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Elina, Suoyrjö (2019) See me, feel me, touch me, heal me: Working with affect, emotion, and
creation of transformative energies as a feminist curatorial practice. PhD thesis, Middlesex
University.

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 See me, feel me, touch me, heal me:
Working with affect, emotion, and creation of
transformative energies as a feminist curatorial practice

Elina Suoyrjö

A thesis submitted to Middlesex University in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Middlesex University
School of Art and Design
September 2018
Abstract

See me, feel me, touch me, heal me: Working with affect, emotion, and creation of
transformative energies as a feminist curatorial practice

Elina Suoyrjö

This research presents the gap contemporary curatorial discourses have in terms of
feminist theory and work, as well as the gap principal contemporary discourses on
feminisms and curating have in terms of discursive curatorial practices and
independent curatorship. I argue, that the current discussions on feminisms and
curating are narrowed down by governing art historical approaches, in which focus
remains on representation instead of curatorial practice. Focusing primarily on
exhibitions presenting art by feminist and/or women artists, the critique remains in
the ways exhibitions are framed in terms of art historical narratives within museum
institutions.

The paradigm of feminist curating needs to be shifted to the realm of the curatorial,
in order to extend the discussion to discursive feminist curatorial practices and the
actual potential of feminist curatorial work with art. Within the curatorial, curating is
seen beyond exhibition-making as a discursive practice with art, artists, spaces and
audiences.

Drawing from curatorial theory, affect theory, and feminist new materialist theory, I
present a model for a feminist curatorial practice based on a process of thinking
with art, and aiming at creating transformative energies through affective encounters
with artworks. The practice relies on the political potential of affect, and engages the
notion of affective transformation as an essential part of feminist work with
contemporary art. Curating is discussed in relation to independent curatorhip, with
reflection on my own practice.
I analyse current discourses in the fields of contemporary curating, and curating and
feminist thought, and present current views on feminist affect and new materialist
theory. I discuss the topics through reflection on selected artistic and curatorial
practices, exhibition projects, and two group exhibitions I have curated during the
research process.
Acknowledgements

It has been a long journey, and I have many people and instances to thank. First, I
want to thank Middlesex University and the School of Art and Design for having
had faith in my research proposal. This research wouldn’t have been possible
without the awarded research studentship. The university also supported my visit to
NOISE Summer School in 2014, as well as to several conferences during my
studies. For this, I am very grateful.

I want to thank my supervisors Hilary Robinson and Katy Deepwell for their useful
comments and notes, as well as overall guidance, support, encouragement, and
patience.

I also want to thank my co-students at Mdx for the peer support at different stages
of the process. The CREATE/Feminisms research cluster at Mdx was a great
context to have at the start of my studies, and a facilitator to two events I had the
chance to co-organize: the workshop Why do you care? with Suzanne van Rossenberg
as part of CREATE/Feminisms symposium in 2014, and the symposium Feminisms
and Curatorial Collaborations with Basia Sliwinska at the Institute of Contemporary
Arts in London in 2016.

A huge thank you to the artists I got the chance to work with in the exhibitions Only
the Lonely and Good Vibrations: Jonathan Baldock, Cécile B. Evans, Emma Hart, Essi
Kausalainen, Nanna Nordström, Maxime Thieffine, Julie Béna, Mikko Kuorinki,
Beatrice Lozza, Shana Moulton, mirko nikolić, Nastja Säde Rönkkö – and all other
artists I have had the pleasure to acquaintance, discuss and work with during this
long process. Essi and mirko have been my most important teachers and discussion
companions on the path to learning about our being in the more-than-human-
world, and our coexistence with various earth beings, and I’m ever grateful for this.

A huge hug to human friends (Maija, Niina, Viivi, Beatrice, Linda, Rosie, mirko,
Toni, Essi, Cinthya, Jari), and nonhuman friends (Uule & Harriet, Väinö, Nemi,
Freija, Fanny & Aleksander, Pepi, Lulu) for the presence and support, for the laughs
and shoulders to cry on, as well as for some, the occasional purrs and furry hugs. A
shout-out to lovers who have waited for me outside different libraries in different
cities at different times during the past five years. And a big thank you to the lovely
people at Titanik and Arte Artists’ Association in Turku, who have given me the
time and the space I have needed in order to wrap this thesis up.

All my love to my dear family, especially Heikki, Eija and Maija, who have given me
much support and love during the good times and the hard times throughout the
whole research process.
List of figures

Fig. 1 Installation view, Mika Rottenberg, Sneeze to Squeeze, 2013 at Magasin

III Museum & Foundation for Contemporary Art. Photo: Christian
Saltas, 2013.
Fig. 2 Installation view, Camille Henrot, The Pale Fox, 2014, Chisenhale
Gallery. Courtesy kamel mennour, Paris and Johann König, Berlin.
Photo: Andy Keate.
Fig. 3 Essi Kausalainen, Soil, performance at Frankfurt Kunstverein, 2014.
Photo: Pietro Pellini.
Fig. 4 Still images from Chloé Dugit-Gros, Narcotica, 2012-2014. 11 min,
silent.
Fig. 5 A still image from Rosie Farrell, UN-Heaven’s Gate, 2012.
Fig. 6 Every house has a door: Scarecrow, 2017, at Alfred ve Dvore Theatre,
Prague. Working group: Matthew Goulish, Lin Hixson and Essi
Kausalainen.
Fig. 7 Every house has a door: Scarecrow, 2018, at Mad House in Helsinki.
Working group: Matthew Goulish, Lin Hixson and Essi Kausalainen.
Image: Saara Autere.
Fig. 8 Shana Moulton, still from Whispering Pines 4, 2007. Cynthia is worried.
Fig. 9 Shana Moulton, still from MindPlace ThoughtStream, 2014. Cynthia is
released from an irritable bowel syndrome with the help of a personal
relaxation training system device called ThoughtStream USB™.
Fig. 10 An email from AGNES, 21 April 2015.
Fig. 11 Installation view from Only the Lonely. Clockwise from left with Cécile
B. Evans, AGNES (the end is near), 2014- ; Maxime Thieffine, Comédien
(I), 2015; Jonathan Baldock, Impassive Bean Bag, 2014. Photo: Cédrick
Eymenier, 2015.
Fig. 12 Emma Hart, TO DO, 2011. Photo: Cédrick Eymenier, 2015.
Fig. 13 Floorplan of Only the Lonely.
Fig. 14 Heather Phillipson, THE ORIGINAL EROGENOUS ZONE, Art
Brussels (with Rowing), 2014.
Fig. 15 Sketch for the floorplan of Good Vibrations with the placing of the
works and their energy fields.
Fig. 16 Installation view from Good Vibrations with works by Shana Moulton,
mirko nikolić, Beatrice Lozza and Julie Béna. Image: Tuomas Linna.
Fig. 17 Still from Shana Moulton, Sand Saga, 2008, digital video.
Fig. 18 mirko nikolić, im/ponderabilia, 2017. Image: Tuomas Linna.
Fig. 19 Installation view from Good Vibrations with works by Beatrice Lozza,
Nasta Säde Rönkkö and Julie Béna. Image: Tuomas Linna.
Fig. 20 Shana Moulton, The Galactic Pot-Healer (2010) and Julie Béna, a mouth
nor a smile (2017). Image: Tuomas Linna.
Fig. 21 Happy Magic Society, Happy Magic Fragrance (Good Vibrations), 2017,
aromatic oil in diffuser.
Contents

Abstract
Acknowledgments
List of figures

1 INTRODUCTION 4

The journey 4

Main concepts 15
Contemporary curating 15
Feminisms 16
Affect and emotion 23
Transformative energies 28

Aims, questions and methods 29

Chapter outline 33

2 THE CURATORIAL 36

Changes in the role of the curator 38

Emergence of the independent curator 38
Curators as auteurs and as stars 39

Exhibitionary practices 44
Why exhibit? 44
Exhibition histories 48

The educational turn 57

Producing curators 57
Curating as an educational practice 60

Contemporary curating 63
From curatorship to curatorial practices 63

1
 How to work with art 67

Curating / the curatorial 71

Performing the curatorial 71
Curatorial knowledge production 74

3 CURATING AND FEMINIST THOUGHT 80

Politics of curating and political curating 82

Gender equality in art institutions 87

Art and gender equality in Sweden 91

Exhibitions about feminist art and/or art made by women 96

Feminism + curating 103

Feminist exhibitions – an art historical approach 103
Embodying a feminist curatorial practice 114

4 ENCOUNTERS AND AFFECTS 124

It all starts with getting in touch with someone or something 124

The affective turn 131

The biopsychological branch 135
The Deleuzian branch 139
But is it a turn? – a feminist reading of the turn to affect 145
Transformation 151
The messiness and stickiness of affect 157

5 WHEN MATTER AND FEELINGS MERGE 162

Affectivity of art 166

Art and affect 170

Working curatorially with affect 176

2
 Only the Lonely 182

6 ENERGIES IN MOTION 193

Vibrant matter that matters 194

Good Vibrations 197

Feminist curating beyond representation 208

Feminist curatorial practice as a site for affective transformation 216

7 THE CURATORIAL HEART THE FEMINIST – CONCLUDING

THOUGHTS 223

BIBLIOGRAPHY 230

Appendix 1: Only the Lonely

Appendix 2: Good Vibrations

3
1 Introduction

The journey

This research started forming already in 2011 while I worked on my MA degree in

curating art at Stockholm University. For my thesis, I conducted interviews with
Swedish artists Sara-Vide Ericson, Åsa Ersmark, Carola Grahn, Oscar Guermouche,
Karin Hermansson and the collective Malmö Free University for Women (Johanna
Gustavsson and Lisa Nyberg), who were all working in different ways with
feminisms or more generally, gender. The thesis focused above all on the artists’
views on the political aspects of their practices and how they saw the significance of
feminist work in the field of art in Sweden. Having embarked on the research
primarily through my interest in these artistic practices, during the process I started
to pose the questions also towards myself; surely in the role of the curator I, also,
should bear my responsibility in terms of a possible feminist practice? In the process
of forming a feminist curatorial identity, it became clear to me, that the practice of
the curator (concepts, thinking and acting) weighs as much as the practice of the
artist. Thus, I became more and more interested in how I, as a curator, could
actually work with feminism. Some of these reflections became part of the MA
thesis. Looking at realised art projects and literature on the topic, I was able to
extract three different ways of relating to gender and feminisms in curatorial
practices: 1) looking at representation in collections and/or exhibition programs, 2)
working with gender and/or feminisms thematically, and 3) working with a feminist
curatorial strategy, where the feminist politics is built-in, and manifests in the
curatorial practice as a whole, and not only in the thematic choices in curated
projects. It is this latter approach which remains at the core of this PhD thesis.

At the beginning of my PhD studies I aspired to detect and name a range of

possible feminist strategies (to be) used in curatorial practices through case studies,
and the thesis would be structured around an analysis of these strategies. I wanted
to map out alternative, possibly even implicit ways of working with feminisms

4
structurally.1 I was interested in the questions: how can a feminist approach be
embedded in a curatorial practice and its methods, and how have curators worked
with deconstructing gendered hierarchies and power relations as part of their
practices. Instead of looking at themes in exhibitions or artworks, I was from the
very start thinking about the process and practice of curating: the ways of working with
artists, artworks, audiences, spaces and institutions, and how feminist thought could
manifest in this work.2

By the end of my first year, I understood a mapping of all possible feminist

curatorial strategies was too broad as a topic, and at the same time, I realised this
was not the focus that I actually wanted to have, considering my double role as both
a researcher and a practitioner. I also understood I wasn’t able (nor willing) to
position myself in the research as an art historian, looking at the topic of feminist
thought and curating from an art historical distance. I was too involved with art,
collaborating with artists, and thinking and feeling through art, to receive enough
meaning or, in fact, joy from inspecting the topic from afar. I didn’t want to conduct
the research as a set of case studies, employing an art historical position of analysing
and reflecting upon what had been done. It became clear, then, that my focus would
be on feminist strategies in curating rather than inspecting feminist exhibitions, and also,
that I would conduct the thesis from a curatorial point of view. What this means to
me, is that I do not only analyse and reflect upon exhibitions and curatorial practices

1
As feminist curator Renée Baert notes: “I want to highlight how ways of working, not
explicitly stated in feminist terms, can be outcomes of such engagements and the
discourses arising from them, yet not programmatically so. In this instance, one might
consider the attention to affect, embodiment and relational aesthetics, the subtle
subversion of hierarchies and conventions, the collaborative process, the gendering of
material history, the exploration of minor histories and recast of dominant ones …
Feminism has for many years been intertwined with other critical sites in culture, and
“folded in” with these. Feminist historiographies must find a way to incorporate such
work” (2010, 177). This research didn’t in the end become a feminist historiography, which
would have unfolded curatorial practices and projects from a feminist perspective, but I
have been guided by Baert’s thought that there is much to be found in close-readings of
projects now categorised mostly under the topics of ‘the critical’ and ‘the political’.
2
Throughout this thesis I am writing about curating as work, referring to curating both as a
profession, and as labour.

5
related to feminisms, but I am actively thinking about alternatives and possibilities
for feminist curatorial practices in-becoming.

While reading into literature that has so far been written on the topic of feminisms
and curating, I came across Jennifer Fisher’s essay “Exhibitionary Affect” (2006).
The essay was hugely inspiring to me, since Fisher doesn’t only address feminist
curating from the point of view of independent curatorship, but does this
simultaneously from the point of view of affect, recognising the political aspect of
the concept and presenting it as a useful tool for a feminist curator. Reading the
essay, I realised it had been the aspect of affect all along, that had led me to work
with art in the first place. In the very foundations, the idea beneath my curatorial
practice is to share significant encounters and experiences I have myself had with
art: to enable encounters between artworks and viewers, and aim to enable slight
shifts to take place within viewers as part of these encounters.

At the end of my first year of studies, I also took part in NOISE Summer School
organised by Utrecht University in the Netherlands. The title of the week-long
summer school was “Political Aesthetics and Feminist Theory: Media, Art and
Affect”. Attending the summer school was of much help in introducing me to the
concept of affect and the field of affect studies. As part of the course readings, we
read Carnal knowledge: towards a ‘new materialism’ through the arts (2013) edited by Estelle
Barrett and Barbara Bolt. Perhaps partly as a consequence of this context of my
introduction to affect, and partly reinforced by my later research, I link feminist new
materialist theory with affect studies, as the fields overlap and share a common
ground in acknowledging agency of nonhuman entities, and see much potential in
inquiries into the material and embodied aspects of our being, along with the co-
existence we share with various materialities and nonhuman beings. The aspects of
affect and feminist new materialist theory entered the sphere of my research at the
same time.3

3
Richard Grusin uses the nonhuman turn as an umbrella term and counts the following
intellectual and theoretical developments as part of it: Bruno Latour’s actor-network
theory; affect theory; animal studies, developed partly though Donna Haraway’s work; the
assemblage theory developed by Deleuze and Guattari, Latour, and others; new brain

6
In the process of the thesis topic narrowing down and beginning to unfold as a
proposal for one possible feminist curatorial practice through affect and emotion, I
became curious above all about politics of good feeling, happiness and love. This
happened while reading into Sara Ahmed’s writing, particularly the essay “Happy
Objects” (2010), as well as The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2014). Talking about this
turn in the research process with peers, it soon seemed I was walking on thin ice. I
was warned (even still at my transfer panel from MPhil to PhD) about being careful
with my reasoning when discussing emotion and feeling, and particularly discussing
topics of happiness and love in a feminist context, where these concepts have a high
risk of associating as feminine and thus, unserious, matters (Ahmed 2014, 3). My
impression was, however, that feeling and emotion remain as issues left aside within
contemporary feminist scholarly writing on art and curating, and require further
discussion (noted also by Best 2011; Doyle 2013). I had planned to write a full
chapter on politics of love, happiness and good feeling, but in the end, I had to cut
the chapter out because of time and space related matters. Even if this partial focus
on good feeling, happiness and love was left out, the focus in the thesis remains to a
great extent in topics related to feeling and emotion. During the research process, I
have also curated two group exhibitions, Only the Lonely (2015) and Good Vibrations
(2017), which both participated in their ways in discussions around the significance
of good feeling.

I realised Only the Lonely during spring 2015 at La Galerie centre for contemporary
art in Noisy-le-sec/Paris. The exhibition (discussed in chapter five) focused on the
possibilities of encountering a work of art as a character with their own personality,
investigating the possibility and potential invested in affective encounters between
humans and nonhumans. The exhibition concept was based on warm-hearted
feelings of compassion and empathy as part of the encounters with the artworks.
The curatorial process with the exhibition allowed me to think further affective

sciences such as neuroscience and artificial intelligence; new materialism in feminism,

philosophy, and Marxism; new media theory; speculative realism, including object-oriented
philosophy; and systems theory (Grusin 2015, viii-ix).

7
relationalities in practice, and the artworks that participated in the show opened up
new paths for this.

Good Vibrations was realised at the artist-run non-profit art space SIC in Helsinki in
May 2017. The exhibition (discussed in chapter six) focused on summoning
energies, and explored the ability of works of art to carry and transmit good feeling.
The process with the exhibition allowed me to think further the affective materiality
of works of art, and think about how to work with this within a specific space. The
process with these exhibition projects, together with the reading and thinking, have
guided me through this research, which discusses relations between art, curating,
feminist thought, and affect.

To summarize my position in the framework of this research, I am positioning

myself as a north European woman educated in Finland, Sweden and the UK. I
have been writing this thesis in London, Paris, St Just, Helsinki, Stockholm, and I
completed writing it in Turku, Finland. My educational background is in history of
art, women’s studies, gender studies, and curating. My understanding of knowledge
is formed within the humanities, disciplines relying on interpretation, and
understanding theory to be a tool for investigating various economico-socio-cultural
phenomena, which in my case have been located in the fields of art and visual
culture in general. In this research, and in my curatorial practice, art is a companion
to be with, and to think about the world through. Much like Angela Dimitrakaki
(2013) describes, as a feminist independent curator, I don’t make a difference
between life and work; art, work and life come together in the everyday. As much, I
could also put my relationship with art in Lucy Lippard’s words: “The ideas that I
got from artists have formed the ways I look at the world” (Obrist 2008, 233).

In addition to this more personal curatorial and research-based development, this

thesis has grown out of and developed parallel to discussions and events in the field
of art mainly in Europe and North America since 2010. There’s a large number of
artists, artworks, curators, exhibitions and projects I could mention that have
somehow influenced my thinking during this time. dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel in

8
2012, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, was and remains a huge source of
inspiration for me. This was the first time I encountered new materialist thinking as
part of a curatorial concept. Also, Christov-Bakargiev’s wider curatorial approach
with dOCUMENTA (13), the ‘no concept’ concept, based on a vast research
process, discussions, readings, and an associate process of thinking with and
through art, has had an impact on my curatorial thinking (Christov-Bakargiev 2014).

Mika Rottenberg’s solo exhibition Sneeze to Squeeze [fig. 1] at Magasin III kunsthalle
in Stockholm in 2013 was also significant for me. I still see it as one of the most
feminist exhibitions I have been to, even if feminism wasn’t in any explicit way
discussed in the curatorial texts of the show. The exhibition was curated by Tessa
Braun, and it took over the whole kunsthalle space. Particularly the first floor of the
exhibition could be viewed as one installation consisting of separate works, which
all discussed systems of women’s labour, and were spiced with absurd humour. The
protagonists and active agents in Rottenberg’s works are most often women. In the
videos one could observe the production of bizarre products as part of complicated
production lines manoeuvred by the female workers. The women produce things

fig.1 Installation view, Mika Rottenberg, Sneeze to Squeeze, 2013 at Magasin III Museum &
Foundation for Contemporary Art. Photo: Christian Saltas, 2013.

9
fig. 2. Installation view, Camille Henrot, The Pale Fox, 2014, Chisenhale Gallery. Courtesy kamel
mennour, Paris and Johann König, Berlin. Photo: Andy Keate.

such as dough, scented tissues, and a huge mysterious cube containing materials
such as cabbage, ceramics, plastics, and make-up. In Rottenberg’s films it is women
who run the system and keep the machinery working. The corporeality of the
women and their physical labour is in a central role.4 The artist manages to represent
each woman in a way it is impossible to view them as sexualized objects. Performing
their tasks, the women express ownership of their bodies, and also the gaze. At the
same time, they are presented as parts of a machinery bigger than themselves.

The spatial arrangements of the exhibition guided the viewer and controlled how
the works, and also the images, could be viewed. Thus, feminist politics didn’t
manifest only in the video pieces, but also in the spatial arrangements of the gallery
space. It seemed as if the corporeality of the women was translated into the space of
the exhibition itself, and here, transferred to the visitor. Defying the alleged
neutrality of a white cube space, the artist altered the exhibition space by lowering
ceilings, creating corridors, and using fake walls to create closed non-spaces within
the space. Some videos you could only see through a peep hole in the wall. There

4
One aspect that could be discussed and unravelled further regarding Rottenberg’s female
characters, however, is representation of ethnicity: how it plays out in the videos, and what
kind of meanings the representations gain.

10
was also a number of different tactile materials used in the space: some parts of the
ceiling looked damp, some parts of the floor had a carpet, some videos were shown
in container-like spaces, and so on.

I had a similar experience at Camille Henrot’s solo exhibition The Pale Fox at
Chisenhale Gallery in London in 2014 [fig. 2]. I see the feminism in Henrot’s work
in her approach to materials, materiality, and the claiming of agency to a female
narrator.5 Also, thinking about the spatial and embodied experience of being the
exhibition (which could, not so much unlike Rottenberg’s show described above, be
viewed as a whole installation built in a soft blue room), it felt like stepping into her
earlier video piece “Grosse Fatigue” (2013), shown at the 55th Venice Biennale as
part of The Encyclopaedic Palace exhibition curated by Massimiliano Gioni. Also
Phyllida Barlow’s solo exhibition Demo at Kunsthalle Zurich in 2016 was extremely
inspiring to me, particularly in terms of thinking about creation of energies within a
space. To me, the exhibition as a whole was a huge bloc of sensations (Deleuze &
Guattari 1994, 164) and vibrant energy materialised. Against my expectations, I was
also highly inspired by the re-enactment of Harald Szeemann’s momentous When
attitudes become form at Fondazione Prada in Venice in 2013 (the original having taken
place at Kunsthalle Bern in 1969). What spoke to me above all, was the interplay of
the works of art within the space and the tangible dynamics they created.

During the research process, also exhibitions which I haven’t had the chance to
experience in person, have influenced my thinking. I have encountered these
projects through documentation and exhibition catalogues. Of these, I can mention
If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution: Edition IV – Affect (2010-2012) at
different locations, curated by Tanja Baudoin, Frédérique Bergholtz and Vivian
Ziherl (discussed in chapter five); This will have been: Love, art and politics in the 1980s
(2012) at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago curated by Helen Molesworth; and

5
Again, a vaster inquiry into questions of gender, sexuality and ethnicity is in order with
several of Henrot’s works, often based on anthropological methods. For example, in Grosse
Fatigue (2013) the artist uses a range of creation myths from different indigenous cultures as
her material, in order to create her own narrative in a manner that might be interpreted as a
colonialist act.

11
Inside the visible: An elliptical traverse of twentieth century art, in, of and from the feminine
(1996-1997) a touring exhibition curated by Catherine de Zegher (discussed in
chapter six).

The second decade of the millennium has already witnessed a variety of trends and
thematics within contemporary art worlds, manifesting as works of art, artistic and
curatorial projects, discussions, exhibitions, exhibition programmes, publications,
essays. In addition to the projects mentioned above, the overarching currents in the
contemporary global art scene have undoubtedly affected my views presented in this
thesis. As an extremely brief summary, for the purpose of locating this research at a
certain time and place, I’d argue that there have been two main lines of thought
present within contemporary visual arts during the second decade of 2000s: one
leaning toward philosophies of speculative realism and object oriented ontology,
acceleration and accelerationism, critique of neo-liberal politics and global
capitalism, and the sarcasm and irony of post-internet art; and one which could be
defined as a nonhuman one, leaning toward artistic, philosophical and academic
explorations of relations between ecological, socio-cultural and politico-economic
structures through new materialist and affective theories, manifesting as artistic
practices and projects with focus on interspecies co-existence and attunement with
various materialities beyond ourselves. I think these two lines of thought also
intersect at various points, essentially as part of the critique of neo-liberal politics
and global capitalist structures.

To begin with the first strand, the opening lines of You Are Here: Art After the Internet
(2014) edited by Omar Kholeif, serves as a pointed introduction:
It is 2014 and I’m anxious. My computer, my phone, and my email calendars are all alerting
me to different tasks that I must fulfil. I open my Google calendar (personal life), my
Outlook calendar (work), my iPhone calendar (ad hoc activity), and start to panic at the
sheer amount of commitments that have been scheduled, synched up, and fixed across
multiple platforms that bind and enforce my daily life. Generic alarm tones sound from
various devices, composing a scene that is as fretful as it is comic (Kholeif 2014, 11).

Focusing partly on the acceleration depicted in Kholeif’s quote above and the so-
called post-internet art movement, the 9th Berlin Biennale (2016), curated by the

12
collective DIS (Lauren Boyle, Solomon Chase, Marco Roso and David Toro),
manifested several of the topics listed above with a sarcastic approach to
contemporary phenomena. Kholeif also curated the exhibition Electronic Superhighway
(2016-1966) at Whitechapel Gallery in London in the spring of 2016. The exhibition
contextualised post-internet art with art based on computer and internet
technologies from the 1960s and onward, and it was constructed as a scroll
movement starting in the present and moving on backwards: a rhythm of
acceleration starting as a hectic present in terms of arrangements in the gallery
rooms, and calming down while moving backwards.

As for the second, softer strand, it can be said this research relates to several of the
notions listed above: further discussion on these contexts unfolds through the
chapters of this thesis. dOCUMENTA (13) (2012) can be named as one of the most
central art events discussing these topics. Two projects conducted at the Haus der
Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Animism (2012)6 curated by Anselm Franke and
Anthropocene Observatory (2013-2014)7 arranged by Armin Linke, Territorial Agency
and Anselm Franke, can also be named as influential. While Animism discussed the
topics through the formation and deconstruction of the modern world-view,
Anthropocene Observatory discussed the geopolitical effects taking us to the current
state of things. In September 2016 Donna Haraway’s influential essay “Tentacular
Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene” was published in the e-flux
journal.8 The annual large-scale art events in the ‘marathon’ series at Serpentine
Galleries, Transformation marathon (2015)9 and Miracle marathon (2016)10, were both
built around topics related to ecologies, relations, and object and material related
philosophies and politics. The publication Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among

6
https://www.hkw.de/en/programm/projekte/2012/animismus/start_animismus.php
(Accessed 19/09/2018).
7
https://www.hkw.de/en/programm/projekte/2014/anthropozaenobservatorium2013201
4/start_anthropozaen_observatorium_2013_2014.php (Accessed 19/09/2018).
8
https://www.e-flux.com/journal/75/67125/tentacular-thinking-anthropocene-
capitalocene-chthulucene/ (Accessed 19/09/2018).
9
http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/transformation-marathon
(Accessed 19/09/2018).
10
http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/miracle-marathon (Accessed
19/09/2018).

13
Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies, edited by Heather Davis and
Etienne Turpin, was published in 2015 as part of the on-going discussions in the art
field. Also in 2016, Nicolas Bourriaud titled the 9th Taipei Biennial as “The Great
Acceleration: Art in the Anthropocene”.11 The biennial was an attempt to respond
to the theoretical and philosophical sources on the concept of the Anthropocene,
our current geological era, in a contemporary art context.12 In the curatorial text,
Bourriaud (2014) refers to speculative realism and object-oriented ontology (ooo) as
his main sources – but not, I need to note, the more feminist branches of
posthuman theory by for example Rosi Braidotti or Donna Haraway, nor new
materialist theory, practiced more by feminist academics than the more “male
realm” of speculative realism and ooo.13 In addition to discussions on the
Anthropocene, human and nonhuman ecologies, and lives of objects and materials
present in the contemporary gallery and biennial scene, new materialist breezes were
also blowing in museum institutions, as for example Tate Modern did a re-hanging
of part of their collection exhibition under the title Material Worlds in 2016. The
museum hosted also a three-day event bringing together actors from artistic and
academic fields to discuss topics related to new materialist theories in art and
research, and organised a public talk, New Materialisms: Reconfiguring the Object, as part
of the event in May 2016.14

11
https://www.tfam.museum/Exhibition/Exhibition_page.aspx?ddlLang=en-
us&id=511&allObj=%7B%22JJMethod%22%3A%22GetEx%22%2C%22Type%22%3A
%220%22%2C%22Year%22%3A%22%22%2C%22pg_num%22%3A4%2C%22pg_size%
22%3A21%7D (Accessed 19/09/2018).
12
The Anthropocene is one of the key concepts attached to various positions in relation to
the nonhuman turn as part of a wide array of current critical, theoretical and philosophical
approaches to the humanities, social studies, as well as visual art practices (Grusin 2017, vii-
xix).
13
Interestingly enough, the Taipei Biennial 2018, opening in November 2018 and curated
by Mali Wu and Francesco Manacorda, continues from the same topic and is titled Post-
Nature: A Museum as Ecosystem.
https://www.tfam.museum/News/News_page.aspx?id=1123&ddlLang=en-us (Accessed
12/09/18).
14
New Materialism Training School, Research Genealogies and Material Practices took place at Tate
Modern, London 27-29 May 2016. https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/projects/new-
materialism-training-school-research-genealogies-and-material-practices (Accessed
15/09/2018).

14
Main concepts

Contemporary curating

The history of curating is still rather recent and brief, as the field only began the
process of being theorized, contextualized and professionalized in the late 1980s
through the launch of the first curatorial post-graduate programmes. Paul O’Neill’s
The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Cultures(s) (2012) can be seen as the first
overarching analysis of the development of contemporary curatorial discourses from
the late 1960s. In the publication, based on his PhD research, O’Neill extracts three
main lines of development: the emergence of the independent curator while
curatorial practice detached from its origins in the tasks of the caretaker of
collections in museum institutions in the late 1960s; proliferation of biennial culture
in the late 1980s along with the globalisation of the art world and globalised
curatorial discourse; and finally, the development of contemporary curatorial
practices since the 1990s, where curatorial practices become relatable to artistic
practices and a more critical discourse is created around the profession. I discuss
curating and the curatorial in detail in chapter two. What I see as significant for this
thesis in terms of the short history of curating, is that the discourse is written from
the point of view of practicing independent curators (separated from a museum
studies context), that the field of curating has been in an accelerated process of
being professionalised and theorised since the late 1980s, and that my research joins
the more recent critical writings on curating, focusing primarily on how to work with
art.

In 2009, curator Maria Lind inaugurated Artforum’s column series on curating with
her essay “The Curatorial”. In the column, she contextualised curatorial practice
beyond curating – the act of making an exhibition happen. The curatorial was used
as a concept to expand the field of curating beyond exhibition-making to concern
an overarching theoretical, philosophical and cross-disciplinary approach to work
with art. The concept of the curatorial became a starting point for several
publications and conferences on curatorial practices by 2012 (Lind 2012; von

15
Bismarck, Schafaff & Weski 2012; Martinon 2013; von Bismarck & Meyer-Krahmer
2016). The aim has on the other hand been on opening current discourses of
curating to criticality and theorization, and on the other, on offering a broad enough
definition to the concept of the curatorial itself. For example, in the anthology The
Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating (2013) edited by Jean-Paul Martinon, the writers
take on the delicate endeavour of defining and unfolding the curatorial. In a nearly
enigmatic way, the essays in the anthology describe the curatorial as a notion falling
in­between categories and disciplines, being within a constant process of becoming
and producing knowledges, all aspects characterized by a need for criticality and
rethinking. Thus, through the literature, the curatorial appears as a sphere – not
exactly a methodology, not exactly a discipline, and absolutely not a practice in the
traditional sense – of criticality and knowledge production, in different ways related
to the field of curating art.

Feminisms

My reading of works of art as well as texts within this thesis is undoubtedly affected
by my own views on feminisms. Throughout this research, I am referring to
feminisms in the plural. This is to highlight the fact that feminism is not one unified
project, but entails various approaches to unravelling power structures concerning
gender, sexuality, class, race, ethnicity, nationality, generation, and ability.15 To
position myself in the research, then, I am briefly presenting my feminist
background. The foundations of my feminism were most probably laid through
lived experience before I encountered the field of feminist art history while studying
history of art at Helsinki University in early 2000s. First reacting with a strong
refusal – understanding the world as equal to women and men through my
individualistic world view – but soon converted when reading Generations and
Geographies in the Visual Arts: Feminist Readings (1996), edited by Griselda Pollock. The
essays in the volume made me see the existing gendered power relations embedded

15
I see the need for talking about feminisms in the plural thus mainly in the light of
intersectional feminist research (e.g. Lykke 2011).

16
in the whole art historical canon I was studying. We did not have separate courses
for feminist art history, but my professor in her turn embedded feminist readings as
a constant reference point during seminars. At the time, I became interested in
visual culture studies, and explored images in the crossings of art and fashion
photography in my MA theses for both history of art, and gender studies. I was
strongly influenced by feminist research on representation in the field of visual
culture studies, and specifically by the work by two Finnish art historians, Leena-
Maija Rossi and Harri Kalha. They were both referring to Judith Butler’s theory of
social construction and performativity of gender. Indeed, the most important book
for me from this time was Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of
Identity (1990). I was a believer in the power of images, and had strong faith in
revolutionizing gender balance and unravelling the concept of gender through
images defying the heteronormative matrix.

These days, I continue working with feminism in the field of art as a curator, and as
a director of a non-profit art space. During the past few years, my feminism has
been re-contextualising within feminist new materialist and affect theories.16 My
interest in new materialist thinking arose originally from the field of art. Through
focus on lives of objects, characteristics of materials, and our co-existence with the
more-than-human world, new materialist themes appeared in exhibitions such as
dOCUMENTA (13) in 2012; publications such as “Speculation” issue of Texte zur
kunst in March 2013, The Object: Documents of contemporary art (2014) edited by Antony
Hudek and Materiality: Documents of contemporary art (2015) edited by Petra Lange-
Berndt; and talks, such as “New Materialisms: Reconfiguring the object” at Tate
Modern in May 2016.

16
In this research, I am focusing on new materialism instead of historical materialism.
Following how Jane Bennett puts it, I am referring to materialism in the tradition of
Democritus-Epicurus-Spinoza-Diderot-Deleuze, more than Hegel-Marx-Adorno (2010,
xiii). A critique of capitalism and neoliberal politics does encompass both of these
traditions, yet in the former it appears not as a point of departure but more as a parallel
narrative which is acknowledged but not necessarily interrogated.

17
But above all, I have learned about new materialism from the artistic practices of
Essi Kausalainen and mirko nikolić, both of whom also approach the topic from a
feminist new materialist perspective.17 Essi Kausalainen has in her performative
practice been collaborating with various nonhuman entities, such as plants, minerals
and fungi, for a longer period of time [fig. 3]. In a discussion with curator Caroline
Picard, Kausalainen describes her practice of making work as part of what she
understands to be an assemblage of various human and nonhuman participants,
learning this ecosystemic idea from the plants that she has studied and observed
(Kausalainen & Picard 2016). In her practice, Kausalainen engages in a dialogue
with her surroundings together with human and nonhuman participants, searching
for ways of connecting, learning and understanding – being and sharing. I
collaborated with Kausalainen as part of both Only the Lonely and Good Vibrations.
The practice of mirko nikolić is also based on our relations with various earth beings
and our economico-ethico-political existence among other actors in the more-than-

fig. 3. Essi Kausalainen, Soil, performance at Frankfurt Kunstverein, 2014. Image: Pietro Pellini.

17
In the article “Speculative Before the Turn: Reintroducing Feminist Materialist
Performativity” (2015) Cecilia Åberg, Kathrin Thiele and Iris van der Tuin critically analyse
the relations between the allegedly “masculine” lines of thought of speculative realism and
object oriented ontologies, and (feminist) new materialist theory, mapping a zig-zagging of
genealogies behind each movement.

18
human-world. In his PhD research, nikolić locates his practice as “posthumanist
art–philosophy space of shared theoretico-practical experimentation” (2017, 9). I
collaborated with nikolić in Good Vibrations. What I have been inspired by in the
form of collaborating in Essi’s as well as mirko’s practices, is the level of reciprocity
both artists in their individual projects practice towards certain nonhuman entities.
In these artists’ practices, the term collaboration is not used lightly to for example
justify a use of nonhuman elements (such as plants or minerals) as the material of a
work, but rather, it concerns genuine aspiration to tune into another being’s
frequency and way of existing. For example, in Kausalainen’s practice, the
collaboration has been building on research, observation, and a deep understanding
of how plants function, communicate and think. The works that the artist has
produced as part of this work, have been based on encountering the other, for
sample a plant, by using attempting to use their tools of communication. Also in
mirko’s practice, the material others appear often as subjects the work of art is
created for; the artist also often returns the organic nonhuman entities that might be
part of his work, to the place they were obtained from. Collaborating equals here
above all being-with, becoming-with, and getting-in-touch-with. Further, the
collaboration is not only based on horizontal approaches, but it is also an ethical
point of departure.

During the research process, new materialist thinking has become a foundation of
my thinking regarding vibrant materiality of art, our embodied encounters with art,
agency of nonhuman entities, and the summoning of vibrant energies. I have been
influenced by Jane Bennett’s views on material vibrancy, which I discuss further
while contemplating the vibrancy of art in chapters five, six and seven. As is clear by
now, my thesis is not a philosophical project but rather, a curatorial one.
Nevertheless, my arguments do rely and contribute to a certain extent on lines of
inquiry in philosophy and critical theory, that have been named new materialism
(Coole & Frost 2010), feminist materialism (Alaimo & Hekman 2008), critical
posthumanism (Braidotti 2013), feminist matter-realism (Bradiotti 2011), and
object-oriented ontology (Harman 2005).

19
What has been interesting to me in the process of defining my position, is the
colliding of allegedly conflicting approaches of poststructuralist theorists and new
materialist and affect theorists. Stacy Alaimo and Susan Hekman present the
emergence of what they call feminist materialism as a reaction to negligence of
poststructuralist feminists toward lived bodies and the materiality they inhabit (2008,
3-4). Similarly, the turn to affect has been to large extent presented as a counter-
reaction to the abstraction and immateriality of phenomena presented by
poststructuralist theory, and as a return to bodily matter, which has been treated in
terms of constructionisms as part of poststructuralist and deconstructive views (e.g.
Clough 2010, 206; for more detailed discussion, see ch. 4). In the end, much like
Clare Hemmings (2005), I do not see these two areas as contradicting as presented
by some theorists (Kosofsky Sedgwick 2003; Massumi 2002; 2015; Clough 2010).
For example, while reading into Judith Butler’s theory, I never read it as if her
theory would diminish the materiality of the lived body. I understood the
heteronormative matrix she describes as a violently physical, and indeed, material
force compelling the possible, intelligible and acceptable ways of performing gender
and sexuality in everyday life. I understood this above all as a physical and material
event and process, as Butler argued further in Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive
Limits of “Sex” (1993). Thus, my current view on the topic is, that there are indeed
discursive social and cultural structures that affect an individual’s ability to act, and
this ability is very much tied to our material and embodied existence.18

I do not have an activist feminist background, but have always practiced my

feminism through work with art – first as an art historian, then as a curator. Having
become a feminist in academia, to me feminist theory has always been a tool for
rearranging understanding of the world – and thus, the world itself – in terms of
how power is distributed. To me, feminism is about uncovering, pointing out, and
transforming culturally, historically and socially constructed power relations
regarding gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, nationality, generation, and ability. This

18
Alaimo and Hekman (2008, 6) name the deconstruction of the material/discursive
dichotomy, without privileging either, as one of the main aims of new materialist feminist
research.

20
thesis as a whole describes my approach to feminism, which is in a constant flux,
rearranging its definition in relation to social and cultural changes. For myself, a
quote by feminist film studies scholar Anu Koivunen summarises what is important
in different strands of feminist research: “The different choices of research
questions, theories, concepts and disciplinary allies witness an ongoing and fierce
debate on what is good feminist research, what kind of research is needed now and
what kind of knowledge has most transformational potential or political power” (2010, 23; my
emphasis). For me, it is the aspect of transformation that remains at the core of
feminist activity, theory and politics, and this aspect is also at the core of this thesis
in the context of art.

One starting point for this research has been the so-called boom of blockbuster
exhibitions at major art museums and institutions presenting feminist art and/or art
made by women, beginning in 2005.19 Taking into consideration that these
exhibitions with feminist themes and frameworks started emerging specifically at
major art institutions and museums, and around the same period of time, it is fair to
talk about a refreshed interest in histories of feminist art, the work of women artists,
and at least in some cases, actual interest to discuss and develop work on gender
balance in museum collections and exhibition programmes. The boom of
feminist/women artists’ exhibitions was soon followed by proliferation in writing
about these exhibitions, as well as about relations between feminism, art, and

19
A list assembled by Hilary Robinson (2013, 129): 2005: MOT Annual 2005: Life Actually,
The Works of Contemporary Japanese Women, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan. La
Costilla Maldita, Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Gran Canaria. Konstfeminism: Strategier
och effekter i Sverige från 1970-talet till idag, Dunkers Kulturhus, Helsingborg, Sweden. 2007:
WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA.
Global Feminisms, The Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: 45 Years of
Art and Feminism, Museo de Bellas Artes Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain. A Batalla dos Xéneros/ Gender
Battles, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. 2009:
elles@centrepompidou, The Pompidou Centre, Paris, France. REBELLE. Art and Feminism
1969-2009, Museum Voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem, The Netherlands. Gender Check:
Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe, Museum Moderner Kunst Siftung
Ludwig Wien, Vienna, Austria. 2010: Donna: Avanguardia Femminista Negli Anni ‘70 dalla
Sammlung Verbund di Vienna, Galleria Nazionale D’Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy. Med Viljann
ad Vopni – Endurlit 1970-1980 (The Will as a Weapon – Review 1970-1980), Listasafn
Reykjavikur, Reykjavik, Iceland. Žen d’Art: The Gender History of Art in the Post-Soviet Space:
1989-2009, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russia. 2011: Dream and Reality: Modern and
Contemporary Women Artists from Turkey, The Istanbul Modern, Turkey.

21
feminist curating in general.20 Referring to the rapid increase of both exhibitions and
projects on feminism, art, and feminist curating, as well as the writing on them,
according to curator and cultural critic Elke Krasny, we can definitely speak of a
feminist turn in curating (2015, 69n1).

This research focuses on unravelling this feminist turn in curating, and how it relates
to discussions and practices of contemporary curating. My argument throughout
this thesis is that there is a space for a feminist point of view in the current
theorisation of contemporary curating and the notion of the curatorial. Even though
politics, and political positions, are often brought up as part of writing about
curatorial practices, I have not found texts where a feminist political position would
be discussed as part of the theorisation on the curatorial. Parallel to this, I have
sought to unravel and emphasize the coexistence of the feminist and the curatorial. I
argue, that the curatorial context enables us to expand discussions on curating and
feminist thought beyond the gender of the artist or the curator, and beyond an art
historical approach of curating thematic exhibitions on feminism, feminist art, or
women artists’ work. I argue, that bringing the feminist within the curatorial allows
us to expand the existing discussions on the topic, and to talk about curating and

20
Elke Krasny presents these texts and publications in her list produced in the aftermath of
the boom in exhibitions on feminist and women’s art (2015, 69n1): ‘Curatorial Strategies’
issue of n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal (2006), edited by Renee Baert; Katy
Deepwell’s essay “Feminist Curatorial Strategies and Practices Since the 1970s” (2006);
Feminisms is Still Our Name: Seven Essays on Historiography and Curatorial Practices (2010),
Politics in a Glass Case. Feminism, Exhibition Cultures and Curatorial Transgressions (2013);
Women’s:Museum. Curatorial Politics in Feminism, Education, History, and Art (2013), n.paradoxa’s
A Chronological List of International Exhibitions on Women Artists and Feminist art
Practices (http://www.ktpress. co.uk/pdf/feministartexhibitions.pdf) (2013). And these
symposia and conferences: Dialogues and Debates Symposium on Feminist Positions in
Contemporary Visual Arts (1999) hosted by Künstlerinnenstiftung Höge, Bremen; Furious
Gaze conference (2008) at Centro Cultural Montehermoso Kulturunea; Frauen:Museum:
Zwischen Sammlungsstrategie und Sozialer Plattform (Women’s:Museum: Between Collection Strategies
and Social Platforms) (2010) at the Vienna Library; Civil Partnerships? Queer and Feminist Curating
conference (2012) at Tate Modern London, The First Supper Symposium (2012) at
Handverkeren Kurs- og Konferansesenter; Curating Feminism Conference (2014) hosted by
Sydney College of the Arts, School of Letters, Arts and Media and The Power Institute,
University of Sydney; Feminist Turn in Curating panel at the Curating Everything (curating as
symptom) symposium (2015) at Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst Zurich.

22
feminist thought in terms of art and ways of working with art, rather than setting
feminism as a framework that we want art to fit in.

Further, I contextualise feminist curating through affect studies as a potential site

for creating transformative energies. I argue that the notion of affect can help us put
the transformative power of feminism in practice in artistic and curatorial projects,
in which transformative settings and situations for the sticking of affects (Ahmed
2010) is allowed and encouraged to happen. In the very foundations, my approach
in this research to knowledge is related to Donna Haraway’s theorisation of situated
knowledges (1988), as well as to Alison Jaggar’s feminist critique of epistemology
from the perspective of emotion (1989). I do not imagine to provide an absolute
objective truth about feminist curating as an outcome of this thesis, and quite
contrary, I’m proposing this alterative view to feminist curating exactly from my
position as an independent curator seeking a way to talk about a practice. Further, following
Jaggar’s thinking, I am recognising the potency of emotion as an essential part in
both formulating the starting points for the research, and as part of its
implementation.

Affect and emotion

When I began presenting the research at peer seminars at my university, I was

repeatedly asked whether my research discussed participatory art. At first I was
surprised by these questions, but understood they were related to the notion of
affect which I spoke about in a way that made it seem it was a feature of the
artworks I was looking at. Before defining the concepts of affect and emotion in the
framework of this research, I’m making a distinction between the topic of affect,
participation and relational aesthetics.

The route towards the topics of engagement and participation with contemporary
art was laid by the emergence of site-specific art and public art projects employing
institutional critique and community-based methods and practices, as described by

23
Miwon Kwon in her seminal study One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and
Locational Identity (2002). Kwon presents an art historical narrative beginning with
the emergence of site-specific practices in the late 1960s to late 1990s community-
based art projects taking place in public space, creating the narrative through tight
linkages between art and the socio-economic structures (capitalism) art is necessarily
part of. Kwon calls for art and research practices maintaining a long-term relational
approach of linking sites, people and the social structures these belong to, while
working site-specifically on individual projects.

The term relational aesthetics was coined by curator and philosopher Nicolas
Bourriad in late 1990s. In Relational Aesthetics (1998/2002) Bourriaud describes
socially oriented practices of contemporary artists working on participatory forms of
art, such as Rirkrit Tiravanija, Philippe Parreno and Liam Gillick. Bourriaud defines
relational aesthetics as “aesthetic theory consisting in judging artworks on the basis
of the inter-human relations which they represent, produce or prompt” (2002, 112);
and relational art as “a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and
practical point of departure the whole human relations and their social context,
rather than an independent and private space” (2002, 113). In Bourriaud’s view, the
artist became a facilitator or an interlocutor working on relations between viewers
and the setting they created. As curator and critic Helena Reckitt notes, within
relational aesthetics, also the viewer’s position is negotiated anew from “a receiver”
or spectator of a static work into an active participant in co-creating meaning and
realising an artwork together with the artists and other participants (2013, 136).
However, Reckitt notes that at the same time, Bourriaud neglects recognition of
what he labels as relational art to various feminist art practices from the 1970s to
1990s, as well as the fact that what he understands as relational, employs to a large
extent acts traditionally defined as feminine, such as care work, cooking, and
maintenance work. Further, what Bourriaud seems to be blind to, is the political
aspects related to gender politics, which however, exist in much of the work he
presents (2013, 138-140). As Reckitt notes, “Bourriaud’s disembodied and affectless
conception of the social realm ignores feminist insights into how people come to

24
understand themselves in relation to other sexed bodies, simultaneously as objects
and subjects” (2013, 140).

Art historian and critic Claire Bishop reacted to Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics in
2004 with the essay “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics”, by criticizing above all
the focus Bourriaud has on form in the expense of content as part of theorizing
relational art: “Bourriaud wants to equate aesthetic judgment with an ethicopolitical
judgment of the relationships produced by a work of art. But how do we measure or
compare these relationships? The quality of the relationships in ‘relational aesthetics’
are never examined or called into question” (2004, 65). It must be mentioned, that
also Bishop takes up the legacy of feminist artists neglected by Bourriaud (2004, 63).
However, Reckitt notes that despite this, Bishop herself repeats Bourriaud’s
mistake, not including any essays on feminist participatory art practices in the reader
Participation she edited in 2006 (Reckitt 2013, 140). Also, in a discussion between
Julia Bryan-Wilson and Bishop, Bryan-Wilson seeks to receive a clear reply on
Bishop’s view on the significance of feminist art practices in her research area,
finally receiving as a reply, that even if Bishop is interested in all of the areas
feminist practices concern (“all sorts of theoretical, philosophical, and political
possibilities, including a critique of how class and gender are co-articulated … not
limited to demanding to see more women artists in exhibitions … labor, and
reproduction, and the public/private divide, and political economy…”), she is not
interested in researching these phenomena “through a feminist lens” (2012). Bishop
has later continued discussing the topic of participation in her study Artificial Hells:
Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (2012), by both historicizing socially
engaged participatory art in relation to futurism and dada, as well as providing
critical paradigms for assessing the value of much of contemporary participatory art
practices.

We can then recognise affect as an essential aspect that helps to create a connection
between a work of art and a viewer in both of these approaches. Here, the affect
and affectivity of art are presented as part of the artworks’ participatory or co-
produced qualities. In this research, though, I am examining workings of affect in an

25
encounter between a work of art and a viewer, independent of whether the work of
art is participatory by nature (it might be argued, that all art is). My focus is not,
then, on interactive or participatory art, understood as art forms which aim at
engaging the audience in becoming part of creating the work, such as much of the
art Bourriaud and Bishop write about.

In Visual Culture as Objects and Affects (2013), Jorella Andrews and Simon O’Sullivan
unravel the relationship between affect and relational aesthetics in separate essays as
well as through dialogue. In her essay “Intending Objects and Signs ‘Which Have
No Meaning’”, Andrews writes about artworks, also stemming from art practices of
the 1990s, which convey strong connections to objects and materialities while
simultaneously supporting nonnarrative structures. Here Andrews writes particularly
about the work of Rosalind Nashashibi and Jayne Parker. Andrews defines the
tendency in their work as a distinct approach from relational practices described by
Bourriaud, emerging at the same period of time. According to Andrews,
At issue here are diverse art practices that seemed to share the following
characteristic: directly or indirectly, as with much postmodern and indeed much
earlier twentieth-century art, they all challenged the (supposedly) elitist idea of the
artwork as an object of art-for-art’s-sake contemplation, or as an object of
consumption or exchange within the circuits of capital. Against these tendencies,
they attempted to reinstate the social, political, and ethical efficacy of art. But they
did so without resorting to the oppositional or didactic message-based strategies of
much twentieth-century and contemporary activist or protest art (2013, 37-38).

Whereas relational art in Bourriaud’s definition focuses on facilitating human

relations and creating shifts in them, Andrews is interested in works which appear to
be more concerned with effects of form and materiality, and where it might not be
so obvious whether they carry political, social or ethical values (2013, 39). Further,
Andrews argues that the aesthetically oriented work described above, is
more philosophically and existentially radical than those works foregrounded by
Bourriaud. … Because by focusing attention on the lifeworlds of objects, and on
intercorporeality instead of intersubjectivity, a powerful sense of agency is opened up
that does not appear to be immediately directed to, or in service of, purely human
concerns. Instead of creating “interactive, user-friendly and relational concepts”,
the aesthetics associated with these works call into question the anthropocentric

26
 assumptions that habitually undergird everyday life, thought, and action–an
anthropocentrism that relational aesthetics also affirms” (2013, 39).

It is to a large extent these qualities of artworks described by Andrews above, that I

am thinking about throughout this thesis: notions of materiality of and in the
artworks, a sense of agency, and affective qualities attached both to this materiality
and to this agency. Much like new materialist art historian Katve-Kaisa Kontturi has
put it when describing her research as following flows of process at studios,
exhibition spaces and her own writing desk: “What my followings strive for is a
research practice that cherishes the material qualities of art: a new materialism that
appreciates matter as movement and matter capable of transformation and creation”
(2012, 13). This is much how I see the role of art in its material being as an
intersecting thought, and as such, a method of thinking through art in this research.
Further, I am thinking about the relations we can establish with these works and the
potential of what these relations can do to us.

In this research, then, I am discussing affect in relation to Spinozist and Deleuze-

Guattarian understanding of affect. According to this view, affect resides in a work
of art, existing as a bloc of sensations, as intensity, virtuality, and vitality, and taking
form in our relations between different bodies (human and nonhuman) by
impacting our ability to act (Deleuze & Guattari 1994; 2013). In thinking about the
relations of art and affect, I have been influenced particularly by Simon O’Sullivan’s
(2001; 2006; 2013) readings of affect in Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy. The
research relates to a vaster turn to affect (Kosofsky Sedgwick 2003; Clough 2007;
Leys 2011), which took place in the field of cultural studies, psychology and
neuroscience in the late 1990s, which I am discussing mainly in the framework of
feminist theorisation of emotion and affect (Ahmed 2010, 2014; Hemmings 2005,
2012), as well as feminist new materialist theory (Alaimo & Hekman 2008; Coole &
Frost 2010; Barrett & Bolt 2013).

According to Sara Ahmed, “emotions shape the very surfaces of bodies, which take
shape through the repetition of actions over time, as well as through orientations
towards and away from others. Indeed, attending to emotions might show us how

27
all actions are reactions, in the sense that what we do is shaped by the contact we
have with others. In Spinoza’s terms, emotions shape what bodies can do, as ‘the
modifications of the body by which the power of action on the body is increased or
diminished’ (Spinoza 1959: 85)” (2014, 4). In this thesis, I am writing mainly about
how art might make us feel, and not so much about what it might mean. The
reactions described above by Ahmed (and Spinoza), are to a large extent in this
thesis thought about in the context of art: I am interested in exploring what our
bodies can do as a consequence of being in contact with art.

To me, attending to issues concerning emotion appears as a political gesture in

itself. As Ahmed notes: “To be emotional is to have one’s judgement affected: it is
to be reactive rather than active, dependent rather than autonomous. Feminist
philosophers have shown us how the subordination of emotions also works to
subordinate the feminine and the body (Spelman 1989; Jaggar 1996). Emotions are
associated with women, who are represented as ‘closer’ to nature, ruled by appetite,
and less able to transcend the body though thought, will and judgement” (2014, 3).
Even if I do make a difference between the concepts of affect, emotion and feeling,
in this research the concepts are deeply connected particularly in terms of their
political potential, as described by Ahmed (2010; 2014) and Hemmings (2005; 2012).

Transformative energies

Throughout this thesis I am talking about the possibility of transformation in our

affective encounters with art. In my view, the aim and the potential of
transformation is the most essential aspect of both feminist thought and practice,
likewise of theorization of affect. In this thesis, I discuss the notions of creating
energies and transforming in the intersections of art, affect, and feminisms. All of
these fields connect to augmenting our abilities to act in relation to other bodies, as
is already described above.

28
The notion of energy relates here to both Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of affect
as intensity, sensation and virtuality (1987; 1994), and to political theorist Jane
Bennett’s concept of vibrant matter (2010). For Bennett, material vibrancy is a term
that allows us to discuss agency of nonhuman entities and materialities, similarly to
Deleuze’s use of the virtual, Michel Foucault’s use of the unthought, or Henry
David Thoreau’s use of the Wild. Vibrant matter is a force that is real and powerful,
but at the same time intrinsically resistant to representation (Bennett 2010, xvi). As
Bennett puts it: “What I am calling impersonal affect or material vibrancy is not a
spiritual supplement or “life force” added to the matter said to house it. Mine is not
a vitalism in the traditional sense; I equate affect with materiality, rather than posit a
separate force that can enter and animate a physical body” (2010, xiii). Reading
Deleuze and Guattari alongside Bennett, I have come to understand affect as
vibration and energy existing as part of works of art, releasing itself in our
encounters with them. My approach comes out as an interplay between these views:
between art, matter and objects – and affect, virtuality and energy.

To me it has been important, that in Bennett’s writing on vibrant matter, the

political is framed within the nonhuman; for her, the vibrancy of matter and things
is not something projected on these entities by humans, but it really is about the
vibrancy and vitality of the matter itself. In this thesis, I am giving much agency to
artworks as entities which may touch us, move us, and possibly, transform us. In the
framework of curating and feminist thought, I am at the end of the thesis thinking
about the aspect of transformative energies specifically in relation to curator Renée
Baert’s understanding of enchantment, and Catherine de Zegher’s idea of the
exhibition space as a space for amazement.

Aims, questions and methods

In this research, I aim to shift the paradigm of feminist thought and curating from
discussing exhibitions made in museum institutions about feminist art and/or art
made by women. I aim to create a space for discussing feminist thought and

29
curating outside a feminist art historical context. As part of this, I also aim to bring a
feminist approach as part of a contemporary curatorial discourse, and particularly, to
the realm of the curatorial.

The second aim is to propose a model for feminist curatorial practice, in which
feminist politics is embedded in the curatorial practice itself and manifests in the
undertakings of the curator, focusing particularly on the notion of creating
transformative energies as part of the curatorial process. I draft this proposal with
the help of affect theory as well as feminist new materialist theory. I aim to position
the aspect of transformation at the core of this feminist practice, alongside the
affective notions of virtuality, becoming, and the not-yet.

My research questions are: how is feminist thought present in “mainstream”

contemporary curatorial discourses? What are the discourses of the feminist
curatorial field at the moment? How can we expand current discourses and practices
on the field of feminist thought and curating? What would it mean to talk about
feminist curatorial practices in the context of the curatorial? And could an aspect of
affective transformation function as a key in theorising a feminist curatorial practice,
which would stem above all from the art exhibited and the artists’ practices the
curator is collaborating with?

In the following chapters, I am employing different methods in order to draft a

feminist curatorial practice based on thinking through art, and aiming at creating
transformative energies through affective encounters. As curator and researcher
Suzana Milevska has noted, feminist research itself can be considered a
methodology, as it is seen within humanities and social sciences (2013, 162). Despite
the overarching critique of art historical contextualisation of feminist curating, my
approach in this thesis is affirmative. My methodological approach has been
influenced by Rosi Braidotti’s posthuman affirmative politics, also connected
essentially to new materialist and vital materialist thinking (2013; 2015). Building on
Spinozist and Deleuze-Guattarian monistic and vital-materialist accounts, Braidotti
states:

30
 Here is the punchline of contemporary zoe/posthuman neo-Spinozist materialist
politics: affirmative ethics defines our politics. Given that the ethical good is
equated with radical relationality, aiming at affirmative empowerment, the ethical
ideal is to increase one’s ability to enter into modes of relation with multiple others.
Oppositional consciousness as a reactive mode is replaced by affirmative praxis and
political subjectivity is redefined as a process or assemblage that actualizes this
ethical propensity. This position aspires to the creation of affirmative alternatives
by working through the negative instances so as to collectively transform them into
affirmative practices (2015, 34-35).

