Beyond the exhibition: a vessel for self-reflexive curating in the Mediterranean

This thesis is the written result of a practice-based PhD. The thesis presents a ‘located’ model of curatorial practice that aims to actively benefit the cultural landscape of host regions. It challenges existing definitions of ‘the curatorial’, taking a multidisciplinary understanding of curatorial practice and evaluating curatorial methods in light of recent geo-political developments. Concerned with the effects of changes in European cultural policy, and the geopolitical position of the Mediterranean basin, this thesis evaluates contemporary curatorial practices in the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership context and, through practice-based interventions, suggests ways to develop situated curatorial processes, appropriate to their geographical context. Specifically, I argue that the temporary, large-scale exhibition formats financially supported by EU policies, such as the European Regional Development Fund, are not necessarily the most appropriate or beneficial to the cultural development of their host regions. I therefore propose an alternative set of methods, tools and considerations for a self-reflexive model of curatorial practice. This proposal takes the form of a curatorial initiative ‘Vessel’; a long-term practice-based research project that seeks models of practice that effectively enable local engagement in cultural production, allowing culture to flourish independently of larger hegemonies. Several of Vessel’s experimental initiatives are presented here, and appraised in order to build a theoretical understanding of ‘located’ curatorial practices that can inform alternative approaches. This research is developed through case studies of Manifesta, Liminal Spaces, Matadero and Intermediae; all of them testing grounds for 'Vessel', a curatorial initiative based in Puglia, Italy. Puglia has been chosen as a site for this research because of its central role in the current Mediterranean situation. This thesis illustrates the theoretical, geographical and historical context of this investigative project, and documents the evolution and outcomes of the curatorial initiative attempted. This thesis represents the first practice-based study of contemporary curatorial practices in the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EUROMED) context, which seeks primarily to develop situated curatorial processes appropriate to their geographical context. The thesis discusses aspects of human geography, cultural studies, social science and European studies, all filtered through practical implementation and reflective examination of the main discipline of interest: curatorial studies. This research acknowledges the role of the curator as a mediator between cultural producers and the political and bureaucratic conditions for cultural production. This role offers the opportunity to develop an awareness of the potential influence of those conditions on the artists, their work and their audiences. In other words, the curator is in a unique position to have an overview of the practices, interests and concerns of cultural producers, as well as those of policy makers and administrative bodies, and any potential conflicts of interest that may arise. Thus, curators are in a privileged position to operate as proactive agents, particularly when they observe that cultural policies are not achieving the aim of fostering cultural development. This thesis, therefore, invites curators to consider their responsibility to critically assess the long-term effects of their practice on cultural and epistemological development in Europe. The thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 presents the research questions, clarifying their terminology and broadly discussing their rationale, context and theoretical focus. The chapter questions current EU cultural and economic strategies and suggests that they may be misguided. In Chapter 2, the level of analysis shifts from the geo-political context to a more specific situation: the position of art practitioners involved in the above situation, and the outcomes produced. Since the exhibition format is popular and has been envisioned by the EU cultural agenda as one of the most effective instruments for creating a dialogue between different geographical areas, Chapter 2 challenges this understanding of the format and the ways of production embedded in it. Chapter 3 presents a series of alternative curatorial approaches coming from the South and related to the four theoretical pillars of the self-reflexive approach: geography, time, process and epistemology. Starting with the methods used to investigate the case studies, the chapter traces connections between theory and practice. The chapter moves through close readings of the alternative case studies and comparative analysis, to the use of self- reflexive practice. Chapter 4 is at the heart of the thesis: it presents the methodologies underpinning both the approach to case study analysis and the practical research. This involves the curatorial proposal put forward and practised through Vessel. Vessel is therefore presented, in Chapter 4, as a self-reflexive model of located curatorial practice that is appropriate for located curatorial engagement. The conclusion addresses the capacity of curatorial practices to cultivate local epistemologies. I propose the outcome of the Vessel research project, and associated case studies as a set of curatorial methods and considerations for a ‘located’ model of curatorial practice

