This linking paper maps connections between the Clew curatorial project and my research on choreographic thinking in curating.

My choreographic curatorial practice includes a consideration of the compositional, the embodied, the dramaturgical, and the temporal. It is a flexible and generative structure for producing exhibitions and artworks.

For me, curating is a practice of wondering and wandering. It is exploratory. While I assemble exhibitions as a response to a set of questions, I am not seeking an answer. My response is somewhat different: it is a way to engage with a set of wonderings, through the act of wandering.

Project Summary

Clew: A Rich and Rewarding Disorientation was a curatorial project developed at the Lamont Gallery at Phillips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, NH, USA. The exhibition, on view from 20 January to 15 April 2017, was the result of a two-year collaboration between artists Deborah Barlow, painter, Todd Hearon, poet, Jung Mi Lee and Jon Sakata, musicians, and Lauren O’Neal, curator.

Drawing from the many ideas evoked by the word clew, from the unfurling sails at the start of a quest, to the myth of the labyrinth, the exhibition emerged into a rich, immersive, and ever-shifting landscape where color, shape, sound, and texture invited viewers on a journey of discovery.

Clew and Curatorial Dramaturgy

As part of this research, I propose several attributes of a choreographic curatorial practice that have emerged through my projects. This linking paper delineates one attribute of this practice, that of curatorial dramaturgy, which I investigate through the Clew: A Rich and Rewarding Disorientation exhibition project.

Throughout the process of developing Clew, I operated with an increased awareness. I knew that the project was connected to my research interests in choreographic thinking, but I did not yet know how. What was it we were doing, exactly? Something cohered, but escaped, even while I was working in and amidst its amorphous but steady guidance. My “not-needing-to-know” that I bring to all curatorial projects, alongside my concurrent “needing-to-show” as an educator and head of an academic gallery, became oscillating motors for my involvement.

Curatorial dramaturgy in my practice has emerged in a two-fold manner: through deep engagement and reflection during curatorial and studio projects, and through my encounters with dance and dance dramaturgy. I situate my research in this manner for several reasons: I view curation as part of my expanded art practice (my doctoral research focuses on my curatorial practice specifically). I am also in conversation with the spatial and temporal art practices I have pursued outside of the curatorial realm. I noticed that my curatorial practice echoed the ways I made sculpture or installation. It was an embodied activity, stemming from my long-term engagement with various movement practices, including contemporary and modern dance and somatic practices.

Intentionally, I launch my exhibition projects with only a glance or preliminary nod toward a thematic structure. Despite this open approach, however, I am driven by ideas and themes, but I let them develop as part of the process.

As my attention to the mechanics of my curation developed through my artistic research, I became curious to know how it was possible for any theme or narrative to develop in an exhibition. How can I have it both ways? Open-ended and bounded? Fluid and structured? What was it I was seeking by creating a curatorial project? What did I come to know during the process? What did my way of working in the gallery context offer to audiences?

Curatorial Dramaturgy as Motor

Clew: A Rich and Rewarding Disorientation became a response to these questions, and a site for enacting of the concept of curatorial dramaturgy. Throughout the project, I noticed that certain interactions or experiences drove the exhibition concept forward. But what was the exhibition concept? The collaborative team only had a provisional sense of the project, guided initially by the word clew, and some of the imagery in one of Todd’s recent poems, and in themes within Deborah’s paintings.

In contrast to a more traditional curatorial endeavor, which might propose to prove and illustrate an art historical thesis, Clew was elusive. That elusiveness was something that was appealing to all of us, so we made no attempt to nail it down or fix it with any one meaning or agenda. We used the broader associations to “sail” into the process, and across oceans of experience.

Based on this project, I have concluded that curatorial dramaturgy in my work has emerged as a practice that contains the characteristics of open-ended, provisional, and non-linear narratives. It is aware of the need for flexibility around positions of authorship, expertise, and thematic or textual direction in the role of the curatorial dramaturg. It operates in a long-format curatorial method that I describe as sustained attention. The way these elements operate include an embodied approach to conceiving of the project, shared by all of the collaborators (and inherent in our aims for the audience), a continuous negotiation with materials (ranging from paintings to sound to water) that can be best described as “coaxing”—the materials coaxed us into working with them, and we, in turn, coaxed them to expand beyond their original purposes.

Raqs Media Collective speaks eloquently about the types of meanings which unfold within conditions of open-endedness:

What does it mean then to culture an exhibition, or any curatorial project, to have it crystallize into meaning and patterns of signification? Firstly, we have to create a flux of starting propositions that are fluid enough, neither too stable nor too volatile, to be conducive to the crystallization of the materials we are working with. Then, we have to make it possible for there to be that degree to contact between the content of works and processes such that incipient patterns may be encouraged to become manifest (without necessarily losing their integrity). We must also make sure that a host of conditions (such as the temperature of attention—neither too hot, nor too cool—and the density and gravity of the ideas and materials) are appropriate, and finally, we have to give the process time ripen, to mature, to crystallize.[1]

Reflecting on the process, through the project archive and through my extended text on curatorial dramaturgy, has allowed me to ‘see’ the structures a bit more clearly. They still waver, as that is their nature, but they are there. My own working definition that stemmed from this inquiry is: Curatorial dramaturgy is the thematic and compositional motor and structuring device of a curatorial activity that produces and scaffolds multiple registers of meaning and engagement. A mouthful, but at least a start.

The When of Artistic Research

When does a curatorial project become “artistic research?” I do not have an answer to that question, but I do differentiate this project from the many other exhibitions I have curated. Even my language in framing this question is telling: “exhibitions I have curated” feels like a very different space than “exhibition as inquiry” or “choreographic curation.” By paying close attention to choreographic thinking in Clew and several other curatorial projects, where I specifically approached them as artistic research, I was able to test my assumptions and conduct trial-runs of strategies and curatorial methodologies.

For the exhibitions before Clew, I could prototype my initial methods of choreographic thinking in the gallery setting and could develop a sense of its inherent properties of motion, flexibility, assemblage, and embodiment.  After Clew, I was able to frame subsequent projects through the lens of curatorial dramaturgy as a component of this choreographic practice.

I can name the components and elements of how choreographic curation works in “non-research” exhibitions, though at the end, I also believe that exhibitions I developed outside of the steady gaze of artistic research were less rich, though perhaps more successful within an audience development framework. This is only a hunch, one that will remain untested for now. This is an artistic endeavor, not a sociological one.

Let’s go!

Bibliography

Raqs Media Collective. “To Culture: Curation as an Active Verb.” Cultures of the Curatorial. Edited by Beatrice von Bismarck, Jörn Schafaff, and Thomas Weski. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012.

Clew Direct