Please note! Course description is confirmed for two academic years, which means that in general, e.g. Learning outcomes, assessment methods and key content stays unchanged. However, via course syllabus, it is possible to specify or change the course execution in each realization of the course, such as how the contact sessions are organized, assessment methods weighted or materials used.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Students develop their curatorial understanding through a thorough investigation of some of curating's most pertinent questions, concerns and recent developments.
Credits: 4
Schedule: 03.03.2021 - 31.03.2021
Teacher in charge (valid 01.08.2020-31.07.2022): Bassam El Baroni
Teacher in charge (applies in this implementation): Bassam El Baroni
Contact information for the course (valid 12.02.2021-21.12.2112):
CEFR level (applies in this implementation):
Language of instruction and studies (valid 01.08.2020-31.07.2022):
Teaching language: English
Languages of study attainment: English
CONTENT, ASSESSMENT AND WORKLOAD
Content
Valid 01.08.2020-31.07.2022:
Students will read, explore, and critically discuss literature in and around curatorial approaches, theory, and practices.
Applies in this implementation:
TAI-L0009
- Contemporary Curating (2021)Curating
and its FuturesFormat
Contemporary Curating as a curatorial
course for doctoral students adopts the concept of the roundtable – a relaxed forum
for debate and discussion - as its general format. The course consists of five
sessions the first four of which will start with an approx. 1-hour lecture. Each
lecture will address a particular facet of the general framework Curating
and its Futures. Curating in this course is understood as a research field in
contrast to the professional activity of curating bound to museum practices and
exhibition making. Curatorial work – as part of an expanded field of art, artistic
research, and creative practices - is facing a considerable number of societal,
economic, political and technological shifts that force it to constantly reconceptualise
and rethink its core alliances and identity as well as its social and political
impacts. Each one of the first four sessions will be dedicated to investigating
a particular issue together. The issues are 1. Art, Financialization and
Counter-Speculation 2. Algocurating (algorithmic curating) 3. What do we mean
when we say Knowledge Production? 4. Curatorial Ethics. Through debate and
discussion around these issues the idea is to picture and speculate on the different
pathways that curating might take in the future.Coursework
The readings and/or links/materials
related to each session will be uploaded a week prior to the course’s starting
date. Participants in the course are expected to have some idea about the topic
through the readings and/or general research of their own. After the lecture, we
will open up the discussion through questions, further examples and queries
that the participants bring to this online roundtable. The final session will
be dedicated to presentations by the course participants. The participants are
tasked with situating themselves sometime in the future (example: 2051) and to develop
a short report on the field of curating to an audience who remains in 2021.
What has changed, what concerns, practices and ways of doing have been dropped
and what new ones have emerged? How are the issues that we discussed during the
course reflected in this report from the future? How are institutions behaving,
how and what are artists and curators organizing and researching? The report
can be read out, be a power-point or take up some online performative characteristics.
Sessions and Dates
03.03.2021 – 13.15 – 17:00, Zoom: https://aalto.zoom.us/j/7409986395
Art, Financialization and Counter-Speculation (Some Curatorial
Approaches)“Financialization, in the narrow political economic sense, names an
historical epoch in the capitalist mode of production when profits increasingly
accrue through financial channels, rather than through production-oriented activity.
For example, non-financial organizations now derive profits from financial
activities while disinvesting from core production and service activities. Financialization,
in the broader sociological sense, also names the process whereby individuals,
households and organizations bear more of the risks which the state, the
would-be lender of last resort to the banking sector, had previously assumed.” [1]In recent
years considerable research has emerged on the effects of financialization on the
arts, but more importantly we have noticed the development of practice-led
research on how artists, curators, and institutions might respond to financialization
as a generator of inequality, scarcity and precarity in societies. This has meant
that artists and curators have had to learn the language and vocabulary of financialization,
understand financial instruments and develop tactical approaches for working
with and through finance. The lecture will first look at financialization and
the way writers/philosophers (e.g., Michel Feher) have addressed and come up
with positions on how to creatively counteract its effects. It will then look at an array of artistic practices
that have engaged with these ideas and attempted to repurpose the logic of
financialization towards the social good or the benefit of artistic
communities.10.03.2021 – 13.15 – 17:00, Zoom: https://aalto.zoom.us/j/7409986395
Algocurating (algorithmic curating)
The automation
of curatorial processes has already been part of curatorial work for a long
time, although we might not recognize them as such. There is often a sentiment
of deep caution and/or lament towards popular platforms (Instagram, Tumblr, TikTok)
that have both democratized and domesticated content curation, how can
professional curating compete with the mass reach, accessibility and power to
transform social norms of these platforms, or so the sentiment goes? This session looks at the topic of algocurating
and the debates and discussions around it? It considers the writings and research
of curators thinking with and through the automation of curatorial processes,
the impact of this automation on the field, what kind of curatorial work is
already being shaped by algorithmic infrastructures and how its being adopted
by different stakeholders within curatorial practice and the wider creative
industry.17.03.2021 – 13.15
– 17:00, Zoom: https://aalto.zoom.us/j/7409986395What do we mean when we say Knowledge Production?
The readings, materials and
lecture for session revolve around the question of art understood as form of knowledge
production. Since “knowledge production seems deeply entrenched in specific
artistic practices, be they individual or collective, in institutional
programming and curating, in the discourses led in the field, and in the
curricula of art academies”[2]
how are we to understand this ‘knowledgization’ historically, in relation to
current challenges and as a socio-economical and socio-philosophical question that
can support and rethink future curatorial practices. It has long been argued
that art does not afford us knowledge in any conventional sense of the term, as
opposed to the sciences for example, yet within the contemporary context the
drive towards an understanding and framing of art and curation as research and inherently
productive of knowledge is becoming the predominant discourse. If this drive is
a contemporary (economy-driven) phenomenon then how can we understand its disadvantages
and advantages, taking up the possibilities it affords us to achieve certain
social ends? We will embark on a close reading of Tom Holert’s book ‘Knowledge
Beside Itself: Contemporary Art’s Epistemic Politics’ and bring it into
conversation with recent writings on the economy such as Mariana Mazzucato’s conceptualization
of ‘mission economics.’ As a non-disciplined discipline at its very core, what
roles can curatorial practice play in shaping the future of knowledge production
vis a vis art?for rest of sessions see General Course Page
Assessment Methods and Criteria
Valid 01.08.2020-31.07.2022:
Active participation, quality of contribution, one assignment at end of course.
Applies in this implementation:
See 'Report from the Future of the Field', participation, discussion, attendance of 4 out 5 sessions
Workload
Valid 01.08.2020-31.07.2022:
Contact teaching, independent and peer work.
DETAILS
Study Material
Applies in this implementation:
will be uploaded 1 week before course starts
- Teacher: El Baroni Bassam