Una pedagogía más allá del grado universitario : El acompañamiento de la formación doctoral

Históricamente, la pedagogía nace de la mano de un niño que es conducido hacia la escuela en la Grecia Antigua. Un esclavo, un paidagogo, que guía y acompaña. Quizás, sea por este origen "inferior" que, cada vez que la pedagogía intenta entrar a algunas instituciones de educación "superior" y tematizar sobre "qué se hace cuando se enseña", (más allá de las carreras especializadas en educación), tenga que lidiar, con mayor o menor esfuerzo, por su reconocimiento. Parecería ser que en determinadas instituciones educativas, la pedagogía es "portadora de rostro" y por eso, es vista con desconfianza. "Es cosa de chicos", "es una disciplina que sirve a la escuela primaria", la pedagogía escolariza al adulto", "la pedagogía va en contra de la cultura del esfuerzo si se les da todo servido a los estudiantes" son algunas de las voces recogidas y escuchadas que se resisten al debate pedagógico sobre las prácticas de enseñanza. Pensar cómo enseñar y pensar quién es el estudiante que asiste a nuestra práctica docente, ¿Es escolarizarlo? ¿Qué práctica profesional no se piensa, no se planifica, no se evalúa? ¿No existirán otros motivos por las cuales la pedagogía no sea bien vista? Dice P. Meirieu en el título de un provocador artículo: "¿Y si el odio a la pedagogía no estuviera mostrando nada menos que el odio por la democracia?" Vale detenerse a estudiar esta asociación entre pedagogía democracia instituciones educativas, en la época actual. Y si de resistencia se trata, cuán osado podría ser el proyecto de pensar en una pedagogía doctoral para un nivel que representa el máximo grado académico. Nuestro propósito parte por retomar el origen, rescatar el verbo: acompañar. Más precisamente, la finalidad de esta ponencia apunta a compartir los fundamentos teóricos sobre una pedagogía de la formación doctoral. Frente a un sujeto exigido y tensionado por las acreditaciones del mundo académico, bajo el imperativo categórico de la excelencia, nos convoca un sujeto en proceso de transformación subjetiva, movilizadora y desestabilizante. Nos referimos a una pedagogía de la formación doctoral que pone en el centro de su pensamiento y su acción, a un sujeto deseante, con motivaciones, necesidades, en la búsqueda de sentido de su proyecto formativo personal profesional, en estado de problematización con sus saberes, sus experiencias y su relación con el saber. Un sujeto que elabora paulatinamente su autorización a construir saberes nuevos, volviéndose autor. En fin, un sujeto acompañado por una pedagogía doctoral

Circling the Circulatory

This article offers a new term, ‘circulatory’ to foreground curatorial and artistic practices predicated on processual, interlacing strategies of public-becoming. The circulatory is evident in such practices neither ‘before’ nor ‘after’ but amidst a temporal, and often durational, interlinking of enquiry, making, and sharing, each element informed anew by the situation, locality, field of enquiry, and ambitions for dissemination. With reference to select examples, the circulatory is offered as a concept and practice and as a method of evaluating the efficacy of connection between all elements of artistic work on a trajectory from inception, through realisation, to becoming public

Y si de permanencer se trata, qué sucede en el doctorado? El ateneo como dispositivo pedagógico en la formación doctoral.

En esta ponencia presentamos la fundamentación teórica de una práctica institucional que tiene lugar en el marco del doctorado del Programa Interuniversitario de Educación (UnLa-Untref) en un espacio curricular llamado: “ateneo”. Nos proponemos compartir los presupuestos centrales que sirven como punto de partida para llevar adelante este dispositivo pedagógico. El mismo trabaja a partir de situaciones que van afectando el proceso de formación de los doctorandos hacia la “autorización “y la “autoría”. Específicamente, este dispositivo fue diseñado en el proyecto institucional original del doctorado y aplicado en la primera cohorte doctoral 2008-2009. Asimismo, se cumplieron las etapas de planificación, coordinación, registro, evaluación y revisión crítica de cada uno de los ateneos realizados. Algunos de los comentarios realizados por los doctorandos, al finalizar la implementación de los ateneos, ponen hincapié en: la conformación de un grupo de pertenencia, la valorización explícita del intercambio entre colegas, de diversa trayectoria profesional, en tanto comparten una misma propuesta formativa y la posibilidad de escuchar, escuchar-se y “ser dicho” por los otros, a partir del proceso de producción que conlleva la escritura de la tesis doctoral. Todo lo valorado por los doctorandos pone en relieve aspectos que relevan de la permanencia en un posgrado doctoral