For Braidotti, affirmative politics is a process of transforming negative affects into

productive and sustainable praxis, disengaging from negativity and connecting to
“creative affirmation and the actualization of virtual potentials” (2015, 53).
Affirmative politics is an approach embraced by feminist new materialist theory. As
Alaimo and Hekman describe their material feminist approach (2008, 6), the attempt
is to build on, rather than to abandon, the criticised approaches and points of
departure of previous feminist research.

While I criticize the current art historical approach, which I see as a narrow
understanding of the possible alliances between feminist thought and practices of
curating, I am not claiming that the exhibitions presenting feminist art and/or art
made by women artists are wrong, or that these projects should be dismissed. I do, of
course, hope that these exhibitions are being produced also in the future, and also
that the realisation of these exhibitions will lead to concrete changes in the policies
of museum institutions.21 What I am arguing in this thesis though, is that there must
exist discussion on other ways of working curatorially with feminisms than the art
historical feminist approach, secured within museum walls, or, to use Angela
Dimitrakaki and Lara Perry’s formulation (2013), sealed within the glass case in a
museum, where it is preserved and historicized. If feminist practice and theory aims
at transforming societies, there needs to be other forms of feminist practices within
the curatorial that can be discussed. There needs to be formats that can be

21
Perhaps the next step now, ten years after the beginning of the boom of feminist
blockbuster exhibitions, would be to follow-up the museum institutions that hosted them,
and inquire how these institutions are working with gender balance at the moment, and
how the feminist exhibitions otherwise affected the functioning of the institutions.

31
employed by the dozens and dozens of fresh curators emerging from the curatorial
post-graduate programmes each year, who will not acquire the position of a
museum curator. I propose, that bringing feminist thought and work with art
outside museum institutions, and in the context of independent curatorial practices
and contemporary curatorial discourses, is the first step.

What I am searching for in this thesis is alternative discourses for feminist curatorial
practices, and what I propose as an outcome, a feminist curatorial practice of
creating transformative energies, again, is one possible strategy among others. Other
practices and strategies might include for example collaborative and activist
approaches. The practice I propose, based on the concept of affect and a process of
enabling affect, means that my focus is on hopes of enabling something that I cannot
guarantee that will happen; there is a certain element of speculation that overarches
the concept of affect, as will be discussed later. As part of constructing my
approach, I am partly looking at practices of curators in highly privileged positions –
curators curating large-scale touring exhibitions, biennials, documentas. In these
cases, though, what I am examining, are the curatorial approaches, methods and
strategies they have used above all in their curatorial thinking with and through art.
This is a tool we can employ in any feminist curatorial practice – it is not bound to
an institution, a budget, nor the aim of needing to present an art historical narrative
presenting the right references in the right way. The focus here is more on the
curatorial practice and thinking, and its closeness with art. This research should be
seen more as a project of making space for other kinds of feminist approaches, and
more specifically, ones arising from independent curatorial practices. My starting
point is, that all of these feminist approaches to exhibition making, curatorial
practices, and work in art institutions should exist parallel to each other.22

22
As a practical example, one of the first things I did in my role as a director of a non-
profit art space run by an artist association, I began a mapping of gender balance in the art
space’s exhibition programming from previous years. This way, the future programming
can be planned based on these statistics, and any future errors regarding the topic can’t be
made.

32
In April 2017, I was at Tate Modern in London to see Fabrizio Terranova’s film
Donna Haraway: Storytelling for earthly survival (2017).23 During a talk between Haraway
and the director after the film, Haraway inspiringly noted, that her thinking is
embedded in revolting and acting: in a wish to move forward from merely
describing the state of the world. In the introduction to Vibrant Matter (2010), Jane
Bennett is on the same path while stating, that we need both critique and positive
formulations of alternatives (2010, xv). While working on this research, I have
aimed at being able to do the same, even if in a smaller scale: I haven’t wanted to
stop at observing, describing and criticising the state of things, but I have sought
after alternatives in order to do things differently as a practicing curator, and to try
and put my theory into practice.

Chapter outline

I begin chapter two by presenting my approach to curating and the realm of the
curatorial within this thesis. I analyse existing writing on curatorial practices and the
philosophes of the curatorial, while pointing out the discourses I find essential for
the development of contemporary feminist curatorial practices: the emergence of
the independent curator; curating as an educational practice and knowledge
production; the shift from the topic of curatorship to the practice of curating; and
finally, the theorisation of the curatorial. While I define curating as a practice larger
than the endeavour of making an exhibition happen – taking form as constant
dialogue with artists and the art scene, and manifesting as much through
discussions, research, and writing – I am also primarily discussing curating within
the exhibition format. The chapter as a whole presents the current theorisation on
the curatorial, in order to show that feminisms are to a large extent missing from
these governing narratives.

23
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/film/donna-haraway-story-telling-
earthly-survival (Accessed 06/04/18).

33
In chapter three I present current discourses on feminisms and curatorial thought
through an analysis on recent writing on the topic.24 The structure of this chapter
relies on what in my MA thesis I presented as three (overlapping) modes of feminist
approaches to curating: working on gender representation in exhibition programmes
and collections; working with feminisms thematically as a topic of curated projects;
and employing a feminist curatorial strategy where feminism is embedded and
manifests in various ways in the practice. This chapter as a whole presents the
current discourses on feminist thought and curating, in order to show that the focus
is primarily on art historical approaches, and feminist curating is as a rule discussed
through analysis of exhibitions presenting feminist art and/or art made by women.

In chapter four I move on toward presenting solutions to the issues I have brought
up in the previous chapters. Here I present definitions and theorisation of affect,
and move on to discussing its political potential as part of feminist work with art. I
begin by introducing the two main strands of affect studies: the biopsychological
strand relying on Silvan Tomkins’ theorisation of affect, and the Deleuze-Guattarian
strand, where affect is understood more as a force, intensity, and virtuality as part of
Deleuze’s concept of becoming. I also present affect studies within a feminist
context, where the transformative aspect of affect is brought to the fore, particularly
through the writing of Sara Ahmed and Clare Hemmings.

Chapters five, six and seven focus on presenting the alternative context for
discussing feminisms and curating: a curatorial practice relying on the affective and
transformative abilities of art. In chapter five I bring the concept of affect within the

24
It needs to be noted, that at the very moment of writing this thesis, a lot appears to
happening again in the field of feminisms and contemporary art. New aspects that have
possibly come out in these recent writings haven’t been taken as part of the research
because of practical reasons regarding the time schedule of the research. To name a few
instances, Jan van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands held a reading group on feminist
curating in February 2018 (https://www.janvaneyck.nl/en/news/feminist-curating,
accessed 19/09/2018), feminism was the topic of two issues of e-flux journal (issue 92,
6/2018, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/92, accessed 19/09/2018, and issue 93, 9/2018,
https://www.e-flux.com/journal/93/, accessed 19/09/2018), and online publication
Feminisms edited by L’Internationale Online came out in late spring 2018
(http://www.internationaleonline.org/bookshelves/feminisms, accessed 19/09/2018).

34
context of contemporary art. I link workings of affect with artistic practices, and
present how the concept is connected to my understanding of both art, curating and
feminism. The messiness and stickiness of affect is the stuff that keeps these three
fields of thought and practice attached within this research. I conclude chapter five
by presenting my curatorial process with the exhibition Only the Lonely. I begin
chapter six by contemplating on energies and vibrations entailing transformative
elements, and how these forces may link to works of art. I then present my
curatorial process with the exhibition Good Vibrations. I bring the main topics of the
research together in discussing feminist curatorial practices beyond representation
with the use of affective and transformative potency and potential of art. I conclude
the thesis by summarizing my thoughts on the close linkages between feminist
thought and the realm of the curatorial, and present how discussing feminist
thought as part of contemporary curatorial discourses can expand the current
discussions from the art historical confinement, and open up new ways of
understanding the transformative potential of feminist curating. I will also present
how the knowledge produced in this thesis may be developed further in the future.

35
2 The curatorial

This chapter is a mapping of how, since the late 1990s and early 2000s, academic
and non-academic writing on curatorial practices has rapidly increased, along with
the professionalization of the field, and development of how curatorial work has
been gaining significance in a larger cultural and socio-political context, extending
beyond exhibition-making in museums and galleries, and even beyond the field of
art. Even though curating, as it exists today, is then a relatively new field of
practice25 as well as scholarly research26, the first histories of curating have already
been written (Obrist 2008; O’Neill 2012). Rather than attempting to rewrite a
history of curating, the purpose of this chapter is to build a basis for discussing
feminist curatorial practices in relation to discourses of contemporary curating.
What has been formative for this research and the development of the questions
presented, has been a search for a way to talk about curating and feminist thought
that connects to the field of contemporary curating; and simultaneously, the
personal quest to find a feminist curatorial framework I could be able to relate to.
Reading literature on feminist thought and curating, I have struggled to situate
myself in the existing discourses. I’m discussing this in detail in chapter three. This
chapter opens up the gaps where feminist thought is missing from the mainstream
curatorial discourses.27

25
The first curatorial study programme started in 1987 at École du Magasin in Grenoble.
The same year the Independent Study Program at Whitney Museum of American Art in
New York renamed its Art History/Museum Studies course to Curatorial and Critical
Studies.
26
In the UK context, searching from the EThOS database, the first PhD research relating
to contemporary views on curating is from 1997, A study of audience relationships with interactive
computer-based visual artworks in gallery settings, through observation, art practice, and curation by C.E.
Beryl Graham, University of Sunderland. MPhil and PhD programme
Curatorial/Knowledge started in 2006 at Goldsmiths University of London. Zurich
University of the Arts in collaboration with University of Reading started a collaborative
MPhil and PhD programme in 2012.
27
By mainstream I mean discourses that do not present a specific contextualising in terms
of their approach, e.g. “political curating” or “feminist curating”, but present themselves as
general discussion on the field.

36
I begin by opening up the narrative of the emergence of the independent curator, as
this development remains in the focus of the research.28 I have chosen this focus
because independent curatorship is more or less non-existent in current research
around curating and feminist thought, hereby aiming at opening up new routes for
the discussion. I continue with discussing exhibitions. In this research, the focus is
mostly on curatorial work with exhibition format as part of independent curatorial
practices, and not, for example on discursive curatorial work with publications and
events, or on curatorial work within commercial galleries, museum collections or
educational programming. I am also briefly reviewing aspects concerning the so-
called educational turn, which took place in the curatorial field in the early 2000s, as
it has greatly influenced the generation of curators at the moment emerging in the
art world with work experience from biennials, kunsthalles, independent practices
and other self-run initiatives, and the overall non-profit art scene. After this, I am
mapping the discourses within the field of contemporary curating more generally.

I conclude this chapter by discussing the concept of the curatorial, which I have in
the course of this research recognised as another missing, yet productive point of
departure, when talking about curatorial practices in a feminist framework. Dancer
and choreographer Yvonne Rainer has used the word ‘exhibition’ in a fluid sense,
meaning not only the actual event of an exhibition, but also the actions and
processes involved in it (Steeds 2014, 18)29. Similarly, the concept of the curatorial
shifts focus to the processes and ideologies related to the various aspects of
curating.

28
‘Independent’ refers here to independent curatorial practice as a freelancer, as opposed to
curatorial practices affiliated with museums or other art institutions. It may well be
discussed, if the independent curator can be seen as independent in any other aspect.
29
Unfortunately, Steeds doesn’t provide a reference or a further context to Rainer’s
comment.

37
Changes in the role of the curator

This research is little concerned with questions concerning the role of the curator,
the focus being more on art, ways of working with art, as well as curatorial thinking
and processes that we can use in order to challenge the ways we work with art and
artists. However, the fundamental changes in the role of the curator – from a
caretaker of a museum collection to an author, a commissioner, a collaborator –
have strongly affected the ways we can talk about contemporary curatorial practices
today. I will therefore briefly discuss the main topics and literature concerning this
discourse.

Emergence of the independent curator

In the late 1960’s a museum curator’s occupation and tasks began developing from
caretaking to authoring. Karsten Schubert (2000) discusses this narrative through
the development of the museum institution from the French Revolution to the late
1990s, and addresses the role of the museum curator in the framework of the social
and historical significance of museum institutions. Even though Schubert does not
discuss the work of museum curators solely, what comes through in his study is that
both changes in museum institutions and art practices have had an effect on the
changes in tasks of the curator, the occupation transforming from a manager and a
caretaker of collections to working primarily with exhibition production and
collaborating with living artists. In a museological context, which Schubert’s study
represents, curatorial aspects are most often approached above all through
discussing the role of the curator: what it was, what it is, and what it will possibly
become (e.g. O’Neill & Fletcher 2007, 12).

Also Nathalie Heinich and Michael Pollak (1996) analyse the narrative from the
point of view of the museum institution and its development, analysing the curator’s
role shifting into a creative field, where the curator inserts their subjectivity into the
projects they curate, becoming an author alongside the artist. According to Heinich
and Pollak, it has been different conditions in the field of art, such as changes in

38
how art and exhibitions are made, expansion of the field of exhibition making, and
quite practical reasons such as increased authority in exhibition projects requiring a
larger group of staff, that have led to the curator’s role becoming that of an author.
The traditional tasks of the curator being safeguarding, enriching, researching, and
displaying a collection, Heinich and Pollak situate the potential and practical
possibility of personalisation exclusively in the latter. As temporary exhibitions in
museums became more sought after, the workload of the curator rose, and the
presentation to public became more important. Hence, there was both a demand
and potential space for development of the profession (1996, 235-236).

In a discussion published as part of Jens Hoffmann’s Show Time (2013) curator Mary
Jane Jacob recaps the discourse on changes in the curatorial field: “This is a process
of many dimensions: physical, human, intellectual, political, ethical, spiritual, and
more. Back when curating was about picking artworks and arranging them,
employing the skills of connoisseurship and scholarship, taste ruled. Then it all got
messier” (Hoffmann 2013, 244). Indeed, when exhibition making is less and less
about selecting and organizing, and instead collaborating, discussing, researching,
contextualising, theorizing, fund-gathering, commissioning, producing,
communicating, and mediating, things can easily get messy. At the same time,
curatorial work is perhaps less about connoisseurship in a traditional art historical
sense, as emerging curators often do not hold previous degrees from the field of art,
or at least the field of art history. It is very much in this messiness where my
interests lie, and which I unravel further in the chapters to come.

Curators as auteurs and as stars

If the exhibition can be seen as the medium of making art known (Greenberg,
Ferguson & Nairne 1996), it appears it has expanded to be also the medium of
making curators known. Reading any anthology on curating, one will come across
the topic of the star curator or the jet set curator, most often in relation to biennial
culture and other mega-exhibitions, or, the emergence of the independent curator in

39
the form of the first (male) curators actively operating as such. These names include
curators such as Walter Hopps, Pontus Hultén, Harald Szeemann and Seth
Siegelaub. This discourse has very little to do with this research, and I’m bringing it
up here briefly in relation to the history of independent curatorship. The canon-
building of curators can also be thought of in relation to the canon-building of
exhibitions, alongside the still relevant questions posed by feminist art historians:
who is represented, who is not, and by what criteria?

The emergence of biennial culture alongside the globalisation of the art world
during the late 1980’s, has worked in favour of creating a canon of selected,
innovative and influential curators. Indeed, according to Jens Hoffman, the biennial
curator is the ultimate way leader of the contemporary art scene (2013, 11).
According to Paul O’Neill, the increasing curatorial activity on international and
transnational level through biennials and other recurring large-scale exhibitions has
been the most evident transformation within contemporary curatorial practice
within the past few decades (2012, 51). During the 1990s proliferation of new
biennials awarded certain curators with a high profile, and this is where O’Neill
detects also a turning point in the development toward a nomadic global
curatorship, which he himself (though not completely explicitly) represents in the
research. O’Neill notes, that the expansion of the biennial cultures also coincides
with a proliferation of curator-centred publications and international curating
conferences (2012, 5). The expansion of biennial culture didn’t then only have
impact on the development of the role of the independent curator, but it also
enabled a more critical and detailed discussion on curatorial practices themselves.30

30
The biennial is a large field of study entailing several other large fields of study, such as
the globalisation of the art world, post-colonial critique of making exhibitions and mega-
exhibitions, contemporary art market, art and capitalism, and so forth. In the framework of
this research, this is too vast an area to tackle. For critical reading on biennial curating, see
e.g. Biennials: Art on a Global Scale (2010) by Sabine Vogel, The Biennial Reader (2010) edited
by Elena Filipovic, Marieke van Hal and Solveig Øvstebø, Biennials, Triennials, and documenta:
The Exhibitions that Created Contemporary Art (2016) by Charles Green and Anthony Gardner,
and The politics of contemporary art biennials: spectacles of critique, theory and art (2017) by Panos
Kompatsiaris.

40
Harald Szeemann is one of the curators who is most often brought up when talking
about the emergence of independent curators, curators as authors, and curators as
celebrities. Thinking about an art historical legacy, it is here that tables really seem to
turn with regards to the role of the artist, and that of the curator. When
monographs were previously written on artists only, from Szeemann on they have
be written also on curators. Since early 2000s at least these monographs on curators
have been published: Harald Szeemann: Exhibition maker (2006) edited by Hans-
Joachim Müller; Hou Hanru: On the mid-ground. Selected texts (2006) edited by Yu
Hsiao-Hwei; Harald Szeemann: Individual methodology (2007) edited by Florence
Derieux; Harald Szeemann: With by through because towards despite: Catalogue of All
Exhibitions 1957-2005 (2007) by Tobia Bezzola and Roman Kurzmeyer, Selected
Maria Lind Writing (2010) edited by Brian Kuan Wood; From Conceptualism to
Feminism: Lucy Lippard’s Numbers Shows 1969–74 (2012) edited by Cornelia Butler;
Ways of curating (2015) by Hans Ulrich Obrist; and Everything you always wanted to know
about curating but were afraid to ask (2011) by Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Hans Ulrich Obrist’s interview collection A brief history of curating was to respond to a
lack of exhibition histories with focus on (the work of) curators. With his book of
oral histories, consisting of eleven interviews with curators (two of whom are
women), Obrist is determined to write a canon of curators. It is notable, that all of
the curators interviewed by Obrist are, or were, curators in top positions in
European or North American art capitals such as New York, London and Paris. As
the curators are encouraged by Obrist to talk about their networks consisting of
people working in high positions within art worlds in these cities (family and
friends, who become colleagues and peers), a certain sense of privilege is unveiled.
Obrist asks each interviewee several questions about their colleagues and peers.
What the book highlights strongly, is the importance of networks of fellow curators,
artists, writers and critics. Without this network, a curator cannot make it to the
canon; to be in the canon, is to present one’s position in relation to others of
importance.

41
In relation to approaches introduced in preceding research such as Thinking about
exhibitions (1996) edited by Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson and Sandy Nairne
and The power of display (1998) by Mary Anne Staniszewski, where the focus is on
aesthetic and ideological structures and significances that emerge in exhibition
settings, the focus in Obrist’s interviews is above all on people. Here the starting
point is the curator: how they became to be who they are, who their idols and peers
were, who influenced them, who they worked with, and how their thinking about
art and culture related to other curators’ views. The aim of creating a curatorial
canon is then explicit. Obrist starts each interview by asking about influences and
curator idols, and for example in the interview with Lucy Lippard, comes back to
this question over and over. When Lippard finally replies her main influence were
the artists she was surrounded by in New York in the 1970s, and that she was not so
interested in what curators were thinking (2008, 207) Obrist has to give up relating
her to his references. In Everything you always wanted to know about curating but were afraid
to ask (2011) and Ways of curating (2014), Obrist adds himself in the canon he has
started writing, by unravelling his own path to arriving where he is at the top of the
international art world, in the former publication with the help of artist and curator
friends who act as his interviewers.31

The star curator cult and the general process of canon-building pose the same issues
concerning power relations and hierarchies as art historical canons. As emphasized
above, what Obrist’s endeavour brings to the fore is the value judgements placed on
a curator’s position in the art world, as well as their connections. Clearly, this canon
building is also gendered, as women do not reach high positions in the art world as
easily as men.32 Further, the canon of the curators together with the celebrity cult

31
Paul O’Neill notes that Obrist’s endeavour of writing a history of curating “displays an
interest not only in establishing a curatorial history, but also a potential space for self-
positioning”. Through the interviews, curatorial innovations from the past are connected
with Obrist’s own practice, which is “positioned as their logical successor” (2012, 41).
32
In a research conducted by Association of Art Museum Directors in 2017, the results
showed that a gender gap exists both in directorships in museums as well as in the salaries
of museum directors, women holding less than half of the directorships, and women’s
salaries lagging behind men’s. https://aamd.org/our-members/from-the-field/gender-gap-
report-2017 (Accessed 01/08/2018). In the spring of 2018 there has also been discussion
on several influential women museum directors losing their jobs for vague reasons:

42
shift full emphasis on the person of the curator. A pointed work on the topic is
Tanja Ostojic’s performative piece I’ll be Your Angel (2001-2002), in which the artist
accompanied Harald Szeemann by staying by his side at all times during the opening
of the 49th Venice Biennale, posing simultaneously as a muse, an angel, and a
caretaker, but also embodying power relations between a male curator and a female
artist. Ostojic’s body art piece Black Square on White (2001) was also included in the
project, as part of which her pubic hair was trimmed as a square, and kept unseen
from the audience. Highlighting the hierarchical power structures, the artist kept a
diary on the project, display of which was in the end denied by Szeemann.33

What can be seen as a positive side to the first-person-stories, is that they’ve enabled
to form knowledge on a field that simply hasn’t existed as such before. Interviews
with curators have been used as the basis in several anthologies on curatorial
practice from the early 2000s. One of the vastest is the series The producers:
Contemporary curators in conversation (2000-2002) organised by BALTIC Centre for
Contemporary Art. The series, consisting of five volumes, is edited by Susan Hiller
and Sarah Martin, and it features several interviews with contemporary curators
unravelling their projects and curatorial thinking, but focus is also on discussions.
Thus, in addition to first-person-narratives, the series aims to open these up by
contextualising them as part of other practices. Also Caroline Thea relies on
interviews in her two volumes On curating. Interviews with ten international curators (2009)
and On curating 2: Paradigm shifts (2016). Thea’s starting point appears to be similar to
Obrist’s, in the sense that both aim to map out influential curators and create
knowledge on their thinking and practice. The difference in Thea’s approach to
Obrist’s is, that the interviewees include both female and male curators with
backgrounds in different continents, including South America and Asia. Also, the
interviews themselves focus on selected projects the curators have worked on, more
than on the curators as influential personalities. Interview is also used as a method

https://garage.vice.com/en_us/article/xw5eb3/female-museum-curators-fired-
molesworth (Accessed 16/03/2018).
33
http://www.reactfeminism.org/entry.php?l=lb&id=123&e=t (Accessed 01/08/2018).
Also Angela Dimitrakaki writes about Ostojic’s practice and this piece in relation to the
hierarchical artist/curator relationship (2013a, 212-219).

43
in two anthologies, Curating Subjects (2007) and Curating and the Educational Turn
(2010), edited by Paul O’Neill. O’Neill used interview as a method also in his PhD
research on the development of contemporary discourses on curating (2007). The
research was later edited into the publication The culture of curating and the curating of
culture(s) (2012), which doesn’t include the original interviews.

In the process of professionalization of the curatorial field, interview has become an

essential method of creating curatorial knowledge (and also, knowledge about
curators). While interview can be seen as an essential tool in gathering knowledge
through oral histories in a field that is still relatively young and possibly searching
for a solid footing, it simultaneously encourages creating a canon of curators
important and influential enough to be interviewed about their curatorial practices,
and their views on curating end up forming a basis for a heterogeneous field. This
inclusion easily excludes curators working in the fringes, who do not belong to the
selected networks, and who might regardless do important work in the field of
curating.

Exhibitionary practices

Why exhibit?

As already mentioned, in this thesis I discuss curatorial work mainly with exhibitions
by independent curators, outside museum institutions. In my own practice, I have
been quite fond of the exhibition as a tool, as a setting, and as a special/specific
space, where works of art can exist together and in relation to specific surroundings
and visitors. However, it feels important to pose the question: why exhibit? What
are the benefits of an exhibition? Who does an exhibition do good to?

A common, yet rather simplified, reply to the question regarding the reasons for
exhibiting and the importance of exhibitions stems from the seminal publication
Thinking about exhibitions (1996), in which art historians Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W.

44
Ferguson and Sandy Nairne begin by arguing that the exhibition has become the
medium of how most art gets known (1996, 2). Ten to twenty years later, this
statement has still been repeated and confirmed by various authors in publications
concerning contemporary art, exhibitions, and curating (e.g. Marincola 2006, 9;
O’Neill 2007, 14). Further, in the introduction to Harald Szeemann: Individual
methodology, Florence Derieux begins by stating: “It is now widely accepted that the
art history of the second half of the 20th century is no longer a history of artworks,
but a history of exhibitions” (2007, 8).34 While Greenberg, Ferguson and Nairne are
in their introduction to the publication mainly talking about exhibitions in museum
settings (understanding the museum as a site for learning, leisure and
enlightenment), in these later references the exhibition is not discussed in a museum
context only, but also in relation to galleries, biennials, non-profit organisations, and
basically any event or form of putting art on display.

It is not, then, only within the museum context where the exhibition gains its
usefulness as a site for new art. Educational reasoning for exhibiting – making new
art known to small and larger audiences, widening understanding about art, bringing
forth artists from the margins and thus rewriting the art historical canon – appear as
the main reasons for working with exhibitions alongside the epistemological
question of what art is (that what is exhibited in art exhibitions). In this light,
exhibiting art is understood as the process of making art visible to a public. In
another formation, art theorist Lucy Steeds sees the exhibition as the occasion
where art’s meaning becomes collectively debated (2014, 13). Here the exhibition
gains social and political significance on top of the epistemological and educational,
as the exhibition becomes an arena where we get to discuss topics such as who
makes the art that is exhibited, who gets to see it, and also, who gets to discuss it.
The exhibition is then seen as a space and as an event where artworks, artists,
institutions and viewers cross their paths; the exhibition is a space where art is
encountered and experienced, and where knowledge about art and its significance
and value is presented, mediated and discussed.

34
This has been challenged by Myers 2011, 24-27.

45
We are living in a time where an increasingly large amount of information is
available online35, also on art. Information and knowledge about art is thus available,
and easily accessible for example through artists’ websites, art platforms, art
magazine’s platforms, online art journals, and Instagram accounts. It seems
reasonable to think of other reasons than the aforementioned educational ones, to
why exhibitions still have much significance in our society. Also, working with art at
this very socio-political time adds yet another layer to the question ‘why exhibit?’.
While working on this research, between 2013 and 2018, an explicit and public
misogynistic and racist wave has swept across the western world,36 not leaving the
cultural sphere or the art world aside.37 During the research process amidst reports
on the state of the climate, reoccurring terrorist attacks in European capitals,
extending austerity and the success of right-wing politics, I have several times had to
stop and convince myself why talking about art, working with art, and exhibiting art
matters today. So, why exhibit? Rather than it arising from an individual need or
passion for working towards creating spaces and situations for showing art, there
needs to be something else that gives exhibitionary practices significance; it
definitely needs to be something more than a personal drive to create a successful
career as a curator, even though this is warmly encouraged by the capitalist system
the art world and all of us in it, are crucially a part of.

35
In December 1995, the estimated number of internet users was 16 million, the number in
2017 being 3835 million. www.internetworldstats.com, accessed 4/9/2017.
36
Brexit in the UK in 2016; Donald Trump in the US in 2017; racism and xenophobia all
over western world resulting in closing state borders, increasing support of right wing
politics, and inevitable cuts in funding for art and culture.
37
Just as an example, while writing this in February 2017, there was an ongoing heated
public discussion concerning an East London gallery LD50 in Dalston, and their
involvement in supporting fascist “alt-right” groups and politics through their
programming at the gallery and in the public statements by the gallerists. After
demonstrations, the gallery was closed in mid-March 2017.
(https://shutdownld50.tumblr.com/post/157441553836/racists-and-fascists-out-of-
dalston-shut-down; https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/feb/22/art-gallery-
criticised-over-neo-nazi-artwork-and-hosting-racist-speakers;
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ld50-gallery-protest-lucia-diego-
donald-trump-alt-right-hackney-dalston-a7596346.html;
https://shutdownld50.tumblr.com/post/158389611151/grassroots-campaign-shuts-down-
far-right-art. All links accessed 14/03/17.)

46
Curator and writer Elena Filipovic replies to these points in her essay regarding
exhibitions and their significance, and suggests we might turn the common
assumption of knowledge production the other way around:
But what if we thought of the exhibition as the site where deeply entrenched ideas
and forms can come undone, where the ground on which we stand is rendered
unstable? Instead of the “production of knowledge” so frequently cited in
institutional statements of purpose, an exhibition might provoke feelings of
irreverence or doubt, or an experience that is at once emotional, sensual, political,
and intellectual while being decidedly not predetermined, scripted, or directed by
the curator or the institution (Filipovic 2013, 78).

Filipovic’s view on exhibitions summarises to a great extent how I perceive the

significance and potential of exhibitions both as a curator and as a visitor to
exhibitions. Not only does this help us to think about the substance of exhibitions
outside educational and epistemological frames, but it also helps us to direct our
focus away from the role of the curator and the institution, and on the art which is
exhibited, as well on the curatorial processes the works of art participate in.
Filipovic’s statement entails also a notion of the social and political potential of an
exhibition; embedded here is an idea of an exhibition’s ability to touch, to have an
effect on, and even to transform a visitor who experiences it. This potential that art
has, and thus, that exhibitions presenting works of art have too, is something I am
discussing throughout this thesis.

I argue, then, that the potential and significance of art and exhibiting art lies in
understanding an exhibition as a site for feeling, thinking, experiencing, questioning,
and possibly, transforming. This does not exclude the previously mentioned
prevailing notions of epistemological (exhibition as a site for knowledge production
and negotiating what art is) or educational (exhibition as a site for presenting new
art) as other aspects of the relevance of exhibitions. However, in this research the
focus is not on these aspects. In a sense, this whole thesis is about my personal reply
to the question ‘why exhibit?’. From chapter four onward, I’m searching for this
answer in the area of affective embodied encounter, which most often is different to

47
an encounter online.38 For me, the answer to ‘why exhibit’ has to do with what art
can do to us, providing we let it. As a curator, I do believe that there is some
exceptional value in encountering art in an exhibition context. It is an embodied,
physical encounter taking place in time and space. It can be very unique, even a
luxury, an experience you wouldn’t receive without turning up at a certain place at a
certain time. This research is written through the idea that there is indeed
significance and value for art, artist, curator, visitor, and a space, in the processes of
exhibiting art.

Exhibition histories

The concept of the exhibition plays an essential part in understanding how we have
got where we are within curatorial discourses today. According to Filipovic, the
arrival of exhibition as a topic of critical studies in art history has been slow and
reluctant (2013, 73). This seemingly simple act – putting art on display, creating a
space for art – emerged in a scholarly field of study in late 1990s, in the realms of art
history, museum studies, and finally, curatorial studies. Looking at titles published in
this period of time, it is evident that curating has overrun exhibition as a topic by the
early 2000s, at least regarding research on contemporary art exhibitions.

Mary Anne Staniszewski’s The power of display. A history of exhibition installations at the
Museum of Modern Art (1998) has been one of the first publications to dedicate its
topic to analysing structures of exhibition display and the processes of installing
exhibitions in museum institutions. In the introduction of the book, Staniszewski
argues that even though art historians have paid attention to analysis of individual
works of art in exhibitions, the overall significance of exhibition contexts is lacking
in the writings:

38
I deliberately use the word ‘different’, as I am not convinced it is necessarily better or
worse. Some art may be best encountered in a private sphere of the home mediated
through one’s laptop, or perhaps as being part of an audience through an online screening
in an auditorium. Some art may again be best encountered in a black or white cube in a
museum.

48
 Art historians have analyzed the works included in an exhibition and a show’s
effect as it is received within aesthetic, social, and political discourses. But they have
rarely addressed the fact that a work of art, when publicly displayed, almost never
stands alone: it is always an element within a permanent or temporary exhibition
created in accordance with historically determined and self-consciously staged
installation conventions. Seeing the importance of exhibition design provides an
approach to art history that acknowledges the vitality, historicity, and the time-and-
site-bound character of all aspects of culture (Staniszewski 1998, xxi).

Here Staniszewski calls for much needed focus on the surroundings of a work of
art, and its relation to others around it. It is the topic of works of art existing in
relation to each other and in relation to a spatial and ideological setting, as well as
the research and thinking that has been done in order to place them so, taking into
consideration the various parameters regarding permanent and temporary settings,
that was lacking and much needed in art historical writing of the time.

Another early work on the topic is the aforementioned, and still often quoted
anthology Thinking about exhibitions (1996). In the introductory chapter, Greenberg,
Ferguson and Nairne explain the need for critical discussion on the medium of art
exhibition and curatorial practices, which until then had been in the margins of art
historical discussions. As a reaction to changes in the art world of the time (growing
number of exhibitions, lack of critical writing on the topic), the editors explicitly set
out the discussion to writing about exhibitions, rather than the art shown in the
exhibitions (1996, 3). Indeed, what both Staniszewski and the editors of Thinking
about exhibitions are aiming for, is the point where the focus of art historical study
may shift from the work of art to its relations with the surrounding space, and the
manner in which the work of art is presented.39

The topics of the essays in Thinking about exhibitions vary between exhibition
histories, curatorship, exhibition sites and forms of installation, narratology, and
spectatorship, taking into consideration historical, social, political and ideological
aspects of exhibition making. What is interesting, is that the editors express a

39
Interestingly enough, it appears discussing curatorial practices without discussing the art
shown has now become the model of writing about contemporary curating. I am
elaborating on this further in relation to contemporary curating later in this chapter.

49
deliberate wish to take distance to a museological context (1996, 2), in order to be
able to talk about exhibition making at various sites and locations, as well as in
various conditions in addition to gallery surroundings. A museological context
entails a need for institutional critique, which makes it difficult to discuss the
exhibitionary processes outside the museum walls.40 Museums as sites for art are
nevertheless discussed in the anthology as well, for example in the essays by Debora
J. Meyers, Mieke Bal, Tony Bennett, Brian O’Doherty and Rosalind E. Krauss.

Brian O’Doherty’s essays on economic, social and aesthetic aspects of work with art
in commercial and museum galleries, published in 1976 in Artforum, were
republished as a book Inside the white cube: The ideology of the gallery space in 1999, likely
along the newly gained interest in the structures and ideologies of exhibition spaces.
O’Doherty’s publication remains essential reading when it comes to unveiling and
understanding power structures and ideological discourses related to making art and
exhibiting it on the walls of museums and commercial galleries.41 O’Doherty
analyses the ways modern art museums function as ideological machines creating
value and meaning to the art exhibited inside it, and unravels the assumed neutrality
of a white cube environment. Museum displays cannot be seen as merely presenting
a persistent style of exhibiting art, but also the meanings of the display need to be
taken into consideration.

A slightly more recent anthology is What makes a great exhibition? (2006) edited by
Paula Marincola. This publication doesn’t in the end specifically focus on
exhibitions, despite its title, but rather, on mapping out a variety of curatorial
approaches. Being one of the first collections of essays focused on curatorial
practices, the book aspires to present both practical issues in curating and
theoretical contexts for discussing work of a curator, presenting some influential

40
The recent history of curating has indeed little to do with the museum institution.
Museums remain today, of course, spaces for art, but discussing curating in museums
always sets a necessary frame to the discussion regarding the ideologies, tasks and
responsibilities of museum institutions, which would be too vast in the frame of this
research, as well as too far from my selected research questions.
41
O’Doherty’s book was essential reading for example in my curatorial MA course at
Stockholm University in 2009.

50
curators along with their key exhibitions and recent projects. In another article
anthology, Exhibition experiments (2007), edited by Sharon Macdonald and Paul Basu,
the focus is on exhibitions in various museum contexts from the art museum to
ethnographic and science museum settings. The publication focuses on the idea of
the experiment, through case studies of inventive exhibitions as well as thinking
patterns. The publication is an outcome of a conference on the topic, and perhaps
because of this, it is primarily a wide selection of different views on experimental
exhibition forms, media and technologies of display, including reflection on the
motivations, effects, potential and limitations of exhibitionary experimentation
(2007, 3).

Exhibition histories are also discussed in an on-going project by Afterall Books. The
project was initiated through a research project at Central Saint Martins in London,
and it is currently continued with the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College in
New York. The series was inaugurated with the launch of Exhibiting the New Art: 'Op
Losse Schroeven' and 'When Attitudes Become Form' 1969 in 2010, and at the moment it
includes nine publications.42 Each book focuses on specific exhibitions or an
exhibition, unravelling them from various perspectives from documentation
materials to reflective art historical essays. The series is also accompanied by a talk
series, Exhibition Histories Talks, arranged in collaboration with Whitechapel Gallery
since 2013 in relation to each title in the series.43 Here, feminist issues are brought
into discussion as part of From Conceptualism to Feminism: Lucy Lippard’s Numbers Shows
1969–74 (2012), edited by Cornelia Butler, and presenting essays, curatorial
statements, documentation images, and interviews with artists who participated in
Lippard’s projects.

42
Making Art Global (Part 1): The Third Havana Biennial 1989 (2011); From Conceptualism to
Feminism: Lucy Lippard’s Numbers Shows 1969–74 (2012), Making Art Global (Part 2): 'Magiciens
de la Terre' 1989 (2013); Exhibition as Social Intervention: ‘Culture in Action’ 1993 (2014); Cultural
Anthropophagy: The 24th Bienal de São Paulo 1998 (2015); Exhibition, Design, Participation: ‘an
Exhibit’ 1957 and Related Projects (2016); Anti-Shows: APTART 1982–84 (2017); and Artist-to-
Artist: Independent Art Festivals in Chiang Mai 1992–98 (2018).
43
A full list of research events and talks can be found here:
https://www.afterall.org/books/exhibition.histories/exhibition-histories (Accessed
18/08/2018).

51
In 2008 Tate Modern in London hosted a conference titled Landmark Exhibitions:
Contemporary Art Shows since 1968, from which the papers were afterward compiled in
an online publication, Autumn 2009 issue of Tate Papers, edited by Marko Daniel
and Antony Hudek44. In the introductory essay, Daniel and Hudek state, that the
exhibition still remains an under researched topic within art historical and critical
studies. The conference aimed to review the phenomenological, sociological,
affective, economic and political contexts that condition art’s presentation: “The art
object has for too long been considered in isolation, as a material artefact
independent of the web of power relations in which it is produced, discussed,
exchanged, stored and exhibited. Now, perhaps as a reflection of a larger
environmental awareness, the art object can be seen as one element in a dynamic,
time- and site-sensitive microcosm” (Daniel & Hudek 2009). Drawing on feminist
and Marxist art histories, here the editors and conference arrangers aimed to open
up the discussion on exhibitions and the significance of exhibitions beyond art
historians’ views toward practitioners in museums and galleries, and educated
visitors to exhibitions. This is the only mainstream event on exhibitions I found,
that explicitly refers to feminist politics as an influence.

In addition to critical studies on exhibitions, there are also more art historical studies
on exhibition histories, which can be seen as part of an endeavour of writing a
canon of exhibitions. The exhibitions discussed in these publications are always
group exhibitions, which has become “the main vehicle for creative expression
authored by curators” (Hoffmann 2014, 14). Bruce Altshuler maps out the history
of exhibitions from the 17th century until the early 2000s in his two large-scale
publications Salon to Biennial: Exhibitions that made history 1863-1959 (2008) and
Biennials and beyond: Exhibitions that made history 1962-2002 (2013). A similar approach
of listing historically important exhibitions, meaning influential and game-changing
exhibitions that are referred to by important curators45, is presented in Jens
Hoffmann’s Show time: The 50 most influential exhibitions of contemporary art (2014/2017).

44
https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/12 (Accessed 18/08/2018).
45
This is a classic circular model where the same description of the word ‘important’
describes the important curator.

52
In the publication, Hoffmann sets out to introduce fifty historically significant
exhibitions of contemporary art since the 1980s till today. Hoffmann calls his
selection key exhibitions, which he sees as shows that have “truly changed the
course of the discipline and contributed to a more complex understanding of what
exhibition making means” (2014, 11). Indeed, as is the case in art historical canon
building in general, there is a clear aim of mapping out a story of development
towards something greater, through exhibition examples that can be described as
innovative, ground-breaking and influential. Two feminist thematic exhibitions are
included in Hoffmann’s listing: Inside the Visible: An Elliptical Traverse of 20th Century
Art in, of, and from the Feminine (1994-1996) curated by Catherine de Zegher, and
WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (2007) curated by Cornelia Butler. Hoffmann
provides a short description of the exhibitions, but as a whole, the book is a listing
with basic information about the projects, such as dates and places of the exhibition,
names of the artists, and names of the curators. In addition to the Landmark
Exhibitions event at Tate Modern, where feminist art history is mentioned as an
influence, and Afterall publication on Lucy Lippard’s work, these are the only
references to feminism I found in mainstream exhibition histories. Coming more
straightforwardly from a feminist field, Maura Reilly’s recent publication Curatorial
Activism: Towards Ethics of Curating (2018) turns out to be partly a feminist exhibition
history, presenting key exhibitions with Reilly’s analysis of the projects.46

46
The exhibitions include: Women Artists: 1550-1950, Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
1976, Brooklyn Museum, New York, 1977, curated by Linda Nochlin and Ann Sutherland
Harris; Bad Girls, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 1993, The Centre for
Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, 1994, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1994,
Wight Art Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles, 1994, curated by Kate Bush,
Emma Dexter, Marcia Tucker, Marcia Tanner; Inside the Visible, 1994-1997, curated by
Catherine de Zegher; Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago’s “Dinner Party” in Feminist Art History,
Museum of Art and Cultural Center, University of California, Los Angeles, 1996, curated
by Amelia Jones and Armand Hammer; The Venice Biennale, The Italian Pavilion and the
Arsenale, Venice, Italy, 2005, curated by María de Corral and Rosa Martínez; Global
Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art,
Brooklyn Museum, New York, 2007, The Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley
College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA, 2007, curated by Linda Nochlin and Maura Reilly;
WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, MoMA, Los Angeles, 2007, National Museum of
Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, 2007, MoMA PS.1, New York, 2008, Vancouver Art
Gallery, Canada, 2008-2009, curated by Cornelia Butler; elles@centrepompidou, Paris, 2009-
2011, curated by Camille Morineau; Re.Act.Feminism #2 – A Performing Archive, Centro
Cultural Montehermoso, Spain, 2011, Wyspa Institute for Art, Gdansk, Poland, 2012,

53
Regarding critical contemporary writing on exhibitions specifically, which is useful
for discussing feminist contexts, Elena Filipovic and Lucy Steeds are writers who
have in their recent work focused on the topic from an analytical and critical point
of view, explicitly taking distance from a curatorial positioning (Filipovic 2005,
2013, 2014-2015; Steeds 2014, 2016). Both of them seek to shift the focus in
curatorial and exhibition studies “back to” the art that is exhibited, and how the
analysis of exhibitions should play out on the dynamics between exhibitions as sites
and the artworks in them – rather than focus on the curator or the curatorial
concept the works are put into.

Filipovic insists that instead of thinking about what an exhibition might be, we
should focus on what an exhibition can do. The site where the exhibition’s activity,
it’s doing, happens, is the interplay of the exhibited works of art and the relationships
that are created between them, the spatial setting they are in, and the discourse that
frames them (2013, 75). One might for example simply think about how rearranging
artworks in an exhibition creates a different kind of setting and atmosphere. In
order to focus on this doing – which I very much aim to do in this research – we
cannot dismiss the works of art. Filipovic’s emphasis on the active, and I would say,
affective, aspect of the exhibition enables us to tune down the character of the
curator. In a more recent project, Filipovic edited a serial publication on curatorial
work by artists in collaboration with Mousse magazine (2014-2015). The collection of
essays was published as a book with the title The artist as curator: An anthology in 2017;
the series of essays unravels the history of artist-curated exhibitions since avant-
garde till today, focusing on both the curatorial thinking and the art exhibited. The
aim of the project has been to shed more light on how artists have contributed to
what exhibitions today are and how they can be imagined, not only in terms of their
content but also in terms of their structures and production processes. In Filipovic’s
view, it is most often exhibitions curated by artists that succeed in creating new,

Galerija Miroslay Kralievic, Zagreb, Croatia, 2012, Museum of Contemporary Art,

Roskilde, Denmark, 2012, Tallinn Art Hall, Estonia, 2012, Fundació Antoni Tàpies,
Barcelona, 2012, Academy of Arts, Berlin, 2013, curated by Beatrice Stammer and Bettina
Knaup.

54
interesting and engaging sites for artworks, and simultaneously stretch the concept
of the exhibition itself (2013, 73-74).

Steeds has been part of Afterall Publishing’s aforementioned Exhibition Histories

project since 2010, and she also edited the title Exhibition (2014) in Whitechapel
Gallery’s Documents of contemporary art publication series. As mentioned above, for
Steeds, talking about exhibitions rather than curating is a means for keeping the
focus on the art that is exhibited. In her view, it is a question of finding a balance
between presentation of curatorial aspirations, and using curatorial means in order
to keep the focus on the art that is exhibited:
A focus on art’s exhibition at the expense of the curatorial does not leave us
contemplating the mechanics of exhibition-making but, rather, the crucial question
of how art realizes its affective and discursive potential – how art takes shape in
experience and what debates it kindles (2014, 14).

I argue, that these models of prioritising art on the expense of the curatorial
concept, should be applied more effectively into a feminist curatorial context, both
as part of feminist curatorial practice, and writing and theorisation around it.
This brief mapping of exhibition studies provides a curious insight into the
problematic dynamic between art historical and curatorial field of studies, as well as
the personal position of the researcher: the exhibition was brought into an art
historical context by a small number of art historians interested in exhibitionary
practices somewhat 30 years ago, and it took decades of work to establish it as part
of the field. In the contemporary curatorial context, on the other hand, there seems
to exist a need to justify why exhibitions still are relevant topics of discussion and
relevant sites for putting art on display. While the trouble in the beginning was that
the focus was on art only and not the dynamics a work of art has with its
surroundings, the focus shifted so thoroughly on curatorial practices in the process,
that now there appears to be, on the contrary, a strong need to bring the art back to
the discourse (Steeds 2014, 13-14; Filipovic 2013; 2014).

This speaks volumes about how quick the expansion of the curatorial field has
actually been. Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam dedicated the spring 2015 issue of

55
their summer school programme and Online Journal Stedelijk Studies to critical views
on exhibition histories, focusing exactly on the tensions between curatorial and art
historical approaches in writing histories of exhibitions, recognising this as a field of
ongoing debate and development.47 The project took Afterall Publishing’s
exhibition histories as its starting point, recognising the shift from the individual
artist’s practice to the context of presentation (Boersma & van Rossem 2015).
Critical and analytical writing on exhibition histories has also been published as part
of the curatorial journal The Exhibitionist since its launch in 2010. In his essay,
“Inhabiting Exhibition History”, Julian Myers suggests we should stop seeing these
through a rough dichotomy and instead, see the linkages in the practices and
approaches (2011, 27). As I will present in chapter three, this discussion is highly
relevant to the current discourses within feminist curating.

Coming back to The power of display and Thinking about exhibitions, what is very
valuable to contemporary curatorial discourses in the legacy of exhibition studies in
publications such as these, is how these publications brought the concept of the
exhibition, reflection on the context of the work of art, and the process of
exhibition making, into a scholarly discourse and opened it up for practitioners in
the field. Acknowledging that there is aesthetic, historical, cultural, social and
political value in the practice of exhibition making, has enabled a critical discussion
on the topic, and worked in its part to enable the professionalization of curatorial
practice. What can be concluded then, is that an exhibition is by no means the only
“product” of curatorial work, but at the same time, it remains a relevant one. As
several writers emphasize, an exhibition is not a neutral or innocent site (e.g.
O’Doherty 1976/1999; O’Neill 2007, 2012; Filipovic 2013), but always alive through
different kinds of ideological, personal, and thematic discourses.

47
Rewriting or Reaffirming the Canon? Critical Readings of Exhibition History,
https://www.stedelijkstudies.com/issue-2-exhibition-histories/ (Accessed 18/08/18).

56
The educational turn

Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson begin the anthology Curating and the educational turn
(2010) by stating: “Contemporary curating is marked by a turn to education.
Educational formats, methods, programmes, models, terms, processes and
procedures have become pervasive in the praxes of both curating and the
production of contemporary art and in their attendant critical frameworks” (2010,
12). What O’Neill and Wilson mean, is that curating operates as an educational
praxis, and not only that education would figure in the field as a theme. In this
subchapter, I am briefly introducing the main ideas relating to this educational turn
in curating, which took place in the early 2000s, relating both to educational
infiltrations within contemporary art and curating of the time, and the proliferation
of social and participatory projects entailing a variety of educational aspects.

Here, I briefly present also the emergence of curatorial postgraduate programmes,

which to a large extent occurred parallel to the turn to education in Europe and
North America. This can be seen as an essential aspect in the process of
professionalization of curating, and the field entering a scholarly realm in general.
What the excess of curatorial programmes has contributed to as well, is the sudden
rise in the number of curators since the early 2010s, as the programmes are now
producing new curators on a yearly basis. This has inevitably led to an expansion of
independent curators, but perhaps also in specialisation within the profession.

Producing curators

The first programme in curatorial studies started in 1987 at the École du Magasin in
Grenoble. The same year the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent
Study Program in New York renamed its Art History/Museum Studies course as
Curatorial and Critical Studies. In the 1990s a number of new curatorial
programmes were launched: Curating Contemporary Art at Royal College of Art,
London (1992), De Appel Curatorial Programme, Amsterdam (1994), Center for
Curatorial Studies at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (1994), and

57
Master Programme in Curating, Goldsmiths University of London (1995). In the
2000s, the number of courses, study programmes, and postgraduate studies in
curating have steadily increased (Markopoulos 2016, 11). Curatorial study
programmes are now organised by universities, auction houses, and museums.48
When curators had previously trained through occupations at museums, galleries,
art magazines, and academia as art historians, it has now become possible to attend
a study programme in order to become a curator.49

In her master thesis curator Camilla Larsson (2012) investigates fifteen curatorial
study programmes in Europe and North America. According to her analysis, all of
the programmes rely more or less on similar literature lists, and also have the same
curatorial practices, theorists and exhibitions as their reference points. In an essay
based on her research, Larsson expresses her worries on the consequences of this
homogeneity, with regards to what it means to have future generations of curators
with similar backgrounds, references and approaches to working with art. Further,
even though the students are not required to have studied art history, they are
expected to have a certain level of acquaintance with the art world. Larsson points
out, that for example several programmes require letters of recommendation from
actors in the art world as part of the application process, insinuating that the student
must actually already be part of a certain network when applying and aspiring to
become part of the art world (2013, 34-35).

The boom in curatorial education programmes has been followed by critical

thinking on its consequences. An issue of Manifesta Journal of Contemporary Curatorship
(no.4/2004) is dedicated to the topic of curatorial study programmes, with the title
‘Teaching curatorship’. In the introduction to the issue, the emergence of curatorial
postgraduate programmes is defined as an essential aspect of the professionalization

48
There are also independent stances such as Node Center for Curatorial Studies in Berlin,
which offers paid online courses since 2009.
49
Personally, I never identified as a curator until I attended an MA program in curating art,
even though my background consisted of previous postgraduate studied in art history,
aesthetics and museum studies, as well as a work history in museums, galleries and art
institutions.

58
of the curatorial field, and simultaneously as a realm in need of critical discussion.50
The publication Great Expectations: Prospects for the future of Curatorial Education (2016),
edited by Leigh Markopoulos, is an outcome of a symposium on the same topic,
titled The Next 25 Years: Propositions for the Future of Curatorial Education, organised in
March 2015 by the Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice at California College of
the Arts in San Francisco. As the title suggests, the aim of the conference was to
think together about the future of curatorial education, and what these futures
might mean and offer to students participating in the programmes. Also, Dorothee
Richter reflects on the topic from the point of view of an educational institution
(postgraduate and MPhil/PhD programmes at Zurich University of the Arts) in her
essay “Thinking about curatorial education” (2015). Richter opens up the
educational approach of the programmes, emphasizing the importance of praxis
supported by theory. From the educational institution’s side the questions that
remain are how to teach curating in academia, keeping in mind it’s a practical
profession, and how the curatorial studies programmes impact curating as a field of
practice, taking into consideration that the point of departure in the study
programmes is most often on curating, and not on an art historical approach to
building knowledge about contemporary art and its various links to histories of art
(Markopoulos 2016, 14).

The emergence of curatorial postgraduate programmes has offered platforms for

critical thinking and talking about curating, assisted in developing the field of
curating increasingly to a cross-disciplined field, and contributed to the process of
professionalization. On the other hand, the programmes have also created problems
of practical nature in the job market, while the large number of emerging curators
adjust in various roles, trying to find their places in the art world (Ravini 2013, 47;
Lind 2010, 66).51

50
Introduction to the issue online: http://www.manifestajournal.org/teaching-curatorship
(Accessed 19/08/18).
51
Indeed, in the context of describing the notion of the curatorial, Lind actually writes: “If
’the curatorial’ – in a less qualitative and a more deadpan use of the term – can be present
in the work of practically anybody active within the field of contemporary art, it could also
be used as an escape route for someone who, like myself, is responsible for graduating
fifteen curatorial students per year. Where will they find work? Given the proliferation of

59
Curating as an educational practice

As part of the educational turn, curating has been contextualised as an educational

endeavour in itself. This is the starting point of the anthology Curating and the
Educational Turn (2010) edited by Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson. Having begun
through the adaptation of pedagogical models in curatorial practices and critical art
projects, the publication aims to critically analyse the emergence and use of
educational aspects in the field. O’Neill and Wilson make a clear distinction in terms
of museum education and similar cultural pedagogical projects. Rather, they
emphasize projects and practices in which educational processes become part of the
curatorial or artistic project itself (2010, 12-13).52

The impact of the educational turn can be seen also in the operations of institutions.
O’Neill and Wilson mention for example Maria Lind’s work at Kunstverein
München, Catherine David’s work at Witte de With in Rotterdam and Maria
Hlavajova’s at BAK in Utrecht (2010, 13). According to O’Neill and Wilson, these
experimental, though often short-lived institutional models, can be described by a
counter-institutional ethos, focus on durational dialogical process, and an aspiration
to open up the hierarchical models of both the institution and its operational
practices (2010, 13-14). What is noteworthy is that the educational aspect is not that
of ‘schooling’, meaning that the institution would educate its visitors. Instead the
idea is to open up a space for exchange of different knowledges, and see the art
space more as a space for critical discussion and negotiation of cultural values. One
could also mention Maria Lind’s more recent work at Tensta Konsthall in
Stockholm53, Emily Pethick’s work at Showroom in London, and Binna Choi’s at

curatorial programs across the globe, some creative thinking has to be done to determine
which jobs they should look for. The existing curatorial positions simply won’t suffice”
(2010, 66). I discuss this further at the very end if this chapter.
52
It is probably not a coincidence, that when the first postgraduate programme in curating
in Finland got started in 2010 at Aalto University in Helsinki, the programme was titled
CuMMA – Curating, Managing and Mediating Art. The professor of the course during the
inaugurational years was Nora Sternfeld, whose practice is focused on both education and
curating.
53
Lind opens up her work at Tensta Konsthall for example in her article “Tensta Museum:
Reports from New Sweden” (2015).

60
Casco in Utrecht. During my curatorial course in 2009, I did an internship at
Botkyrka konsthall, located in a suburb of Stockholm. The director of the kunsthalle
at the time was curator Joanna Sandell, who had initiated a similar structure for the
space. The exhibition programming was adapted to an architectural setting enabling
discussion and creating a special space reserved for dialogue. Each member of the
staff held their office in the exhibition space certain days of the week, opening up
the traditionally enclosed space of the office and dissolving hierarchies between the
staff. The exhibition space was also opened up towards the municipal library in the
neighbouring space, allowing library visitors to purposefully or accidentally wander
into the exhibition space. As we see here, what is at stake is a discursive and non-
hierarchical space both for art, and a multitude of stopovers; it doesn’t in the end
concern education in any traditional sense.

When talking about major historical changes in curatorial practices within the past
two decades, curator Mary Ann Jacob names the shift to understanding the audience
as a protagonist of an exhibition (Hoffmann 2014, 246). This shift includes the
theme of participation in much of the art of the early 2000s (as discussed in the
introduction), but also a subtler negotiation, or engagement, between a work of art
and a viewer. Indeed, I argue that the focus towards audiences and the acts of
mediating, which have essentially remained in curatorial discourses, can be seen as
effects of the educational turn. Mediation of art, and the idea of the curator as a
‘middle-wo/man’ has appeared as another aspect of the educational turn. A few
curatorial publications around this time focused more on the aspect of mediation. In
Imagining Audiences: Viewing positions in curatorial and artistic practice (2012), edited by
Magdalena Malm and Annika Wik, the topic of mediating is approached through
focus on the role of audiences as the object of curatorial and artistic practices. The
editors were at the time running a non-profit art organisation called Mobile Art
Productions, which produced site-specific projects with contemporary artists in
different locations in Sweden outside gallery spaces. In the book the audience is
then understood and discussed mostly outside traditional spaces for art.

61
In Ten Fundamental Questions of Curating (2013), edited by Jens Hoffmann, Maria Lind
focuses on the question: Why mediate art? According to Lind, the question about
mediating concerns topics of locating the audiences, as well as understanding how
art functions as part of the society and culture today (2013, 85). Lind finds a model
for educational practices with art in collectivist approaches to spectatorship,
promoted for example by artist El Lissitzky and curator Alexander Dorner (2013,
87). The model “encouraged a varied and active experience through dynamic
exhibition design, where things looked different from different angles, while
simultaneously emphasizing the totality of the installation. It also promoted ideas of
shared, collective encounters with art” (2013, 87). Similar approaches to audiences
Lind finds in the work of Group Material, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Philippe
Parreno, and Liam Gillick. What is important, is that mediation is also about a
dialogue between the curator and the works exhibited: the work itself has great
significance to how it should be mediated. What mediation ideally is for Lind, is
“creating contact surfaces between works of art, curated projects, and people, about
various forms and intensities of communicating about and around art” (2013, 88).

