Rob Ritzen

I work as a curator with a background in philosophy and activism. My curatorial practice is focused on self-organised and collaborative formats in close association with cultural practitioners. In my research I am concerned with social and political constellations that have a hold on everyday life. Cultural practices are a way to dislodge the hold the present has on us, they enable the exploration and experimentation with alternative forms of life and the organisation of things among us. This can be done by reappropriating the past, reshuffling the present, and (re)claiming the time to come.

In my projects there are some recurring curatorial tactics. As a curator I aim to set out parameters within which different articulations and constellations can occur. For this I make use of a practice of assembly. Spatially this practice is translated in the form of scenographies that enable collective exchange or organisational forms in which critical mutual care can flourish. Assembly comes back in the content of my work by bringing apparently disparate practices and perspectives together in order to converge and deflect. Consequently, my projects are characterized by an emphasis on process. The outcome can result in an exhibition or publication in which I try to keep the playful but brisk character of an essay. With my curatorial practice I want to reconfigure ways of seeing and doing by giving room to a plurality of voices and narratives. Only in this way can the complexities, difficulties and potentialities of our present become apparent.

He is a founding member of Level Five a cooperative artist studio in Brussel, and was part in shaping its organisational, social and political form. He is the coördinator of Permanent, a project that seeks to develop a permanent social and cultural infrastructure in Brussels. Together with Paoletta Holst I initiated That Might Be Right, an initiative dedicated to (re)searching, developing and supporting alternatives to the present. Recent projects include Colonial Lives of Property (2020), Forms of Life of Forms (2019), In My Own Backyard (2019), M’ (2018), All Work No Pay (2018), Borderscapes: From the Margin to the Centre (2017) Between the Sheets (2017).