Whereabouts you are

•‘Whereabouts you are’ was an exhibition of work by ten Glasgow School of Art PhD Researchers, curated by Allyson Keehan (Glasgow School of Art) and guest curator Viviana Checchia (Centre for Contemporary Arts) • The exhibition ran from Saturday 15th October to Thursday 10th November in The Reid Gallery, Glasgow School of Art ‘Whereabouts you are’ explored the diverse research practices of the Glasgow School of Art PhD cohort. Bringing together researchers from disciplines across the fields of Fine Art and Design, the exhibition posed a number of questions about the role of arts practice in academic research, its unique character, and its particular challenges. For the exhibiting researchers, pinpointing whereabouts you are is about marking a particular moment in the research process, pausing to reflect and take stock of their individual journey so far and to consider the next steps. In that spirit, rather than deferring the questions posed by the exhibition, they tackled them head-on through accompanying events organised in collaboration with the Centre for Contemporary Arts. By bringing their work out of the studio, the group hoped to not only shed light on the thought-provoking and innovative research undertaken at Glasgow School of Art, but to enliven the research through conversation with its new audience. The exhibiting researchers were: • Eszter Biró (School of Fine Art) • Jacqueline Butler (School of Fine Art) • Mirian Calvo (Institute for Design Innovation) • Inês Bento Coelho (School of Fine Art) • Allyson Keehan (School of Fine Art) • Fiona Jane MacLellan (Institute for Design Innovation) • Catherine M. Weir (School of Fine Art) • Dawn Worsley (School of Fine Art) • Hanan Makki Zakari (School of Simulation and Visualisation) • Polina Zioga (School of Simulation and Visualisation). Curated by Allyson Keehan (Glasgow School of Art) and guest curator Viviana Checchia (Centre for Contemporary Arts)

Whereabouts you are

'Whereabouts you are' was an exhibition of work by ten Glasgow School of Art Ph.D. Researchers, curated by Allyson Keehan (Glasgow School of Art) and guest curator Viviana Checchia (Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow). The exhibition ran from Saturday 15th October to Thursday 10th November 2016 in The Reid Gallery, Glasgow School of Art. 'Whereabouts you are' explored the diverse research practices of the Glasgow School of Art Ph.D. cohort. Bringing together researchers from disciplines across the fields of Fine Art and Design, the exhibition posed a number of questions about the role of arts practice in academic research, its unique character, and its particular challenges. For the exhibiting researchers, pinpointing 'whereabouts you are' is about marking a particular moment in the research process, pausing to reflect and take stock of their individual journey so far and to consider the next steps. In that spirit, rather than deferring the questions posed by the exhibition, they tackled them head-on through accompanying events organised in collaboration with the Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow. By bringing their work out of the studio, the group hoped to not only shed light on the thought-provoking and innovative research undertaken at Glasgow School of Art, but to enliven the research through conversation with its new audience. The exhibiting researchers were: • Eszter Biró (School of Fine Art) • Jacqueline Butler (School of Fine Art) • Mirian Calvo (Institute for Design Innovation) • Inês Bento Coelho (School of Fine Art) • Allyson Keehan (School of Fine Art) • Fiona Jane MacLellan (Institute for Design Innovation) • Catherine M. Weir (School of Fine Art) • Dawn Worsley (School of Fine Art) • Hanan Makki Zakari (School of Simulation and Visualisation) • Polina Zioga (School of Simulation and Visualisation)

Dismantling, Disappearing, Reconstituting? Reflections on the Mackintosh fire 2018