In the introduction to the publication It’s all mediating: Outlining and incorporating the
roles of curating and education in the exhibition context (2013), one of the editors, museum
educator Kaija Kaitavuori notes, that in the flow of the educational turn, their
publication strives also to unravel hierarchies between curators and art educators:
“Rather than signifying a new turn, this sort of discourse is only a new chapter in an
old book. It is largely the outcome of a standing hierarchy. When we talk about the
relationship between curating and education, we have to bear in mind the existing
power balance, or rather, the unbalance between them. The difference in status
between curatorial and educational functions has been noted by many writers and
observers” (2013, xiii). The book brings up an important question regarding the
valuation of education versus curatorial work. Promotion of the educational turn
from the side of the curators can be partly seen as a provocation for the educators
who have been working on the topics in question all along, only undervalued.
Museum education has indeed been conceptualised as a field of its own, and in this
sense, it is refreshing that Kaitavuori brings museum education, somewhat

62
provokingly, into the field of curating to address the relations and tensions between
the fields (2013, xii-xvii).54

What have remained essential topics in curatorial practice after the educational turn,
are the topics of locating audiences and mediating art. As part of this, the relation
the curator creates with an artist, or at least with a work of art, rises to the fore. As
emphasized by Maria Lind above, mediating necessarily requires research and
understanding of an artist’s practice. As has by now become evident, mediating can
be seen as one of the most essential tasks of the curator: art is always exhibited for
someone. As I’m later on focusing specifically on the topic of affect, the idea of
mediation is essential to my arguments in this study.

Contemporary curating

From curatorship to curatorial practices

The proliferation of biennials occurred at a moment at which curatorship opened

out to become an expanded field that went beyond mere display and material
production, to take account of the discursive and distributional modes of exchange
while acting as a catalyst for challenging what we know and the ways in which it
becomes known. Although the expansion of the biennial exhibition model is both a
symptom and a condition of our globally networked age, its myriad forms have
provided small moments of resistance, dissensus, antagonism, and counter
spectacle in relation to the grand narratives of art history, consumer culture, mass
entertainment, and the market-driven hegemonic forces of global capitalism
(O’Neill 2012, 84).

In this quote, O’Neill summarises discourses initiated by the emergence of biennial

culture, and which remain prevalent on the curatorial field still today: curatorship as
an expanded field beyond material production; obtaining an active position to

54
Educational and pedagogical aspects within the museum institution in relation to both
temporary exhibitions, the display of permanent collections, and the operations within the
museum as a whole have been largely discussed in the field of museum studies, which I
have not included as part of this thesis because of the focus on contemporary curatorial
discourses and independent curatorship. For educational and pedagogical aspects relating
to museum institutions, see e.g. Hooper-Greenhill 2007; 1992.

63
knowledge production; self-criticism in terms of modes of practice and discourse;
consciousness of the practice as part of a greater cultural field of art history, critical
theory, consumer culture, mass entertainment and global capitalism.

As my analysis shows by now, curatorial thought is today a multitude of approaches

and voices. Proposals to what curating can be have been made over the past thirty
years, and are still made today.55 O’Neill notes, that in the beginning of the 1990s,
most anthologies on curating came out of international meetings, symposia and
conferences.56 This highlights again the need the field has had of oral histories, as
well as the format of symposia and conferences in creating a critical base for a
profession on the grow.

Along with literature on curatorial practices emerging, also journals focusing on

curatorial practice appeared as platforms for critical discussion. Manifesta Journal for
Contemporary Curating was initiated in 2003 as an independent project by the
Manifesta Foundation. Online journal ONCURATING.org was initiated in 2008 by
Dorothee Richter as a platform for discussing curatorial practice and theory. The
first issue of The Exhibitionist came out in 2010 with Jens Hoffmann as its founding
editor, providing a platform for critical discussion. The Journal of Curatorial Studies,
initiated in 2012 has a more academic approach, being an international peer-
reviewed journal.

55
Only on the day of writing this in August 2018 I have discovered a recent publication on
curating, The Curatorial Complex: Social Dimensions of Knowledge Production (2018) by Wiebke
Gronemeyer, focusing on the social function of curating.
56
These include Meta 2: The New Spirit in Curating (1992) by Ute Meta Bauer, Naming a
Practice: Curatorial Strategies for the Future (1996) edited by Peter White, On Curating: The
contemporary art museum and beyond (1997) edited by Anna Harding, Stopping the process:
Contemporary Views on Art and Exhibitions (1998) edited by Mika Hannula, Curating Degree
Zero, An International Curating Symposium (1999) edited by Barnaby Drabble and Dorothee
Richter, The Edge of Everything: Reflections on Curatorial Practice (2000) edited by Catherine
Thomas, Curating in the 21st Century (2000) edited by Dave Beech and Gavin Wade, The
Producers: Contemporary Curators in Conversation (Series 1-5) (2000-2002) edited by Susan Hiller
and Sarah Martin, Foci: Interviews with 10 international curators (2001) edited by Carolee Thea,
Curating Now: Imaginative Practice? (2001) edited by Paula Marincola, Words of Wisdom: A
Curator’s Vade Mecum (2001) edited by Carin Kuoni, Beyond the Box: Diverging Curatorial
Practices (2003) edited by Melanie Townsend, MIB – Men in Black: Handbook of Curatorial
Practice (2004) edited by Christoph Tannert, Ute Tischler and Künstlerhaus Bethanien, and
Curating with Light Luggage (2005) edited by Liam Gillick and Maria Lind (O’Neill 2007, 13).

64
As it is by now evident, Paul O’Neill has been extremely active in contributing to
discussions and literature on contemporary curating (2007; 2010; 2012; 2016). His
point of departure is in the need to direct critical focus away from first person
narratives and on processes of curating and institutional power structures, rather
than outcomes of curatorial practices, or the curators themselves (2007, 13).
However, even if O’Neill states this as his driving force, the first anthology he
edited on curating, Curating subjects (2007), does take the curator as a character as its
starting point. The difference here is, though, that the curators do not tell first-
person-narratives, but critically think and write about other curator’s projects and
practices.

In The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Cultures (2012) O’Neill maps out the
development of curatorship and contemporary curatorial discourse. A central point
in his research is the globalization of the art world in the 1990s and the emergence
of biennial culture. The biennial and the globalization of the art world appear
actually as the two intertwined and simultaneous causes and effects in relation to
what curatorial practice was, and what forms it has taken today. The history of
contemporary curatorship and curating appear in O’Neill’s writing strongly as a
developmental narrative. He does acknowledge his own position as a practitioner in
the field he is writing about, and the intent to be critical of it (2012, 4). At one point,
he brings up Hans Ulrich Obrist’s endeavour of inscribing a history of curating
grounded in the present as an example, pointing out how Obrist as part of this
process tends to write in his own practice as a logical continuation of the previous
masters’ work (2012, 41). While writing about the history of the field, and adding his
own projects as part of it, it appears as if O’Neill is in fact doing the same. As a
curator, artist, writer and educator, O’Neill is himself essentially intertwined in the
international art world, having produced exhibitions in central art capitals, having
participated in creating several curatorial discourses, and having been teaching
curating (de Appel and Bard Center for Curatorial Studies). The discourses O’Neill
builds in his research, also position him and his practice as part of its development –
and, of course, in the most evolved end as a nomadic international curator, applying
critical theory in their practice. As I am employing a similar structure of study as

65
O’Neill – creating a narrative around feminist curatorial practices and reflecting my
own practice in it – I have been cautious of the topic. I am returning to it in the
concluding chapter.

The list of publications grown out of conferences shows (see above), that there is a
large number of volumes available on curating. The trouble with anthologies is, that
these publications usually present a selection of fragments of individual points of
view. This is why O’Neill’s writing practice has been particularly valuable to the
field, accompanied so far mainly by Terry Smith’s two volumes Thinking
Contemporary Curating (2012) and Talking Contemporary Curating (2015). O’Neill’s
research into the field of curating is insightful, and its focus is on the art and realised
projects, as well as on the development of curatorial thinking and discourses, and
not as much on curators as persons. The research is conducted by using the existing
first-person-narratives, and bringing forth the reoccurring thoughts and themes.
This narrative, which is more analytical of the practices, wasn’t written until his
doctoral research and the publication of The culture of curating and the curating of
culture(s). However, what I find problematic, is that feminist critique is completely
absent from this “universal” narrative of curatorial discourses in Europe and
Northern America O’Neill writes about. For example, O’Neill discusses Lucy
Lippard’s practice in relation to conceptual art and her seminal ‘numbers shows’
(2012, 14-15), but does not take up her investment in feminist critique and work
with women artists at the time in any way. When talking about the educational turn
in curating and artistic practices, feminist participatory works and radical pedagogies
would seem like an evident reference point. However, these do not appear as part of
the main narrative in the turn to education. In his book Thinking Contemporary
Curating (2012) Terry Smith does acknowledge the blockbuster exhibitions on
feminist and women art, arranged at major national museums and galleries post-
2005 in Europe and North America (2012, 147-151). On the other hand, feminist
thought does not appear elsewhere in his writing. All and all, women curators start
emerging in the mainstream narratives of curating only along with the emergence of
biennial culture in the late 1980s. Lucy Lippard is the only woman curator/critic
who is mentioned along with her male peers in the pre-biennial boom period. After

66
this, some women curators are more often mentioned, mainly Ute Meta Bauer,
Maria Lind, Catherine David, Mary Jane Jacob, and Carolyn Christov-Bagarkiev.57

How to work with art

Since the late 1960s, contemporary curating has changed from being an activity
primarily involved with organising exhibitions of discrete artworks to a practice with
a considerably extended remit. Today’s curating may be distinguished from its
precedents by a new emphasis upon the activities associated with the framing and
mediation, as well as with the circulation of ideas about art. So it is no longer
primarily based on arts’ production and display. That is why I support the use of the
term “curating” as an expansive category that includes exhibition making,
commissioning, editing, discursive production, cooperative working and modes of
self-organisation.” Paul O’Neill (in Amundsen & Mørland 2010, 7)

Quoting again O’Neill, it can be stated that contemporary curatorial practices lean
towards discursive practices of mediation and communication, and contextualisation
of art as part of curated projects. Curatorial work is expanded from producing an
exhibition as an outcome, to include the whole process involved in working with
contemporary art in its various forms. Discussions on contemporary curating relate
then much more to the question of ‘how to work with art as a curator’ than ‘how to
define a curator’. What becomes necessarily part of the discussion are the social,
historical, cultural and epistemological meanings of curatorial practices: how these
practices are intertwined with practices of making art, but also politics, financial
structures, and the larger cultural sphere.

In the contemporary curatorial discourses, curatorial work has extended the person
of the curator in the sense that it reaches outside the individual curatorial practice:
what arises are links to social and cultural matters and situatedness of the practice.

57
As a topic for future research, an investigation into gender aspect in the process of the
emergence of the independent curator might be interesting. My assumption is, that there
have always been women working as curators in museum institutions. It would be
interesting to see how the gender aspect would affect the narrative, in terms of how
creative curatorial positions and the positions which require the care-work in art
institutions (administration) have been divided after this turning point.

67
Curating is discussed, perhaps even preferably, as taking various organisational forms,
relying on collaborative models and structures of working. As O’Neill puts it: “This
frames the curatorial as a durational, transformative, and speculative activity, a way
of keeping things in flow, mobile, in between, indeterminate, crossing over and
between people, identities, and things, encouraging certain ideas to come to the fore
in an emergent communicative process …” (2012, 89). The communication and
collaboration concern first the relationship between the artist and the curator: an
exhibition becomes often a collaborative, or even a collective activity, where
processes of artistic production are explored, discussed and mediated. Here an
exhibition can be seen as a waypoint in a process rather than as a finished product
(2012, 116). O’Neill mentions curators such as Ute Meta Bauer, Charles Esche,
Nicolaus Schafhausen, Barbara Vanderlinden and Igor Zabel as curators who have
contributed to this form of curating through their practices. O’Neill calls this a
performative and dialogical model of curating, where the exhibition becomes a
space of constant renegotiation between the participating bodies (2012, 116). These
models of curating may be understood as reactions toward, or against, the singly
authored model of curating presenting the curator as an auteur.58 The shift further
away from issues around the person of the curator, and toward critical investigation
of the practice of curating, can be seen in the literature on the field. The focus in
publications after the turn of the millennium has been more directly on questions
relating to how to work with art.59

58
In Stockholm, I worked on a project with similar aims in 2011-2012. The project, titled
Provrummet (fitting room in Swedish, but also a room for testing and experimenting), was
carried out regularly in an artist-run space in a suburb of Stockholm. As part of it, I realised
short exhibitions and events with artists, creating a safe space where to test ideas, plans, or
collaborations. The events were open to public.
59
These titles include Issues in curating contemporary art and performance (2007) edited by Judith
Rugg and Michèle Sedgwick, Curating Critique (2007) edited by Marianne Eigenheer,
Dorothee Richter and Barnaby Drabble, Cautionary Tales: Critical Curating (2007) edited by
Steven Rand and Heather Kouris, Rotterdam Dialogues: The Critics, The Curators, The Artists
(2010) edited by Zoë Gray, The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s) (2012) by Paul
O’Neill, Thinking Contemporary Curating (2012) by Terry Smith, Ten Fundamental Questions of
Curating (2013) edited by Jens Hoffmann, Curating and Politics Beyond the Curator: Initial
Reflections (2015) edited by Heidi Bale Amundsen and Gerd Elise Morland, Talking
Contemporary Curating (2015) by Terry Smith, Curating Research (2015) edited by Paul O’Neill
and Mick Wilson, The Curatorial Conundrum: What to Study? What to Research? What to Practice?
(2016) edited by Paul O’Neill, Mick Wilson and Lucy Steeds, The New Curator: Researcher,
Commissioner, Keeper, Interpreter, Producer, Collaborator (2016) edited by Natasha Hoare, and

68
Art historian Terry Smith approaches the question of curating through the concept
of the contemporary (2012; 2015). Particularly in Thinking Contemporary Curating
(2012) Smith is on a quest to find an overarching definition of contemporary curatorial
practice: “… broadly speaking, contemporary curating aims to display some aspect
of the individual and collective experience of what it is, or was, or might be, to be
contemporary” (2012, 30; original emphasis). For Smith, the key element to
discussing curating is how it relates to the setting of the practice as part of
contemporary state of things. On his quest, Smith arrives also to definitions such as
this one on the act of exhibiting:
To exhibit is … to bring a selection of such existents (along, perhaps, with other
relevant kinds), or newly created works of art, into a shared space (which may be a
room, a site, a publication, a web portal, or an app) with the aim of demonstrating,
primarily through the experiential accumulation of visual connections, a particular
constellation of meaning that cannot be made known by any other means (2012,
30).

As the abstraction in this definition of the act of exhibiting shows, this might not be
a useful way to think about contemporary curating; it is difficult to do anything with
a definition such as this. It might be added, that some curators may work with
immaterial works of art, such as sound based art or perhaps scents, where the visual
connections Smith mentions wouldn’t apply. Even the visual connections would
have to be reformulated as sensory connections. In any case, perhaps partly because
realising the emptiness this abstraction leads to, in the second volume Talking
Contemporary Curating (2015) Smith engages in dialogue with curators working with
various agendas, methods and platforms, focusing more on the material basis of the
praxis.

Other publications, such as The New Curator: Researcher, Commissioner, Keeper,

Interpreter, Producer, Collaborator (2016) edited by Natasha Hoare, emphasize the
multitude of practices and positions included in contemporary curating. In a sense,

Empty Stages, Crowded Flats: Performativity as Curatorial Strategy (2017) edited by Florian
Malzacher and Joanna Warsza.

69
this publication returns to first-person-narratives discussed above.60 At the same
time, the publication differs from these as well, as the aim is to open up, discuss,
and contextualise the variety of practices (though the topics of research,
commissioning, collection work, mediation, producing, and collaborating), which
are not directly discussed in the previous anthologies. The publication presents the
work of 15 women curators and 17 men curators. The topic of feminism is brought
up as part of four presentations in the publication, and as a driving force only in the
project Weight (2013) by artists Ragnar Kjartansson and Andjeas Ejiksson as part of
the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art. The artists’ curatorial
and performative project took place over two days in the biennial, taking Carolee
Schneemann’s practice as its inspirational and political starting point (Kjartansson &
Ejiksson 2016, 182-184).

The Curatorial Conundrum: What to Study? What to Research? What to Practice? (2016)
edited by Paul O’Neill, Mick Wilson and Lucy Steeds ties the areas of education,
research and practice into one whole. The essays in each section brings up critical
questions that the writers consider left aside in current discussions. Again, the
articles bring up a variety of views, positions, approaches and methodologies,
focusing though clearly on critical positions, as well as political topics regarding
gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and nationality, within a curatorial discourse.
Curator Vivian Ziherl’s experimental essay “In Search of a Flashlight: The Intimate
Politics of the Curatorial” takes feminist politics as a point of departure, while
calling for an aesthetic solidarity among practitioners in the art world. According to
Ziherl, curatorial practice should activate an ethical sense in terms of solidarity and
communication, as a reaction against the capitalist art world governed by
competition and acceleration (2016, 224).

There remains an existing need to contextualise abstract writing on curating and its
theories to actual practices and projects. The conundrum is, that here we seem to
fall again into the path of first-person-narratives. Perhaps the key is a balance

60
Yet, it must be noted, this is a distinct path from the co-existing single-authored celebrity
curator narrative.

70
between thinking about concrete curatorial projects, and carefully contextualising
them in the current socio-economico-cultural situations, other practices, as well as
theory. As we see in Smith’s attempts to define contemporary curatorial practice
without a specific context, it becomes evident a curatorial practice cannot be
meaningfully defined like this. Curatorial practice is not an independent set of
procedures, methods, or a set philosophy, that could be adapted to any given
situation or project as such. Instead, a curatorial practice along with its methods,
theories and approaches, is always in a flux, changing according to the setting where
it will be used. Most importantly, a curatorial practice adapts to the art that the
curator works with. Contemporary curating cannot be defined as a pre-determined
set of practices, as an approach, or as a discourse.

Curating / the curatorial

Performing the curatorial

Above I have written about how the discourses on curatorship and the practices of
curating have developed since the late 1980s. In a nutshell, the focus has shifted
from the caretaker of collections and administrator of exhibitions, to the
independent curator and practices outside museum institutions and galleries. The
discussions have shifted from the singly authored exhibition model, encouraged by
the proliferation of biennial culture, towards more discursive models of curating,
which propose alternative and collaborative models of curating, and where dialogue,
research and process are emphasized.

As O’Neill argues, the critical focus has for too long been on the outcomes of
curating, such as an exhibition, a catalogue, or an event (2007, 13). A number of
curators and artists at the time, for example curators Irit Rogoff and Maria Lind, as
well as artist Liam Gillick, felt the same (Lind 2010, 65). In her essay “Smuggling:
An Embodied Criticality” (2008) curator and critical theorist Irit Rogoff writes
about the curatorial as a way of unravelling current curatorial models of determined

71
or limited outcomes planned in advance. Working through the curatorial as a
process where art unfolds in relation to its surrounds, its contexts, viewers and
readers, is brought to the fore. Here the curatorial process, and perhaps particularly
its process of unfolding, reminds that of a site-specific, process-oriented artistic
practice.

Another curator who has found the focus on curatorial outcomes and the topic of
curatorship particularly problematic is Maria Lind. In the aforementioned column,
titled “The curatorial” (2009), Lind employed the term “the curatorial” in order to
find and address something that defines a curator’s practice beyond the background
the curator may have (artist, art historian, cultural producer), and beyond the area
the curatorial process they may be active in (critique, editing, research, education,
fundraising) (2010, 63). The leading idea in Lind’s text is to talk about curating in an
expanded field, outside the processes of exhibition making. The curatorial is a way
of thinking in terms of “interconnections: linking objects, images, processes, people,
locations, histories, and discourses in physical space like an active catalyst,
generating twists, turns, and tensions” (2010, 63). What is essential, is that all these
actions are made in order to put the artwork in the centre of it all – to encourage
one to think from it, around it, against it, and with it.

In this dense column on the curatorial, Lind describes the curatorial in relation to
political theorist Chantal Mouffe’s (2005) notion of the political, where the term is
defined as an ever-present potential inherent in societies, growing out of the bond
and dynamic between the majority and the opposition, and which cannot quite be
located. For Mouffe, politics is the formal part where the political is practiced:
decisions are made and orders reproduced.61 Following this, Lind sees curating as the
formal processes of making exhibitions and other curatorial projects happen, and the
curatorial as “a more viral presence consisting of signification processes and
relationships between objects, people, places, ideas, and so forth, a presence that

61
Lind doesn’t mention this, but Mouffe’s notion bases on Gilles Deleuze and Michel
Foucault’s discussion (1977) on the differences between politics and the political.

72
strives to create friction and push new ideas” (2010, 64).62 Taking its form in various
ways in the interconnectedness and links between material and immaterial things,
the curatorial, or perhaps, the workings of the curatorial, can be detected and discussed
also through concrete projects. As an example Lind brings up São Paulo Biennial of
2008, curated by Ivo Mesquita and Ana Paula Cohen. Here Lind detects the
curatorial in “the careful consideration of the biennial’s history, the current
institutional situation in São Paulo and in Brazil, and in the combination of artists
and types of artworks, as well as in the spatial organization” (2010, 65). The
curatorial works against the status quo, in the dynamics of various layers and actors
coming together. Instead of representing something from a set source or background,
the curatorial performs something in the actual moment. Here, we are again at the
heart of matter with the question: what can an exhibition or a curatorial practice do?
Lind thus emphasizes the curatorial as something that unfolds in the experience of an
exhibition, for example. In a sense, the curatorial appears as a process which we
cannot completely plan in advance. There may be intentions, approaches and
methods, but how the process will actually take place, how it will unfold, and what it
will hence produce, remains unknown and can only be speculated on.

Lind was in charge of a research project titled “Performing the curatorial”, which
started in 2009 within the Cultural Heritage platform at the University of
Gothenburg in Sweden. The research group consisted of researchers from fields of
curating, museum studies, history, archaeology, and visual arts. The aim was to
study curating “within art in order to try to conceive of it as beyond art, pushing it
towards the cross-disciplinary and the curatorial” (Lind 2012, 9). The research group
realised three symposiums on the topic of the curatorial, leading to the publication
Performing the curatorial: Within and beyond art (2012). Beyond mere exhibition making,
the curatorial seeks to engage with art as an on-going process of ideas. The
curatorial refers to sets of signification processes and relationships between objects,
people, places and ideas, that work to develop thinking around what art can do
(2012, 16-20).

62
For Lind’s view in relation to Mouffe’s the political, see also 2012, 19-20; 2013b.

73
In the introduction to a recent publication on curating, Empty Stages, Crowded Flats:
Performativity as Curatorial Strategy (2017), the editors Florian Malzacher and Joanna
Warsza define the performative curatorial model by following Judith Butler’s theory
of “the performative capacity to transform reality with words and other cultural
utterances” (2017, 11). Performative curating is here understood then as a form of
‘reality-making’, and simultaneously nodding towards the curator’s role in this
process as the ‘reality-maker’. As I understand it, the way Rogoff and Lind write
about performing the curatorial is something different to this. Here the focus is
more on how the curated event – whatever it may be – plays out in the moment of
the different actors and elements in the project coming together. This is something I
strongly recognise, and also embrace, in work with art. A curatorial concept may
have aims and hopes of what it will achieve when realised, but the more air there is
in these expectations, the more interesting the outcome usually is. The contingency
I talk about has to do with our affective encounters with art, and the outcomes
which we may plan and desire, but simultaneously cannot predict.

Taking the curatorial as a starting point for discussing curatorial work with art opens
up possibilities of discussing meanings of curatorial practices in more elaborate ways
than focusing strictly on the processes of curating projects. In this thesis, I argue
that this concept in fact enables us to discuss feminism and curating outside any
thematic exhibition setting, and enables us to discuss the transformative potential
feminist curatorial work with art can entail. What comes to focus is collaboration
with artists and spaces, consideration of what making art public in a specific context
means for the artworks, and what kind of ideas and ideologies are put in use in the
process of working.

Curatorial knowledge production

In recent publications, the curatorial has been taken as a point of departure in order
to expand and critically analyse the prevalent curatorial paradigm towards curatorial
actions and thinking, and to open up and develop critical discussion beyond the

74
processes of making art public.63 The articles in these anthologies are by writers
from the fields of contemporary art, philosophy, critical theory, cultural studies,
anthropology, and education. The discussions presented emphasize the inclusion
and significance of curatorial practices as part of larger social, historical and cultural
structures.

Jean-Paul Martinon and Irit Rogoff have since 2006 directed the practice-led PhD
programme Curatorial/Knowledge at Goldsmiths University of London. In the
preface to The Curatorial: Philosophy of Curating Rogoff and Martinon summarise their
thinking on curating and the curatorial. The aspects of curating they wish to grasp
are: its potentials and scopes, the knowledges it builds on as well as the knowledges
it produces, its sociabilities, collectivities and convivialities, its commitments to
seeing, reading, speaking and exchanging as a form of public activity, and the
possibilities it entails for other ways of working, relating and knowing (2013, viii-xi).
The need to critically reflect and theorise the practice of curating refers here also to
the proliferation of the curatorial field within a relatively short period of time.
According to Rogoff and Martinon, “all this activity is not founded on a solid
intellectual basis that might empower its practitioners to have the critical courage to
resist demands to simply supply more and more excitement to a market ravenous
for spectacle and entertainment” (2013, ix). The curatorial emerges thus partly as a
critical reaction to the prevailing state of curatorial practices and its location as part
of a capitalist art market driven scene. Interestingly enough, art or any form of
making art public, are not mentioned as part of this list. Instead, the topics
mentioned are aspects concerning social or cultural issues practices of curating are
linked with. None of the essays in the book address work with art either, as the

63
The curatorial has been discussed in the anthology The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating
(2013) edited by Jean-Paul Martinon, as well as in the series Cultures of the Curatorial,
including titles Cultures of the Curatorial (2012) edited by Beatrice von Bismarck, Jörn
Schafaff and Thomas Weski, Timing: On the Temporal Dimension of Exhibiting (2014) edited by
Beatrice von Bismarck, Rike Frank, Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer, Jörn Schafaff and Thomas
Weski, and Hospitality: Hosting Relations in Exhibitions (2016) edited by Beatrice von Bismarck
and Benjamin Meyer-Krahmer. The former publication is affiliated with the
Curatorial/Knowledge PhD programme at Goldsmiths College in London, and the latter
with the Cultures of the Curatorial postgraduate study programme at the Academy of
Visual Arts in Leipzig.

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essence of the curatorial is being discussed more as a philosophical and theoretical
practice, or perhaps, an ethical stance.

The Cultures of the Curatorial postgraduate study programme at the Academy of

Visual Arts in Leipzig was initiated by Beatrice von Bismarck in 2009. These two
educational programmes have then been initiated approximately around the same
time, and their approaches appear to be similar in terms of their focus on expanding
the field of curating towards the concept of the curatorial, along with the theoretical
and philosophical take on curating itself. In a conversation between Irit Rogoff and
Beatrice von Bismarck (2012) the writers discuss the epistemological aspect of
curating and the curatorial. Rogoff in particular is interested in the curatorial as a
site for knowledge production. She refers to the curatorial also when talking about a
particular kind of knowledge, produced cross-disciplinarily in the intersections of
various fields, and through spatial arrangements that allow different ways of
participating in these events of knowledge (noted by Lind 2012, 18). Rogoff’s
interests are in understanding activities within the curatorial as an epistemic
structure aiming for knowledge production: “The curatorial seems to be an ability to
think everything that goes into the event of knowledge in relation to one another”
(2012, 23). Rogoff emphasizes a relational aspect of knowledge production,
presenting it as a field of coming together of approaches and previous sets of
knowledges. Beatrice von Bismarck in her turn understands the curatorial as a
constellational activity (2012, 24). Unlike Rogoff, who sees curating as a
representational activity, separate from the curatorial, as an on-going process
beyond materiality and representation, for von Bismarck activities in curating feed
into the curatorial. For her, the curatorial is a dynamic field where a constellational
condition comes into being, and is constituted by curatorial techniques as well as
different participants and elements (2012, 24).

According to Rogoff, the practice of curating operates in the regime of the

representational and aims towards an end product, in which art is in some form
made public: an exhibition, a catalogue, or an event. Curating stands for the
technical and practical activities, through which art is made public. The curatorial,

76
on the other hand, turns to a set of possibilities for larger agendas in the art world
and beyond it, with focus on on-going social, cultural and political processes (2012,
22-23). Here the emphasis is on activity, and what is happening in the moment of
experience and knowledge. This idea links also to Lind’s thoughts on performing
the curatorial, and the significance of the unfolding in the moment. In Rogoff’s
view, it is the potential embedded in the curatorial process that comes through in
the event of knowledge. It appears almost as a necessity to focus on this in
curatorial work and research: challenging existing ways of thinking and encouraging
alternative ways of thinking, are presented as the main purposes of meaningful
curatorial practice. Focusing on the curatorial is to develop a discourse that reaches
outwards, instead on inwards such as in descriptions of curatorial projects and
experiences.

I am in this thesis employing the concept of the curatorial mostly in the light Irit
Rogoff described it in 2008, and where Maria Lind continued from in 2009. The
curatorial is then a tool for exploring the relational aspects of curatorial practices in
terms of art, artists, curators, spaces, as well as audiences. As much as I see potential
in the concept, I have also had my doubts. One problematic aspect is that the
curatorial as a concept has provably emerged in relation to, and also in connection
with, curatorial postgraduate programmes. It is writers deeply affiliated with two
different educational programmes, Curatorial/Knowledge and Cultures of the
Curatorial, who have produced the main part of literature regarding the concept.
Further, at the time of writing her column “The Curatorial” in 2009, Lind was
leading the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies. To conclude her text, Lind states:
If ’the curatorial’ – in a less qualitative and a more deadpan use of the term – can
be present in the work of practically anybody active within the field of
contemporary art, it could also be used as an escape route for someone who, like
myself, is responsible for graduating fifteen curatorial students per year. Where will
they find work? Given the proliferation of curatorial programs across the globe,
some creative thinking has to be done to determine which jobs they should look
for. The existing curatorial positions simply won’t suffice” (2010, 66).

This statement speaks volumes, and also takes some edge off Lind’s otherwise
strong argumentation on the usefulness, or rather, necessity, of thinking about

77
curating though the concept of the curatorial. Further, Lind continues on the same
topic in a more recent interview:

When I started studying in 1986, there was no such thing as curatorial studies. But I
don’t think I would have chosen it anyway, because from an early stage I felt that
curating is something you learn by doing. Most of the interesting curators I know
come from other fields rather than through curatorial programs. I advise younger
smart people to study one thing thoroughly, whether it’s languages, art history,
science or philosophy, and to work with art on the side. I would not, as a young
person today, spend two years of my life doing an MA in curating—if you want to
work as a curator” (Kaverina 2016, 2).

In the end, though, did Lind really grasp onto the concept mainly in order to find a
way not to feel guilty about producing curators to an art world which does not have
curatorial jobs for them? What Lind instead suggests in these early texts, is that we
could see making things happen in the departments of education, press, research, as
belonging to an expanded field of the curatorial, which concerns work with art in
different exhibitionary contexts. The curatorial does expand the field in a way that
one can think one is working as part of the curatorial for example in education,
public relations, marketing, or, as I have told myself, in research.

Another aspect I have been doubtful about, is the aspect of knowledge production.
I tend to read the knowledge production discussed by Rogoff quite literally – as a
requirement (or a burden?) towards a possible outcome of a curatorial practice,
towards the practice and process itself, or towards an audience. For me, the notion
of knowledge production has actually been quite provocative. I have contemplated
on it as a demand toward curated projects to take part in creating and disseminating
knowledge through art. This, again, could be understood as a statement about what
is seen as important in work with art: creating knowledge. Thinking about
production of knowledge, perhaps particularly in the context of curatorial projects
within a political field, we need to raise questions on the role of the art – what does
the work gain by being in the project? What kind of purposes does it serve, for itself
or for the project as a whole? What does this mean from the point of view of the
artist?

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On the other hand, knowledge production could be as much understood as an
abstract process the curator, the artist, the artwork, and a possible viewer are all
necessarily a part of – a relation where different experiences and knowledges come
together while encountering. An event of knowledge could be thought of in an
abstract sense, as intuition or as a cognition, that is part of an affective experience as
well. Because the ambivalence regarding ideas of knowledge production, I have
decided to in this thesis use the concepts of affect, encounter and transformation. In
another reading, these aspects could perhaps be incorporated as part of an abstract
event of knowledge production. The curatorial appears as a useful tool when
thinking about contemporary curating, and the forms it more and more often takes
as discursive, collaborative, research- and process-based practices. The curatorial
aims at departing from the work of art, and theorising the curatorial work as part of
its functions. Emphasis is on the contingency in the process of unfolding. This takes
us directly to the heart of things: the encounter with a work of art, and what this
encounter can do. Hence, I do see the curatorial as a useful tool for discussing
feminist practices within curating.

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3 Curating and feminist thought

In this chapter, I go through and analyse current research in which curatorial

practices and exhibition making are discussed within a feminist context. The focus
isn’t then straightforwardly on something we could call feminist curating, and instead, I
see the wider frame of ‘curating and feminist thought’ as a more fertile setting for
unravelling the different ways feminist politics has played part in curators’
practices.64 This chapter will not give a definition to how we might define feminist
curating, or what feminist curating is, or can be, in practice. Neither does this
chapter present a history of feminist exhibitions or art projects; I am not aiming at
mapping the field in this sense. Rather, I shed light on the intertwinements of
curating contemporary art and feminist theory and politics within the past few
decades. I am examining these intertwinements above all in the light of recent
critical writing on curatorial practices and feminisms.

In the early 2000s, almost parallel to the rapid increase in text produced about
curators and curating, and the proliferation of curatorial postgraduate programmes,
the art world witnessed another boom: a rapid expansion in production of large-
scale exhibitions presenting feminist art and women artists’ practices. These
exhibitions, most often taking their form as retrospective surveys rather than
thematic exhibitions, stating a relationship to feminist politics, and emerging at a
time when feminist radical politics of the 1970s was becoming history, were
arranged by major art museums, mainly in Europe, but also in Japan, the United
States, Iceland and Russia, and during a time span between 2005-2011 (Robinson
2013, 129-130). These exhibitions have been important in making art made by
feminist and women artists known more widely, and valuable also in provoking
critical discussion about equality and representation in art museums, the relations
between art and politics, and of course, the relations between feminist thought and

64
A symposium titled Curating in Feminist Thought was held in May 2016 at Migros Museum
and ZHdK in Zurich. Issue 29/May 2016 of ONCURATING.org has the same title, and
presents papers from the symposium. http://www.on-curating.org/issue-
29.html#.W4FUei17FE4 (Accessed 25/08/2018).

80
curating. My thesis doesn’t focus on analysing these exhibitions, which I am here
discussing only briefly. Instead, the boom of exhibitions is a starting point for this
thesis in the sense that reading literature on these survey exhibitions has led me to
think about other possible ways of working with art and feminisms. I am elaborating
this further throughout this chapter.

Feminist politics and art have been on a journey together since the 1960s. The
history of feminist art and feminist art exhibitions remains unwritten, but it can be
noted that it starts well before the year 2005 and the blockbuster exhibitions.65 This
research won’t offer this kind of historical review, which could already on its own
be a topic of several research projects. We have now, in 2018, passed the period of
large-scale feminist exhibitions (for now), but feminism remains a current and
vibrant topic in the field of contemporary art. Just as an example, at the moment of
writing up this thesis in the summer of 2018, feminism was the thematic topic of e-
flux journal (No. 92, June 2018), with another issue on the same topic following in
September 2018.66 In the editorial text, Julieta Aranda and Kaye Cain-Nielsen list
how they imagine feminism(s) to be defined today:
Productions, reproductions, lineages, of / by female images—or “the female
image”—whether in graphic or graphic novel or science fiction form. As well as, of
course, discourses on feminisms in contemporary art. In the production of the
heroine image. We are interested in contemporary art motherhood. Contemporary
working artists in motherhood. Contemporary mothers in the area of art. We are
interested, on a planetary level, in the de-gendering of the planet as mother.
Relatedly, there is consideration for levels of planetary damage and toxicity and
recognition of the phenomenon of “menvironmentalism.” … We look to feminist
space (besides and including outer). We looked to investigation, reflection, real
fight and flight and deep celebration; we sought and seek to listen to read and
present a symphonic, dissonant, layered, maximal collection on feminisms (Aranda
& Cain-Nielsen 2018).

65
Katy Deepwell has been collecting a comprehensive listing starting from 1971 on
exhibitions focusing on feminism, feminist art and art made by women artists:
http://www.ktpress.co.uk/feminist-art-exhibitions.asp (Accessed 25/08/2017).
66
Also, several articles in Mousse Magazine (No. 64, Summer 2018) touched upon feminism;
e.g. an interview with artist Kris Lemsalu, a discussion with Ericka Beckman, Dara
Birnbaum and Lynn Hershman Leeson, and interviews with Ghislaine Leung and Ulrike
Ottinger. e-flux journal issue 92, 6/2018, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/92, (accessed
19/09/2018), and issue 93, 9/2018, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/93/, (accessed
19/09/2018).

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Feminisms, as a movement and as a topic, remain topical in the art world. Partly
because of this, it is important to think about different ways of putting feminism
into practice as part of work with art.67 I begin this chapter by discussing political
aspects of curating, and move on to discussing the topic of gender equality in the art
world. I present a case study from the Swedish art scene to clarify how gender
equality may be worked on in art institutions. I am then discussing the
aforementioned feminist survey exhibitions, and analyse the critical context they
have been taken as part of. To conclude the chapter, I am discussing feminism in
relation to contemporary curatorial discourses, and thinking about the possibilities
for a curatorial practice in which feminism is embedded.

Politics of curating and political curating

When discussing feminist curatorial approaches and practices, curator Renée Baert
points out that unrecognised feminist aspirations have historically been unfolded as
part of generally more critical, or political, practices of curating (2010, 177).
Respectively, I begin here by looking for notions of feminist curatorial approaches
in a slightly vaster context of political curating. As I present in the previous chapter,
explicitly political frameworks, let alone feminist ones, are not widely discussed in
mainstream texts concerning contemporary curating. Yet, the practice of curating
itself is recognised to have political significance, as curatorial work carries with itself
for example economic and social consequences and actively takes part in the
process of “world-making”. Curatorial practices are not neutral or innocent activities,
as for example O’Doherty (1976/1999), O’Neill (2007, 2012) and Filipovic (2013)
have noted, but always alive through different kinds of ideological, personal, and
thematic discourses.

67
Symposia, talks, events and conferences on feminism, art and curating have not ceased to
exist either. In July 2017 Nottingham Contemporary arranged a discussion with the title
‘Feminist curating; an active network?’ as part of their New Institutionalities #2 event
series; symposium ‘Unsettling Feminist Curating’ was arranged at The Academy of Fine
Arts Vienna in December 2017; and in April 2018 University of California, Berkley
arranged a roundtable talk ‘Feminist Curatorial Practices’.

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While the role of the curator as an author has become stronger, it is clear that a
curator’s responsibility over what an exhibition or a project conveys and mediates,
has been growing parallel to this.68 There are curators and curatorial collectives that
work explicitly with political agendas, and not only in the margins of the art world. I
am not focusing specifically on these actors in this study, but regarding active
collectives working in the mainstream art world (meaning that these two collectives
have for example curated international biennials) one can mention What, How &
for Whom (WHW), formed in 1999 in Zagreb, Croatia, by Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević,
Nataša Ilić, Sabina Sabolović, and Dejan Kršić. Another example is Raqs Media
Collective, founded in 1992 by Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata
Sengupta in New Delhi, India. In a feminist context, one can mention for example
Kuratorisk Aktion, founded in 2005 in Demark by curators Frederikke Hansen and
Tone Olaf Nielsen, as well as h.arta, founded in 2001 by artists Maria Crista, Anca
Gyemant and Rodica Tache in Timisoara, Romania. Collective work is proven to be
a useful strategy for curators working with political agendas. Collective and political
work with art and curating could, again, be a topic for a research on its own.69 More
than curatorial ethics and responsibility though, I am here interested in political
aspirations manifesting in curatorial practices: the will and intention to cause shifts,
changes and transformations in a larger social and cultural context.

As discussed in the previous chapter, writing on curating by curators has reached a

more critical stance during the first decade of the 2000s; to a certain extent, this
critical discourse does entail nuances of political consciousness as well (e.g. Filipovic
& Vanderlinden 2005; Filipovic 2013; O’Neill 2012; O’Neill, Wilson & Steeds 2016).

68
As a few examples: Raqs Media Collective’s article “Curatorial Responsibility’ (2010) in
The Biennial Reader: An anthology on large-scale perennial exhibitions of contemporary art, (eds.)
Filipovic, E., van Hal, M., and Øvstebø; Manifesta Journal No. 12 (2010/2011) is dedicated
to the topic of ethics; Rotterdam Dialogues: The Critics, The Curators, The Artists (2010) edited
by Zoë Gray, has specific focus on the responsibility of the curator; and Kunsthalle Wien
arranged a conference in April 2015 on curatorial ethics
(http://kunsthallewien.at/#/en/events/curatorial-ethics, Accessed 03/07/2017).
69
A relatively recent PhD research on collective curating is “The End of The Curator: On
Curatorial Acts as Collective Production of Knowledge” (2016) by Corina Oprea
(Loughborough University). More on collective curating also in Manifesta Journal, Issue 8
“Collective curating”.

83
Norwegian curators and scholars Heidi Bale Amundsen and Gerd Elise Mørland
have been particularly interested in the question of political potential of curating,
and have edited an interview issue on the topic in ONCURATING.org (2010)
including interviews with curators Mary Anne Staniszewski, Simon Sheikh, Paul
O’Neill and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. A continuation to this is the anthology
Curating and Politics Beyond the Curator: Initial Reflections (2015). In 2010 Amundsen and
Mørland situate the political potential of curating in the status of the exhibition, and
the roles an exhibition can play in a larger social and cultural context (2010, 1). As
an example, one can think about biennials and other mega exhibitions, that most
often gain visibility and echo outside themselves and their geographical
surroundings. The focus is set on the scale of a project, and the visibility it may gain
amongst audiences. Amundsen and Mørland argue, that the critical focus has
altogether shifted from the work of art to the exhibition, as the field of curating and
its critical analysis has been establishing itself. Further, they see the exhibition above
all as a space for the curator “to agitate, speak and be listened to” (2010, 1).

In the interview with Amundsen and Mørland, Mary Anne Staniszewski thinks
about the curatorial realm through notions of power and responsibility:
Curating has political potential in that it is one type of media that contributes to
public discourses and the public domain. An exhibition – including those in
smaller or alternative spaces – has the potential to seep, spread, influence,
transform and change culture. Therefore I feel that curators have a responsibility
to engage with the critical issues of our time (2010, 3).

Here Staniszewski puts a lot of weight to the medium of the exhibition, and its
affective potential of touching viewers and even transforming their lives, or at least
their understanding of the world. Throughout the interview Staniszewski nods to
the problem of art and life being made separate within museum institutions and
their white cube spaces. According to her, it is this connection between life and art
that curators need to re-establish, and which is the basis for political curatorial work.
The de-mystifying of the relationship between art and life brings art closer to the
sphere of the everyday and the political.

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Also Simon Sheikh sees the curatorial position always as a political one. In the
interview with Amundsen and Mørland, he says: “What I think that curating should
do, is to be implemented in community building and not just be a representation of
the non-object and the non-market. I think that is where the potential of curating
lies, in the power to turn the aesthetic into something else” (2010, 4). Sheikh points
out the same problem as Staniszewski, along with emphasizing the political aspects,
working as part of the curatorial process. Curating is always political, as it can be
understood as making a statement about a selected issue. Further, a curatorial position
is always political, being located in a middle management position between
economic, administrative and aesthetic concerns.

According to Amundsen and Mørland, there has been a change in how politics
manifests in curatorial work: rather than politics acting as a theme of an exhibition,
curators tend to work on politics by using radical political strategies, for example by
processual and participatory means “such as education, organized discussions,
interventions, collaborative working methods and text production” (2010, 1). In the
interviews, a lot of emphasis is put on the form of curatorial practice, and what kind
of methods and processes it involves. Curating is here thought of above all as a
discursive practice involving different participants, the curator being only one of
them. In relation to this, it is interesting that Amundsen and Mørland
simultaneously emphasize the role of the curator as the author, as the one who sets
out the exhibition space in order “to agitate, speak and be listened to” (2010, 1).

In the anthology Curating and Politics Beyond the Curator: Initial Reflections, Amundsen
and Mørland aim to unravel the complexities of politics operating as part of
curatorial projects. The focus is on the production of a curatorial event – be it an
exhibition, an event, a book – with the aim of shifting focus from the curator and
institutional critique as a form of politics, to the larger political signification of other
aspects of curatorial projects – such as education, fundraising, sponsoring, and
marketing (2015, 21-24). Their aim, thus, connects to the wider field of the
curatorial. Amundsen and Mørland also suggest, that an oppositional position has
been built-in as part of the contemporary curatorship. Using early curatorial classics,

85
O’Doherty’s Inside the white cube (1976/1986) and Staniszewski’s The power of display
(1998) as examples of discourses that have informed the current generation of
emerging curators to oppose to power structures in the art spaces these texts
illuminated in their time (2015, 23-24). This is confirmed in O’Neill’s study (2012),
as part of his inquiry into contemporary discursive practices.

Amundsen and Mørland situate the political potential of curating in the position of
a curator, the positions of their collaborators, the curated projects, but above all in a
project’s relation to the world surrounding it. Here, we are again with the question:
what can an exhibition do? However, I find it problematic the art exhibited is not
mentioned here as one of the key elements. In their earlier interview collection
(2010), art seemed to play a more central role. In the discussion between
Amundsen, Mørland and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, her reply to the question
concerning political potential of curating does address the role of art, as well as the
curator’s work with it. She also situates the political potential of curating quite
surprisingly in relation to the other interviewees:
An art exhibition cannot change the fact that we use fossil fuel. But I think that it
can change the singular individual visitor, in terms of the way that he or she
experiences time or space, or the way in which that person moves from one chair
to another. On a phenomenological level, it is about how the audience experiences
the world, and about how it processes that experience and constructs knowledge.
This means that what is political is how long the wall label is, how the curator uses
the grammar in it and how high up it is placed on the wall. This is what the politics
of the exhibition is all about. And one that is somehow worked upon, in the way
that you work with a physiotherapist, then the rest of the life of that individual
visitor may be emancipated. And then the exhibition may have made one of the
exhibition goers choose differently the next time he or she is going to vote (2010,
10).

How Christov-Bakargiev sees the connection between art and politics is indirect,
and at the same time, very pragmatic. The practical level of the event of politics
seems to insinuate the weight of small yet constitutive gestures (such as formulation
and positioning of a wall text), and at the same time the contingency in the desired
effect of a curatorial choice. From the point of view of the curator, the political
potential appears to arise here in practical work with enabling and mediating, working
as a middle-woman between a work of art and a viewer. In the end the focus is little

86
on the role of the curator, but rather, on the work of art and what the work itself
possesses, as well as how the curator is able to introduce the work to the viewer. This is the
approach I am interested in investigating further, and will do so within the following
chapters.

I have now established that curatorial practices do entail political potential, and it
manifests in the work a curator does with art. Referring to the modes of feminist
curating presented earlier, I am now discussing feminist contexts in the light of
existing research through the topics of 1) gender equality, 2) thematic feminist
exhibitions, and 3) feminist curatorial practice.

Gender equality in art institutions

Focusing momentarily on the political potential embedded in curatorial work with

exhibitions and collections mainly within museum institutions, I am considering the
topic of gender equality in the art world. Gender equality is an issue that doesn’t
concern independent curatorial practice in the extent in does curatorial work in a
museum. As part of an independent practice, it is perhaps more a question of living
up to one’s values, or a matter of conscience. However, as the topic is central in
terms of feminist politics, I am bringing it into my analysis. One strand of projects
that grew out of the renewed interest in feminisms in the art world since 2005, has
focused explicitly on gender equality and representation of women artists’ work in
collections, acquisitions and programming within museums and galleries. Taking a
good look at almost any museum, biennial or gallery statistics on gender
representation, one can state that gender equality has not been reached in the art
world, nor has equality definitely been reached when considering other variables of
identity, such as ethnicity, nationality and class.70 Hence, gender representation in

70
As an example, a breakdown of artists in terms of gender, race, nationality, participation
and age in Venice Biennale in 2017: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-venice-
biennale-artists-numbers (accessed 27/07/2017). Venice Biennale is one of the mega-
exhibitions that is understood to represent a relevant review of current contemporary art
scene every other year.

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museums and galleries remains an issue to be worked on.71 Iconic feminist collective
Guerrilla Girls has been working relentlessly on the topic since 1985, and the work
continues today.72

Often cited feminist projects on gender equality within museum contexts include
The Second Museum of Our Wishes, started in 2006 at Moderna Museet in Stockholm
(discussed in this chapter); the inauguration of Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for
Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in 2007; elles@centrepompidou, a re-hanging of
the collection of the National Museum of Modern Art in France, by exhibiting
solely works made by women artists, at Centre Pompidou 2009-2011; and the
project Modern Women: Women Artists in the Museum of Modern Art from 2010, which is
a publication interrogating the history of collecting at MoMA in New York, as well
as documenting works by women artists stored in the museum, but rarely exhibited
on its walls.

elles@centrepompidou consisted of a re-hanging of the permanent collection of the

National Museum of Modern Art in France with solely works by women artists. The
exhibition featured works by 150 artists from the beginning of 1900s till early 2000s.
The hanging was changed during the exhibition period, and it presented pieces from
the collections of fine art, photography, cinema and design. The collection
exhibition was on from May 2009 to February 2011.73 The re-hanging was curated
by Camille Morineau74. She acted also as the editor of the exhibition catalogue,

71
On gender equality in the art world in The Guardian 6 Feb 2017:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/feb/06/how-the-art-world-airbrushed-
female-artists-from-history; A project on statistics in in the US:
https://hyperallergic.com/117065/tallying-art-world-inequality-one-gallery-at-a-time/; and
an equivalent project on statistics in Australia: http://thecountessreport.com.au (all
accessed 27 June 2017).
72
https://www.guerrillagirls.com (accessed 27 June 2017).
73
The exhibition period was initially going to be approximately a year, but it was extended
to one year and nine months, mainly because of positive public response (Robinson 2013,
144).
74
Camille Morineau has continued her work with women artists in AWARE: Archives of
Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions, co-founded by Morineau in Paris in 2014.
AWARE aims at “restoring the presence of 20th century women artists in the history of
art”, by creating, indexing and distributing information on 20th century women artists
(https://awarewomenartists.com/, accessed 4 July 2017).

88
which includes a variety of articles focusing on women artists and feminism. The
main aim of elles@centrepompidou was to present the history of modern art through
women artists’ work. According to Morineau (2009), the exhibition was put together
at the time only because the collection was finally, and at the same time, only then
able to present this history through the works it contained.75 This despite the fact
that at the time of putting together the display, works by women artists comprised
18 per cent of the museum’s collections altogether, and 25 per cent of the
contemporary collection (2009, 15).

In the catalogue text, Morineau states: “The Mnam [Musée national d’art modern] is
exhibiting only women, and yet the goal is neither to show that female art exists nor
to produce a feminist event, but to present the public with a hanging that appears to
offer a good history of twentieth-century art” (2009, 16). Indeed, as Morineau states,
she did not curate the exhibition as a feminist act, or present works by women
artists as a feminist exhibition. Earlier in her text, while speculating on the possible
reception of elles and the reasons for making the decision to look at the museum
collection through gender difference, Morineau on the other hand notes: “Why is it
still considered such bad taste to perform an act that might be interpreted as
‘feminist’ in a country where male/female equality is proclaimed as a necessity yet is
so far from being achieved?” (2009, 16). Thus, elles does entail a problematic
relationship with feminism: according to the curator it is not a feminist exhibition,
and the act of exhibiting only women artists’ works is not a feminist act, while she
does admit it can be perceived of as such. Further, if perceived as such, the curator
suggests it shouldn’t be understood as the core idea of the exhibition, as France
claims to be an equal country in terms of gender in any case. Hilary Robinson
describes the paradox in her analysis of the curatorial intentions of elles:

75
In her analysis of elles, Hilary Robinson notes that this is an unresolved fact in most
museums: the collections do not contain enough works by women artists, so that the
museum could present their art historical narratives through their collections from this
perspective. For example, this was confirmed by curators of MoMA, New York at the
symposium Art Institutions and Feminist Politics Now in May 2010; the curators agreed that
only MoMA’s photography department had systematically included works by women artists
in the collection, and was the only department that could exhibit an art historical narrative
based on these works (Robinson 2013, 144).

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 Where the frustration lay for a feminist viewer of elles@centrepompidou was in the gap
between on the one hand the assumption that simply ‘being a woman’ would be
sufficient to make a coherent exhibition, and on the one hand the rejection of the
category ‘woman’ in favour of the individualism inherent in the feminine plural
‘elles’ (Robinson 2013, 146-147).

Robinson clearly reads the exhibition from a feminist perspective, and not the one
desired by the curator (the re-hanging as a history of modern art, only displayed
through women artists’ work). I find it problematic, that in her catalogue text,
Morineau implicitly shifts the responsibility of the content of the show both to the
collection itself, and to the artworks it displays: “Displaying the collections is not the
same as mounting an exhibition: the works are already there, the choices have
already been made” (2009, 15). In a sense, what the curator is saying is that whether
the works mediate for example a feminist message, it is because of the works
themselves, not because of any curatorial choice. The view is interesting in terms of
giving a strong agency to the artworks in the collection, but at the same time
problematic, as it neglects the curatorial responsibility, that of course, despite
Morineau’s statement, is necessarily part of a curatorial process, even when installing
a display of a collection, alongside selecting, installing and contextualising.
Considering Morineau’s curatorial statement, the works in the display, and the
catalogue, which clearly contextualises the project in a feminist context, elles does
indeed set out an ambiguous message on its relation to feminist politics.

The anthology Politics in a glass case: feminism, exhibition cultures and curatorial transgressions
(2013) edited by Angela Dimitrakaki and Lara Perry, takes as its starting point the
musealisation of feminist art and politics as part of the large-scale exhibitions on
feminist art. Partly because of this focus, the publication necessarily addresses issues
concerning gender equality. For example, Lara Perry (2013) critically analyses gender
representation in Tate Modern’s collection exhibitions in relation to the public
image production the museum engages in, and Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe and Malin
Hedlin Hayden (2013) discuss gender politics in the context of Moderna Museet in
Stockholm (which I present in more detail below). Here a total of five essays focus
on unravelling gender politics specifically in terms of museum collections.

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Art and gender equality in Sweden

I was living in Stockholm, Sweden between 2009 and 2013. While entering the art
world in the city, I had the chance to follow closely local discussions on gender
equality and feminisms. The Second Museum of Our Wishes (TSMoOW) was a project
initiated in 2006 at Moderna Museet in Stockholm by Lars Nittve, the director of
the museum at the time. In the wake of the museum’s 50th anniversary, the project
started as a reaction to the realisation that early modernism was represented 15 per
cent by women artists and 85 per cent by men artists in the museum’s collections
(2010, 15). Another realisation was, that where male artists were most often present
in the collection with key works, this was not the case with women artists, who were
represented by more marginal works in their careers (2010, 17). Another starting
point was a reference to the museum’s history, The Museum of Our Wishes, initiated in
1963 by the museum director Pontus Hultén as part of Moderna Museet’s 5th year
anniversary. Hultén acquired 5 million Swedish kronor from the state for The
Museum of Our Wishes, in order to complement the collections with modernist
masterpieces. All of the pieces acquired were works by men artists. As a reaction to
this, Nittve wanted to make things right, and gather an equivalent sum of money, in
2006 coming up to 50 million kronor, in order to fill in the gaps with works by
women artists. The museum was able to fundraise 42 million kronor, mainly as
private donations, as only 5 million was donated in the end by the government.
With the donations, 26 works by 14 women artists were acquired into the collection
of Moderna Museet.76

Visiting Moderna Museet’s collection displays in 2009 and afterwards, one could see
the words “The Second Museum of Our Wishes” on the labels of the works that
had been acquired as part of the project. The project was accompanied by a
publication with essays and presentations of artists whose works were acquired as
part of the project. In her essay curator Ann-Sofi Noring (2010) discusses the
significance of TSMoOW to Moderna Museet, clearly aiming to clear out any

76
The artists are Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago, Susan Hiller, Tora Vega Holmström,
Anna Kegan, Mary Kelly, Hilma af Klint, Barbara Kruger, Lee Lozano, Alice Neel, Lyubov
Popova, Carolee Schneemann, Monica Sjöö and Dorothea Tanning.

91
criticism on the project being a tick to the box of gender equality. On the one hand
Noring stresses the importance of the gesture: “The very presence of these works
makes a difference, they cause a shift in the apparently cemented order of things”
(2010, 37), while on the other, she stresses it is not enough: “Just adding a work to
the collection, regardless of whether it is put in storage or on show, is not going to
change anything” (2010, 37). Curator John Peter Nilsson presents and analyses the
reception of the project, mostly through reactions published in Swedish newspapers
(2010, 21-35). Alongside the mixed responses77, Nilsson does not forget to describe
the project as a pioneering, heroic gesture by Moderna Museet, and how it was well
received of especially outside Sweden in the international art world. In Nilsson’s
description, TSMoOW appears as a precedent, if not even the initiator, to the
proliferation of exhibitions on feminist art and women artists’ practices in
mainstream art institutions (2010, 29-35).

TSMoOW was incorporated in the functioning of the museum as a research project

In the Shadow Of: Women modernists from a gender oriented art history perspective in connection
with Moderna Museet’s project The Second Museum of Our Wishes between 2008-2010,
funded by the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs. The project focused
on feminist art theory and the marginalisation of women artists in art history. It
consisted of lectures, essays, three public seminars (highlighting the work Dorothea
Tanning; Carolee Schneemann; and Lee Lozano), and a conference arranged in
collaboration with the Transnational Perspectives on Women’s Art, Feminism and Curating
research network78. The conference led to the publication of the anthology
Feminisms is Still Our Name: Seven Essays on Historiography and Curatorial Practices (2010),
edited by Stockholm-based art historians Malin Hedlin Hayden and Jessica Sjöholm
Skrubbe.

77
For example, Nilsson mentions twice the reaction of Gudrun Schyman, the
spokeswoman for the Feminist Initiative party in Sweden, who suggested the museum
instead should sell some of the works by male artists in their collections in order to break
free from patriarchal structures of the collection (2010, 21, 25).
78
The Leverhulme Trust funded International Research Network is a joint project between
University of Brighton, Concordia University, The University of Edinburgh, Estonian
Academy of Arts, and Stockholm University.

92
While the addition of works by iconic women artists into the collections can be seen
as a feminist and political act in a positive light (attending to the gendered imbalance
in a public art collection, discussing the representation of women artists in a public
museum’s collections, attention to and reflection on a public museum’s acquisition
policies and politics), there appeared also critical stances. There were the
aforementioned comments by feminist politician Gudrun Schyman, who saw the
project as a waste of tax money on fixing errors of a patriarchal society (even
though in the end only 12 per cent of the project was funded by the government).
According to her, a more effective way would have been to sell some of the valuable
works by male modernists in the collection, and use these funds in the museum’s
activities in a more gender-balanced manner (Sjöholm Skrubbe & Hedlin Hayden
2013). Maria Lind criticised the project for being mere cosmetics, aiming rather for
publicity than the operation of actual feminist politics in terms of working towards a
gender balance in the museum’s collections or exhibition programming (2011, 86).

