Any views expressed within media held on this service are those of the contributors, should not be taken as approved or endorsed by the University, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University in respect of any particular issue.
What Happens When the Exhibition Starts Listening Back?
Who decides what an exhibition means? Why are we only allowed to read curatorial narratives, not rewrite them?
Fluid Curatingasks: What if the audience could rename the space? Redraw the paths? Retell the story?
This is a curatorial experiment in shared authorship and disrupted authority. There’s no single narrative. No fixed wall text. Just a living, rewritable system shaped by the people inside it.
If you’ve ever felt that exhibitions speak at you instead of with you— this project is for you.
👇 Click to enter the proposal space: floor plan, visuals, public programme, zine, and a decentralised curatorial vision—ready to be rewritten.
Acknowledgements Looking back, this course has been so much more than I expected. I want to sincerely thank our lecturers and tutors—not just for teaching, but for constantly encouraging reflection, experimentation, and emotional honesty. Your feedback and provocations really shaped how I see curating now.
To my peers—thank you for your openness, support, and all the moments of shared vulnerability and laughter. Working alongside you helped me learn just as much outside the classroom as inside.
And finally, thank you to the way this course was designed: every week built something new, and every assignment felt like an invitation to grow. I’m walking away not just with a project, but with a deeper understanding of what curating can be—and who I am within it.
(Fear as a Method A sensory workshop. March 29, 2025 · Summerhall · In Vitro Gallery)
Our PPT laid out the structure, intent, and emotional architecture of the workshop. We framed fear not as pathology but as a method— a curatorial tool to explore perception, misjudgment, and emotional co-creation.
We offered no art objects. No polished installations. What we gave participants was a guided pathway— through touch, sound, spatial disorientation, and quiet reflection.
They left not with answers, but with a method. And we, as curators, left with better questions.
This blog is a reflection on how that happened. Not just how we built the workshop, but how the workshop built us.
Part 2:
Curatorial review and reflection
I. Where It All Began: Feeling Our Way Into a Method
We didn’t begin with a perfect concept. We began with a shared feeling—something more like a hunch than a plan.
It was early March, and the four of us—Yiran, Yufan, Lingqiu, and I—were tucked into a quiet café corner, half-lost in conversation, half-sketching thoughts onto napkins. What kept coming up was this strange, slippery word: fear. Not as an idea to explain, but as a sensation we couldn’t quite pin down. I remember looking up and asking: “What if fear isn’t something we display, but something we practice—something we can stay with, even gently rehearse?” And that was it. That question became the doorway to everything that followed.
Right from the beginning, I didn’t want to make an exhibition people only looked at. I wanted to make something people felt through. We proposed the central theme—Fear as a Method—as a way to move away from visuals, and into something more internal: a participatory, sensory, body-centered experience. Not therapy. Not theatre. Just a quiet space where people could encounter their fear—not to fix it, but to understand it differently.
II. Building from the Course: Three Weeks that Shaped Everything
W4: Curatorial Ethics
This week changed our entire approach to curating. It taught our to think not only about what we show, but how people feel when moving through a space. Inspired by course readings on care, vulnerability, and bodily safety (O’Neill, Wilson), We began designing the workshop route not as a gallery but as an emotional threshold.
I made key decisions here:
Using soft materials like feathers and ribbon to create sensory ambiguity.
Incorporating ambient sound layers that blend comfort and tension.
Emphasizing psychological safety while gently pushing discomfort.
Our route was not designed for clarity, but for internal resonance.
(The photographer of the event photos: Yiran Gu)
W6: Artist-led Curation
This week’s examples reminded me that a curator can also be a facilitator, a host, or a listener. I saw the power of allowing others to co-create the emotional temperature of a project.
We structured the workshop so that each participant could move at their own pace, in silence, blindfolded, uninterrupted. I personally designed the route flow and sound transitions to support this rhythm, ensuring people could drift inward.
During testing, I adjusted the transitions between sensory stations based on what participants felt—not what we expected. My role became not just designer, but emotional cartographer.
(“Fear as a Method” sensory route – exhibition layout sketch, April 2025. Includes Blindfold Zone, Crunch Floor, Ribbon Installations, Producer of the effect drawing: Yiran Gu.)
W9: Publishing as Curation
This week was perhaps the most transformative for me. We studied “The Phone is the Keyhole; The Penpot, the Heart” and I was completely moved. Their refusal of polish, their embrace of emotional honesty, and their prioritizing of friendship as method helped me see publishing not as post-event documentation, but as an integral part of the curatorial experience.
So I proposed:
“Let’s make the back side of our zine a toolkit.”
“Not just to reflect, but to use. Something they can take away.”
I designed the emotional kit section with fill-in prompts, soft design choices, and handwritten elements—so participants could continue the workshop privately, on their own terms.
(Zine mock-up: Designed and written by the team, All images are co-created by the event participants. )
III. Making and Unmaking: Group Process and Living Diagrams
Our group worked in Miro constantly. Looking back, our board doesn’t just show logistics—it shows our thinking style: layered, nonlinear, highly emotional. We mapped quotes, fears, diagrams, workshop flows, and even doubt. The board became a record of not just what we did, but how we made decisions. This was also the first time I felt fully comfortable disagreeing in a group—I knew my ideas (and feelings) had space.
Together we refined:
The misjudgment stations (I curated the sound textures).
The route structure (I directed how the body flows).
The language tone (I crafted the closing reflection speech).
The publication design (I created the concept for the emotional takeaway page). (Miro process map – team discussion and emotional mapping Screenshot from team Miro board, March 2025. Author: Team archive.)
