Shifting Practices, Shifting Roles
Shifting Practices, Shifting Roles (2010) was a MAVIS Curatorial Project that took place at THE LAB, Dublin City Arts Office .The project set about discerning a conceptual modality by which to approach the curation of de-accesion panel pieces produced by the artistic duo the Desperate Optimists.
Working with contemporary muesological thinking put forward by Bruce Altshulers in his presentation; Shifting Practices, shifting roles, we moved to readdressed a conception of the art work as object of permanency and rather positioned within a process of continual reinterpretation.. As an art writer, curating the project, I was interested to explore a textual intervention based on the ideas of a new institutional framework. Project collaboration generated difference in opinion raising questions about the legitimacy any one solution to the installation of the panels. By exploiting this collaborative problematic a curatorial strategy was formulated. We performed the space by writing and typing of a myriad of possible ideas to curating the panels, as ideas were written they were crumpled and cast to the corner of the space. Casting aside paid reference to de-accession of the panels while acknowledging the unlimited reinterpretations latent within the life of the art work.
