En-acting voices: Rhetorical platforms, public speaking and curatorial discourse

本提案旨在质疑“修辞生产”（O’neill, 2015）在过去十年中在当代艺术策展中所扮演的角色，这反映在策展学术和策展实践中。它不仅指支撑策展话语兴起的丰富的话语形式——从谈话和访谈到第一人称叙述和传记叙述——而且还指对策展的程序化议程的理论探究，这些议程越来越多地将这种实践视为一种特殊的说话模式(Sheikh, 2007; Rogoff, 2013；Butler and Lehrer, 2016)和策展人作为在当代艺术领域建立公共言论空间的主要人物。尽管在过去的十年中，策展话语平台占据了突出地位，但这些平台仍然没有得到充分的分析，同时，它对当代艺术所经历的双年化过程的影响，尤其是在其中讨论的关键主题上，例如，全球化，生态危机，非殖民化等。因此，如果我们想要了解当代艺术、策展和全球政治之间的联系，就有必要研究产生修辞作品的策展场所。在策展实践的例子中，公共演讲据称是调和策展人的独特性与社区实例化，我的目标是重新评估策展声音的普遍性，以理解策展话语在过去十年中在当代艺术中所扮演的角色。我的分析旨在揭示诸如第14届文献展的“方法”广播、蛇形马拉松或“发声的行为”展览等项目是如何在支持策展的话语维度的同时，将演讲作为实现其策展目的的一种手段。这种修辞范式的出现与一系列概念相对应，策展学已将这些概念纳入其研究领域；例如，责任和“响应性”（Butler and Athanasiou, 2013），表演性(Lind (ed.), 2012；Lind, 2007, 2010)，持续过程（O'Neill and Doherty, 2011）以及教学法（Graham et al., 2016）。这些反思也催生了对政治、符号学和性欲经济的主要策展方法，这些方法实例化了一个社区，后者通常在策展话语中被称为选区（Byrne (ed.), 2018）。通过制定这样的选区，策展实践将公共演讲作为传达社区情感的主要工具。在KORO、卑尔根大会（Bergen Assembly）或folkestone三年展等活动中，公共演讲既是学科反思的范例，也是演讲的策展人，也是构成“社区”的主要结构（Christ et al., 2015）。这种矛盾心理很好地总结了双年展和类似倡议的最终议程，揭示了社区概念中隐含的政治立场，而社区概念需要一个媒介实例——策展人的实例。更有趣的是，这种公共演讲的本质本身，既是以当代艺术的名义召集选民的前提，也是其结果，它能够赋予这些人真正的政治地位——通常暗示传统形式的社区缺乏政治真实性。

The present proposal aims to interrogate the role "rhetorical production" (O'Neill, 2015) hasplayed in contemporary art curating over the past decade, as reflected in curatorialscholarship and conveyed in curatorial practice. It refers not only to the rich array ofdiscursive formats underpinning the rise of curatorial discourse --from talks and interviews tofirst-person narratives and biographical accounts-- but, also, to theoretical inquiries into theprogrammatic agenda of curating, which have increasingly considered this practice as aparticular mode of speaking (Sheikh, 2007; Rogoff, 2013; Butler and Lehrer, 2016) and thecurator as the main figure enabling a common space for speech in the sphere ofcontemporary art. Despite the prominence of curatorial discursive platforms during the lastten years, these have remained under-analysed and, with it, its impact on the process ofbiennalisation undergone by contemporary art, not least on the crucial themes debatedtherein, for instance, globalization, ecological crisis, decolonization, etc. Examining thecuratorial sites generating rhetorical production becomes therefore a need if we want tounderstand the nexus between contemporary art, curating and global politics.Drawing on examples of curatorial practice where public speech is purportedly reconcilingthe singularity of the curator with community instantiation, I aim to reassess thepervasiveness of the curatorial voice to understand the role curatorial discourse has playedin contemporary art during the last decade. My analysis intends to unpack how projects suchas documenta 14's "methexic" radio, the Serpentine Marathons, or the exhibition "Acts ofVoicing" have privileged speaking as a means to accomplish their curatorial purpose whilebracing the discursive dimension of curating.The emergence of this rhetorical paradigm has corresponded to a series of notions whichcurating has incorporated into its field of inquiry; such as, responsibility and "responsiveness"(Butler and Athanasiou, 2013), performativity (Lind (ed.), 2012; Lind, 2007, 2010), durationalprocesses (O'Neill and Doherty, 2011) as well as pedagogy (Graham et al., 2016). Thesereflections have also nurtured major curatorial approaches to the political, semiotic andlibidinal economies that instantiate a community, the latter often labelled in curatorialdiscourse as constituency (Byrne (ed.), 2018). In and by enacting such constituencies,curatorial practice has privileged public speaking as the main vehicle conveying thosemoments of community. In initiatives such as KORO, Bergen Assembly or the FolkestoneTriennial public address has operated both as the paradigm for disciplinary reflection oncurating, being the curator who speaks, and as the main structure that constitutes the"community" (Christ et al., 2015). This ambivalence, which summarizes well the ultimateagenda biennales and analog initiatives are set out to accomplish, gives away the politicalstances implied in a notion of community that requires, to become such, a mediatinginstantiation -the curator's. Still more interesting is the nature itself of this kind of publicspeaking, both a prerequisite for and a result of assembling constituencies in the name ofcontemporary art, which is able to endow the same with genuine political status -usuallymaking implicit that conventional forms of community lack political authenticity.