IV. The Workshop: A Rehearsal for Courage
On the day of the workshop, I was nervous. Not about logistics, but about whether people would actually feel something. We weren’t showing art. We were inviting people to surrender their sight, to misjudge, to be vulnerable.
At the end of the route, I delivered the final speech:
Thank you for walking this path. Maybe you didn’t guess anything right. Maybe you startled yourself. Maybe—you weren’t afraid at all.
Sometimes, fear isn’t a mistake. It’s a reminder. It says: “There’s something here that frightens you.” Maybe it’s a memory. Maybe it’s something from childhood.
In the dark, fear becomes clearer. But often, fear comes not from what’s real— but from what we imagine. Reality is rarely as terrifying as our minds make it out to be.
When you realise that what you’re afraid of is actually a past wound speaking, and when you gather the courage to face it— that fear may already be halfway gone.
Now, write one sentence— a message for a future version of yourself who might be afraid. When fear returns, how will you remind yourself?
Remind yourself that we always have courage. Enough to face one unknown after another.
This is the little method you take with you today. A quiet piece of courage that belongs only to you.
They took the zines. They wrote themselves notes for the future.
And I watched them place those sticky notes on the wall—
each one a small sentence of survival.
V.Team Roles and Contributions
1. Hanyun Xue — Experience Curator (Emotional Facilitator) As the group’s emotional anchor, Hanyun served as the guide and psychological support throughout the experience. With her background in art and counseling, she shaped the language of comfort and trust. Her voice—calm, attentive, and clear—helped participants navigate their fear safely, especially in moments of sensory disorientation.
2. Lingqiu Xiao — Spatial Choreographer (The Lobby Manager) As the “lobby manager” of our emotional space, Lingqiu took charge of real-time movement and crowd coordination. Like a stage choreographer, she arranged the physical flow of participants with a sharp eye for timing and calm control. From managing transitions to maintaining safety during blindfolded routes, she held the space with both precision and empathy.
3. Yiran Gu — Sensory Orchestrator (Media & Technical Lead) Acting as our behind-the-scenes technician, Yiran handled both sound design and video documentation. She composed the atmospheric sound layers and recorded the workshop with sensitivity—capturing fleeting gestures, silences, and reactions. Her work preserved the ephemeral feeling of the event and helped us build a self-archive rooted in emotion.
4. Yufan Wang — Service Narrator (Flow & Discipline Coordinator) Taking on the role of “discipline coordinator,” Yufan made sure everything ran smoothly. She oversaw timing, participant rhythm, and station transitions. Quiet but ever-present, she was the backstage voice who ensured that nothing felt rushed or chaotic. Her sense of order gave structure to the experience—and her steady presence made it feel secure.
My Role, My Reflection
Task
Description
Theme Initiation
Proposed the core concept “Fear as a Method” during the first brainstorming session.
Sound Design
Selected and edited sound textures for sensory misjudgment zones (e.g. insects, feathers).
Route Planning
Designed the blindfolded walking route; guided spatial pacing and emotional rhythm.
Emotional Toolkit Design (Zine)
Created the reflective back page of the zine with writing prompts and coping actions.
Closing Speech
Wrote and delivered the final speech during the workshop to reflect on emotional insights.
Exhibition Recap (PPT)
Co-developed the final presentation slides on team roles, outcomes, and reflections.
1: Research
We applied emotional ethics (W4), sensory curation (W6), and affective publishing (W9) directly into the design of this project. We referenced not only course texts but practices by artists like Marina Abramović (who uses presence as method), and Tramway’s Jarman exhibition (W7), which made private pain public without aestheticizing it.
2: Practice
I coordinated theme direction, sensory station design, wrote and delivered the workshop’s closing, and authored the emotional reflection page in the zine. I also curated sound elements, choreographed the route, and contributed to visual consistency in our publishing and video documentation.
3: Reflection
I realised that curating isn’t about “creating something to be looked at.” It’s about creating a space where something can happen—for real people, in real time. The workshop was about trust. And we earned it.
VI. Outcomes Are Not Just Outputs
Our project ultimately consisted of four interwoven outcomes:
The exhibition route: a designed walk of fear, confusion, and intimacy.
The zine: an object that lives beyond the space, with both theory and practice.
A short documentary video, capturing both audience reactions and our own reflections.
Fear as a Method was not perfect—but it was personal, alive, and full of care. We didn’t aim to heal people. We offered them a method to rehearse feeling, misjudgment, and return.
It taught me what kind of curator I want to be:
Not a guide. Not a gatekeeper.
But a quiet facilitator of difficult feeling.
If I had to describe these three group events in one word, it would be: alive. Not just because we were surrounded by real flowers and blooming ideas, but because the experience of making something together—as a team—felt truly vibrant.
🎬 Collective Event 1: Film Sharing Afternoon at Summerhall
On March 20, our curatorial collective gathered in the Collective Space at Summerhall for a film-sharing session. We didn’t set out to impress or instruct—our only goal was to feel together. And that’s exactly what happened.
Each of us brought a short experimental video—mostly from UbuWeb, some from YouTube—and we watched them one by one. No lectures, no long analysis. Just a few soft words on why we chose what we chose, and then a moment of stillness to sit with what we saw.
I shared Joan Jonas – Left Side Right Side (1972)
🔗 Link to film
It’s a raw, direct piece that uses the body and the camera to challenge how we see. Jonas’s gestures—moving from left to right, shifting her gaze—felt like she was handing over control of the frame to us. I chose this work because it captures something I want to explore in “Fluid Curating”: what happens when we surrender authority and invite others to take part? What does curatorial space feel like when it becomes shared, intimate, and unstable?
