Marta Ramos

In 2022, 41 contemporary art curators, researchers, and museum directors from 24 different countries were awarded to attend the CIMAM 2022 Annual Conference. The CIMAM 2022 Annual Conference, titled "The Attentive Museum. Permeable Practices for a Common Ground", was held in Mallorca (Balearic Islands), Spain on 11–13 November, hosted by Es Baluard Museu d'Art Contemporani de Palma.

Marta Ramos' Conference Report

Attentive, permeable, and common are the three adjectives we can find in the CIMAM 2022 Annual Conference title as an invitation to get together over the concept of the contemporary art museum. Three words that express ways of being in the world in relationship with others, but also three standpoints to talk about how a museum could be organised for the development of the commonplace -so it has to deal with governance and autonomy in different ways-, the space for all narratives – so it has to be permeable to all the beings – and the shelter for all kind emergency – so it has to care for crisis and future changes. Each one of the days we spent in Mallorca approached these main issues through experiences and models made by curators and other agents of the art context, but, for me the most appealing testimonies, were by artists whose engaged practices show how to act and propose radical and coherent ways of being in the world, so inside or in relation with the museum. Words, and how they were spoken, by Denise Ferreira da Silva, Sandra Gamarra, Sethembile Msezane, Emily Jacir, Lada Nakonechna, and Philip Rizk were especially accurate: decolonize eyes, words, memories, and objects, but also think in new dynamics around the perception in all senses, political too. A proposal to think about our work with art as a basis to behave and create communities. In that sense, it is inspiring to think how professionals who work in museums are worried about how they are located and surrounded in context, even more, how to think about themselves as situated, a state that implies a compromise in the being. It is important also to remember how Philip Rizk, Emily Jacir and Enrique España reflected and warn on how deep, and for how long, we collaborate with social and political urgencies. If we have to change the roles of artifacts and players in order to listen and learn other voices and sounds to unlearn, also we should listen and learn from the current contexts for building futures based on real embodied compromises. Artists, eventually, in just a few hours put the accent in the real attention. And we should not forget we work because they make.