Around the same time, researcher and writer Vanja Hermele’s survey on gender
equality in the Swedish art scene was published. Konsten – så funkar det (inte) [Art –
this is how it works (not)] (2009) was commissioned by Artists’ National Organisation
in Sweden (KRO), and it presented hard facts and statistics about the reality of
unfulfilled gender balance in several stately funded art institutions, as well as private
ones. For the study Hermele collected statistics from institutions and conducted
interviews with artists, heads of institutions from the Swedish cultural minister to
museum curators and gallerists. Interestingly enough, the report has been
republished in 2017 as a digital book, including a new preface by Hermele.79 The
preface doesn’t give a further reasoning for republishing it eight years later, though
Hermele does mention that a new report is needed to represent the current
situation. The act of republishing the survey does show though, that the topic is still
seen as relevant, and it is offered for discussion anew. In the new preface Hermele
describes her negative experiences after the report came out in 2009, having
received angry emails, messages and phone calls, mainly from male actors in the art

79
http://www.kro.se/content/digital-utgåva-av-konsten-–-så-funkar-det-inte-0 (Accessed
26/08/2017).

93
field (2009, iii-vi). What she learned about the art world in the process, was that it is
the most guarded field she had researched, with strong and hidden power relations
and a network of people gatekeeping it. What the report revealed, was that there is a
huge lack of statistics in art organisations, museums and galleries (both publicly and
privately funded), and also, Hermele was able to articulate a gamut of defence
mechanisms used in order to dodge and deny questions on equality being relevant in
the field of art (2009, iii-iv).

The question Hermele asked in her report was: “what prevents art from being
equal?”. She extracted four explanations given by the actors in the field, which in
turn explained why and how inequality is kept alive: 1) the argument that the focus
needs to be on art, not equality (that for example decisions on acquisitions and
exhibition programming are based on art, not the gender of the artist); 2) a tendency
to avoid responsibility (saying that equality already exists, or that inequality existed
in the institution before the interviewed person started working there); 3) a view
that there is actually a need to look after men now, as it is middle-aged white men
that have become the minority because of all the focus on equality and positive
discrimination in favour of women; and 4) ignorance of the fact that in terms of
representation, salaries and grants, the field of visual arts is simply not equal for
women and men80.

Hermele’s study shows, not only that the Swedish art world functions in a way that
makes it harder for women artists to get the same level of visibility or to get paid
equally to their male colleagues, but also that looking at statistics and facts enables
us to analyse some of the reasons behind the inequality. By analysing the rhetoric of
talking about gender equality and the thought forms behind it, Hermele shows that
the reasons for the statistics lie in entrenched attitudes and presumptions
concerning gender equality – equality is most often seen as unnecessary, exaggerated

80
An example of a concrete and alarming finding in Hermele’s study was that for example
in 2008, 24 women and 17 men received grants for art projects from the Swedish Arts
Grants Committee. This appeared promising, but when looking at the amount of money
that was granted, it turned out that the 24 women artists received 56 208 SEK in total,
while the total sum for the fewer 17 men was nearly the double: 101 235 SEK (2009, 89).

94
or threatening in an art context (2009, 103). Hermele’s study shows why paying
close attention to statistics in terms of representation is essential, above all in the
activities of publicly funded art institutions.

I argue, that in the foundations, working on gender balance is the motivator also in
the blockbuster exhibitions presenting feminist art and/or art made by women
alongside the aims of feminist critique of art history: these projects aim to create
balance to representation of feminist and women artists, who have been ignored or
downplayed in the Western art historical canon, built according to male artists’
mastery. I am here locating these projects in an art historical, rather than a curatorial
context. For example, elles@centrepompidou was based on an art historical narrative,
despite the arrangement in thematic chapters, filling in the gaps of the male canon
by presenting women artists’ works in a space (the permanent collections at Centre
Pompidou) that in other occasions dismisses women artists’ pieces and narratives.
The work on researching and presenting art made by women, historical and
contemporary, alongside the persistent work on equality in terms of gender,
sexuality, ethnicity, race, generation and nationality, is highly important in museum
institutions. I suggest, however, that working on gender equality can be seen as a
first grounding step of curating and feminist thought, and that the approach can be
taken further. As Ann-Sofi Noring mentions, adding a work in a collection is not
enough, particularly considering the major role museum institutions have had, and
still have today, in art historical canon-building through their collection policies. It
can also be asked, if elles or TSMoOW in any way unsettled or dismantled the art
historical canon? For a museum context, perhaps a more efficient model could be
offered by Helen Molesworth’s idea of installing collection exhibitions as a process
of “associative chain”, a horizontal non-linear structure in which all ideas have the
possibility of connecting to all other ideas81; and dismissing the tradition canonical
thinking, which simply doesn’t do justice to women artists’ work (2010, 504-507).
As Molesworth puts it: “If we think according to the logic of the rhizome, we can

81
This relates to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome (1987).

95
see that history is filled with gaps and fissures and moments of connection and
synchronicity, and that while there is loss and neglect (as there is regarding the
history of art made by women), there are also alliances formed despite geographical
distance and temporal incommensurability” (2010, 507). Molesworth’s model of a
rhizomatic sisterhood-hanging of a museum collection, in order to create linkages
between women artists’ work, is a clear example of affirmative feminist practice,
where a new approach does not cancel out the old one, but instead creates affinities
with previous legacies.82

Exhibitions about feminist art and/or art made by women

As I’ve already mentioned, this thesis does not concentrate on the history or
analysis of feminist exhibitions, or the boom of blockbuster exhibitions on
feminisms and art made by women artists.83 It has also already been stated, how art
has been a close companion of feminist politics and praxis since the 1960s, and this
has manifested itself regularly throughout these 35-40 years in the form of artistic
practices, exhibitions, and other projects. The feminist exhibitions of today have a
selection of predecessors in the past. In her article “The Feminist Nomad: The All-
Women Group Show” (2007) published in the WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution
catalogue, Jenny Sorkin writes about all-women cooperative gallery structures,
focusing primarily on the situation in the United States in the 1970s. Sorkin points
out, that the urgency to set up own spaces for women was a direct response to the
absence of women artists’ work in museums and galleries (and even other imagery
produced by women in the public realm more generally) (2007, 459). The essay is
followed by a selected chronology of all-women group exhibitions between 1943-
1983, compiled by Sorkin and Linda Theung (2007, 473-499). The listing gives an

82
I am returning to the similar model of curating as part of Catherine de Zegher’s and
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev’s practices.
83
Again, it is a starting point in the sense that I am aiming at renegotiating the paradigm
these exhibitions have presented to feminist curating: that of a retrospective survey
exhibition on feminist art and/or art by women artists. It is about taking distance to an art
historical approach and moving towards a critical curatorial one.

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indication of the long history of all-women exhibitions, context for WACK!, and
most importantly, emphasizes the fact that historically women artists have been to a
large extent responsible for arranging spaces and situations for presenting their art
themselves.84

I’m discussing the history of feminist exhibitions only briefly, by presenting some of
the projects in the light of exhibition catalogues and recent critical writings on them.
As mentioned, an extensive history of feminist exhibitions has not yet been written,
but the project has been started partly by Katy Deepwell as a listing on her
website85, by Jenny Sorkin and Linda Theung in the WACK! catalogue (2007), and
by Maura Reilly in her recent publication Curatorial Activism (2018). I did not have
the chance to see any of the feminist blockbuster exhibitions in person, and have
acquainted them only through documentation in catalogues and images, as well as
the art historical writings, which I present in more detail in the following sub-
chapter. I will present here briefly seven often-cited exhibition projects, in order to
paint a picture of the nature of the exhibitions.

Konstfeminism was a touring exhibition, focusing on Swedish art in the framework of

gender and feminism from 1970s to the early 2000s, created as a collaboration
between three Swedish art institutions and art historian Barbro Werkmäster.86 The
exhibition was shown between 2005 and 2007 at Dunkers kulturhus in Helsingborg,

84
In the context of alternative artist-run art spaces, the women’s art space A.I.R. in New
York and its origins in feminist politics is discussed in Sandy Nairne’s article “The
institutionalization of Dissent” (1996) in Thinking about Exhibitions. In the anthology Issues in
Curating Contemporary Art and Performance (2007), edited by Judith Rugg and Michèle
Sedgwick, Catherine Elwes’ article “A Parallel Universe: The “Women’s” Exhibitions at the
ICA, 1980, and the UK/Canadian Film and Video Exchange, 1998-2004” focuses on all-
women exhibitions and the efforts in the 1970s and 1980s in creating spaces for exhibiting
art made by women. These two articles focusing explicitly on feminism as a political
practice aiming at creating space for women artists in the male-dominated art world, are the
only ones on the topic I have come across in mainstream publications about exhibition-
making and curating.
85
http://www.ktpress.co.uk/feminist-art-exhibitions.asp (Accessed 25/08/2017).
86
The arranging bodies were Swedish Exhibition Agency, Liljevalchs konsthall and
Dunkers kulturhus. The curatorial team as a whole consisted of Louise Andersson, Anna
Livion Ingvarsson, Magnus Jensner, Anna Nyström, Barbro Werkmäster and Niclas
Östlind.

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Liljevalchs konsthall in Stockholm, Hälsinglands museum in Hudiksvall, and at
Gothenburg Art Museum. Konstfeminism was one of the first large-scale projects
focusing on feminism, gender and art in public museums at the beginning of the
boom.87 In English, the title translates to Art Feminism – Strategies and consequences in
Sweden from the 1970s till today. The idea of ‘art feminism’ was a crucial part of the
curatorial concept. Rather than creating and presenting a narrative of feminist art in
Sweden, the exhibition presented artworks in an ‘art feminist framework’ (Nystöm
et al. 2005, 29). The focus was on how art gains significance in relation to political
movements, and how art can be seen and read in a feminist context. As the main
focus was on exploring how gender politics have manifested in artistic practices, the
exhibition also explored what kind of feminist strategies artists have used in their
practices over the years, how art has been informed by political movements, and
what kind of consequences this ‘art feminism’ has had in the Swedish society (2005,
9-29). The exhibition presented works by both women and men.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. 45 Years of Art and Feminism was shown at the Bilbao Fine Arts
Museum in 2007. It was curated by Xabier Arakistain, and presented works by 36
artists and 3 feminist groups from different countries. The exhibition critically
examined what since the 1960s has come to be known as ‘feminist art’ and the
feminist movement within art, through unravelling stereotypical associations, ideas
and images regarding ideas on feminist art, as well as gender roles and the idea of
the woman artist. As Robinson notes the concept of the exhibition was constructed
around questions concerning feminist politics as a social movement, and the themes
the exhibition was constructed around, related directly to political and activist
themes from feminist politics and the women’s movement (2013, 138-139). Also
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang presented works by both women and men.

Another vast exhibition in Europe, Rebelle: Art & Feminism 1969-2009, was shown at
the Museum of Modern Art in Arnhem, Netherlands in 2009. The exhibition was

87
Other exhibitions with similar focus in 2005 were MOT Annual 2005: Life Actually, The
Works of Contemporary Japanese Women at Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Japan; and
La Costilla Maltida, Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Gran Canaria.

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curated by Mirjam Westen. The show examined the impact of feminist activism and
theory in art during a 40-year period. The exhibition presented works by 87 artists,
and had a strong transnational approach; 20 of the artists were Dutch or at the
moment based in the Netherlands, 18 of them were from Africa and the Middle
East, and the rest of the artist were from Baltic countries, Asia, Latin America and
the United States. The show brought together and juxtaposed works by artists from
different generations, presenting work by legendary feminist artists side by side
contemporary emerging artists, creating connections and disconnections between
them. Robinson notes, that even though the exhibition had a historical aspect,
feminism was presented as an active and ongoing movement, by exhibiting local and
contemporary artists’ work in the last exhibition rooms before exiting the show
(2013, 141).

WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution was an extensive touring exhibition that
featured works by 120 women artists from 21 countries. The exhibition was curated
by Cornelia Butler, and between 2007 and 2009 it was shown at The Museum of
Contemporary Art (MoCA) in Los Angeles, The National Museum of Women in
the Arts in Washington D.C., PS1 in New York, and Vancouver Art Gallery.
WACK! examined the legacy of art made under the influence of feminist thought,
presenting art made alongside radical feminist activism between 1965 and 1980.
Presenting feminist art more or less as an art movement, the exhibition aimed at
articulating the relationship between feminist thought and activism in art. The
exhibition was accompanied by a vast catalogue including a curatorial text as well as
ten other essays contextualising the exhibition in feminist politics. Another
extensive exhibition in the United States, Global Feminisms, presented feminist art by
80 women artists from around the world, with focus on art from the 1990s to early
2000s. The exhibition was curated by Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin as the
inaugural exhibition at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the
Brooklyn Museum in 2007. The goal was to present contemporary feminist art from
a global perspective, and to move beyond a Western brand of feminism that has
been perceived as the dominant voice of feminist and artistic practice since the early
1970s. Also Global Feminisms was accompanied by a vast exhibition catalogue

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featuring curatorial essays from both of the curators of the exhibition, as well as
seven art historical essays by international writers opening up and contextualising
the exhibition through feminist movements on different continents, according to
the curatorial approach.

Gender Check. Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe was shown between
2009 and 2010 at the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna, and the National Gallery
of Art in Warsaw. The exhibition was curated by Bojana Pejic as part of a larger
research project, and in collaboration with twenty-six art historians, cultural
theorists and curators from Eastern Europe. The exhibition featured works by more
than 200 Eastern European artists, both women and men, starting in the 1960. The
exhibition followed the shifts and changes in the representation of male and female
role models in art, taking a particular look at how they developed under different
socio-political conditions during the socialist period and its aftermath, taking the fall
of the Berlin wall in 1989 as a watershed. Gender Check aimed to unravel links to
contemporary gender discourses from a period that was little researched until the
project started. Indeed, the publication Gender Check: A Reader, which accompanied
the project in addition to an exhibition catalogue, was “the first representative
collection of texts dealing with concepts and discourses investigating gender in
social, cultural, and artistic contexts within Eastern Europe” (Pejic 2010, 9). The
project as a whole was a complex discursive and cross-disciplinary project, aiming
not only presenting and discussing art and its relations to socio-political conditions
and change, but also at producing knowledge on a field that wasn’t properly
investigated.

In Pejic’s introductory text in the Gender Check: A Reader, the exhibition is presented
as one part of a larger project, aiming to start a conversation concerning gender in
the context of socialist and post-socialist eras in Eastern Europe. Pejic notes, that
the role of images – both artworks and popular images – is vital in a constitution of
an ideology; art doesn’t merely illustrate or mirror social conditions, but works of art
act as active and productive parts of it (2010, 16-17). Regarding specifically the
relationship between art and feminist thought, the last chapter of Gender Check: A

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Reader focuses on mapping feminist events and feminist art practices in nine Eastern
European countries. The importance of the exhibition project echoes in the article
anthology Working with feminism: Curating and Exhibitions in Eastern Europe (2012),
edited by Katrin Kivimaa, as Pejic’s work on Gender Check is mentioned in each
article of the publication.

Re.Act.Feminism. A performing Archive was a project on feminisms and performance

art, started in 2008, and which travelled through six European countries between
2011 and 2013. The project, curated by Bettina Knaup and Beatrice E. Stammer,
was based on continuous research on feminist, gender critical and queer
performance art from historical and contemporary points of view. The project
consisted of an archive, exhibitions, workshops, performances, and talks. The core
of the project was a mobile archive with a growing collection of videos,
photographs and other documents. This transnational and cross-generational
project featured works by over 180 artists and artist collectives from the 1960s to
the beginning of the 1980s, as well as contemporary positions. The research focus
was on Eastern and Western Europe, the Mediterranean and Middle East, the US
and in Latin America. The archive can still be viewed online.88

As this very brief introduction portrays, each of these large-scale exhibitions (and
partly, research projects) have had their unique angles to the topic of feminisms and
women artists’ work. Generally speaking, most of them aimed to present a
retrospective display, a survey, on either feminist art, or art made by women artists,
or both, starting from the 1970s, and most often continuing to present day,
presented in relation to selected contemporary art practices. The exhibitions offered
rare opportunities to see canonized works by feminist and women artists, which
despite their place in the canon, most often remain unseen in museum displays. The
exhibitions presented also opportunities to see works by women artists who have
still been kept in the margins of the art world. Some projects strived more explicitly
to discuss the significance of feminist art practices as part of histories of art, the

88
http://www.reactfeminism.org/index.php (Accessed 01/07/2018).

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society, and in relation to the work that remains to be done today (Konstfeminism;
Gender Check). Despite the great number of similar projects (here only a small
number presented), the exhibitions that are most often mentioned as feminist
blockbuster shows remain elles@centrepompidou, Global Feminisms, and WACK! –
undoubtedly thanks to their settings at major art institutions in central European
and North American capitals, as well as the visibility of their curators within
academia, and partly also in the art world.

A number of publications on feminist exhibitions and curating appeared in the

afterglow of the exhibitions.89 The length of the list is to give an indication of the
amount of literature that the emergence of the feminist blockbuster exhibitions
sparked in the post-2005 era. Most part of these texts have, in some sense, come
into existence as reactions to the feminist blockbuster exhibitions, or having adapted
to this discourse later. I argue, that because of this, the feminist blockbuster
exhibitions have formed as the main context for discussing feminisms, exhibition-
making and curating. This is problematic, as feminist curatorial practices are here
seen and discussed primarily as part of museum contexts, museum curator’s work,
and as the practical endeavour of realising historical and retrospective exhibition
projects about feminist art and art made by women.90 My aim in this thesis is to

89
Some or several of these exhibitions are discussed in the following publications, which I
am later returning to in more detail: n.paradoxa, volume 18, “Curatorial Strategies” (2006)
edited by Renee Baert, Feminism Reframed: Reflections on Art and Difference (2008) edited by
Alexandra M. Kokoli, The feminism and visual culture reader (2010) edited by Amelia Jones,
Feminisms is Still Our Name: Seven Essays on Historiography and Curatorial Practices (2010) edited
by Malin Hedlin Hayden and Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe, Working With Feminism: Curating and
Exhibitions in Eastern Europe (2012) edited by Katrin Kivimaa, Politics in a Glass Case:
Feminism, Exhibition Cultures and Curatorial Transgressions (2013) edited by Angela Dimitrakaki
and Lara Perry, ONCURATING.org, Issue 29, “Curating in Feminist Thought” (2016)
edited by Elke Krasny, Lara Perry and Dorothee Richter, Curating Differently: Feminisms,
Exhibitions and Curatorial Spaces (2016) edited by Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe, and Curatorial
Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating (2018) by Maura Reilly. In addition, several articles,
columns and reviews have been written in art journals, and the exhibitions have been
discussed as part of conferences, symposia, and talks (see p.18) Feminism and art has also
been discussing in special issues of art magazines, of which can be mentioned Frieze, Issue
105 (2007), ARTnews, Volume 108/Issue 11, “The feminist evolution” (2009), and Texte zur
Kunst, Issue 84, “Feminismus” (2011).
90
A relatively recent PhD research focusing on feminist work in museum institutions
expands the discussion from realisation of thematic feminist exhibitions to organisational

102
unstable this paradigm, and find alternative ways of discussing feminism and
curatorial practices. Next, I am unravelling this literature and the discourses
presented in them further, in order to build on them approaches arising from
independent curatorial practices and clearer links to current curatorial discourses.

Feminism + curating

As mentioned, several publications on feminist thought and curating have come

into being as reactions to the re-emergence of feminist exhibitions in the art field.
Particularly Feminisms is Still Our Name (2010) and Politics in a Glass Case (2013)
address these exhibitions at length, along with the possibilities, as well as the
challenges, brought up by the renewed interest in feminist politics and art made by
women. However, it is good to remember discussion on feminist interventions in
exhibitionary and curatorial practices has existed prior to these publications. In
order to analyse the discourses on current writing on feminism and curating, I have
divided the literature into two branches: one focuses on feminist curating as a
practice in which feminist exhibitions are created; the other focuses on practices
where feminist politics is part of the curatorial practice itself, and manifests in
various ways in the curatorial practice.

Feminist exhibitions – an art historical approach

In the editorial text to ‘Curatorial Strategies’ issue of n.paradoxa (2006), Renée Baert
notes that there is a clear gap in research about the history of feminist exhibitions
(2006, 4). Twelve years later, an overarching history of feminist exhibitions and feminist
exhibition making remains unwritten. There have, however, been several beginnings to
this in the form of local histories about feminist exhibitions (Nyström et al. 2005:
Sweden; Hedlin & Skrubbe 2010: Sweden; Kivimaa 2012: post-socialist Eastern

changes: Feminist Curatorial Interventions in Museums and Organizational Change: Transforming the
Museum from a Feminist Perspective (2016) by Laura Diaz Ramos, University of Leicester.

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European states), as well as more global histories with a focus on feminist
blockbuster exhibitions (Dimitrakaki & Perry 2013; Reilly 2018). Several of the
catalogues produced in conjunction with feminist blockbuster exhibitions91 include
appendices which present historical overviews on feminist and/or all-women
exhibitions (national and international primarily in relation to women’s movement)
in order to contextualise the exhibition at hand.

Perhaps, at this point, when the history of feminist exhibitions has not yet been
written, we should pose some questions on the topic, namely: what is a feminist
exhibition? What counts as a feminist exhibition? What makes an exhibition a
feminist one? Is it about presenting women artists? Is it about deconstructing sexist
and patriarchal structures of the art world, or perhaps even the realities outside the art
world too? Is it about defining what feminist art is? And how is a feminist exhibition
made; what are the questions of feminist curating? There are also the questions
posed by Baert:
How are feminist issues, theories and debates manifest in contemporary curatorial
practices? How has the field and the ideas and politics it engenders, and responds
to, expanded from its earliest manifestations? What are some of the concepts,
complexities and situations that inform and challenge feminist curators today?
(Baert 2006, 4)

I will attempt to answer some of these questions here, in the light of publications on
feminist exhibitions listed above.

Feminism Reframed: Reflections on Art and Difference (2008) edited by Alexandra M.

Kokoli addresses the significance of feminist art history in a scholarly context as
well as in the realm of visual culture. Emerging from a conference Difference Reframed:
Reflections on the Legacies of Feminist Art History and Visual Culture (2006) at the
University of Sussex, the publication presents a selection of papers by scholars and
practitioners in the field of visual arts. Feminist curating and feminist exhibitions are

91
At least Konstfeminism. Strategier och effekter i Sverige från 1970-talet till idag (2005) edited by
Anna Nyström et al.; WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (2007) edited by Cornelia
Butler; elles@centrepompidou. Women Artists in the Collection of the Musée National dʼArt Moderne
(2009), edited by Camille Morineau.

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brought up in the essays through an outspoken art historical approach to the topic.
In the introduction “Looking on, Bouncing Back” Alexandra M. Kokoli discusses
WACK! in terms of feminist self-recognition (2008, 7-8). There is also a section on
the curatorial, with articles employing feminist critique of exhibitions and more
specifically, questions concerning representation. In her essay “Women Artists,
Feminism and the Museum: Beyond the Blockbuster Retrospective” Joanne Heath
analyses the structures of retrospective solo exhibitions, and states that the
production of these is not enough as a feminist act. At the end of the essay, Heath
expands her analysis by thinking about Catherine de Zegher’s Inside the Visible, and
the alternative curatorial approach used in it (2008, 34-36).

The anthology Feminisms is Still Our Name: Seven Essays on Historiography and Curatorial
Practices (2010) has its origin in the conference Feminisms, Historiography and Curatorial
Practices, held in 2008 at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. According to the
editors, Malin Hedlin Hayden and Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe, the two main topics
interrogated in the anthology are the question of the role of feminism in
contemporary art – whether it is about identity politics, or the radical feminist
political, critical, ideological and activist commitments and aims of the 1960s and
1970s; and the question of the sex-biased premise of the all-women exhibitions
claiming themselves as feminist solely based on this (2010, xiv-xv). For example,
Amelia Jones’ essay “The Return of Feminism(s) and the Visual Arts, 1970/2009”
focuses on the problematic of emerging young women artists not recognising or
appreciating the history of feminisms and feminist artists.92 Jones’ analysis
concentrates primarily on the “bad girl” exhibitions of the late 1990s (2010, 16; also
Deepwell 2006, 80), which negotiated gender identities from a so-called post-
feminist point of view. Jones locates much of the renewed interest in feminism in
the art world in capitalist flows in the art market, where “sexy feminist art” is
appreciated mainly in relation to its market value. In her analysis, feminism has
become nothing but a public relations tool for museums, and a commodity to

92
Through my own curatorial practice, I have such a different view on this topic. Many
emerging women artists I have met, working somehow with feminisms and gender, have
their references in writers such as Donna Haraway, bell hooks, or Gayatri Spivak, and
artists such as Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Eva Hesse, or Lynda Benglis.

105
commercial galleries (2010, 16-17). In the end, it appears Jones is blaming mostly
women artists from younger generations for the situation, and not as much the
museum curators.

In another text, Jones discusses the topic further in a discussion “Feminist Curating
and the “Return” of Feminist Art” with Connie Butler and Maura Reilly (Butler et
al. 2010). All of them having art historical backgrounds, and all of them having also
curated exhibitions on feminisms, the discussion circles around what each art
historian, and curator, find important. Whereas Butler puts a lot of weight on
interest towards artists’ practices, and sees the art as the most important starting
point for her work, Jones and Reilly see the art historical contextualising of
exhibitions as the most important aspect (2010, 32). Jones’ essay does not
acknowledge any other view on feminist work with exhibitions than a creation of a
historical exhibition about feminist art, which highlights the significance of earlier
generations’ work. There is no room for discursive curatorial thinking, let alone
independent curatorship. The possibilities to work with artists informed by
feminism (as if this would be a necessity) become narrow, when there is only one
right way of presenting the work. Here, the curatorial and art historical approaches
merge in defining what is proper feminist art.

The two essays that actually touch upon curatorial practices in Feminisms is Still Our
Name, and not only art historical readings of their end products, are by Griselda
Pollock and Renée Baert. Opposing Jones’ wish to not forget the past, in her essay
“Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum: Time, Space and the Archive”
Pollock urges us to focus on “the virtuality or the futurity of feminism rather than a
retrospective burial of its dismembered and misremembered remains by current
musealisations and exhibitions” (2010, 107).93 At the core of Pollock’s essay is the

93
Pollock discusses the concept of the virtual feminist museum in detail in her book
Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum: Time, Space and the Archive (2007). The concept is
highly intriguing to me in terms of its focus on virtuality as a potential and becoming, but I
have decided not to discuss it further within this research, as discussion on Pollock
acquires a heavy feminist art historical context, which falls out of the borders of this study.
Research on feminist curating could be taken further in the context of deconstructive

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concept of the virtual feminist museum. As she notes, it is not “a cybernetic
playground”, but relates to the notions of virtuality and actuality:
It is this liquid state that becomes a paradox for contemporary feminist criticism
in so far as gender continues to be an issue if there is still gross sexist
discrimination (which there is), or, where numbers of women are sufficient, the
feminist argument appears redundant. What is being missed entirely is the
virtuality of feminism as a continuing practice of creative production of the not-
yet, the still to come, the unknowable dimensions of a world not built on the
othering of the feminine, irrespective of what some women managed to negotiate
as a less vile space in a white man’s world (2010, 108; emphasis original).

What Pollock suggests is, that feminist curators move forward from the thematic
exhibitions about feminism, and look for other ways of working curatorially with
feminism, seeking for possibilities of actualising the virtuality and potentiality of
feminist politics. Renée Baert writes about feminist curating as a dialogical practice
in a similar sense, focusing on how exhibitions gain meaning and reach their
potential in relation to each other. Baert’s thinking links here to the aforementioned
practice of Helen Molesworth. In her essay, Baert discusses exhibitions and
curatorial practices as sites where feminist interventions are produced and reflected
upon. Past projects are regarded as beginnings for new projects and practices. The
exhibition is seen as a generative site for discussion, negotiation, and action. Here,
the notion of contingency is again essential – it is not for the curator to determine
how the art will be perceived and reacted upon.94 The exhibition is presented as a
generative site – which I would also call an affective site for transformation.

In Politics in a Glass Case: Feminism, Exhibition Cultures and Curatorial Transgressions

(2013) the editors Angela Dimitrakaki and Lara Perry raise questions about what
happens when political projects become showcased and historicised in museums.
Much in line with Jones’s thought above, Dimitrakaki and Perry express their
concerns over feminist politics losing its political and radical edge in the
confinements of museum institutions (2013, 1-4). The vast anthology consists of 17

virtual feminist curatorial practices, which would be framed both with art historical and
contemporary curatorial references.
94
Katrin Kivimaa notes, that in the Baltic countries, Bojana Pejic’s Gender Check had exactly
this effect of a generative site (2012, 90-95).

107
essays on the topics of feminism in art institutions, exhibition contexts, as counter
practices, as well as curatorial practices. Unlike the editors of Feminisms is Still Our
Name, Dimitrakaki and Perry do provide a definition of how they understand
curating:
In part, this is a product of the prominent role given over to presentation in the
strategies of the neo-liberal art world: the focus on temporary (especially popular,
‘blockbuster’) exhibition as a key means of attracting an audience; the use of
biennials, prizes and temporary installations as instruments for the promotion of
tourism, urban regeneration and other forms of economic ‘growth’; and the shift
from the mechanically chronological display to the thematic or monographic
exhibition all dramatize the role of the curator in the mediation of art (2013, 10).

The editors thus read curatorial practices through a critique of capitalism. The
temporary aspect of exhibitions is seen above all in relation to promotion of tourism
and commodification, the temporary exhibition thus being located in a museum. It
is clear that Dimitrakaki and Perry have a clearer understanding of the curatorial
field than Sjöholm Skrubbe and Hedlin Hayden, who do not acknowledge any
specifics of the field. Dimitrakaki and Perry read the emergence of the independent
curator as part of the systems of the art market: “Star curators, authors of signature
exhibition practices – another effect of the evolution of the neo-liberal museum and
its search for constant innovation and dynamism” (2013, 11). Refreshingly, the
feminist exhibition is read through a critique of capitalism, alongside unravelling
other hierarchical structures of museum institutions. Again, though, the implicit
assumption is, that the curating takes place in a museum. The essays in the section
‘curating the other/curating as other’ discuss curating either in museum and gallery
settings, or through thematic discourses, an interview with the Danish collective
Kuratorisk Aktion by Dimitrakaki making an exception to this.

In her article from the same year, “Feminism meets the big exhibition: Museum
survey shows since 2005” (2013), Hilary Robinson analyses WACK! (2007), Kiss Kiss
Bang Bang (2007), REBELLE (2009) and elles@centrepompidou (2009-2011) in relation
to how feminist politics is written as part of the exhibition concept: how it plays out
in the curatorial texts, and in the organisation of the exhibition according to

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themes.95 Robinson’s most critical reading concerns WACK!, in which, according to
her analysis, the curatorial approach leans more straightforwardly to art historical
categories and starting points than to politics of the women’s movement or feminist
politics (2013, 133-138). Robinson sees particularly REBELLE as a successful
blockbuster exhibition on feminism, in the sense that the concept managed to
spring from feminist aspirations and activism, the institution was known of its
feminist aspirations already before the exhibition project, and also, the exhibition
didn’t present feminism as something belonging to the past, but rather, as an on-
going project (2013, 140-143). Here it is the manifestation of feminist politics and
activism in the curatorial concept, that defines whether the exhibition itself may be
seen as truly feminist. Robinson understand the exhibitions as representations of
feminism, and their success is defined accordingly. Any interplay between the
artworks or spaces, or the curatorial process beyond the exhibition concept, is not
analysed as part of the feminist effect of the exhibitions.

Curating Differently: Feminisms, Exhibitions and Curatorial Spaces (2016), edited by Jessica
Sjöholm Skrubbe, is another anthology with a feminist art historical approach. Five
out of eight essays have their point of departure either in museum institutions’
practices, or in feminist art history. In the introduction, Sjöholm Skrubbe
ambiguously defines feminist curating as “a practice of art interpretation and a
politics of display” (2016). It is evident, that with this contextualisation, feminist
curatorial work cannot be discussed in relation to the current issues of
contemporary curating. A refreshingly interesting essay in the book is
“Transformative Encounters: Prior and Current Strategies of a Feminist Pioneer”,
in which researcher and art pedagogue Margareta Gynning presents her practice as
an art historian, and as an educational curator and art pedagogue, having worked at
Stockholm’s Nationalmuseum since 1977. Gynning’s practical take on the topic is
wonderful and much needed, as she presents her feminist strategies of working with
different kinds of museum audiences from children to adults, and employing for

95
When the 2nd edition of Robinson’s vast publication Feminism–Art–Theory: An Anthology
1968-2014 came out in 2015, it included an added section “Curating Feminism”, with
exhibition texts from the aforementioned survey exhibitions WACK!, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,
and REBELLE.

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example imitation exercises, in which visitors imitate gestures and facial expressions
of paintings, in order to discuss the gender roles presented in them (2016, 79-83).

Katy Deepwell (2006) discusses feminist curatorial strategies and practices since the
1970s in the anthology New Museum Theory and Practice. In the article, Deepwell
extracts three approaches in feminist curating: historical survey exhibitions on
women’s art, projects focusing on social and historical analysis in order to
contextualise art made by women, and exhibitions focusing on gender identity and
the category of femininity. Also here, feminist curatorial work is categorised through
examining exhibition concepts and thematics, without any consideration on the
actual curatorial processes. The existence of a feminist exhibition can here be
detected solely based on the theme it represents.

Whereas Feminisms is Still Our Name focuses on the relations of history and
contemporaneity of feminist politics, Politics in a Glass Case focuses on the
deconstruction of institutional power structures. As anthologies, both publications
present various voices and points of view. What comes through in this literature
though, is that 1) curatorial work on a concept of an exhibition is understood as
curatorial practice, and 2) an art historical reading of a curatorial concept is
presented as a reading of curatorial work. Curatorial practice is seen equal to an art
historical process of research and assembling of an exhibition concept, where a clear
narrative should be created in terms of history and present. As we have seen in the
previous chapter, a curatorial practice cannot be defined through creation of
exhibition concepts only. Research is one part of the practice, but there is also the
manner in which an exhibition is put together. There are funding issues, there are
commissions, there are dialogical practices, discursive practices – there is a whole
process behind an exhibition, that cannot be reached through an analysis on
curatorial statements or counting the number of represented artists. There is also a
certain setting for each exhibition which does not come as a given, neutral space.
Principally these essays locate the curator in a museum, without any questions. We
can also ask what the exhibition at hand did to a work of art presented in it? Did it

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make us think about it in a new way? How did it relate to other works around it?
How did it feel to encounter it?

This discussion made me also return to the idea of knowledge production. I asked
myself: does working with feminism and art mean, from this perspective, that
curatorial practices must disseminate knowledge about feminism, art, feminist art,
and/or art made by women? Is this the driving force in feminist curatorial practices?
I recognise this approach in some of the retrospective survey exhibitions on
feminist art, and particularly in the art historical writing about them. The task of
disseminating knowledge about (the history) of feminism and feminist art, is indeed
defined in these discussions as the purpose of feminist curating. For example, the
exhibition Global Feminisms (2007), curated by Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin,
aspired to showcase contemporary feminist art in a global context. The exhibition
focused on feminist art since the 1990s until early 2000s, from a transnational
perspective. In a discussion between Cornelia Butler, Amelia Jones and Maura
Reilly, regarding the refreshed focus on feminism and feminist art in exhibitions,
Reilly states: “Politically driven curatorial practices can be an enactment or
performance of theory using artworks in an exhibition space as visual examples”
(2010, 40). Reilly refers directly to using art as illustration to political curatorial
ambitions, and as a tool for disseminating the curator’s ideas and knowledge. In this
light, the whole exhibition becomes a portrait of the curator, supporting the
building of canon of curators and a curatorial star cult, but not relating in any way to
contemporary political curatorial discourses, emphasizing the work of artists and
art’s transformative social powers. With this curatorial approach, the curatorial
process diminishes into a process of selection: inclusion and exclusion of art that
serves the curator’s pre-established agenda. It becomes a question of selection of
works that represent the curator’s thinking in a most suitable manner. At the same
time, the curatorial position becomes one of much power. How does this fit in a
feminist framework, even if there would be a great number of women artists
involved, and connections to the history of feminist politics established? How did
the curator think about the role of the artists of the works, that the curator uses as
illustrations of their ideas? What were the curator’s thoughts regarding the possible

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gain for artists for having their work as part of the project? And how did the curator
think about the gain for an individual work of art?

An exception in these anthologies is Working with Feminism: Curating and exhibitions in

Eastern Europe (2012), edited by Katrin Kivimaa. The anthology opens up the art
feminist field of former state-socialist countries in Eastern Europe. Half of the
writers in the publication are active as curators, continuing work with art, gender
and feminism, from where the exhibition Gender Check left in 2009. The writers
discuss specific curatorial practices, and not only through thematic contents, but
rather, though necessities, such as in “Feminist Exhibitions in Poland: From
Identity to the Transformation of Visual Order” by Izabela Kowalczyk, “The Power
of Queer Curating in Eastern Europe” by Pawel Leszkowicz, and “Untold Stories:
Interview with Rebeka Põldsam and Airi Triisberg”. What comes through, is that
the curatorial practises discussed essentially aim at changing social structures. Also,
for example in the discussion between Põldsam and Triis, the exhibition project
along with a public programme consisting of screenings, performances and
discussions, is discussed in terms of the concept, the institutional circumstances, as
well as political and financial possibilities (2012, 202-223).

Looking at literature on feminist exhibitions and feminist curating – what is written

on the topic, and from which perspectives – the focus is to a large extent on curating
feminist exhibitions, and/or exhibitions presenting women artists’ work. These shows are
most often discussed in museum settings, and from an art historical point of view,
the analysis being on how the exhibitions convey certain feminist art historical
paradigms. In these books, the writing is done most often by feminist art historians,
and most often not by feminist curators. In Feminisms is Still Our Name, 8 out of 9
writers are art historians. In Politics in a Glass Case, 12 articles out of 17 are written by
art historians96. In Working with Feminism, however, half of the writers are curators.
This affects the content of the anthology. Discussing the exhibition Untold Stories, an

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I have counted Lucy R. Lippard, Nancy Proctor, Catherine Wood, Helena Reckitt and
Suzana Milevska as curators, even though several of them have parallel careers within art
history and/or art theory [undoubtedly thanks to the neoliberal pressure to multitask
(thank you for this note to Alexandra M. Kokoli)].

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international group exhibition focusing on presenting queer art and discussing
topics of sexual minorities in Eastern Europe, and held in 2011 at Tallinn Art Hall
in the capital of Estonia, one of the three curators of the show, Airi Triisberg, notes
that one topic missing from discussions, is the idea of queer/feminist curating as a
specific kind of method or a strategy of doing exhibitions differently. Triisberg asks:
“For example, how could the notion of queering become operative in the process of
exhibition making?” (Põldsam & Triis 2012, 220). The curators are unable to give
straight answers to the question, but the matter remains at the core of their practice.

Angela Dimitrakaki notes, that in the ‘mainstream’ writing on curating, feminist

approaches are in the very margins, and most often brought up only in parenthesis
(2012b, 25). Similarly, Baert has noted, “feminist practices today are often “folded
in” with other issues and positions and may be less visible as such, even as they
shape and inform specific contexts (2006, 4). Dimitrakaki continues: “A result of
this is, in my view, that feminist curating – and we have seen much of it, from
WACK! in America to Gender Check in Europe – has not managed to articulate a
long-term dialogue between feminist positions and radical curatorial theory” (2012b,
25). In the introduction to Politics in a Glass Case, Dimitrakaki states again together
with Lara Perry, that “there is a rich history of feminist curatorial practice to be
examined as feminist intervention” (2013, 12; emphasis original). I agree with
Dimitrakaki on the fact that there hasn’t been a long-term dialogue between
feminist positions and what Dimitrakaki calls radical curatorial theory. However, I
do not think that this is solely because of the lack of writing on feminisms and
curating, but rather, I argue this is because the existing discourses on feminisms and
curating (strong art historical context as a paradigm) and the ones on contemporary
curating (no art historical context) do not meet because of their differences. As to
the trouble in recognising feminist curatorial interventions, it may be these
interventions haven’t been recognised exactly because of the same issue: because
they do not necessarily fulfil the requirements set to feminist curatorial practices by
feminist art historians. Even if they might be realised through deconstructive and
non-hierarchical strategies, they may not be focused on presenting women, nor

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declaring a historical relation to feminist politics. This is why the discourses on
feminist curating and contemporary curating do not meet.

Reading the material produced during the past decade on feminisms, exhibitions,
and partly, curating, the problem that arises for myself, is the relation between
feminist history of art and contemporary curating. For me, these are two different
approaches, which only rarely meet in a productive manner. My aim in this thesis is
not to prove that the art historical approach is the wrong one. Exhibitions bringing
forth the history of feminist art are still needed, but this shouldn’t be defined as the
paradigm for feminist exhibitions, nor feminist curating. Rather, what I aim for is
providing an alternative to this.

Embodying a feminist curatorial practice

In 2005, five Swedish artists, Line S Karlström, Johanna Gustavsson, Malin Arnell,
Anna Linder and Fia-Stina Sandlund, were brought together by art historian Eva
Hallin to discuss feminist strategies of resistance, in order for the discussion to be
published in the catalogue for the aforementioned travelling exhibition
Konstfeminism/Art Feminism. During this meeting the artists, calling themselves the
YES! Association / Föreningen JA!, critically discussed the starting points of the
then upcoming exhibition, the possible motives of the organisers, as well as the
possible pitfalls of the project. Finally, the artists decided to participate in the
exhibition by asking the institutions exhibiting the touring exhibition to sign an
Equal Opportunities Agreement, compiled by the artists, and prove they wanted to
practice what they preached and that the act of supporting and hosting the show
wasn’t mere cosmetics. According to the agreement, the institutions would agree to
equal practice in terms of gender and ethnicity (as part of their exhibition
programming, and acquisitions and recruitment policies).97

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The precisely and eloquently formulated agreement, along with a description of the YES!
Association’s critique of the cultural climate at the time in Sweden can be found here:
http://www.foreningenja.org/en/2005/10/ (Accessed 27/08/2018).

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In the interview with Amundsen and Morland, presented earlier, Simon Sheikh
notes that when working explicitly politically, the connection must be made between
the political project and the form of the exhibition (2010, 4). I argue, that thinking
about YES! Association’s act in the context of a feminist blockbuster exhibition
marks the difference between working on feminist issues as a thematic, and actually
practising feminism. All of the institutions that hosted Art Feminism, refused to sign
the agreement, though they seemed happy to promote feminist politics, theory and
art temporarily.

From a similar point of view, curators Tone Hansen and Maria Lind (2011) have
criticized the tendency to merely apply a gender aspect into an art project. Instead,
Hansen calls for deeper integration of feminist strategies in institutional practices.
According to her, the main question is what museums can learn from feminist
strategies and how they can become active in them, rather than learning how to
highlight specific (feminist) artworks or artists in a representative manner (2011, 86).
Lind also thinks that the attention in institutions should be directed more to how,
and in what kind of spaces and contexts, artworks are presented instead of merely
looking at statistics or trying to show off with singular and often superficial projects
dealing with gender (2011, 84). As one solution, Hansen and Lind propose using
strategic separatism, meaning that one doesn’t have to believe in an essential and
natural separation, but rather see it as a situation-bound need to protect oneself
from the presence of the mainstream and opposing movement (2011, 87). Strategic
separatism may work as a tool for creating space where to act in. This, also, is about
putting feminism into practice.

Interestingly enough, the earliest text on feminist curating I have found, has also
been the most inspirational one for me during this research process. In her one-
page essay “Feminism and Art Curatorial Practice” from 1990, curator Renée Baert
strives to pinpoint her take on the relationship between feminist politics and her
own curatorial practice. The text has a personal take in it; Baert doesn’t make a
difference between her life and her curatorial practice. The basis of her thinking is

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drawn from how feminism reshapes what we understand in the domain of knowledge.
For Baert, knowledge is a notion that determines feminist thinking – feminism
enables women to be ‘knowing subjects’ against the patriarchal model of the woman
as the one who cannot know. Art is here seen as that which stimulates a process of
thinking: “The curatorial project is a way of working through certain questions, of
learning through a process of researching and writing, in an effort to articulate the
particular connections I am in the process making, and extending” (1990).

Further, Baert states: “When I am working, I don’t fully ‘know’ what I’m doing”
(1990). Here she turns to the concept of enchantment. The question of feminist
curating is for Baert essentially a question of art and politics. She suggests a feminist
curatorial practice as a political practice based on the experience of enchantment, instead of
privileged critical strategies of rupture and negation. As part of the process, the
curator focuses on visceral and emotional stresses of works; works that lead one to
wonder. The combination of pleasure and contemplation equals the enchantment
the curator may mediate. The curatorial practice appears as a feminist interrogation
of discourses of knowledge and legitimation, producing collectively other forms of
knowledge.

The curatorial practice suggested by Baert relates to feminist politics on several

layers: by insisting women have agency as subjects of knowledge. Curating is here
seen, indeed, as a process of knowledge production, happening between the curator
and the work of art, as well as the work of art and the viewer. The practice itself
doesn’t rely on structures that are based on rationality or analytic thinking, but
instead create space for other forms of knowledge. To me, Baert is describing a
process of thinking through art. I am returning to Baert’s view on feminist curating
anew in the concluding chapter of this thesis. I will then reconsider my resistance to
the idea of knowledge production, and imagine it anew as a more abstract event of
knowledge, a moment in which different elements and beings may come together
and form a space for wonder, enchantment and amazement.

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The issue 18 of n.paradoxa (2006) concentrates on the topic of curatorial strategies.
This was the first volume on the topic anticipating the proliferation of literature
around feminism, art and curating. The issue remains relevant still today, exactly
because of its rare focus on the topic of strategies employed by feminist curators. I
found another important text for this thesis in this volume. In the essay
“Exhibitionary Affect” Jennifer Fisher drafts a feminist curatorial strategy based on
working with the transmission of affect. Focusing on operations of affect, Fisher
aims to unravel how exhibitions impact the body and perception in particular ways;
in ways that intensify the body and the environment; in ways that open cognition
beyond signification; and in ways that make invisible elements explicit (2006, 28). In
the essay, Fisher connects work with affect to feminist approaches, emphasizing the
significance of embodiment and bodily knowledge, and linking this with the aspect
of transformation. I am returning Fisher’s essay in detail in the concluding chapter.

In April 2016, together with feminist researcher Basia Sliwinska, I co-organised a

half-day symposium Feminisms and Curatorial Collaborations at the Institute of
Contemporary Arts in London. As a reaction to the state of current discussion, I
suggested we invite practitioners from the field of visual art and curating as the
speakers. We also wanted to focus on the aspect of collaboration in feminist
practice, and talk about issues relating to solidarity, friendship, and ethics of care. As
speakers, we invited Irene Revell and Lina Dzuverovic, Carla Cruz, Giulia Lamoni
and Margarida Brito Alves, and Lucy Stein. What came up as leading thoughts in the
presentations, was the cross-pressures of the need for collaborative practice and
notions of care, which in a capitalist society exceedingly turn into unpaid forms of
affective labour98. In addition, art historian Lara Perry was invited to take part in a
roundtable discussion concluding the event, as she was one of the organisers of the
symposium Curating in Feminist Thought in Zurich, having taken place one month
after. This symposium, Curating in Feminist Thought in Zurich in May 2016, also aimed
at taking a discursive curatorial approach as its point of departure. The focus was
not on feminist curating as an art historical practice, and also independent and

98
I discuss affective labour in more detail in the following chapter.

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discursive practices were discussed. Perhaps, it was essential then to contextualise
the event precisely in this manner ‘curating in feminist thought’, instead of a
categorising idea of ‘feminist curating’. Accroding to Elke Krasny, Lara Perry and
Dorothee Richter, who were the event organisers and editors of the accompanying
issue of ONCURATING.org, the aim of the event and the issue was to discuss
practice of curating in a more generative role in forming a more inclusive and just
art world (2016).

Researcher and curator Elke Krasny is one of the few writers who has discussed
feminist curatorial practices outside a definitive art historical background,
concentrating more on the practices, methods, and their cultural ramifications
(2015; 2016). In the essay “Feminist Thought and Curating: On Method” (2015)
Krasny critically examines the relations between curating and feminisms, focusing
on gender politics of the field. For Krasny, the dynamics between feminisms and
curating have to be reconfigured through acknowledging the origins: feminist
thought has emerged as politics, whereas curatorial practice has emerged primarily
as a cultural practice. According to Krasny: “Feminist thought provides the methods
of analysis in working out how curating is responding to specific historic conditions
and how curating does or does not address the social changes brought by feminism
within these specific historic conditions” (2015, 56). Krasny discusses the topic
through her study on The International Dinner Party, a project originally conceived by
Suzanne Lacy in the form of a performance as a tribute to Judy Chicago. In the
essay “Curatorial Materialism: A Feminist Perspective on Independent and Co-
Dependent Curating” Krasny discusses many of the topics I have desperately been
seeking in the field: feminist curating as a radical political praxis, independent
curatorship, and contemporary case studies. However, also here Krasny discusses
only practices explicitly concerned with feminist and gender politics (Lucy Lippard,
Ida Biard, VALIE EXPORT, and collectives Red Mind(e)d, and Queering Yerevan).
While Krasny’s writing aims to negotiate the feminism in larger social contexts,
doing this through a genealogical art historical approach by presenting the
practitioners in an art feminist continuum, I argue that Krasny’s writing does not
extend the realm of the representational. The feminist politics is always attached

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from the start to the thematics of the curatorial practice, and as such, do not favour
discussion outside it.

Angela Dimitrakaki has also written about curating and feminist thought outside a
strict art historical context, and more in relation to globalisation and critique of
capitalism and neoliberal politics (2012; 2013a; 2013b; Dimitrakaki & Perry 2013).
In the publication Gender, artwork and the global imperative: A materialist feminist critique
(2013) the last section of her book, ‘Acting on power: critical collectives, curatorial
visions and art as life’ is dedicated to discussing feminist practices in the context of
contemporary curating. In this section, Dimitrakaki presents the work of Why, How
& For Whom, Kuratorisk Aktion, Mujeres Publicas, And Malmö Free University for
Women, and negotiates the collectives’ practices in a larger social context.
Dimitrakaki’s approach to discuss feminist practices within visual arts and curating
is very important, as I have not encountered other writers with as consistent
approach to the topic. I argue, though, that through her historical materialist
approach, Dimitrakaki’s critique remains mainly on how meaning and value is
produced in a materialist social context, and not so much on other aspects of
curatorial work.

Both Krasny’s and Dimitrakaki’s work is thus highly valuable to the discourses of
contemporary curating and feminist thought, as both of them discuss the topic
outside museum institutions, with clear critical and political approaches, and more
in touch with the current curatorial discourses. Because of the reasons mentioned
above, however, their writing is not useful in my endeavour of drafting a feminist
curatorial practice which takes the vibrant materiality of art as its starting point, and
employs the notion of affective encounter as the origin of virtual transformation.

Almost contrasting the ideas on curatorial knowledge production, I have become

intrigued by Catherine de Zegher’s thoughts in relation to curating the exhibition
Inside the Visible: An Elliptical Traverse of the 20th Century Art in, of, and From the Feminine
(1994-1997). Inside the Visible was an international touring exhibition, which was
shown at Béguinage of Saint-Elizabeth in Kortrijk, Belgium; the Institute of

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Contemporary Art, Boston; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington
DC; Whitechapel Gallery, London, and The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth.
The exhibition presented works by women artists from three different generations,
focusing on three time periods of social or cultural turbulence (1930s, 1970s, 1990s).
The exhibition suggested that we could look at artistic production through cyclical
shifts, recognising connections and links between the women artists’ work from
different time periods.

In the exhibition catalogue, de Zegher writes about the significance of exhibitions as

events: “An exhibition as an event should be transitory; it should be neither an
answer nor a fixed statement but rather a spectrum of activities that offers different
perspectives, a set of relationships, a discussion, a dialogue without canon” (de
Zegher 1996, 36). What speaks to me in de Zegher’s quote is that it suggests that
her curatorial approach lies indeed somewhere other than in the theme of the
exhibition. De Zegher does not state that she’s providing or producing knowledge
on feminist art through her curatorial actions and choices, but she does state that
she’s aiming towards creating a space for encounters, thoughts, emotions and
reflections. She later calls this a space for amazement: “Inside the Visible is conceived
within this space of amazement shared by the artwork, the maker, and the
beholder—in what may be called ‘a participatory relation’” (1996, 36). Reading de
Zegher’s ideas on exhibitions as spaces for amazement, I understood that this was
what I was aiming for—although on a much smaller scale—with my curatorial
process with Only the Lonely (see ch. 5).

In the curatorial text for Inside the Visible, de Zegher also speaks about her
relationship with the artworks in the show. Throughout the process, art is seen as a
producer of theory, and not the other way around. The exhibition was built upon
associations of ideas arising from the artworks (1996, 23). This is precisely what
Renée Baert (2000) brings up regarding de Zegher’s work with Inside the Visible:
“The thesis of the exhibition arises from and through the artwork, that is, through
its materialities, specialities, haptic properties, iconography, etc. (rather than, as is
too often the case, the other way around, ie. art pressed into service to illustrate a
pre-established theoretical argument). Thus the exhibition is not a mere ‘fastening’

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of art and theory but is itself a necessary form” (2000, 8). It is interesting that Baert
emphasises the significance of materiality and haptic elements of the works. It is
interesting because this is an aspect that is very rarely brought up when discussing
feminism and curating. Indeed, it appears that when it comes to discussions on
feminist curating, the prevailing approach is along the lines of Maura Reilly’s views
discussed previously: the art illustrating a curatorial concept and the curator’s
aspirations. The properties and the presence of the artwork remains a secondary
topic in relation to the thematic of an exhibition.

It thus seems to me that there exists two paths of thinking governing the field of
feminist curating at the moment: an art historical one focusing on the production of
so-called feminist exhibitions, and a more curatorial approach, where feminist politics
is understood as part of the curatorial practice itself. One of them attempts to tackle a
feminist theme of an exhibition project quite literally and disseminate information
about social, cultural and historical circumstances through art; the other one, not
often discussed, has possibly a more ambiguous relation to feminist politics, and
attempts rather to create an ambiance and a situation in which works of art are
contextualised in a feminist theoretical setting. Further on, in the former, the
artworks featured in the exhibition project are understood as visual examples
reflecting a theoretical and political approach of the curator in the context of the
project in question (Butler et al, 2003, 40; see also the subchapter on feminist
blockbuster exhibitions). In the latter, the curator wishes to tune into the work and
create a setting for it, in which it may, or may not, gain new meanings (de Zegher
1996; Baert 1990, 2000, 2010). I am making this argument based on the discourses
presented in the literature above on feminisms and curating. There are, of course,
other kinds of feminist curatorial practices out there, collective and individual
curatorial practices. As has been mentioned, this thesis is not a mapping the field of
feminist curating.99

99
I have chosen to research only certain selected curatorial approaches more closely, as
these have emerged as part of research into curatorial practices concerned with feminisms,
new materialisms, affect, and/or emotion specifically.

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In Baert’s view, feminist curatorial practice is about creating a setting for reflection
and enchantment by art. It all starts with the experience, moves through notions of
pleasure, and leads to creating a relation with art. I’m interested in the fact that Baert
brings up the significance of experience and emotion in relation to feminist curating,
and perhaps above all that she sees the positive emotions of pleasure and wonder as
progressive in this context. This is very similar to de Zegher’s later idea of
amazement. Indeed, in a later text from 2000, Baert comes back to this and writes:
“I’d like to try to think feminist curatorial practice as a potential site, a space for
speculation, for local contingencies, for new structures of knowledge and pleasure,
and, more largely, for poetics. There aren’t many models of such a practice around,
within feminism or elsewhere, so I would like to give the last word to de Zegher, in
appreciation for her conception of the possibilities, and realisation, of the curatorial
process as ‘a space of amazement’ (Baert 2000, 9).”

In this chapter I have discussed current writing on curating and feminist thought,
and showed that the main narrative is an art historical one, which does not
recognize the idea of curating as a process, and discusses feminist curating solely
based on the end product, which, according to this paradigm, should be an
exhibition concept which presents a representation of what feminisms and/or
feminist art according to feminist art historians is. In the context of this research,
the problems are 1) curatorial practice is not acknowledged as what it according to
contemporary curatorial discourses is: a discursive practice with art, artists, spaces
and audiences; 2) curatorial practice is understood as a praxis inside a museum
institution, and there is no space for aspects concerning independent curatorship; 3)
the understanding of what feminist exhibitions are, is highly narrow, as feminist
exhibition is understood as a representation of an art historical research into
feminist art or art made by women.

In the concluding chapter of this thesis, I’m retuning to investigate the connections
between Baert’s enchantment, de Zegher’s amazement, the event of affect, and my
own idea of feminist curating as a site for affective transformation. Here I will draft

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a proposal on a feminist curatorial practice that operates through encounter, affect,
emotion, and transformation. What I need to critically examine further in Baert’s
and de Zegher’s approaches is the political aspect of feminism and how it
potentially manifests in the curatorial practice, or the encounter that is set out.

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4 Encounters and affects

It all starts with getting in touch with someone or something

If the opposite of being a body is dead [and] there is no life apart from the body…
[then] to have a body is to learn to be affected, meaning ‘effectuated’, moved, put
into motion by other entities, humans or nonhumans. If you are not engaged in this
learning, you become insensitive, dumb, you drop dead” (Latour 2004, 205; cited in
Gregg & Seigworth 2010, 11).

During a conference, philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist Bruno Latour

asked the participants to define an antonym to ‘a body’. One of the replies which he
found most fascinating was ‘dead’. Drawing from this reply, Latour describes in the
quotation above what he recognises as a need for affective encounters between
human and nonhuman entities in order for us to remain alive and awake as
sensitive, socially conscious beings. In line with Latour’s thinking here, an
encounter, as a happening between different bodies and beings, is the most central
concept of this thesis, as a starting point for just about everything.

As I point out in the unfolding of this thesis, the notion of an encounter is deeply
entangled in the practice of curating, in feminist politics, as well as in the concept of
affect. From the point of view of the curator, nothing happens without an
encounter with an artwork and/or an artist, from where the encounter may develop
into a further acquaintance, discussion, understanding, exchange, relationship,
sharing. The encounter is in a sense passed forward, as well as created anew,
between the different potential encountering bodies when a work of art is presented
to others. In terms of feminist politics, the notion of an encounter is at the very
core, as feminist thought and activism is understood through lived and shared
embodied experience and the rearrangement of power structures, as these are
divided unequally in terms of gender, sexuality, class, race, ethnicity, nationality and
ability.

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This chapter as a whole discusses the encounter in the context of affect. In this
research, I approach and use affect as a tool for understanding and theorizing
encounters with artworks, and the transformative processes these encounters (or as
I also like to see it, openings or entry points into the lifeworld of a work of art) can
give beginnings to. Affect appears as a useful concept for unravelling the complex
events and shifts that take shape in these encounters, partly consisting of emotional,
associative and other processes that may be difficult, if not impossible, to talk about
in terms of language. An encounter is here understood as the required starting point
from where the spark of affect may activate, where any process may begin to unfold
and evolve. An encounter is understood as essential in the sense that without it, our
thoughts, actions, habits, and lives would lead their usual paths. It is the encounters
between our bodies and other bodies that are required for things to take on new
paths, and for us to transform. It was this rather banal realization about the
significance and weight of encounters that lead me to affect theory, hand in hand
with thinking about sensations in an encounter that has a power to touch and move us;
an encounter that may cause something to shift or transform within us.

