I Hope This Message Finds You Well, Eszter Szakács (S3/Ep2)

I Hope This Message Finds You Well

Welcome to the second episode of the third season of I Hope This Message Finds You Well, a podcast on curating hosted by Kris Dittel and Eloise Sweetman. In this season we are focusing our conversations around “the exhibition”. With our guests we discuss its status for curating, and whether we take it for granted. We want to dig deeper into the exhibition as a location for the display and reception of artworks, a space of representation and liberation, and its limitations.
In this episode, we are in conversation with curator, organizer, and researcher Eszter Szakács. We discuss her curatorial beginnings as a curator’s assistant, her creation of the Curatorial Dictionary, and her recent exhibition Dóra Maurer – SUMUS – We Are Together at De Appel in Amsterdam. For Szakács, the exhibition is a place of learning; as she says, “When the exhibition is open, the work begins.” This work involves learning from her mistakes to use as a launching pad for new research and exhibitions. She also discusses the organizational aspect of making exhibitions and events political, which she explores in her work with OFF Biennale.
The conversation with Eszter was recorded in August 2023. The short chat between Kris & Eloise was recorded in January 2024.
If you have feedback we’d love to receive your email at [e-mail]; you can also follow us on Instagram @ihopethismessage. The jingle was made by the artist Natalia Solzano and sound engineering by Nick Thomas. Graphic design by Christophe Clarijs.
We have launched our I Hope This Message Finds You Well t-shirts, get them via our Everpress campaign: https://everpress.com/i-hope-this-message
Show notes:
In this interview, we discussed & mentioned:
De Appel https://www.deappel.nl/en/
OFF-Biennale Budapest https://offbiennale.hu/en/off-biennale-budapest/
Hajnalka Somogyi https://ccs.bard.edu/people/195-hajnalka-somogyi
CCS Bard https://ccs.bard.edu/school
Curatorial dictionary https://tranzit.org/curatorialdictionary/index.php/dictionary/
Lara Khaldi, https://soundcloud.com/ihopethismessage/i-hope-this-message-finds-you-well-lara-khaldi
Paul O'Neill https://soundcloud.com/ihopethismessage/i-hope-this-message-finds-you-well-paul-oneill-s2-ep5
Maria Lind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Lind
Documenta fifteen https://documenta-fifteen.de/en/
lumbung https://documenta-fifteen.de/en/lumbung/
Dóra Maurer, SUMUS – We Are Together at De Appel https://www.deappel.nl/en/archive/events/1196-dra-maurer-sumus-we-are-together
Works and Words, De Appel, Amsterdam, 1979 https://www.deappel.nl/en/archive/events/143-works-and-words