9-11 June 2025, 11:00-17:30 @MKC, Skopje
Invitation text from curator of the conference: Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski
At the (non)conference we are inviting international and Macedonian curators and artists to share their curatorial and artistic strategies, tactics, and modes of work related to ecopolitics, feminism and socially engaged practices based on solidarity and equity. Their practices and collaborative work will be organized as presentations, workshops and discussions among themselves, local professionals, students, and the general audience.
Participants: Katalin Erdődi (Budapest), Paz Ponce (Berlin), Marta Keil (Warsaw/Utrecht), Hampus Bergander (Stockholm), Nefeli Gioti (Athens/Stockholm), Nikola Uzunovski, Ivana Dragsic, Kristina Lelovac (Skopje) and Slobodanka Stevceska (Skopje).
The (non)conference idea is to explore the (non-)conference format, as a public and semi-public, allow participants to present their recent work modes, and think together towards ecopolitics, ecofeminism, feminism and how they affect curatorial and organisational, or governing practices in the arts.
We will try to explore diverse eco- and feminist curatorial and artistic practices and socio-ecological transformation in artistic and cultural production. We will work with intersectional perspectives that connect eco-and feminist, solidarity-based, green practices and policies in support of socio-ecological change. We will try to build a shared space to explore ecopolitical and feminist approaches to curating. At the end of the event, we will co-create a plan for a fanzine that will be presented in the autumn edition of the festival and then distributed online.
Venue: Youth Cultural Center (MKC), Skopje
Dates: 9–11 June, 2025
Format: Non-conference model with presentation, (walking) discussions, workshops, collective sharing, and situated reflection.
Project-link: https://www.lokomotiva.org.mk/nonconference-ecofeminism-in-practices-rethinking-arts-and-curatorial-futures-неконференција/
Programme:
DAY 1: Monday, 9 June
Sharing & Reflecting
Location: Youth Cultural Center (MKC)
11:00–11:30 → Welcome & Introduction
11:30–14:00 → Practice Sharing: Curatorial and artistic methodologies – Katalin Erdődi (Budapest), Paz Ponce (Berlin), Marta Kail (Amsterdam), Hampus Bergander (Stockholm)
14:00–15:30 → Lunch Break
15:30–16:00 → Practice Sharing: Curatorial and artistic methodologies – Nefeli Gioti (Athens/Stockholm)
16.00-17.00 → Discussion
“I shared two dilemmas that guide my curatorial work:
How can the curatorial revert back to the local scene?
and
Is imagining institutions more interesting than becoming one?From there, I introduced a set of words I carry with me — a vocabulary in motion — and shared three projects that bring these ideas to life. We moved between poetry and timelines, between care and memory, between riverbeds and ruins. I spoke about curating as an ecosystem service, a way to listen back — to places, stories, people; and infrastructure to dream together.
1. anatomia publica – open stage for scientific, aesthetic & social research practices (Sept – Dec. 2025): A curatorial program at the Tieranatomisches Theater (Humboldt University Berlin), designed as an open stage for scientific, aesthetic, and social research. I spoke about arriving in a new institutional context and beginning by interrogating its “architecture of knowledge.” The project fosters transdisciplinary research and invites others into the space not just as presenters, but as guest researchers, reshaping how public engagement with knowledge happens.
2. The Listening Theater: TA T Audioguide Project (in development): This upcoming project stems from a discovery of gaps in the institutional timeline of the Tieranatomisches Theater. I approach the timeline as a score, using archival absence and personal memory to guide new narratives — including more-than-human stories and multivocal readings of place. The piece begins with a memory from Frau Menzel, the caretaker of the space, and flows into reflections on rivers, erosion, and forgotten histories.
3. museo de la democracia (past: 2021): A fictional institution for preserving democracy as an endangered species. This speculative museum project — presented at nGbK Berlin — unfolded across three conceptual chapters and blended historical research with performative formats. It included the Oficina de Sueños, where I co-developed a participatory sound archive of Latin American protests. The work reflected on community museums, institutional imagination, and how to make space for memory and resistance through curatorial dreaming.
— Paz Ponce
DAY 2: Tuesday, 10 June
Sharing & Reflecting
Location: Youth Cultural Center (MKC)
11:00–12:30 → Walking Discussion: Skopje as an eco-political landscape (Ivana Dragsic, Skopje)
12:30–14:00 → Practice Sharing: Curatorial and artistic methodologies (Nikola Uzunovski, Kristina Lelovac and Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski)
14:00–15:30 → Lunch Break
15:30-17:30 → Collective Discussion/Sharing / Group Work
Collective sharing: How can eco- and feminist-driven curatorial practices contribute to shifts in contemporary (performing) arts? What potentialities emerge when ecofeminist, decolonial, and affective frameworks intersect with curatorial work?
Participants will work in groups to map relations, generate insights, and propose plural, situated imaginaries. Rather than seeking fixed answers, the session will open space for articulating concepts, strategies, and dilemmas relevant to eco- and feminist curating.
How do we ‘unsettle the settled’? How can ecofeminist and relational principles reshape the curatorial and affect how we think and make contemporary arts?
Each curator is invited to bring one key dilemma or question from their practice. These provocations will guide collective exploration on how situated, embodied, and transindividual curating can enact change – conceptually and structurally.
DAY 3: Wednesday, 11 June
Critical Pedagogy and Ecological Learning in Curatorial Practice
Location: Youth Cultural Center (MKC)
11:00-14:00 → Collective Working Session
Theme: Critical Pedagogy, Curating, and the Ecological Turn
Focus:
- Rethinking knowledge infrastructures
- Decolonial and ecofeminist learning
- Social and ecological justice in art education
14:00–15:30 → Lunch Break
15:30–17:30 → Collective Reflection/Presentation of collaborative work & Fanzine Planning
The session will explore how education in curating and arts/culture can respond to eco and feminist urgencies. Through shared proposals and open discussion, we will draft ideas for transforming curricula and knowledge infrastructures. The fanzine will serve as a trace and tool for wider distribution and continued engagement.
Supporters: Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of North Macedonia, Heinrich Böll Foundation, Goethe-Institut Skopje, Performance Situation Room / LLB 3 project co-funded by Creative Europe and Perform Europe.
The fanzine – is currently being edited for publication
As part of the (non)conference, we collectively initiated a fanzine: A Companion to Ecofeminist Curatorial Geography. Half exercise book, half poetic trace, it gathers fragments, resonances, and shared urgencies from our days together in Skopje — an invitation to think-with, drift-through, and continue dreaming ecofeminist curatorial worlds. At its core flows a river of questions, statements, dilemmas, and imaginative acts — an ever-shifting current to which we can all respond, each from our own position.
My contribution to the fanzine
Cantos rodados (Rolling Songs): Curating as Situated Memory and Ecosystem Service
The non-conference on eco-feminism was part of the Performance Platform Festival (PPF) 2025, including the launch of the First edition of the Macedonian choreographic platform (MCP). The notes on ecofeminism are from the practice sharing by curator Biljana Tanurovska-Kjulavkovski. The stage image is from Ivana Balabanova‘s work in progress: YUGO, where she investigates the female body – not as symbol, but as a site – where power, survival, and agency are negotiated within the textures of systemic oppression (wonderful work). The views of Skopje I took during the Walking Discussion: Skopje as an eco-political landscape (Ivana Dragsic, Skopje)
PAZ PONCE _ PORTFOLIO 