Drawn from lectures given by Victoria Walsch, Sabeth Buchmann, Marina Lind, Clementine Deliss, Peter Schneemann: Curatorial Things, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 28.10 - 1.11 2014
1. The Anthropocene (a term used to describe the period from which point human activity has had a significant effect on the earths ecosystems), shifts our understanding of the external object-world contemplated within the traditional museum and gallery space. We are implicit in it ALL.
HOW CAN WE HIGHLIGHT AND NEGATE A REDUCTION IN AGENCY OF THE OBJECT THROUGH CURATORIAL DISPLACEMENT?
2. Where (the object of) knowledge pertains to the quality of 'original material' - particularly in terms of scripting from real life interviews and conversations - it also acts as a form of testament, producing a legally culpable subject. Objects now function as quasi-subject objects particularly when knowledge or data is the thing, and are required to perform thier 'originality and authenticity'.
WHERE CAN WE FIND 'READABLE FRAGMENTS OF REALITY' THAT CONNECT THE VIEWER WITH AN ORIGINAL LOCATION - AS OPPOSED TO ACTING AS COMPENSATION FOR OUR FALURE TO EFFECTIVELY ENGENDER SIMULTANEITY, COLLABORATION AND TRANSLATION?
2.1 We may be able to find points of fixity and dialogue in-between the uselessness of terms such as simultaneity, collaboration, translation.
3. Today the autonomous object that acts as a truth-container has been replaced by an approach that can be summed up as 'doing things with things, things that do things with us'.
IF RE-MEDIATION OF OBJECTS AND COLONIAL EXTRACTION CAN BE ATTEMPTED THROUGH RECOGNISING AND POSITIONING ONESELF AGAINST NEW CURATORIAL HIERARCHIES, WHAT ARE THE SIGNALS AND HOW DOES THIS POWER FUNCTION?
4. Materiality Vs Animism. The agency of the museum object arrises from commodity fetishism. Which is an argument about what you should have and what you should want to have. Thus for contemporary curatorial practices the fetish for communication, which could mean collaboration, networks, participative process, but more likely some form of technologically facilitated connectivity (embellished by the 'broadcast self'), enters the museum. This 'connectivity' effects the entire paradigm of object or non-object (quasi-subject objects) within not only curatorial but also wider processes of knowledge production.
WHAT ARGUMENTS, TERMS AND CRITERIA DO WE HAVE FOR ASSESSING THE VALUE OF SUCH OBJECTS OF KNOWLEDGE/ARTWORKS?
4.1 We are now in a shift within our art-historic paradigm toward fluidity, physical discontinuity and multiple temporality.
MIGHT WE THEN RECOGNISE THE ARTWORK AS SUCH PRECISELY AT THE MOMENT AT WHICH IT BECOMES UNHINGED FROM LINEAR HISTORY?
. . .
Simultaneity then, can be understood qualitatively as delicate, slippery and deceptive