The Curatorial Roundtable, an international forum for curators and institutional leaders to discuss formative and current projects, is hosted by Steven Henry Madoff, Founding Chair of the MA Curatorial Practice at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
How do we encounter climate breakdown? How do we negotiate the impossibly complex? If, as Amitav Ghosh suggests in The Nutmeg’s Curse, the greatest obstacle to facing planetary trouble is not a crisis of means, but one of imagination, then how do we--creative and cultural practitioners, whose lives are dedicated to the possibilities of the imagination--participate in nurturing and encouraging a renewed sense of our purpose?
In this presentation, Pietroiusti will bring stories from her own curatorial practice, from the General Ecology project (2018-ongoing) to Songs for the Changing Seasons, Vienna's first Climate Biennale (2024). To help her do so, Pietroiusti will rely upon the intelligences of many different ecologies (environmental, psychic, organizational, social, human, and more-than-human), in order to think through how these are inextricably tangled up with one another, and what directions they may point towards, for both creative and systemic practices, in a moment of profound transformation.
Lucia Pietroiusti is Head of Ecologies at Serpentine, London. As a curator, programmer, and organizational strategist, she works at the intersection of art, ecology, and systems, often outside of the exhibition space. Ecologies at Serpentine is a holistic initiative and purpose-led department aimed at embedding environmental responsibility throughout the organization’s infrastructure, operations, networks, and programming. Pietroiusti was the founder of Serpentine’s General Ecology project and the curator of Sun & Sea (Lithuanian Pavilion, 2019 Venice Biennale and ongoing tour). Together with Filipa Ramos, she is the curator of Songs for the Changing Seasons (Vienna Climate Biennale, 2024); Persones Persons (8th Biennale Gherdeïna, 2022); and The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish (research, festival, podcast and publication series). Pietroiusti is also a curator of Sites of… Practice (E-WERK Luckenwalde, 2024), Back to Earth (Serpentine, 2020-22), and Infinite Ecologies Marathon (2023-24). Recent publications include More-than-Human (with Andrés Jaque and Marina Otero Verzier) and Microhabitable (with Fernando García-Dory).