Cultural analysis / Art Analysis and Reading / Exhibition policy

Professor : Michela Sacchetto

summary of contents :

The course proposes to articulate historical and theoretical tools to analyze and question the modern principle of art exhibition. It will be a question of situating in a historical and theoretical perspective the cultural presuppositions emanating from different exhibition practices, of questioning zones of porosities between making art and exhibiting art, of convening experiments that go beyond the imperatives of programming and staging and staging exhibitions, and of questioning the practices of reconstitution and revival of past exhibitions seized as objects or as historical speeches.

In the first quarter we will mainly focus on exhibitions that are singular in their inclusion in a historical and cultural discourse, focusing on the many practices and discourses that are peripheral to institutions. In the second quarter we will try to identify specific paradigms that can accompany us in an understanding of the issues of "making exhibition" of art and "making art" of exhibition. Among these paradigms: the use and shaping of exhibition devices (base, window, frame, wall, table, reproduction, web page etc...); the space-time relationship introduced by the experience of the exhibition (duration, journey, sections, continuity and chronological discontinuities etc...); the production of a collective and social environment through exposure (the production of knowledge, the configuration of memory and culture, the representation of temporary artistic and social communities, etc.); the implementation of mediation ceremonies (the plan, the cartel, the invitation card, the guided tour, etc.).

method :

As a working material, depending on the current ephemeral status of exhibitions, we will address the "spare parts" of these: exhibition visuals, exhibition videos, virtual tours, catalogue(s), mediation tools, plans and protocols / instructions for the assembly of works, speeches of artists and institutions, feedback from the public and the press etc.... We will follow the process of systematically problematizing these "spare parts" and thereby question their power to send us back to this absent object which is the exhibition and to lead us to imagine its futures.

Invitations to artists, theorists and exhibition practitioners are considered, depending on the students' interests and the course and things.

The evaluation will be based on a written test in the first quarter and a collective and fictional writing work on one or more "spare parts" for exposure in the second quarter.

Mandatory course for all Masters: Art Practice - Critical Tools, Simultaneous Arts and Context (MA), Narratives and Experimentation / Speculative Narration, Politics and Experimentation graphique→ Artistic Practices and Scientific Complexity and Design and Politics of the Multiple (MA).