Curating Lively Objects: Exhibitions Beyond Disciplines

Description

Curating Lively Objects explores the role of things as catalysts in imagining futures beyond disciplines for museums and exhibitions. Authors describe how their curatorial collaborations with diverse objects, from rocks to robots, generate new ways of organising and sharing knowledge. Bringing together leading artists and curators from Australia and Canada, this volume addresses object liveliness from a range of entwined perspectives, including new materialism, decolonial thinking, Indigenous epistemologies, environmentalism, feminist critique and digital aesthetics. Foregrounding practice-based curatorial scholarship, the book focuses on rigorous reflexive accounts of how curating is done. It contributes to global topics in curatorial research, including time and memory beyond and before disciplinarity; the relationship between human and non-human across different ontologies; and the interaction between Indigenous knowledge and disciplinary expertise in interpreting museum collections. Curating Lively Objects will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of curatorial studies, museum studies, cultural heritage, art history, Indigenous studies, material culture and anthropology. It also provides a vital resource for professionals working in museums and galleries around the world who are seeking to respond creatively, ethically and inclusively to the challenge of changing disciplinary boundaries. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of figures List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: How lively objects disrupt disciplinary display Curating as applied new materialism Curating beyond disciplines Technologies of enchantment Situating liveliness: Australia and Canada Troublesome objects Metabolic objects Energetic objects Conclusion: Beware the curator Works cited Part I: Troublesome objects Chapter 1: Decolonising archives: Killing art to write its history Works cited Chapter 2: Rendezvous with the Indigenous Art Collection: How to “raise a flag” A winning moment Dangling the carrot The proposal The collection Re:visiting On site Conclusion: flag raising Works Cited Chapter 3: Troublemakers in the museum: Robots, romance and the performance of liveliness Performing liveliness Curating energies The troublemakers Works cited Chapter 4: Curating data-driven information-based art: Outlive or let die Exhibition lives Work one: Stutterer by Thomson & Craighead Work two: Becoming.A(Thing) by Špela Petrič and Miha Turšič Work three: Para-site-seeing by Jen Southern and Rod Dillon Work four: Spirit Molecule I by Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Phillip Andrew Lewis Conclusion Works cited Part II: Metabolizing objects Chapter 5: Digesting institutional critique Under the table Eating and digestion Registration Doctrines Systems Conclusion: indigestion and exiting Works cited Chapter 6: Curatorial care and the lively materials of biomedical art Lively materials: from bio- to biomedical art Curatorial care for the extended body Entanglement and biomedical art The artist as patient: networks of care Life, death and between Conclusion: beyond the limits of life Works cited Chapter 7: Living and semi-living artefacts on display: The monster that therefore is a living epistemic thing Hybrids on display: Biomess and Futile Labor as case studies Beyond objecthood To not abandon the monsters Conclusion Works cited Chapter 8: Troubling (natural) history: Bonnie Devine, Mark Dion, and Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature Mark Dion: The Life of a Dead Tree Bonnie Devine, Battle for the Woodlands: Anishinaabitude and La Rábida, Soul of Conquest: An Anishinaabe Encounter Conclusion Works cited Chapter 9: Social objects, art, and agriculture Coral and sugar Sunflowers and soil Labour and hats Works cited Part III: Energetic objects Chapter 10: Mineral materialities in contemporary art: Between intra-action, discursive magic and grief Works cited Chapter 11: Objects, energies and curating resonance across disciplines Objects and energies Gravity (and Wonder) Human non Human Works cited Chapter 12: Feminist new materialism, religion and perception Science and religion Where is the artwork? Time travel Medieval devotion Medieval vision and contemporary neuroscience Conclusion Works cited Chapter 13: Digital–physical–emotional immersion in country: Bearing witness to the Appin massacre Works cited Index