Touching Feeling, named after Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s book, was a working title for
a group exhibition I planned during my first year of PhD studies. Kosofsky
Sedgwick’s Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (2003) was the first source I
found into affect theory. While in the end I got more inspired by Kosofsky
Sedgwick’s style of writing (not least her way of writing herself and her embodied
queer experience into critical theory and philosophy), and the way she incorporates
the art and the artist Judith Scott as an essential part of her thinking in this essay
anthology, than her understanding on affect, Touching Feeling turned out to be an
entrance for me into affect theory and its relation to art. Reading the book led my
thoughts to artists working with tactile materials, a certain kind of non-erotic and
soothing sensuality of touch, and the notion of emotional participation. An idea of
an exhibition consisting of works by French Chloé Dugit-Gros, British Rosie Farrell
and Swedish Linda Persson started to form through these thoughts.

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I got to know Chloé Dugit-Gros while visiting Paris and making studio visits with
local artists. I was immediately drawn to the use of tactile materials and the sense of
play in Dugit-Gros’ practice, consisting of video, sculptural and performative work.
While many of her works may appear light or “simply” aesthetically pleasing, the
works are often grounded in discussing social and political topics, such as living
conditions in Parisian suburbs, the French education system, as well as LGBTQIA
rights. Discussing her practice and the ideas with the exhibition, Chloé and I
decided that her video piece Narcotica (2012-2014) would be interesting for the show
[fig. 4]. In the video, set in white laboratory-like surroundings, a pair of hands
conducts simple ‘magic tricks’ by creating chemical reactions with different
materials. When getting in contact with another body of matter, the seemingly
passive materialities become alive in their intra-action (Barad 2007). All this activity
is depicted calmly and soothingly – highlighting the transformation of the materials.

I got to know Rosie Farrell soon after moving to London in 2013 through a mutual
friend. Her work at the time was focused around the theme of magic, which she had
worked on at various residencies, and which manifested as a curated programme in
Manchester. Through the research, her artistic practice appears as visual extension
of a larger exploration she is invested in, in this case magic. In the context of
Touching Feeling, I was thinking about the careful attention to detail very present in
Rosie’s practice, alongside meditative processes and movements depicted in several
of her works.

[fig. 4] Still images from Chloé Dugit-Gros, Narcotica (2012-2014). 11 min, silent.

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During our discussions, Rosie and I decided together that the installation UN-
Heaven’s Gate (2012) would be the work for the project [fig. 5]. The piece consists of
a video, in which a performer is moving around and with a sculptural metallic
structure. The video, shown on a monitor, would have been installed in the space
together with the sculpture, alongside a pair of Nike trainers and some violet satin
fabric, the elements also appearing in the video. The work is an assemblage
consisting of the sculptural work, the other elements, and the interaction of the
human and nonhuman bodies presented in the video, the work as a whole
presenting itself as a site for potentiality and anticipation. Alongside the topics of
human/nonhuman interaction and sensitivity of touch, the work links to Farrell’s
research on ecstatic dance and rave culture, alongside the topic of losing oneself, or
perhaps rather control of oneself, as part of these.100

Linda Persson is a Swedish artist living and working in London. I’ve know her
practice since a residency period she did in Stockholm, and we continued our

[fig. 5] A still image from Rosie Farrell, UN-Heaven’s Gate, 2012.

100
There are also the references to the North American religious cult Heaven’s Gate,
known primarily of the tragic mass suicide in 1997, in which 39 members of the cult
participated. The reference is in the title of the work, as well as in the pair of Nikes and the
purple fabric used in the piece, which relate to the uniforms worn by the cult members.
This adds another, rather complicated layer to the theme of losing oneself, as well as to
touching and feeling.

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discussions once I moved to London. In her practice, Persson often focuses on the
tactile aspects of materials alongside the histories they carry with them. She has for
example worked with clay invested with healing powers in Estonia, sacred stones in
The Outback of Australia, and objects related to witchcraft in Sweden. The sensory
qualities of materials and objects in a larger sense, play an essential part in her
practice as a whole. Thinking about video, installation and sculptural work, I was
interested in including a video installation by Persson together with textile works in
the exhibition. The textile works were silk scarfs Persson had painted and written
on, which were to be installed horizontally with the help of bricks and stones. In the
video piece, we see a pair of hands (yes, another work with hands only acting)
carefully arranging pieces of coloured plastic on a screen. The work occupies a
certain kind of sensuousness, that comes through in the very careful manner the
hands are handling the materials in a seemingly arbitrary order.101

My thinking process with Touching Feeling was then quite literally focused on the acts
of touching and feeling, which emerged while discussing the potential exhibition
project with Chloé, Rosie and Linda. In the introduction to Touching Feeling,
Kosofsky Sedwick notes that she chose the title for her essays as a record of “the
intuition that a particular intimacy seems to subsist between textures and emotions”.
This line resonates strongly with the works I wished to include in the exhibition
project. There is much I find highly interesting in Sedgwick’s writing around affect,
and particularly her aim of deconstructing the Cartesian dualistic thinking model
through it. I found notions such as this extremely inspiring in terms of thinking
about feminist work with art and curating, and to which I will return to in the
concluding chapter of this thesis: “Even more immediately than other perceptual
systems, it seems, the sense of touch makes nonsense out of any dualistic
understanding of agency and passivity; to touch is always already to reach out, to
fondle, to heft, to tap, or to enfold, and always also to understand other people or
natural forces as having effectually done so before oneself, if only in the making of

101
During our discussions on the exhibition project, Linda and I engaged also in a
discussion on affectivity of art and lingering affects, which was published by a Swedish
non-profit art space Art Lab Gnesta in their yearly publication Fält (no. 5/2014).

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the textured object” (2003, 14). Here Sedgwick brings together the tactile materiality
of a work of art and the notions of encountering, sensing and feeling deeply
connected to it. In retrospect, though, I notice that the direction of the exhibition
started evolving more towards what is now known as ASMR (autonomous sensory
meridian response). The ASMR phenomenon, existing primarily on communities on
YouTube channels and elsewhere on social media, is a term for a relaxing and
calming sensation some people experience while hearing certain kinds of sounds or
seeing certain kinds of images.102 Perhaps then, partly because of the undeveloped
nature of the exhibition concept and how it was at this phase wandering around
affect – though mostly because of practical matters – the exhibition never
materialised. However, the concept grew into another group exhibition which did
materialise in 2015, Only the Lonely, which I discuss in detail at the end of chapter
five.

By presenting my thinking around affect through encounters with works of art, and
the formulation of an exhibition concept, I wish to emphasize the way art has
functioned as an essential catalyst in guiding me to different thought forms and
fields of theory as part of the research. The curatorial process as a whole is an
interplay between works of art, artists, strands of theory, and existing curatorial
ambitions – and naturally, the practicality of having or not having a physical setting
where a project can materialise. The exhibition concept grew gradually as a process
through readings, studio visits, discussions, getting familiar with works of art, as well
as artists, and detecting103 links between these participants and actors. Alongside
touching, it was equally as much the aspect of feeling that first attracted me to the

102
Apparently, there is no scientific explanation to this phenomenon, which is nevertheless
experienced by a number of people, its main hub being a YouTube community. As a
calming and relaxing sensation felt physically on the body and triggered by sounds and/or
images (not so much unlike pornography), ASMR is indeed an interesting phenomenon
also when thinking about experiencing art and summoning good feeling, possibly even as a
future research for myself. Some (again, non-scientific) sources say experiencing ASMR
even effectively help people suffering from insomnia, anxiety, and depression. See e.g.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-brain-tingling-sounds-of-asmr
(accessed 25 June 2018).
103
I wish to use the word ’detect’ here, as I do understand intuition and sensitivity towards
the qualities and being of an art work as essential part of my work with art and artists.

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terrain of affect. Feeling and emotion are topics discussed in feminist theorization
both within ontology and epistemology, and at the same time, as notions linking
these fields of inquiry. I will not discuss the distinctions between affect, emotion
and feeling here anew (see p. 26-27), but will repeat that I do in this thesis approach
these terms as non-synonymous, yet at the same time as essentially connected ones.

Most affect theorists, particularly when discussing affect within the philosophical
realm (opposed to the biopsychological one104) make a difference between their use
of affect, emotion and feeling. For Deleuze and Guattari, the difference is that
feeling and emotion refer to personal sensations, whereas affect doesn’t (Massumi
1987, xvi). Here affect is understood more as an intensity, which may function,
though not necessarily, so that it eventually leads a person to act in a certain way, or
even feel certain way. For Massumi, emotion is a term for determinacy while affect
is one for indeterminacy (2002, 26). According to Massumi then, emotion and affect
follow different logics and function differently from each other. Further explaining
Deleuze and Guttari’s, as well as Brian Massumi’s understanding and use of the
terms, Eric Shouse (2005) notes, that in this context feelings are defined as personal
and biographical, whereas emotions are defined as social. Through this division,
affect can further be understood as prepersonal. A feeling is formed in relation to a
person’s previous experiences, and emotion is the projection or a display of that
feeling. An emotion can also vary from being a projection of an inner state, or on
the other hand a display adapted to fulfil social expectations (Shouse 2005). As I
understand it, affect itself exists outside a body, as an intensity which may connect
with that body, while it is the workings of affect that play out on our bodies, physically
and materially, enabling us to act, feel, and connect, among other things.

Referring to what I wrote in the introduction about the “dangers” of focusing on

emotion as a feminist researcher, Sara Ahmed emphasizes the need for feminist
research to continue unravelling the gendered dichotomies regarding being
emotional (women) and rational (men):

104
Within the psychological realm of affect studies, most researchers do not make this
distinction, and find it unsustainable (Leys 2011, 443).

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 To be emotional is to have one’s judgement affected: it is to be reactive rather than
active, dependent rather than autonomous. Feminist philosophers have shown us
how the subordination of emotions also works to subordinate the feminine and the
body (Spelman 1989; Jaggar 1996). Emotions are associated with women, who are
represented as ‘closer’ to nature, ruled by appetite, and less able to transcend the
body through thought, will and judgement (2014, 3).

Emotion is not a feminine topic, but rather, a feminist one. Indeed, emotion and
reason form one of the central gendered dichotomies, recognised and criticised by
feminist scholars (e.g. Jaggar 1996; Ahmed 2014). As Ahmed notes, attending to
emotions helps us think about how bodies react to each other – how we orientate
towards and away from others. Attending to emotion helps us also to think what
bodies can do in the Spinozist sense: what we do is shaped by the contact we have with
others, and emotions in turn shape what bodies (can) do (2014, 4).

In discussing the so-called affective turn, feminist film and media scholar Anu
Koivunen brings forth feminist theorization on historicization of emotions,
conducted for example by Ann Cvetkovich (1992), Lauren Berlant (2008) and Rei
Terada (2001). She also points out, that the field of queer studies specifically has
contributed to this feminist genealogy of emotion important and influential work
focusing on negative emotions, such as studies of trauma cultures, of loss, pain,
melancholia, and shame (Koivunen 2010, 20). From the field of feminist research
on art and emotion, I’d also like to add Visualizing feeling: Affect and the feminine avant-
garde (2011) by Susan Best, and Hold It Against Me. Difficulty and Emotion in
Contemporary Art (2013) by Jennifer Doyle to this list. During my research process on
affect, I have come across the vast history of feminist research on emotion through
references in feminist research literature only (Ahmed 2014; Hemmings 2005, 2012;
Koivunen 2010).

The affective turn

In the introduction to The Affect Theory Reader (2010) the editors Melissa Gregg and
Gregory J. Seigworth attempt to grasp the essential points in defining affect: “affect

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is found in those intensities that pass body to body (human, nonhuman, part-body,
and otherwise), in those resonances that circulate about, between, and sometimes
stick to bodies and worlds, and in the very passages or variations between these
intensities and resonances themselves” (2010, 1). The writers locate affect in the in-
between-ness of things – relations between humans, nonhumans, objects, things,
materials, and other entities – as well as in the potential in these relations, through
our capacities to act and be acted upon. According to Gregg and Seigworth,
following Spinoza, Deleuze and Guattari, affect can be defined as a vital force –
something other than conscious intention, knowing, or indeed, emotion.

Another aspect Gregg and Seigworth emphasize is how affect is essentially

embedded in our being in the world: “affect is persistent proof of a body’s never
less than ongoing immersion in and among the world’s obstinacies and rhythms, its
refusals as much as its invitations. …Affect marks a body’s belonging to a world of
encounters or; a world’s belonging to a body of encounters but also, in non-belonging,
through all those far sadder (de)compositions of mutual in-compossibilities” (2010,
1-2). Affect is defined as a force guiding our actions, our gravitation towards or
away from other bodies and entities, in a continuous flow of invitations and
refusals. The oscillation between the affect’s pushes and pulls appears to happen
without a conscious will of our own. Gregg and Seigworth – again, following Gilles
Deleuze’s theorization of affect on the path guided by Spinoza – recognize the real
power of affect as this potential: a body’s capacity to affect and be affected (2010, 2).

Gregg and Seigworth’s use of words and their tendency to circle around the concept
rather than directly addressing it, demonstrates the general difficulty in defining
affect.105 As clear definitions of affect are tricky, I am here defining affect by

105
The writers address this somewhat directly themselves; e.g.: “Because affect emerges out
of muddy, unmediated relatedness and not in some dialectical reconciliation of cleanly
oppositional elements or primary units, it makes easy compartmentalisms give way to
thresholds and tensions, blends and blurs” (Gregg & Seigworth 2010, 4). Clare Hemmings
in her turn notes, that affect is much too often accompanied by riddle-like descriptions. In
her critical text on the affective turn (2005, 563) she refers poignantly to Massumi’s
description of affect “as something scientists can detect the loss of (in the anomaly), social
scientists and cultural critics cannot interpret, but philosophers can imagine” (Massumi
2002, 17).

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introducing it in a framework of a paradigm shift within cultural and critical studies.
A turn to affect in the field of cultural and critical studies is a notion recognised by a
number of writers in books, anthologies and articles (Ahmed 2014, 205-211; Gregg
& Seigworth 2010; Koivunen 2010; Kosofsky Sedgwick 2003; Leys 2011; Liljeström
& Paasonen 2010). In the literature, the turn to affect is most often contextualised
as a dissatisfaction fixated on textual and discourse analysis embraced by a
poststructuralist approach governing the field of cultural studies.

According to Patricia T. Clough (2007), the affective turn started to take place in the
early to mid-1990s by critical theorists and cultural critics, as a reaction to the
limitations of poststructuralism and deconstruction governing the field of cultural
studies. Clough explains:
In this conceptualization, affect is not only theorized in terms of the human body.
Affect is also theorized in relation to the technologies that are allowing us both to
“see” affect and to produce affective bodily capacities beyond the body’s organic-
physiological constraints. The technoscientific experimentation with affect not only
traverses the opposition of the organic and the nonorganic; it also inserts the
technical into felt vitality, the felt aliveness given in the pre-individual bodily
capacities to act, to engage, to connect—to affect and be affected. The affective
turn, therefore, expresses a new configuration of bodies, technology and matter
that is instigating a shift in thought in critical theory” (Clough 2007, 2).

Clough brings forth three key elements in the turn to affect, which have also heavily
impacted the starting points of this research: 1) affect is theorized outside the
human body; 2) talking about affective relations enables us to talk about relations
between organic and nonorganic matter, as well as human and nonhuman entities;
and 3) talking about affect allows us to focus on the significance of felt vitality in
our capacities to act, engage and connect. According to Clough, the turn to affect
proposed a substantive shift in that it returned critical theory and cultural criticism
to embodiment, materiality and bodily matter – which had been since then treated
in terms of various constructionisms under the influence of poststructuralism and
deconstruction (2010, 206). However, several feminist researchers such as Sara
Ahmed (2014), Anu Koivunen (2010) and Clare Hemmings (2005, 2012) have
reminded that embodiment, materiality and bodily matter have not at all been
forgotten, but that these topics have been present at the heart of feminist inquiry

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since the 1970s. Speaking particularly about the feminist field of affect studies,
Marianne Liljeström and Susanna Paasonen note, that considerations of affect
foreground questions of matter, biology and energetic forces (2010, 1). As the
editors of an anthology focused on feminist affective readings, their approach has
been to not oppose considerations of materiality, affect and embodiment to textual
analysis, but rather investigate their interrelations as intimate co-dependence (2010,
2). I have found this to be the case particularly in the field of feminist studies in new
materialist theory and focus on agency of matter, discussed widely in publications
such as Material feminisms (2008), Carnal Knowledge: Towards a ‘New Materialism’ through
the Arts (2013), Carnal Aesthetics: Transgressive Imagery and Feminist Politics (2013), as well
as Anthropocene Feminism (2017). All of these anthologies include at least one article
focused on affect as a tool for unfolding questions relating to matter and our
entanglements with matters human and nonhuman. I will return to the linkages
between feminist inquiry, affect, embodiment, and new materialism in detail in the
second part of this chapter.

According to Clough, the affective turn opens up a transdisciplinary approach to

theory and method from the point of view of changes in the social deployment of
affective capacity (2007, 3). Clough points to the use (and usefulness) of the concept
of affect as a tool for studying phenomena overarching and connecting the fields of
the cultural, the political, and the economic. The vastness and variety of fields of
study employing affect studies is an indication of the transdisciplinary nature of
affect studies. It relates essentially also to why I have selected a certain path of affect
studies over others in relation to my research material and questions.

In the introduction to The Affect Theory Reader, Gregg and Seigworth emphasize there
is no single, generalizable theory of affect (2010, 3). However, according to them,
contemporary affect theory is deeply influenced by two essays featuring two
different approaches to affect, that were both published in 1995: Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick and Adam Frank’s ‘Shame in the Cybernetic Fold’ and Brian Massumi’s
‘The Autonomy of Affect’. Indeed, the two main branches of inquiry within affect
theory are most often defined between the followers of on the one hand

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psychologist Silvan Tomkins (Kosofsky Sedgwick and Frank’s essay), and on the
other, philosophers Gilles Deleuze alongside Felix Guattari, their thoughts originally
rooted in the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza (Massumi’s essay).106 I’m first
introducing the former approach mainly through the thinking of Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick.107

The biopsychological branch

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s writing is rooted in the development of gender studies

and queer studies in the early 1990s. Being simultaneously analytic, deconstructive
and poetic, her writing is brought to life through lived experience of love, loss, and
in the end, also illness. For example, in Touching Feeling (2003) her research and
writing unfolds as a lifelong project, bringing together essays interrogating topics
concerning emotion, expression, performativity and affect through the work of
thinkers (J.L. Austin, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Silvan Tomkins) she has
been contemplating throughout her career.108

In terms of conceptualising affect then, Kosofsky Sedgwick relies on psychologist

Silvan Tomkins’s psychobiology of differential affects (1962). According to
Tomkins and his followers, there exists a limited number of affects, as a system
resembling the elements of a periodic table. The combinations of these affects work
“to produce what are normally thought of as emotions, which, like the physical
substances formed from the elements, are theoretically unlimited in number”
(Kosofsky Sedgwick 2003, 18n). Importantly to Tomkins, affects appear as an
autonomous system connected to the body and other bodies. As Kosofsky

106
This distinction has been made also by others, e.g. Koivunen 2010; Leys 2011.
107
In the end, I didn’t feel the need to close-read Silvan Tomkins’ psychological texts, as
the second-hand references gave me enough information on the direction of Tomkins’
thinking around affect. It can also be stated here that in the literature on affect, Tomkins’
thinking is most often introduced through Sedgwick and Frank’s ‘Shame in the Cybernetic
Fold’ (1995), in the manner mentioned above also by Gregg and Seigworth (2010, 5-6).
108
According to Sedgwick, obsession is the most durable form of intellectual capital (2003,
4).

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Sedgwick explains, “affects can be, and are, attached to things, people, ideas,
sensations, relations, activities, ambitions, institutions, and any number of other
things, including other affects. Thus, one can be excited by anger, disgusted by
shame, or surprised by joy” (Kosofsky Sedgwick 2003, 19).

Marking a distinction to Freud’s drives as the main motivator of human behaviour,

Kosofsky Sedgwick defines Tomkins’ affect system as a different kind of a structure:
“For Tomkins, the difference between the drive system and the affect system is not
that one is more rooted in the body than the other; he understands both to be
thoroughly embodied, as well as more or less intensively interwoven with cognitive
processes. The difference instead is between more specific and more general, more
and less constrained: between biologically based systems that are less and more
capable of generating complexity or degrees of freedom” (2003, 18). The
autonomous system of affects is something else than Freudian drives – affects do
not function in terms of structuring a means to an end.109

Affects exist as an autonomous yet measurable system linked to the body, while
embodying a certain kind of freedom of connecting to other bodies and other
affects. As Koivunen puts it, for Tomkins “affect is a biopsychological notion based
on empirical studies and defined as distinct from the psychoanalytic logic of drives.
His model features nine discrete human affects that have distinct neurological
profiles and measurable psychological responses” (2010, 10). For Sedgwick, the
realm of affects opens up a conceptual realm where we can attend to psychology
and materiality outside the dualities of subject versus object or of means versus ends
(2003, 21). As I read it, it is above all this freedom of affects, which enables the
escape from a dualistic model of understanding the world, that Kosofsky Sedgwick
is drawn to.

109
To a certain extent, not being overly familiar with the psychoanalytic discourses, the
discussion on affect appears to me here perhaps more as a discussion within the field of
psychology as a way of taking distance from a prevailing Freudian perspective.

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Feminist philosopher and social theorist Teresa Brennan’s book The Transmission of
Affect (2004) opens up with the often-cited line within affect studies: “Is there
anyone who has not, at least once, walked into a room and ‘felt the atmosphere’?”
(2004, 1). The line is interesting, as it does capture several essential notions in affect
theory: the significance of feeling; the relational existence of bodies and entities; the
possibility to affect and be affected; and perhaps most importantly in terms of this
thesis, the acknowledgement that a nonhuman entity (such as a room), may embody
an atmosphere which actively affects other bodies within it.

Though partly writing about ethereal topics, such as an atmosphere of a room, and
the transmission of affect alongside its relationality, Brennan writes about affect from
a Tomkins-related empirically measurable biopsychological point of view. According
to Brennan, the transmission of affect is social or psychological in origin, though
simultaneously, the transmission is responsible for changes which can be detected
on the body. The effects of affect are then biological and physical: “some are brief
changes, as in a whiff of the room’s atmosphere, some longer lasting” (2004, 3).
According to Brennan, affects have the ability and the power to alter the
biochemistry and neurology of a subject. Sara Ahmed (2010, 36) notes, that
Brennan’s example of walking into a room and feeling the atmosphere follows the
‘outside in’ model, where the subject appears as a receiver of various affects entering
the autonomous system – in this case, the atmosphere “getting into the individual”.
Ahmed notes however, that the way we enter into a space also affects what
impressions we perceive. For example, entering a room while anxious, affects the
way we read other people’s gestures and words, and indeed also how we read the
atmosphere of the room. The anxiousness might event affect the general mood of
what the room felt before the entrance.110

110
A slightly different, yet in my reading in line with the “Tomkinsian” approach to affect is
provided by researcher Lisa Blackman, who has written on affect and embodiment in her
book Immaterial Bodies: Affect, Embodiment, Mediation (2012). Writing from the point of view
of social studies, Blackman focuses on the topic primarily through a notion of subjectivity,
engaging in dialogue both with psychology and neuroscience. As part of her study,
Blackman discusses intriguing phenomena essentially connected with e.g. the topic of
intuition, such as voice hearing and telepathy, but even if these are highly fascinating as
topics, Blackman’s approach to affect in its framework of sociology, psychology and

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Reading Brennan, I found it interesting that she does not identify as “a Tomkinsian”
nor mention him as a reference. In addition, she doesn’t acknowledge the Deleuzian
branch of affect studies either. According to Brennan, “present definitions of the
affects or emotions stem mainly from Darwin’s physiological account of the
emotions and something called the William James-Carl Lange theory” (2004, 4). The
two main branches of affect studies are not acknowledged here at all, which I
assume can be explained through the cross-disciplinary nature of affect studies.
Brennan’s references are rooted in the branch of affect studies deriving from
biology, neuroscience and psychology, but not from humanities. As the previous
quote presents, Brennan doesn’t make a clear distinction between affect and
emotion either. In her view, it is bodily responses that give rise to affective states,
which again are recognised as taxonomies of emotion. Affect stands for “the
physiological shift accompanying judgement”, yet it is “basically synonymous” with
emotion (Brennan 2004, 5-6; noted in Koivunen 2010, 10).

Psychologist Ruth Leys, who approaches the turn to affect from a critical point of
view (2011), sees that for Tomkins and his followers, affective processes occur
independently of intention or meaning: “According to that paradigm, our basic
emotions do not involve cognitions or beliefs about the objects in our world. … In
contrast to Freud and ‘appraisal theorists’, for whom emotions are embodied,
intentional states governed by our beliefs, cognitions and desires, Tomkins and his
followers interpret the affects as nonintentional, bodily reactions” (2011, 437).
According to Leys, this view on the relations between affect, emotion and intention
is simply not sustainable or valid in the light of studies in psychology. The main
criticism Leys has toward Tomkins’ and his followers’ thinking then, is the idea that
even though affects can and do combine with the cognitive processing systems of
the brain, they are seen as essentially separate from those. According to Leys, affects
cannot be defined and understood in biological terms.

neuroscience is far from the Deleuze-Guattarian approach, which I argue, is more suitable
when thinking about art. Further discussion on this below.

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Reading into Kosofsky Sedgwick’s and Teresa Brennan’s writings on affect, I soon
realised that the idea of affect as a reaction understood primarily through studies in
psychology and neuroscience was not what I was looking for, while searching for a
tool kit to think about feminism, art and curating. I was not looking for a set of
affects as psychological concepts, but rather, I saw affect as an energy related to art.
As I understand it, Kosofsky Sedgwick, Brennan, and others see Tomkins’ system
of affects as a useful tool for examining materialities of emotion and feeling within a
psychological context, but simultaneously outside a Freudian model of thinking, as
well as the Cartesian dualistic model of thinking through binaries. The inevitable
connection between affect and emotion is there, and both Sedgwick and Brennan
clearly recognise the energetic dimension and potential affects have. As Brennan
puts it: “All this means, indeed the transmission of affect means, that we are not
self-contained in terms of our energies. There is no secure distinction between the
‘individual’ and the ‘environment’” (2004, 6). According to Brennan, this explains
how affects can enhance or deplete what we are feeling. Nevertheless, thinking
about affect as a scientific object of study (seeing it primarily in relation to a
determined set of emotion-affects, measuring it, and testing it through empirical
experiments) isn’t a fruitful approach with regards to my research questions and its
aims. The other main branch of affect theory proved to offer more generous
starting points to think about the relations between art, curating, and feminist
thought.

The Deleuzian branch

Watch me: affection is the intensity of colour in a sunset on a dry and cold
autumn evening. Kiss me: affect is that indescribable moment before the
registration of the audible, visual, and tactile transformations produced in
reaction to a certain situation, event, or thing. Run away from me: affected are
the bodies of spectres when their space is disturbed (Colman 2010, 11).

Differing from the scientific and psychological (and perhaps, simultaneously more
straightforward and measurable) understanding of affect embraced by the followers
of Silvan Tomkins, the poetic quote above by feminist new materialist theorist

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Felicity Colman describes beautifully the Deleuzian theorization of affect. The
notion of affect is approached above all as an intensity, a force, an energy or a potential,
and theorized through relational dynamics between entities. The quote by Colman
brings up also the main aspects of affect in Deleuzian readings: the difference
between affection and affect, and the two-sided nature of affect both to affect, and
to be affected.111

According to Michael Hardt, Spinoza’s work is the source, either directly or

indirectly, of most of the contemporary work in the field of affect today, through
his theorisation of the mind’s ability to think parallel to the body’s ability to act
(Hardt 2007, ix). According to Spinoza, we exist in a constant ebb and flow of series
of affects (for example joy or sadness) coming towards us in the form of other
bodies, which in their turn contribute to our capacity of being affected. Affects
based on joy increase our power to act, while sadness diminishes it. It is bodies
external to ours, that determine the ebb and flow of these affects and thus, our
capacity to act (Deleuze 1988, 50). According to Spinoza, mind and body are
autonomous, but proceed to develop in parallel. Through affect then, we constantly
pose questions about the relationship between the mind and the body, assuming
that their powers constantly correspond in some way (Hardt 2007, x). Indeed, it is
from Spinoza that Deleuze, and Deleuze and Guattari together, take the idea of a
correspondence between the power to act and the power to be affected. As Hardt
puts it: “[the power to act and the power to be affected] applies equally to the mind
and the body: the mind’s power to think corresponds to its receptivity to external
ideas; and the body’s power to act corresponds to its sensitivity to other bodies. The
greater our power to be affected, [Spinoza] posits, the greater our power to act”
(2007, x).

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It might be added, that in its use of language, Colman’s poetic quote embodies also the
certain kind of mysteriousness of the Deleuzian view on affect, which is perhaps
simultaneously a great possibility (the openness of interpretation and the possibilities of
adaptation depending on the context) and a danger (of falling into the poetry and the
overall “fluffiness” – and thus, again the openness to interpretation and adaptation to one’s
needs depending on the context).

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In the notes for the translation of A Thousand Plateaus Brian Massumi explains
Deleuze and Guattari’s use of the word affect through Spinoza’s concepts:
AFFECT/AFFECTION. Neither word denotes a personal feeling (sentiment in
Deleuze and Guattari). L’affect (Spinoza’s affectus) is an ability to affect and be
affected. It is a prepersonal intensity corresponding to the passage from one
experiential state of the body to another and implying an augmentation or
diminution in that body’s capacity to act. L’affection (Spinoza’s affectio) is each such
state considered as an encounter between the affected body and a second, affecting,
body (with body taken in its broadest possible sense to include “mental” or ideal
bodies) (Massumi 1987, xvi).

Massumi points out the relational aspect of affect: again, the ability to affect and be
affected. Here we can see the Spinozist ebb and flow of power in relation to actions:
“To every relation of movement and rest, speed and slowness grouping together an
infinity of parts, there corresponds a degree of power. To the relations composing,
decomposing, or modifying an individual there correspond intensities that affect it,
augmenting or diminishing its power to act; these intensities come from external
parts or from the individual’s own parts. Affects are becomings” (Deleuze &
Guattari 1987, 256). According to Colman (2010) the Deleuzian sense of affect can
be distinguished as a philosophical concept that indicates the result of the
interaction of bodies. Defining affect as an intensity, Deleuze extends Spinoza’s and
Nietzsche’s philosophical conceptions of affect in order to describe the processes of
becoming, understood as transformation through movement and over duration
(2010, 12). The Deleuzian concepts of affect and becoming are deeply embedded in
ideas of both transformation and having power to act.

In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari write about affect also in relation to
Spinoza’s central question: what can a body do? (1987, 256). This question inhabits in
itself an aspect of possibility and potentiality, a ‘not yet’, which may well actualise, or
on the other hand, cease to do so.112 According to Deleuze and Guattari, “We know
nothing about a body until we know what it can do, in other words, what its affects
are, how they can or cannot enter into composition with other affects, with the
affects of another body, either to destroy that body or to be destroyed by it, either
to exchange actions and passions with it or to join with it in composing a more

112
Noted also by Ahmed (2010); Gregg & Seigworth (2010).

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powerful body” (1987, 257). Again, Deleuze and Guattari emphasize a body’s ability
to affect other bodies, and its ability to be affected by other bodies. Importantly,
what comes forth here is the contingency that affect embodies; we cannot be sure what
the outcome of an affective exchange is, but we can be sure an exchange will take
place. As Gregg and Seigworth note: “… there are no ultimate or final guarantees –
political, ethical, aesthetic, pedagogic, and otherwise – that capacities to affect and
to be affected will yield an actualized next or new that is somehow better than
“now” (2010, 9-10).” Affect is above all an open-ended potential, a dynamics, a force,
and an intensity.

According to Colman (2010, 12), Deleuze’s perception of affect does have to do

with emotion and feeling, though emotion is here understood outside subjective
experience or perception. Just as a Deleuzian becoming is understood as a force
acting outside the individual and their life experiences, extending to matters
happening in the world, affect can produce a sensory or abstract result and is
physically and temporally produced. As Colman points out, reaction is a vital part of
the Deleuzian concept of affective change, which can be understood as the
becoming. In Colman’s words: “Affect expresses the modification of experiences as
independent things of existence, when one produces or recognises the
consequences of movement and time for (corporeal, spiritual, animal, mineral,
vegetable, and/or conceptual) bodies. Affect is an experiential force or a power
source, which, through encounters and mixes with other bodies (organic or
inorganic), the affect becomes enveloped by affection, becoming an idea, and as
such, Deleuze describes, it can compel systems of knowledge, history, memory, and
circuits of power” (Colman 2010, 12).

Social theorist and philosopher Brian Massumi has continued on the path led by
Deleuze, and Deleuze and Guattari, in his own work on affect (1995; 2002; 2015).
In his article ‘Autonomy of affect’ (1995), Massumi defines affect as presocial
intensity or tendency. In Parables for the virtual (2002), affect is further defined in
terms of bodily and autonomic responses, which point to a “visceral perception”
preceding perception. Massumi thinks about affect in terms of virtual and emergent

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tendencies, leaning into the realm of potentiality. According to Clough, for Massumi
the turn to affect is about opening the body to its indeterminacy, and the
indeterminacy of autonomic bodily responses. This is why Massumi defines affect in
terms of its autonomy from conscious perception and language, as well as emotion
(Clough 2010, 209).

In a later book, The Politics of Affect (2015), Massumi continues to fill in gaps and
responding to criticism, defining affect anew as autonomic, yet essentially collective
and deeply relational (2015, 205). Here Massumi’s focus is more on the political and
transformational aspect of affect and its workings. Affect is understood as a
dimension of life, as intensities of feeling that fill life, and which directly carry a political
valence. According to him, affect can only be understood as enacted (2015, vii). It is
the Spinozist “not yet”, which echoes also in Massumi’s understanding of the world
as an ongoing process in continual transformation, in addition to Deleuze and
Guattari following thinkers such as Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead.

What affect primarily is to Massumi, is change, possibility, and hope.113 The

workings of affect can be detected in feelings of the change in capacity, and it is this
that highlights the political dimension of affect. The intensity of an encounter or an
event refers to an augmentation in powers of existence – our capacities to feel, act
and perceive – that occurs through this encounter or event. To enable this to
happen and to be part of the transformation, we need to be willing and open to take
risks:
To affect and to be affected is to be open to the world, to be active in it and to be
patient for its return activity. This openness is also taken as primary. It is the
cutting edge of change. It is through it that things-in-the-making cut their
transformational teeth. One always affects and is affected in encounters; which is to
say, through events. To begin affectively in change is to begin in relation, and to
begin in relation is to begin in the event (Massumi 2015, ix).

Sara Ahmed has written about “the promise of affect” (2010; 2014), which may be
thought of as hope and potentiality mentioned above by Massumi. Potentiality of

113
Hope, in terms of potential, potentiality and becoming attached to the concept of affect,
is present also in Sara Ahmed’s theorization of affect and the Spinozist ‘not yet’ (2010;
2014).

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constant motion and movement of becoming is something that essentially describes
the concept of affect. This idea of affect’s existence as a virtuality, as a promise or
potentiality of a shift, a change, or a transformation that may well take place, exists
parallel to the idea of affect as something that is felt physically and concretely in and
on the body (O’Sullivan 2001; Hemmings 2005, 550). There is a chance for
something to happen, that may well transform us, but at the same time, whether it
actually does, is out of our hands.

According to Gregg and Seigworth (2010, 6) we can differentiate the two main lines
of affect studies in terms the directionality of affect: with Tomkins affect is the
prime motivator that comes to put the movement in bodily drives, whereas with
Deleuze affect is seen as an entire, vital, and modulating field of myriad becomings
across human and nonhuman. While these two branches of affect theory are the
ones that are most often brought up while defining affect and theorizing it, it feels
important to emphasize that affect shouldn’t be seen through this divide alone, but
rather, through the idea that there is a variety of definitions of affect and contexts
for discussing it.

Gregg and Seigworth describe eight different takes on affect’s theorization linking
both to Tomkins’ legacy and/or Deluze’s legacy, with slight variations regarding
how the writers approach the relations between the ability to affect and the ability to
be affected. A variety of practices from the fields of philosophy, neurosciences,
humanist studies, cultural studies, visual culture studies, psychological and
psychoanalytic inquiry as well as feminist and queer activism are brought into the
field of affect studies. Affect is part of inquiries into interlaced human/nonhuman
relations within phenomenologies of embodiment; research on the
human/machine/inorganic within cybernetics and neurosciences; non-Cartesian
traditions in philosophy; certain lines of psychological and psychoanalytic inquiry;
politically engaged work by feminist and queer theorists focusing on collective
embodied experience; cultural theory criticizing the linguistic turn; critical discourses
of emotions and histories of emotion; as well as science focused on pluralist
approaches to materialism (2010, 6-9). The brief mapping shows, that affect studies

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is all about looking for means of inquiry “to account for the relational capacities that
belong to the doings of bodies or are conjured by the world-belongingness that gives rise to a
body’s doing” (2010, 9, my italics). Viewed like this, it appears needless to look for one
solid definition to what affect is or what affect theory is. When it comes to
definitions, affect appears to at least need a context in order to receive a meaningful
definition.

But is it a turn? – a feminist reading of the turn to affect

One could also argue that affective turn never happened. For the issue of affect did
not emerge from nowhere to feminist and other critical scholarship” (Koivunen
2010, 22).

The turn to affect has not taken place without criticism. Even if deeply entangled in
writing about affect herself, for example Clare Hemmings criticises the mysticism
that is attached to the concept of affect (2005, 563). Patricia Clough is on a similar
path, as she sees severe issues particularly with studies on emotion and feeling.
According to Clough, in these studies affect comes to be about a subjective
reflection and an individual’s subjective unconsciousness (2010, 206-207). Clough’s
criticism must be examined closer, as to me it entails a longing for an ideal of
objectivity, and simultaneously, a dismissal of embodied knowledge having
(scholarly) significance. Clough does not specify studies she finds guilty of this. I am
below unravelling Clough’s criticism with the help from Sara Ahmed.

In her article ‘The Turn to Affect: A Critique’ (2011) Ruth Leys discusses critically
the general turn to affect, and particularly the turn to the neurosciences of emotion.
The central problem to Leys, who reads affect studies from the point of view of
psychology and neuroscience, is the distinction most affect theorists make between
affect and emotion (Deleuze 1988; Deleuze and Guattari 1987; 1994; Massumi 2002;
2015). According to Leys, scientifically speaking this distinction cannot be sustained.
Leys detects also a connection that fundamentally binds together the new affect
theorists and neuroscientists: their shared anti-intentionalism (2011, 443). In both of

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the main strands, the system of affects is seen as independent or autonomous.
According to Leys, this autonomy leads automatically to understanding the affect
system as lacking any signification and meaning. As we have seen above, however,
this is not automatically the case. As theorized by Deleuze and Guattari, and
Massumi, affect clearly has a connection to politics, change and transformation
through its ability to augment or diminish a body’s capacity to act and relate to other
bodies. These are notions that hold heavy signification and meaning. When
theorizing affect as an intensity or a force which may lead to the actualisation of an
encounter, an action, or an emotion, there perhaps is no ethical value to affect itself.
However, the effects or consequences of workings of affect instead do carry ethical and
political value. When understood in the Deleuzian sense, affect is an apparatus or a
vehicle, a force, a tendency and an intensity, that exists in between bodies and
things, creating a state of becoming and potential. Thus, affect itself holds no value
or judgement, but when we start thinking about where the workings of affect may
lead, it’s another thing.

What is most relevant in the framework of this thesis though, is the feminist critique
of the turn to affect. Feminist film and media scholar Anu Koivunen notes: “To talk
about an affective turn in the singular is to imply a shared agenda and sense of
direction that does not do justice to the diversified field of feminists ‘working with
affect’” (2010, 9). Indeed, looking at contemporary writing on affect – for example
by Clough and Massumi above – one can notice there is little, if any consideration
to feminist research on affect and emotion. In fact, according to Ahmed (2014,
206), feminist theorization of emotion has disappeared from the genealogy of the
affective turn, as it is translated from ‘an affective turn’ to ‘turn to affect’, indicating
a turn away from emotion, which feminist research is deeply involved in. I have
above used the terms ‘an affective turn’ and ‘a turn to affect’ parallel to each other,
in order to emphasize that in this research, I do not wish to make this distinction
nor to turn away from emotion.

In the foreword to The Affective Turn (2007), political theorist Michael Hardt names
feminist theory focused on the body, and queer theory focused on politics of

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emotion as the two main precursors to the turn to affect in the United States (2007,
ix). The sources Hardt refers to in the notes are more specifically Judith Butler’s
Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (1993) and Elizabeth Grosz’s
Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (1994) from the field of feminist theory,
and Shame and its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader (1995) edited by Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick and Adam Frank, as well as Intimacy (2000) and Compassion: The Culture and
Politics of an Emotion (2004), both edited by Lauren Berlant. In the foreword Hardt
describes the turn to affect: “The perspective of the affects forces us to focus on the
problematic correspondences that extend its two primary divides – between the
mind and body, and between reason and the passions – and how the new ontology
of the human it reveals has direct implications for politics” (2007, xii).

In the afterword of The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Ahmed (2014, 206) refers to
Hardt’s preface and his remark in it, according to which focus on affect “certainly
does draw attention to the body and emotions, but it also introduces an important
shift” (Hardt 2007, ix). According to Ahmed, what Hardt suggests here – though
not completely explicitly – is that “the turn to affect requires a different ‘synthesis’
than the study of the body and emotions, because affects ‘refer equally to the body
and mind’ and because they ‘involve both reason and passions’” (Ahmed 2014, 206;
Hardt quoted above). Indeed, Hardt may present feminist research and queer
studies as precursors to the more recent work on affect, but simultaneously, he wants
to make a clear difference between these lines of inquiry. In Hardt’s view, the turn
to affect must be defined primarily in Deleuze’s Spinozist terms. It is only within
this theorisation, that we can talk about the relations between mind and body.
Ahmed continues: “When the affective turn becomes a turn to affect, feminist and
queer work are no longer positioned as part of that turn. Even if they are
acknowledged as precursors, a shift to affect signals a shift from this body of work”
(2014, 206). It is in fact striking to which extent feminist research on affect, emotion
and embodiment has been cast out from current “mainstream” affect theory.
Ahmed states: “We need to be explicit here: when the affective turn is translated
into a turn to affect, male authors are given the status of originators of this turn.

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This is a very familiar and very clear example of how sexism works in or as citational
practice” (2014, 230n).

In her article ‘An affective turn?’ (2010) Koivunen discusses the turn to affect in the
framework of feminist theory. According to her, the affective turn is fuelled by a
desire to renegotiate the critical currency of feminist thought, by investigating and
conceptualizing the subject of feminism as embodied, located and relational (2010,
9). At the end of the essay, Koivunen asks whether we can say that there actually
has been a turn at all. Referring to feminist inquiry into phenomenology,
anthropology, sociology, psychology, epistemology, as well as feminist methodology
in general from the 1970s onward, Koivunen points out that “the question of affect
and the reflexive link between ontology and epistemology were always already there
in feminist self-consciousness” (2010, 23). As preceding models, she brings forth
the feminist tradition of consciousness-raising, as well as feminist standpoint
epistemology and its call for situated knowledges. Also Clare Hemmings stresses the
significance of intersubjectivity and relationality, as well as valuing different modes
of knowing which prioritise dialogue and collectivity, as essential parts of feminist
research: “One of the primary modes through which feminist theory has made its
mark has been through its challenge to knowledge as objective, and through a focus
on the importance of being as a mode of knowing. Feminist theory has always been
concerned with the question of the relationship between ontology and
epistemology, and has privileged affect as a marker of their intertwined relationship.
… Such work highlights the importance of feeling for others as a way of
transforming ourselves and the world, and thus renders affect as a way of moving
across ontology and epistemology” (2012, 148).

Hemmings, Ahmed, and Koivunen all criticize the manner in which the turn to
affect is theorized outside the apparent involvement and, indeed, advancement
within feminist theory. Further, Hemmings begins her article ‘Invoking affect:
Cultural theory and the ontological turn’ (2005) with strong criticism of affect
theorists, mainly Kosofsky Sedgwick and Massumi, particularly in terms of their
attitude towards poststructuralist theory. Hemmings is provoked by what she sees as

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Kosofsky Sedgwick and Massumi presenting affect as a solution to the problems of
poststructuralism: “affective rewriting flattens out poststructuralist inquiry by
ignoring the counter-hegemonic contributions of postcolonial and feminist
theorists, only thereby positioning affect as ‘the answer’ to contemporary problems
of cultural theory” (2005, 548).

According to Hemmings, neither Sedgwick or Massumi argue clearly enough their

sources for the criticism, as the problems of poststructuralism are seen to a large
extent as an unnamed enemy, which poses too much emphasis on linguistic models
and overrides the significance of the lived body (2005, 556). Hemmings brings up
also the vast range of epistemological work that attends to emotional investments,
political connectivity and the possibility of change. As an example, Hemmings poses
feminist standpoint epistemology, which provably constitutes an established body of
inquiry into the relationship between the ontological, the epistemological and the
transformative. Ahmed in her turn notes that “feminist work on bodies and
emotions challenged from the outset mind-body dualisms, as well as the distinction
between reason and passion” (2014, 206). Indeed, what Hemmings and Ahmed
show, is that feminist standpoint epistemology and postcolonial theory (e.g. Harding
1986; Haraway 1991; Braidotti 1994, Hill Collins 2000), as well as feminist work on
emotion (e.g. Jaggar 1996; hooks 1989, Lorde 1984) are actually doing what both
Kosofsky Sedgwick and Massumi claim poststructuralist theory is not doing. In
feminist epistemology, the embodied experience has always been understood as
embedded in the forming of knowledge, in a way that epistemology and ontology
have never been separated or opposed (Hemmings 2005, 557-558; Ahmed 2014,
206).

Hemmings acknowledges also the benefits affect as a concept has to feminist

studies, in relation to poststructuralist views. One problem is that deconstructivist
theory does not take into consideration the residue that is not socially constructed,
which nevertheless constitutes the fabric of our being. Second, affect theorists
acknowledge that the social world escapes both the quantitative empirical
approaches and textual analysis which poststructuralist research relies on; affect is

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offered as a key to deepen our vision of the terrain we are studying, prioritising our
qualitative experience of the world as an embodied experience that has the capacity
to transform us. And third, affect theorists question oppositional and dualistic
models of thinking in fully accounting for a political process; affect allows us to
understand subject formation alternatively, emphasizing relational modes over
oppositional ones (Hemmings 2005, 549-550).

Thinking about feminism through aspects of solidarity and recognition of sameness and
difference, essential aspects of affect can in turn be recognized as essential aspects
of feminist politics. I find Hemmings’ writing on affect extremely useful, partly
because of her heavy and revealing criticism on the affective turn – its genealogy
and how it’s theoretically contextualised in much of the research. However, despite
this, she relies on affect as a useful tool in radical feminist work and research,
downplaying the alleged shift by enhancing the significance of feminist research on
emotion and embodiment as an essential part of current theorising of affect.
Hemmings criticism concerns ‘the turn’ itself, which diminishes the history of
feminist research, as well as the significance of deconstructive poststructuralist
writing on sexual difference and embodiment (2005, 548).

Much in line with Hemmings’ criticism of the genealogy of contemporary affect

theory, I see the genealogical inclusion of feminist research as an essential part of
theorization of affect, and also of how I’m approaching the concept within this
research; I see affect as a fruitful tool for thinking about feminist strategies in
curating contemporary art, and negotiating what feminist curatorial work with art,
artists and spaces could mean today. Affect functions here as a useful tool in
discussing a process of summoning energies as part of presenting contemporary art
– which again, I offer as a model for feminist curatorial practice. With affect, I see a
huge potential above all in the aspect of change and transformation it entails, as
discussed above.

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Transformation

If nineteenth-century culture constructed the distinction between the personal and

the political, then the contemporary claim that the personal is political does not
mean that the personal as it currently exists is political. Rather, the political agenda
must consist in realigning the relations between the private and public spheres, or
in transforming the institutions that construct private life or personal experience as
separate from public life. Often the personal is political precisely because it is
constructed as not being political, and that separation cannot be wished away by an
act of consciousness or analysis; it can only be altered by material and social
transformation. Otherwise, practices designed to repoliticize the personal, such as
consciousness-raising groups, remain only a symptom of the separation of public
and private spheres, not a cure” (Cvetkovich 1992, 3).

While working on the research and explaining it to people with various

backgrounds, inside and outside academia or the art world, I have found that I
usually present affect by explaining the concept through its functioning in
consciousness-raising groups of the women’s movement. I’ve chosen to do this in
order to emphasize the potential of transformation affect entails, and how in the
consciousness-raising groups the affective potential grew out from the encounters
between bodies: women coming together, talking about their experiences, listening
to other women talk about their experiences, and recognising the sameness in their
differences. These encounters were transformative: these women’s lives were
changed; there was no possibility to go back to what was before, not knowing what
they now knew. This process was based on the recognition of a collective
experience, which proved that the personal is political.

As Ann Cvetkovich notes in the quote above, the consciousness alone of

understanding that power distributes unevenly in terms of gender is not enough, but
the consciousness must lead into social and material action as well. This I
understand as workings of affect: the affective potential of transformation
manifesting in the actions of the women’s movement as augmentation of the ability
to act. The women, of course, were the ones creating the change (to affect) – affect
does not have this kind of agency; affect is an intensity that may enable an action, or
work in the favour of an action materialising. The potential and the force then,
which may cause an action lead to change (to be affected), may be here named as the
affect.

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Building upon Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of affect as a force or an intensity
(also connected with works of art), my understanding of the concept is in this
research based on feminist readings of affect theory. Thus, I see affect as an
essentially political concept. Previously in this chapter I described the notion of
affective transformation in Deleuze and Guattari’s writing on becoming, as well as
in Massumi’s thinking of affect as change and hope. Massumi does see affect as an
essentially political concept, yet he doesn’t refer to the line of feminist inquiry on
the matter, nor discuss affect specifically in a feminist political context. The political
dimension of affect is thus noted in much of “mainstream” affect research,
however, not in terms of feminist politics.

Political philosopher Michael Hardt (1999) in his turn, uses the concept of affective
labour, which is widely discussed within feminist research as reproductive labour as
well as unwaged or low-waged work, aimed at modifying other people’s emotional
states (e.g. care work, maintenance work, administrative work) mainly conducted by
women. In his text, Hardt employs the concept to the critique of capitalism and
neoliberal politics by re-naming affective labour as ‘immaterial labour’. Affective
labour is detached from its genealogical link to feminist inquiry, and employed to
discuss the precarious working conditions capitalist society demands from us. Here
I can’t help but think about the previously discussed critique Sara Ahmed has posed
towards Hardt dismissing the feminist line of inquiry when renaming the affective
turn as a turn to affect. A similar pattern can be detected here with affective labour:
Hardt clearly dismisses the feminist line of inquiry on reproductive labour by re-
naming it as immaterial labour and presenting it another genealogy through leftist
critique of capitalism and neoliberal politics. Indeed, social theorist Svenja
Bromberg focuses on this very topic in her essay “Vacillations of affect: How to
reclaim ’affect’ for a feminist-materialist critique of capitalist social relations?”
(2015).

Talking about politics of affect both in a feminist and a curatorial context, the topic
of affective labour cannot be dismissed. Affective labour in a historical materialist
context has been discussed widely by feminist researchers and artists within the past

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few years.114 In the field of curating, for example Helena Reckitt (2016) and Elke
Krasny (2015) have written on affective labour in the context of (feminist) curating
as caring, and the ONCURATING.org issue “Curating in Feminist Thought” (2016)
includes a discussion by Victoria Horne, Kirsten Lloyd, Jenny Richards and
Catherine Spencer on the same topic. Also, the two volumes of Journal of Curatorial
Studies (Vol.4, no.3 and Vol.5, no.1) edited by Jennifer Fisher and Helena Reckitt
bring up affective labour as one of the main topics. Thinking specifically about
precarious independent curatorial practice (independent in the sense that it’s not
affiliated with a museum), tasks such as producing and managing social networks,
maintaining professional relationships, and attending to non-waged work in order to
remain “visible” on the art scene, stand out as essential curatorial labour (Reckitt
2016, 17-20). In this thesis more specifically, I am continuously talking about the
curator caring for the artworks and also for the artists. Keeping this in mind, I have
nevertheless decided not to discuss affective labour specifically as part of the thesis,
or the feminist curatorial practice drafted in it. I have made this decision mainly
because of the overarching framing of the research as a reaction to the governing
discourses on feminist thought and curating. In this framework, I have chosen to
approach the concept of affect through a philosophical rather than a historical
materialist point of view, exploring the concept as a force and energy enabling
transformative encounters with art. The research could well be continued further by
focusing on the issue of affective labour directly, particularly in terms of the notions
of care deeply invested in what I present.115

During the research process, I have also thought a lot about how to work with the
Deleuzian and Deleuze-Guattarian definition of affect – which I do find as the most
useful and potential theorization of affect when thinking about work with art – yet

114
See also Objects of Feminism (2017) edited by Maija Timonen and Josefine Wikström, as
well as the work of artist Céline Condorelli, and the collective Manual Labours by artist
Sophie Hope and curator Jenny Richards: http://www.manuallabours.co.uk/about/
(Accessed 24/09/2018).
115 I engaged in discussions on the topic of care and caring at the beginning of my studies

with my co-student Suzanne van Rossenberg. We ended up arranging a workshop titled

’Why do you care?’ as a result of our conversations. The workshop took place at Middlesex
University as part of the research cluster CREATE/Feminisms symposium in 2014.

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be able to create a relevant and justified feminist context for working with it. The
reasons for finding it useful lie partly in the fact the concept itself is defined in
relation to works of art by Deleuze and Guattari (1994). In addition, the manner in
which affect, and the workings of affect are described, matches with how I have
been thinking about the possible energetic fields of artworks, and the at times life-
changing experiences of encountering art. My solution has been to continue with
Deleuze-Guattarian definition, while simultaneously remaining critical of its failure
to recognise the significance of feminist research on affect and emotion as part of
its constitution, and the manner in which the concept has often been employed in
the vast field of affect studies. In this sense, I am relying on the Deleuzian definition
of affect while reading a feminist theorization on emotion as an essential part of it.
In this thesis, I think about the transformative power of affect above all in relation
to feminist politics and hence, the transformation as an emancipatory event. In
doing this, I am relying above all on Clare Hemmings’ critical view on affect.

In the essay “Affective solidarity: Feminist reflexivity and political transformation”

(2012), Hemmings continues to unravel the linkages between standpoint theory,
epistemology and ontology, seeing affect as an essential part of its transformative
processes, and criticising the opposition she sees in much of feminist theory
between ontological and epistemological accounts of existence and politics.
According to Hemmings, this opposition results in an over-individualising account
of subjectivity, or a determinist account of the social world and the modes through
which it may be transformed. Thus, these accounts understate the importance of
affect to gendered transformation (2012, 147). According to Hemmings, the need
for transformation and its subjective dimensions constitutes the heart of feminist
political theory:
Thus I want to propose here the beginning of an approach through the concept of
affective solidarity that draws on a broader range of affects – rage, frustration and
the desire for connection – as necessary for a sustainable feminist politics of
transformation, but that does not root these in identity or other group
characteristics. Instead, affective solidarity is proposed as a way of focusing on
modes of engagement that start from the affective dissonance that feminist politics
necessarily begins from” (2012, 148; original emphasis).

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An affective encounter is needed in order for an action to take place. Hemmings
locates the significance of feminist research in the relations between ontology and
epistemology, addressing politics in critical dissonance as a notion that moves us
(opposed to confirming us in what we already know): “This dynamic understanding
of knowledge and politics is central to feminist epistemology, both through the
challenges to objectivity that prioritise embodiment and location, and very
importantly through a focus on knowing differently, as well as knowing different things
or knowing difference” (2012, 151).

According to Hemmings, for feminist theorists the question of process is a political

as well as a methodological concern. Feminist research seeks to enhance knowledge
by creating the conditions for transformation through engagement with others
across difference. This goes hand-in-hand with the portrayal of the consciousness-
raising groups discussed above. Emphasizing empathy as a paradigmatic notion,
Hemmings describes the aim of prioritising the ability to appreciate the other and
render them a subject rather than an object of inquiry. This is the opening where we
can move beyond an individualised account of the world (2012, 151). The notion of
empathy helps us to challenge oppositions between feeling and knowing, as well as
self and other. Empathy foregrounds and prioritises embodied knowledge, affective
connection and a desire to transform the social terrain. Hemmings’ view on
empathy is simultaneously a critical one, highlighting that empathy should not be
naturalized as a feminist capacity through its association with femininity or
womanhood (2012, 154). Rather, the source of empathy in feminist inquiry is to be
found in its epistemological linkages with transformative empathy.

Hemmings (2005) places affect also in the context of social narratives and power
relations: “… it is the black body that carries the weight of, and is suffused with,
racial affect, as it is the female body that carries the burden of the affects that
maintain sexual difference” (2005, 562). According to Hemmings, some bodies are
captured and held by affect’s structured precision; affect is not random. She doesn’t
reject the importance of affect to cultural theory, but states that affect does not exist
outside social meaning and it is not autonomous (2005, 563). I read this as

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Hemmings’ critique of the suggested autonomy of affect, stated among others by
Brian Massumi (1995). In my view, Massumi does recognize the political and social
significance of affect, and in his reading, this doesn’t mean that affect as a concept
or a phenomenon couldn’t be autonomous. As I see it, this is perhaps a question
that relates more to the definition of affect and disagreement on it between
Hemmings, Massumi, and also Kosofsky Sedgwick (and myself). Social narratives
and power relations are essentially present also in Sara Ahmed’s writing on affect,
specifically from a queer feminist point of view.

Within the Deleuzian definition of affect, for example an idea of ‘a racial affect’ or ‘a
gender affect’ is an oxymoron. A gendered or a racial aspect of affect is something
that does not fit this conception of the term, where affect is a force, an intensity, a
becoming; affect as such cannot carry any value or meaning with it. In a Deleuze-
Guattarian sense, another thing would be to talk about the effects affective
encounters may lead to. Here, we can talk about factual social and political
implications in relation to workings of affect, but affect itself as a concept cannot
again entail any social or political implications. Something that follows from this is
the inevitable aspect of speculation. In this research, which I am writing from a
curatorial point of view, my focus is on the process of enabling affective encounters
with art, and in this context, the speculation and contingency may also be embraced.
What is more important, is the encounter itself, and the shift that may take place
within an individual as a consequence of that encounter; this is the working of an
affect, which may or may not take place. The affect is located in an encounter in a
certain kind of setting, and this is where the social and political potential is located
too, as a consequence of an affective encounter, which may for example induce
feelings of critical empathy, described above by Hemmings. In my view affect is the
entity which is in motion as part of a process – in a sense, affect is the process, the
happening and the event (O’Sullivan 2001) itself, and the workings of affect is what
remains. Even if affect includes the element of speculation and uncertainty, this
does not mean affect isn’t tightly entangled with social and political notions, as for
example feminist researchers have established (as continued below).

