Borbála Soós CV Events Curating
Borbála Soós
bori (at) borbalasoos.co.uk Curating Events CV
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Borbála Soós (1984, Budapest) is a London-based curator and an active advocate, participant and organiser of artistic and ecological research. Borbála’s practice responds to, disrupts and enriches environmental thinking and related social, political and decolonial urgencies. She is currently Curator at the Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston. 2022–23 she was Artist Caretaker at Eastside Projects, Birmingham. 2012–19 she was Director/Curator at Tenderpixel, London. She curated projects in collaboration with the Kunsthalle Bratislava; tranzit, Bratislava; FUTURA, Prague; OFF-Biennale, Budapest; Trafó House of Contemporary Arts, Budapest; Rupert, Vilnius; ICA, London; Camden Arts Centre, London; Wysing Arts Centre, UK; CCA Derry-Londonderry... She has been visiting lecturer at Goldsmiths College, the Royal College of Art, Central Saint Martins and Edinburgh College of Art, among others.

Plant, Hangover, Animal, Social Choreography, Mushrooms, Forest, System Dynamics, Language & Politics, Commons, Participation, Future Landscapes, Decoloniality, Migration, Magic & Politics, Expedition, Seeds, Border Ecologies, Climate Justice, Botanic Garden, Fugitivity, Layers of Earth, Food Cultures

Metal Peterborough, Research Residency, 2022-2023

As an outcome of my research residency, I launched a podcasts series that discuss the different layers of earth under our feet, and how they are associated with different influxes of people, plants and animals. The deeper we dig, the less familiar it gets. How these newcomers continue to shape the landscape, and how this might give us new perspectives and critical approached to understanding the temporal nature of us tending to this land?

Index Seminum, the Botanical Garden of Comenius University, Bratislava; the Pink Whale, Bratislava, 23 – 24 August, 2022, events in collaboration with KunstHalle Bratislava, Slovakia

Performative readings by Borbála Soós at the Botanical Garden of Comenius University. The texts re-created a journey of colonial discovery as they were aligned with different habitats in the Botanical Garden of Bratislava. The readings reflect on the creation of botanical gardens as aspirational colonial structures, and their role in the collection, banking and dissemination of seeds, species and ideas of the exotic Other.

A screening programme shown at the Pink Whale, Bratislava. Curated by Borbáls Soós with moving image works by artists Ana Vaz & Tristan Bera, Laura Huertas Millán, Pilar Mata Dupont, Pedro Neves Marques, Asunción Molinos Gordo, Gerard Ortín Castellví and Jonas Staal. The films reflected on colonial journeys of discovery and how nature is politically, culturally and cinematically constructed.

Border Environments: The entangled politics of ecology and migration – organised by the Centre for Research Architecture (London) in collaboration with Het Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam), 12 - 13 May 2022, Goldsmiths College, London

Lecture presentation with the Border Ecologies Network, as part of the event The ​​Border Environments. The roundtable programme set out to critically examine the ways in which environmental systems become active agents in the management and control of migrant bodies and their modes of circulation, resulting in violent and even deadly consequences. Over the two-days of the programme addressed a number of urgent issues including the weaponisation of semi-natural landscapes in border struggles, the role of conservation projects and nature reserves in demolishing migrant camps, and the transformation of ecologies into tactical security regimes.

Leader of a Peer Forum, January – October 2020, at the Horniman Museum and Gardens, London, UK in collaboration with Artquest

I was selected to lead a series of Peer Forum meetings engaging with the scientific work, collections and displays of the Horniman Museum and Gardens. The group is running a reading group, regular meetings with the Horniman curators. They discusses how each of their artistic practices relate to the ecologies of rewilding and what sort of ideas, forms and methodologies this might encompass, such as communal projects and projects in unusual locations; in collaboration with scientists and other researchers; and exercising practices of care...

Forest Ecologies, online performative lecture, 10 June 2020, tranzit, Bratislava, Slovakia

To mark the occasion of the opening of the exhibition 'Ecologies of the Ghost Landscape. The Word for World is Forest', curator Borbála Soósgives and online performative lecture. Opening up the space of the exhibition by stopping at various places related to the scenarios in which the artworks of the exhibition came about, we will examine specific entangled habitats with complex political, social and economic strings attached.

Leader of Forest Ecologies, online reading group, April – June 2020, in collaboration with tranzit, Bratislava, Slovakia

The reading group explored themes such as forest ecologies, permaculture, rewilding and radical care in relation to the exhibition 'Ecologies of the Ghost Landscape. The Word for World is Forest' I curated for tranzit.sk in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Residency and performative online lecture, How to Become a Forest?, March – May 2020, Agosto Foundation, Prague, Czech Republic

As an outcome of her residency March - May 2020 at Agosto Foundation, Prague, curator Borbála Soós invites you on a journey. In the familiar style of virtual guided tours in exhibition halls, she will take you through a series of existing and imagined spaces filled with strange details and luscious vegetation. She will guide you through a series of passageways, exploring the complex and entangled relationship between places, species and history with the help of audio pieces, videos and other artworks. Along the way Borbála will talk about issues of narrativisation and of how we perceive nature, blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction. She will problematise colonial legacies, the financialization of nature, rewilding and humans as saviours of nature.

Public Talk, 12 February 2020, Scottish Sculpture Workshop

The public talk followed and orchard visit in the morning. The lecture related to the current overarching theme at SSW titled  'Stony Connections Matter' and narrated a journey by flowing through materials such as stone, water and wood as well as through music, videos and other artworks.

