e-flux journal editor Brian Kuan Wood speaks to iLiana Fokianaki and Laura Raicovich on the occasion of Rojava Film Commune: Forms of Freedom at e-flux. The exhibition is curated by Fokianaki and on view through April 4, 2020.

iLiana Fokianaki is a Greek curator, researcher and writer based in Athens and Rotterdam. She is the founder and director of State of Concept, Athens, cofounder, with Antonia Alampi, of the research platform Future Climates, and lecturer at the Dutch Art Institute. Read her text, “Narcissistic Authoritarian Statism, Part 1: The Eso and Exo Axis of Contemporary Forms of Power,” in e-flux journal issue 103 (October 2019).

Laura Raicovich is a curator and writer dedicated to art and artistic production that relies on complexity, poetics, and care to create a more engaged and equitable civic realm. She is currently working on a book about museums, cultural institutions, and the myth of neutrality (Verso, 2020), and is the recipient of both the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellowship and the inaugural Emily H. Tremaine Journalism Fellowship for Curators at Hyperallergic.

Until early 2018, she served as President and Executive Director of the Queens Museum where she oversaw an inviting and vital commons for art, ideas, and engagement. Prior to the Queens Museum, Raicovich inaugurated Creative Time’s Global Initiatives, launched Creative Time Reports, and directed the Creative Time Summit. She arrived there after a decade at Dia Art Foundation, where she served as deputy director.

The role of ideology in institutions: iLiana Fokianaki and Laura Raicovich