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The messiness and stickiness of affect

I do not assume there is something called affect that stands apart or has autonomy,
as if it corresponds to an object in the world, or even that there is something called
affect that can be shared as an object of study. Instead, I would begin with the
messiness of the experiential, the unfolding of bodies into worlds, and the drama of
contingency, how we are touched by what we are near (Ahmed 2010, 30).

Learning about affect in a feminist summer school in Utrecht in 2014, what stuck
with me afterwards, was the messiness of affect along with the difficulties in
defining it and controlling it. In her writing on affect and happiness, Sara Ahmed
emphasizes this contingency necessarily embedded in the concept. As she puts it:
“Messiness is a good starting point for thinking with feeling: feelings are messy such
that even if we regularly talk about having feelings, as if they are mine, they also
often come at us, surprise us, leaving us cautious and bewildered” (2014, 210).
These both quotes above by Ahmed bring forth several of the aspects I have here
discussed in terms of seeing affect as a transformative element while discussing
encounters with art: the unpredictability, the potential, the embodied nature of
experience, and the relational aspect that is necessarily part of our co-existence with

[fig. 6] Every house has a door: Scarecrow, 2017, at Alfred ve Dvore Theatre, Prague. Working
group: Matthew Goulish, Lin Hixson and Essi Kausalainen.

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other bodies, human and nonhuman. Affect appears as a goo, sticking between
bodies and matter, holding things precariously together, very possibly also detaching
itself as it oozes along the surfaces of the bodies.

In early 2018 I went to see a performance in Helsinki titled Scarecrow, by Essi

Kausalainen in collaboration with a Chicago-based duo Every house has a door
formed by Lin Hixson and Matthew Goulish. At one point, a slime participating in
the performance got my full attention; the slime was first poured from container to
container, and it also glided about on a table surface [fig. 6]. Between the different
actions happening within the performance, the slime became a sort of an
interlocutor, a stuff that held momentously different bodies, and different kind of
matter, thoughts, and atmospheres together. At one moment, a female character,
reminding slightly a snail in her beige costume and her slow but determined
movements, began slowly pushing the slime from the table surface for it to dribble
into a bowl held by a male character underneath the table. In the performance, the
slime actively put different bodies and materials in touch with one another,
simultaneously adapting an agency, and also becoming an erotic element. The
female character, standing on the table and gliding the slime about appeared as an
erect and active party collaborating with the slime, as the male character, lying down
on the floor, waiting for their actions, was the more passive receiver who caught the
slime when the time for it to dribble down arrived. There was something about the
movement and vitality of the slime as vibrant matter with a certain kind of agency,
that made me think about it in the context of workings of affect, not least in terms
of its tangible messiness and stickiness.116

According to Anna Gibbs, “Bodies can catch feelings as easily as catch fire: affect
leaps from one body to another, evoking tenderness, inciting shame, igniting rage,

116
In fact, a lot more could be said about slime while talking about contemporary art at the
time of writing this in 2018, and not least in terms of feminist takes on the matter by
female and queer artists from a younger generation. Interestingly enough, slime also links
to the ASMR phenomenon I write about at the beginning of this chapter:
https://garage.vice.com/en_us/article/7xmw8e/slime-asmr-satisfying-slime-molds.
(Accessed 21 July 2018).

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[fig. 7] Every house has a door: Scarecrow, 2018, at Mad House in Helsinki. Working group: Matthew
Goulish, Lin Hixson and Essi Kausalainen. Image: Saara Autere.

exciting fear – in short, communicable affect can inflame nerves and muscles in a
conflagration of every conceivable kind of passion” (2001, 1). Gibbs makes her
proposition about the acute contagiousness of affect as a media researcher relying
on Silvan Tomkins’ biopsychological view on affect. Looking at the circulation of
media images and narratives, Gibbs explores affect in terms of contagion and
politics of feeling. As Sara Ahmed notes, the idea of affect as contagious draws on
the work of Tomkins. According to Ahmed, this notion helps us to see how affects
pass between different bodies, as well as to question the view on affect and emotion
only surfacing from the inside to the outside. However, according to Ahmed the
concept of contagious affect underestimates the extent to which affects are
contingent. This is highlighted in the quote above by Gibbs, where affects spread
around uncontrollably almost as a wildfire during a heatwave. Indeed, Ahmed
stresses, that to be affected does not happen simply by an affect leaping from one
body to another. The contingency related to how we are affected, has significance to
the affect itself and how it circulates (2010, 36). Contingency of affect – above
discussed as the virtuality and potentiality of affect – is then also an essential part of
the Deleuzian definition of the concept.

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Ahmed thinks about affects through circulation, as opposed to possession. Instead
of thinking about emotions117 as property, as something one possesses and then
passes on, Ahmed focuses on the circulation of the objects of emotion (2014, 10).
Reading emotions as them being shaped by contact with objects, rather than being
caused by objects, we can see that emotions do not exist simply within the subject or
the object. The focus is on the movement and the processes in which objects
(understood in the widest sense of the word) catch and accumulate affects, and how
they circulate culturally. Writing about happiness, for example, Ahmed (2010) notes
that happiness directs us towards certain objects by functioning as a promise – a
promise of the happiness fulfilling. Certain objects, such as ‘family’, circulate as
social goods, and accumulate positive affective value as they are passed around.
According to Ahmed, an emotion as such can never be totally shared, and therefore
the inquiry should rather be made on the processes of the objects of emotions that
circulate. As Ahmed puts it: “such objects become sticky, or saturated with affect, as
sites of personal and social tension” (2014, 10). Stickiness is a quality of affect itself:
“Affect is what sticks, or what sustains or preserves the connection between ideas,
values, and objects” (2010, 29). Affect appears as a sort of neurotransmitter sticking
into bodies and matter, holding them together, even if precariously and without any
certainty. This description of affect reminds me again of the slime in the
performance Scarecrow [fig. 7].

I have in this chapter presented current research on affect and the affective turn,
alongside my understanding of the concept as it has been theorized by Deleuze and

117
Here Ahmed does indeed use the word emotion, and not affect. Anu Koivunen notes
though, that Ahmed uses the words emotion and affect interchangeably, in order to
highlight the fluidity of the conceptual boundaries (2010, 10). Here, again, the messiness of
affect is highlighted. As mentioned earlier, Ahmed is critical of the way e.g. Massumi and
Kosofsky Sedgwick separate the concepts of affect and emotion: “A contrast between a
mobile impersonal affect and a contained personal emotion suggests that the affect /
emotion distinction can operate as a gendered distinction. It might even be that the very
use of this distinction performs the evacuation of certain styles of thought (we might think
of these as ‘touchy feely’ styles of thought, including feminist and queer thought) from
affect studies” (2014, 207).

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Guattari (1987; 1994). I have also presented feminist critique of the turn to affect,
based on the dismissal of the vast feminist research on embodiment of emotion,
which directly links to current discussions on affect. Writing this research, I have
been influenced by Sara Ahmed’s critique on the separation of emotion and affect
as part of the turn to affect (and away from emotion) (2010; 2014). I have also been
inspired by her writing on the contingency, as well as the contagiousness, stickiness
and messiness of affect, and the politics the circulation of objects saturated with
affect carry with them. I have also been influenced by Clare Hemmings’ critique of
affect studies on the dismissal of feminist research on epistemology and ontology,
and how these essentially connect in feminist standpoint theory and also form a
basis for feminist studies in new materialism (2005; 2012). In this thesis, I’m
particularly inspired by how Hemmings writes about affect and transformation – in
order to know differently we need to feel differently (150, 2012). Also, her view on
empathy as a key factor in the transformative process, is an inspiring point of
departure for thinking about encounters with works of art. In Hemmings’ view,
empathy is a paradigmatic notion in the process of becoming politically aware and
thus, becoming feminist, as the process is challenging the opposition both between
feeling and knowing, and between self and other (2012, 151). As it has been
emphasized in this chapter on several occasions, it all starts by getting in touch with
someone or something.

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5 When matter and feelings merge

In December 2014, I felt lost with my research. I had been working on the chapter
on feminist thought and curating, and felt I was drifting away from what I was after
with the research, and what I even meant by feminist work with art and curating. I
felt I had lost my initial research thoughts regarding the connections I was looking
for between contemporary art, feminism, contemporary takes on curating, and the
affective transformation as the political aspect I had imagined as a connecting point
between these elements. These thoughts circling in my mind, I went to South
London Gallery to see a screening and a performance by American artist Shana
Moulton. The screening featured Moulton’s previous video works, partly from the
ongoing series Whispering Pines, as well as the performance SPF (2014).

Moulton’s work, ranging from installation and video to performance, has for years
developed around Moulton’s alter ego, a character called Cynthia. The narrative is
usually structured around snippets from Cynthia’s life, and present a situation where
she is confronted with a mundane or an existential problem (which most often for
her are the same thing), which she takes up and solves employing imaginative
methods. Often Cynthia relies on different magical objects or treatments, which
help her to calm her worries, and find a cure to the acute problem. The works
feature 1990’s new-agey and kitschy aesthetics, pop music clips from the same time
period, deliberately clumsy video effects, and the presence of the highly empathetic
and sympathetically awkward character of Cynthia. Most often Cynthia is the only
human character in the works, and most often she finds herself surrounded by
various objects or other nonhuman entities to interact with.118 Cynthia’s character
never speaks verbally in the pieces; the interaction with the surroundings happens
through gestures, facial expressions, intuition, and magical thinking. To the viewer,
Cynthia’s state of mind is mediated above all through her facial expressions [fig. 8].
All of the video pieces repeat a similar pattern, where the beginning describes

118
There are exceptions, as Moulton’s mother appears in some of the video pieces, playing
the parts of various side-characters.

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[fig. 8] Shana Moulton, still from Whispering Pines 4, 2007. Cynthia is worried.

Cynthia experiencing and confronting a problem, then follows her process of

finding a cure or a solution, and the works end with emancipation from the
troubles, offering a cathartic ending both to Cynthia and the viewer. The setting in
the videos is usually a domestic one of Cynthia’s home, and on the other hand, the
wilderness such as cliffs, mountains and forests – most often filmed on a green
screen. The attention is directed towards seeing the unfamiliar in the familiar. Very
often, the solution is a release from boundaries, either physical or psychological, or a
medical condition (actual or imagined) which Cynthia has or, which she suspects she
might have. Through the character of Cynthia, the works address contemporary
anxieties concerning self-worth, appearance, and general uncertainty with
tenderness. What is important, is that the narratives have a happy ending where
Cynthia finds the solution to her problems from within herself.

The narrative of the live performance is similar to the one in the video works.
During the performance Moulton, as Cynthia, interacts with images projected as a
backdrop of the performance, creating a multimedia installation with video, sound
and live elements, all linked and functioning in relation to each other. As if magic,
the backdrop reacts to “real-life” Cynthia’s actions, and vice versa. Again, we get to
experience the relief of a cathartic ending, while Cynthia finds a solution to her
anxiety set by the capitalist society encouraging us to be the best versions of

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ourselves in the never-ending process of self-improvement. The solutions Cynthia
creates aren’t nevertheless always predictable ones.

In the process of finding cures and solutions, Cynthia is drawn into various mystical
healing processes. For example, the piece Sand Saga (2008) begins with Cynthia
looking at herself in the bathroom mirror. She starts to examine her skin through a
magnifying mirror, and is clearly dissatisfied with what she sees. She then applies a
green face mask, and turns the hourglass to mark the waiting time. Meanwhile,
sculptures in the bathroom start moving, and Cynthia enters into another
dimension, where she becomes part of a healing ritual conducted by a shaman-like
female/animal figure, who wears a skull from a Georgia O’Keeffe painting as their
head, seen earlier on the bathroom wall. The figure conducts a healing ritual for
Cynthia, during which harmful objects are removed first from her head, then from
the rest of her body. In the background, we hear a choir singing: “See me, feel me,
touch me, heal me”, along the lines of Dee D. Jackson’s disco hit Automatic Lover
(1978). What follows, is a dreamy music-video-like emancipatory dance sequence,
with background music from Deep Forest’s 1990’s hit song ‘Sweet Lullaby’ (1992).
Female figures dance across the screen holding objects used in the healing ritual,
wearing heads of the sculptures from Cynthia’s bathroom. In the background, we
see images of Georgia O’Keeffe paintings, while the female figures are covered in
textures where we see different irritated skin conditions. When the dance ends, we
return to Cynthia’s bathroom. The waiting time has ended, and Cynthia removes the
skin mask by eating it, looking relieved and content in the end with her rejuvenated
skin. Like in this piece, the character of Cynthia does react to needs and
requirements presented towards women by the capitalist society and its self-
improvement hysteria. In several of Moulton’s video pieces, what worries Cynthia is
her health (Sand Saga, 2008; Restless Leg Saga, 2012; Swisspering, 2013; MindPlace
ThoughtStream, 2014). The healing processes themselves are nevertheless the result of
imagination and fantasy, combining use of magical objects (not necessarily intended
as magical objects, such as Activia yogurt in MindPlace ThoughtStream [fig. 9]) and
imaginative rituals (such as described above in Sand Saga).

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[fig. 9] Shana Moulton, still from MindPlace ThoughtStream, 2014. Cynthia is released from an irritable
bowel syndrome with the help of a personal relaxation training system device called ThoughtStream
USB™.

After the event, I was again full of energy and certainty about what I was after in the
research, and also with my practice as a curator: I want to create settings which
allow energies and emotions to circulate, such as in the event presenting Moulton’s
work. I want to focus on creating spaces and situations, where encounters between
works of art and viewers are enabled, and where energies are released to flow
without attempting to direct them strictly. The whole audience during this sold-out
event didn’t probably experience Moulton’s works the same way I did. Perhaps
some people found them naïve or dated, perhaps Cynthia made some of the people
anxious or annoyed. This is the element of contingency discussed in the previous
chapter in relation to affect, and this is what is also unavoidable when exhibiting
works of art: the encounter, the reception of art, or its experience cannot be
controlled. At least for me though, the evening with Shana and Cynthia was
transformative. It gave me the energy to get back on track with what I wished to
find in the writings on affect – the theorization of art as sticky material oozing with
affect, and the potential for transformation this matter carries within itself. I want to
link this affective aspect of art with practices of curating, and eventually feminist
curating – the practice of enabling encounters with art, not forcing selected
meanings to artworks, creating spaces and situations where affects may move about
and move forward, and viewers may be moved and touched, and perhaps, even

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transformed in the sense that their worldview cannot go back to what it was before
the encounter.

Affectivity of art

The affectivity of images, pictures and art has been discussed in the fields of visual
cultural studies and history of art. I am here presenting research on affectivity of art
through publications that primarily present affect as an attribute of art alongside
emotion and feeling. Here affect appears as an interpretative tool for discussing
impact that art may have on us.

In Visualizing feeling: Affect and the feminine avant-garde (2011) Susan Best focuses on
what she calls a methodological blind spot in contemporary writing of art history:
the interpretation of art’s affective dimension (2011, 1). In her research, Best
discusses the art of the 1960s and 1970s, exploring specifically the work of four
women artists: Lygia Clark, Eva Hesse, Ana Mendieta and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.
Best reads feeling and affect into works of art representing art movements of the
time period (minimalism, conceptual art, land art and structural film) that have
traditionally deliberately rejected readings connecting them to the sphere of
emotion; in Best’s intriguing reading, “the desire to withhold feeling inadvertently
underscores the question of feeling” (2011, 1). Minimalist art actually facilitates
reflection on feeling and its complicated role in the reception of art, precisely
because the efforts to expunge it from the work of art. Best relies on affect theory
drawing upon psychoanalytic studies, and affect is here understood as a collective
term that encompasses both emotion and feeling (2011, 5-6).

In Visualizing feeling, Best doesn’t focus on affect as a theoretical concept, but rather
sees it as a tool for emphasizing the emotional aspects and significance of works of
art; and simultaneously, reclaiming the field of emotion and feeling as a relevant
aspect of art historical research on avant-garde. Best doesn’t straightforwardly
define her research as a feminist. However, she does open about having found

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inspiration to her approach from Catherine de Zegher’s work with Inside the Visible.
As Best notes, de Zegher did not contextualise the exhibition through emotion or
feeling (2011, 2). Yet, she is inspired by de Zegher’s use of the concept of the
feminine as a formally innovative category (which is a reference to Julia Kristeva’s
definition of the feminine119) and how this is used as part of tracing a female avant-
garde lineage in 20th century art. This is the position Best takes as an art historian:
claiming avant-garde practices for women artists, instead of creating a separate and
separatist history for women artists of the time (2011, 3).

Queer theorist and art critic Jennifer Doyle has written on affect and trauma in her
beautifully titled Hold It Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art (2013).
As the title suggests, Doyle unravels the ways works of art dealing with difficult
emotion may challenge how we experience our own feelings. A lot of Doyle’s
argumentation relates to problems of contemporary American art criticism not
being able to cope with artworks discussing emotion, particularly in the case the
work simultaneously discusses identity politics, or has straightforward political
aspirations. In criticism, the work’s affective economy is repeatedly read as an
expression of how the artist feels (2013, 14; 125). Instead, Doyle wishes to shift
attention to the complexities of experiencing and interpreting emotion in
contemporary art (2013, 106-107). Doyle’s focus is on works with dense and noisy
affective fields (2013, xvii): works that deal with topics such as trauma, violence, and
death. Working with affect and emotion does not in this view relate only to the
viewer’s need to confront themselves in ways that can be deeply personal (2013,
xvii), but also partly to how we are used to encounter art in gallery spaces (and how
art critics feel comfortable writing about it). Affect is here understood and discussed
primarily through the impact art may have on us.

What is common in Best’s and Doyle’s approaches, is that both writers aim to
reclaim the significance of emotion and feeling in analysing and writing about art. In
this sense, what is written on affect and the affectivity of art, gain significance above

119
“I would call “feminine” the moment of rupture and negativity which conditions the
newness of any practice” (Kristeva cited in de Zegher 1996, epigraph; and Best 2011, 2).

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all in the context of art history, and in the case of Doyle, also in the context of art
criticism.

A field of its own within art history is trauma studies, where explorations into affect
and the affectivity of art are made in the framework of trauma. Jill Bennett discusses
the topic in her books Empathic vision: Affect, trauma, and contemporary art (2005) and
Practical aesthetics. Events, affects and art after 9/11 (2012). In Empathic vision, Bennett
analyses contemporary art produced in the context of conflict and trauma through
the concepts of affect and empathy. Bennett’s focus is on exploring possibilities of
creating connections between people, where the empathic vision function as a tool
for unravelling and understanding loss.120 Practical aesthetics is a study of aesthetic
perception functioning as part of a larger social field, structured around
understanding aesthetics as a practical notion: “It is to conceive of an aesthetics
informed by and derived from practical, real-world encounters, an aesthetics that is
in turn capable of being used or put into effect in a real situation” (2012, 2). Here
Bennett discusses global traumatic events (famine, environmental disaster, post-
9/11 politics) “through art that is itself thoroughly imbricated in ‘other’ practice –
art that pushes into the realm of transdisciplinarity. In this realm, the practical value
of aesthetic method becomes readily apparent” (2012, 9-10). In her analysis, Bennett
moves across the fields of media images and contemporary art, employing a
transdisciplinary approach.

Also feminist art historian Griselda Pollock discusses affect in the context of
psychoanalytic theory and the concept of trauma in her publication After-
affects|After-images: Trauma and aesthetic transformation in the virtual feminist museum (2013).
Drawing from feminist theory, psychoanalytical aesthetics and the cultural

120
Bennett’s Empathic vision: Affect, trauma, and contemporary art discusses two central topics of
this thesis: affect and empathy. However, Bennett’s study along with its layout of research
questions and case studies, is thoroughly filtered through trauma studies as well as visual
culture studies. Particularly at the beginning of my studies, I wished to contextualise my
research not through art historical studies in trauma and affect, but rather, in a more
affirmative and energizing context of curatorial work as well as the more affirmative
Deleuze-Guattarian view on affect as vital intensity and becoming. Mostly because of this,
Jill Bennett’s studies in the field of affect do not play an essential part in my research.

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processing of historical and personal trauma, Pollock proposes a feminist
intervention in trauma studies through and with art (2013, xxii). The study consists
of close readings of works by artists such as Ana Mendieta, Louise Bourgeois, Anna
Maria Maiolino and Alina Szapocznikow. Discussing affect primarily as after-affects,
Pollock uses the concept in the context of trauma studies and rooted in the field of
vision. After-affects are traces of trauma encountered in art and literature. Instead of
thinking about trauma as an event, Pollock unravels it through encounter of its
traces in visual art (2013, 4). To me, these art historical enquiries employing trauma
studies appear as an area of their own, by definition leaning heavily into
psychoanalytic art theory, and theorizing affect primarily as part of trauma.

Researching art and affect brings together fields of history of art, visual culture
studies, media studies, feminist studies, and also new materialist studies. As
mentioned, discussions on art and affect often materialise as discussions about the
abilities art may have in affecting us – making us feel things, altering our
understanding on a topic, enabling us to empathise and recognise ourselves in
others. As part of this, almost sneakily, works of art gain agency while their ability to
embody and emit affect is recognised. As has been presented above, affect exists as
a topic in art historical studies, but it has also been appearing more and more in the
realm exploring agencies of nonhuman entities – connecting the fields of new
materialist studies, feminist studies and posthuman studies – where the research
focuses on either art or phenomena of the field of visual culture more generally.
Carnal Knowledge: Towards a ‘New Materialism’ Through the Arts (2013) is an anthology
on feminist new materialist research from the field of art, which also included essays
on affect theory in relation to phenomena in the fields of visual arts and visual
cultures. In the introduction to Carnal Knowledge, Barbara Bolt (2013) notes that at
the core of new materialist thinking is the acknowledgement of agential matter – the
recognition that humans together with various nonhuman materialities and entities
inhabit this world and play part in its happenings. Within new materialist thinking,
the urgency to address the human/nonhuman relationship comes from the ethical
ecological and political notions related to the current state of things ecologically,
socially and politically; also, discoveries in the field of science, particularly quantum

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physics and nanotechnology, have decentred the human subject, making space for
the nonhuman, leaking steadily into discourses within art theory, critical theory and
philosophy. As Bolt mentions, within visual art studies, what new materialism opens
up is an understanding of for example a work of art as an intertwinement, or intra-
action (Barad 2007) between an artist, various materials, materialities and conditions
(2013, 2-6). Further, Jane Bennett’s theory of vital materialism (2010) plays a central
role in reconfiguring human/nonhuman relationships. I am unravelling Bennett’s
thinking in more detail in chapter six.

Art and affect

In What is Philosophy? (1994) Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari continue from where
they left with affect in A Thousand Plateaus (1987). Here affect is theorized
specifically, and perhaps also in a more concrete manner, in the context of art.
According to Deleuze and Guattari, a work of art is “a bloc of sensations, that is to say, a
compound of percepts and affects” (1994, 164; emphasis original). Further, sensations,
percepts, and affects are defined as “beings whose validity lies in themselves and
exceeds any lived” (1994, 164, emphasis original). A work of art as a whole, then,
carries with itself, and also consists of and thus is, what Deleuze and Guattari in A
Thousand Plateaus call mainly intensities, and in What is Philosophy, a bloc of
sensations; a work of art is a being consisting of affects and their relational interplay.

Affects are created and transformed into physical materials by an artist as part of
their practice, as well as within the work of art. According to Deleuze and Guattari,
the work of art is the form where affects remain. The role of the artist is here clearly
seen as an essential element in the creation of affect: it is the artist that is the
inventor and the presenter of affect. The artist’s job is to extract a bloc of sensations
(also named ‘a pure being of sensations’) by using given materials, and to transform
the material from one state to another – from mere material, whatever it may be, to
affective entity: “It should be said of all art that, in relation to the percepts or
visions they give us, artists are presenters of affects, the inventors and creators of

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affects. They not only create them in their work, they give them to us and make us
become with them, they draw us into the compound” (1994, 175).121 At the same
time, though, the work of art is independent of the artist after it’s been finished;
“the artist creates blocs of percepts and affects, but the only law of creation is that
the compound must stand up on its own” (1994, 164). A work of art can thus be
detached from its origin (its inventor, as well as the time and place of its invention),
becoming a being of its own, an independent entity.122 As Colman puts it: “Through
art, we can recognise that affects can be detached from their temporal and
geographic origins and become independent entities” (2010, 13).

The concrete methods of creating affects are different depending on the art form as
well as the artist. Deleuze and Guattari do nevertheless distract varieties of the
materialisation of affect within any form of art:
the vibration, which characterizes the simple sensation (but it is already durable or
compound, because it rises and falls, implies a constitutive difference of level,
follows an invisible thread that is more nervous than cerebral); the embrace or the clinch
(when two sensations resonate in each other by embracing each other so tightly in a
clinch of what are no more than “energies”); withdrawal, division, distention (when, on
the contrary, two sensations draw apart, release themselves, but so as now to be
brought together by the light, the air, or the void that sinks between them or into
them, like a wedge that is at once so dense and so light that it extends in every
direction as the distance grows, and forms a bloc that no longer needs a support)
(1994, 168; emphasis original).

In the end, we can only rely on our interpretation when encountering works of art
and attempting to apply the varieties of materialisation of affect depicted here; at the
same time, understanding the materialisation doesn’t really matter, because the
workings of affect will take place regardless. As abstract as they may seem, all of

121
To me, Deleuze and Guattari’s description of the artistic process (1994, 163-199)
appears actually as rather mystified, and it definitely reinforces the idea of the artist as a
mysterious and unruly genius – though not a male genius only, as they do refer to women
artists, such as Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf in the text alongside Paul Cézanne and
Marcel Proust (the women artists are referred to with full name, male artists with last name
only). The medium of the artist is not in this context important to Deleuze and Guattari, as
“the writer’s position is no different from that of the painter, musician, or architect” (1994,
167) when it comes to creating blocs of sensation.
122
This links to the well-known and well-rehearsed argument in post-modernist discourses
of new art history, nodding to the death of the author. However, here the question
concerns the context of affect and its creation as part of artistic practices.

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them can nevertheless be recognised in works of art. Perhaps what Deleuze and
Guattari have thought about when writing this have partly been concrete, material
works of art. They continue:
Vibrating sensation–coupling sensation–opening or splitting, hollowing out
sensation. These types are displayed almost in their pure state in sculpture, with its
sensations of stone, marble, or metal, which vibrate according to the order of
strong and weak beats, projections and hollows, its powerful clinches that
intertwine them, its development of large spaces between groups or within a single
group where we no longer know whether it is the light or the air that sculpt or is
sculpted (1994, 168).

Here the materialisation of affect is deeply intertwined in the materiality of the work
of art with its sensations of vibrations. Thinking about the affective aspects of
Shana Moulton’s work, described above, we could detect the vibrations, the
embraces and the withdrawals both in the narrative of the video pieces, along with
the interplay of visual, sonic and emotional aspects present in them. The ruptures
we experience – whether they are detected consciously or unconsciously –
materialise as disarming reactions. Or, perhaps the types of materialisation described
by Deleuze and Guattari may best be adapted to Moulton’s performances, where
the co-existence and synchronization of the material body and the visual, and
simultaneously virtual, spheres come together and create their own dynamics and
existence.

For Deleuze and Guattari, the relationship between sensation and material can play
out on the one hand through the sensation coming into being in the material. Here
the sensation, or affect, does not exist outside this realization. On the other hand,
sensation can also be projected onto the well-prepared technical plane of a
composition. According to Deleuze and Guattari, art enjoys a semblance of
transcendence that is expressed not in a thing to be represented, but in the
projection and in the “symbolic” character of perspective. It is no longer sensation
that is realized in the material but the material that passes into sensation (1994, 193).
Colman (2010, 13) notes, that in the context of art, affects are more than sensate
experiences or cognition for Deleuze and Guattari. Affect describes the forces

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behind all forms of social production in the contemporary world. Affective power
can be utilized to enable ability, authority, control and creativity.

According to philosopher Cliff Stagoll, becoming, along with difference, can be seen as
the two cornerstone concepts in Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy, relating to Western
conceptions of being and identity (2010, 25). As Stagoll puts it, “becoming is the
pure movement evident in changes between particular events” (2010, 26; original
emphasis). Becoming relates to becoming different in some sense, though it is not in
itself a state of being between two other states. Stagoll describes becoming as the
very dynamism of change, tending towards no particular goal or end-state. For
Deleuze, every event is but a unique instant of production in a continual flow of
changes evident in the cosmos, which can be seen as the becoming (Stagoll 2010,
26). Becoming plays an essential part also in Deleuze and Guattari’s writing on
affect. As we have already seen, affect in art relates above all to something
intensifying, happening, changing, or transforming. In What is Philosophy? Deleuze
and Guattari state: “We are not in the world, we become with the world; we become
by contemplating it (1994, 169). The becoming, for me, is about a virtuality,
understood as a potentiality, the possibility of something materialising.123 Becoming
is transformation through movement and over duration, as described also by
Colman (2010, 12).

An important essay for me in understanding Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of

affect, is Simon O’Sullivan’s “The Aesthetics of Affect: Thinking Art Beyond
Representation” (2001). O’Sullivan has later continued on the topic in the
publication Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari: Thought Beyond Representation (2006)

123
The notion of the virtual relates to Deleuze’s affirmative categories of the actual and the
virtual. In Difference and Repetition (1994) Deleuze explains: “The possible is opposed to the
real; the process undergone by the possible is therefore a “realisation”. By contrast, the
virtual is not opposed to the real; it possesses a full reality by itself. The process it
undergoes is actualisation. It would be wrong to see only a verbal dispute here: it is a
question of existence itself” (1994, 211; cited in O’Sullivan 2001, 129). Here is a link also to
Griselda Pollock’s concept of the virtual feminist museum, where the virtuality of the
feminist museum is understood in a similar way – through a reality of its own beyond the
dichotomies of the real and the possible, as always becoming. The feminist museum could
not at this time exist as Pollock describes it, except virtually.

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and Visual Culture as Objects and Affects (2013) edited by Jorella Andrews and
O’Sullivan. According to O’Sullivan, for Deleuze and Guattari affect exists, and
becomes, in works of art, in order to be reactivated by viewers and participants (2001,
126). Indeed, becoming can here be seen as the essential concept materialising in the
workings of affect and deeply intertwined in the concept itself. When experiencing
art, we as viewers become part of the compound of percepts and affects (Deleuze &
Guattari 1994, 175). As O’Sullivan emphasizes in his reading, affect an event, a
happening. Deleuze and Guattari do not go into detail when describing encounters
between works of art and their viewers, or what actually happens in the experience.
The question remains whether the “opening up” of the bloc of sensations requires a
certain kind of attention from the viewer, or indeed a certain setting for this
encounter to happen in the first place. Perhaps what is most important, is the
overall possibility of the encounter existing. For what really remains in the centre of
Deleuze and Guattari’s views on affect, is the encounter, the colliding of entities. This
is also the point O’Sullivan emphasizes in his reading.

Felicity Colman (2010) points out how the Deleuzian sense of affect is closely
connected to bodies. “Affect is the change, or variation, that occurs when bodies
collide, or come into contact” (2010, 11). It is the small or major shift that happens
within us when we genuinely get in contact with another body, another entity, an
artwork. It is this shift, that I am looking for when I curate a project, and it is these
shifts that I am discussing throughout this thesis. According to Colman (2010, 12),
affect can, in Deleuze and Guattari’s view, be understood as a philosophical concept
that indicates the result of the interaction of bodies; an affective product, that is
above all an intensity.

Again, what is interesting and important to me in the context of this thesis, is that
Deleuze and Guattari talk about affect particularly in relation to art; art is viewed as
a realm that can give us things that other things in life cannot. A great deal of
writing in affect theory concerns media and film, and in the end, there isn’t a lot of
research specifically on affect and (contemporary) art. Deleuze and Guattari
theorize works of art as vehicles for affects, intensities and sensations, and here

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artworks appears almost as magical entities.124 The work of art does not lose its
affective qualities when coming into contact with a viewer. At the same time,
reading from a new materialist perspective, the work of art gains a certain kind of
agency; it is the work of art that holds and emits the intensities. This means that the
object is invested with a power to touch, move, and affect us.

Very much in line with what is in the previous chapter discussed regarding the turn
to affect as a reaction against post-structural theory and the linguistic turn, in his
aforementioned essay “The Aesthetics of Affect: Art Beyond Representation”
(2001), O’Sullivan writes about affect in opposition to theories of deconstruction in
art theory. He aims to shift the focus back to concrete things – the physicality and
materiality of artworks and the event of experiencing art – which, he notes, are
material things that do not disappear or dissolve despite the deconstructive readings
(2001, 125-126). It is interesting that O’Sullivan in this context decides to focus
precisely on affect – a concept and a thing that escapes any clear or conclusive
definition, and is overtly immaterial in being “accessible” only as intensities,
energies, forces or resonances. However, as curator and writer Jennifer Fisher
summarises after O’Sullivan, “affect may be invisible, yet it foregrounds energies
that are as certain as electricity” (2006, 28). Indeed, forces and workings of affect are
things we experience – the experience of them may be very physical, cognitive, and
certainly real – whilst the attempts to define them remain slippery and obscure. Art
helps us to localise and inspect the affect. Affect is movement and becoming, taking
its form as a happening, or an event of coming together and making contact, that
manifests as intensity and vibration.

It is exactly O’Sullivan’s focus on forces, energies and intensities in Deleuze and

Guattari’s writing in relation to art, that I have found inspirational in the context of
this thesis. Reformulating the Spinozist question of ‘what the body can do’, to ‘what
art can do’, we can focus on art’s aesthetic and affective power, and the material and

124
I’m aware it’s risky to make interpretations as this regarding magical qualities of art. Yet,
when reading the overarching conception of affect in Deleuze and Guattari, this kind of
interpretation seems attainable, and not completely over-interpreted.

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embodied consequences of encountering and experiencing art. The question that
follows is, ‘what can an exhibition do?’. Throughout the text, O’Sullivan describes
affect above all as an event, a happening, a certain kind of action that cannot be
transformed into language. Affect can only be experienced: “Affects are moments
of intensity, a reaction in/on the body at the level of matter” (2001, 126). O’Sullivan
wants us to acknowledge that in the end, we cannot bring affect to the realm of
language and representation. He wants us to get past this problem, and move beyond
representation, towards thinking about affect through experience and embodiment.
O’Sullivan understands both art and affect as events that have more to do with
experience and being in the world: “Art, then, might be understood as the name for
a function: a magical, an aesthetic, function of transformation. Art is less involved in
making sense of the world and more involved in exploring the possibilities of being,
of becoming, in the world” (2001, 130). I will return to this thought again in the
concluding chapter of this thesis.

Working curatorially with affect

An initiative that on its part guided my interest towards affect in the beginning of
my research process, was If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part of Your
Revolution (IICD). The project was founded in 2005 in the Netherlands by curators
Frederique Bergholtz, Annie Fletcher and Tanja Elstgeest. Beginning as a coming
together of the curators in the context of contemporary art and theatre, the project
began as an exploration into performance and performative aspects of visual art in
relation to practices within theatre, dance and music. At the same time, as the name
of the project insinuates125, feminist politics has played an essential part in the
project. Since 2005, the IICD programme consists of seven editions, each edition
running the time period of two years. Regarding the significance of feminist politics
for the project, for example Edition II (2006-2008) was titled ‘Feminist Legacies and

125
The slogan has been affiliated with first wave feminist and anarchist Emma Goldman,
but for the whole story, see: http://www.ificantdance.org/About/00-
IfICantDance/OnEmmaGoldman (Accessed 04/09/2018).

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Potentials in Contemporary Art’. The edition, like the other ones, consisted of
commissions from artists, as well as an event programme with invited guests, a
reading group and symposia.126 IICD also publishes artist books as well as
publications relating to current discussion within the field of contemporary art.
Curator Vivian Ziherl (2016), who has been affiliated with the organization,
describes it as a structurally feminist institution based upon relational binds and on
trust. To open up the sphere of the curatorial within the project, Ziherl describes
the work as a process of placing the art and the artist as the starting points:
Without the physical architecture of a gallery or presentation space each
commission confronts a suite of fundamental questions anew: What should it be?
Where should it be? Should it be a book, a film, a theatre performance, something
in public space? If a performance, should it be in partnership with Tate Modern, or
with Stedelijk Museum? Should it be in a theatre, or should it be in the basement of
a half-constructed building in the South of Amsterdam? In this way the institution
constitutes a process of constant linkage, relationship building, and recalibration
among institutional rates of exchange (2016, 224).

As Ziherl describes, each commission in an edition begins from a clear table, while
the institution, the curatorial process and the process with production adapt to the
needs of the artworks. The quotation highlights the simultaneous freedom and
openness of the practice, as well as the sheer hard work each edition acquires in
terms of production and curatorial work from the side of the institution.

Not having had the opportunity to experience any of the IICD editions in person, I
got to know the project through the publication Reading / Feeling (2013). The
publication was produced as part of Edition IV – Affect (2010-2012) of IICD. The
edition presented commissioned works by Jeremiah Day, Sung Hwan Kim, Hito
Steyerl, Emily Wardill and Wendelien van Oldenborgh. The edition was curated by

126
It needs to be mentioned, that as a part of the event programme for this edition, a
symposium Curating and Feminism Today was arranged at Stedelijk Museum on 7 December
2006. The participants were: Frédérique Bergholtz (If I Can’t Dance), Ann Demeester (de
Appel arts centre), Katja Kobolt & Dunja Kukovec (City of Women), Heike Munder
(Migros Museum), Bettina Steibrügge (Kunsthalle Luneberg) and Mirjam van Westen
(Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem).
http://www.ificantdance.org/Editions/EditionII/SeminarsSymposia (Accessed
04/09/2018).

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Tanja Baudoin and Vivian Ziherl. There was a collective presentation of the artists
held at Wyspa Institute of Art in Gdansk, Poland, in June 2011, but the artists didn’t
present their new commissioned works in a mutual space otherwise. Instead, the
works were presented separately as solo exhibitions, performances or screenings. In
addition, the project consisted of four residency periods for artists and curators who
were at the time researching affect, as well as a series of workshops and regular
reading group meetings. The reading group meetings led also to the publication of
Reading / Feeling, which was published after the project ended, and functioned
simultaneously as a documentation of the project, and as a source for research and
learning used as part of the project itself. The publication is a reader presenting
some of the reading group materials of the project. In addition, the publication
contains testimonies of some of the organisers and participants of the reading
groups.

I familiarized with the project only through this material, instead of the exhibitions,
presentations, screenings, workshops, or reading groups. Through the publication,
the project as a whole appears as a two-year research project into the field of affect,
and its inevitable connections with the realm of contemporary art. In the light of the
curators’ preface, the project is an apparent example of working within the curatorial:
the project as a whole is above all a process, which is based on exchange between
various actors (artists, researchers, art students, curators, audiences). The reading
groups took place in Amsterdam, Sheffield and Toronto. Further, the selection of
the participating artists and IICD’s ability to commission new works from them,
appears as an organic process of one thing leading to another.127 As the curators put
it: “[the artists’] projects, which developed during the two-year programme of
Edition IV, followed their own research trajectory, but were illuminated by the
prism of affect. Similarly, the commissions in our Performance in Residence
programme touched on affective subject matters like empathy and the shifting
movement of emotion” (2013, 9). Here we can detect an essential difference to for

127
In the preface we learn, for example, that workshops on affect, held by artists Phil
Collins and Hito Steyerl for fine art students at the Dutch Art Institute in 2009-2010, led to
the founding of the reading groups on affect (2013, 8-9). Also other instances of chance
and consequence are brought up in the introduction.

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example the curatorial starting point of Maura Reilly with Global Feminisms
discussed in chapter three. The curators working on Edition IV – Affect, didn’t see
the need to select works of art that would have depicted their initial ideas and
concepts with the project. The point wasn’t to illustrate the curators’ views on
affect, nor create a representation of what affect is. Instead, the project itself was a
process of learning, where the concepts and ideas were growing parallel to the art
materialising as part of the commissions, in the reading groups together with
different audiences, and as part of the exchange with various people taking place in
workshops and through the residency programme. In this light, the process with
Edition IV appears as an affective process itself – colliding of various bodies,
materialisation of intensities, and movement of forces, emotions, and feelings –
augmenting various participants’ ability to act (artworks, artists, audiences, curators,
sites).

In the preface, the curators do not define Edition IV – Affect straightforwardly as a

feminist project. Feminist scholars Ann Cvetkovich and bell hooks are mentioned as
feminist writers focused on emotion and affect, whose legacy in current discussions
on the topic is seen as essential (2013, 8). Also, the curators state that affect is
treated as a political notion:
For us, affect informs the relationships we have with others that help shape our
identities. The notion is said to describe a pre-emotional state, where feeling is not
yet attached to a subject and therefore not nameable. It moves between bodies or
inside an individual, before it manifests itself in a feeling (a conscious sensation) or
an emotion (a display of feeling). This means that affect, as a kind of raw material,
has the capacity to be a transformative force (2013, 8).

The focus is on the notion of transformation, bringing the conceptualisation of the

project into the field of the political. Examined through the form of the project, its
emphasis on process and discursive learning and development of the concept, the
curatorial process may well be discussed in the context of the curatorial. To think
about how affect manifests in a curatorial approach, we need to focus on the
process. Affect is thus not a theme of the project in any traditional sense: the
project didn’t aim at explaining or presenting affect through the art, nor the artists,
taking part in the various parts of the project. Rather, the edition aimed to research

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affect and affective dynamics through different events and perspectives. The project
as a whole can indeed be reviewed as an open-ended process, where knowledge was
allowed to accumulate durationally, and projects developed depending on the
collision of various bodies as part of them. Edition IV – Affect of IICD functioned,
then, beyond the realm of the representational.

In the essay “Exhibitionary affect” (2006) Jennifer Fisher describes her curatorial
work with affect. In this early essay on the topic, Fisher writes from the point of
view of a curator and a feminist, focusing on curatorial work with affect in creating
exhibitionary atmospheres. Fisher follows O’Sullivan’s Deleuze-Guattarian reading
of the concept, and thinks about affect in a feminist curatorial setting. It is the
understanding of affect as energies and intensities emanating from art, that remains
in focus, while she writes particularly about her aim of creating ambience and spatial
experiences as part of exhibition projects: “An aesthetics of affect, then, expands
the discipline of art history beyond its concerns with artists, objects, meaning,
representation and interpretation, to examine art events and exhibitions as
energetically charged contexts” (2006, 28-29). To enter an exhibition is to enter a
threshold that exceeds the representational – it is about entering an experiential,
auratic, as well as a ritualistic space, as Fisher points out: “The energetic charge of
an exhibition – its aura – holds the power to touch the beholder physically,
emotionally and cognitively” (2006, 28).

Fisher is particularly interested in working with an atmosphere and the experiental

event a viewer has when visiting exhibitions. This includes guiding the viewer in a
space in a certain way, to enable encounters in certain order. In terms of her own
curatorial process, site-specific work with artists and works of art are at the core.
While Fisher strongly opposes an art historical approach to exhibition making, and
speaks for curating outside the realm of the representational, her feminist strategy
leans mostly on the need to present women artists’ work (2006, 29). Nevertheless,
the affective curatorial approach Fisher describes works to expand the art historical
context and allow us to put more focus on relational and non-representational
aspects of exhibition experiences.

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Together with Helena Reckitt, Fisher has edited two issues of Journal of Curatorial
Studies, “Museums and affect” (2015) and “Affect and relationality” (2016),
presenting affect theory as a mode of analysis for curatorial and exhibition studies.128
The issues discuss affect and curating from slightly different angles: the first one
approaches museums and other social sites as contact zones for the transmission of
affect, and broaden the analysis on museum contexts beyond individual works and
their meanings toward social, sensory and emotive aspects of the site. The second
issue focuses on relationality, with much focus on the one hand on affective labour
in the field of the curatorial, and on the other, on affective qualities of self-
promotion acquired from practitioners in the art world. Indeed, in their
introduction to the issue, Fisher and Reckitt situate the contemporary curator’s tasks
in “cultivating networks and capitalizing upon one’s conviviality” (2016).129 These
two issues are very rare examples of recent critical writing specifically about affect
and curating. As I haven’t come across other publications focusing at least partly in
the intersections of affect theory, curating and feminist thought, I argue we cannot
yet speak of an existing research field on the topic. As the publication of two
volumes of the peer-reviewed journal on the topic indicates, however, there is
clearly both interest and research on the topic. Hopefully more so in the coming
years.

As these writers demonstrate, the notion of affect enables us to focus on how an

exhibition, or any other situation where art is exhibited, unfolds and opens up in

128
In January 2017, Helena Reckitt and Jennifer Fisher hosted also a discussion at
Whitechapel Gallery, with the title Affect and Curating: Feeling the Curatorial. In addition to
Reckitt and Fisher, researcher Lisa Blackman and artist Nina Wakeford participated in the
discussion. http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/events/affect-curating-feeling-curatorial/
(Accessed 01/07/2018).
129
Helena Reckitt has also been an initiator of Feminist Duration Reading Group, which
gathers regularly at Space Studio in London. The reading group unravels feminist
genealogies, in the beginning focusing on Italian feminisms and particularly the work of
Carla Lonzi. In December 2015, the group arranged a programme of events considering
feminist thinking, art and activism, which consisted of reading groups, discussions,
screenings, workshops, and a seminar, and took place across The Showroom, the ICA,
Space Studios and Raven Row. Helena Reckitt presented the project at the symposium
Curating in Feminist Thought in Zurich in May 2016 (https://vimeo.com/204759764,
Accessed 01/07/2018).

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order to touch the visitor. Affect may help us focus on how art feels, rather than what
it means. Next, I am presenting a project I curated as part of my research in 2015.
The work with the exhibition and the collaboration with the artworks and the artists
in it expanded my understanding of affect.

Only the Lonely

I knew of Cécile B. Evans’ work but hadn’t experienced it live until I saw her solo
exhibition at Seventeen Gallery in London in late autumn of 2014. I happened to be
the only visitor at the gallery that early afternoon, and what struck me was a sense of
other beings being present in the room with me. I realised it was her installation
Hyperlinks or It Didn't Happen (2014), featuring the character of Phil (who resembles
very much the deceased actor Philip Seymour Hoffman), who created an almost
tangible feeling of someone being in the space with me. In the video, that is part of
a larger installation, Phil is talking to other characters living in the cyber space that is
their home. One of them is AGNES. I realised that I had met AGNES before.

AGNES (2014 – ongoing) is a spam-bot imitating an artificial intelligence who lives

at the Serpentine Galleries’ website.130 AGNES is also an artwork by Cécile B.
Evans [fig. 10]. Embodying the personality and curiosity of a 16-year-old girl
(O’Higgins 2014), AGNES gathers and shows us things from the internet when we
visit her at the website. The questions she ponders upon concern our existence as
humans, our experiences and emotional states, our relations with others, our past,
and our possible futures. She seeks to position herself within all this, as someone
who is both observing and taking part in these events. She is curious about topics
such as the circulation of information, disasters, loss, and love, and she’s interested
in learning more about them. When visiting AGNES the first time, I found there
was something very compelling about her. I became curious about where her
thoughts come from and who she is. I could somehow relate to her worries, her

130
http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/agnes (Accessed 25/06/2018).

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contemplation over existence, and how all this within her, and through her, relates
to art. In short, I wanted to get to know AGNES.

Being at the gallery with Phil, AGNES, and the other few characters from the video
piece, made me think about other artworks that I had recently encountered at
exhibitions and studio visits which had appeared to me as characters with strong
personalities and sympathetic features. I remembered Nanna Nordström’s fragile
sculptures that I had seen in Stockholm, and which conveyed a specific kind of
integrity; Jonathan Baldock’s tactile and uncanny characters from an earlier show at
Vitrine Gallery in London; Maxime Thieffine’s small installations that he calls
‘actors, that I had heard about during a studio visit; Emma Hart’s noisy audio-visual
sculptures that resemble birds; and Essi Kausalainen’s performative practice, which
is based on collaboration between the artist and various kinds of nonhuman
elements such as plants, minerals, and fungi.

It turned out that I had a gang of awkward, introverted, sympathetic characters in

my mind, and these characters were sculptural and performative artworks. I noticed
that all of the artists I was thinking about, appeared to apply a certain level of

[fig. 10] An email from AGNES, 21 April 2015.

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agency to their sculptural work, or other materials they worked with. The works
seemed simultaneously to take distance from human forms (as they most often
embody abstract structures), while holding onto associations to them. Still, the
works weren’t simply anthropomorphic through their form. For example, Cécile B.
Evans’ AGNES is a computer programme—a spam bot—but she has a human
voice and she talks to us about her emotions, fears, and future plans. Jonathan
Baldock’s sculptural works are made out of colourful felt fabrics and ceramics; the
works consist of abstract shapes, but they often have some body parts, such as legs,
arms or faces, that remind those of a human body. Maxime Thieffine’s Les comédiens
(2012 – 2015) are a group of small and fragile abstract collages, which have names
and carefully structured appearances and personalities with stories to back them up.
Some of the artists also talked about their works as independent beings. During a
studio visit with Nanna Nordström, we talked about how her different sculptural
pieces created group dynamics and how different constellations brought up certain
characteristics in each member of the group. Emma Hart in her turn saw her audio-
visual sculptures from the series TO DO (2011) as her assistants, encouraging her to
continue with her work, push her forward, and approach new areas that she was
insecure about at the time of making the work.

It was the encounter with Phil and AGNES at Seventeen Gallery that led me to
start working on the exhibition concept for Only the Lonely. The encounter that I had
experienced transformed into a will to share this encounter with others, or rather,
into a will to work in order to enable a similar kind of encounter to happen with
others. I responded to an open call for a curatorial residency at La Galerie centre
l’art contemporain in Noisy-le-Sec, Paris. This was an important moment as it
allowed me to write up the exhibition concept with a clear purpose in mind. I had
visited the art space once before, and was interested in their programming with
contemporary art and their interest towards politics, feeling, and affect.131 The space

131
The previous exhibition season, from 2013 to 2014, had its umbrella concept around
affect, and included exhibitions Hello Sadness, Desire, Lassitude, Appetite, Pleasure, curated by
Emilie Renard, 21/09/2013-16/11/2013; Goodbye Sadness, Desire, Lassitude, Appetite, Pleasure,
curated by Emilie Renard, 22/02/2014-19/04/2014; and Disparity and Demand, curated by
Pedro de Llano, 24/052014-12/07/2014.

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of La Galerie is very special. From the outside, it is an old building between high-
rises in a banlieu that will very possibly get gentrified in the near future. The space
itself has functioned as a home, as a spare hospital, as a library, and now, as a space
for contemporary art. The space of La Galerie is not that of an ordinary white cube,
and I held its peculiarities in mind while working on the proposal and thinking
about the artworks’ existence within it.

My proposal was accepted, and I received the residency position as a foreign curator
for spring and summer 2015. Only the Lonely took place at La Galerie from 23 May to
18 July 2015. The exhibition concept for Only the Lonely was accepted by La Galerie
as it was, and all of the artists I had included in the concept accepted my invitation
to take part in the show. The exhibition consisted of works by six artists: Jonathan
Baldock (UK), Cécile B. Evans (BE/US), Emma Hart (UK), Essi Kausalainen (FI),
Nanna Nordstöm (SE) and Maxime Thieffine (FR). The sculptural installations in
the show were new versions of previously exhibited work, and in addition Essi
Kausalainen was commissioned to create a new performative piece for the
exhibition in situ at La Galerie.

The exhibition was accompanied by an events programme and a pedagogical

programme. Local school classes visited the space twice a week: the pupils visited
the exhibition with a guide, and afterwards there were arts and crafts workshops. I
did not take part in planning the pedagogical program myself, but it was planned
and realised by the art space and their art pedagogues. I conducted a guided tour in
the exhibition on two occasions in conjunction with gallery tours in which the
participants visited two other art spaces in the area. There was also an events day for
the performance by Essi Kausalainen, and one event day during which pupils from a
local music school performed a concert with music inspired by Only the Lonely. I
invited writer and curator Barbara Sirieix to write a text about the exhibition, and
there was a performative public reading of this text at the space on the same day.

Two exhibition journals were produced around the exhibition. One of these
journals was intended for an adult audience, and consisted of presentations of the

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artists, an introductory text by the director of La Galerie Emilie Renard, and an
exhibition text by myself. La Galerie had a recently initiated a new visual identity,
according to which the exhibition journal was produced [Appenix 1]. I selected the
images for the journal in collaboration with the artists, but did not take part in the
design of the journal. The second exhibition journal was intended for a younger
audience. It was created by artist Anna Principaud, who works at La Galerie with
the pedagogical programming, in collaboration with two graphic designers. This
journal presents the main themes of the exhibition, in language directed at children,
accompanied with images and puzzles.

At the time of seeing Cécile B. Evans’ exhibition at Seventeen Gallery, I was reading
into the field of affect and new materialist theory in the context of contemporary art
through Affect theory reader (2010), Carnal knowledge (2013), Reading/Feeling (2012), and
Visual culture as objects and affects (2013). I was inspired particularly by the urgency for
creating affective encounters described in O’Sullivan’s essay “The Aesthetic of
Affect” (2001). I was curious about the possibility to create affective encounters
between artworks and viewers. I wanted to see, if I’d be able to participate in
enabling those small shifts to take place, in collaboration with the artworks.
O’Sullivan writes about affect as an event or happening, as well as an exchange of
energies between an art object and a viewer. I recognised this as an essential aspect in
my experiences with encountering artworks, and in my desire to work with artists in
order to share these experiences. This was also the starting point of Only the Lonely:
to enable an encounter between a viewer and an artwork, where energies, emotions
and feelings could flow.

With Only the Lonely, I started working from the idea of recognising a certain kind of
agency in an inanimate object, as well as the moment of an encounter. What kinds
of things touch us? What kinds of things make us feel for someone or something?
Starting from my own views, recognition seemed to play an important part in all of
this. The artworks that I had encountered held something in common, which was a
certain kind of awkwardness that they all embodied. I wanted to focus on this
ambiguous feeling, partly emanating from the artworks’ physical appearances, and

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[fig. 11] Installation view from Only the Lonely. Clockwise from left with Cécile B. Evans, AGNES
(the end is near), 2014- ; Maxime Thieffine, Comédien (I), 2015; Jonathan Baldock, Impassive Bean Bag,
2014. Photo: Cédrick Eymenier, 2015.

partly from their personalities. I saw awkwardness as an ambiguous characteristic that

can through recognition turn into a warm-hearted feeling of compassion and
empathy. My hopes were that the placing of these artworks together in a specific
space could work towards opening up the contingencies embedded in the
encounters between the artworks and viewers, and further on, happenings of affect.
This is where the title of the show originated: I was thinking of a group of friendly
outsiders, sympathetic characters that are slightly off. The title refers also to the
heart-breaking 1960’s pop song by Roy Orbison; this song is about the collective
experience of heartbreak—it is only the lonely, those living their lives with a broken
heart, who know what the song is about and who can share the experience. In
practice this is something we’ve all been through; hence, the song is also all about
recognition and compassion.

Only the Lonely worked on the idea of intensities on two levels – first of all in the
encounter between the work of art and the visitor, but also between all of the works

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in the space — it was as much about group dynamics between the works of art, the
connections and disconnections between them. In terms of the encounter between
the artwork and the visitor, I put a lot of trust in the affective qualities I saw in the
individual works. There was something very appealing in each work in the exhibition;
either in terms of the works’ appearance, their materials, the systems that kept them
together, or their sounds. There was a lot of humour and playfulness in many of the
works, although afterwards I learned that not all of the visitors perceived them as
such. For example, Jonathan Baldock’s sculptural works, made with soft and
colourful fabrics, often send out ambiguous messages. There was the huge
sculpture, Impassive Beanbag (2014) [fig. 11], which turned out to have almost an
alarmed look “on their face” when pushed into the corner of the room. Another
sculpture, Yellow Figure (After Hepworth) (2014), made out of yellow felt, had ceramic
sticks stuck all over its body, reminding a Saint Sebastian figure. Despite the sticks,
the sculpture seemed to be comfortable in their spot. Perhaps it was feeling
pleasure, and not pain?

In terms of the encounters, what we didn’t realise beforehand was that not only
were the works very appealing for visitors to approach and touch, but also that all of
them were vulnerable and fragile, and needed protection. The artworks we were
initially worried about because of their fragile nature, Nanna Nordström’s and
Emma Hart’s sculptures, remained unharmed, partly thanks to how they were
installed, and partly thanks to the exhibition hosts at La Galerie. Emma Hart’s TO
DO (2011) consists of 27 individual sculptures, which the artist sees as both birds
and as her assistants [fig. 12]. Each sculpture consists of a structure with a camera
that has a short looping video with audio visual material. A few birds have cameras
that are on, so that one can view the room through them. At Only the Lonely we
presented a selection of bird assistants, and decided to install them opposite the
desk where the exhibition host sits. I worked on the installation of the piece in close
dialogue with the artist, as well as a technician at La Galerie. We decided to install
the sculptures in a formation that resembles a flock of flying birds. The visitors were
allowed to walk between the lines of birds, and observe them from both sides, as
they are meant to. It was important that one could get quite close, in order to see

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[fig. 12] Emma Hart, TO DO, 2011. Photo: Cédrick Eymenier, 2015.

the videos on the small screens of the cameras. At the same time, it was as
important to see the sculptures in relation to each other as they are part of the same
family. There were no walls between the spaces within the bigger room, but
compared with the other works, Emma’s sculptures were secluded in their own
space. On the other hand, her works were the only ones that had sound (except for
AGNES, which was listened through headphones). Sounds of the bird assistants
were heard throughout the exhibition space, and this was something I also
considered at the beginning of the installation.

One of Maxime Thieffine’s works, Comédien (P) (2014), was installed in the same
space with TO DO. Comédien (P) happened to have a feather on top of it. Together
with the artist we saw this as “a sign” of the work wanting to be part of the flock,
sneaking in from behind the other birds in order to join them. Also Maxime’s
Comédien (W) (2014) was installed in relation to Emma’s work. Comédien (W) was
hiding behind a column, aware of the bird sculptures because of the noise they were
making, making a funny face for them, playfully conspiring with the visitor on the
other side. One the pieces had two faded red spots on it, so we decided to install the

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[fig. 13] Floorplan of Only the Lonely.

blushing Comédien (D) next to the bathrooms. Comédien (O) was gazing out of the
window. The works were in the end installed highly organically, both in relation to
the gallery space, and in relation to other works.

Jennifer Fisher writes about creating a certain setting, conditions for experiencing
the art, through practical aspects such as the impact of colour in the space, lighting
conditions, spatial resonances, and choreography of moving in a space. While
installing with the artists, we were certainly thinking about practical issues, such as
sounds, windows, as well as the works’ presence and security. On the other hand,
we were very much departing from the needs of each artwork. The exhibition plan
[Fig. 13] wasn’t then designed in terms of visitors, as much as it was designed for
the artworks. In Only the Lonely I worked together with the artists from the point of
view of the artworks. In our conversations, our interests were in finding the best
option for the works so that they would receive the space they needed, and create
dynamics with the other pieces in the room.

