Notes from the 2020 Curatorial Workshop | 23-26 June 2020 |Bucharest Biennale.
Tuesday 23 June
There is basic assumption that ‘exhibition’ is a self-explanatory term and that it is no real problem to answer the question: “What is an exhibition?” An exhibition is where stuff gets shown to people who come to see things on display. Things become a little more complicated however once we register the breadth and diversity of modes and sites of display: from the boutique art gallery to the global spectacle of the Venice Biennale; from the quirky diorama displays of a provincial natural history museum to the high-octane mise-en-scene architecture of contemporary retail spectacle.
If we focus primarily on the contemporary art field, we can notice a tension between exhibition as the primary way in which contemporary art is valorized as art, and at the same time a double movement whereby (i) non-exhibitionary forms multiply as the preferred modes of many art practices in recent decades, and (ii) at the same time a recouping of extra-exhibitionary forms (the publication, the event, the durational site-specific project, the evanescent performative gesture, the para-institutional structure, the poetry reading, the network project) within the more established terms of art gallery display.
In addition to the globalisation of the white cube / black box display conventions, we also have a globally dispersed portfolio of evental, discursive, educational, infotainment, and off-site project formats—“public programming”—that potentially renews the question of the exhibition and the troubled terms of ‘public-ness’. This may prompt us to further consider what do exhibitions do, and indeed what can they do?
Under the heading of ‘the exhibition as poetic, as genre, as apparatus and as situated practice’, we are faced with different ways of thinking what exhibitions are and what they do. This provides the introduction to our workshop and its agenda to consider the exhibition as a site of and as an object of enquiry. Noting that the exhibition is not a universal form—though one that has at times sought to universalize itself, and one that has deep affinities with imperial and colonial histories—can further help to frame these questions with respect to different political geographies, histories and economies.
There are some fragmentary notes on the question: What—after all is said and done—is exhibition?
And here you will find some notes from the first day of the workshop.
exhibition.school 