On April 23rd we conducted our studio visits with an emphasis on discussing work without props and writing project proposals for Delft id11. On the 24th Simon Ferdinando from Amsterdam was our guest along with Paul O’Neill from Bristol, UK. Simon used his postal route
to derive our way through Amsterdam West and along the way we will considered the nature and textuality of the invisible city, Situationist Movement, Spinoza and postcodes. We then arrived at Smart Project Space, viewed the exhibition there Endless Installation: A Ghost Story for Adults organised by PSWAR, and then Paul O’Neill lectured on curation, leading up to the contemporary position of artist-curator. Most of us had seen his previous show at Smart, Coalesce: Happenstance, which is ‘a result and a product of a long period of the demystification of art’s mediation processes. Whilst it denounces the position of the curator as a master planner, it is intended as a reflection upon how the re-configuration of curatorial praxis can be made apparent within the final exhibition-form.’ (Smart Papers, 10/01-22/02/2009).

Paul is the editor of Curating Subjects, an anthology of new curatorial writing that documents the inter-dependent relationships between the curatorial past, present, and speculative futures which is being reprinted! and he donated a copy to the DAI library. Other reading assignments: Jens Hoffman’s text: The art of curating and the curating of art.