Paper short abstract:

did not exist? was the only European? became all of us? The curatorial prioritises practice over thought, whereas in anthropology the reverse is true. Learning from Mongol artists, sensing, feeling, socialising, and caring could become part of the methodological repertoire of a nomadic anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

The curatorial is not the same everywhere. This paper begins with a conceptual image of the ger and the fact that neither the word 'curating' nor the notion of the 'curatorial' exists in the Mongolian language yet. Ethnographically, a supposed Curator ('Kurator') of a short residency was absent too. They did not make it from Europe to the project site in Mongolia. We were then forced to delink from established curatorial practices that the Curator would have brought from Europe, and then improvise, reclaim, and create a local way of doing things. Tracing an art trip between the city (Ulaanbaatar) and the countryside (hödöö), I describe how these annual art trips to the countryside taken by contemporary artists reveal ethnographically the sociality, affectivity, spontaneity, and spirituality of the curatorial process in Mongolia. Movement through space and time affords a liminality that allows artist to reconsider their position in the world, and living together forced us to deal with our differences. Amid a prolonged 'crisis ordinary' (Lauren Berlant), going to the countryside is an escape from the governmentality of the city and disrupts routinised urban temporal discipline. Spiritually relaxed, people care for each other but also have fun in the countryside. We drank, laughed, danced, argued, and wrestled. The curatorial emerged from the theatricality of social life, began from praxis and affective care, and was constantly self-transforming with the temporality and spirituality of countryside life (hödöönii aj ahui). What might anthropology learn from this contemporary Mongolian curatorial?