Film Selections
Here are some of the works we watched together:
Staff at Moderna Museet by Annika Eriksson
Cycles by Zeinabu irene Davis
Why Modern Art is so Expensive? by Business Insider
Singing in the Rain by Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen
Interior Scroll – The Cave by Carolee Schneemann
Love Sequences – Qanun by Gobelins
Inspirator by Abigail Lane
Lanvin, Alka-Seltzer, Veterano ads by Salvador Dalí
The Neighbor’s Window by Marshall Curry
Each one offered a different way of sensing—through rhythm, silence, contradiction, or vulnerability. Together, they formed a constellation of emotional and visual textures.
（The poster designed by Sarah）
Collaborative Setup
What I appreciated most was the way we worked as a group. Someone brought popcorn, another taped up the windows to dim the light, someone else set up the projector. We didn’t assign roles like a production team—we just moved together, intuitively, like a collective with shared purpose.
This event reminded me that curating is not just about objects or spaces—it’s about shared energy. In that room, every gesture felt like part of the exhibition already.
Sometimes, curating doesn’t need walls or text panels. Sometimes, it begins with a projector on a wobbly table, a dim room, and a handful of people ready to sit quietly with each other. This was more than a screening. It was a rehearsal for the kind of curating I want to practice: slow, shared, and emotionally intelligent.
💻 Summerhall Event 2 – Entering the World of Artsteps
This session was like stepping into a new dimension. Our teammate Beichen (a.k.a. our unofficial tech guide!) introduced us to Artsteps, an online tool for building virtual exhibitions. At first, it felt a bit like a game—dragging walls, resizing images—but then I realised: this is curation in action.
Together, we explored how to build a digital space that reflects a shared vision. Not just uploading images, but thinking about:
How does someone move through this exhibition?
Where should a pause happen?
Can digital silence feel like breathing space?
I loved seeing how everyone brought something to the table—some coded quietly, some discussed lighting effects, others helped title walls or test the walkthroughs. It wasn’t just about digital skills. It was about shared authorship.
This is curatorial practice in its expanded field: merging tech, aesthetics, collaboration, and playful experimentation.
🌸 Summerhall Event 3 – Flower Arranging with Feeling
From screen to stem, the next session took us in the opposite direction—back to the material world.
We gathered for a flower arranging session. It wasn’t a workshop in the formal sense. No one was “teaching” us. Instead, it was something more beautiful: a space to create side by side. Each of us brought different flowers, and as we sat together on the wooden floor, trimming stems and passing colors to each other, something shifted.
This wasn’t just about arranging flowers. It was about arranging time, presence, and attention.
There were no rules, just silent understandings. A shared sense of “you add that, I’ll hold this.”
The bouquets we made were different, but they all reflected the gentleness of co-creation.
I realised—curatingdoesn’t always begin with a concept. Sometimes it starts with care.
💬 Reflections on Practice
Looking back, these sessions taught me something vital. Curating isn’t just about selecting and displaying artworks. It’s also about learning how to be together—online and offline, formally and emotionally.
Whether building a virtual gallery or weaving petals into shape, we were always practicing:
Shared decision-making
Respecting differences in aesthetics and pace
Making space for everyone to contribute
These moments, simple as they were, grounded my belief that “fluid curating” begins with real people, working together, experimenting, laughing, failing, adjusting, and making something new.
And honestly? That’s the kind of exhibition I want to make. One that’s not perfect, but deeply human.
For me, it’s not a blank wall or dismantled tape. It’s what lives on in documentation, in the hands of the audience, and in the tools we leave behind.
Publishing as Curating: Letting the Audience Finish the Sentence
W9 and W11 asked us to rethink publishing and archiving not as aftermaths, but as curatorial forms themselves. Inspired by this, I designed a post-show publishing strategy rooted in co-authorship, reuse, and future circulation.
🟣 1. Co-Written Curatorial Zine
80 copies were printed and a digital PDF uploaded to ECA’s internal archive. This zine combines:
Audience Woolclap entries
Workshop writing
Reflections by student collaborators
Maps and images from the show
It isn’t a catalogue. It’s a collective reflection. Like Annie Fletcher and Sarah Pierce’s Paraeducation Department (O’Neill & Wilson, 2010), this zine aims to hold multi-directional knowledge, not top-down curatorial statements.
🟣 2. Audience Feedback Report
A visual brief summarising:
Voting trends and participatory patterns
Comments from visitors
Emotional responses collected via story corners and stickers
Influenced by Jim Drobnick and Jennifer Fisher’s ideas in The Artist as Curator (2016), I considered affective response as a legitimate and valuable form of curatorial feedback.
🟣 3. Workshop Documentation & Visual Archives
Each cross-school session (TESOL, Design, Art Ed, CAT) was photographed, annotated, and saved:
Worksheets, maps, and trails
Concept boards and tactile feedback models
This echoes Simon Sheikh’s call in W4 for archives that are plural, localised, and generative.
🟣 4. Re-Usable Tools
From Woolclap’s QR systems to accessibility signage templates, all elements were designed for modular reuse:
Editable InDesign files
Google Drive folder accessible to ECA students
This allows the curatorial infrastructure to evolve rather than restart—what Nina Simon called “scaffolding for participation.”
🟣 5. Intra-School Curation Toolkit
I compiled my practical learning into a short downloadable guide:
Budget structuring
Co-authorship credit templates
Ethical guidance for participatory mechanisms
Open to all schools within ECA, this toolkit translates my project into a replicable low-cost, collaborative methodology.
