Abstract (short paper)

Keywords: Curatorial, material-discursive, sentience, agency, media art, curating, material turn, curatorial turn

This paper discusses the processual ontological transitions of the curatorial after Paul O’Neil’s “curatorial turn”. Studying the curatorial from its discursive conception to a new materialist approach, it explores what can change when the curatorial is considered both a discourse and a practice, with no hierarchical distinctions or separations between them. To envisage the curatorial as a material-discursive practice is to admit that matter and meaning emerge together and one does not exist in the same way in the absence of the other. In this epistemology, the question changes from what the curatorial is to what the curatorial does, considering it as a mode of production of different kinds of knowledges.

• Renata Azevedo Moreira is a writer, researcher and curator. She is a PhD candidate in Communication Studies at Université de Montréal, Canada, with a co-direction in Art History at Université du Québec à Montréal. Her research focuses on the exhibition of media arts, in particular on the dialogue established between the curatorial and the processual creation of the artwork. Between 2019-2020, Renata was an author in residency on the Duologie programming year at the artist-run centre Dare-Dare. She has also produced essays and analytical texts for Centre Skol and Studio XX, where she is respectively a member of the board of directors and of the programming committee. Renata regularly publishes exhibition reviews in her column L’art au rendez-vous on Baronmag.com, and her texts can additionally be found in journals such as Esse arts +opinions, Commposite and Cahier d’École.