Rewilding Curatorial Practice, lecture for eremuak's Naturak symposium, 17-19 October 2019, hosted by Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao, Spain

eremuak's symposium around the notion of Naturak is an attempt to avoid reducing the chosen thematic focus to a song about certain simplifying attitudes on the inherent complexity of relationships between the human and non-human, the living and the inert, the artificial and the supposedly natural. Hence it is relevant to provide the root term of this plurality (the –k in naturak, or the –s in naturalezas), which allows to address diversity that is more in line with the reality of the art world and all of the natures that it produces or faces.

How to Talk to Birds? – lecture performance – WE ARE WOODS: About Plant Intelligence and Interspecies Communication, 26 – 28 July 2019, Czech Republic

The lecture performance was part of the events at the forest gathering with WOODS, Community for Cultivation, Theory and Art, near the village of Písečná, Ústí nad Orlicí, in the foothills of the Orlické Mountains, Czech Republic. Titled WE ARE WOODS: About Plant Intelligence and Interspecies Communication, artists, theorists, curators, sociologists, plant and star experts met, discussed, cooked, and shared time in a forest removed from agricultural use and devoted to the common exploration of our interconnected existence.

Forest Rangers – Ecological Commons, 14 January, 12 February, 12 March 2019,  hosted by Jupiter Woods, London, UK

Forest Rangers is a platform focused on ecology(ies), ecosystems and their communities within the realm of art. Forest Rangers explores the current state of the commons and their possible future. With a particular focus on discussing the state of alternative art spaces, natural resources, education, open source economics and outer space migration, FR hopes to establish a comprehensible set of understandings and goals to nurture our common resources.

Worlds open inside a shell, 28 September 2018, Blitz, Valletta, Malta

For the closing event of her residency at Blitz, curator Borbála Soós creates an exhibition in a form of a talk. Bringing the audience on a journey evoking a series of existing and imagined spaces in Malta and on other similar islands, she flexibly opens up the mind to what a space of an exhibition could contain, expanding and contracting along the way.

SPACE Art+Technology, Here: After, Now, Next – Panel Discussion Chair, 31 May 2018, SPACE, London, UK

The panel discussion with former SPACE Art + Technology artists in residence explored the residency focused on emerging technologies, looking at how artists react and adapt to digital trends.

Publication launch and talk. The Attraction of the Mountains by Nicolás Lamas was published by Posture Editions, Saturday, 18 November 2017,  P////AKT, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

The book launch coinciding with the opening of the artist's solo exhibition included a talk with Alejandro Alonso Díaz, Nicolás Lamas and Borbála Soós.

CONGLOMERATE, Screening and Launch of Block Four, followed by discussion moderated by Borbála Soós, Sunday, 15 October 2017, at Camden Arts Centre, London, UK

CONGLOMERATE is a collaborative Gesamtkunstwerk presented in the form of a television network. The project is realised by a core team of five Berlin-based artists and filmmakers: Sol Calero, Ethan Hayes-Chute, Derek Howard, Christopher Kline and Dafna Maimon.

Lecture on Mushrooms as Enablers, as part of  Theory of Leaves, July 2017, organised by Emma (Veronica Valentini) in Offagna, Ancona, Italy

Looking at plants as model for collaboration among human and non-human spheres, the four-day programme aimed to generate a climate of knowledge through cohabitation, exploration, distributed and situated learning promoted by artistic and cultural production.

A realm where cause-and-effect no longer applies, 25 April, 2017, Autarkia, Vilnius, Lithuania

Mushrooms sprout to life even in the darkest conditions. Spores of inspiration spread on the breeze of science, awash in irrepressible fantasy. Tropical climates are ripe for fermentation. While the yeast ferments, the revolution foments. Look through the cellular membrane: nostalgia therapy. Simulation leads to stimulation. The mountain pulls away turbulent weather, leaving sunshine over the beach. Escapism is a fundamental aspect of human life and mental health. All options are the best options. Heaven is a Place on Earth...

Fungal Futures, 25 April 2017, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania

In this lecture I presented my research on organisational structures in nature, including underground mushroom mycelium; slime mould intelligence and emergent behaviours; how bacteria can recognise one another and activate themselves upon reaching a critical mass; I talked about birds communication, and the bioluminescence of deep-sea creatures. Though entering the territory of fabulation, the lecture aimed to opens up our imagination to an interconnected world...

Rupert, Curatorial Residency, 1 until 30 April 2017, Vilnius, Lithuania

As part of the residency at Rupert my research focused on the organisational systems of fungi species, slime mould, plants and deep sea creatures in relation to social structures...

In Conversation with David Ferrando Giraut, 15 February 2017, SCAN Project Room, London, UK

Screening of 'Loss' by David Ferrando Giraut followed by an 'In Conversation' session between the artist and Borbala Soos, Director and Curator of Tenderpixel.

Biopolitics and the Urban Commons, as part of Techniques to Make You Doubt, 27-28 September 2016, Fluent, Santander, Spain

This lecture on ‘Biopolitics and the Urban Commons’ was part of ‘Techniques to Make You Doubt’, a two-day seminar at Fluent, Santander, Spain, specifically conceived for researchers, cultural practitioners and students from the MA in Visual Culture MNCARS Reina Sofia. Participants included Sonia Fernández Pan, Sabel Gavaldon, Hanna Laura Kaljo, João Laia, Fran Meana, Enough Room for Space, Borbala Soos, Jochen Volz and Benjamin Weil.

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