On the Question of Exhibition

The university´s platform for artistic research PARSE has opened a new call for contributions of research on the theme: On the Question of Exhibition.

All contributions will pass through an open peer review process.

Deadline for submission of abstracts/proposals is 30 November 2020.

(Deadline for full draft is 31 January 2021.)

 

On the Question of Exhibition

The PARSE Summer 2021 issue On the Question of Exhibition will take as its broad agenda an exploration of the nature, role and tendency of exhibition.

 

‘Exhibition’ often appears as a self-explanatory category. It is a key term for naming acts of showing. The term ‘exhibition’ seems to manifest in itself the very same operation of clear and distinct presentation that it designates. This way of thinking takes the exhibition as an already comprehended genre, as a process of cognitive and aesthetic given-ness. This habit of thought that takes exhibition as a transparent construct often appears both in the discourse of the everyday and in specialist jargon of academia and the art field. In this way of thinking, the question – “What is an exhibition?”- offers no real problem. ‘Exhibition’ is simply where things are shown and where people go/come to see those things that are on display.

 

However, matters become complicated in considering the breadth and diversity of modes and sites of exhibiting: the boutique art gallery; the global spectacle of the Venice architecture and art Biennales; the quirky diorama displays of a provincial natural history museum; the high-octane mise en scène and architecture of contemporary retail spectacles; and the scholarly display of competence.

 

Matters are further complicated when attending to the ways in which principles of display, exposition, demonstration, exemplification, taxonomy, circulation, mediation, commentary, spectatorship and valorization operate within these dispersed fields of exhibition. When attending to the themes of the exhibiting institution and to exhibition variously construed as genre, poetic and apparatus, the question of exhibition appears not as one of clear presentation but rather as one of some obscurity.

 

The somewhat antiquated Cartesian figure of clear and distinct presentations in contrast with moments of obscurity may help to underline the epistemological stakes of exhibition across the arts and sciences. With respect to the cognitive and aesthetic divisions of colonial-modernity there is a shifting valency in the operation of exhibition. This in turn begs the question(s) of exhibition with respect to political imaginaries and worldings for which colonial-modernity is not the universal reference frame: worldings that show themselves beyond the ken of Eurocentric critiques of Eurocentrism.

 

We are interested in works that seek to apprehend or interrogate different aspects of the exhibition as a broad genre of practice. Among the headings proposed for this issue on the question of exhibition are:

 

(i) the competing ontological and epistemological conceptions of exhibition as manifest in contemporary exhibition practice, exhibition studies and exhibition histories;

(ii) the exhibition as research action, research object and research site across the arts and sciences;

(iii) the translations and relays of exhibition within online and algorithmic domains, both before, during and (eventually) after the Covid19 pandemic;

(iv) the interchanges between exhibition and what has been variously termed socially engaged, socially embedded and expanded practices (i.e., practices that are often, if not typically, constituted and valorized in terms other than that of the exhibition);

(v) the question of the political imaginary at work within different constructions and operations of exhibition.

 

The deadline for submission of proposals with respect to art works and/or abstracts with respect to full papers and essays (in any medium) is 30 November 2020. Please send your submission (500 word abstract/proposal) together with a short bio (150 words) to rose.brander@gu.se. The deadline for full draft content is 31 January 2021.

 

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As with previous issues of PARSE, this iteration will employ a range of audio-visual and textual formats, and will combine a range of communication genres including dialogues, case-studies, specific research project reports and broader critical-theoretical analyses and reflections.

Editors for the PARSE issue On the Question of Exhibition

Mick Wilson, Professor of Art, Hdk-Valand /Academy of Art and Design, University of Gothenburg.

Jyoti Mistry, Professor of Film, Hdk-Valand /Academy of Art and Design, University of Gothenburg

Kjell Caminha, Lecturer in Fine Art, Hdk-Valand /Academy of Art and Design, University of Gothenburg.

Nick Aikens, Doctoral researcher, Hdk-Valand /Academy of Art and Design, University of Gothenburg; Curator at the Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven.