Based in Hungary. Active since 2012
Curatorial Dictionary is an ongoing, long-term collaborative online research project at tranzit.hu in Budapest, Hungary. The dictionary project, paradoxically, is propelled by dilemmas rather than statements. It poses questions about the ways we think and write about curatorial practice and discourse, as well the gaps between the two: about the possibility of defining and translating. The rigid dictionary format thus far has been a helpful problematizing tool in the different phases of the project: to scrutinize the terms of the Anglophone-based globalized art and curatorial discourse, to provide—in some cases, forge—their Hungarian equivalents, and to try to complement international art discourses with concepts, lines of thoughts, and case studies specific mostly to Hungary and the former Eastern Europe. Furthermore, going also beyond these, on a more “trans-national” and prospective level, to share and exchange understandings of working in locations that do not or partially participate in the dominant discourse, as well as to unlearn this very discourse and representation by learning about many others instead.
Curatorial Dictionary’s working group members are artist Balázs Beöthy, curator Nikolett Erőss, ethnographer Zsófia Frazon, curator Eszter Lázár, and curator Eszter Szakács. The project is edited by Eszter Szakács and designed by Imre Lepsényi.