into the algorithm of exhibition?

This line of enquiry is connected to work on the questions of contemporary art practices and modes of going public within digital network cultures.

The research strand began with a conversation initiated at the BB9 public workshop in June 2020 (under the heading “exhibitions online—what for?” ) It was further developed in the 2021 EARN Conference “The Postresearch Condition” (26-30 January 2021) that included a workshop under the heading “expo-facto: into the algorithm of exhibition?” This session in the conference proposed a consideration of the transfer and relay of exhibitionary protocols online. This was followed by the publication of an edited volume in the MetropolisM book series on October 2022 that includes contributions from The Aesthetics Group, Bassam El Baroni, Noel Fitzpatrick, Leonardo Impett, Joasia Krysa, Ioana Leca, Margarita Gonzalez Lorente, Bige Örer, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Carolina Rito, Henk Slager, and Mick Wilson.

The launch of the book will take place in Helsinki as part of the EARN conference Making Artistic Research Public with short presentaions by Bassam El Baroni andJoasia Krysa. As part of the book launch there will also be a short workshop that seeks to further develop the themes and questions introduced in the book.

about the “expo-facto” strand of research

The ascendancy within the contemporary art system of e-flux announcements, social media posting, art-blogging, website mediation of exhibition and jpeg-enabled art sales has been in place for some time. However, there has been, in the context of the COVID19 global pandemic, an intensification of the relays between exhibition protocols and the culture of digital networks. In what seems like a global institutional convergence – similar in ways to the pervasive distribution of white cube though much more accelerated – there has been a widespread adoption of the exhibition-online as the immediate solution to the demands of physical distancing, lock-down and travel restriction in the context of the global pandemic. This would seem to warrant some critical reflection and analysis in its own right. What is at stake in this drive to online exhibition? What are the operative presumptions about exhibition that inform this imperative?

The questions of exhibition (and exposition) have been activated within the debates on artistic and curatorial research. The question of how the exhibition operates as a site, agent and entanglement of enquiry has been discussed increasingly in the last decade. The spatial choreography and material assemblages of exhibition have been significant themes in this discussion.  How do we think through the protocols of exhibition as enquiry in the era of the algorithmic?