The practical aspect of this research has been the curation of a series of hybrid exhibitionary spaces. These exhibitionary forms have resulted from creating a series of interfaces under the umbrella of 'that’s contemporary',a non-profit organization that I co-founded and have run since 2011. In this thesis, the practice of curating is taken to be the operation of 'inscribing' a program of actions (i.e.a script) into the design of interfaces; 'prescribing' these actions to the users of these interfaces; and 'describing' how users actually use the interface. My research argues that interfaces, by being used, unfold hybrid exhibitionary spaces. They are hybrid because the interfaces through which the exhibition is used and produced fluctuate between digital and physical space, in a hybrid zone. In this sense, physical exhibitions are curated along with the organization of their multiple replications on digital and non-digital interfaces. My concept of hybrid exhibitionary space is shaped by theory (Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 2005; Kennedy, 2012)that understands space to be produced by social relations meaning that users create the exhibitionary spaces they inhabit. From this point of view, the exhibition does not pre-exist its users, rather it takes place in an unremitting process of use, opening up the possibility for its multiple descriptions to be made. This idea of use as a form of exhibition production is applied to the concept of 'network curation', which refers to a type of collective curatorial process that is engendered by users, reiterating and re-contextualizing the exhibition along digital networks. Inspired by Actor Network Theory, the written component of this research has been interlaced together into an exhibitionary description. This method acts to document while, at the same time, it re-performs the‘curating’ and ‘curatorial’ processes that originally gave form to these exhibitionary interfaces. In this way, the thesis turns into an interface that mediates between its exhibited objects – my practice – and its users – the readers – while, simultaneously 'enacting' the research along this process of mediation.

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.

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Cette thèse interroge le champ de pratiques et de positions discursives appelées récemment « curating ». L’approche que nous avons choisie est celle de l’analyse des écrits des curateurs d’art contemporain. De nature très variée, ils nous permettent de percevoir leurs conceptions à partir de leurs pratiques d’organisation d’expositions et des diverses activités de présentation publique de l’art. Il s’agit de traiter la proximité, ainsi que la distance, entre la construction d’une théorie curatoriale et la pratique à travers un ensemble de règles et d’opérations de normalisation décidées par une communauté disciplinaire et professionnelle. La notion de champ de curating est abordée à partir des diverses conceptions sociologiques et philosophiques qui nous conduisent à approfondir la question de l’écriture des curateurs sur un terrain concret au sein des expositions. À travers des cas historiques, nous abordons la question des traces écrites laissées par une exposition ; nous examinons également certains problèmes associés à la construction de l’histoire des événements artistiques d’art contemporain. La dernière partie de cette recherche est consacrée à la question des stratégies discursives de positionnement des curateurs à partir des publications parues depuis les années 1990. Ces formes discursives constituent entre autres la base de l’enseignement des formations curatoriales récentes. / This thesis questions the practice field and discursive positions recently called curating. The perspective we have selected is the analysis of writings by contemporary art curators. Of varied nature, these texts allow us to discern their understanding of their practice of organizing exhibitions and diverse activities for the public display of art. With the purpose of tackling the proximity and the distance between the construction of curatorial theory on one hand, and on the other, curatorial practice as determined by a set of rules and processes decided by a disciplinary and professional community. The notion of the curatorial field is approached through various sociological and philosophical concepts that lead us to deepen our inquiry about writing to a concrete field of exhibitions. Selected historical cases allow us to address the issue of written traces left by an exhibition; equally important, we examine certain problems related to the construction of the history of art events in contemporary art. The last part of this research is devoted to the question of discursive strategies of positioning by curators, starting with publications that first appear in the 1990s. These discursive forms, among others, constitute the foundation of teaching in recent curatorial training.

