An experimental essay and collaboration with the artist Nika von Ham, published as the last chapter of Zdenka Badovinac’s Comradeship: Curating, Art, and Politics in Post-Socialist Europe, “My Post-Catastrophic Glossary” is written as a semi-fictional glossary. It imagines the future of museums after their full destruction from a catastrophe, through the following concepts: Destruction; War Time; The Self-Reflection of the Museum; The Authentic Interest of the Museum; Historicization; Self-Historicization; Contemporary Art; The Museum of Modern Art; The Museum of Contemporary Art and Its Time; Narrators; The Sustainable Museum; Institutional Building; and Comradeship.
Badovinac revisits this essay in conversation with writers and art historians Carlos Kong and Yin Ho, who were core participants of the Comradeship Reading Group, a year-long program to discuss and looking closely at Badovinac’s publication, Comradeship. The three talk about the genesis and format of the glossary, how the concepts of catastrophe influenced Badovinac’s work as a museum director, the future of museums, and importantly, how to become true comrades.
