Bunker Talk #148: Jurriaan Benschop

Jurriaan Benschop in conversation with Jenny Eden

Jurriaan Benschop is a Dutch writer and curator who is based in Athens and Berlin. He is the author of Why Paintings Work (2023) and Salt in the Wound. Encountering Contemporary Artists across Europe (2019). His reviews and essays are published in Artforum International, The Brooklyn Rail, on Arterritory as well as in numerous

exhibition catalogues and artists’ books. Exhibitions that he has curated include Material World (Tartu Art House, 2024) What we Learn from Land and Sea (Cycladic Arts, Paros, 2023), A Grammar of Gestures (Kourd Gallery, Athens, 2021-22), Taking Root (KIT, Düsseldorf, 2019-20) and A Matter of Touch (Kunst- und Projekthaus Torstrasse 111, Berlin, 2020). He has been lecturing at art schools and universities in Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Bloomington IN, Riga, Tallinn, Vienna, Helsinki and other cities.

Bunker Talks

This event is part of Bunker Talks. Bunker Talks invite artists and researchers to talk about who they are and what they do. Curated by the Performance Research Group at Manchester School of Art, Bunker Talks explore geopolitical, ecological or economic concerns. The talks create space for critical encounters, presentations, provocation and dialogue.

Originally conceived in the pandemic to explore how artists, writers, curators and researchers continued to make and share their work, live Bunker Talks now take place at The Salutation every month. Since 2020, over 145 talks have been hosted by Art & Performance Researchers and colleagues from across the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. All talks are recorded, edited, captioned and then archived to create an online catalogue, capturing how artists, makers and curators think about the world today. Find previous talks here: https://www.art.mmu.ac.uk/bunkertalks/