Just as Dave Beech warned against “managerialist participation” (2010), I wanted to build not just inclusion, but meaningful reciprocity—with tools, not just talk.
🔍Why These Outputs Matter
I didn’t want the exhibition to vanish into memory or slide decks. These outputs are ways of letting the audience remain in the room—even after they leave.
They also prove something essential: that low-budget, high-sensitivity curating is not only possible but documentable. It leaves behind proof. And potential.
The exhibition doesn’t end when visitors leave. If anything, I see it as just beginning.
In my opinion, the curation work is more like an ecosystem than a schedule. I don’t want this project to peak during installation week and then disappear. I want to make it transversal-across disciplines, ages, and institutions. That’s why I plan to expand the exhibition into a 6 day exhibition, followed by 6 days of public programming, divided into three areas: schools, public Spaces, and interinstitutional collaboration.
Opening to the Public: Young Visitors as Present Authors
I often hear people talk about children as the “future audience.” But what if we stopped postponing their participation?
As part of this project, I plan to collaborate with nearby primary schools to launch a curatorial literacy programme that invites children to participate in renaming artworks, mapping their own paths through the exhibition, and composing object labels based on personal feelings or stories. Through these activities, children will be engaged in participatory art not as spectators, but as co-authors of meaning. These moments of encounter are not intended as simplified simulations—but as genuine invitations to authorship. In this context, curating becomes a language that any age can learn to speak.
During the early development of Fluid Curating, collaborators from different academic backgrounds contributed valuable perspectives on spatial design, linguistic mediation, and audience experience. Now, as the project enters a phase of reflection and regeneration, we will reconnect with these interdisciplinary partners to co-develop a series of post-exhibition research experiments. The exhibition’s end is not marked by the completion of any installation—but rather, it continues through the feedback, interpretations, and emotional responses of our audience, which become the raw material for new inquiries.
Route Re-Mapping Lab (Design Students)
Design students will be invited to analyse visitor movement data—tracking which routes they chose, where they added labels, and how long they stayed in different areas. These patterns are not seen as passive feedback, but as emotional mappings of spatial behaviour. Together, we propose a new research direction: “How can spatial design be reimagined as an emotional landscape rather than a functional layout?” Drawing on these observations, design students will integrate affective and perceptual dimensions into their own research, advancing audience-responsive spatial strategies.
Zine Co-Editing Lab (TESOL Students)
TESOL students will transform the archive of audience responses into a multilingual e-Zine—curated as a collage of emotional impressions, interpretations, and renamed artworks. Importantly, we will not edit or translate these voices: every language, every expression, and every contribution will be preserved as it is. This non-hierarchical editing approach embodies our reciprocal relationship with TESOL collaborators: we offer the space and data; they bring linguistic diversity into a shared publishing practice.
Our guiding research question is: “Can language become a medium for curatorial co-authorship? How can unedited multilingual collage reflect a truly collective voice?”
Data as Interpretation (Art History / CAT Students)
Students from Art History and Contemporary Art Theory (CAT) will examine the collected responses, renamed titles, and emotional triggers as more than just feedback—they become curatorial material. Their research project explores: “In participatory exhibitions, how do audience affective reactions contribute to the construction of meaning?”
These analyses will be shared with CAP student artists, offering them rare access to comprehensive audience insight and helping resolve the common issue of limited feedback. This shared interpretative process reflects our commitment to collaborative meaning-making and decentralised curatorial authorship.
From W4 and W11, I began to rethink budgeting not as an administrative task, but as a curatorial decision-making tool.
In W4, Gabi’s session on relational ethics challenged me to consider:
Who is being paid? Who is contributing without recognition? Who has the power to say no?
This directly shaped my approach to volunteer honoraria, where I included line items for cross-school collaborators and student assistants. Rather than assume goodwill, I translated co-labour into financial and material recognition.
From W11, I drew from our discussions on “scaling through tools” instead of scale through budget. I chose platforms like Woolclap not only because they were free, but because they aligned with the values of open authorship, anonymous contribution, and decentralised control.
The budgeting process became a way to embody my values:
Transparency over spectacle
Collaboration over outsourcing
Access over exclusivity
By the end, every cost wasn’t just a line item—it was a reflection of curatorial ethics in action.
I kept my budget strictly within £2000, guided by a resource-sharing ethos that prioritises low-threshold access, intra-school collaboration, and sustainability.
“The Student Opportunities Fund supports students to deliver events, activities, and projects with community impact.” EUSA Funding
🌍 Creative Scotland Open Fund for Individuals (£1300)
“Supporting a wide range of activity initiated by artists, writers, producers and other creative practitioners in Scotland.” Creative Scotland Funding
💡 Own Contribution (£200) — allocated toward zine printing, design materials, and micro-gifts.
Infrastructure, Not Decoration
The exhibition’s physical and interactive design was shaped around necessity:
The site—ECA Main Hall—is an open-access, in-kind supported venue.
TESOL & Inclusive Design students designed multilingual signage and accessibility prompts.
ECA Bookit resources (recorders, polling boards) and digital screens were integrated, avoiding extra rental costs.
CAP student works form the core of the exhibition content—no artist fees required.
Shared Tools, Shared Authorship
Interactive systems were built with open-source platforms like Woolclap, allowing anonymous input, multilingual co-writing, and slow-tech responses.
Equipment such as cameras, screens, and sound systems were borrowed within the school ecosystem.
