Lars Willumeit | Research Trip
Lebanon
Lars Willumeit (b. 1974, Frankenthal/Pfalz, Germany) is an independent curator, author, and art educator based in Switzerland. He is currently a curator at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne. With degrees in Social Anthropology (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Curatorial Studies (Zürcher Hochschule der Künste), his interests are in photography, documentarisms, regimes of representation, and visual cultures. Lars has applied for a one-month curatorial research residency at the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut, Lebanon in order to enable dcgetting a preliminary overview of the physical archives and collections at AIF. But also to learn about their specific institutional approach and positioning as regards conservation and mediation issues, all with a goal to establish potential future collaborations.
Curatorial projects include: Yann Mingard – Everything is up in the air, thus our vertigo, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne (2019); Salvatore Vitale – How to Secure a Country, Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur (2019); CO-OP, Unseen, Amsterdam (2017 + 2018); Unfamiliar Familiarities — Outside Views on Switzerland, Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur and Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne (2017/18); Crisis? What Crisis?!, the Main Program for Kraków Photomonth (2016); Beyond Evidence: An Incomplete Narratology of Photographic Truths, Quad, Derby (2015). Written contributions include: Why not…gather together?!— Imagineering the (Un-)becomings of Photography as Arenas and Communities of Collective Meaning-Making and Collaborative Agency, in Why Exhibit?, A.K. Rastenberger/I. Sikking eds. (FW-books, 2018); Wonderful to Watch — Some Notes on Ruin Lust and Creative Destruction in/of Photographic Realism, Andrea Botto, KABOOM (Editions Pierre Bessard, 2017); Factory tools, in Fabrik, catalogue for German Pavilion curated by Florian Ebner, Venice (Verlag Walther König, 2015); and Deposit by Yann Mingard (Steidl, 2014). He is also editor of The (Un)becomings of Photography—On Reaggregating and Reassembling the Photographic and its Institutions (Foundation for Visual Arts, 2016) and co-editor with Salvatore Vitale of How to Secure a Country. From Border Policing via Weather Forecast to Social Engineering—A Visual Study of 21st-Century Statehood (Lars Müller Publishers, 2019).
