Lisa Paland is an art and cultural scientist and curator. Within the research training group "Normativity, Critique, Change" she is currently writing her doctoral thesis in art history on performative exhibition practices. She completed her M.A. studies in "Staging the Arts and Media" at the University of Hildesheim in 2019 with a thesis on feminist science fiction narratives in contemporary art, exemplified by three spatial installations by Marianne Vlaschits. Previously, she studied in the Bachelor's programme "Culture and Media Education" at Merseburg University of Applied Sciences.

As a curator and art mediator she has worked for Kunstverein Hildesheim, transmediale – festival for art and digital culture, Meta.Morf – Trondheim International Biennale for Art and Technology, and the National Gallery of Iceland, among others. 2019–21 she was a curatorial fellow for the Haus der Kunst in Munich, where she has worked on various exhibitions, events and publications, featuring Phyllida Barlow, Sung Tieu, Kapwani Kiwanga, and the Southeast Asia Performance Collection.

The dissertation explores the performative change in curatorial practice. The subject of my research are three so-called "project exhibitions" of the late 1980s and 1990s. These have transformed the format of the exhibition in that they used it as an artistic medium, as a form of political intervention and as a communicative situation. While the exhibition space became a physical gathering place, curating was reinterpreted as a critical artistic practice for the creation of counter-publics. The curatorial situations are examined by means of the performative figure of the assembly. For this purpose, basic parameters of the performative will first be worked out theoretically and then transferred to the selected curatorial situations. The aim is to show how normative standards in curatorial practice can be criticised and changed by means of performative acts.

Research interests:

• Exhibition practice and theory
• Performativity of the curatorial
• (queer)feminist theory and artistic/curatorial practice