LRLX Guest Curator Open Call, due May 15 2019

LRLX Guest Curator Open Call
SF Bay Area, Season 6: 2019-2020

Overview

The Guest Curator position is for the duration of one complete LRLX season. It requires 5-10 hours per month of managerial work and availability from 6pm-11pm on the Third Tuesday of the month for each exchange. The Light Exchange is a labor of love. We are able to provide a tiny tiny $250 honorarium along with reimbursements (for food and/or drinks only) accrued throughout the season.

Responsibilities

The overall gist is that, together with Liat Berdugo, LRLX co-founder, you will oversee both the conceptual and logistical details of the Exchanges you are co-curating. This means choosing in advance who the speakers will be, then implementing the plan on a monthly basis. For each Exchange, it is necessary to understand what each speaker will be discussing, so that you can facilitate the evening’s discussion in a way that offers insight and easy access to different themes for a broad audience. It also means taking care of all the logistics so that the speaker, your co-curator, the other speakers, and the Exchange host are adequately prepared for a smooth evening of talks. The critical and playful dialogic nature of LRLX is one of its best characteristics, we take this preparation very seriously as part of the conceptual mission of LRLX.

LRLX Season 6 Dates:

  1. Tue, Sep 16, 2019

  2. Tue, Oct 15, 2019

  3. Tue, Nov 19, 2019

  4. Tue, Jan 21, 2020

  5. Tue, Feb 18, 2020

  6. Tue, Mar 17, 2020

  7. Tue, Apr 21, 2020

Location:

LRLX happens in living rooms around the San Francisco Bay Area. As a guest curator, you need to be local, and mobile. If you aren’t local, we’ll still welcome your application but please make a note of how you plan to be present and able to carry out the curatorial tasks.

Structure of the Light Exchange:

Curators arrive at 6pm to set up, and speakers at 6:45pm. Doors open at 7pm and talks start at 7:30pm. Each speaker present for 15 minutes each, with 10 minute conversation to follow. We take a short break between speakers two and three, and have a longer group dialogue at the end of the night. The event wraps up around 10pm, and both curators stay to clean up.

Responsibilities: Broad Strokes together with your Season 6 co-curator, Liat Berdugo

  • Plan out the season’s speakers three months in advance

  • Plan out the host living rooms three months in advance

  • Invite speakers, and consult with them on their talk and the form it will take before they present, gather their bio + info for our website and newsletters

  • At each event:

    • Set up the living room

    • Tech check each speaker’s presentation when they arrive

    • Introduce the evening

    • Facilitate so that a conversation amidst the community and speakers unfolds in a casual, thoughtful/critical, accessible, meaningful, and engaged yet not-too-formal way. Be prepared to respectfully and thoughtfully wrap up a dialogue that exceeds time, is too much of a monologue, has deviated too far off topic for too long, or is exclusive and does not provide an entry point for others

    • Bring snacks or pizza (reimbursed of course) and help lay it out

    • Help clean up the home after everyone has left

  • Thank everyone involved, by email

Why this open call?

Liat Berdugo and Elia Vargas have been co-curating LRLX since they founded it in 2014. Elia moved abroad in 2019 and we welcomed our first guest curator, Dorothy R. Santos, to the team as Elia temporarily shifted his role to our annual publication and our long-term strategic initiatives. We envision this position as a yearly, rotating position for a curator to work alongside Liat (or Elia, when he returns!) as a way to bring broader perspectives, interests, and viewpoints to LRLX as we change and grow.

Decisions

Panelists are Liat Berdugo, LRLX co-founder and co-curator; Elia Vargas, LRLX co-founder; and Dorothy R Santos, LRLX Season 5 guest curator. Decisions will be announced in June 2019.

Deadline

Please submit your application by May 15, 2019.

To Apply

Please send your answers to these questions along with your CV to livingroomlightexchange@gmail.com

  1. Have you attended LRLX? (Yes/No)

  2. Have you worked with LRLX in the past? If so, in what capacity?

  3. Where are you based?

  4. Why you would like to be LRLX Guest Curator?

  5. Who are some artists / media theorists who you’d like to curate into Season 6?