The exhibition is digitally inclusive without becoming digitally exclusive.
Cross-School as Co-Labour
Collaboration was budgeted as co-authorship:
5 cross-school units were supported (Design, TESOL, Education, Art History, CAT).
Volunteer honoraria and co-creation materials were included to ensure commitment was recognised.
Micro is Sustainable
Rather than scale through money, I scaled through imagination and alliances.
No hired install crew. No designer fees. Instead: a network of student collaborators and shared responsibility.
The budget became a curatorial medium—reflecting my ethics, values, and sense of what must be shared, and what can be let go.
Approx. £450 of this is in-kind support (space, equipment, co-curation labour).
24.3% of the budget reflects shared resources—not as a compromise, but as a commitment to an open, collaborative curatorial ecology.
(ECA Request Flow Diagram for ART/DESIGN/ESALA requests)
I started with a question: Whose voices do we trust enough to let them shape the exhibition?
Consent, Not Contribution
In participatory curation, asking for input isn’t enough. We need to ask: how is that input used, attributed, stored, reshaped?
Visitors to Fluid Curating can share interpretations through the Woolclap platform, leave voice notes at the sound wall, or write directly onto the co-authored curatorial wall. But before any of these are made public—whether projected, printed, or posted—I offer clear options for anonymity, attribution, and withdrawal.
No voice enters the archive without its owner’s choice.
This principle draws on Gevers’ idea of “curating as context” (2013), where creating interpretive space includes creating consent space. It’s not about gathering stories for effect—it’s about constructing frameworks where stories can live with dignity and on their own terms.
Inclusion Isn’t Atmosphere—It’s Infrastructure
Too often, exhibitions proclaim inclusivity as a tone.
I wanted mine to reflect it in the structure.
Following the lessons of Fletcher and Pierce’s Paraeducation Department (2010), I’ve looked at Fluid Curating as a platform where knowledge doesn’t flow in one direction. Working with students in TESOL, Inclusive Design, and Art Education, we’ve translated key exhibition content into multiple languages, created tactile signage, and provided verbal cue cards for blind or low-vision participants.
We also installed “quiet time”—pathways with minimal audio and movement, to allow neurodivergent visitors more time and space. Participation isn’t timed by the exhibition’s speed; it unfolds at the visitor’s own rhythm. As DisplayCult (2016) argue, affective experience is a form of labour. So this exhibition makes space for rest, silence, and slower modes of meaning-making.
( Example of multilingual verbal cue cards)
Publics Are Not Pre-Defined
Simon Sheikh (2010) reminds us that exhibitions don’t merely reflect publics—they produce them. This idea reframed how I saw my responsibility.
Rather than trying to imagine one singular “ideal audience,” I thought about what it means to hold space for unplanned publics: the passerby, the hesitant, the first-timer, the child, the migrant visitor.
Each contribution is a potential act of authorship—not simply commentary. And that shifts the ethics. If we honour those inputs, we also honour the role of the curator as listener, not just organiser. That’s why I built Woolclap around anonymous entries and multilingual response portals. These aren’t decoration. They are architecture.
Why This Matters
Martinon (2013) describes the role of curators as those who refuse to totalise meaning. That’s the ethics I’m drawn to—not just inclusion as presence, but inclusion as epistemic permission.
So in Fluid Curating, every ethical decision—whether it’s signage design or story ownership—emerges from one belief:
No voice should have to ask for permission to be part of the conversation.
Citations
Beech, Dave. 2010. “Weberian Lessons: Art, Pedagogy and Managerialism.” In Curating and the Educational Turn, edited by Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, 47–60. London: Open Editions / Amsterdam: De Appel.
DisplayCult (Jim Drobnick and Jennifer Fisher). 2016. “Curating the City: Collectioneering and the Affects of Display.” In The Artist as Curator, edited by Celina Jeffery, 151–68. Bristol: Intellect.
Fletcher, Annie, and Sarah Pierce. 2010. “Introduction to The Paraeducation Department.” In Curating and the Educational Turn, edited by Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, 198–99. London: Open Editions / Amsterdam: De Appel.
Gevers, Ine. 2013. “Curating: The Art of Creating Contexts.” In The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating, edited by Jean-Paul Martinon, 217–26. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Jeffery, Celina. 2016. “Introduction: The Artist as Curator.” In The Artist as Curator, edited by Celina Jeffery, 1–20. Bristol: Intellect.
Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2013. “Becoming-Curator.” In The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating, edited by Jean-Paul Martinon, 69–81. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
O’Neill, Paul, and Mick Wilson, eds. 2015. Curating and the Educational Turn. London: Black Dog Publishing.
Sheikh, Simon. 2010. “Letter to Jane (Investigation of a Function).” In Curating and the Educational Turn, edited by Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, 70–71. London: Open Editions / Amsterdam: De Appel.
That’s the question I’ve been asking myself. When I first started curating an exhibition, I subconsciously imagined that the “audience” was a group of people who took the initiative to come to the exhibition, perhaps from the academic circle, the art circle, and people with curatorial backgrounds. But I soon discovered that in the lobby of the ECA building, which I had chosen as an exhibition space, it was a very different group of people who actually walked into the space every day.
I think of the first-year students who rush to class with headphones, the CAP students who practice their work in the hallways, the graduate students who pass by the library after class, and even the staff members who never voluntarily enter the exhibition but walk through the lobby every day.
I slowly realized: I wanted to curate for these people.
They may not be the kind of people “scheduled” to see the exhibition, but their bodies have already entered the space. So I started to adjust my design thinking – not thinking about “how to attract them to come in”, but “how to make them find themselves already in it”.
