Context Responsive Curating - Document

Leeds University, School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies

2010 Module Leader: Peter Lewis

Semester 2 February - March -April - May 2010

for
Professor Vanalyne Green, Chair of Fine Art
v.green@leeds.ac.uk
0113 343 7633

Tuesdays, 4.00 pm to 6.00 pm
G19


The module will help you thematise your own work as an artist and/or curator and to give you the intellectual repertoire needed to situate your work and ideas in the public sphere. There are two working assumption of this module: One, that traditional approaches to visual display are inadequate in the context of marginal, orphaned, ephemeral, and raw spaces; two: that we will pay particular attention to exhibitions in which the accumulation of individual art works or proposals is privileged over a trajectory of single careers, and, three: that critical writing about art and visual display is worthy of an artistic project. Students should complete the module with the necessary insight, skill and experience to engage with a range of spaces and to curate ideas, as well as objects. Students will write a catalogue essay, or a piece of creative writing as a text for catalogue as well.

Assignments: you will have weekly brief explications. These texts are a place for you to rehearse your thoughts about the readings, lectures, and class exercises.


On-line web address: http://organisationofdirt.blogspot.com

This URL is accessible


Week 1: In and Around Curating

Synoptic overview of connoisseurship and the history of visual display, particularly as it obtains to the phenomenon of recent curatorial incursions in to fine art, globalisation, the biennialisation of art, and curating concepts.

What forms of knowledge are representative of the group of participants?




Read: readings listed on-line:

Quick overview of important bits here ("Towards a Situationist International")

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/report.htm#Toward%20a%20Situationist%20International

and here ("Theory of the Derive")

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/theory.html

Second Life:


Assignment: text explication due, next class. Bring copies for everyone.


Week 2: Where Theory Meets Practice. 29, January, 07

Turn in text explications and discuss readings. Bring copies for everyone.

Interventions in and subversions of curation and visual display


The Situationist International: A Users Guide. Ford, Simon

In the spirit of Fluxus. Armstrong and Rothfuss, Catalogue (1993)

The benefits of public art: the polemics of permanent art in public places Sara Selwood., (1995).


Messhall: http://www.messhall.org/
Synagogue project: http://www.goethe.de/ges/rel/thm/en32969.htm


Further reading:

Public art - the new agenda. Valerie Holman. Ed. (1993)
Decadent: Public Art: Contentious Term & Contested Practice . David Harding. (1997)
Art in public: what, why and how . Susan Jones., (1992).
Situationist International Anthology. Kenn Knabb, (1981)
Sociopolitical Activism in Art. Wochenklausur. (2001)
Publics and Counterpublics by Michael Warner, Zone Books; ISBN: 1890951285; (June 15, 2002)


Messhall: http://www.messhall.org/
Synagogue project: http://www.goethe.de/ges/rel/thm/en32969.htm

First text explication due


Week 3: Art as Life, Life as Art

Histories and practices about the creation of situations and engagement with an audience.

The Revolution of Everyday life. Vaneigem, Raoul. (1998)

The Fluxus Reader. Friedman, Ken.

Art in Everyday Life. Montano, Linda. Station Hill Press. 1981
Further reading:
Society of the Spectacle. Debord, Guy.
Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life. Allan Kaprow, (2003)
Practicum: exploiting existing on-line services to create web design templates.

Assignment: On-line catalogue essay and bibliography


Week 4: Matter Out of Place


Assignment: second text explication

Deploying theories about the impure to negotiate alternative curatorial practices.


Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Douglas, Mary. Routledge, 2002


Deconstruction, A Reader Macquillan, Martin (Ed.).
Simulations. Baudrillard, Jean. (1983)

Theory of The Avant-Garde, Peter Burger, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1984
Further Readiing:
The Order of Things. Foucault, Michel.
October, No 79 (Special on Situationist International), Winter 1993
The Curator’s Egg. Schbert, K. (2000)

Assignment due: outline catalogue essay with bibliography


Week 5: Substance to Surface I

Assignment: web addresses for visual display of provisional objects

Turn in outline catalogue essay with bibliography

Practicum: Students bring in their chosen objects or images and agree on an initial arrangement in the space. Documentation of objects and spacial relationships. This documentation, along with the results of the tasks from weeks one through three, will form the initial content of the web exhibition which will go live in week six. Presentation and discussion about the mechanics of setting up and running an art show, (i.e., press, documentation, fund raising, placing and hanging work, lighting, invitations, mailing lists, signage and so on). Step-by-step information sheets will be distributed at the end of the session. The students will then be divided into groups specific to the tasks in hand and tasks will be delegated. These will include areas such as design, website maintenance, collating press contacts and mailing list, sourcing sponsorship, etc.

Theoretical context: Foucauldian theory and the study of museums.
AN Newsletter (Listings)

Arts Council Guidelines for writing Press Release

Catalogue: Situation Leeds Festival (2005)

Democracy Unrealized: Documenta 11. Enwezor, Okwui. Cantz Editions (February 2003)

Beyond Recognition, Representation, Power and Culture, Craig Owens, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford,1992.

Further reading:

Black Dogs, Vitrine and Situation Leeds press releases.
Press coverage from Black Dogs and members (in Yorkshire Evening Post, Leeds Guide etc) and features on “Situation Leeds Festival” in national publications.
Catalogues: Vitrine (2005-2006)

Second text explication due
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Week 6: Reading Week

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Week 7: Substance to Surface II

Practicum: Writing press releases and the role of the catalogue in an audience’s understanding of an exhibition. Press release as literary genre. At the end of week six students will have an understanding of the importance of text in relation to art practice.

Theoretical context: Social histories of object making and display, gendering space.

Turn in web addresses for visual display of provisional objects

Sexuality & Space. Ed., Beatriz, Colomina. Princeton Papers on Architecture, 1996.
The Return of The Real, Hal Foster, MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts and London, England, 1996.


Week 8: In the Viewers’ Shoes

Practicum: In week six the writing produced so far will go on-line to form part of the exhibition-in-progress/ lab. Reviewing what has been written and how it relates to the objects and the space. Will it be interesting and coherent to an audience? Is it consistent in its outlook? At this point the option will be made available to swap the original objects that form the content of the exhibition for more suitable material. With the experience and knowledge gained so far what would the ideal objects be and what is the brief for submissions?

Theoretical context: Narrativity and visual display

Frank Lloyd Wright & Lewis Mumford: Thirty Years of Correspondence. Ed. Brooks, Bruce and Wojtowicz, Robert. Princeton Arch. 2001
Straight Corridor Hollywood Cinema. Bordwell, David. 1998


SEMESTER BREAK


Week 9: Editing Appearances


Practicum: Objects brought in and situated within the space. This arrangement will constitute the final appearance of the show and will be arrived at through group discussion and consideration.

Theoretical context: The School of Project Art

Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space. Grosz, Elizabeth, Eisenman, Peter. The MIT Press. 2001.
Museum Highlights: The Writings of Andrea Fraser Fraser, Andrea.. ed. by Alexander Alberro. MIT press, 2005.


Week 10: Setting Up

Practicum: Installation of the show begins. Creating information sheets and signage, finalising any sponsorship, ensuring that e-mailouts and invitations are completed and are ready to go out as reminders. Web maintenance team to ensure that the web exhibition is fully up-to-date and operational. On-site team to ensure that everything is fully prepared and to iron out last-minute details.

Theoretical context: Catalogue essay assignments that deploy readings to contextualize theory within arts administration.

Week 11: Launch and Public Delivery