Alexandra Baudelot
Co-director of les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers (Paris northern suburbs) since 2013 with Dora Garcia and Mathilde Villeneuve, Alexandra Baudelot has worked for several years as an exhibition curator, editor and author. In 2009 she created and managed Rosascape, a platform for contemporary creation in Paris that straddles multiple spheres as a private art centre and production unit, exploring the contexts of production and reception of works as well as their mode of display by attending to specific notions such as the question of private, intimate space vs public and political space. The decision to house Rosascape in an architecturally defined space — a private, intimate, theatrical space, playing with a tension between interior and exterior space and the domestic character of its surroundings — rather than in a neutral, ‘white cube’ type of exhibition space, stems from a will to perceptibly shift the relationship to artworks and artistic experiences. A critical awareness of the standardisation of exhibition spaces in the context of globalisation, and thus of the standardised relationship between the artwork and the public, led us to seek and occupy a site and experiential sphere of a different kind — a left-field space — and displace, in this way, our relationship to contemporary art. At Rosascape she curated exhibitions with Katinka Bock, Ulla von Brandenburg, Raymond Gervais, Benoît Maire, Vittorio Santoro, Berger&Berger, and Adrian Dan and produced several artists books. + Since 2013, as co-director of Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, she develops a work with Mathilde Villeneuve and Dora Garcia based on two factors — a laboratory that research, test out and experiment, and the town of Aubervilliers (at the periphery, on the outskirts, a melting pot of industrial workers, and a major site of immigration). The very particular relationship between these elements is the context in which artists-in-residence make and develop their projects. The collegial approach aims to establish collectives that enable new forms of intersubjectivity to take shape. In collaboration with the co-direction team, she works on developing novel communities that alter and transform according to the shifts and developments in their work. From the very beginning, the Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers has been committed to reducing the gap between informed and uninformed audiences, and to supporting the most complex and hybrid artistic practices while ensuring no one feels excluded. The institution is renowned for the collective productions it has generated, for fostering collaborations between artists across the entire spectrum of disciplines, and for its participatory, community-building projects involving local residents. In 2016 she co-curated the event « Performing Opposition » intiated by Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers at Capacete (Rio de Janeiro) and Casa do Povo (Sao Paulo). She is the author of the book “Dispositif chorégraphique” (Les Presses du Réel, Nouvelles scènes collection, 2005) on the work of choreographer Jennifer Lacey in collaboration with the scenographer Nadia Lauro, the editor of the monograph “Grimaces du réél” on the choreographer Latifa Laâbissi (Les Presses du Réel, Nouvelles scènes collection, 2015), “Portraits d’Aubervilliers” by Lenio Kaklea with Lou Forster (Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, 2018), “Zarba Lonsa _o_o__o Mesonya/ » an editorial project by Katinka Bock, (MER. Paper Kunsthalle, 2018) In 2016 she curated a serie of three exhibitions with Ulla von Brandenburg at The Power Plant (Toronto), The Darling Foundry (Montreal) and ACCA (Melbourne). -
Mathilde Villeneuve
Daniela Mattos
Artist, educator and curator, currently teaching at UFRJ.
“O Capacete tem sido um espaço fundamental de produção artística, encontros e pesquisas no Rio de Janeiro, atuando de forma independente e também em parceria com instituições locais. Tive a chance e a felicidade de participar e colaborar com atividades do Capa em diferentes projetos e momentos, listo aqui alguns deles: como integrante do grupo Máquina de Escrever (RJ), como propositora do workshop O artista como curador (RJ), como artista convidada do evento Feminismo e Feijoada (RJ) e como integrante do grupo Máquina de Escrever (SP) que culminou com a publicação Livro para Responder. Além disso, assisti a inúmeras palestras, tive encontros, conversas, celebrações e também fiz amigas e amigos entre os artistas, curadores e pesquisadores residentes que participaram desses 20 anos de atuação. Espero que essa iniciativa se mantenha viva e atuante, oxigenando as estruturas formais e não-formais do circuito de arte carioca, brasileiro e internacional.”
