27 September 2019
Our Friday session started with an introduction to ‘Group Material’, and their approach to curating, as ‘The People’s Choice’, through crowd sourced exhibitions by the same title, organized by them. They questioned the origins and users of culture, creating products to empower people to define their own culture, instead of having it being imposed upon them.
Based on ‘Group Material’s’ innovative curatorial of ‘real objects’, we were asked to select, in groups of 4, twenty objects/images brought by our peers, from the V&A. We did this in 3 steps:
- We reflected upon procured objects, making notes on their qualities and possible narratives
- We discussed each object among our groups, making a cumulative impression for each ‘artefact’ in our collection
- We tried to link the different objects through a common narrative, and looked at different engaging ways of presenting the narrative through our ‘museum’.
We used text as a means of narrating a story connecting various objects. Nayana and Saskiyana wrote pieces of poetry to support the segments of the story, while Wooli created an ensemble with the items she had collected. I was interested in giving abstract captions for the objects, leading the audience from one to the next.
We ended up with some interactive elements like a spinning ‘arrow’ image representing the cycle of life, a fan to be flicked (Wooli’s temperature installation) and an identity tag which would be tugged at, representing issues of identity and expectation. It was interesting to note the audience’s reaction and response to our curation once the museum ‘opened’.
Visiting the museums curated by other groups revealed so many ingenious ways of classifying objects as well as, engaging an audience.
The exercise gave me the opportunity to engage with, and analyse objects at a deeper level. I also noticed how other groups analysed ‘my’ contributions.
From this curatorial exercise, I’d like to go back to my selected artefacts, and conduct a deeper study and classification based on possible narratives, contexts and methods of designing/making.
design factory 