Marschall, Anika - ORCID 0000-0002-4189-1925 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4189-1925Item not available in this repository.In this article, the curator Viviana Checchia and the theatre scholar Anika Marschall reflect on the impact that the fire at the Mackintosh building in 2018 had on their public engagement at the Centre for Contemporary Arts: Glasgow; in particular on the art project The Scottish-European Parliament they co-created. Through an interdisciplinary lens, they consider how this critical and curatorial work relate to the Mackintosh wreckage, a former site of learning and cultural production. Whilst asking the question of 'we', the authors situate the concrete wreckage as nodal point, which produces political ties between cultural communities, claims to rights, space, and infrastructure. By drawing on Lauren Berlant (2016), Shannon Jackson (2011) and Irit Rogoff (2008), they discuss the notion of infrastructure and propose that a critical infrastructure enables them to unlock the capacity for shared imagination and to bring a fragmented community back into urban display in wrecked sites.https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2019.167172324pubpub

Political Animal

Political Animal was an interdisciplinary cultural event which explored how the contemporary city can be written, curated, performed and (re)built. Through talks, presentations, exhibitions and assemblies, questions around the roles of the collective and the individual in the operations of the city will be raised and discussed

Political Animal

The Political Animal exhibition takes the animal fable and makes an existential examination of the bestial and instinctual sides of our political and civic life in word and image. A long term collaboration between a curator, an artist and a writer, the work examines how diverse formations of the collective - the mob, the pack, the crowd - pay into everyday behaviours. All three of the show’s creators have a strong point in common in their respective practices: awareness of and engagement with space. Thanks to the curatorial situated approach, the artistic site-specific and place-making oriented practice, and the ‘architecture’ of the writing, the result is a spatial reading of the themes. The exhibition consists of ten animal drawings by Prabhakar Pachpute as well as a series of spatial interventions including large scale coloured chalk drawings across the walls of the interior of the Reid Building and 3-D sculptures and cutouts. The exploration of spatial depth and disposition both through the biomorphic forms of the animals and the geometry of objects adds an unexpected dimension to the conventional moral range of the fable here. One might speculate on the mining background in the families of both the artist and the writer of Political Animal to understand how and why they bring to this universal and traditional cultural form such a new profundity of investigation of questions of inside/outside, presence/absence and conceptual/material. Pachpute’s artworks are indeed inspired by the work of writer Johnny Rodger, who has been experimenting with a type of modern prose-poem fable in order to come at the question of the ‘contemporary’ through the very different angle of literary form. There is now a collection of twenty of these modern fables. Rodger’s work takes the simple but fantastical elements of the conventional talking-animal fable and reworks them with political complexity in an engaged and discursive existential style which creates its own literary space.The reworked fables are assembled together in the book which accompanies the show, also titled Political Animal (copies of the book can be found laid out in the driven void). In the show itself the display of these animals is organised by order of the length of their average lifespan -from ant via gull, elephant, fish, donkey and others, to the long surviving tardigrade. The intention of the curator, Viviana Checchia, is to take these basic literary and visual formats and recreate the gallery itself as a section of a book. Having wondered for years about the relevance of primary sources in the creation of the exhibitions, Checchia has designed Political Animal to incorporate an extensive series of books and texts used by Pachpute and Rodger as an integral part of the show in the form of references, footnotes, and extracts. This is a move against the current practice of the use of ‘source rooms’ to delegate contextualisation: it is becoming a rarity to find gallery spaces without a room devoted to reading materials. This show is a source room in itself. The public are thus invited to experience the exhibition as a reader. It is a book written in space: a book about books. Prabhakar Pachpute’s new series of work was commissioned by the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), The Drouth and The Glasgow School of Art; sponsored by Leverhulme International Network of Contemporary Studies, to accompany the publishing by CCA of the book Political Animal. This show will be part of a two day event presented with the same title, Political Animal, and focused on the phenomenon of the Contemporary City. The Glasgow School of Art and the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) have invited a collection of international artists, writers, performers, academics, musicians, dancers and activists from all over the globe to come together on the 21st and 22nd of June 2019