encourage a way to look, think, and discuss passionately and expansively about the nature of artistic inquiry, what it produces in the artist and the audience, and how materials catalyze actions
Touching a Few More Threads (A Few Reflections)
In addition to the elements described and pictured in the Wavering Lines section (which for some people would indicate the “final” form of an exhibition), we all continued to tweak and adjust the exhibition throughout its run. This was an almost daily ritual, where the compulsion to touch became a talismanic gesture. This included adjusting the video (angles, brightness, loops), the sound (volume, direction), the sand and salt (sweeping, redrawing, replenishing), the scrim (straightening, fluffing), the lighting (adjusting as needed, which often doesn’t become evident until a few weeks in, as well as adjusting and dimming for select events), the mirrors (angling, shifting their placement), and the paintings (leveling, or angling, as necessary, or adjusting in other ways). This continuous shifting of elements, positions, and attitudes, with a sustained attention and curiosity on the part of the collaborators and the audience, created a type of curatorial dramaturgy of journey, investigation, and experimentation throughout the project.
Clew was two-year journey that led to something none of us imagined at the outset. I do not believe anyone outside of the immediate project context could know just how deeply, and in such nuanced ways, we built structures and strategies not only for the work, but for ways to work together that were generative, exploratory, and joyful. Collaboration can be difficult. At times, it’s exhausting. Trust, humor, good food, stepping up, stepping back, arranging and rearranging, listening, speaking, being seen and heard, helping, and caring are all part of this collaborative process when it works well. These are also core elements of my own choreographic curatorial process.
The artists reflected on the project in different ways, both directly and indirectly. Deborah Barlow reflected on the experience through her blog. Another faculty member, Fermin Perez-Andreu, was enlisted to produce a video walk-through. Jung Mi Lee and Jon Sakata continued to collaborate with both Todd Hearon and with me. Other artists who saw the exhibition integrated some of the curatorial and material aspirations into their own projects. We benefited from the insights of writers in regional publications. Phillips Exeter Academy art students were inspired as well, and the end-of-the-year senior and advanced studio students, whose show followed Clew, filled the gallery with dynamic and exploratory work.
From an artistic research perspective, the project allowed me to develop my concept of curatorial dramaturgy, expanding and furthering my doctoral research. It afforded me the opportunity to collaborate over a much longer time period than I had previously done, as well as to collaborate with different artists. It shifted my view on what could be done in the gallery and how I could detect my own habits (unnecessary as well as productive). It recalibrated my assumptions about how the Harkness pedagogy might operate in the gallery by affiliating it with a dynamic, roving conversation much more so than to a discourse around a table (no matter how open-ended). It increased my capacity for risk and experimentation on a larger, and more public, scale. The experience continues to influence me.
