The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating

Description

Stop curating! And think what curating is all about. This book starts from this simple premise: thinking the activity of curating. To do that, it distinguishes between 'curating' and 'the curatorial'. If 'curating' is a gamut of professional practices for setting up exhibitions, then 'the curatorial' explores what takes place on the stage set up, both intentionally and unintentionally, by the curator. It therefore refers not to the staging of an event, but to the event of knowledge itself. In order to start thinking about curating, this book takes a new approach to the topic. Instead of relying on conventional art historical narratives (for example, identifying the moments when artistic and curatorial practices merged or when the global curator-author was first identified), this book puts forward a multiplicity of perspectives that go from the anecdotal to the theoretical and from the personal to the philosophical. These perspectives allow for a fresh reflection on curating, one in which, suddenly, curating becomes an activity that implicates us all (artists, curators, and viewers), not just as passive recipients, but as active members. As such, the Curatorial is a book without compromise: it asks us to think again, fight against sweeping art historical generalizations, the sedimentation of ideas and the draw of the sound bite. Curating will not stop, but at least with this book it can begin to allow itself to be challenged by some of the most complex and ethics-driven thought of our times. HalfTitle Series Title Copyright Contents Illustrations Preface Notes on Contributors Introduction Part I Send-Offs 1 On the Curatorial, From the Trapeze AZ BY CX DW EV FU GT HS IR JQ KP LO MN 2 Theses in the Philosophy of Curating1 Gift Embodied knowledge The other of narrative Spacing Mapping and playing chess Send-Off Warrior of the imaginary A place that isn’t one The ignorant body Thought 3 Whence the Future? 4 The Expanding Field What on earth do they mean? The limits of multiplicity Contemporaneity as infrastructure 5 Dear Art, Yours Sincerely Part II Praxeologies 6 The Curator Crosses the River: A Fabulation 7 Becoming-Curator The event of becoming a curatorial subject Truth – Knowledge Three moves Conclusion 8 An Exhausted Curating 9 Eros, Plague, Olfaction: Three Allegories of the Curatorial Autistic doxology Eros: Sensual epistemology Plague: Affective contagion Olfaction: Being sense Operative play Part III Moves 10 The Task at Hand: Transcending the Clamp of Sovereignty 11 The Simple Operator Foreword The rise up Crossing over The other An example of beginning Naming The setting down 12 Three Short Takes on the Curatorial Blinding Inhibiting Symptom 13 Aku menjadi saksi kepada – What I am Thinking 14 Betrayal and the Curatorial – A Testimony for the Committee on the Curatorial Part IV Heresies 15 A Conspiracy without a Plot The accomplice The undercommons The police Study Invocation Care Complicit love 16 What does a Question Do? Micropolitics and Art Education 17 Being Able to Do Something A decided ‘perhaps’ A question mark within Critical agency 18 The Politics of Residual Fun The art of conversation Technologies of fun Part V Refigurations 19 Modern Art: Its Very Idea and the Time/Space of the Collection 20 Two Invoking Media: Radio and Exhibition 21 In Unfamiliar Terrain: Preliminary Notes towards Site-Relationality and the Curatorial Report on Balikci Denjongpa’s project Report on the Alien Nation Project: The dynamics of community Site-relationality: Map-making as gesture Summation: Conflict and endless overlaps of disciplinary thoughts 22 Curating Ghostly Objects: Counter-Memories in Cinematic Space Introduction: The curatorial mode of filmmaking Exhibiting warchitecture: Borders as sites of catastrophic memories Curating soundscapes: Remembering the polyvocal/multilingual society Performing counter-narratives: Reminiscing unofficial histories Conclusion 23 Non-Museums Srinagar, 1963 Kassel, 2012 National Art Gallery, Islamabad, 2007 Toba Tek Singh, 1948 or 1949 Part VI Stages 24 Curating, Dramatization and the Diagram: Notes towards a Sensible Stage 25 Curating Context Coda: Your Apples Fall Into My Garden: Two Takes on Context 26 Backstage and Processuality: Unfolding the Installation Sites of Curatorial Projects Processual notions Call for materialism Unfolding installation sites 27 This Is Not About Us Coda: The Curatorial Bibliography Index