Tag: co-curation

📚 Learning Applied: Budget as Critical Practice

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.

📊 Budget Strategy: Resource-Conscious, Ethically Aligned

Funding comes from three key sources:

🏛 EUSA Development Fund (£500)

“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)

Selected Budget Breakdown

Category	Description	Cost (£)
🟡 Exhibition Design & Space	Infrastructure materials: paths, sound corners, book walls, naming stickers, maps, feedback boards	300
	Printing multilingual guides & signage (designed with TESOL/Inclusive Design students)	100
	Sensory alternatives: carpets, cushions, tactile zones, quiet signage	100
🟡 Interactive & Co-Creation Tools	Woolclap platform use (free) + setup costs: QR codes, stands	100
🟡 Interactive & Co-Creation Tools	Polling wall, co-writing sticky notes, voice corner setup (recorder rental, feedback system)	100
🟡 Promotion & Design	Social media visuals, copywriting, scheduling	50
🟡 Promotion & Design	Print guidebooks & resource kits (for Art Ed / TESOL school tours)	100
🟡 Post-Exhibition Outputs	Curatorial Zine printing (co-written texts, audience quotes, 80 copies @ £2.5)	200
🟡 Post-Exhibition Outputs	Data visualisation + Participation Trends Report	50
🟡 Personnel & Collaboration Support	CAP student install/travel support	100
	Cross-school volunteer honoraria (10 x £20)	200
	Trained facilitators for blind/deaf visitors, water points, seating	100
🟡 Public Programme	Public Talk Setup + Tea Reception (“On Shifting Curatorial Power”)	100
🟡 Public Programme	Materials for “co-curation” workshop + print souvenirs (e.g. postcards)	100
🔵 Contingency	Emergency repairs, tech replacements, on-site staffing	150
💡 TOTAL		£2000

Apr 13, 2025

Blog 1 – Project Title & Narrative｜From Authority to Co-Creation: Why I Curate “Fluidly”

By Hanyun Xue

On 12 April 2025

In ✨ Individual Curatorial Project: Fluid Curating

Curatorial Narrative: From Top-down Authority to Distributed Dialogue

When I first imagined Fluid Curating, I wasn’t interested in simply organizing an exhibition. I wanted to challenge something deeper: the invisible lines of power that often define who gets to choose, explain, and validate meaning in art. Traditional curating—though rich in historical methods—often centers on a single authoritative voice. What if we reimagine this voice as a chorus? What if meaning could emerge from conversation rather than instruction?

My project stems from this desire to shift away from the curator as sovereign. I was inspired by early discussions in Week 1 and Week 2 around institutions, platforms, and authorship, and began asking: who really holds curatorial power, and who gets to speak? These reflections led me to decentralisation, not as a purely technical gesture, but as a curatorial attitude—one that opens space, redistributes authorship, and invites collective meaning-making.

This shift isn’t just conceptual. It has emotional and ethical stakes. My vision for Fluid Curating is built around co-creation: an ecosystem where artists, audiences, and curators share responsibility for shaping not only the content of the exhibition, but its rhythm, its routes, and its interpretation.

Curatorial Questions Driving the Exhibition

Can meaning be co-authored rather than delivered?
What happens when audiences don’t just observe, but write, vote, and narrate?
If we design for decentralisation, does power truly move—or just appear to?

These questions echo many discussed in our course, especially those explored during Week 4 (Curatorial Ethics), Week 9 (Publishing as Curating), and Week 10 (Publics and Participation). They continue to guide my decisions—from spatial design to media choice, from participation structure to the ethics of attribution.

**What Fluid Curating Means in Practice**

Fluid Curating is not only a name, but a structure—one that puts decentralisation into curatorial action. It proposes an exhibition framework that cannot be completed without the audience. It is not “for” them, but “with” them.

