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This article aims to deepen the understanding of the distribution and reconfiguration of agency and power in relationships between artists from the South and curators from the North. Focusing on the Zürcher Theater Spektakel, an annual performing arts festival in Zürich, Switzerland, it scrutinises the artist-curator relationship through the perspective of the gift rationales. Gift-giving theory can contribute to understanding motifs and logics behind dealings between curator and artist. In order to qualify these interactions, the article fuses gift-giving with relational care ethics. In doing so, it foregrounds the values and ethics that inhabit curator-artist relationships and shows to what degree gift-givers and gift-recipients may influence each other’s work. From this perspective, the article suggests that contemporary curating not only implies that the curator and the artist coproduce artistic performances, rather contemporary curating entails that the curator and the artist coproduce curatorial formats, hence the festival.

Brussels-based theatre Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg (KVS) relocated part of its program to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to collaborate with Kin artists and partners. Experimenting with a participatory curatorial approach, the KVS gradually moved from a model that showcased local artists to an interactive encounter in which sharing and discussing cultural processes became as important as the performances.

I experienced the future, an intercultural future.1 1. I thank the cast and directors of Gintersdorfer/Klassen for granting me access to their rehearsals and for patiently answering my many questio...