I wanted a fluid system: for the curators to follow the pace of the people, not for people to stop to watch. My goal is: when they pass by, there is a voice, a piece of paper, a word, a story left by others, so that they can feel: you are welcome here, and you are needed.
For me, it’s no longer about “providing viewers with a viewing experience,” but inviting them to be a part of the exhibition, if only in one sentence, one vote, one look back.
Access as a Curatorial Method, Not an Add-On
I’ve been deeply influenced by Nina Simon’s The Participatory Museum, which emphasizes the difference between designing for access and simply declaring openness. Access is something you build structurally. Not just a door you leave ajar.
Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson’s idea of the “educational turn” also shaped my thinking. They describe curating as an expanded pedagogical practice—an approach that welcomes learning, co-authorship, and multiple publics into the meaning-making process (O’Neill and Wilson 2015). That philosophy gave me language for what I wanted to do: create learning environments through affect, conversation, and shared authorship—not just through information.
Similarly, Gevers’ notion of “opening interpretive contexts” (2013) reminded me that access isn’t only about physical or linguistic entry—it’s about making meaning flexible. That’s what my use of the Woolclap platform aims to do. Visitors leave their interpretations in any language, any tone—serious, poetic, messy, raw—and these accumulate daily into a curatorial text that reflects the plurality of response, not a polished consensus.
（Myзeй coвpeMeHHoгo иcKyccтвa -Participatory Art Practices）
Who They Are, Why They Matter, and How They Shape the Exhibition
🟩 ECA Students (Everyday Walkers & Accidental Curators)
Why they matter: They are the natural inhabitants of the exhibition space (ECA Main Lobby), moving through it daily.
How they’re invited: Interactive elements are embedded into their routes: quick-vote boards, “rename this space” tags, tactile floor guides.
How they influence the show: Their constant presence triggers live changes—votes impact layout every three days; texts uploaded to Woolclap appear in evolving curatorial walls. They leave, the wall shifts.
🟦 International & Multilingual Visitors (Cross-Cultural Interpreters)
Why they matter: The ECA community is multilingual, and language often becomes an invisible barrier to art interpretation.
How they’re invited: TESOL students helped co-create tri-lingual signage (Mandarin, Arabic, English), translated instructions on interactive devices, and hosted “quiet read-aloud” audio guides.
How they influence the show: Different languages generate different texts. Visitors’ entries are recorded in their native tongue, creating a multilingual curatorial layer.
🟨 Children & Local Schools (Young Co-Authors)
Why they matter: Children are not future audiences—they are current participants with unique perspectives.
How they’re invited: Through Art Education partners, we host child-led walkthroughs, sticker trails, “draw your exhibition” corners.
How they influence the show: Their illustrations and responses are integrated into the wall projections. Their questions become public prompts.（How to… Curate Participatory Art Projects – Schools and Teachers
Installation workshop view of MATT+FIONA: Room For Art, Whitechapel Gallery, 2017. Photo: Rob Harris）
🟪 Designing for Difference
Why they matter: Decentralisation is meaningless if access is unequally distributed.
Blind and Visually Impaired Participants
I don’t have high-tech AR headsets or braille printers, but I do have people—and intention. I plan to station trained volunteers, especially those from Art Education and Inclusive Practice, to offer descriptive exhibition walkthroughs. These will be paired with verbal cue cards and tactile maps, so that no one has to ask if they’re “allowed” in.
Many of the artworks—particularly sound-based and tactile installations—offer sensory routes that go beyond vision. In fact, the voice-sharing station, where audiences can record their own interpretation of the work, becomes a central space for blind visitors to contribute.
Neurodivergent & Sensory-Sensitive Visitors
Some people need less noise. I’ve set designated quiet hours where lighting is softened and sound devices are paused. At all times, tactile signage and paper-based voting and feedback tools offer alternatives to touchscreens and noise-reactive installations. There’s also a rest corner, where sitting is not a withdrawal from art, but a way to meet it more slowly.
What I find most moving about this group’s inclusion is how it shapes the rhythm of the show. Their pace becomes the exhibition’s pace. Their silences aren’t gaps, but textures in the curatorial soundscape.
Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Participants
With TESOL and Inclusive Design partners, we’re preparing multi-language signage, captioned welcome videos, and clear visual prompts at each station. More importantly, activities like the naming map, the co-writing wall, and the feedback sticker zone all rely on visual language. No interpreter needed to understand your right to contribute.
How they influence the show: Their pacing, interpretation, and silence become part of the curatorial texture. The exhibition expands to include rest.
（Accessibility-Inclusive Art Museum -Harn Museum of Art）
Accessibility as a Method, Not an Afterthought
Inspired byW9–W10 discussions on publics and ethics, I no longer treat accessibility as a set of “adjustments.”
It is the structure itself.
Designing an open-ended, multi-sensory exhibition is not just about equity—it is a political gesture.
If a child can rename a space, if a non-English speaker can write the wall text, if silence becomes narrative—then I’ve shifted the power of meaning-making.
Case Studies & Theoretical References
Nina Simon’s The Participatory Museum (2010) → Advocates for active audience roles in shaping exhibitions, particularly those who “don’t feel like insiders.”
Gwangju Biennale’s “Roundtable Curating” (2008) → A circular model of decision-making, bringing in audiences and collaborators to co-shape the biennale’s meaning. → Supports audience co-authorship and decentralised authorship.
