PROJECT

Curatorium is a collective of makers and thinkers energised by the idea of doing social analysis differently. We formed in an attempt to foster a shared experiment in creative and critical thinking, hoping to generate new affirmations and critiques of what anthropology makes possible.

Curatorium aligns with projects that immerse themselves in questions and challenges
of knowledge creation, while grappling with representations, methodologies of making together, co-creative expression, and formal experimentation that amplify the many urgent efforts to decolonise the future. We want search together for new kinds of traction and relational force in the world and, by extension, new forms of accountability. In doing so we seek to work with emerging vectors of tension, discord, and tenacity unfolding within the worlds in which we work.

We profoundly acknowledge the many First Nations scholars, filmmakers, curators,
and artists whose critical-creative engagements continue to both challenge and transform anthropology. The provocations and critiques that they have brought to the field have radically sharpened shared reckonings of the situated political, ethical, and aesthetic stakes in such work. We acknowledge too, a great indebtedness and respect for the ground-breaking legacies of Australian anthropology in areas of visual, sensory and media anthropology. It’s our hope to contribute anew to the opening, reconfiguring, and energising of the discipline and its transdisciplinary collaborations.

Curatorium formed in 2018 as an initiative of the Australian Anthropological Society.
In 2020 we proposed a partnership with The Australian Journal of Anthropology resulting in this hybrid special issue. In 2021 the Centre for Creative Futures at Charles Darwin University became our institutional home under the leadership of co-directors Jennifer Deger and Paul Gurrumuruwuy Wunungmurra.