Seminar 37 // 10, 11, 12 January 2013 // London
Wednesday 09.01
Location: Small Hall (cinema) RHB - Richar Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths
6-8 pm: Kader Attia presentation
Thursday 10.01
Location: Prokovief Room, Library, Goldsmiths
11.00 am – 5.00 pm: Seminar with Kader Attia and philosopher Jacinto Lageira
Friday 11.01
Location: Prokovief Room, Library, Goldsmiths
11.00 am – 5.00 pm: Presentation by C/K participant Sarah Pierce
Being in a Medium of Human Beings: Contemporary Art Practice and the Curatorial
"My presentation will take three turns: 1) I will look at the larger project of a PhD by mapping out my PhD in particular and proposing an approach to the curatorial as a field of study. 2) Next, I want to hone in on two moments in the larger project: Rebellion and 'being-student' and The Community of the Exhibition. 3) Finally, would like to tack these to the larger project by looking at practice and the methodology of a practice-based PhD. Summary: My PhD coheres around the concept of rebellion at the site of knowledge. The term 'rebellion' here extends beyond the usual uprisings and oppositions, and can be seen as moments of doubt when official knowledge is called into question. This notion of rebellion is therefore distinct from forms of political action and prescription of political programs — my question is what would it mean for practice to thematise a politics or space of political/politicized knowledge production outside, separate from, or prior to political engagement? Is this a question of engagement or of measure? Parallel to this theoretical journey, I am employing methods in my own art practice, which provide other ways into the problems I am presenting here. Since 2006, I have produced a large body of real material work under the umbrella term The Metropolitan Complex, which serves as my archive. This emphasis on ‘material work’ is not intended as a separation of practice and theory—it is an insistence that they offer different methodologies that work in different ways and on different registers in the PhD as a whole. I am also writing against the backdrop of group research that began in 2006 through the Curatorial/Knowledge programme at Goldsmiths College in the Department of Visual Cultures. This research is set up with particular attention to the relationships between ‘the curatorial’, ‘curating,’ and the ‘event’. Much of this work has been conversational, prepared through ongoing, focused group seminars and reading groups. Two points have resonated with me as we enter the curatorial as a field of study, which evolved through discussions led by Jean Paul Martinon in his analysis of Jacques Derrida’s “Send Offs” (1982). First, is the parallel between research and the curatorial which allows us to think about the curatorial as a point of departure and a point of pause, and second is the paradox that this duality presents us with, as we set out on a path that carries with it the insecurities of not knowing our destination."
Saturday 12.01
Location: The Showroom 63 Penfold Street London NW8 8PQ (http://www.theshowroom.org/contact.html)
12.00 am - 4.00 pm: Reading Group
Readings:
Thursday (Kader Attia and Jacinto Lageira)
Jacinto Lageira, 'Repairing, Resisting'
Friday (Sarah Pierce)
Albert Camus, The Rebel, 1951 (pp. 2-16)
Giorgio Agamben, Notes on Gesture
Maurice Blanchot, Negative Community