Assembling a Praxis: Choreographic Thinking and Curatorial Agency - Clew: A Rich and Rewarding DIsorientation
(2024)
author(s): Lauren O'Neal
published in: University of the Arts Helsinki
This exposition examines the curatorial project "Clew: A Rich and Rewarding Disorientation," held at the Lamont Gallery at Phillips Exeter Academy in 2017. The project is part of my doctoral research on “Assembling a Praxis: Choreographic Thinking and Curatorial Agency.” “Clew” proposes a framework for curatorial dramaturgy and asks: What is the potential of a dramaturgical approach within an open-ended exhibition structure? Who, or what, is the curatorial dramaturg? How do materials and time contribute to unfolding exhibition narratives?
[This exposition corresponds to Section Six: Extending Lines in All Directions: Curatorial Dramaturgy in the printed dissertation.]
The sea as a site of curation: Reflections on aesthetics education
(2023)
author(s): John Baldacchino
published in: HUB - Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society
With the sea as a “site” of curation, a thalassic approach (as that which belongs to the sea), facilitates a showing of those things that converge upon the contingency of daily living. The case for aesthetics is pedagogical, inasmuch as it provides us with a strategy for exiting into the wider world as we move outside the walls of a building (and that of Bildung). Exiting also implies rejecting all those institutionalized constraints that education’s edificial approach brings to learning. Here, in its aporetic nature, art is one of those few human actions which allow us to articulate and enact a sense of being both strangers and homecomers in our own world. In other words, this is a form of curation that is claimed through the autonomy that it portends.
Assembling a Praxis: Choreographic Thinking and Curatorial Agency - Open House: A Portrait of Collecting
(2023)
author(s): Lauren O'Neal
published in: University of the Arts Helsinki
“Open House: A Portrait of Collecting,” a curatorial project held at the Lamont Gallery at Phillips Exeter Academy in 2015, is part of my doctoral research on “Assembling a Praxis: Choreographic Thinking and Curatorial Agency.” The "Open House" exhibition was initially about collecting and caring for objects, a traditional function of museums. Curating with a choreographic mindset encouraged me to address other questions, including how objects and collections foster emotional connections. My initial question for the project, “How to do things with objects?” soon became “How do objects arrange spaces of relation between people and ideas?” Themes include community, memory, identity, taxonomy, preservation, accumulation, value, story, exchange, and display.
[This exposition corresponds to Section Five: Arranging Spaces of Relation(s): What Can Objects Do? in the printed dissertation.]
Assembling a Praxis: Choreographic Thinking and Curatorial Agency - Being and Feeling (Alone, Together)
(2023)
author(s): Lauren O'Neal
published in: University of the Arts Helsinki
What "moves" in an exhibition, if not the bodies of artists, audiences, and objects? How does conversation move us? What can speculative artistic research offer? This exposition, "Being & Feeling (Alone Together),” held at the Lamont Gallery at Phillips Exeter Academy in 2020, is part of my doctoral research project, “Assembling a Praxis: Choreographic Thinking and Curatorial Agency.” While some aspects of the project (including the title), were developed before the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the project unfolds in relation to myriad cultural, spatiotemporal, and civic situations that the pandemic produced. This situation required experimental and responsive curatorial methods that encouraged the project to move in unexpected ways.
[This exposition corresponds to Section Seven: Letting Things Move in the printed dissertation.]
Love of God - Group Exhibition: A Retrospective Virtual Gallery
(2022)
author(s): Jeffrey Cobbold
published in: Research Catalogue
Love of God - Group Exhibition
Curated by Jeffrey Cobbold
September 14 - October 19, 2019
Artworks Trenton, Trenton, New Jersey (U.S.A)
2019 Curatorial Statement:
“…I will find you. I will always find you……A loving heart is the truest wisdom……To believe and be satisfied with just the way things are……No one has ever seen God……Jesus……Love is a circle……And what comes around goes around…”
The words above come from Love of God (L.O.G) Audio Quotation Database, a DIY online database and digital humanities project I started in 2015 when I was working as an intern within the Love of God Retreat Program in Lawrenceville, NJ. In order to create the database I asked the program’s high school student participants to find quotes about love and God that would help them reflect on the meaning of these words within their retreat program. These quotes are now the heart and inspiration for Love of God – Group Exhibition, which presents works from a selection of artists exploring issues of love and God revealed through artistic practice.
The artists featured in this volume are:
Jessica Browne-White (sculpture)
Jeffrey Cobbold (sound, video, text)
Devonte Roach (film)
Marina de Bernado Sanchis (drawing)
Together they create multiple entry points for one to consider the character of love, God and the intersections of both in our ever changing world.
Love of God – Group Exhibition takes on the spirit of the Love of God Retreat Program in Lawrenceville, NJ with its necessity for inclusive understandings about love and God. While Jesus was a central topic of discussion within the retreat program, there was no mandated opinion one was expected to have about him. Rather, the unifying aspect of this program was an affinity for music and the arts within the expression of community. Their community was intersectional, dealing with the differences of varied socio-economic statuses, sexual identities and divergent relationships with the organized Christian church amongst so many other forms of diversity.
