In the Pursuit of the Curatorial

Art Fund Curatorial Seminar, 8 part taking place throughout 2015 at fig-2

As part of the collaboration between fig-2 and the Art Fund, fig-2 will be hosting 8 public seminars conceptualised by Art Fund Curator Fatos Ustek. This eight part seminar series will explore the curatorial pursuit and eloquence of expression in curating today. Inspired by the structure of fig-2, changing the rules of display of ideas weekly, if not daily, the artist changes every week. The exhibition is not a singular presentation of works or a consistent message, but instead is composed of several constellations, each revealing how one object put next to another could provoke different readings of both. Each seminar will concentrate on a theme in particular with an assigned reading announced on the website prior, and led by Fatos Ustek.

Part I: Instituting the Social Imaginary on 22nd January, 2015

As part of the collaboration between fig-2 and the Art Fund, fig-2 is hosting eight public seminars conceptualised by Art Fund Curator Fatoş Üstek. The first of eight part seminar series with the title Instituting the Social started by addressing the concepts studied by Cornelius Castoriadis, activating the understanding of institutions, and their relationship to the construction of social imaginary.

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Part II: On Responsibility on 19th February, 2015

The second of eight part seminar series with the title On Responsibility will concentrate on Roland Barthes’ seminal text entitled To the Seminar, investigating the contents and discontents of the current cultural production of art institutions and their modes of audience engagement.

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Part III: Politics of Display on 16th April, 2015

The third of the eight part seminar series with the title Politics of Display will investigate the charged liminal space between a work of art and audience, and the art institution. Bringing forward Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine’s publication Exhibiting Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Display, the seminar will focus on the relationship of representation, cultural relic within the participation.

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Part IV. Objects of Experience

Thursday 16 July 2015 (7pm – 8pm)

The fourth of the eight part seminar series with the title Objects of Experience will concentrate on the art object questioning the domain of ordinary material things versus mimetic objects, imitations of transcendent forms or structures. Deriving from the seminal article On Style by Susan Sontag, the seminar will cultivate an elucidation of art experience in the form of object encounter.

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Part V. On Autonomy

Thursday 20 August 2015 (7pm – 8pm)

The fifth of the eight part seminar series with the title On Autonomy will delve into the dynamics of artistic and curatorial production in relation to the concepts of autonomy. Taking John Roberts’ conceptualisations from his publication The Necessity of Errors into account, the seminar will cumulate situations and examples in which autonomy is at stake.

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Part VI. Making things Public

Thursday 17 September 2015 (7pm – 8pm)

The sixth of the eight part seminar series with the title Making things Public will expand on the primary role of curating and on the notion of exhibition making in general. Discussing positions from established to semi established and informal institutions, the seminar will extrapolate Tony Bennett’s The Birth of the Museum.

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Part VII. Performing the real

Thursday 22 October 2015 (7pm – 8pm)

The seventh of the eight part seminar series with the title Performing the real will provoke an understanding and approach to auteur curating, concentrating on the traceability of subjectivity in production of the definition of art. Visiting Robert Storr’s contextualisation of the wording auteur curator, the seminar will speculate on drawing the real with its anticipation closer.

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Part VIIICoherency and Incompleteness

Thursday 10 December 2015 (7pm – 8pm)

The eight and last part of the seminar series with the title Coherency and Incompleteness will pay a visit to the seven prior seminars, placing them in the context of a curatorial pursuit in today’s currency of visual arts. The two concepts evoked in the title will be explored in their dictionary definition whilst the programme at fig-2 will be stripped bare in order to speculate towards new terrains of knowledge production and expansion of the multiplicity of art encounters.

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