Week 4 Planning for The Curatorial Project
🐸Thoughts on My Curatorial Project
This week’s visit to Summerhall shifted my thinking from having ideas to understanding structure. Listening to the talk and learning about how the institution operates made me realise that curating is not only about concepts, but also about space, funding, audiences, and feasibility. Also, if I want an institution like Summerhall to accept my proposal, I need to articulate clearly why my exhibition belongs there? Why should this exhibition happen here? How will space be used? Who is the intended audience? How will resources be justified?
To solve the problems, I began reflecting on Harold Lasswell’s 5W communication model(Lasswell, 1948).
Who
Say What
In Which Channel
To Whom
With What Effect
Furthermore, I started translating this into curatorial terms:
Who is speaking?
What is the central question?
Through what spatial and material form?
For which audience?
And what kind of impact do I hope to create?
⚖️Two Ideas for The Project
My current project inspired by Bao Rong’s Pink Roundabout, a continuously rotating pink installation. The meaning of this work lies in bodily politics, fluid gender, and the fluidity of materials. Consequently, I have conceived two different plans for my own curatorial project.
PINK ROUNDABOUT(2024)
Bao Rong
London
W170 x L170 x H150 cm
PVC fabric, wire, mesh tube, toys, yoga ball, glass, rotate plate
1.Endless Circulation/ Rotating
#rotation #mechanical motion #looping systems #guided movement
Looking for other art works about cycles of consumption, desire, pleasure… Time goes on, but the Earth rotating, water recycle system..things keep moving yet structurally stuck/ rotating.
Consumer culture, commodified happiness and the feeling of “living in a bubble.” Like scrolling endlessly, shopping for pleasure, or participating in entertainment systems. Comfort, softness and playfulness function as a kind of trap, make people stuck… etc.
I am interested in rotation not only as physical movement, but as a structural condition of contemporary life. We are constantly moving, scrolling, consuming, working, yet often feel stuck within invisible systems.
(Concept sketch for exhibition layout, sketched by Xiaobao Ye)
I am developing this into an exhibition structured around a one-way circular route. The audience would physically move in loops, guided through rotating installations and looping video works, mirroring systems of consumption and desire. My exhibition asks all the audience one question: Are we progressing, or simply circulating?
2.Fluid Gender/combines gender, organs, and different materials/ form a body/ body politics
#boundaries of material fluidity #mutability #the concept of material gender.
Looking for the works about Gender/body politics.
Reference:
Lasswell, Harold D. 1948. “The Structure and Function of Communication in Society.” In The Communication of Ideas, edited by Lyman Bryson, 37–51. New York: Harper & Row.
https://www.baorongstudio.com/portfolio-collections/floating/pink-roundabout
