A critical examination of the 'Public Programme' within contemporary art.

从信息性到非正式性，从实践性到表演性，当代艺术机构的公共项目包含的内容似乎是无限的。尽管这种做法越来越引人注目，但它在制度和话语中仍然处于次要地位。然而，我认为它为探索公共性提供了一个独特的有利位置，因为它是由艺术博物馆及其扩展空间——当代艺术机构、艺术学校和表演节——以一种不同于展览制作和其他形式的策展的方式产生的。在这篇论文中，我提出了这样的问题：公共项目的空间能够告诉我们，在当代艺术机构中，公共意味着什么？我的观点是，公共性既是空间上的，也是时间上的；我们必须观察和量化自己和他人的感受、反应和行动，才能真正理解它。通过酷儿理论、戏剧和表演研究的结合，我更全面地关注公共的感官、情感和感觉维度，并在“公共项目”的构建中发现抽象的、单一的公众。挑战策展话语经常求助的无处不在的公共性空间隐喻，然后我主张将公共性作为新兴事物的另一种理解。我对“公开化”的理解来自于艺术博物馆，以及它是如何以一种相当不舒服的方式与公共性联系在一起的，此外，我还仔细阅读了我策划或参加的活动中让我感到不舒服、尴尬或不确定如何回应的特定时刻。我的发现在一个名为“尴尬的阶段：公共程序员的私人研讨会”（2018-19）的系列中被重新付诸实践。邀请参与者分享他们作为程序员和观众的双重角色的不安时刻，我分析了他们分享的轶事，以回答我最后的研究问题：将公共性重新定义为一个成为的过程，会对我们对当代艺术机构公共项目的理解产生什么影响？这篇论文认为，接受公共性带来的不适，是为了重新思考公共项目的空间，不再把公共性视为理所当然。

From the informational to the informal, the practical to the performative, what acontemporary art institution's public programme includes is seemingly limitless.Despite the increasing visibility of this practice, it remains side-lined in institutionsand discourse. Yet, I argue it offers a unique vantage point from which to explorepublicness, as it is produced by the art museum and its extended spaces - thecontemporary art institution, art school and performance festival - in a mannerdistinct from exhibition making and other forms of the curatorial. I ask in this thesis:what can the space of the public programme tell us about what it means to becomepublic in the contemporary art institution?It is my contention that publicness is both spatially and temporally constructed; wemust observe and quantify the feelings, responses, actions of ourselves and othersto truly understand it. Through a combination of queer theory, theatre andperformance studies, I attend more fully to the sensuous, affective and feltdimensions of publicness, and trouble the abstract, singular public found in theconstruction 'public programme'. Challenging pervasive spatial metaphors ofpublicness that curatorial discourses often have recourse to, I then argue for analternative understanding of publicness as an emergent becoming.My understanding of 'becoming public(s)' emerges from the art museum and how ithas been tied to publicness in rather uncomfortable ways, alongside close readingsof specific moments during events I have programmed or attended that left mefeeling uncomfortable, awkward, or uncertain how to respond. My findings are takenback into practice in a series called That Awkward Stage: Private Workshops forPublic Programmers (2018-19). Inviting participants to share moments of discomfortin their double role as programmer and audience, I analyse anecdotes shared toanswer my final research question: what could reframing publicness as a process ofbecoming do to our understanding of the public programme in the contemporary artinstitution? This thesis argues for embracing the discomfort around publicness as away to rethink the space of the public programme in ways that no longer takebecoming public for granted.