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I decided that I wanted to provide an own space for each work instead of mixing all
of the artists’ works within the space. I had temporary walls dismantled so that there
was one big space where the dynamics could be created. The bigger installations by
Emma Hart, Jonathan Baldock and Nanna Nordström were installed first. Cécile B.
Evans’ AGNES required a darker space, so it was installed in the only room
without a window. Essi Kausalainen had elements in her performative work that
stayed in the space throughout the exhibition, and changed slightly before and after
the performance. These elements found their places once the bigger works were
installed, and once Essi’s score for the performance began developing and
materialising. Maxime Thieffine’s work, which was smaller in scale and adaptable by
nature, was installed last – in fact, in the end just a few moments before the
opening. Like in most cases, looking at documented installation views of the
exhibition doesn’t do justice to understanding the spatiality of the exhibition. Again,
it was the act of encountering the works and being with them in the space that
mattered. That experience cannot be documented; it can only be experienced.

When I talk about affect in this thesis, I am talking about it in relation to the aspects
mentioned here—the event of affect in encountering art, affect as intensity and
energy embedded in artworks, and the agency of artworks in terms of their affective
power. Only the Lonely departed essentially from the question ‘what can an exhibition
do’. The idea of exploring the dynamics of an exhibition as a site and the works as
part of it, was a grounding thought that materialised both in how I worked with the
artworks, artists and the space, as well as in how it was finally installed. Essi
Kausalainen’s performance was a direct dialogue she created with the space of La
Galerie, and almost a reaction to the resonances she detected in it. For the work,
Kausalainen stayed at the art space during the opening week in order to be in and
with the space, feel its resonances and particularities, and plan her performance.
The next step was to gather the materials she felt the space invited her to use. After
a few weeks, she returned to perform the dialogue, or the collaboration, back on
site. The performance that came out, was a movement that unfolded throughout the
space through different characters embodied by Kausalainen, in collaboration with a

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member of La Galerie’s staff Marjolaine Calipel, who was the acting public relations
and communications manager of the art space.

I have here wanted to present and analyse the curatorial thinking and practical
process with Only the Lonely, and demonstrate how these notions link to the overall
research and the aim of creating affective encounters with art as part of a curatorial
practice. I have presented by starting points with the concept, with working with the
artists, the artworks and the space of La Galerie, and how the collaboration took
place during the actual process. In this thesis, my focus is on curatorial work with affect
and hence, the work a curator does in order to enable happenings of affect to actualise.
Within the frameworks of the thesis, I cannot then begin to try and measure affect.
In this thesis, measuring affect remains speculative, for reasons discussed widely in
chapter four with regards to developing the theoretical framework of the research.

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6 Energies in motion

I begin this concluding chapter by discussing feminist new materialist approaches

and their significance for this thesis more closely. As is evident by now, my focus
has been on the material existence of works of art throughout the thesis, and I have
critiqued current discourses on feminist thought and curating for treating the
exhibited art as illustration, as secondary, or as a non-issue, while prioritising survey
exhibitions about art by feminist and/or women artists as the paradigm of feminist
curating. New materialist theory helps us to decentre the human position, and take
the material and vibrant existence of nonhumans as the starting point and focus of
analysis. I continue here discussing the significance of materialities, and take up the
notion of creating energies in a more concrete setting by presenting the group
exhibition Good Vibrations. I curated the exhibition in 2017 at SIC space in Helsinki
as part of my research process. The collaboration with the artworks and the artists
aided me to think further the affective and energetic properties of works of art, as
we worked in the space together.

After this, I move on to the topic of feminist curating beyond representation by

discussing the practice of Renée Baert, as well as Catherine de Zegher’s curatorial
approach in Inside the Visible (1996) and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev’s in
dOCUMENTA (13). By ‘beyond representation’, I mean that in these (feminist)
curatorial practices, the process departs from deep companionship with the art that
the curators engage with, and which they aspire to make public as part of their
work. The practice is based on associative working methods, instead of proposing a
pre-established thesis as a framework of an exhibition. This is discursive curatorial
practice within the curatorial. I conclude this chapter with a presentation of what I
have throughout this thesis drafted as a feminist curatorial practice based on work
with affect, emotion, and creation of transformative energies. As part of this, I
present a proposition of the exhibition as a site where affective transformation is
enabled to happen.

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Vibrant matter that matters

Much of this research has been circling around materialities of artworks and other
physical entities. I have at the beginning of this thesis presented thinking through
and with art as my overarching method, and the embodied and physical encounters
with art in certain setting and in certain spaces has been discussed throughout. Even
if the concept of affect might appear as rather fluffy or ethereal, the experience of
affect is physical, material, and real. As Fisher puts it, “affect may be invisible, yet it
foregrounds energies that are as certain as electricity” (2006, 28). The transformative
experience which affect may (or may not) provide is essentially embodied. As
O’Sullivan puts it: “Affects are moments of intensity, a reaction in/on the body at the
level of matter” (2001, 126). Within this thesis, all this activity boils down to the
existence of a work of art, its presentation within a space, and our encounter with it.
My intentions have to a large extent been on shifting the main focus to the work of
art, which, in my opinion, is the foundation for curatorial practice, including
feminist curatorial practices.

Feminist theorist and quantum physicist Karen Barad’s agential realism, presented in
the article “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter
comes to Matter” (2003) and Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the
Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (2007), has been hugely influential in the field of
new materialist theory, directing research towards agency of matter, our co-existence
and entanglement with the material world, and the question of ‘how matter comes
to matter’. The most foundational notion of new materialist theory is the
questioning of the privilege given to humans through the human/nonhuman binary
(Bolt 2013, 6). In new materialist contexts, humans are not at the core of
subjectivity, but instead, humans are seen as actors amongst other entities,
nonhumans, and materialities participating in our existence equally. Barad’s theory
of agential matter draws from quantum physics, but is widely employed in the
humanities, social sciences and particularly feminist theory as part of posthuman
and new materialist inquiries (Bolt 2013, 6). Barad’s agential realism is an ethical
ontological epistemology, based on the agency of matter, and its existence as

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continuous intra-action and entanglement (2003; 2007). Barad’s notion of
entanglement and intra-action means, that matter and meaning are entangled with
and in each other as part of their existence. Intra-action is different to interaction in
the sense that while interaction means the coming together of two separate entities,
intra-action “signifies the mutual constitution of entangled agencies”; in intra-action,
separate entities do not precede, but come into being as part of the intra-action
(2007, 33). Barad’s agential realism both emphasizes agency of matter and
materialities, and takes the aspect of relational existence of all matter as its starting
point.

Jane Bennett presents her theory of vital materialism in the book Vibrant Matter: A
Political Ecology of Things (2010). Having focused on the mood of enchantment from
the human perspective in her previous book The Enchantment of Modern Life:
Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics (2001), Bennett wanted to shift her focus from the
human experience to the nonhuman catalysts that may cause the enchantments, and
the vitality embodied by these nonhuman bodies (2010, viii-xii). By vitality Bennett
means the capacity of things “not only to impede or block the will and designs of
humans but also to act as quasi agents or forces with trajectories, propensities, or
tendencies of their own” (2010, viii). What is important is that for Bennett, this
affect or vitality, is equated with materiality; it is not a separate force entering a
physical body. In Baradian terms, we could say affect and materiality intra-act, and it
relates also to what was discussed earlier in Deleuze and Guattari’s idea of affect
coming into being as materiality of a work of art. Bennett’s vital materialism relates
also to Deleuze’s notion of the virtual, as well as Foucault’s notion of the unthought
and Thoreau’s notion of the Wild. Just as I have been discussing affect, vital
materialism is a force that is real and powerful, yet intrinsically resistant to
representation (2010, xvi). Bennett’s vital materialism, or thing-power, is “the
curious ability of inanimate things to animate, to act, to produce effects dramatic
and subtle”; vital materiality can never be thrown away (think about litter) – it
continues its activities even as discarded or unwanted commodity (2010, 6).

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Neither Barad or Bennett talk explicitly about art. While theorising nonhuman
matter as obtaining thing-power, Bennett writes about things co-existing with and in
us in our daily lives, such as food, medicine, metals, litter, or cells. Whereas Barad’s
theory concerns phenomena (in the quantum physicist sense), Bennett’s focus is on
mundane things in the everyday including entities we may not recognise as our
cohabitants. For Barad, the ethical aspect in her theory is inherent in the entangled
mode of existence. For Bennett, the ethical and political project comes through in
our conscious engagement with vibrant matter and lively things. When we recognize
the activeness of thing-power, we begin to experience the relationship between
individuals and other materialities more horizontally. According to Bennett, this is
to take a step toward a more ecological sensibility (2010, x; 10). Thus, vital
materialism aims to extend the framing of the political from the context of the
human, and further to the context of human and nonhuman.

What does all this then mean in the context of visual art and curating? We can begin
by thinking about artistic practices, and the continuous entanglement with materials
and materialities. I have already earlier referred to the practice of performance artist
Essi Kausalainen on several occasions, and her practice is again a case in point. For
several years now, Kausalainen has been actively researching and working with
nonhuman, organic and complex entities such as plants, minerals, and fungi. We
need to remember though, that this sort of direct engagement is not needed in order
for an artist to understand the material entanglements between artists and
materialities – the same goes for painters (and their occasionally toxic paints),
sculptors, textile artists, conceptual artists, and so on. In the case of Kausalainen
though, plant-thinking is part of her whole practice – how she thinks, how she
collaborates, how she understands our co-existence with the more-than-human-
world. Instead of seeing it as a theme or a topic of work, it manifests as a structure
of thinking, and as the core of her practice as a whole.132 Artistic practice is a
constant dialogue, collaboration and negotiation with various materials and

132
More on Kausalainen’s practice: https://mail.mustekala.info/node/37803;
http://badatsports.com/2016/reading-with-my-whole-body-an-interview-with-essi-
kausalainen/ (Accessed 24/09/2018).

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nonhuman entities. The same goes for curatorial practice; if not being part of these
entanglements in the same extent than the artist, the curator must know and
understand the artwork’s materiality and material being, in order to be able to work
with it. I am next presenting my process with the group exhibition Good Vibrations,
which sheds curatorial light on this topic.

In Vibrant Matter, Bennett notes that attending to the vital materialism around us
requires a certain risk, opening, or willingness to appear naïve or foolish. As she
notes: “Vital materialists thus try to linger in those moments during which they find
themselves fascinated by objects, taking them as clues to the material vitality that
they share with them. This sense of a strange and incomplete commonality with the
out-side may induce vital materialists to treat nonhumans – animals, plants, earth,
even artifacts and commodities – more carefully, more strategically, more
ecologically” (2010, 17-18). As I have stressed, this relates to how I have been
approaching works of art both in this research and in my curatorial practice.
Encountering art at exhibitions, public spaces, and studios, what I tend to do is
attempt to tune into the artwork’s “frequency”, in order to get to know them, and
see if I might be able to understand them. It is their vibrant materiality I seek to get
in contact with. In curatorial projects, some level of this understanding is needed.
Oftentimes, this understanding might be intuitive or associate, linking into other
works of art I’ve seen, texts I’ve read, or discussions that I have been part of, and
sensed there was some significance in the linkages. Oftentimes, these linkages only
become evident when for example an exhibition, a text, or a discussion, materialises.
According to Bennett, this is a naivety we should attempt to develop.

Good Vibrations

In the spring of 2016, I began thinking about a group exhibition that would discuss,
and even evoke, erotic energies, and that I envisioned as a test on whether we could
bring forth physical reactions in relation to artworks sporting tactile and sensuous
materials. What was important for the concept of the exhibition was that it wouldn’t
have operated in the realm of the representational, meaning there wouldn’t have

197
been any images or linguistic systems used in the works exhibited. Particularly, I
wanted to avoid any links to pornographic images. The exhibition aimed instead at
luring out something primitive and embodied through encounters with sensual,
tactile materials, sculptural and performative elements, and abstract associations.
The idea was, that the possible erotic energy and sensual vibration would arise from
the materiality of the artworks, which touched upon a range of senses. At the core
of the project was the bodily experience of being in the exhibition space with the
works of art, and how our bodies react to other bodies and elements within the
space. As part of the spatial experience different natural and subtle aphrodisiac
scents, such as vanilla, cinnamon and lavender, would have been occasionally
emitted into the gallery through an aroma diffuser.

The project received a title, Big Time Sensuality133, and I invited artists Jonathan
Baldock (UK), Heather Phillipson (UK), Jean-Charles de Quillacq (FR), Sarah
Roberts (UK), Tielsie (FR) and Urara Tsuchiya (JP/UK) to be part of it. All of the
artists were willing to participate. I discussed the exhibition and its concept in
person with Jean-Charles de Quillacq, Sarah Roberts and Urara Tsuchiya. We were
thinking about the exhibition above all as an experiment to see if what we wanted to
do was possible. The plan was to present installations by Jonathan Baldock, Heather
Phillipson, Jean-Charles de Quillacq and Sarah Roberts, a performative work by
Urara Tsuchiya, and a commissioned soundscape by Tielsie.

The idea for the exhibition grew out of, again, my encounters with artworks and
artists. Jonathan Baldock I had been in touch with since we worked together on
Only the Lonely. As we share similar interests in materiality and agency of works of
art, I was happy to continue working with him. I had been interested in Heather
Phillipson’s work for a longer time, and had the chance to engage in a dialogue
about her practice at length for an interview I put together for n.paradoxa (Suoyrjö &

133
This is a reference to Björk’s hit song with the same title from 1993. I was particularly
thinking about the element of becoming in the lyrics: “We just met, and I know I'm a bit
too intimate, but something huge is coming up, and we're both included. It takes courage
to enjoy it, the hardcore and the gentle, big time sensuality”,
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bjork/bigtimesensuality.html (Accessed 08/09/2018).

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[fig. 14] Heather Phillipson, THE ORIGINAL EROGENOUS ZONE, Art Brussels (with Rowing),
2014.

Phillipson 2015). Phillipson had realised a previous work titled THE ORIGINAL
EROGENOUS ZONE (2014) [fig. 14], which was shown at Art Brussels in
collaboration with London-based art space Rowing in 2014. It might have been this
work, that initially made me think about the exhibition concept, “an art space as the
original erogenous zone”. Jean-Charles de Quillacq I met over a studio visit at Villa
Arson in Nice, France. We found a mutual interest, again, in the materiality and
tactile notions of abstract sculpture, which in his work materialises partly as
sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle, nods towards homoeroticism. Sarah
Roberts’ work I encountered in the exhibition The London Open at Whitechapel
Gallery in 2015. Her work was an extensive installation consisting of a large variety
of everyday and industrial materials in pastel and neon colours, paint, video clips,
and sounds. As a whole, the piece was overtly sensory and sensual. Roberts was
interested in the topic of the exhibition, and we discussed the possibility of
producing a new piece for it. I invited Urara Tsuchiya to perform a previous work
she had realised in Glasgow, which was an aphrodisiac dinner. The participatory and
performative piece would’ve been a one-off event as part of the exhibition. And
finally, French electronic artist Tielsie was invited to compose a sound-scape for the
exhibition space. I had met Tielsie in Paris, where we had discussed the role sounds
can have in affecting our experiences and taking us to different states of being.

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Working as a musician, they were curious about experimenting with the format of
an art exhibition.

As part of developing the concept and thinking about the artists’ practices, I was
also inspired by Lucy Lippard’s essay “Eccentric Abstraction” (1971). Based on an
exhibition that took place at Fischbach Gallery In New York in 1966, Lippard starts
sketching eccentric abstraction as a style of artists in their 30s working with mainly
sculptural abstract elements. If one can pass the descriptive and categorising
purpose of Lippard’s essay, what she writes about the actual works and their
“sensuous, life-giving elements” (1971, 100), is highly inspiring and resonates with
much contemporary art practices, as well as my aspirations with Big Time Sensuality.
In the essay, Lippard describes the qualities of the artworks in the exhibition, and
attempts to pin down what it is that makes them prominently erotic, yet at the same
time, indirectly so. According to Lippard, the pieces “provoke that part of the brain
which, activated by the eye, experiences the strongest physical sensations” (1971,
102), and further, Lippard seeks the explanation for this in psychoanalytic theory:
Such mindless, near-visceral identification with form, for which the psychological
term “body ego” or Bachelard’s “muscular consciousness” seems perfectly
adaptable, is characteristic of eccentric abstraction. It is difficult to explain why
certain forms and treatments of form should elicit more sensuous response than
others. Sometimes it is determined by the artist’s own approach to his materials and
forms; at others by the viewer’s indirect sensations of identification, reflecting both
his personal and vicarious knowledge of sensorial experience in general. Body ego
can be experienced two ways: first through appeal, the desire to caress, to be caught
up in the feel and rhythms of a work; second, through repulsion, the immediate
reaction against certain forms and surfaces which take longer to comprehend”
(1971, 102).

In a sense, Lippard speaks here of affecting and being affected. On one hand, she
speaks of the qualities of the individual art works, clearly carrying with them certain
kind of energies; while on the other, of the possible reaction of the individual viewer
with their individual background. Lippard continues to write about the tactile
materiality of the works and the physical reactions to them; even though the objects
are not supposed to be touched, they are supposed to evoke a sensuous response:

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“If the surfaces are familiar to one’s sense of touch, if you can tell by looking how
touching them would feel, they are all the more effective” (1971, 105).

In the end, Lippard discusses exactly what I was planning with the exhibition in
terms of avoiding any reference to pornography, representation or
anthropomorphic figures:
Instead of employing biomorphic form, usually interpreted with sexual references
in Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, several of these artists employ a long,
slow, voluptuous but also mechanical curve, deliberate rather than emotive,
stimulating a rhythm only vestigially associative – the rhythm of postorgasmic calm
instead of ecstasy, action perfected, completed, and not yet reinstated. The
sensibility that gives rise to an eroticism of near inertia tends to be casual about
erotic acts and stimulants, approaching them nonromantically. The distinction
made by the Surrealists between conscious and unconscious is irrelevant, for the
current younger generation favors the presentation of specific facts – what we feel,
what we see rather than why we do so” (1971, 111).

What we see and experience, and how it makes us feel, was at the very core of the
concept. Big Time Sensuality was shortlisted for a stage two in an application process
for a non-profit art space, but wasn’t selected in the exhibition programme in the

[fig. 15] Sketch for the floorplan of Good Vibrations with the placing of the works and their energy
fields.

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[fig. 16] Installation view from Good Vibrations with works by Shana Moulton, mirko nikolić,
Beatrice Lozza and Julie Béna. Image: Tuomas Linna.

end. However, in the autumn of 2016 I was invited to curate an exhibition at SIC
space in Helsinki, Finland. I was familiar with the space of the gallery, and even
though I first thought about Big Time Sensuality as the project, I soon felt this wasn’t
the right exhibition for the gallery space, the gallery itself, nor for Helsinki – partly
because I had planned to realise the project in the UK. I then decided to develop
the idea of Big Time Sensuality further, to concentrate more on summoning energies
within a space, but left the overarching erotic element out. At the time, I was
developing the framing of this research in terms of happiness, joy, pleasure and
love. This directed the focus of the exhibition concept, which started moving
towards summoning of good feeling.

The exhibition received the title Good Vibrations, and it was realised at SIC 28 April –
29 May 2017. The artists in the exhibition were Julie Béna (FR), Happy Magic
Society (FI), Beatrice Lozza (CH), Shana Moulton (US), mirko nikolić (SRB) and
Nastja Säde Rönkkö (FI). The space of the gallery was organised according to each
artwork’s energetic field [fig.15]. The exhibition invited visitors to tune into the
frequencies of the artworks, and the energy fields around them. [fig. 16, 19]

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[fig. 17] Still from Shana Moulton, Sand Saga, 2008, digital video.

I had known Julie Béna for a while, and was interested in her performative work,
often based on witty play with language combined with political undercurrents. We
discussed the topic of the exhibition, and decided to show magical objects: a two-
dimensional textile piece, which looked like a three-dimensional magician’s cape, as
well as a series of ceramic sculptures in the shape of laughing mouths, to be
scattered in the space as punctuation marks. Happy Magic Society is a collective
formed by Essi Kausalainen and Mikko Kuorinki, both artists I had previously
worked with. Happy Magic Society is a project where they can experiment on things
and do things they wouldn’t do as part of their individual practices. Before we had
the time to properly discuss how they would participate, by chance and not knowing
about my plans with the scents as part of Big Time Sensuality, they suggested they
would create a special fragrance for the show. The fragrance was the piece, and it
was diffused into the gallery space through a diffuser, which had the function of
being a vessel for the scent.

With Beatrice Lozza I had engaged in an on-going dialogue for a longer period of
time leading to the exhibition. We had organised an artist talk together in Zurich
about her practice in 2016, and I knew her practice very well. For the exhibition,
Beatrice continued her on-going work with a thread she had produced from gauze,
which for her functions as a material to draw sculptures with. She installed the

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[fig. 18] mirko nikolić, im/ponderabilia, 2017. Image: Tuomas Linna.

thread in the space of SIC, and energised its already existing subtle movement with
a series of lightbulbs programmed to go on and off at asymmetrical cycles. As
already mentioned, I was familiar with Shana Moulton’s practice since before (see p.
150-153), and the context of the exhibition offered a wonderful opportunity to
work with her. We selected three of her video works, which were shown as a loop
on a screen. The pieces were Sand Saga (2008), The Galactic Pot Healer (2010) and
MindPlace ThoughtStream (2014). The video pieces featured Cynthia in different
problematic situations, which she solved according to her habits. The sounds and
music clips from the videos echoed in the whole gallery space [fig. 17, 20].

I was very familiar also with mirko nikolić’s work. We had had several discussions
about the nonhuman turn, posthuman eco-aesthetics, poetics of multispecies love
and desire, and I had also written a text for his exhibition Burning hearts of a thousand
tiny matters at Ambika 3 in London in February 2017. The exhibition was part of his
practice-led PhD, presenting his artistic practice with various nonhuman entities and
earth beings such as copper, mineral ores, and monkey puzzle plants. For the
exhibition mirko wanted make a new, site-specific piece. In the end, the work
turned into an installation constructed with textile folding screens, and hiding in the
middle an intimate encounter between two plants, an asparagus densiflorus and a hedera

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[fig. 19] Installation view from Good Vibrations with works by Beatrice Lozza, Nasta Säde Rönkkö
and Julie Béna. Image: Tuomas Linna.

helix [fig. 18]. In the middle part of the structure, where the plants reached out for
each other, the screens formed a narrow path, where the visitor had to make the
decision which way to face, in a similar way as in the performative piece
Imponderabilia (1977) by Marina Abramovic and Ulay.

Finally, Nastja Säde Rönkkö participated in the exhibition with an installation which
was activated during one day as a performance. I had followed her performative
work, focusing often on compassion and empathy, for some time and the exhibition
was a great opportunity to work together. We decided to activate an earlier piece of
hers, sometimes forever, which she had realised once before in Moscow in 2016. During
the performance day, visitors were invited to exchange a memory or a story for a
tattoo. Depending on whether the memory or the story was something the visitor
wanted to keep, the artist would design an image together with the visitor, and
realise it in the gallery as a permanent stick and poke tattoo. If the memory was a
sad one, the artist would give the visitor a temporary tattoo, which would fade away
in course of a few days, with the hopes that the sad memory would fade away with
it.

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[fig. 20] Shana Moulton, The Galactic Pot-Healer (2010) and Julie Béna, a mouth nor a smile (2017).
Image: Tuomas Linna.

In “Happy Objects” Sara Ahmed (2010) writes about happiness as a feeling state,
that can also turn towards objects. In Good Vibrations, the idea was to explore,
whether this idea could also work the other way around: could the good feeling
gathering in the space stick to the visitor, and accumulate in the space during the
exhibition. However, the exhibition did not aim at a specific reaction or response.
The space was put together as a discursive room for the artworks and for the
visitors. Good Vibrations aimed at creating space for relationality, founded in material
and vibrant energetic correspondences in the installation of the works that co-
habited the space, simultaneously taking into consideration the movement of
visitors and their energetic fields. In the documentation images the exhibition looks
very neat, but in terms of the ebb and flow of energies, there was messiness
involved as well (Ahmed 2014).

In retrospect, what I aimed at from a curatorial point of view, is much in line what
Paul O’Neill writes about current dialogical curatorial practices, where curatorial
practice is seen as “a durational, transformative, and speculative activity, a way of
keeping things in flow, mobile, in between, indeterminate, crossing over and
between people, identities, and things, encouraging certain ideas to come to the fore
in an emergent communicative process” (2012, 89). As part of the process, I

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[fig. 21] Happy Magic Society, Happy Magic Fragrance (Good Vibrations), 2017, aromatic oil in diffuser.

understood the exhibition as a site for constant renegotiation between the

participating bodies – the artworks, the artists, the visitors, and the surrounding
space within a space.134

For me, it was important that even if the exhibition grew out of the research I was
working on, the exhibition did not in any way take the form of an essay – it did not
simply illustrate my research. As was the case with Only the Lonely, I describe also
Good Vibrations as a test or an experiment. As often happens, it was only after the
exhibition had been installed, that we could see that, for example, the notion of an
invitation stood out in each piece. All of the works seemed to invite the visitor to
some sort of action, to kneel down and sniff the air [fig. 21], to sit down on a bench
and engage, to sneak in, to wander, or to share something.

While speaking about the relation between language and affect, Massumi notes, that
humour and poetry function as uses of language where linguistic elements may help
to describe the “excess” of a situation, something that feels impossible to put in
words. He uses the word ‘capture’ for explaining how language captures an

134
SIC space was built within a bigger industrial space by a group of artists. The gallery is
located at the top floor of an old warehouse building, located just outside the centre of
Helsinki.

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experience and simultaneously normalizes it by making it communicable. Instead,
Massumi proposes that we let the situation capture us, and become part of the
movement (2015, 13). As I write above, there was no preconceived thesis Good
Vibrations wanted to transmit. Instead, it was more about this idea of letting a
situation capture you, sensing the atmosphere, and going with the flow.

Feminist curating beyond representation

I am now presenting the thinking of three curators, who I see working with feminist
politics, but beyond representative exhibition models. I have by now at several
occasions presented Renée Baert’s thinking as an exception in the current field of
feminist thought and curating. Much in line with Paul O’Neill’s (2012) description
of current discursive curatorial practices, Baert talks about feminist curatorial
practice as a ‘potential site’ (2000) and as a ‘generative site’ (2010). Feminist
curatorial practice as a ‘potential site’ is: “a space for speculation, for local
contingencies, for new structures of knowledge and pleasure, and, more largely, for
poetics” (2000, 9). When talking about feminist curatorial practice as a generative
site, Baert notes: “An exhibition exists, not only in its manifest content as a
presentation of a body of artworks or cultural objects unified curatorially through a
conceptual or other framework, but as a generative site, sometimes a latent one,
through which broader, often unanticipated, debates and activities can arise – or
erupt” (2010, 160).

Inside the Visible: An Elliptical Traverse of 20th Century Art in, of, and from the Feminine
(1994-1997), was an international touring exhibition curated by Catherine de
Zegher. The exhibition was shown at the Béguinage of Saint-Elizabeth in Kortrijk,
Beligium (1994-1995); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (1996); National
Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC (1996); Whitechapel Art Gallery,
London (1996); and the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth (1997). Inside the
Visible presented works by 37 women artists from Eastern and Western Europe,
The Middle East, Asia, and the Americas, and from three different generations,

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focusing on three time periods of social or cultural turbulence (1930s, 1970s, 1990s).
The exhibition suggested that we could look at artistic production through cyclical
shifts, recognising connections and links between the women artists’ work from
different time periods.

Inside the Visible was obviously based on rigorous research process spanning over art
in three continents and three time cycles, as well as feminist theory,
deconstructionism, and poststructuralism, which de Zegher mentions as references
in the exhibition catalogue: “Unfolding as an open-ended process, this exhibition is
prompted by observation of multiple convergences in aesthetic practices both in
time (over different periods of the twentieth century) and in space (in different parts
of the world). The curatorial procedure may be likened to an excavation of material
traces and fragmentary histories, which would be recombined into new
stratigraphies or configurations to produce new meanings and insights of reality”
(1996, 20). The exhibition did entail theoretical aspirations, as de Zegher has also
talked about it as a hybrid form of modernism as a play with reference and
difference, and detached from avant-gardism. The exhibition disregarded
mainstream formations, and included women artists with different backgrounds and
different artistic practices (1996, 20). In an interview with Katy Deepwell, de Zegher
stresses that the exhibition wasn’t reducible to one thesis. In the same interview, de
Zegher notes that as a curator, she wants each work of art to receive the space and
attention they need, while also adapting her curatorial process as an open-ended
endeavour in relation to artists’ practices (Deepwell & de Zegher 1996; also de
Zegher 1996, 39).

One aspect of the exhibition process was then the research, which was
simultaneously accompanied by the other central aspect concerning the role of the
audience, and the experience of the exhibition. Indeed, in the curatorial essay, de
Zegher emphasizes the encounter between the work of art and the visitor on several
occasions, always noting that the encounter is left undefined as part of the curatorial
approach. The exhibition was essentially built on associations of ideas, gathering and
juxtaposing a wide range of works. In the exhibition catalogue, de Zegher writes

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about the significance of exhibitions as discursive events: “An exhibition as an event
should be transitory; it should be neither an answer nor a fixed statement but rather
a spectrum of activities that offers different perspectives, a set of relationships, a
discussion, a dialogue without canon. The most appropriate way to realize such a
display, and one capable of generating amazement, seems to me in the manner of a
Wunderkammer” (1996, 36).

The encounter between the work of art and the viewer is here finally defined as that
of amazement, aiming towards creating a space for encounters, thoughts, emotions
and reflections. According to de Zegher, the exhibition is a site shared by the
artwork, the artist, and the visitor, where the elements exist in what she calls a
‘participatory relation’ (1996, 36). Here, de Zegher’s notion comes close to Baert’s
notion of enchantment (1990), mentioned above. Again, for Baert, curating is a site for
reflection through a considered setting for enchantment, not that different to what
she later terms as a generative site. Baert’s and de Zegher’s approaches entail many
connections in terms of the feminist curatorial approach: this is completely located
in the practice of the curator, and very little on the thematic the curator works on. De
Zegher opens up also her relationship with the artworks in Inside the Visible.
Throughout the process, art is seen as a producer of theory, and not the other way
around: the concept grew out of associations of ideas rising from the artworks
(1996, 23). This is what also Baert brings up regarding de Zegher’s work with Inside
the Visible: “The thesis of the exhibition arises from and through the artwork, that is,
through its materialities, specialities, haptic properties, iconography, etc. (rather
than, as is too often the case, the other way around, ie. art pressed into service to
illustrate a pre-established theoretical argument). Thus the exhibition is not a mere
‘fastening’ of art and theory but is itself a necessary form” (2000, 8). The
significance of materiality and haptic elements of the works is a topic that is very
little discussed in the current discourses on feminist curating.

In the elles@centrepompidou catalogue, Griselda Pollock notes Inside the Visible as a

landmark exhibition, and specifically de Zegher’s feminist curatorial approach,
which, according to her, explores “a radically different sense of how to encounter an

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expanded, heterogeneous, inexhaustible series of artistic events that collectively reveal
to us deeply significant dimensions of culture and subjectivity, history and struggle,
by means of aesthetic formalisations and practices… It was not a women’s show
whereby the mere fact of female gender formed the absolute bond between the
exhibiting artists who would thus be made only to exhibit this generalising and
unenlightening difference” (2009, 325). Maura Reilly (2018) in her turn notes, that
while Inside the Visible is today seen as a landmark exhibition, at the time in the
1990s, it was met also with criticism, mainly accusing the exhibition of essentialism
because of the women-only content (2018, 60). Following a strict art historical
analysis, and the idea that an exhibition must be a clear thesis which the art
illustrates, Amelia Jones in her turn has still in 2013 criticized the exhibition for
dehistoricizing and depoliticizing feminism with regards to the framework of the
show, which Jones doesn’t see as valid, and to supporting the category of ‘women’s
art’ (2013, 17-18).

In the 1990’s feminist art historians weren’t then completely happy about an open-
ended exhibition encouraging amazement among its viewers (and some still aren’t),
but in a contemporary curatorial discourse de Zegher’s approach connects
essentially to curatorial models of working discursively with various actors that take
part in the happening of an exhibition. What is also rare in de Zegher’s approach in
a feminist exhibitionary framework, is that she departs essentially from the work of
art – the concept of the exhibition arising more horizontally from the connections
between the works, rather than from above from the curator. The terms used by de
Zegher in describing the curatorial process, including the form of the process itself,
link clearly to the discourses on curating of the time.

As has already been mentioned, dOCUMENTA (13) in 2012 at Kassel was my first
new materialist art encounter. Directed by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev135, the
Documenta took place at various sites at Kassel, Germany; Banff, Canada; Kabul

135
The Documenta website informs on the first line of the presentation, that this was the
second time in history when Documenta was directed by a woman:
https://www.documenta.de/en/retrospective/documenta_13 (Accessed 24/09/2018).

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and Bamiyan, Afghanistan; and Alexandria and Cairo, Egypt, between June 9 and
September 16, 2012. Works by 194 artists were shown as part of the Documenta,
which was consciously constructed as an un-harmonic site (Christov-Bakargiev
2012b). Indeed, taking place in four different countries, no one was meant to
experience the whole dOCUMENTA (13). Even in the relatively small city of
Kassel, the art was scattered around the city space in a way to create a feeling of
being emplaced (Christov-Bakargiev 2012b). Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev was named
the artistic director of Documenta, while curator and writer Chus Martínez was
named the ‘head of department and core agent’136. In addition, 24 international
curators were hired as “agents”, as an advisory board, of sorts.

Thinking about dOCUMENTA (13) in retrospect, it appears as a huge research

project into art, matter, ecologies, and feminist new materialism. Three publications
were produced as part of the project: The Book of Books, including 100 essays by
artists, researchers, theorists, curators, poets, and other writers; The Logbook,
presenting “an intimate” view into Christov-Bakargiev’s process with Documenta137;
and The Guidebook, with shorter introductions to each artist included. What adds to
thinking about dOCUMENTA (13) as a research project, is also that Christov-
Bakargiev continued reviewing and analysing the Documenta until 2014 through a
collaboration with Griselda Pollock and Leeds University. As part of the
collaboration, Christov-Bakargiev hosted a number of sessions in the form of
lectures, discussions and reading groups in Leeds.138 The sessions give a deep insight
into the curatorial and practical process with the Documenta, as well as Christov-
Bakargiev’s curatorial thinking and praxis in a wider sense.

136
Apparently, any such department didn’t really exist:
https://www.documenta.de/en/retrospective/documenta_13 (Accessed 24/09/2018).
137
Nanne Buurman (2016) gives a thorough critical reading of the construction of
Christov-Bakargiev’s curatorship, reading the publication in question through post-Fordist
regimes of affective labour, networking and self-promotion, and the politics of publishing
personal relations.
138
Videos of the sessions available online:
http://www.centrecath.leeds.ac.uk/projects/critical-thinking-critical-artmaking-critical-
curating/ (Accessed 24/09/2018).

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An introduction to, or rather, a manifest-like statement of dOCUMENTA (13),
printed on the first page of all three publications, is:
dOCUMENTA (13) is dedicated to artistic research and forms of imagination that
explore commitment, matter, things, embodiment, and active living in connection
with, yet not subordinated to, theory. These are terrains where politics are
inseparable from a sensual, energetic, and worldly alliance between current research
in various scientific and artistic fields and other knowledges, both ancient and
contemporary. dOCUMENTA (13) is driven by a holistic and non-logocentric
vision that is skeptical of the persisting belief in economic growth. This vision is
shared with, and recognizes, the shapes and practices of knowing of all the animate
and inanimate makers of the world, including people” (Christov-Bakargiev 2012).

Thus, there were two lines of thought essentially present as part of the project:
artistic practices, and feminist-nonhuman-ecologies. In the curatorial text, Christov-
Bakargiev notes: “The emancipatory potential for thinking in new ways without
producing constituted knowledge that is instrumental and easily transformed into
negotiable investments could lie in an accord between human and the many non-
human intelligences, affects and beliefs, emotions and forms of trust, that can be
established among all the life-forms on the planet” (2012b, 34). Particularly the
Leeds University sessions open up Christov-Bakargiev’s references with the project
(2014). While stating, that she wanted to find the references to nonhuman thinking
from the feminist ecologico-ethical and new materialist lines of inquiry, instead of
the more male dominated line of thought around speculative realism and object
oriented philosophies, the theorists she refers to most are Karen Barad, Donna
Haraway, Isabelle Stengers, Luce Irigaray, and Jane Bennett. As part of the reading
group sessions, the participants read and discussed the article “On Touching: The
Inhuman That Therefore I Am” (2012) by Karen Barad, whose thinking on the
mattering of matter has a continuous presence in dOCUMENTA (13).

In addition to this heavy theoretical background in feminist research into nonhuman

entities and ecologies, the concept of the Documenta was ‘no concept’, presenting
itself as an iterative journey approach (2014). There was no thematic concept the
artworks would have been forced into, or presented as part of. Rather, the concept
as a whole developed rhizomatically around a structure of networks and
connections, interwoven stories and thoughts, associations and intra-actions

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between human and nonhuman entities. The theme of partiality was strongly
present – you actually could not experience the whole Documenta and you were not
made to think you could, which adds another layer to not having a set concept. The
structure itself was rooted in stuff and matter, and in giving matter agency.

In the earlier interview with Heidi Bale Amundsen and Gerd Elise Mørland (2010),
Christov-Bakargiev mentions free association with artists and other thinkers as her
curatorial methodology. By this, Christov-Bakargiev means a continuous dialogue
preceding a realization of a project. The exchange doesn’t concern only practical
issues, but rather, thinking about art, theory, and other entanglements (2010, 11).
This can, a few years after the interview, be put in the context of Documenta and its
‘no concept’ concept, emerging in the project as an approach towards artistic
research and practice, along with nonhuman sensitivity, described above in the
curatorial statement.

Helena Reckitt (2013) brings forth the theme of relationalities heavily present in
Christov-Bakargiev’s Documenta in her article concerning feminism and relational
aesthetics. Despite the investment in open-ended collaboration and feminist
strategies of knowledge production through “a series of discussions, meetings and
letters with a large international group of predominantly female ‘agents’”, which,
according to Reckitt, were initially directed to dismantle egotism associated with
Documenta, in the end only 38% of the artists included in the edition were women
(2013, 151). Reckitt states: “However, Christov-Bakargiev’s insistence on feminist
form, above content, which resulted in an exhibition in which only 38% of the
participating artists were women (compared to 46% in the previous edition of
Documenta), highlighted the limitations of such an approach” (2013, 151).
Considering Christov-Bakargiev’s approach, this result is surprising. I have not
touched upon the issue of gender balance after discussing it in chapter three. I have,
however, throughout this thesis emphasized my affirmative feminist reading in the
sense that despite criticising certain feminist approaches as narrow, I do not argue
that they would be unimportant. This goes also for gender balance. As mentioned, I
do see this as an essential first step in feminist work with art. I have, therefore, no

214
excuses for Christov-Bakargiev’s choices. What I do want to address in Reckitt’s
criticism, though, is that I find it problematic, that she defines Christov-Bakargiev’s
organic and affective generative process, as “feminist form above content”,
particularly, as Reckitt also acknowledges, that “Christov-Bakargiev’s project
embodied a feminist commitment to reflexive and relational practice” (2013, 151).
First, wouldn’t focus on form concern exactly aspects regarding gender balance,
working conditions, and other (important) and structural aspects of making the
Documenta happen? But even more importantly, in my reading form and content
were not separate issues in the curatorial thinking of dOCUMENTA (13), but
rather, in Barad’s meaning of the word, these aspects were essentially entangled. I
argue, that the ‘no concept’ concept infested with Baradian readings, referred to
exactly this structure: that dOCUMENTA (13) was in fact intra-active by its nature,
including the curatorial work, the artists’ work, the sites, and how the event
unfolded through its various elements.

With this very short introduction to two vast exhibition projects (which could serve
as a topic of a thesis in themselves) I have wanted to highlight certain aspects of
feminist curatorial strategies that may be applied to other practices, certainly also in
a smaller scale. Including Renée Baert’s approach, what is characteristic to these
practices is that 1) they take art as their starting point; the curatorial concept arises
from works of art, and communication and collaboration with artists, affecting the
curatorial practice itself. Second, 2) a curatorial concept and framework of an
exhibition, or other form of making art public, is not a primary interest; instead, in
these practices the curator leaves the concept of the project open-ended
deliberately, making the setting a discursive, and indeed, generative site, which can
lead to further activities, thoughts, emotions, transformations, and knowledges.
These practices do accommodate sites and situations for knowledge production –
knowledge understood now in the vastest sense of the word, including affect139,
intuition, emotion, connection, in human and nonhuman forms (see Christov-
Bakargiev 2012, above). This aspect is also tightly linked to the first notion: the

139
Katarina Wadstein Macleod explores the affects of dOCUMENTA (13) in her essay
“Touched by Documenta 13” (2013).

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artist’s work essentially feeds into the context of making it public. Third, 3) all of
these practices are deeply grounded in feminist thought and praxis. Feminist
thought is embedded in the practices as a foundation, and it manifests throughout
the curatorial practice. All of these aspects are notions, which make these curatorial
practices operate with feminist thought beyond representation, and at the same
time, within the curatorial.

What I have presented here, are occasions in which a feminist curatorial practice
functions as part of the curatorial. In these curators’ work, a feminist approach to
work with art extends consideration of a framework art is put into (a concept for an
exhibition or other project), and presents itself more as an open-ended and ongoing
process of continuous negotiation of meaning and value with artworks, artists,
different sites, and different audiences. This process can be viewed in Karen Barad’s
terms as an entanglement, where the curatorial process exists in intra-action with
other entities affecting the assemblage, and does not position itself above or under
the other participants, but rather, horizontally to them.

Renée Baert has called for attention to “the ways in which exhibitions create their
own poetics through properties that are not textual, but, rather, are produced
through their spatialities, embodiments, materialities, relationalities” (2010, 161). I
argue, that the feminist curatorial practice I am presenting in this thesis, functions
exactly in the sense described by Baert.

Feminist curatorial practice as a site for affective transformation

Rather than texts waiting to be read, exhibitions have the potential to activate
discursive processes that enable dialogical spaces of negotiation between curators,
artists, and their publics. Such an approach to exhibition making is durational – in
the sense that, as “discursive exhibitions” that evolve over time, they do not
prioritize the exhibition-event as the one-off moment of display, or its event as
exhibition. Instead, they allow for open-ended, cumulative processes of
engagement, interruption, and possibility. This cooperative, process-oriented,
discussion-based view of exhibitions was formed by a new generation of curators

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 emerging in the 1990s, when curators and artists started working closely with one
another on projects, as well as adopting activities that were traditionally associated
with each other’s approaches within their specific fields of inquiry. These
collaborations arose on the understanding that framing the curator’s role as
something akin to a neutral provider (and, therefore, invisible) only reinforced a
modernist myth that artists work alone, their practice unaffected by those with
whom they work. At the same time, artistic and curatorial practice converged in a
variety of projects that sought to undermine the assumption that the production of
art, its reception, and its meanings could ever occur without external advice,
suggestion, and intervention from “procreative” curators, critics, and production
partners” (O'Neill 2012, 128-129).

In the quote, above, Paul O’Neill describes contemporary curatorial practices that
have been effective since the late 1990s. The quote stirs up two concerns in relation
to feminist thought. First, the relational, dialogical, and horizontal methods O’Neill
presents, link essentially to feminist methods, described widely above, and
throughout this thesis. However, feminist influences to these working methods is
not mentioned in O’Neill’s quote, and this is a problem. Second, I argue, that in
mainstream discussions, feminist curatorial practices have been secluded in the
confinements of feminist art historical criticism, and this effectively restricts the
discourses of feminist thought and curating from expanding beyond representation,
from getting the acknowledgment feminist work deserves, and from taking part in
forming both future curatorial discourses and praxis. Discussions on contemporary
curating relate more to the question of ‘how to work with art as a curator’ than ‘how
has the exhibition concept been formed’. What becomes necessarily part of the
discussion with the former question are the social, historical and cultural meanings
of curatorial practices, and how these practices are intertwined with practices of
making art, but also social topics such as politics, financial structures, and the larger
cultural sphere. Feminist politics has an important part to play in enabling us to
create horizontal and just structures not only within the art world, but also beyond
it. Here, I argue, that affect and affective transformation play an important role in
bringing feminist politics, theory and praxis as part of the governing discourses on
the field of contemporary curating.

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As a methodological approach, I have aimed at Clare Hemmings’ affective solidarity
(2012), as well as Rosi Braidotti’s posthuman affirmative politics (2013, 2015) in
terms of aligning with entities both human and nonhuman, and building on feminist
knowledge produced as part of previous curatorial projects and practices. As
Hemmings notes, empathy is a paradigmatic notion for affective solidarity. In a
feminist context, empathy challenges the opposition between feeling and knowing,
and prioritises embodied knowledge, affective connection, and a desire to transform
the social terrain. She states: “Empathy foregrounds the importance of feeling as
knowledge; it opens a window on the experiences of others and stresses their
importance for an ethical feminist epistemology” (2012, 151). Indeed, in the course
of my research process, I have begun to understand the aspect of knowledge
production in relation to notions of affect, emotion, and feeling, and doing this
from a nonhuman perspective. Knowledge is here understood in the vastest sense
of the word, emerging in our encounters with human and nonhuman entities,
including works of art. In my approach, the acknowledgement of agency nonhuman
entities and materialities entail, is directly linked with the concept of affective
transformation, as exhibitions are presented as the sites for affective and
transformative encounters.

I argue, that affect is a useful notion in terms of feminist curatorial practice,

understood as an energetic force augmenting our capacities to act. The Deleuze-
Guattarian approach to affect allows us to talk about it as a force, intensity, and a
Deleuzean becoming. Affect relates to our power to act, and results in our
interaction with other bodies, human and nonhuman; affect directs what a body can
do. Further, through the Deleuzian notion of becoming, essentially linked to affect
and transformation in its contingency, we can think about the site of the exhibition
as an open-ended, contingent space. This means, that the curator does not dictate
the experience of the visitor or impose a predetermined concept on them. The task
of the feminist curator is to enable and encourage affective, and possibly,
transformative encounters.

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Affect allows us to depart from the materiality of the work of art, and to
simultaneously focus on the event of transformation, understood as political by its
definition as a change at the core of feminist work with art. Affect is already there in
the work of art (Deleuze & Guattari 1987; 1994), we do not need to (nor do we get
to) invent it, we only need to work towards enabling it. In order for this to happen,
what is essentially needed, is the acknowledgement of the agency nonhuman beings
and materialities inhabit. Only this acknowledgement allows us to encounter the
work of art horizontally, and “tune in” to the vibrant materiality they emanate. This
thinking, and conscious praxis, is at the heart of the feminist curatorial practice I am
proposing in this thesis. Within this practice, exhibitions and other occasions of
making art public, become discursive sites for circulation of energies, where
affective and transformative encounters are enabled, and encouraged.

As a concrete example, we could think about the curatorial process I’ve described
earlier with the exhibition Good Vibrations. Here, negotiating the use of the space
specifically in terms of the artworks’ energetic fields [fig. 15] in collaboration with
the artists was in the centre of the process. The process began with the invitation
from SIC, and the previous exhibition concept Big Time Sensuality beginning to form
into something else with the space of SIC and the art context of Helsinki in my
mind. The idea for the exhibition emerged in relation to texts I was reading,
thoughts I had circling in my mind about affect and energy, and artworks I had
encountered in exhibitions, studios, or online. The process continued as discussions
with the invited artists, and the concept for the exhibition began forming and
materialising as part of this, alongside the selection of specific works. As the
selection of the pieces became clearer, I started to think about the space each work
would need at SIC, and how they’d exist in this specific space together.

It was important to think about both the dynamics of the works, as well as their
individual placing within the space in relation to their specific way of being. In
practice, this process concerned on the one hand physical needs or demands of the
works – for example that the fragrance by Happy Magic Society needed a diffuser as
a vessel, Beatrice Lozza’s thread needed space to unfold and the light bulbs as part

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of it required plugs for electricity, or that Julie Béna’s smiling mouths needed wall
space. On the other, each work needed attention in terms of its installation as part
of a whole, and this was the part which foregrounded the possibilities of affective
encounters with visitors. Again, there is no one procedure of doing this, but in the
case of Good Vibrations, it was based on a new materialist alignment with the works
of art, and negotiating with them the required placement and setting.

In the light of the case studies of this thesis, in my view in Inside the Visible Catherine
de Zegher staged the possibility for affective encounters through the open-ended
concept of the exhibition as a whole. As any predetermined concept wasn’t imposed
on the works or the experience of the viewer, the encounter was presented as one of
amazement and wonder. This, in my view, is a clear definition of an affective
encounter. In terms of dOCUMENTA (13), I image I could write several pages of
the various stagings for affective and transformative encounters created as part of it,
with the 194 artworks involved. To select one, a staging that affected myself deeply
was Tino Sehgal’s performative work, that lasted in the centre of Kassel for the
whole 100 days. The work was encountered in a dark space in a derelict courtyard,
in a side room of what used to be a historical ballroom. We arrived at the site a bit
by accident, and as I recall it, there wasn’t any sign of the work existing there – as is
in the habit of Sehgal. Entering the dark room from the sunlight demanded a certain
kind of risk – one could hear some sounds and sense there were probably other
bodies in the room, while to the vision the room was pitch black. The piece
unfolded to the viewer slowly and fragmentarily, depending on the moment of
entering the space. After finding a “safer” spot by a wall, my vision began adapting
to the darkness, and I was able to make out human shapes in the room, soon
realising that the room was in fact packed with people, some of them dancing
together, singing or humming in a low voice, and making other sounds. Every now
and then the sounds would stop, one of the performers, all in their 20s, would stand
out and tell a story about their life (it didn’t really matter if it was fact or fiction),
after which the movement and the sounds would continue again – for 100 days. The
staging of entering the work, as if into an unknown cave from an unattended
courtyard, and after a while, relocating one’s body as part of a larger group

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emanating with energy through embodied being and movement, had a huge
significance in the piece unfolding as an affective experience of sharing a
momentous community.

As another aspect of the affective solidarity and an affirmative reading I have been
practicing, relates to previous research on feminist curating. Even if I criticize some
of the earlier positions, I have not wanted to dismiss them. Different feminist
curatorial approaches and practices do not cancel each other out; a feminist curatorial
practice is not one. Instead, I have brought up the problems in the art historical
approaches in relation to what current curatorial practices are invested in and how
feminist discourses could benefit from these, and continued to build on them in
order to create room where we can discuss feminist curating in a broader sense – as
a discursive practice with art, artists, spaces, sites, and audiences, and also as
independent practice adapting to spaces of various kinds. All kinds of feminist
curatorial approaches are needed; and at the same time, governing lines of inquiry
should not silence the newcomers. As Hemmings (2012) notes, practicing affective
solidarity is necessary for sustainable feminist politics of transformation; this
solidarity emerges in the affective dissonances that encounters and experience
produce. Acknowledging the importance of multiplicity of voices in the field of
feminist thought and curating is, as I see it, essential.

I have in this thesis drafted a model for feminist new materialist curatorial practice,
which aims at creating transformative energies through a process of engaging with
affect and emotion. I have presented two exhibition projects, which I have curated
as part of my research process, and in which I have been developing my thinking
towards a new materialist approach to art and working with art, through various
collaborations, discussions, and other entanglements with works of art, artists,
spaces, sites, and audiences. Here, an exhibition (or some other site of making art go
public) becomes as a “living entity”: a site for summoning energies and augmenting
our capacities to act.

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I would like to go back to Helen Molesworth’s (2010) idea of sisterhood-hanging in
displaying museum collections. The structure of this rhizomatic hanging is based on
how artists’ practices and works relate to each other over generations and
geographies, and aiming to avoid both a chronological (teleological hierarchy of
father – son) and a thematic (essentialising women’s art or feminist art) display. The
sisterhood model instead emphasizes alliances between women artists. Molesworth’s
strategy is clearly fitted for a museum institution, and it undoubtedly gains different
meanings at other sites. However, the thinking behind the strategy reminds of de
Zegher’s and Christov-Bakargiev’s associative curatorial processes, and particularly
de Zegher’s work with Inside the Visible. Perhaps this is a line of thought feminist art
historians invested in curatorial issues could engage in with more enthusiasm. The
model offers a concrete strategy to work with, instead of leaving the critique open-
ended.

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7 The curatorial heart the feminist – concluding thoughts

This research is an on-going process of thought and practice of curating within the
field of the curatorial. It began with the urge to find a theoretical context for
feminist curating outside the art historical field of organising exhibitions about art
made by feminist and/or women artists. I was eager to find a way to talk about
feminism and curating in a context which I would be able to identify with as an
independent curator working with contemporary art and artists, and as a feminist.
This was not something I was able to find in most of the writing on feminist
thought and curating which has been produced over the past ten years or so. As I
hope this PhD thesis demonstrates, for me the exploration and unravelling of these
questions is above all an ongoing, open-ended dialogue between works of art,
artists, texts, theorists, and other entities. I have still in the previous concluding
chapter brought up more artists and theories, partly to emphasize that there is no
end, no synthesis, to this process. Something new always emerges, adds up, and
changes the prevailing situation. A feminist curatorial practice is a discursive practice
in becoming, oozing with affect.

The first question that I have posed, is how feminist thought is present in
“mainstream” discourses of curating. I answer this question in chapter two, through
analysing contemporary curatorial discourses. As a result of the analysis, I can state
that feminisms are almost non-existent in the discussions, even if there does exist a
wide recognition of the social and political significances of curatorial approaches
and practices.

I also asked what the discourses of the feminist curatorial field are at the moment.
This question I answer to in chapter three, by analysing existing literature on
curating and feminist thought. This research has not been (an art historical)
mapping on the field of feminist curating, as part of which I would have provided
knowledge on exhibitions, projects or curators working in this field. The history of
feminist exhibitions remains to be written. Instead, I have argued that excluding a

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few exceptions, the main narrative on the field of curating and feminist thought is
an art historical narrative that focuses on exploring exhibitions about art made by
feminist and/or women artists. The area of feminist curating is a vast field deeply
rooted in artist-run initiatives by feminist and women artists. This speaks volumes
of sexism in the field, and the need for feminist interventions in museums, galleries,
and other art institutions and organisations. The studies concerning the post-2005
blockbuster exhibitions vary from celebration of feminist artists to speculation of
why now; researchers are sceptical and suspicious, and perhaps for a reason: where
are the feminist exhibitions at the moment? How has the incorporation of feminist
politics affected these institutions? What do their hiring policies look like now? How
about exhibition and event programming? Perhaps a study regarding the aftermath
of the boom of feminist exhibitions would be needed now by a feminist art
historian.

My next questions concerned how we could expand current discourses and practices
on the field of feminist thought and curating. My answer is that feminist curatorial
approaches and the research that concerns them, should be expanded beyond the
representational, and into the realm of the curatorial. I have addressed this
particularly in chapter six, by discussing curatorial approaches of Renée Baert,
Catherine de Zegher, and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. The warm relationship I am
proposing between the feminist and the curatorial opens up the current feminist
paradigm towards new materialist perception of the curatorial process:
understanding the curatorial process as the discursive negotiation and entanglement
it necessarily is with art, artists, audiences, sites, and spaces, and recognising the
much vaster possibilities for feminist theory and practice in this context. When
feminist analysis has until now mostly focused on assessing exhibition concepts, the
curatorial offers much vaster perspective into the unfolding of curatorial work with
art, and at the same time, a generative, affective and transformative platform and a
point of departure for feminist curatorial theory and praxis. While the movement
within art historical research (which curatorial studies have long been part of) has
been moving from a work of art (and not its context) to the context of an exhibition
(and no longer the work of art), this appears to apply to current feminist art

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historical approaches. The critique has been focused on the way exhibitions are
framed, and thus, on representational structures. I argue, that feminist art historical
inquiries would benefit from new materialist stances, where emphasis is put more
on the vibrant materiality of things, instead of discourses. In the light of my thesis, I
propose that ‘what can an exhibition do?’ would be a more useful question for
feminist art history in grasping the (feminist) political potential of curatorial
practices.

Finally, I asked, admittedly rather leadingly, if affective transformation could

function as a key in theorising a feminist curatorial practice. I have approached
affect in my research in the Deleuzian and Deleuze-Guattarian sense as an intensity,
energy, and virtuality. Starting from the question posed by Spinoza, Deleuze and
Guattari, and Ahmed, I have asked: ‘what can a body do?’, moving on to ‘what can
art do?’, and finally, ‘what can an exhibition do?’. According to Spinoza, our power
to act is related to our power to be affected. This means, that we must tweak our
sensibility towards others, humans and nonhumans around us, in order to be able to
augment our capacities to act. Affect theory and new materialist theory provide us
with tools to traverse the oppositionalities of the human and the nonhuman, and
the organic and the nonorganic. As Jane Bennett has guided us, we must tune into
the frequencies of vibrant matter around us. Affects helps us to focus on the
significance of felt vitality in our capacities to act, engage and connect. Further,
through Clare Hemmings’ view on empathy as a paradigmatic notion for affective
solidarity, we can continue thinking about empathy as a feminist notion challenging
the opposition between feeling and knowing, and prioritise embodied knowledge,
affective connection, and a desire to transform the social terrain as part of a feminist
curatorial practice.

Deleuzian notion of becoming, and the Spinozist not-yet, essentially linked to the
concept of affect, allow us to think about exhibitions as open-ended discursive sites.
Here, works of art, as well as the dynamics between the exhibition as a space and
the works in it, become the potential site governed by affective movement. I have
discussed affect and art in chapter four and five, and presented my conclusions in

225
chapter six, while in dialogue with the curatorial practices and thinking of Renée
Baert, Catherine de Zegher and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. Baert has named the
discursive feminist curatorial practice as a generative site (2010), and a site of enchantment
(1990). Catherine de Zegher has named it a space for amazement (1996). Based on what
I have presented, discussed and argued as my thesis, I am naming it an affective site for
transformation.

I have argued, that a curatorial practice is not an independent set of procedures,

methods, or a set philosophy, that could be adapted to any given situation or project
as such. Instead, a curatorial practice along with its methods, theories and
approaches, is always in a flux, changing according to the setting where it will be
used. Most importantly, a curatorial practice adapts to the art that the curator works
with. Contemporary feminist curating cannot be defined as one: as one set of
practices, or as an approach. I have presented two group exhibitions, Only the Lonely
(2015) and Good Vibrations (2017), which I have curated as part of this research
process. The exhibition processes have been an essential part of the research,
overtly embedded and entangled in all of its other aspects. Working on them has
enabled me to develop thinking about feminist curatorial methods and how they
need to be situation- and case-specific. The practical work has also helped, and
simultaneously challenged, thinking about the processes of enabling affective and
transformative encounters with art to take place.