DisplayCult (Drobnick & Fisher) in The Artist as Curator (2016) → Promotes “affective curation,” where feeling and sensory engagement are modes of access. → Encourages multi-sensory, multi-lingual approaches to curating for diverse publics.
Gevers (2013) on “creating contexts” → Curating as the act of opening up intersubjective spaces for new social encounters. → Resonates with my open-ended “living wall of meaning.”
Sheikh (2010) → Highlights the fragmentation of the public and the need to build curating around plural publics, not a singular mass.
If traditional exhibitions lead the audience along a prescribed path, my curatorial model throws out the map.
When I first walked into the ECA Main Building Lobby, it felt like an in-between space—a transitory zone of coffee, conversation, passing glances. But in that looseness, I saw possibility: an open matrix for curatorial action. This wasn’t a white cube; it was a commons. A site already filled with movement, energy, and student voices. And that mattered, because decentralised curating isn’t just about who speaks—it’s about where voices collide.
Choosing this space was a pivot moment. I moved from abstract ideas of online platforms and speculative architecture (like my earlier imagined version at FACT Liverpool), to something grounded, temporal, and alive. The lobby would host a rewritable exhibition, one that changes form, shape, and meaning through constant interaction.
Fluidity in Physical Form: Rhizomatic Design
Traditional exhibitions follow a path: entrance, sequence, exit. But Fluid Curating is built differently. I wanted to resist linearity and build an environment that feels more like a network—messy, rhizomatic, open-ended.
So I designed a spatial system where the layout is responsive, where visitors shape not only what they see but how they move.
Inspired by Utopia Station (Venice Biennale, 2003), I began thinking of the exhibition not as a container but as a field: polyvocal, unscripted, soft-edged. The layout of Fluid Curating reflects this. Colour-coded tapes allow visitors to map their own trails. Corners become naming zones. A sound corner becomes a communal listening post.
Using low-cost signage, mirrors, floor text, and Woolclap-enabled QR codes, visitors can name spaces, remix routes, and co-author interpretations. The space becomes a map in motion.
Rather than fix meaning in place, this design allows it to shift with presence. Every three days, a soft rehang is conducted based on audience interaction data, comments, and collective votes. This ensures the exhibition evolves not just structurally but conceptually—staying fluid, alive.
Below is a selection of images from the exhibition Utopia Station (Venice Biennale 2003), showing typical features of its “rhizomatic exhibition layout”
Rather than assigning movement, I invite navigation. This aligns with ideas explored in Week 7 (Site Visit) and Week 8 (Systems Curation): space isn’t a backdrop, it’s a co-author.
System as Sensory Engine: What Visitors Touch, Say, Change
Visitors activate:
A sound-sharing corner to record voice reflections (Woolclap-based)
A co-curation wall that projects daily audience annotations
A motion-tracked zone where artworks respond to proximity
These elements are low-tech but high-agency. They embody Rudolf Frieling’s assertion in The Art of Participation (2008) that interactivity isn’t a feature—it’s a political design choice.
The Lobby as a Living Platform: Why This Space Works
The ECA lobby already has precedent: previous CAP pop-ups and student shows. It is accessible, non-intimidating, and constantly used. I didn’t need to manufacture a public—I needed to listen to the one already there. This learning came from Week 7, where we were encouraged to consider affective and temporal qualities of space.
What I changed: I dropped the screen-heavy modular setup. I replaced complex algorithms with analogue trails. I learned that if I wanted people to leave a trace, I had to leave room for them to enter.
Cross-School as Co-Structure: Institutionalising Decentralisation
But decentralisation isn’t only about audience freedom—it’s also about institutional permeability.
That’s why Fluid Curating integrates a “Cross-ECA Co-Curation Strategy.” Rather than curating in isolation, I’ve invited students and staff across disciplines to build the infrastructure with me:
This idea inspired by Week 8’s emphasis on systems thinking and Week 9’s discussion of publishing as a collaborative act, I asked myself:
What if curating became a campus-wide conversation?
🛠️ Preparation Process: Step-by-Step
1. Observing institutional blind spots
While reviewing feedback from CAP students, I noticed that many of them, especially those working with participatory media, struggled to collect consistent audience responses. At the same time, my own curatorial proposal faced challenges: limited tech budget, the need for inclusive accessibility, and the pressure to show peer collaboration. That’s when it clicked—what if my exhibition could help solve their problems, while they solved mine?
2. Mapping the school’s potential collaborators
I began by mapping existing departments and MA programs across ECA and identifying their practical strengths:
Music & Sonic Arts for spatial audio design
Art History & Visual Culture for exhibition annotation
Design for participatory mapping and signage
TESOL and Inclusive Education for multilingual accessibility
Art Education for school-focused workshop delivery
CAT and Art History again for Zine editing and curatorial discourse
This wasn’t about token inclusion. It was about building functional, mutual dependencies—where each group contributed something they were already practicing, but within a new curatorial framework.
3. Designing co-owned modules
Rather than just inviting contributors after the fact, I restructured my Programme Notes to create built-in modules of collaboration:
A Sound Corner with music students composing daily responses
A Reading Wall curated by art historians
A DIY Map Lab developed by designers
A Multilingual Access Point for TESOL students to prototype language supports
A Zine station for CAT peers to help me rethink curatorial authorship
Each of these became more than exhibition features—they were opportunities for knowledge-sharing and horizontal authorship.
