Dunya Kalantery

My dissertation set out to consider participatory art practice as a model for conceiving a contemporary curatorial practice.  It did so in the acknowledgement of curating as a mode of public making, and in the acknowledgement of participatory art practice as a mode of imagining and creating new possibilities and processes of being. It considered the functions that allow and inhibit participatory art practice in creating transformative experiences, and hoped to learn from these while taking into consideration the implications that the role of a curator as institutor can have. In doing so, it  proposed a model for curating that can occupy and engage flexible and vulnerable subject positions: with the aim of allowing the public that is created to occupy the same such positions.

In the formation of this argument, this dissertation considered the functions that allow and inhibit participatory art practice via three case studies: an account of Rafał Zajko’s ‘Curator’s Performance’, at Adjacent Practice Colliding Daily: Acme Project Space (2013), including a personal recollection as curator and subject, and an interview with the artist; an account of ‘Museum Restaurant Dinner Series’ as part of Meshac Gaba’s Museum of Contemporary African Art: Tate Modern (2013); and an interview with Alistair Hudson, Deputy Director Grizedale Arts Centre.