This thesis identifies and responds to a contemporary impasse in the curatorial, which is thought of as the realm that encompasses curating as a complex action and interaction; a verb that includes the conceiving, organising and executing of exhibitions as well as critical thinking around curation as a discipline. The current impasse in curation the thesis responds to is caused, on the one hand, through its rapid expansion since the late 1980s and, on the other, through its mainstream and populist appropriation, which confuses understandings of it. The thesis proposes a strategy for the recovery for curating’s most basic work of ‘taking care’ and situates the curatorial as a creative act. It adopts Duchamp’s inframince as an artistic concept, and uses it as a lens to reveal the role of the speculative, poetic and absurd, the personal and subjective and the instant of emergence of creativity in curatorial practice. This facilitates an essentially diffractive methodology as well as a textual method of ‘an imaginative leap’ through friction, rhythm and repetition, building on Whitehead and Barad, (among others) to connect ideas of non-linearity and relay in (art) history. Opening up this rich meshwork thus allows for a reconnection of the curatorial to its original provenance and connoisseurship. The poetic investigation of an invisible force, the inframince, which is seen as instrumental to the curatorial and meaning making in general, is underpinned by the investigation of two other major, intertwining narratives – laughter and cybernetics. This liberates the inframince’s versatility and makes it potentially an operative tool, following Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of becoming minor and O’Sullivan’s interpretation, within a wider trans-disciplinary framework of art-science collaborations. Through this discussion, the thesis then reaffirms the curatorial (as it is intended here) as a practice that shapes the collaboration between specific human and nonhuman elements: the curator, and the artist (and/or scientist) and texts, artefacts, spaces and time.

« Apophatique » signifie « négatif » ou « par négation ». Le terme est principalement employé pour qualifier une forme particulière de théologie qui 1. ne peut rien dire de Dieu car énoncer une qualité serait lui ôter la qualité antinomique. Il est facile d'en comprendre la logique : dire que Dieu est grand c'est dire qu'il n'est pas petit ce qui est incompatible avec le fait de dire qu'il est tout. 2. consiste à énoncer ce que Dieu n'est pas : mauvais ou un chien, par exemples. Par exemple aussi, cette recherche n'est pas l'occasion d'une anthologie des meilleurs textes de théologie négative, mais la méthode – le scepticisme teinté de pensée logique et/ou mystique – n'est pas sans alimenter les développements à venir. Une des solutions qui s'offre à moi consiste à n'évoquer en rien l'art, l'esthétique, et tout autre domaine relatif aux dites sciences de l'art – un texte sur le nombre pi aurait fait l'affaire d'une esthétique apophatique. Cependant positivement fonder une pensée sur/avec la négation me rend heureux, par espièglerie, esprit de contradiction, par inquiétude fondamentale ; je ne m'en priverai donc pas au profit d'un tour de passe-passe, aussi réjouissante que soit l'idée de vous imaginer lire présentement une théorie du chou-fleur. / “Apophatic” means “negative” or “by negation”. The term is mainly used to designate a particular form of theology which 1. can't say anything of God because stating a quality would be taking the antinomic quality away from him. It is easy to understand the logic : to say that God is great is to say that he is not small, which is incompatible with the fact of saying that he is everything. 2. consists in stating what God is not : bad or a dog, for example. For example also, this research is not the occurrence of an anthology of the best texts of negative theology, but the method – the scepticism tinged with logical and/or mystic thought – is not without fueling the developments to come. One of the solutions that is given to me consists in not mentioning art in any way at all, the aesthetics, and any other field related to the so-called sciences of the arts – a text on the number Pi would have suited an apophatic aesthetics. However positively establishing a thought on negation makes me happy, by mischievousness, for the sake of argumentation, by fundamental concern; I will thus not deprive myself of it in favor of a quick/cheap trick, as delightful as the idea of imagining you currently reading a theory of the cauliflower might be.

On appelle installation sonore une forme d'art multimédia dans laquelle l'accent est mis en particulier sur l’aspect sonore, sans pour autant ignorer toutes les autres composantes qui constituent l’installation. Bien qu’elle soit une forme classée parmi les arts plastiques, l’installation sonore se rapporte plutôt à l’art sonore. En effet, l’art sonore se caractérise par la prééminence de l’usage du son comme moyen d’expression et comme préoccupation artistique (le grand nombre de manifestations, de blogs et de festivals d’art sonore en témoignent). Parmi les pratiques expérimentales ayant trait à l’art sonore, une nette préférence va à l’installation sonore et il semblerait qu’elle devienne une forme d’art en soi. On peut s’interroger sur la possibilité d’envisager ceci de cette manière. Dans cette thèse, il faut comprendre l’installation sonore comme une pratique artistique hétérogène, interdisciplinaire, expérimentale et hybride, pratique qu’on retrouve dans l’installation artistique en général. Cependant, on peut constater que des préoccupations reviennent souvent : la visualisation du son, la perception de l’espace à travers le sonore, l’écoute et sa relation avec la position et le déplacement du corps de l’auditeur. Afin de contribuer à une plus grande compréhension d’une culture sonore contemporaine qui est largement partagée, le propos de cette thèse est d’étudier les divers domaines auxquels l’installation sonore appartient et ceci à partir de plusieurs points de vue : historique, esthétique, culturel et médiatique. / Sound installation is an inter media-based art form that draws particular attention to the component of sound, although not at the expense of its visual underpinnings. Considering that it is a form of art, sound installation refers to sound art, an area that requires separate recognition and independence among existing art forms, due to the use of sound as a means of expression as well as the current artistic preoccupation with it (as reflected in the growing number of sound art demonstrations, blogs and festivals).Among the different experimental practices within sound art, sound installation is clearly favored, thus it would appear that it is becoming an art form in itself. Could it be seen in this way? In this thesis, Sound Installation is viewed as a current art form connected to “Art installation”, a field with its own characteristics: heterogeneous, multi-disciplinary, experimental and hybrid. However, as a singular art form, it is a source of insight, which emerges repeatedly and is amplified by the exploration of both sound and sound perception; for example, sound imaging, the perception of space through sound, listening and its relationship to the position of the listener’s body in space. The purpose of this thesis is to approach the field in which Sound Installation belongs from different perspectives such as history, aesthetics, culture and media. With the question of how to conceptualize sound components always in mind, we intend to contribute to the understanding of an ever –growing contemporary culture of sound.