The retreat program no longer exists as it did in 2015 due the disbursement of its high school participants and changes in adult leadership. The online database is now a relic of the digital humanities project that occurred at that time. Yet, this exhibition is an initial step toward sharing a glimpse of the spirit of this retreat program with others. I sincerely hope that the spirit of this exhibition will connect with you as you search for love and God in your personal life and within the communities you serve everyday.
Love of God Community Conversation (Luke 1:5-45)
October 12, 2019
Artworks Trenton, Trenton, New Jersey (U.S.A)
Featured presentation:
"Love, God, and Community" by Simone Oliver
2019 Community Conversation Statement:
This community conversation seeks to provide a space for theological and artistic reflection within the Love of God – Group Exhibition. A team of presenters will offer their individual reflections on love, God and community through engagement with Luke 1:5-45. Presenters will also consider the works of contemporary art and case study materials within the Love of God – Group Exhibition to aide their presentations. A time for discussion will be had between presenters and the audience for better articulation and understanding of divergent pathways toward love, God and community that can be useful for work in Christian ministry and contemporary art & culture.
Adding to the Narrative: Intersectional Feminist Critical Curatorial Practices in Classical Vocal Music Performance
(2022)
author(s): Shanice Skinner
published in: KC Research Portal
Diversity and inclusion within Western art music have become topics of elevated importance in in recent discussions. To create enduring results regarding these matters, there needs to be a commitment to in-depth study of practices that will produce visible change. This is one of the goals of my research, in which I tackle issues of representation by focusing on Black women composers and their absence from the canon as overlooked and marginalized artists. It is well known that women have been denied many opportunities throughout history; as composers, many experiences crucial to professionalism were not always available to women, including music education in composition, the publication and circulation of their works, not being hired as conductors, or receiving reviews from influential critics. These opportunities and resources dwindled further if a woman was also a person of colour. Thus, in order to ensure their inclusion within the canon, these underrepresented identities demand and require unique recognition.
I have examined the issue of neglected women of colour composers in classical music from an interdisciplinary standpoint, utilizing the methodologies of history and experimentation to form an “intersectional feminist critical curation” framework. This framework implements knowledge from intersectional feminist theory and music curation practices in order to answer following questions: “What is the impact on new audiences of diverse backgrounds experiencing classical music through an intersectional feminist curatorial framework?”, "Can classical music be an effective device for messages of social and political change?", and “What is the impact on myself as a classical vocalist and a Black woman to implement an intersectional feminist curatorial framework within my musical study and performance?”. The overall goal of this research was to discover an effective way forward to achieving diversity in classical music for underrepresented groups. Drawing from this study, I have created a digital performance project entitled “The Narrativity Sessions,” which functioned as an experiment utilizing this knowledge of intersectional feminist theory and praxis fused with select critical curation strategies applied to my own artistic practice as a classical singer. The outcome was a novel artistic practice that can contribute to creating innovative and artistically fulfilling performances while simultaneously advancing diversity and inclusion in the classical music sphere for audiences, performers, and composers alike.
YEARNING TO CONNECT A Short Introduction to Music Curatorship
(2021)
author(s): Heloisa Amaral
published in: Research Catalogue
A presentation of the master elective With and Beyond Music combined with a description of own curatorial projects and the disclosure of findings of the research project Curatorship and Social Engagement, led by the lectorate Music, Education & Society.
A–Z Display Units (After Kiesler & Krischanitz) 2015–2020
(2020)
author(s): Gavin Wade
published in: Research Catalogue, Birmingham City University: Faculty of Arts, Design and Media
Art is not exhibited. Art Exhibits – Gavin Wade, 2012.
Wade’s practise and research challenges the nature and understanding of art’s primary function as an exhibition. His work expands the artist-curator role through his development of new systems of display. These draw on historical precedents creating sculptural mediations between artists, curators, and publics. He proposes transformative artworks as social systems and temporal experiences, always requiring collaboration with others. Drawing from studies of ‘useful art’, ‘artist and engineering’, ‘support structures’ (Condorelli and Wade, 2009) and referencing Artist Placement Group’s concept ‘context is half the work’, his output informs understandings of ‘when artists curate’ (Green, 2018) and the ‘transhistorical museum’ (Demeester, 2018).
Wade’s remodelling and extending of a series of ‘Display Units’ use a process of ‘upcycling’, a term Wade uses to describe his method. In 2015 Wade started developing artworks upcycled from the ‘L and T–Type Display Units’ (Frederick Kiesler,1924) and referencing the ‘Vienna Secession Mobile Wall System’ (Adolf Krischanitz,1986). Wade’s synthesizing method is generating a new A–Z alphabet Display Unit system as part of the process of re-imagining curatorial activities as a form of art practice. His Upcycle This Book (2017), nominated for the European Prix Bob Calle du livre d’artiste, presents 26 texts on this work and 12 Display Unit drawings.
Wade created Display Units for ‘Display Show’(2015), exhibited in Dublin, Birmingham and Netherlands – funded by ACE/British Council International Artists Development Award. Christopher Williams (USA), Eilis McDonald (IRE) and Leeds Weirdo Club (UK) were collaborating artists.
Wade worked with Frans Hals Museum collection to create ‘Z is for ZOO’ (2017) exploring the transhistorical potential of his ‘Z-Type’ and ‘T-Type’ Display Units, artworks purchased by the museum.
His writing for ‘Display Show’ provided the provocation for ‘That Art Exhibits’: EARN Conference, Brussels (2016). Wade was the invited keynote speaker.
Colonial hospitality: rethinking curatorial and artistic responsibility
(2016)
author(s): Danny Butt, Local Time
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
The recent enthusiasm for gestures of hospitality in contemporary art promises relief from the individualising forces of neoliberal capitalism and the professionalised hierarchies of the art world. Yet, Jacques Derrida describes the gesture of hospitality as paradoxically asserting a kind of sovereignty that underwrites the 'right to host', returning hospitality to the conditionality of the authorising institution. In settler-colonial territories, these institutionally underwritten gestures always sit uneasily atop indigenous sovereignties that have not been ceded, requiring the positive gestures of hospitality to remain open to their structuring fissures. This paper considers figurations of hospitality and responsibility in works by Derrida, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Raqs Media Collective in reading the art collective Local Time’s research-driven practice that seeks to reconcile indigenous self-determination and settler gestures of hospitality.
Practices for the future / an Artogrphic approach
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Sebastian Ruiz Bartilson
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Task submission for course Dokumentation, reflektion och kritisk granskning / Documentation, Reflection and Critical Review
Application of Artographic methods towards own and/ or others dance practice.
Project "Practices for the future"
Research Projects Lectorate Music, Education & Society 2018-2021
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Paul Craenen
connected to: KC Research Portal
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This exposition gives an overview and access to all ongoing or finalised research projects of the Lectorate Music, Education & Society at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague (2018-2021).
RUUKKU Journal: Lectio Praecursoria: Choreographic Thinking in Curatorial Practice
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Lauren O'Neal
This exposition is in review and its share status is: visible to all.
RUUKKU Journal: Lectio Praecursoria: Choreographic Thinking in Curatorial Practice
Lauren O’Neal presented this lectio praecursoria at the University of the Arts Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland, on 26.5.2023, as part of the public doctoral thesis defense for her project "Assembling a Praxis: Choreographic Thinking and Curatorial Agency." Custos: Dr. Mika Elo, University of the Arts Helsinki. Examiner: Dr. Adesola Akinleye, Texas Women’s University.
The dissertation project (including the publication and expositions): https://taju.uniarts.fi/handle/10024/7780.
Master proposal -Music curating, performances and connectedness within community
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Laura Sophie von der Goltz
archived in: KC Research Portal
This Proposal is a draft of an investigation on the relationship between music curating and connectedness within community and between audiences and performers.
Besides a literature based analysis of the field and the issue, there will be there cases studies ofwhich role music can play within a group or community. Further more there will be examples of curated multimedia music performances given how for each of these groups. These examples will be in take the form of a documentation of the process from research, conceptualisation, realisation and conclude in a evaluation of the results.
Fair Games
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Thomas Robert Moore
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The authors of Defragmentation: Curating Contemporary Music (Darmstäder Beiträge zur Neuen Musik, 2018) all by (un)spoken agreement appeared to take for granted that nothing in new music curation can be taken for granted. In other words, all aspects of any given event were fair game. They suggested that not only could the choice in pieces, soloists, conductors, and ensembles be (re)tooled, but even site-specific aspects, roles of the musicians and audience, and even value regimes could be instrumentalized to fit the artistic need of the curator. Dorthee Richter, by way of introducing the bundle, proposed that curation should be a ‘practice that is deeply involved in the politics of display, politics of site, politics of transfer and translation, and regimes of visibility’. If we understand politics as, ‘the total complex of relations between people living in society’ (Merriam-Webster), then Richter suggests that every thinkable way people relate can, and perhaps should, be considered. Curators should reflect on how relationships in our world are displayed, the interplay involved on site (e.g. the history of specific concert venues), the participation (or lack thereof) of an audience, the participant’s ability to understand, enjoy, and be entertained (or not), and even the audience’s and presenter’s perceived position in society and how that interplays in concert.
We, a performer-researcher, a culture-sociologist, and a musicologist, will rearticulate this premise, applying Boris Groys’ philosophy of care to examine curatorial practices. We will question the curator’s central role and probe any shifts in power between festival directors, receptive venues, and performing ensembles. And finally, drawing on Pascal Gielen’s previous research into fine arts curation and Jennifer Walshe’s piece splendor_solis.wav (2022), we will delve into the influence ‘flying’ curators have on artistic, social, and financial stability of individual musicians and ensembles.