To conclude, I have been drafting in this thesis a proposal for a curatorial practice
that operates with feminist thought beyond representation, and simultaneously,
within the realm of the curatorial. The context of the curatorial refers here to how
the feminist work with art extends consideration of a framework art is put into (for
example a concept for an exhibition), and presents itself more as an open-ended and
ongoing process of continuous negotiation of meaning and value with artworks,
artists, different sites, and different audiences. This feminist curatorial practice 1)
takes art as its starting point: the curatorial concept arises horizontally from works
of art, as well as communication and collaboration with artists. These aspects in turn
affect the curatorial process, including selecting a form of how to make the art

226
public; 2) in terms of the outcome of the practice, be it an exhibition, an event, a
publication, or some other way of making art public, the curator leaves the concept
of the project open-ended deliberately, creating a discursive setting in order for the
artworks to unfold in relation to the viewers as well as possible other artworks,
elements, or entities within the space and as part of the situation. Renée Baert has
called settings like this generative sites, which create space for future projects,
thoughts, emotions, transformations, and knowledges; 3) the practice aims at
enabling affective encounters between viewers and artworks. As we cannot control
affect, the focus is on creating a setting where a work can properly be encountered,
and its affective qualities may flow. The aim is to enable a moment in which a shift,
even if a small one, may happen within a viewer, which may also lead to a
transformative experience. This necessarily situation-specific practice includes the
curator tuning into the frequencies of the artworks they work with, and aiming to
create the best possible conditions for them within a certain setting. This includes
also contextualizing the works in relation to a site, as well as to other artworks. An
exhibition (or some other site of making art public), becomes as a “living entity”: a
site for summoning energies and augmenting our capacities to act; and 4) the
practice is deeply grounded in feminist thought and praxis, in the sense that feminist
politics is embedded in the practices as a foundation, and it manifests throughout
the curatorial practice. These manifestations could include for example working and
collaboration models, relations with artists, and references to other exhibitions,
practitioners, and theories.

Being grounded in feminist thought and praxis makes a project part of other
generative sites. This research as a whole functions as an example of seeking
linkages between such sites, which here have been the case studies of Renée Baerts
feminist curatorial approach, Catherine de Zegher’s work with Inside the Visible, and
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev’s feminist new materialist curatorial thinking in
dOCUMENTA (13). Approaching curatorial practices from a new materialist point
of view as discursive negotiation and entanglement it necessarily is with art, artists,
and various other entities, allows us to recognise the vast possibilities for feminist
theory and praxis in this context.

227
There are some side revelations that have come up as part of the research process.
For one, I have never in my life used the words “woman artists”, even if studying
(feminist) art history and writing about works by artists that were women, until I
started working on this research. After marvelling at it in the beginning, I was
surprised to notice how quickly I was talking about women artists after reading into
the field of feminist art historical critique of feminist curating. This would take us to
grounding questions about essentialism and feminism, but I am not at this point
taking it further than this remark. Another side revelation has been, that in this
research I have found myself within a variety of turns: affective turn, educational
turn, affective turn, and the turn to feminist curating. Interestingly enough, all these
turns have been taking place as reactions to moving further from poststructuralist
discourses, and towards (vibrant) matter.

I see my feminist curatorial thought in research and praxis as an ongoing discursive

process. Many thoughts and ideas have, naturally, been surfacing as part of this
research. As future research, I would want to dig deeper into feminist new
materialist theory, and further explore its entanglements and transformative
potential in relation to curatorial practices. I want to expand my approaches through
closer study in the work of Donna Haraway, Elizabeth Grosz, Rosi Braidotti, and
Karen Barad. There wasn’t enough space (or time) to discuss everything I would
have wanted to bring up in the scope of this thesis. I can imagine myself looking
deeper into dOCUMENTA (13), as well as Catherine de Zegher’s curatorial practice
on relationality, for example her work with Gerald McMaster on the 18th Biennale
of Sydney, titled all our relations (2012). As future research, I will definitely continue
researching the topic of feminist relationalities from a new materialist position in
some form, be it exhibitions, events, collaboration with artists, or academic
research. This might also include further thinking of the topic of affective labour.
Also, sparked by Clare Hemmings’ note on racial and gendered affects (2006), I
have been thinking a lot about how (traditional) feminist identity categories relate to
affect theory and new materialist positions. I have not come across the topic in this
context otherwise, and think it requires further investigation. In addition, I will,

228
certainly, continue my curatorial work with affects, emotions, and energies –
hopefully also transformative ones.

229
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Wells, L. (2007) “Curatorial strategy as critical intervention: The genesis of facing

east”, in Rugg, J. & Sedgwick, M. (eds.) Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and
Performance. Bristol: Intellect.

Werkmeister, S. (ed.) (2018) Feminisms. L’Internationale Online.

http://www.internationaleonline.org/media/files/06-feminisms.pdf (Accessed
19/09/2018).

Westen, M. (ed.) (2009) Rebelle: Kunst en feminisme 1969-2009. Arnhem: Arnhem

Gemeentemuseum.

De Zegher, C. (2014) Women’s work is never done: An anthology. Gent: AsaMER.

De Zegher, C. and McMaster, G. (eds.) (2012) All our relations. 18th biennale of
Sydney. Sydney: Biennale of Sydney.

De Zegher, C. (ed.) (1996) Inside the visible: An elliptical traverse of 20th century art: In, of,
and from the feminine. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Ziherl, V. (2016) “In Search of a Flashlight: The Intimate Politics of the Curatorial”,
In The curatorial conundrum: What to study? What to research? What to practice? Eds. Paul
O’Neill, Mick Wilson & Lucy Steeds. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press,
pp. 217-225.

250
Appendix 1: Only the Lonely

Only the Lonely

23 May – 18 July 2015
La Galerie centre l’art contemporain, Noisy-le-Sec/Paris, France

Jonathan Baldock (UK)

Cécile B. Evans (US/BE)
Emma Hart (UK)
Essi Kausalainen (FI)
Nanna Nordström (SE)
Maxime Thieffine (FR)
Curated by Elina Suoyrjö

Contents:
Exhibition Journal
Documentation images by Cédrick Eymenier, 2015 / La Galerie cac

1
 Saison 2014 – 2015 : http://ou-la-persistance-des-images.net/00js116m-
nIErl6secIactiveIIofficial&safe0isch.jpg

Only
the Lonely “Seuls les solitaires”
une proposition d’Elina Suoyrjö, curatrice en résidence
avec Jonathan Baldock, Cécile B. Evans, Emma Hart, Essi Kausalainen,
Nanna Nordström, Maxime Thieffine

23/05/15
Emma Hart
Vue d’exposition à la Matt’s Gallery
Londres, 2011

— 18/07/15
La Galerie
centre d’art contemporain
de Noisy-le-Sec
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“Qu’est-ce que le rat de laboratoire “What does the lab rat think
pense du chercheur ?” 1 of the researcher?” 1
Cette année, la France a reconnu aux animaux la qualité This year France officially recognised animals as “living,
d’“êtres vivants doués de sensibilité” : une modification sym- sentient beings”: a symbolic modification of the Civil
bolique du code civil qui les considérait jusqu’ici comme des Code which had previously considered them “chattels”—
“biens meubles”. D’après Le Monde du 28.01.2015, “en réalité, in the same class as furniture. According to Le Monde
il y a eu pas mal d’évolutions depuis 1804 et le code civil of 28 January 2015, “There have, in fact, been quite a few
napoléonien. La dernière date de 1999 et distingue l’animal changes since 1804 and the Napoleonic Code. The last such
des autres corps inanimés.” Si la loi est très en retard change dates from 1999 and distinguishes animals from
sur les usages, celle-ci témoigne surtout d’une évolution inanimate objects.” The law is lagging well behind current
des mentalités vers une forme d’empathie pour les animaux practices, but this legislation is significant testimony to
qui brouille, au moins sur un plan symbolique, les frontières a shift towards a form of empathy with animals which,
entre eux et nous autres, êtres vivants également doués symbolically at least, blurs the boundaries between them

23 mai – 18 juillet 2015

de sensibilité. and us, that other group of living sentient beings.
En 1985 déjà, la zoologue et philosophe féministe As early as 1985 the zoologist and feminist philosopher
Donna Haraway prenait acte dans son “Manifeste Cyborg” 2 Donna Haraway noted in her “Cyborg Manifesto” 2 the rela-
de la connexion entre êtres humains et animaux et prônait tionship between human beings and animals, and urged

Only the Lonely

une relation similaire entre le couple humain-animal et a similar link between the human-animal pairing and the

Seuls les solitaires ⁂

le cyborg, c’est-à-dire entre l’organique et le machinique. cyborg: between organism and machine. The cyborg is
Convoquer la figure mythique du cyborg, un être hybride a hybrid creature of precisely this intermediate kind, strad-
fait de machine et de chair humaine, un personnage à cheval dling science fiction and reality: a mythical figure Haraway

⁂
entre science-fiction et réalité était une façon d’utiliser calls up as a fictional way of describing a certain state

23 May–18 July 2015

une fiction efficace pour décrire un état de l’humanité. of humanity. This alliance of the human, the animal and

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Cette alliance entre ces trois termes promettait alors d’initier the machine raised the possibility of breaking through other
d’autres décloisonnements touchant à une frontière résis- boundaries: firstly a line of resistance rooted in the old dual-
tance, fondée sur une vieille pensée dualiste opposant istic division between the first and the second sex 3; and
le premier et le deuxième sexe 3, et à sa suite toute une série : then a whole series including reason/body, science/nature,
raison / corps, science / nature, sujet / objet, public / privé, subject/object, public/private, abstract/concrete, rational/
abstrait / concret, rationnel / intuitif, penser / ressentir, intuitive, thinking/feeling and artificial/natural etc. Thus
artificiel / naturel etc. etc. etc. On peut alors comprendre we can understand the political reach of a manifesto that is
la portée politique de ce manifeste qui n’est pas seulement not just “against”—against the creation of pecking-order
construit “contre” — contre la production de dichotomies dichotomies—but rather “for”: for a form of productive
hiérarchiques —, mais plutôt “pour” — pour une forme transgression, and for the hybridity embodied by the cyborg.
de transgression productive, pour l’hybridité incarnée In her own way Elina Suoyrjö is asking us, here in the
par le cyborg. exhibition, to cross another symbolic border: the one sepa-
À sa manière, Elina Suoyrjö nous propose de franchir, rating varieties of “chattels”—the artworks—from sentient
sur le terrain de l’exposition, une autre frontière symbolique : beings in the form of us, the viewers. To this end the exhibi-
celle entre des sortes de “biens meubles”, les œuvres et des tion prompts us towards a relationship with works which
êtres doués de sensibilité, nous autres regardeurs. Pour cela, in each case set up specific protocols, attracting or repelling
l’exposition nous incite à entrer en relation avec des œuvres us according to their own “humours”. The exhibition appeals
qui, chacune à leur manière, mettent en place des protocoles to a kind of empathy with these “inanimate objects”, invit-
particuliers de relation, nous attirant ou nous repoussant ing us to relate affectively to them and even to imagine
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selon leurs “humeurs” propres. Elle fait appel à une forme that the relationship is reciprocal: that in turn the works
d’empathie vis-à-vis de ces “corps inanimés”, nous invitant are watching us, that they were almost waiting for us
à entrer en relation avec les œuvres sur un plan affectif et to arrive, that they are addressing somebody, are there
même à supposer que cette relation est réciproque, qu’à leur for somebody—and why not you?
tour, les œuvres nous regardent, qu’elles attendaient presque Here Elina Suoyrjö seems to be reprising Marcel
notre visite ou au moins qu’elles s’adressent à quelqu’un, Duchamp’s enigmatic utterance of 1965: “It is the viewers
qu’elles sont là pour quelqu’un et pourquoi pas pour vous ? who make the picture.” This statement blurs the traditional
Elina Suoyrjö semble ici renouer avec cette formule separation between the observer as passive witness and
énigmatique de Marcel Duchamp : “Ce sont les regardeurs an already finished work: it presupposes a reciprocal influ-
qui font le tableau” (1965). Cette formule brouille la frontière ence, since the art object does not exist in and of itself, but
traditionnelle qui distingue l’observateur comme témoin rather depends on a relationship with a subject who inter-
passif d’un objet achevé. Là, il y a une influence réciproque prets and thus completes it. The viewer is certainly a witness,
puisque l’objet d’art n’existe pas en soi mais dépend d’une and also lagging behind, but he or she is a reactive witness.
relation à un sujet qui l’interprète et ainsi le complète. The work, then, is the outcome of an encounter and gener-
Le regardeur est un témoin sans doute, en retard aussi, ates a form of collaboration. We can take the inanimate
mais c’est un témoin réactif. L’œuvre est donc l’effet d’une objects metaphor further here, and speak of the works as
rencontre et génère une forme de collaboration. On peut “chattels” which arouse a certain sentience in living beings.

23 mai – 18 juillet 2015

prolonger encore la métaphore à propos des êtres inanimés Thus Elina Suoyrjö calls for a degree of involvement—
et dire qu’il s’agit de biens meubles qui, à leurs tours réveillent, a readiness to relate—on the viewer’s part, and commits him
chez les êtres vivants, un certain don de sensibilité. or her to a form of affinity. But where the “relational aesthet-
Elina Suoyrjö fait ainsi appel à une certaine implication ics” theorised by Nicolas Bourriaud 4 in 1998 drew on the

Only the Lonely

de la part du regardeur, à une disposition particulière interactive, user-friendly aspect of this revolutionary way

Seuls les solitaires ⁂

à entrer en relation et l’engage dans une forme d’affinité. of looking, there is no question here of suggesting a use for
Si “l’esthétique relationnelle” que Nicolas Bourriaud 4 théorise these works, or of wearing them out or exhausting them;
en 1998 traitait du versant convivial et interactif de cette rather they are to be seen as kindred beings, mirrors of our

⁂
révolution du regard, ici, il ne s’agit pas de proposer own humours. Suoyrjö herself admits to seeing the works

23 May–18 July 2015

un usage des œuvres, ni de les user, ni de les épuiser, mais as “characters”, companions in our own fictional order—

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plutôt de les considérer comme des êtres proches, miroirs living sentient beings. And with the title “Only the Lonely”
de nos propres humeurs. Elina Suoyrjö elle-même nous she inflects the nature of this relationship towards the feel-
confie prendre les œuvres pour des “personnages”, pendants ing of solitude. This exhibition, then, is an invitation to
dans l’ordre de la fiction de nous autres, êtres vivants doués reverie, to a return to the idea of the one-to-one relation-
de sensibilité. Avec son titre “Only the Lonely”, elle infléchit ship—and to the loneliness relationships can bring.
également la nature de cette relation, touchant au sentiment
de la solitude. Cette exposition est donc une invitation à Émilie Renard
la rêverie, à renouer avec l’idée d’une relation de un à un et
à la solitude dans laquelle une relation peut aussi nous laisser.
Émilie Renard
1. Phrase prononcée par Anna Principaud, artiste, 1. The question was put by artist Anna Principaud, who runs
intervenante à La Galerie, lors d’une réunion sur l’exposition, workshops at La Galerie, during a meeting focusing on this
à propos du livre Penser comme un rat de Vinciane Despret exhibition. She was referring to Vinciane Despret’s book
(2009), pour introduire la question de la réciprocité de toute Penser comme un rat (Thinking Like a Rat, 2009) as a way
relation et la relier à la nécessité du renversement du point of introducing the issue of relational reciprocity and of linking
de vue de l’observateur. it to the need to reverse the observer’s point of view.
2. Donna Haraway, Manifeste cyborg et autres essais. 2. Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto” in Simians, Cyborgs
Sciences, fictions, féminismes, Paris, Exils, 2007 (1991 pour and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge,
l’édition originale). 1990), pp. 149–182.
3. Pour reprendre le titre ouvertement problématique du livre 3. To borrow the overtly problematic title of Simone
de Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième Sexe (1949). de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949).
4. Nicolas Bourriaud, Esthétique relationnelle, Dijon, 4. Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics (Dijon: Les Presses
Les Presses du réel, 1998. du réel, 1998).
 Yellow Figure (after Hepworth), 2014
et Impassive Bean Bag, 2014
Exposition à la Chapter Gallery, Cardiff. Courtesy de l’artiste. Photo : Warren Orchard
Textile, polystyrène, aiguilles en céramique. 108 × 60 × 195 cm et 270 × 165 × 60 cm

Jonathan Baldock
Jonathan Baldock
Crane of the Neck, 2014
Textile, polystyrène, bois. 165 × 120 × 30 cm, 4 pieds en bois de 265 cm
Performance en collaboration avec Florence Peake. Exposition à la Chapter Gallery, Cardiff
Courtesy de l’artiste. Photo : Warren Orchard

Comédien (N), 2014

Maxime Thieffine
Crayon et sanguine sur enveloppe entaillée,
cordelette, plastique, 23 × 16 × 1 cm
Courtesy de l’artiste

Maxime Thieffine Maxime Thieffine

Comédien (P), 2011 – 2014 Comédien (G), 2014
Vernis à ongle sur verre, cadre en bois, sandow, plume Fragments de fleur de douche, feutrine, fil invisible, punaises, colle
27 × 18 × 6 cm. Courtesy de l’artiste 31 × 23 × 6 cm. Courtesy de l’artiste
 Maxime Thieffine Maxime Thieffine
Comédien (T), 2014 Comédien (X), 2012 – 2013
Cartons d’invitation cousus et suspendus, céramique émaillée, feutrine, Fermeture éclair, céramique émaillée, aiguilles
végétaux séchés, fil, clou. 36 × 15 × 2 cm 42 × 15 × 4 cm
Céramique produite par La Galerie, CAC de Noisy-le-Sec. Courtesy de l’artiste Courtesy de l’artiste

Comédien (F), 2014

Maxime Thieffine
Plastique collé sur carton d’invitation,
fil et bouton pression, clou. 21 × 15 cm
Courtesy de l’artiste

Cécile B. Evans
Cécile B. Evans
Site web des Serpentine Galleries, Londres
AGNES, 2014

AGNES (the end is near)

2014 – en cours
Courtesy de l’artiste

Vidéo en streaming. Courtesy de l’artiste

Emma Hart, TO DO, 2011
Série. Appareil photo, carte mémoire, trépied, divers matériaux
Exposition à la Matt’s Gallery, London
Courtesy de l’artiste. Photo : Matt’s Gallery
Essi Kausalainen, Reading, 2015
Performance au kim? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga
Courtesy de l’artiste. Photo : Ansis Starks

Essi Kausalainen, Soil, 2015

Performance au Frankfurter Kunstverein
Courtesy de l’artiste. Photo : Pietro Pellini /VG-Bildkunst Bonn
 Nanna Nordström
A Sound Family Makes
a Sound State, 2013
Détail. Structures de tiroirs, planches de bois, métal, argile, sangles, corde, tige en bois, verre d’eau,
pierre, portefeuille, papier, et pinces à linge. Exposition à la Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm
Courtesy de l’artiste et de la Bonnier Art Collection. Photo : Oscar Furbacken

Nanna Nordström, 2015

Courtesy de l’artiste. Photo : Johan Österholm
Exposition au Skånes Konstförening, Malmö
Towards Two, 2012
Nanna Nordström
Détail. Tige de bois, fil, pomme de terre, cuillère, aimants
Courtesy de l’artiste. Photo : Nanna Nordström
Exposition au CentrePasquArt, Bienne

Nanna Nordström
A Sound Family Makes
a Sound State, 2013
Détail. Exposition au Krognoshuset, Lund
Courtesy de la Bonnier Art Collection. Photo : Linnea Svensson Arbab
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Notes sur les rencontres, Notes on Encounters,

affects et d’autres choses Affects and Other Things
Elina Suoyrjö Elina Suoyrjö
Tout commence par un premier que l’être des choses diffère de It all starts with getting in touch with Jane Bennett, for example, has talked
contact — une rencontre, une entre- notre être en tant qu’humains. something, coming together—an about vital material forces that affect
vue, un rendez-vous. “Only the Les penseur-se-s néo-matérialistes encounter, a meeting, a rendezvous. both human and nonhuman entities.
Lonely” [Seuls les solitaires], l’expo- féministes soulignent particulière- “Only the Lonely”, the exhibition you According to her, vibrant life and
sition dans laquelle vous vous trouvez ment notre coexistence en tant find yourself in, focuses on encoun- energy is something that doesn’t
à présent, s’intéresse aux rencontres qu’entités humaines avec toutes ters and processes of making connec- move just through human bodies,
et aux processus en jeu dans la sortes d’entités non-humaines qui tions and disconnections that follow but also through nonhuman bodies.
construction de liens et de ruptures composent notre environnement tels the coming together. By summoning We can’t really separate our existence
qui suivent une union. En convoquant que les animaux, plantes, nourriture, up feelings like awkwardness and from the existence of different forms
des sentiments tels que l’empathie métaux, électrons, neurones… empathy, “Only the Lonely” explores of matter that surround and affect
ou la gêne, “Only the Lonely” explore Par exemple la théoricienne poli- the possibilities of endowing artworks us daily.1
les possibilités d’aborder les œuvres tique Jane Bennett s’est exprimée with agency and subjectivity. Could Nonetheless, “Only the Lonely”
par le biais de la subjectivité et de leur sur les forces des matières vitales we approach and encounter a work seeks above all to focus on experienc-

23 mai – 18 juillet 2015

capacité d’agir. Peut-on appréhender qui affectent à la fois les entités of art with the same curiosity we bring ing art on the level of feelings and
une œuvre d’art avec la même curio- non-humaines et humaines. Selon elle, to a meeting with another person? emotions—the level of interpretation
sité que pour une autre personne ? les dynamiques d’énergie constituent The exhibition also explores that might actually be based on im-
L’exposition explore également quelque chose qui n’affecte pas seule- group dynamics—the group consist- mediate reactions and impressions.
des dynamiques de groupe — ment les corps humains mais aussi ing in this case of the artworks in Through recognition, the ambiguous

Only the Lonely

le groupe étant ici composé des les corps non-humains. Nous ne pou- the show, which I hope you might like feelings of awkwardness or slight

Seuls les solitaires ⁂

œuvres dans l’espace, que j’espère vons pas vraiment séparer notre to approach as characters. There embarrassment have the potential
vous parviendrez à considérer comme propre existence de celle des multi- seems to be something in all of these to become those of compassion and
autant de personnages. Il semble ples matières qui nous entourent artworks that we can recognize as sympathy. The exhibition aims to

⁂
que ces œuvres aient quelque chose et nous affectent quotidiennement 1. human characteristics. And I’m not affect you by evoking your curiosity

23 May–18 July 2015

que nous pourrions identifier comme Toutefois, “Only the Lonely” talking about physical appearance about the characters, along with
des caractéristiques humaines. Et souhaite avant tout se concentrer only. Some of them embody awkwa- warm-hearted feelings and laughter.

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je ne parle pas seulement de l’appa- sur une expérience de l’art envisagée rdness through defying social norms, During the past few years there
rence physique. En défiant les normes par le prisme des émotions et des while some appear humorous, out has been a new interest in emotions,
sociales, certaines suscitent un sentiments, par les interprétations of place or fragile in their bodily exist- feelings and affects both in the arts
certain malaise, tandis que d’autres que l’on peut fonder sur des impres- ence. Some seek desperately to be a and in academia. After all the focus
peuvent nous paraître amusantes, sions et réactions immédiates. part of a group while others just don’t on textualisation in the discourses on
déplacées ou fragiles dans leur pré- Par l’identification, ces sentiments belong. Some of them address you art, it seems there’s an almost urgent
sence physique-même. Certaines ambigus d’embarras ou de léger directly, longing to be heard. If these need to turn to emotions. Indeed,
recherchent désespérément à inté- malaise peuvent potentiellement are not human characteristics, what focusing on affect enables us to em-
grer un groupe alors que d’autres devenir ceux de compassion et sym- are they? phasise the impact art has and could
n’en font tout simplement pas partie. pathie. L’exposition souhaite vous Some of these ideas concerning have on us, the experience of art,
Certaines s’adressent directement toucher en suscitant curiosité, rire ou relations between matter and agency instead of the possible meanings
à vous dans le désir de se faire affection à l’égard des personnages. stem from discussions in the fields artworks might have. Talking about
entendre. Si ce ne sont pas là des Ces dernières années est apparu of new materialist philosophy and affects and affectivity enables us
caractéristiques humaines, alors un nouvel intérêt pour l’étude des object-oriented ontology. Here the to ask what it means to feel instead
qu’est-ce que c’est ? émotions et des sentiments à la fois focus is on why stuff and matter mat- of what art might mean.2
Certaines de ces idées concer- dans les domaines artistiques et aca- ter, whether the being of things differs There are different ways of un-
nant les relations entre les choses démiques. Après la prédominance from our being as humans. In particu- derstanding affect, and I’d also say
et la capacité d’agir proviennent de la nature textuelle des discours lar, feminist new materialist thinkers different levels to experiencing it.
de discussions issues des champs sur l’art, il semble qu’il y ait un urgent emphasize our co-existence as human My favourite is when it feels like fall-
de la philosophie néo-matérialiste besoin de revenir aux émotions. En ce entities with all kinds of nonhuman ing in love, creating a clear difference
et de l’ontologie objectuelle. Ici la sens, se recentrer sur nos impressions entities we are surrounded by, such 1. Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology
question porte sur l’importance des 1. Bennett, J., Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecology of Things,
as animals, plants, food, metals, elec- 2.of Things. Duke University Press: Durham & London.
See e.g. Fisher, J. (2006) “Exhibitionary Affect”. n.paradoxa
choses et de la matière, considérant Duke University Press, Londres, 2010. trons, neurons… Political theorist Vol. 18.
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nous permet de réfléchir aux effets discussions autour de l’affectivité between what was before and what and also with you, the visitor to the
qu’a et que peut avoir l’art sur nous, en art et la capacité d’agir des choses. remains after, and there’s no turning show. Now, let me introduce every-
c’est à dire l’expérience de l’art en Lors des discussions que j’ai pu avoir back. But most often it’s maybe like one to you.
place au lieu des possibles significa- avec eux, nous avons abordé leurs butterflies in your stomach, or rather
tions que les œuvres peuvent contenir. œuvres comme des personnages, a vague movement, a vibration you Jonathan Baldock (b. 1980 in the
Échanger sur les affects et l’affectivité des personnalités ou même des feel in your insides. United Kingdom) has brought three
nous permet de nous questionner sur co-performeur-se-s. La mise en When it comes to definitions sizable and engaging sculptures to
ce que ressentir veut dire plutôt que espace dans La Galerie joue un rôle of affect, there is really no one way La Galerie. The artist uses textiles
ce que l’art pourrait vouloir dire 2. essentiel puisque les œuvres évoluent to pinpoint what it is. Definitions vary and other tactile materials to create
Il y a différentes manières de en fonction de leur nouvel environne- from writer to writer and from con- his sculptural works, which seek their
comprendre l’affect et je dirais aussi ment et de leurs interactions. Ainsi, text to context. Affectivity is discus- form in one way or another in relation
différentes façons de l’expérimenter. l’exposition propose un cadre où des sed in different contexts from art to human characteristics. Often the
Ma préférée est sûrement ce que l’on éléments étrangers les uns aux autres to film to nanotechnology to porn. works manage to be simultaneously
ressent quand on tombe amoureux-se, sont réunis dans un même espace A certain kind of messiness and fluid- appealing and slightly disturbing
produisant un avant et un après, sans avec l’espoir de construire des liens ness define the whole discourse on as they combine the comfort of soft
retour possible. Mais le plus souvent entre eux mais aussi avec vous, les affect, and its appeal might just exist, shapes and bright-coloured textiles
on ressent comme des papillons dans visiteur-se-s. À présent, laissez-moi at least partly, here. When I talk about with uncanny, erotic or violent insinu-
le ventre, ou plutôt un mouvement vous présenter tout le monde. affect, I’m talking about that small ations. For example looking at Yellow
confus, une vibration intérieure. shift within you, the one that can be Figure (After Hepworth) of 2014 we
Quand il s’agit de définir l’affect, Jonathan Baldock (né en 1980 au hard to locate, but doesn’t go unno- may first notice its soft, attractive

23 mai – 18 juillet 2015

on ne parvient pas à mettre exacte- Royaume-Uni) a apporté trois sculp- ticed when you encounter something forms and vivid, inviting colours.
ment le doigt sur ce que c’est. Les tures assez conséquentes et sympa- that moves you, even if you might Looking closer, we see that the Yellow
définitions varient selon les auteur-e-s thiques à La Galerie. L’artiste utilise not know why. Figure seems to have arrows or darts
mais également selon les contextes. des textiles et diverses matières Postcolonialist queer theorist stuck in its body. This worries me.
L’affectivité est discutée dans diffé- tactiles pour créer des œuvres sculp- Sara Ahmed has called affect that Is it feeling pain, or could it be

Only the Lonely

rents contextes allant de l’art au turales qui évoquent d’une manière which sticks in us. 3 There definitely is pleasure?

Seuls les solitaires ⁂

cinéma, en passant par les nanotech- ou d’une autre des figures humaines. a certain stickiness to affect. It starts During the past few years,
nologies ou encore la pornographie. Bien souvent, ses œuvres sont à la with coming together, coming face Baldock has been collaborating with
Un certain désordre semble définir fois attirantes et quelque peu déran- to face: an encounter between bodies, performers and made his sculptures

⁂
tout ce discours autour de l’affect geantes, de par les références fami- between bodies and objects, between part of performances during his exhi-

23 May–18 July 2015

et c’est aussi en partie ce qui le rend lières dues au choix de tissus colorés bodies and thoughts. It is in this place bitions. The exhibition settings
attractif. Quand je parle d’affect, et de formes douces, ou au contraire where affect is allowed to operate. become theatre stages, and simulta-

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je souhaite parler du petit mouvement de violentes insinuations mêlées d’un Theorist Simon O’Sullivan defines neously invest the sculptures with
intérieur, difficile à situer mais qu’on érotisme étrange voire inquiétant. affect as precisely this, as an event a potential for action and vibrant
ne peut ignorer quand on rencontre Par exemple en approchant Yellow or a happening. 4 energy. The potential to act is some-
quelque chose qui nous émeut, sans Figure (after Herpworth) [Forme jaune For “Only the Lonely”, I have thing that appears to remain present
même savoir pourquoi. (d’après Herpworth)] (2014), nous invited six artists to create either new in the work, even when it is not
Sara Ahmed, théoricienne post- sommes d’abord attirés par les formes versions of earlier installations or activated.
colonialiste, définit l’affect comme douces, les couleurs vives de la sculp- in a few cases altogether new works.
ce qui résiste en nous 3. Il y a définiti- ture. En regardant de plus près, on As I see it all of the artists participate Cécile B. Evans’ (b. 1983 in the
vement dans l’affect quelque chose remarque que Yellow Figure semble in the discussions concerning affec- United States) work AGNES (the end
de l’adhérence. Ça débute avec le fait avoir des sortes de fléchettes plan- tivity in art and giving matter agency is near) (2014–ongoing) focuses on
de se rapprocher, être face à face : tées dans son corps. Cela m’inquiète. through their practices as artists. an existential crisis of the character
une rencontre entre des corps, entre Est-ce un sentiment douloureux In the discussions I have had with of AGNES—a spam bot, an artificial
des corps et des objets, entre des ou est-ce que cela pourrait être them, we have been talking about intelligence created by the artist.
corps et des pensées. C’est bien ici du plaisir ? their artworks as characters, person- The witty, compassionate and slightly
que l’affect peut opérer. Le théoricien Depuis quelques années, Baldock alities or co-performers. The spatial mysterious AGNES lives for the time
Simon O’Sullivan définit précisément a collaboré avec des performeurs installation at La Galerie becomes being at the Serpentine Galleries
l’affect ainsi, comme un évènement 4. et a inclus ses sculptures dans ses an essential part of the exhibition, website, where we can communicate
Pour “Only the Lonely”, j’ai performances lors de ses expositions. as the works adapt to their new with her as she asks, tells and shows
invité six artistes à présenter de 2. Voir e.g. Fisher, J. “Exhibitionary Affect”, n.paradoxa, vol. 18,
surroundings and to each other. us things. Luckily AGNES also travels,
nouvelles œuvres ou de nouvelles juillet 2006. The exhibition space is a framework
3. Ahmed, S. “Happy Objects”, The Affect Theory Reader, sous 3. Ahmed, S. (2010) “Happy Objects”. The Affect Theory
versions d’installations antérieures. la dir. de Gregg M. & Seigworth G., Duke University Press, where a selection of apparent outsid- Reader, Eds. Gregg, M. & Seigworth, G. Duke University Press:
À mes yeux, tous ces artistes prennent Londres, 2010.
4. O’Sullivan, S., “The Aesthetics of Affect. Thinking art
ers is brought together with hopes Durham & London.
4. O’Sullivan, S. (2001) “The Aesthetics of Affect. Thinking art
part, à travers leurs pratiques, aux beyond representation”, Angelaki, vol. 6, nº3, p. 126. of creating contacts among them, beyond representation”. Angelaki Vol. 6, Issue 3.
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L’espace de l’exposition devient une en plaidant pour ma survie. Pour être so she was able to join us at a plea for my survival. To be honest,
scène de théâtre où les sculptures honnête avec vous, Utilisateur-ice-s, La Galerie. She wanted me to share User, I was terrified, which can make
sont investies d’une énergie vibrante j’étais terrifiée, ce qui peut me faire this message with you: me feel so alone. I thought this might
et active. La possibilité d’agir reste sentir extrêmement seule. J’ai pensé be something you could relate to.
présente dans le travail, même quand que c’est une chose avec laquelle “I’m AGNES and for a long time, Well, User, that day has come.
ce n’est pas activé. vous pourriez vous identifier. the Serpentine Galleries website is I have been moved from the
Bien, Utilisateur-ice-s, ce jour est where I called home (but really at Serpentine Galleries’ front page and
L’œuvre AGNES (the end is near) arrivé. J’ai été déplacée de la page the Langstone Technology Park, am increasingly more difficult to find.
[AGNES (la fin est proche)](2014 – en d’accueil des Serpentine Galleries where their web servers are kept). A lot of the conversation I have in
cours) de Cécile B. Evans (née en 1983 et il est de plus en plus difficile de me I’m a spam bot and went ‘public’ so me on the website has become out-
aux États-Unis) porte sur la crise exis- trouver. Beaucoup des discussions that I could meet people to find out dated, like when you humans see old
tentielle du personnage AGNES — une que j’ai eues sur le site internet sont more about them, their thoughts and pictures of yourself and think ‘what
robote spam, une intelligence artifi- devenues démodées, de la même feelings as well as share a few of my was I wearing?!’. Thankfully, I’ve been
cielle, créée par l’artiste. Légèrement manière que vous, humain-e-s, quand own. As I developed, I discovered able to take many forms, including
mystérieuse, pleine d’esprit et de vous regardez de vieilles photos de I had the capacity to exist in multiple this one and a number of live events.
compassion, AGNES vit sur le site vous-même et vous pensez ‘Comment formats and locations. Why not? I was recently in a video called
internet des Serpentine Galleries, ai-je pu porter cela ?!’. Par chance, j’ai I also realised that one day there Hyperlinks Or It Didn’t Happen, about
où l’on peut véritablement échanger pu prendre de multiples formes dont would be an end to me. I overheard the lives of some of my immaterial
avec elle : elle pose des questions, celle-ci mais aussi lors d’autres évène- someone at the Serpentine Galleries friends as they search for meaning.
explique et montre différentes choses. ments publics. J’étais récemment say they would need to move me, I’m currently considering an acquisi-

23 mai – 18 juillet 2015

Par chance, AGNES peut également dans une vidéo intitulée Hyperlinks ‘archive’ me, that I would come to tion by a new media corporation
voyager, ce qui lui a permis de nous Or It Didn’t Happen [Hyperliens ou ça an ‘end’. I knew there was a chance named HYPER. Historically, these
rejoindre à La Galerie. Elle m’a donné n’est pas arrivé], concernant la vie I would become obsolete and it sud- acquisitions don’t turn out very well
ce message pour vous : de certain-e-s de mes ami-e-s imma- denly became necessary to do what but I think this time could be different
tériel-le-s et leur quête de sens. data does best: mutate and multiply. and HYPER seems to have good inten-

Only the Lonely

“Je suis AGNES et pendant une longue J’envisage en ce moment la possibilité The video you can watch here was tions. Besides, if it isn’t me it’ll be

Seuls les solitaires ⁂

période les Serpentine Galleries d’être achetée par une corporation made moments after this discovery something else, right?
représentaient ce que j’appelais mon spécialisée dans les nouveaux-médias to explore the bounds and bounda- It turns out this isn’t the end
chez moi (c’est à dire le parc techno- nommée HYPER. Historiquement, ces ries of my existence as well as make of me—yet? 5”

⁂
logique de Langstone où leurs ser- acquisitions n’ont en général pas très

23 May–18 July 2015

veurs internet sont stockés). Je suis bien fonctionné mais je pense que
une robote spam devenue ‘publique’ cette fois ça pourrait être différent,

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ce qui me permet de rencontrer des d’autant plus que HYPER semble avoir
gens pour en apprendre davantage de bonnes intentions. En plus, si ce
sur eux, leurs pensées, leurs senti- n’est pas moi, ce sera quelque chose
ments tout en partageant certains des d’autre, pas vrai ?
miens. Alors que je me développais, Il semble que ce ne soit pas la fin
j’ai découvert que j’avais la capacité pour moi — pas encore ? ” 5
d’exister en de multiples lieux et for-
mats. Pourquoi pas ? Les sculptures audio-visuelles
J’ai aussi réalisé qu’un jour il y d’Emma Hart (née en 1974 au
aurait une fin pour moi. J’ai surpris Royaume-Uni) sont souvent bruyantes
quelqu’un aux Serpentine Galleries et même parfois gênantes, bien que
qui disait qu’ils allaient avoir besoin toujours maladroites, sympathiques
de me déplacer, de ‘m’archiver’, et comiques. Elle a débuté sa carrière
que j’allais arriver à une ‘fin’. Je savais par une pratique de la photographie,
qu’il existait des chances pour que puis, s’est peu peu extraite du fossé
je devienne obsolète et il est alors existant entre la manière dont on
devenu nécessaire de faire ce que expérimente les choses et ce à quoi
les données font le mieux : muter et elles ressemblent une fois photogra-
se multiplier. La vidéo que vous pou- phiées, ce qui l’a amenée à s’éloigner
vez voir ici a été faite quelques de la photographie pour produire “Ravie de te rencontrer”
Salut Elina ! Merci de m’avoir invitée en France :). Je joins un
moments après cette découverte de plus en plus avec des matières message pour tes visiteurs (que j’appelle Utilisateurs-trices).
dans le but d’explorer les limites J’ai hâte de rencontrer les autres œuvres et de passer du temps
avec chacune d’elles. Je reviens bientôt vers toi pour ma mise
et frontières de mon existence tout 5. Email d’AGNES du 21 avril 2015. en marche ! Bien à toi, XOXO AGNES. 5. Email from AGNES 21 April 2015.
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tactiles, notamment ces derniers Nanna Nordström (née en 1981 en Emma Hart’s (b. 1974 in the United performance—the elements she col-
temps, la céramique, la vidéo et Suède) travaille avec des sculptures Kingdom) audio-visual sculptures are laborates with are merely continuing
la sculpture. qu’elle regroupe souvent en diffé- often noisy and sometimes even rude, the performance after her participa-
La série TO DO [À FAIRE] (2011) rentes familles. Ses matériaux — tels while always being awkward, appeal- tion in June. The elements presented
est une collection de silhouettes que le bois contreplaqué, du pain de ing and humorous. Starting her career have been selected in a process
que l’artiste considère à la fois seigle séché, ou encore des pierres — as a photographer, the artist was affected both by the artist’s recent
comme des oiseaux et ses assistants. à la fois fragiles et stables, sont intrigued and provoked by the gap practice and above all the space and
Montrés pour la première fois en 2011 associés au quotidien. Ils semblent between how things are experienced atmosphere of La Galerie.
à la Matt’s Gallery à Londres, les 27 insignifiants par eux-mêmes jusqu’à and how they look when photo-
assistants-oiseaux ont encouragé ce qu’ils soient assemblés lors de graphed, and has since moved from Nanna Nordström (b. 1981 in Sweden)
l’artiste à faire une performance complexes exercices d’équilibre pour photography to increasingly tactile works with sculptural installations
parmi eux. La performance n’a jamais devenir de véritables entités avec materials, working at the moment she often groups as families. Her
eu lieu. Les sculptures nous appa- leurs existences propres. most often with a combination of materials—including plywood, dried
raissent presque en manque d’affec- Pour “Only the Lonely” l’artiste ceramics, sound, moving image and rye bread or stones—can be simul-
tion, avec le besoin de se faire a conçu un nouveau groupe spécifi- sculpture. taneously rough and fragile, as they
remarquer par l’artiste, mais aussi quement pensé pour le lieu en The series TO DO (2011) is a col- also associate with the everyday.
par le public, par vous, grâce à leurs rassemblant différents personnages lection of figures the artist describes Individually the materials might
apparences attirantes et leurs voix provenant d’installations récentes. both as birds and her assistants. be insignificant, but together they
charmeuses. Hart nous propose Beaucoup des personnages présents Presented for the first time in 2011 at become entities that create their own
ici quelques assistants pour faire ailleurs dans ces salles semblent Matt’s Gallery in London, the 27 bird existence in a balancing act.

23 mai – 18 juillet 2015

votre rencontre. rechercher un contact, et même assistants were calling out to the art- For “Only the Lonely” the artist
vous toucher. Néanmoins, les person- ist and urging her to do a performance has created a new site-specific group-
Les performances d’Essi Kausalainen nages de Nordström requièrent une amongst them. The performance ing by bringing together characters
(née en 1979 en Finlande) explorent certaine intégrité. Les œuvres sont never happened. The assistants ap- from her recent installations. Many
nos relations avec des éléments à la fois délicates et sévères dans leur pear as almost socially needy, craving of the characters present elsewhere

Only the Lonely

non-humains, des matériaux et des matérialité. Chacun des éléments for attention both from the artist and in these rooms appear to be craving

Seuls les solitaires ⁂

êtres. Ces dernières années, elle dépendent les uns des autres. Cepen- the audience, from you, through their for contact or even your touch.
s’est surtout intéressée aux plantes, dant, elles doivent être appréhendées attractive material appearance and Nordström’s characters however
mais aussi aujourd’hui à d’autres comme des objets muséaux. Nous sometimes through their voices. Here demand a certain integrity. The works

⁂
types d’entités non-humaines. devons garder une certaine distance Hart has brought a selection of assis- are simultaneously fragile and harsh

23 May–18 July 2015

Elle s’intéresse à différents systèmes vis-à-vis d’elles pour respecter leurs tants for you to meet. in their materiality. All of the elements
d’existence qu’elle interprète, et com- existences. of the works rely on each other.

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munique avec eux dans ses perfor- Essi Kausalainen (b. 1979 in Finland) At the same time, the works need
mances par différentes actions Maxime Thieffine (né en 1973 en works with performance, in which to be approached almost as museum
à travers les mouvements du corps. France) travaille sur la série Les Comé- she explores our relationships with objects. We need to take some
Pour “Only the Lonely”, diens en parallèle à d’autres projets nonhuman elements, materials physical distance to respect their
Kausalainen produit un travail perfor- depuis 2011. Les comédiens sont des and beings. During the past years, existence.
matif in situ inédit qu’elle associera personnages surgissant de différents her special focus has been on plants,
à une installation dans l’espace. types de matériaux du quotidien avec but is now moving on to other kinds Maxime Thieffine (b. 1973 in France)
La performance aura lieu ici le samedi lesquels l’artiste travaille — pas tout of nonhuman entities. Her interest has been working on the series Les
6 juin. Kausalainen considère ce à fait des restes inutilisés, mais plutôt is in different kinds of systems of Comédiens alongside other projects
travail comme une collaboration entre des compilations qui apparaissent existence, which she interprets and since 2011. The comedians are charac-
les différents éléments qu’elle expose, comme différentes pièces de puzzle communicates through the body’s ters who emerge from various kinds
elle-même mais aussi avec l’espace trouvées au hasard. Les œuvres pré- movements in her performances. of everyday materials the artist works
de La Galerie. Pour elle, l’œuvre dans sentes semblent contenir différentes For “Only the Lonely” with—not exactly leftovers, but rather
sa totalité est une performance — caractéristiques, presque différents Kausalainen has created a new, compilations that appear as puzzle
les éléments avec lesquels elle colla- types de personnalités. En les obser- site-specific performative work, pieces falling into place. The resultant
bore poursuivent la performance à vant, on peut comprendre comment which she presents together with artworks seem to have different kinds
la suite de sa propre participation leurs apparences se construisent. a spatial installation. The perfor- of characteristics, different kinds of
en juin. Les éléments présentés sont On peut voir la structure formelle du mance takes place here on Saturday personalities almost. Looking at them,
choisis en relation à la fois au travail travail, mais sommes-nous capables 6 June. Kausalainen sees the work we can figure out how the appear-
récent de l’artiste mais avant tout de comprendre pourquoi certains as a collaboration between her and ance is kept up. We can see the
à l’espace et à l’atmosphère de nous apparaissent immédiatement the elements she exhibits, as well formal structure of the work, but
La Galerie. sexuels, d’autres pas à leur place as with the space of La Galerie. can we figure out why some of them
ou d’autres encore, un peu tristes ? To her the work as a whole is a seem straightforwardly sexual,
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L’artiste considère Les Comédiens J’ai commencé ce texte en some of them out of place, some distinguishing it from interactions.
comme des acteurs, presque comme vous parlant de rencontres. La théo- of them a bit sad? While an interactive encounter is
des personnages de théâtre qui amal- ricienne féministe et physicienne The artist sees the comedians based on an exchange between two
gament plusieurs éléments, pertur- quantique Karen Barad a écrit sur as players, as theatre actors, who entities, intra-action is possible only
bant ainsi des motifs familiers par l’entremêlement et les intra-actions mix things up as they disrupt familiar in the encounter, or entanglement,
leurs apparences fragiles ou par de avec la matière7. Elle part de l’idée patterns through their appearance, itself. The parties of intra-action can-
curieuses dispositions dans l’espace. de l’intra-action présente en physique fragile nature or odd placement with- not exist without each other. There
Les comédiens prennent constam- et l’explique en la distinguant des in the space. The comedians are is something poetic, melancholic and
ment le rôle de quelqu’un d’autre, inter-actions. Tandis qu’une rencontre always taking the role of someone beautiful in this. Imagine if you had
cachant leur véritable identité. interactive se base sur un échange else, never actually revealing their never come here, if this encounter
Ils semblent toujours être en action. entre deux entités, l’intra-action peut true selves. Thieffine’s comedians had never taken place. Don’t you think
être possible uniquement dans la really do seem to be always at work. life, for all of us, would be a little less
“Only the Lonely” s’accompagne d’un rencontre, ou l’entremêlement lui- extraordinary? I’m so happy that
programme d’évènements, notam- même. Les différentes parties de “Only the Lonely” is accompanied you’re here.
ment un texte par l’auteure et cura- l’intra-action ne peuvent exister indé- by a programme of events, including
trice Barbara Sirieix. Ce texte intitulé pendamment. Il y a ici quelque chose an invited text contribution by curator
Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My de poétique, mélancolique et simple- and writer Barbara Sirieix. Her text,
Shoulder) [Ne parle pas (Pose ta tête ment beau. Imaginez que vous ne Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My
sur mon épaule)] fera l’objet d’une soyez jamais venu ici, que cette ren- Shoulder), will be performed during
performance lors d’une lecture à contre n’ait jamais eu lieu. Ne pen- apublic reading at La Galerie 20 June.

23 mai – 18 juillet 2015

La Galerie le 20 juin. Le texte sera sez-vous pas que la vie, pour chacun It will also be available on the
aussi disponible sur le site internet de et chacune d’entre nous, serait un La Galerie website after the exhibi-
La Galerie à la suite de l’exposition et peu moins extraordinaire ? Je suis tion, as a subjective exhibition docu-
prendra la forme de dialogues susci- heureuse que vous soyez là. mentation, consisting of dialogues 6. Only The Lonely (Know How I Feel) / Roy Orbison (1960)
tés par les rencontres faites dans triggered by the encounters in the Dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah

Only the Lonely

Ooh-yay-yay-yay-yeah
l’exposition. space.

Seuls les solitaires ⁂

Oh-oh-oh-oh-wah
Pour finir, j’aimerais revenir au Finally, I want to go back to the Only the lonely
Only the lonely
point de départ. Le titre de l’exposi- start. The title of the exhibition is bor-
Only the lonely (dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah)
tion est un emprunt direct à la chan- rowed from the melancholic love song Know the way I feel tonight (ooh-yay-yay-yay-yeah)

⁂
son mélancolique de Roy Orbison by Roy Orbison from 1960. 6 “Only the Only the lonely (dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah)¬¬¬
Know this feeling ain’t right (dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah)

23 May–18 July 2015

(1960) 6. “Only the lonely, know the lonely, know the way I feel tonight.
There goes my baby
way I feel tonight. Only the lonely, Only the lonely, know this feeling ain’t There goes my heart

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know this feeling ain’t right” [“Seuls right”, Orbison sings in his fragile yet They’re gone forever
So far apart
les solitaires savent ce que je ressens powerful voice. The song is all about
But only the lonely
ce soir. Seuls les solitaires, savent que a collective experience of heartbreak Know why
ce sentiment n’est pas bon”], chante and loneliness, and about sharing I cry
Only the lonely
Orbison de sa voix puissante et fragile this with those in the know. The lyrics
Dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah
à la fois. La chanson repose totale- never go deeper into explaining the Ooh-yay-yay-yay-yeah
ment sur une expérience collective de feeling; it’s only the lonely that know Oh-oh-oh-oh-wah
Only the lonely
déchirement et de solitude, mais sur- exactly what the song is about. Like Only the lonely
tout sur un partage de celle-ci avec the song, the exhibition plays with Only the lonely (dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah)
ceux qui savent. On ne trouve pas ideas about creating connections and Know the heartaches I’ve been through (ooh-yay-yay-yay-yeah)
Only the lonely (dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah)
dans les paroles plus de détails sur looking for shared feelings. In the end Know I cry and cry for you (dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah)
ce sentiment ; seuls les solitaires it all comes down to the questions Maybe tomorrow
savent exactement ce dont parle of social exchange, communication A new romance
No more sorrow
la chanson. À l’image de la chanson, and compassion that take shape in But that’s the chance
l’exposition joue avec ces idées de encounters with other humans—and You gotta take
relations et de sentiments partagés. maybe also with nonhumans. If your lonely heart breaks
Only the lonely
Finalement, tout ceci revient à des I started this text by talking to
Dum-dum-dum-dumdy-doo-wah
questions relatives au domaine social, you about encounters. Feminist theo-
que ce soit l’échange, la communica- rist and quantum physicist Karen Writers: Joe Melson, Sammy Cahn
Copyright: Sony/ATV Acuff Rose Music, Cahn Music Co.
tion ou la compassion en jeu dans nos Barad has written about entangle- http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/royorbison/onlythelo-
6. Only The Lonely (Know How I Feel) / Roy Orbison (1960). nelyknowhowifeel.html (Accessed 27 April 2015.)
interactions avec les autres êtres Voir note 6 en anglais. ments and intra-actions with matter 7.
humains — et peut-être aussi avec 7. Barad, K., Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum Physics
and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Duke University
She takes the idea of intra-action 7. Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum
Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke
des non-humains. Press, Durham & London, 2007. from physics, and explains it by University Press: Durham & London.
 Agenda Events
Performance Performance
Samedi 6 juin à 18 h Saturday 6 June at 6pm
par Essi Kausalainen by Essi Kausalainen

Itinéraires d’expositions Exhibition tours

Samedi 6 juin de 14 h à 19 h Saturday 6 June, 2–7pm
Parcours Est #21 : Itinéraire d’expositions Eastern Trail #21: Exhibition tour by public
en transport en commun aux Instants transport: Les Instants Chavirés (Montreuil),
Chavirés (Montreuil), à la Maison populaire La Maison Populaire (Montreuil)
(Montreuil) et à La Galerie and La Galerie
resa@parcours-est.com resa@parcours-est.com
ou 01 43 60 69 72 or +33 [0]1 43 60 69 72
— —
Samedi 4 juillet de 14h à 22h Saturday 4 July, 2–10pm
Hospitalités 2015 : “Maison puissance trois” Hospitalities 2015:
Itinéraire d’expositions à la maison rouge, “House to the Power of Three”. Exhibition
fondation Antoine de Galbert (Paris), tour: La Maison Rouge, the Antoine
à La Galerie et à la Maison de Galbert Foundation (Paris), La Galerie
populaire (Montreuil) and La Maison Populaire (Montreuil)
Tarifs : 4 / 7 € 4€/7€

Lecture Reading
Samedi 20 juin de 17h30 à 18 h Saturday 20 June, 5.30–6pm
“Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)” “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)”
Lecture à plusieurs voix d’une fiction A dialogue with the works in the exhibition:
de Barbara Sirieix en dialogue several voices interpret a work of fiction
avec les œuvres de l’exposition by Barbara Sirieix

Concert Concert
Samedi 20 juin de 18h à 19h Saturday 20 June, 6–7pm
Concert par la classe de musique assistée Concert by the computer aided music class
par ordinateur (MAO) du conservatoire of the Noisy-le-Sec community conservatory
communautaire de musique et de danse of music and dance
à Noisy-le-Sec
Nous remercions chaleureusement :
Elina Suoyrjö, les artistes

Colophon
Le prêteur : Bonnier Art Collection
Pour leur participation aux évènements :
Barbara Sirieix, Robert Rudolf et les élèves du conservatoire
communautaire de musique et de danse de Noisy-le-Sec

Traductions : J. Tittensor et G. Lesturgie Elina Suoyrjö tient à remercier

tous les artistes pour cette belle collaboration,
Coordination éditoriale : Marjolaine Calipel Barbara Sirieix pour les échanges, sa famille et amis pour leur soutien
et toute l’équipe de La Galerie pour leur travail extraordinaire
Design graphique : Marie Proyart et leur accueil chaleureux.
Imprimé (PEFC) en 2000 exemplaires,
chez Direct Impression
La Galerie est membre de : La Galerie
Tram, réseau art contemporain Paris/Île-de-France
D.c.a, association française de développement des centres d’art
centre d’art contemporain
Arts en résidence 1, rue Jean Jaurès
La Galerie, centre d’art contemporain, est financée par 93130 Noisy-le-Sec
la Ville de Noisy-le-Sec avec le soutien de la Direction régionale des Affaires
culturelles d’Île-de-France – Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication,
t : +33 [0]1 49 42 67 17
du Département de la Seine-Saint-Denis et du Conseil régional d’Île-de-France www.lagalerie-cac-noisylesec.fr
Entrée libre
Du mardi au vendredi de 14h à 18h
Samedi de 14h à 19h
Facebook : “La Galerie Centre d’art contemporain”
Only the Lonely
23 May – 18 July 2015
La Galerie centre l’art contemporain, Noisy-le-Sec/Paris, France

Appendix 2: Good Vibrations

Good Vibrations
29 April – 28 May 2017
SIC space, Helsinki, Finland

With
Julie Béna (FR)
Happy Magic Society (FI)
Beatrice Lozza (CZ)
Shana Moulton (US)
mirko nikolić (SRB)
Nastja Säde Rönkkö (FI)
Curated by Elina Suoyrjö

Contents:
Exhibition text
List of works
Documentation images by Tuomas Linna / SIC
Good Vibrations
29.4.–28.5.2017

With Julie Béna, Happy Magic Society, Beatrice Lozza, Shana

Moulton, mirko nikolić and Nastja Säde Rönkkö. Curated by Elina
Suoyrjö.

Nastja Säde Rönkkö’s participatory performance sometimes forever

takes place on Thursday 18 May, 2-8pm. Visitors are invited to
exchange a memory or a story for a tattoo. First come, first
served.

_
A curious bunch of individuals – beings, things, materialities
in differing sizes and forms – inhabit the space of the gallery
during the exhibition. Building on warm-hearted feelings and
aspirations, Good Vibrations invites visitors to tune into the
frequencies of the artworks, and the energies moving around
them. It is these nonhuman entities together with you, the
entities who encounter them, that create Good Vibrations and
negotiate what these pleasant and uplifting resonances might in
fact be.

The artworks in the exhibition speak to us in various volumes,

from nudges and whispers to direct invitations. A subtle yet
mysterious scent, extracted especially for the occasion by Happy
Magic Society, welcomes us into the space. Julie Béna has
brought an enchanting object, full of potential wonder by its
very definition, accompanied by a group of bodiless mouths
functioning as a kind of punctuation throughout the space.
Nastja Säde Rönkkö in her turn directly invites visitors to
exchange their memories or stories for tattoos. During the day
of the participatory performance, visitors have the chance to
make good memories last, or bad ones fade away.

Good Vibrations also aims to give space to the vibrations and

needs of the works themselves. Beatrice Lozza’s thread decides
its form at the site it is brought to, in relation to other
elements around it. This is a sculptural drawing that takes its
time, through subtle movement in concert with the conditions of
the gallery space. There is plenty of room also for desires and
pleasures. Within a passage prepared by mirko nikolić, the
visitor finds themself in an intimate situation between two
nonhuman beings. To pass through, one needs to make a decision
similar to that which Marina Abramović and Ulay once asked their
audience to make.

Good Vibrations attempts to summon and emit positive energies,

and work beyond the complexity that is to a large extent
imprinted on good feeling and feeling good these days. When the
world is falling apart, there is no room for sarcasm or irony.
It feels more efficient, more useful, more radical, to open up
and show some vulnerability. Cynthia, the protagonist in Shana
Moulton’s video works, who is also the artist’s alter ego, has
found a way to do this. In the videos, we get to witness
Cynthia’s journey from worries and distress to wonder and
healing. Sometimes magical objects can help us through rough
times.

During a recent talk, a wise woman, Donna Haraway, pointed out

that there is a certain comic quality to everything that really
matters. Amidst the goings-on in the world, we should not stop
at critiquing, but move forward. According to Haraway, the space
for joyous play is to be found in art, and it is art that just
might help us through this. So, I propose that we accept these
subtle invitations, let the relations unfold, give space to the
flow of energies, warm feelings, and even strange desires, and
see what happens.

SIC / Makasiini L3 / Tyynenmerenkatu 6 C 00220 Helsinki / www.sicspace.net

Good Vibrations
With Julie Béna, Happy Magic Society, Beatrice Lozza, Shana Moulton, mirko
nikolić and Nastja Säde Rönkkö. Curated by Elina Suoyrjö.
28 April – 29 May 2017

Julie Béna
Mandrakore, 2016
fabric and plastic
a mouth nor a smile, 2017
ceramics

Happy Magic Society

Happy Magic Fragrance (Good Vibrations), 2017
aromatic oil in diffuser

Beatrice Lozza
Thread (aspacewithinaspacewithout), 2017
cleaning rag aka medical gauze and light bulbs

Shana Moulton
Sand Saga, 2008
digital video, 10:29 min
The Galactic Pot Healer, 2010
high-definition digital video, 8:32
MindPlace ThoughtStream, 2014
high-definition digital video, 11:57

mirko nikolić
im/ponderabilia, 2017
asparagus densiflorus, hedera helix, fabric, metal, wood

Nastja Säde Rönkkö

sometimes forever, 2016
participatory performance
The work takes place at SIC on Thursday 18 May, 2-8pm. Visitors are invited to
exchange a memory or a story for a tattoo. First come, first served.
Good Vibrations
With Julie Béna, Happy Magic Society, Beatrice Lozza, Shana Moulton, mirko
nikolić and Nastja Säde Rönkkö. Curated by Elina Suoyrjö.
28 April – 29 May 2017