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.
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.
💡 This week’s key words: Co-creation, decentralization, curatorial responsibility
🌱 Curatorial team Progress: lucky number 11:11
This week, our curatorial group finally has an official name—11:11 ✨! The inspiration for this name came from one of my personal quirks—I always see 11:11 as a lucky moment. When I realized that our group had exactly 11 members, the name just felt right!
Why 11:11?
In the occult, 11:11 is known as an angelic number, symbolizing good luck, inspiration, and guidance.
The name reflects our vision for curating—we want to create an open, positive, and collaborative atmosphere, where everyone’s ideas can shine and contribute to something greater.
Curating is not just about exhibitions, it is about co-creation between people, and our group itself is an experimental space for collective growth.
My friend Yiran Gu and I both felt it was a great idea, so we brought it up to the group! 🎉
In addition, I helped further refine the group’s Mission Statement, which I proposed: “Curating for the Future”
Curation is responsibility. From material selection to energy consumption, we integrate Sustainability into our curatorial practices, ensuring that our exhibitions are not only conceptually forward-looking, but also operationally consistent with environmental justice principles.
🚀 Personal curatorial project progress:
In terms of personal curatorial projects, I continue the vision of last week and continue to promote the research of Decentralized Curation. The focus of this week is to make my curatorial ideas more specific, gradually from concept to practice! 💡
🔍 What’s Next?
1️⃣ Deepen research on curatorial models based on blockchain
This week’s reading of Rugg & Sedgwick’s (2007) Issues in Curating Contemporary Art and Performance, which explores how curatorial power structures affect audience experience, got me thinking further:
Does decentralized curation really empower the audience, or is it just a “democratizing” strategy for curators?
At the same time, I’m looking at the case of the Zien Foundation, which uses the NFT to let the audience vote directly on the content of the exhibition, rather than the curators alone. This model is enlightening, but it also makes me wonder if “co-curating” is really fair. Or will it be dominated by economic capital?
2️⃣ Outline the exhibition layout & interactive tools
This week, I started thinking about how to make the audience really become part of the exhibition.
How can technology improve interaction? I studied Refik Anadol’s AI-generated curatorial experiment and wondered if AI could be a “digital curator” to help visitors generate a personalized exhibition experience.
How does NFT fit into the exhibition? I hope that every decision of the exhibition can be recorded on the blockchain, forming a “Living Archive”, so that curation is no longer static, but a process of continuous evolution.
🖼 Exhibition visit: Glasgow Kendall Koppe Gallery
This week I went to Glasgow to see The sun and the sun’s reflection at Kendall Koppe Gallery.
Rather than the exhibition itself, I am more interested in how it presents time, memory and longing. The exhibition raises an intriguing question:
Is memory a comfort or a constraint?
Is our obsession with the past an attempt to find ourselves, or an escape from reality?
The exhibition made me think about the other side of Archival Curation – curation is often the reproduction of history and memory, but if we have been immersed in memories, will we miss new possibilities? It also made me reflect:
Can my concept of “fluid curation” make the exhibition free from the “burden of the past” and become a space that is always evolving? 🤯
📌 Key Focus for Next Week
1.Continue to deepen the research on decentralized curation, especially the interactive model co-created by NFT and the audience.
2.Design interactive aspects of the exhibition, such as allowing the audience to vote on the content of the exhibition.
3.Explore the role of AI in curating and test the curatorial relationship between curator, audience and AI.
Bibliography
Rosen, Aaron. 2021. “The Impact of NFTs on the Art Market: A Decentralized Approach.” Art Market Journal 15 (2): 45–58.
Smith, John, and Emily Johnson. 2022. “Decentralized Curation: How Blockchain is Transforming Art Exhibitions.” Journal of Digital Art Economies 4 (1): 29–52.
Thompson, Sarah. 2023. “NFTs and the Democratization of Art Ownership.” Cultural Policy Review 12 (3): 112–117.
Williams, Mark, and Laura Stevens. 2024. “Challenges and Opportunities in Decentralized Art Curation.” On Curating 56: 78–95.
Brown, David. 2025. “Top Auction Houses Courted the Crypto Crew — Is It Enough to Save Them?” Financial Times, January 22, 2025.
(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.)
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.
