2025 Convening: Circus of Life Curatorial Statement
From Convening Curator Laura Raicovich:
“The circus is coming to town!” harkens tricksters and astonishing acrobatics, sticky cotton candy and popcorn, noisy, hot nights, and time spent in the company of others. Classically, the circus also recalls the Latin circus or Greek kirkos, and is named for the Goddess Circe’s festivals honoring her father, the sun God Helios. Circuses evoke chaotic events, variety shows of diverse entertainments, clowning and games, intergenerational attractions, large-scale public events, and spaces to express creativity and ideas, ALL are welcome. “Come one, come all!”
The inaugural Counterpublic Convening, brings CIRCUS OF LIFE to St. Louis, a weekend festival that connects people with one another, and makes tangible the inherent relationship between daily life and art. Artists and the experiences they create have long been at the center of inspiring society’s imagination. At a moment when locating what we hold in common is urgent and necessary, CIRCUS OF LIFE will bring a bevy of such experiences to the public. Under a big tent, free and open to the public, and created especially with our current moment in mind, artists of all stripes will perform, host booths of fun and exchange, offer challenges and questions for publics to consider, making meaning together with their audiences.
In the wake of the alienation of our times, where too many interactions and activities happen via the interface of a screen, where our work and home lives are increasingly disembodied and disassociated from one another, and the precarity of life (physical, climatic, economic) encroaches on daily routines, we need moments of togetherness where we can encounter one another in joy, thought, expression, creativity, and freedom. Art can help break down seemingly rigid realities, especially art that comes in the form of a circus. A circus sets no expectations for its audiences, except that they show up and engage in its offerings at whatever pace and level of interest they please. It is an adventure that is up to visitors to choose, where pleasure meets rowdiness, joy meets skepticism, indulgence meets experimentation.
Under the big top, CIRCUS OF LIFE will present the groundbreaking work of artists, thinkers, and advocates that are committed to challenging the most ingrained of our assumptions, asking us to expand our imaginations to envision living otherwise. There is often a point in a circus performance where one asks “Is it magic, or is it a trick? Is it real, or is it fake?” This question may also apply to the proposals put forward by those convened for the CIRCUS OF LIFE. Their impact, however, is perhaps greater than the answers to these questions--no matter what may be “real,” they have instigated a different potentiality, another way, an alternate path. These potential alternatives are not given, but rather, must be negotiated collectively, locally, by publics who will from it forge precious other lifeways that are held in common.
Registration is now open.
Counterpublic Convening: Circus of Life Curator
Laura Raicovich is a New York City-based writer and curator known for her critical work on arts institutions and dedication to more equitable cultural production. Her recent book, Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest, was published by Verso Books and is being translated into multiple languages. In 2023, with a collective of artists, musicians, and culture workers, Raicovich opened The Francis Kite Club, a public social club in NYC’s East Village. She served as editor and curator of Protodispatch, a digital publication featuring artists’ takes on the local and global conditions that make their work necessary; she initiated the forum with Mari Spirito and Protocinema in 2022. In 2020, Raicovich co-founded Urban Front, a transcontinental consultancy addressing the challenges facing cities through a progressive cultural and activist lens. Prior to these projects, Raicovich served as Director of the Queens Museum and Interim Director of the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art; she was a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow at the Bellagio Center, and the Tremaine Curatorial Fellow for Journalism at Hyperallergic. She is the author and editor of several books, and lectures internationally and continues to work on projects that explore art, freedom of speech, and equity.
