- Trial lecture starts at 10 am
- Public defence starts at 12 noon
Topic for the trial lecture: Within an ecological framework, discuss the role of the audience or the public you wish to reach in your curatorial practice. Use your own practice as a starting point and provide concrete examples
Read the thesis in NVA here: https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3217524
Disputation chair: Vice Dean Professor Anne Haugland Balsnes
Assessment committee:
- Committee Chair Elmedin Zunic, Associate Professor, Department of Visual Arts & Drama, University of Agder
- Opponent Professor Anna Hickey-Moody, Maynooth, National University of Ireland
- Opponent Professor Hanne Hammer Stien, Academy of Art, UiT The Artic University of Norway
Supervisors in the doctoral work:
Professor Helene Illeris, University of Agder
Associate Professor Sigurd Tenningen, University of Agder
Summary of thesis
This Ph.D. dissertation is presented in a scholarly format but is practice-led. It consists of three peer-reviewed articles and the monograph Embracing Ambivalence in “Art-Work”: A Practice-led Account of Curating Within an Ecological Framework. The introductory chapters (kappa) and articles are based on my experience as curator for the two exhibitions HABITAT I (2022) and HABITAT II (2023) at Agder Kunstsenter and Lista Lighthouse.
In the project, I have explored how curating can be practiced within an ecological and sustainable framework. The starting point has been a practice-led investigation into how exhibition work can be sustainable and contribute to promoting ecological awareness, while also making visible the tensions and challenges that arise in the process. In this context, I develop three central concepts in relation to curatorial practice-as-research (“the curatorial”):
Sensory pedagogy, which shows how aesthetic experiences can function as ecological learning processes within the curatorial process;
Material-specificity, which builds on Miwon Kwon’s concept of site-specificity and directs curatorial attention to the life of materials and their connection to specific places;
and “art-work”, which denotes the expanded relationships and processes between curator, artist, materials, places, and ideas in the work leading up to an exhibition.
Through a personally-developed theoretical method, I have analyzed my experiences as curator in encounters with artists, materials, and institutional frameworks in the HABITAT project. This approach has made it possible to illuminate both the project’s potentials and the ambivalence that characterizes ecological and sustainable curating. I particularly highlight four dilemmas that create this ambivalence in curatorial practice: between local and global, between sustainable production and artistic freedom, between care and organization, and between new-materialist and anthropocentric perspectives.
The dissertation contributes a nuanced understanding of ecological and sustainable curating as a complex and ambivalent practice—an understanding I believe is lacking in a field marked by affirmative accounts. I argue that within the frictions and uncertainties of curatorial research on sustainability and ecology lies a potential for new forms of knowledge and learning to emerge.
What to do as an online audience member
The disputation is open to the public. To follow the trial lecture and the public defence online, register on Zoom.
https://uiano.zoom.us/j/68626915434?pwd=tG9jM2iQ80SD2GUSj2Z8xVmixuq6g8.1
We ask online audience members to join no earlier than 10 minutes in advance. After these times, you can leave and rejoin the meeting at any time.
Opponent ex auditorio:
Deadline for the public to pose questions is during the break between the two opponents. Questions ex auditorio can be submitted to disputation chair Dean Marit Wergeland marit.wergeland@uia.no