Giseli Vasconcelos
Giseli é produtora cultural e artista interdisciplinar, brasileira, residente nos Estados Unidos. Desenvolve festivais, workshops, exibições e publicações que discutem mídias e tecnologias relacionadas ao cenário brasileiro de arte e ativismo. Seus projetos se caracterizam pela junção de redes colaborativas que se destacam por práticas de mídias táticas e pedagogias radicais relacionadas à cultura de internet. Seus projetos já foram apresentados em Quito (LabSurLab), Amsterdam (N5M), Nova Delhi (Sarai), Viena (MQ21), Berlim (Radical Networks), São Paulo (31st Biennial of São Paulo, Sesc Pompeia), Rio de Janeiro (Capacete, Lastro).
Giseli is a cultural worker and interdisciplinary artist from Brazil based in US. She has been organizing festivals, workshops, exhibitions and publications that discuss media and technology related to the Brazilian scene of art and activism. Most of the projects are collaborative process that highlights practices on tactical media and radical pedagogies related to internet culture. Her work has already been presented in Quito (LabSurLab), Amsterdam (N5M), New Delhi (Sarai), Vienna (MQ21), Berlin (Radical Networks), São Paulo (31st Biennial of São Paulo, Sesc Pompeia), Rio de Janeiro (Capacete, Lastro).
“No retorno ao Brasil, Capacete foi o espaço e agenciamento importante para revisitar minha rede de trabalho, e também para estabelecer novos contatos e aproximação artistas, pensadores e curadores que circulam pelo Brasil. Como integrante do primeiro programa anual Capacete, o espaço residência-escola localizado no Rio de Janeiro nos proporcionou um ambiente informal e descontraído para repensar e debater experiências coletivas, e permitiu uma abertura para aproximar outras redes culturais que trazem questões críticas contundentes ao sistema institucional da arte no Brasil.”
Hanns Lennart Wiesner
I am currently based in Berlin and organize curatorial projects here and abroad independently.
“Before Capacete I sporadically had contact with the art world already, but had no further interest to work in the arts professionally. That changed after my time in Rio de Janeiro. I organized an exhibition with the support of Helmut in Lidice and started to work as an assistant for Daniel Steegmann Mangrané. The numerous encounters with artists, curators and theorists from all over the world continuously shaped my interest in a more complex and critical approach to understand the world we live in. I remain grateful for the 3 years that I accompanied Capacete’s activities and I am extremely happy for all the dear friends that I made during that time. Obrigado a todxs”
Rieke Vos
Annick Kleizen
“My residency at Capacete came as a crossroad: I arrived in Rio de Janeiro at the start of an independent practice after working as a curator for art institutes for several years; Capacete itself was going through a change of structure and brainstorms on (alternative) education and the new program were an ongoing conversation; above all, it was my first travel to Latin America. The three-month residency turned into a five-month stay and many subsequent returns to Brazil, mainly to São Paulo. During the first weeks, I wrote to a friend that Brazil taught me about complexity. At that moment this was not more than a hunch: I understood little Portuguese and my (Western European) perspective was only starting to open up. Since that first moment, the complexity only increased. Now I think that time in Brazil has been teaching me to listen more deeply.
+ Capacete’s focus is on presence, instead of studio-work, and there is no pressure to immediately turn time, conversations, walks and study into a fixed, presentable shape. Because of that, the experiences have the possibility to take their course and run much deeper. For me, those first months in Rio gave me a first taste of other narratives, and other ways of being in the world, that now, four years later, I still find myself working and thinking with.” -
Max Hinderer
Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz is a writer, editor and philosopher who works as professor, cultural critic, and curator, since 2011 he is a frequent collaborator of Capacete. 2014 Capacete translated and published his and Sabeth Buchmann’s book “Hélio Oiticica and Neville D’Almeida: Block-Experiments in Cosmococa – program in progress” (Afterall Books/MIT Press, 2013) from English into Portuguese – in collaboration with Editora Azougue, Rio de Janeiro.
Raimundas Malasauskas
