TIMIșOARA.- Art Encounters Foundation (Timișoara) and Cluj Cultural Centre (Cluj-Napoca) are launching the open call for the Unschool of Curating, taking place in Cluj and Timișoara, Romania between July 6–13, 2025. The programme—developed collaboratively by the two organizations—aims to strengthen curatorial networks in Romania and internationally.

The Unschool of Curating is an intensive eight-day seminar, formerly known as The Autumn School of Curating. With its newly adopted name, the programme signals a focus on informal methodologies, alternative pedagogies, and practice-led curatorial discourse.

Its seventh edition, led by renowned curator Raimundas Malašauskas, offers emerging curators an international platform for dialogue, knowledge exchange, and learning. Over the course of the program the participants will be immersed in the artistic context that both cities have to offer while exploring concepts and conversations around the theme The Art of Chaos:

“We are living through a deeper mess than many of us remember. And for those of us—still alive, still trying to make sense of things—the word chaos is everywhere (even the dead are said to be turning in their graves).

It arrives from all sides: academia, poetry, the street. Yet rarely is it remembered in its ancient Greek sense—as a gaping openness, a primordial potential. Nor is it treated with the precision of mathematics, where chaos is not a metaphor but a measurable fact. More often, it serves as shorthand for disorder, unpredictability, noise. In other words: a deep mess.

But chaos is also generative. It carries the swirling, shimmering potential so often cherished in the arts. There is a whole history of chaos-poetics. And at the same time, chaos is the very condition authoritarian forces exploit to install new masters and new forms of control. It holds a dark potency—charged with fear, ripe with danger.

There is always the chance that the poetics of chaos may meet the logistics of chaos to generate something new. And there’s always the chance they’ll never meet at all—each running its course to extremes.

Today, the art of exhibition-making finds itself in a peculiar relation to chaos. An exhibition is an enterprise of illumination, knowledge, and—in its mass grandeur—a spectacle. But can a curated space remain porous to the unpredictable? Can it hold space for what cannot be resolved?

In this seminar, we may ask: how do we care for what resists control and order? Or for what does not ask to be cared for? How do we engage with the hardly controllable—gases, beats, improvised gestures, smells, photons—and the un-curatable, un-curable, unforgivable?”

The programme of the Unschool of Curating is split between three days in Cluj and three days in Timișoara and includes lectures and working sessions with the course leader, presentations and workshops with guest speakers, visits to local galleries, art venues and exhibitions, and meetings with curators and artists. Two public events are organized as part of the programme –a public lecture of the course leader in Cluj and an open conversation with participants in Timișoara.

Who can apply

Emerging professionals in the field of contemporary art curating, with at least 3 years’ experience. The Unschool of Curating is free of charge and open to international candidates. We strongly encourage Romanian curators to apply to the programme, as well as professionals from the wider region. The courses will be held in English. Availability in person for the entire course is required in Cluj and Timișoara.

What is covered by the programme

The programme is free of charge. Organisers will cover:

• accommodation costs for the sessions scheduled in Cluj-Napoca (3 nights) and Timișoara (4 nights) from July 7–13, in double rooms

• transport costs from Cluj-Napoca to Timișoara on July 9 (by bus)

• two collective dinners, one in Cluj and one in Timișoara

Organisers can also support participants with recommendation letters or official invitation letters in support of visa applications or scholarships that participants apply for independently.

What is not covered by the programme

• international and local travel for participants, others than those mentioned above
• meals for the whole duration of the programme, others than those mentioned above
• visa costs or any other costs related to the participation in the programme
• any personal costs that might be incurred throughout the programme

Application deadline: May 15, 2025.

How to apply

Applications for the Unschool of Curating #7 can be submitted until May 15th, 2025 at the form here.

The course leader

Raimundas Malašauskas has co-written an opera libretto (Cellar Door by Loris Gréaud, Palais de Tokyo, 2008), co-produced a television show (CAC TV, Vilnius, 2004–2006), served as an agent for dOCUMENTA (13), and released Paper Exhibition, a book of his selected writings (Sternberg Press, 2012).

He co-curated the 9th Baltic Triennial of International Art (Vilnius, 2005), the 9th Mercosul Biennial (Porto Alegre, 2013), and the 9th Liverpool Biennial (2017). His childhood paintings were exhibited in a choreographic composition by Alix Eynaudi (2019).

His recent projects include trust & confusion, an eight-month-long live art exhibition at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2021); 914, the Russian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (cancelled); Mars Returns, a 14-hour-long event at Mykolas Žilinskas Gallery, Kaunas, Lithuania; Mundus Mal-a-Showcase, a one-night event at Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles, Paris; and 2019, an exhibition at Grazer Kunstverein. Suzon, his second book of selected writings, was recently published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König.

From 1994 to 2006, Malašauskas worked as a curator at the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius. Since then, he has curated numerous international projects including The Last Piece by John Fare (gb agency, Paris, 2007); Paper Exhibition(Artists Space, New York, 2009); Repetition Island (Centre Pompidou, 2010); Into the Belly of a Dove (Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, 2010); Satellite Series 4 (Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2011); oO, the Lithuanian and Cyprus pavilions at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); Fusiform Gyrus (Lisson Gallery, London, 2013); Meeting Points 8 (Brussels, Beirut, Cairo, 2016–2017); On Campus (Monash University, Melbourne, 2017); and Rosalind Nashashibi, a solo exhibition at Kunstinstituut Melly (Rotterdam, 2018), among others.

His longest-running project, Hypnotic Show (ongoing since 2008, with Marcos Lutyens), is an exhibition that takes place through hypnosis. The Clifford Irving Show (2008–2010) explored notions of truth, life-writing, identity, and play over a two-year period.

Malašauskas has taught at California College of the Arts (San Francisco, 2008), Impulstanz Festival (Vienna, 2015), HEAD – Genève (2017–2019), and Sandberg Institute (Amsterdam, 2011–2015).

He was born in Vilnius, Lithuania.