The space is designed as a rhizomatic grid rather than a linear pathway, enabling visitors to navigate freely, remap meaning, and even rename spaces using coloured tape trails. The artworks—primarily participatory installations by CAP artists and invited collaborators—remain open-ended until activated by audience interaction. Visitors become necessary co-authors in bringing the work to life.

Interpretation is equally decentralised. Audiences can scan a QR code to access a shared platform (via Woolclap) where they co-write curatorial texts, share voice notes, and reflect in real time. These contributions are updated and projected daily, forming a “living wall of meaning” that evolves with each visitor’s presence.

Display arrangements are not fixed. Every three days, works are reconfigured based on audience feedback, voting, and engagement metrics. Exhibition design becomes fluid—data-driven but people-responsive.

After the show, audience-created content will be compiled into a collectively-authored Zine, capturing curatorial texts, sound fragments, and reflections. A summary market report will also be generated to visualize interaction heatmaps, keyword clusters, and value perception trends—offering emerging artists and institutions new insights into participatory demand.

This is not a spectacle of participation—it is an invitation to redefine curating itself.

Case Studies: Inspirations That Changed My Curatorial Lens

Several exhibitions and curatorial models became reference points:

Documenta 11’s “Platforms” (2002) replaced one curatorial voice with many.
Gwangju Biennale’s “Roundtable Curating” model reimagined curation as circular and collective.
Manifesta 6 and its offshoots like Night School transformed exhibition into experimental schools.
Copenhagen Free University and Tania Bruguera’s Arte de Conducta redefined artists as curators of knowledge and experience.

Together, these cases helped me see how fluid, participatory, and educational models decentralise curatorial control and share authorship with artists and publics.

Soft Reflection: From Concept to Commitment

Rather than offering a separate reflection section, I believe my project’s material and structural changes speak for themselves. Through studio visits with CAP artists, peer review exchanges, and in-class provocations, I came to see co-creation not as a supplement to curating, but as its generative core.

The move away from speculative technologies (NFTs, blockchain, AI) toward something more grounded—student-led, low-cost, audience-responsive—wasn’t a compromise. It was a choice. A choice to center experience over infrastructure, participation over programming.

As Rancière reminds us in The Emancipated Spectator, the act of seeing is never passive—it is interpretative, active, and political. Fluid Curating doesn’t just accept this—it designs for it.

Citations

Jeffery, Celina. The Artist as Curator. Bristol: Intellect, 2016.
Macdonald, Sarah. Exhibition Experiments. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007.
Martinon, Jean-Paul. The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.
O’Neill, Paul, and Mick Wilson. Curating and the Educational Turn. London: Open Editions, 2010.
Smith, Terry. Thinking Contemporary Curating. New York: Independent Curators International (ICI), 2012.

Apr 12, 2025

🎡 W9 (2) – Speed Curating at CAT × CAP: Conversations that Sparked Something Real

By Hanyun Xue

On 16 March 2025

In ✨ Individual Curatorial Project: Fluid Curating, 💬 Peer Exchange & Curatorial Dialogue, 🧭 Field Notes & Exhibition Visits

Hi everyone,

This week I participated in a special joint event between CAT (Contemporary Art Theory) and CAP (Contemporary Art Practice) students. We met not on Teams, but face-to-face in the West Court, and I have to say—it was more inspiring than I imagined.

The format was based on Speed Curating, a method adapted from the UK Arts Council. CAP students introduced their art practices in quick 2-minute bursts, while us CAT students shared five key curatorial interests. It was fast, a little chaotic, but filled with energy and curiosity.

🎨 Meeting Artists, Meeting Possibilities

As a CAT student working on my Fluid Curating project, this event was a goldmine. I heard so many artist presentations that aligned with what I’ve been thinking about—audience interaction, sensory engagement, performative gestures, and curating as a living process.

Some CAP students showed deeply personal work about memory, others presented interactive installations. I had some great chats about how audiences can intervene, not just observe; how we might co-create exhibitions where the boundaries between artist, curator, and viewer start to dissolve.