（Cross-ECA Co-Curation Strategy: Activity Table）
4. Framing the collaboration as part of the exhibition’s logic
To maintain coherence, I ensured each collaborative element aligned with my curatorial ethics: fluidity, co-authorship, and responsiveness. That meant:
Avoiding fixed panels—replacing them with writable, reconfigurable surfaces
Offering open tools for annotation, rather than locked-down text
Visualising visitor contributions and collaborators’ inputs with equal weight
This process taught me that decentralised curation isn’t about removing structure—it’s about multiplying access points. By integrating cross-school collaboration into the curatorial core, Fluid Curating doesn’t stretch beyond itself—it stretches into relevance.
Each department I invited didn’t dilute the vision; they deepened it. They helped the project breathe through different vocabularies, senses, and pedagogies.
In doing so, the exhibition becomes more than a showcase—it becomes an organism co-constructed by the rhythms of a knowledge community.
From Medium to Method: Why Participation is Not a Detail, but a Design
When I first imagined Fluid Curating, I thought of systems and formats: interactive platforms, voting walls, flexible spaces. But it wasn’t until I stepped into the CAP studios that I realized this project had a pulse—and it beat in the artworks of my peers.
During the CAP × CAT Curatorial Encounter (Week 8), I was introduced to a series of participatory works by emerging artists that didn’t just use audience interaction—they needed it. These weren’t completed artworks waiting for interpretation. They were frameworks in waiting, systems unfinished, until the viewer stepped in. In them, I saw the living embodiment of what I had only theorized: curatorial decentralization.
Artist 1: Chen Sijia
In her SQUEEZE ME series (2024), Chen Sijia creates silicone-based objects that invite the audience to physically press, bend, and manipulate the surfaces—transforming passive spectators into haptic co-performers. Her 2025 piece Matree, Patree takes it further: participants use pipe cleaners to modify a rigid genealogical structure, collectively rewriting family trees.
“Her work embodies the tension between personal and political inheritance. The audience doesn’t just watch, they rewrite.”
Why she fits: Sijia’s practice resonates with Jacques Rancière’s idea of the emancipated spectator (2009). Her work empowers audiences to act, not just reflect.
Artist 2: Jia Xudong
With The Banality of Evil (2025), Jia uses TouchDesigner to create an interactive video work where digital flowers bloom in proportion to the number of viewers in the room. The more eyes, the more “evil” it becomes—a haunting commentary on complicity and collective violence.
“It’s a real-time ethical question rendered as art. And it cannot function without the audience.”
Why he fits: His work echoes Paul O’Neill’s notion of curating as an expanded educational space (Curating and the Educational Turn, 2010), prompting not only interaction but self-inquiry.
Artist 3: Fiza
Fiza’s Mimosa Touch installation offers a botanical metaphor for sensitivity and response. The work reacts to the audience’s touch like a plant—folding, shifting, responding. Viewers aren’t just visitors, they are caretakers.
“It’s a choreography between the human and the vegetal—a shared sensory world.”
Why she fits: Her work supports my shift away from technological spectacle and towards relational aesthetics, as described by Nicolas Bourriaud (1998).
Artist 4: Keyi Ju
Keyi constructs multisensory interventions that simulate estrangement: obstructing vision, heightening sound, manipulating touch. Her installations are gentle disorientations that require full audience presence. The space becomes not a gallery, but a body.
“Her work makes you feel like a guest in your own skin. That friction is where meaning is made.”
Why she fits: Keyi’s use of spatial perception echoes Aneta Szyłak’s theory of “curating context” (The Curatorial, 2013), where space and sensation are integral to meaning.
From Artist Works to Curatorial Logic
Each of these artists confirmed that my curatorial vision didn’t need to invent participation—it needed to host it. Their work led me to restructure my exhibition around living systems that respond to presence.
I no longer separate artwork from structure. The mediums here are not only silicone, projection, wire, or sound. They are interaction, negotiation, friction. These artists are not exhibitors. They are co-authors of a curatorial body that breathes with its audience.
In choosing them, I made a choice not to curate around a theme, but around a method: participation as method, not motif. That’s what makes Fluid Curating truly fluid.
Bibliography
Bourriaud, Nicolas. 1998. Relational Aesthetics. Dijon: Les Presses du Réel.
Martinon, Jean-Paul, ed. 2013. The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
O’Neill, Paul, and Mick Wilson, eds. 2010. Curating and the Educational Turn. London: Open Editions / Amsterdam: De Appel.
Rancière, Jacques. 2009. The Emancipated Spectator. London: Verso.
Szyłak, Aneta. 2013. “Curating Context.” In The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating, edited by Jean-Paul Martinon, 217–226. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
(The photographer of the event photos: Yiran Gu)
(Miro process map – team discussion and emotional mapping Screenshot from team Miro board, March 2025. Author: Team archive.)
![Home [www.victoriesnautism.com]](https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.b8f4afd386a99f83da117cdc1585f9ed?rik=NFwJMjNv3U0pLw&riu=http%3a%2f%2fwww.victoriesnautism.com%2fuploads%2f4%2f0%2f4%2f0%2f4040527%2f9118470_orig.png&ehk=vzG%2bDm1Bh231I9%2flBWhKI2EQ77dMYvfxNX%2bAa7s1IoY%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw&r=0)
（Myзeй coвpeMeHHoгo иcKyccтвa -Participatory Art Practices）
（How to… Curate Participatory Art Projects – Schools and Teachers
（Accessibility-Inclusive Art Museum -Harn Museum of Art）
Rather than assigning movement, I invite navigation. This aligns with ideas explored in 
Why she fits: Keyi’s use of spatial perception echoes Aneta Szyłak’s theory of “curating context” (The Curatorial, 2013), where space and sensation are integral to meaning.