PhD Researcher
Victoria Ivanova a curator, writer and consultant living in London.
Ivanova’s practice is focused on systemic and infrastructural conditions that shape socio-economic, political and institutional realities. To this extent, Ivanova develops (i.e. researches, writes about, curates programmes, does public talks and consults on) innovative approaches to policy, finance and rights in the sphere of contemporary art and beyond. She is a co-founder of Izolyatsia, Real Flow and Bureau for Cultural Strategies (bux), and frequently works with artists, institutions and interest organisations. Back in 2010, she graduated from the LSE with an MSc in Human Rights, which was followed by a Masters in Curatorial Studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies Bard College in 2014 for which she received a scholarship.
Ivanova’s practice-based PhD in collaboration with the Serpentine Galleries has the working title, “From Institution to Platform: Organisational Structures and Arts Practices in Network Cultures.” With Serpentine Galleries as a test site for intra- and inter-institutional operational prototyping via the arts and technology research network, the overarching aim of the research proposal is to develop and test out an expanded digital strategy that operationally remodels a dimension of the contemporary art institution into a platform for cross-sectorial R&D. In this respect, the research combines theoretical and practical work to produce an infrastructural analysis of contemporary art’s ecology in order to identify barriers to as well as capabilities for the development of generative, systemic and impactful modalities for the interaction between the contemporary art field and the technology sector; to identify and analyse historical and contemporary case studies of artistic and wider organisational practices that have attempted to either adopt innovative operational modalities or new technologies in ways that strove/strive to shift something structural in the art field’s interaction with other fields, and/or within the nature of a specific technology’s functionalities and/or deployment; and, to utilise the findings for the development and implementation of a set of operational protocols for the research network, and for the programmes that are to be developed as prototypes for different collaborative configurations between network partners.