Exhibiting new materialisms and new realisms : the influence of contemporary anti-anthropocentric philosophies on 21st century curatorial practices

Ravaglia, Valentina (2024) Exhibiting new materialisms and new realisms : the influence of contemporary anti-anthropocentric philosophies on 21st century curatorial practices. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

Recent anti-anthropocentric developments in philosophy, challenging the presumption that humanity occupies a focal and privileged position in the cosmos, have exerted an undeniable influence on artistic and curatorial practices, particularly in the past fifteen years. However, the exact nature and scope of these exchanges is yet to be clearly defined and systematically examined. This thesis traces a partial history of this phenomenon as a confluence of exhibition-making, art theory and aspects of philosophies that can be grouped under the rubrics of ‘new materialisms’ and ‘new realisms’, pinpointing core themes, evolving approaches, misunderstandings and underlying problems along the way. In doing so, I posit that by channelling art, science and philosophy as complementary ways of understanding the world, curatorial practices can play an essential role in revealing the mechanisms through which humans perceive and process reality. My argument is that the category of ‘the curatorial’ — a function of knowledge transmission — plays a key role in reframing one’s position as a ‘subject’ tracing imaginary boundaries around ‘objects’. The core chapters of this thesis presents a number of case studies, beginning with dOCUMENTA(13) (2012) as an especially notable event in this partial history of ‘new materialist exhibitions’, followed by the exhibition Les Immatériaux (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1985) as a key early example and focussing on a number of representative exhibitions taking place in Europe and the US in the 2000s and 2010s, in parallel with an analysis of critical responses and other relevant texts. These include Making things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2005) and Speculations on Anonymous Materials (Museum Fridericianum, Kassel, 2013). Special attention is given to the curatorial activities of philosophers Bruno Latour and Robin Mackay/Urbanomic, as well as to the influence of Object-Oriented Ontology. Two theoretical chapters provide the foundations for a neomaterialist curatorial theory, beginning with the redefinition of a number of fundamental terms, such as ‘sapience’, ‘art’ and 'the curatorial’. The conclusion extrapolates a number of observations and guiding principles for curatorial practices to contribute to a reframing of humanity’s position, and to do so in ways that can relate directly to urgent matters of ecology and politics. Keywords: the Curatorial, New Materialisms, New Realisms, Speculative Realism, exhibition-making, transdisciplinarity

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