Talking Contemporary Curating

by Terry Smith

ICI ANNOUNCES TALKING CONTEMPORARY CURATING BY TERRY SMITH

 

CAPTURING THE CURRENT STATE OF CURATORIAL DISCOURSE THROUGH CONVERSATIONS WITH THE WORLD’S LEADING CURATORS AND ART HISTORIANS

SECOND PUBLICATION IN THE BEST-SELLER SERIES “PERSPECTIVES IN CURATING”

New York, NY, October 20, 2015 – Independent Curators International (ICI) announces Talking Contemporary Curating, the second publication in ICI’s “Perspectives in Curating” series, dedicated to offering timely reflections by curators, art historians, critics, and artists on emergent debates in curatorial practice.

Talking Contemporary Curating is a compilation of conversations between art historian Terry Smith and 12 leading international curators, art historians, and theorists deeply immersed in reflecting upon the demands of their respective practices; the contexts of exhibition making; and the platforms through which art may be made public. The contributors include Zdenka Badovinac, Claire Bishop, Zoe Butt, Germano Celant, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Okwui Enwezor, Boris Groys, Jens Hoffmann, Mami Kataoka, Maria Lind, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Mari Carmen Ramírez. Read together, they present a fascinating picture of how curating can contribute to a broader understanding of our contemporary world.

The conversations are framed by Smith’s opening chapter “The Discourse” in which he tracks the advent of a self-reflexive “discursive” era in curating. In the last decade, curators have developed a language specific to their field that has contributed to further shaping curatorial practice itself.

In her Preface, series editor Kate Fowle describes Smith’s work as “discourse in the making, emerging from talking, spurred by the ‘doings’ of twelve practitioners who are immersed in the potential of curating now.”

The exchanges in this publication build upon, question and challenge Smith’s premises in Thinking Contemporary Curating, the first-ever book-length text to explore what is distinctive about curatorial thought, published by ICI in 2012. In the two years following, Smith conducted interviews, discussions, and research involving colleagues in the field, inviting them to respond to the publication. This research took Smith from the U.S., to Europe, to Japan and beyond, and led to the conversations in Talking Contemporary Curating.

6.25 x 8.5 inches, Paperback
Published by Independent Curators International (ICI), 2015 Distribution: Distributed Art Publishers (DAP) – $19.95