This study departs from the observation that since the late 1980´s educational programmes for curators have been established and since then expanded greatly. The programmes are part of a process of institutionalization and professionalization of the role of the curator within the international contemporary art field where the role as such has gained much power. Even though many statements have been made about this relatively new phenomenon of curatorial studies, there is a lack of sufficient research. The intention of this study is therefore to examine the educational programmes as such. The selection of 15 programmes has been made with the purpose to include early as well as newly established and to cover a wide geographic area. The starting point has been to ask what kind of knowledge and role of the curator the programmes are given prominence to. Using Michel Foucault´s and Norman Fairclough´s theory and methods on discourses I examine the programmes as a discursive practice. The analysis shows that there is a strong coherence within the field of the programmes and certain ideals, conventions and procedures are shared among them. The programmes are highly dependent on the professional field of curators – individuals as well as institutions are frequently being invited to lecture and support the students. The application procedures make sure that students who are willing to adopt to given ideals and norms, are being accepted. Furthermore the ideal role of the curator has been defined with the following concepts – new institutionalism, an expanded working field and discursive curating. The curator is highlighted as creative, critical and independent. These concepts have been singled out and made explicitly unique for the role of the curator by the programmes although aspects have clearly been taken from the role of the artist and the critics. The result has been a stronger competition between these positions. The programmes are institutions that promote the curator as an important and irreplaceable agent and to claim even a stronger position new assets have been singled out in the form of a theoretical and academic capital.         Educational programmes included in the study: École du Magasin, Grenoble, Whitney Independent Study Program, New York, Curating Contemporary Art, Art Royal College of Art, London, De Appel Curatorial Programme, Amsterdam, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, MFA Curating, Goldsmiths, London, CuratorLab - Curatorial Program for Professionals in Arts, Crafts and Design, Konstfack, Stockholm, Curating Art - International Master Programme in Curating Art, including Management and Law, Stockholm university, Curatorial practice, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, Post-graduate Programme in Curating, Zürich University of the Arts, PhD-programme Curatorial/Knowledge, Goldsmiths, London, Cultures of the Curatorial, Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, CuMMA - Curating, Managing and Mediating Art, Aalto University, Helsinki, PhD-programme Curating, Zürich University of the Arts in collaboration with the university of Reading, Praxis Master’s Programme, Finnish Art Academy, Helsinki.

My intention is to contribute to the field of exhibition-making a repertoire of presentation modes, previously not analysed or documented, that can be applied to the display of fashion in the museum and which will extend those techniques currently available to the exhibition-maker to create meaningful and stimulating exhibition environments. Part 1 contextualises my investigation, through discussion of the exhibition as source material, the methods employed to execute the research and analysis of relevant literature. Part 1 concludes with an introduction to ModeMuseum, Antwerp, which is the primary location for my research. Part 2 details the identification, description and definition of a repertoire of presentation modes, classified and distinguished as innovative through comparative analysis of over 100 exhibitions visited for this research, alongside investigation of the exhibition formats and structures that support deployment of the modes. Part 3 relates the application of the presentation modes to the construction of a 'fashion autobiography‘ in the form of a proposal for a hypothetical exhibition, through examination of the processes utilised to develop the exhibition narrative and detailed account of the proposal in its final realisation. In conclusion, I will critically reflect on the research executed, underlining the interrelationship of the theoretical and practice-based activities. Finally, I will detail opportunities taken to disseminate this research, and indicate possible directions for continued investigation.

Looking primarily at the family photographs in Anne Carson’s epitaph in book form, this essay explores how Nox multiply exhibits translation as the approximation of an imperfect nearness. The replica of a testimonial object Carson created after her brother’s passing, Nox is a resolutely non- narrative work of poetry structured around a belabored translation of a Catullan elegy, prose poems, photographs, and other fragments of memorial matter. Examining Nox as an intimate archive made public through Carson’s act of curation, my project draws attention to how this work analogizes translation to the understanding of affective life. Inspired by Marianne Hirsch’s critical work on vernacular photography, I demonstrate that the exhibited family photographs in Nox not only thematize Carson’s focus on illumination and darkness, but also materially amplify the inaccessibility of the felt lives they encapsulate. I argue that Nox, like the photographs it houses, models a memorial practice insistent simultaneously on materiality and the incomplete proximity to what remains. / text