Kuratorisk Aktion is a platform for curators engaged in a critical practice along the lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality. The platform was founded by Danish-born curators, Frederikke Hansen and Tone Olaf Nielsen, in spring 2005. Merging feminist, queer, and activist informed approaches, Kuratorisk Aktion pledge themselves to raise consciousness on the politics of representation and translate this consciousness into practice. We attempt to achieve this through a 65/35 percent representation of minoritarian and majoritarian subjectivities respectively in all our productions, at the same time as we open this procedure up to critique as part of the curatorial methodology. In this way, Kuratorisk Aktion hope to demonstrate a politically correct practice – one, however, that steers clear of tokenism and allows alternative thinking to be the dominant trait, not only in terms of the identity politics of the participants but more importantly in terms of their practice.

Since August 2005, Kuratorisk Aktion have been employed by NIFCA, Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art in Helsinki. Their employment will end in December 2006, upon which the collective hopes to establish a research institute for long-term aesthetic, theoretical, and activist interrogations into global socio-political issues. Kuratorisk Aktion is presently also working on realizing the project What’s Left of the Left? Rethinking Left-Wing Politics in the Age of Globalization. Websites include: www.kuratorisk.org, www.rethinking-nordic-colonialism.org.

Through curating and writing, Frederikke Hansen has been engaging feminist and queer politics within Western contemporary art since the mid-1990s. Situating herself and her practice in a critical dialogue with fellow cultural workers and activists, she is steadily developing a curatorial methodology that is consistent with her social and ethico-political principles. In short, her principles and practice could be described as deconstructing privilege. Part of that process entailed emigrating from increasingly xenophobic and right-leaning Denmark and settling in Kreuzberg, Berlin in 1997 and, eight years later, founding the curatorial platform Kuratorisk Aktion together with Tone Olaf Nielsen.

Hansen has been involved in running and curating several independent art spaces, including LXX (Aarhus), Galleri Campbells Occasionally (Copenhagen), and Frø (Berlin). From 2000-04, she was working as curator at the Shedhalle in Zurich, Switzerland. Projects include: Pedigree Pal: New Definition of Family (2001), Making Peace: Shifting Paradigms of Peace and War (2003), Musik Didactique: Content and Message in Electronic Pop-Music After Techno (2003), and Citizen Queer (2004). Currently, she is curator at NIFCA, Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland.

Tone Olaf Nielsen is primarily known for her work as an independent curator and interdisciplinary projects like Democracy When!? Activist Strategizing in Los Angeles (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, 2002) and Minority Report: Challenging Intolerance in Contemporary Denmark (different locations in the city of Aarhus, Denmark, 2004). She characterizes her curatorial practice as activist, and her strongly politicized projects explore the possibilities of using the exhibition medium as an activist tool for social change.

Nielsen is also active as a visual artist within the collective, Goll & Nielsen, which she co-founded with visual artist, Morten Goll, in 1998. Goll & Nielsen’s practice is focused on mobilizing communities and their most recent projects count The Evening School (Gallery Signal, Malmoe, Sweden, 2001); OIENL (The Organization for Information on the Effects of Neo-Liberalism) (Efterårsudstillingen 2002, Charlottenborg Exhibition Hall, Copenhagen, 2002); and Niagara Falls Artist Host Program (presented in two parts at SUPERDANISH: Newfangled Danish Culture, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, 2004, and at Mercer Union, A Centre for Contemporary Art, Toronto, 2004).

In the spring of 2005, Nielsen joined forces with curator Frederikke Hansen and founded the curatorial platform Kuratorisk Aktion. The collaboration with Hansen has allowed her to supplement her cultural materialist approach with queer and psychoanalytical theory. With Hansen, Nielsen is currently a curator at NIFCA, Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland. Websites include: http://uid.dk/coma/exhibitions/Sim_CoMa_files/index.php, www.artleak.org/DemocracyWhen, www.chisenhale.org.uk, www.withlovefrom6c.dk, www.minority-report.dk, www.harbourfrontcentre.com/superdanish/visArts.php, www.mercerunion.org/show.asp?show_id=255.