Week 9
This week we got down to the nitty gritty of curation – BUDGETS!
Listening to Marcus speak about his film festival at Tramway and how he budgeted was helpful. I particularly liked when he emphasised that his budget reflected his own personal ethics. He explained that if more money is spent on wine and canapés than on the artists involved, then you need to stop and have good hard look at yourself.
Some things I would need to consider on my budget include (not listed in order of importance):
- Artist commission fees
- Seanachoiche fees (storytelling group)
- Venue Hire (1 week) (including invigilators)
- Gallery technicians
- Publication fees
- scribe
- recording equipment
- website?
- Blindboy – live podcast?
I need to consider the longevity of the project. As the installation is only going to last for a week, I want to ensure that the stories that are told stay alive. After all that is the point of the project, to keep the tradition of storytelling and oral history alive. Perhaps I would look at YouTube as a way to keep these recordings – it is the format chosen by Seanachoiche. Of course this would only be done with the consent of those involved. Another option would be tp transcribe what is said into a publication – although does this defeat the purpose of an oral/aural history?
Blindboy could be a good addition, he speaks so fluently about Irish folklore in his podcasts. With his background in both art history and psychology, he always brings an interesting twist to folklore.
Hi Emily!
After reading your blog, I found that your curatorial theme developed progressively through exhibition visits, case studies, class discussions, and personal readings. In first blog, you visited Barry Le Va’s exhibition and raised the question of the curator as artist. Later, in Blog 2, through Frances’s lecture on the Anthropocene, you reflected on the Four Corners Monument and began exploring the complex relationship between land and memory, introducing the concept of the emotional Anthropocene. In Blogs 5 and 6, you engaged with texts by Ailton Krenak and William Cronon, which deepened her understanding of the tension between ancestral knowledge and ecological discourse.
I would like to offer a few suggestions that may be helpful as you continues to refine your SICP. The first suggestion is to think more specifically about the role of the viewer in the exhibition and the path of participation. The combination of sculptural seating and telling space in the current project concept is an emotive design, but it may not yet be clear what the audience’s position is – are they passive listeners, active participants, or co-creators of the story? As curator and participatory design expert Nina Simon suggests in The Participatory Museum (2010), audience participation can be categorised as contributory, collaborative or participatory. In The Participatory Museum (2010), expert Nina Simon suggests that audience participation can be categorised as contributory, collaborative and co-creative. I would suggest incorporating open-ended interactive elements—such as prompt cards or a story exchange wall—to help transform the space into a genuinely dynamic, public narrative site.
Secondly, in terms of the deepening of the sound panel, I recommend referring to The Missing Voice (Case Study B) by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller (1999). The work is set in the streets of London, where the audience wears headphones and walks through the city as the audio guides them; the sound is interspersed with the narrator’s memories, descriptions of places and emotional experiences. Sound not only provides information, but also creates a curatorial field where a sense of presence, empathy and psychological space and time coexist. As sound theorist Brandon LaBelle writes in Background Noise: A Sound Art Perspective (2006), the power of sound lies in its ability to establish a fluid field of perception that transcends physical space, making the listener a co-producer of experience. Therefore, I wonder if a similar listening route could be created within the exhibition—where stories, myths, and fragments of memory unfold as visitors walk among the Ash sculptures site. This listening process not only enriches the sensory experience, but may also inspire viewers to project emotionally about the land or their own life experiences.
Reviewing your blog also prompted me to reflect on my own curatorial project. I focus on the cultural memory of materials, seeking to reconstruct contemporary understandings of time, belief, and belonging through the symbolic significance of ancient materials like ceramics, bronze, wood, and stone. Your project responds to the ecological crisis of Ash by elevating it into a sacred form and reviving indigenous knowledge systems—reclaiming everyday nature as culturally sacred. This inspired me to consider whether the materials I engage with also carry cultural or spiritual meaning. This is a question I aim to explore further as I continue developing my project.
Below are some artworks and articles that may be helpful for your SICP：
[1]Simon, Nina. The participatory museum. Museum 2.0, 2010.
[2]LaBelle, Brandon. Background noise: perspectives on sound art. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2015.
[3]https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/the-missing-voice-case-study-b/