✨ My Five Curatorial Keywords

To help introduce my ideas during the event, I shared five key themes that define my practice. I’ll share them here too:

Decentralised Curation
I want to challenge top-down models. Can the audience’s decisions, movements, and emotions shape the exhibition just as much as the curators’?
Audience Intervention
I’m interested in how viewers might not just observe, but alter—touching, rearranging, or reshaping the work as part of the exhibition itself.
Co-Creation
Rather than presenting finished works, I want to collaborate with artists to create open structures where outcomes remain fluid and evolving.
Curation as Process
I see curating as something unfolding in time. Not a fixed result, but a process that’s shaped by those who enter the space and what they bring.
Shifting Curatorial Authority
What happens when curators give up control, and artists invite intervention? Can letting go create something more alive, more real?

These ideas became beautiful conversation starters. Some CAP students lit up when I described exhibitions as perception practice fields, or when I said, “What if we don’t design the message, but design a mood and let the rest happen?”

One of the artists, Sijia Chen, shared a tree with us—though not just any tree. This one was an installation made of welded steel branches, fuzzy pink yarn, and sparkling hanging ornaments. Right in the center stood a solid metal trunk, something she built herself.
She said it represents those immovable forces in our world—systems, structures, or maybe even fate. But what caught my attention were the branches. Around the steel frame, she invited us to add colorful bendable sticks (they had wires inside, so we could twist them into shapes).
People made spirals, loops, even strange little symbols. This wasn’t just decoration. She called it “an editable tree.”

And honestly, I loved that phrase.

The idea behind it was so powerful. Sure, the trunk—the core—is fixed. But everything around it? Open to change.
It’s a metaphor for participation within structure, for how individuals can intervene, re-shape, and re-narrate even within rigid systems. It reminded me so much of what I’m trying to do with Fluid Curating. Not to destroy the framework of exhibitions, but to invite others into it. To say, “Come, add your branch.” The editable tree became, in that moment, a perfect symbol of co-creation. It was poetic, but also quietly radical.

I walked away thinking: maybe my own curatorial space could offer this same gesture. A framework that’s solid, but soft around the edges. A space where people don’t just observe, but gently re-edit what’s there.

Another work that really stuck with me came from artist Xudong Jia. He showed us a digital interactive piece—on screen, it looked like pink flowers exploding outward, or maybe colorful ink swirling in water. It was beautiful at first glance, almost hypnotic.
Then he told us the title: The Evil Flower.

The screen was equipped with facial recognition. Every time someone approached, the image would shift. The flower would grow bigger, darker, more aggressive.
Jia explained that the piece was about the butterfly effect, about online violence—how no single snowflake in an avalanche is innocent. The more people watched, the more the flower “blamed” them.

It hit me hard. The interactivity wasn’t playful, it was accusatory. You weren’t in control of the work—it was confronting you. That twist in perspective really stayed with me. It wasn’t interaction for interaction’s sake; it was interaction as responsibility.
I kept thinking about how this could fit into my own idea of Fluid Curating—where audience behavior doesn’t just “complete” the exhibition, it actually shapes its emotional direction. What if interactivity could be unsettling? What if being seen by the artwork is part of the artwork?

This piece challenged me. And that’s exactly what I want my exhibitions to do.

🧠 Reflections and Next Steps

This session wasn’t just useful—it was moving. I left with several artists I’d love to follow up with. Some of them are exploring clay as a soft resistance. Others are working with sound, text, or ephemeral materials.
I can already imagine co-curating something gentle, open, and audience-responsive together.

In the next few weeks, I’ll be deepening my readings on participatory art and affective curating. I’ve already started noting quotes from Curating and the Educational Turn that feel like they’re speaking directly to what I’m trying to do:

“They seem to seek not the masterful production of expertise… but the co-production of question, ambiguity and enquiry.” (O’Neill and Wilson, 2013)

Yes. That’s exactly it.

This was more than a networking session. It was a seed-planting moment. And I’m already looking forward to what might grow.

Mar 16, 2025