Curatorial Practice Embedded in the City – A Case Study of Curating New Genre Public Art in a Festival Context

Abstract

This research investigates curatorial practices of new genre public art in a festival context. The aim of the research is to understand and produce new knowledge about recent and current practices of curating after the social turn of the arts, and contribute to the conversation about redefining curating and its current practice. The research explores the role of the curator in the production process of new genre public art and analyses how curatorial practice engages with the complexities of the urban context. The research is multidisciplinary and multi-methodological: drawing on art research and theory, cultural policy and cultural studies. Methodologically, it is a qualitative multiple case study. The cases are four art festivals: Metropolis (Copenhagen, Denmark), Steirischer Herbst (Graz, Austria), IHME Festival (Helsinki, Finland) and PLACCC Festival (Budapest, Hungary). The empirical data consists of interviews, case introductions, observations, photographs, festival catalogues and websites. The method of analysis is qualitative content analysis. The key findings of the research can be summarised in three points. First, curatorial practices of new genre public art in a festival context can be defined as a performative and non-representational practice embedded in the city. As a practice, it is thoroughly dialogical and based on an ongoing dialogue between the curator, artists and the city. Secondly, there are three political agendas of the studied festivals: the art world, the socio-political, and the urban agenda. Although overlapping, they demonstrate that in the festival context, curatorial practice reaches to these three areas because it is informed by the festival’s political agendas. The third key result is that the curators’ aims to create encounters holds a potential for politics. These encounters, immersed in the everyday, connect curatorial practice to ideas of potential, possibility and experimentation.