What does it mean to rehearse, research and wish for a 'slow institution' in the field of contemporary art? In my presentation I would like to address my wishes and doubts how to curate a forthcoming biennial (Contour Biennial in Mechelen, Belgium), by taking literally what the anthropologist Ghassan Hage suggested, for all of us concerned about climate change, that we should 'not analyse a missile when it is heading towards us, but act and mobilize' ourselves immediately and rethink what we are doing and how we do it. I desire to think of artistic practice as a sustainable, socially responsible practice among citizens, rather than as an accumulation of marketable, product-oriented works. In 2011 renowned philosopher of sciences Isabelle Stengers wrote a plea for ethical research in sciences that she refers to « slow science », where she drew analogy between « the slow knowledge of a gardener to the fast one of the rational industrial agriculture”. Questions that I would like to pose are concerned with how to create artistic practices that coexist within our lived realities, and how can such practices become part of the call for economic and technological degrowth in the developed countries of the Global North, which are causing the largest amount of global-warming-causing pollution.

Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez is an independent curator, writer and editor based in Paris, France. She is currently chief editor of the online platform of the European museum confederation L’Internationale and has been appointed curator for the forthcoming Contour Biennale in Mechelen. Since 2006 she has co-organized the seminar “Something You Should Know,” EHESS, Paris, France, and is a member of the research group Travelling féministe in the frame of Centre audiovisuel Simone de Beauvoir. In 2010 she was associate curator of The Promises of the Past, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and guest curator of Paris Photo.Between 2010 and 2012 she was co-director of the Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers. Curatorial projects include: Show me your archive and I will tell you who is in power, Kiosk, Ghent (2017), Let’s Talk about the Weather. Art and Ecology in a Time of Crisis, Sursock Museum, Beirut (2016), Tales of Empathy, Jeu de Paume, Paris (2014), Resilience. Triennial of Contemporary Art in Slovenia, Museum of Contemporary Art, Ljubljana (2013). She has contributed to magazines including e-flux journal, Springerin, Parkett, Bidoun, and Sarai Reader. Between 2012 and 2014 Petrešin-Bachelez has been chief editor of Manifesta Journal. 

Navigating Turbulences names the Public Seminar 2016/17 that is organized by the Research-Based CCC Master Program, one of three Masters of the Visual Arts Department at HEAD – Genève. More a frame than a theme, Navigating Turbulences proposes to continue to think together about the need for new vocabularies for living in global turbulences by means of contemporary research processes. All sessions emerge from the CCC-Curriculum with its faculty members The Colloquium departs from literally “a speaking together”: from com- “together” + -loquium “speaking”. Such an approach does not propose thinking to be a philosophical method to study a subject matter but departs from a moment under conditions of turbulence when knowledge is in crisis that makes it necessary for us to think, to think differently.