Reading: Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Controversy - - PDF document

Reading: Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Controversy http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/controversy/ 10 minutes presentations of artworks and/or curatorial projects and the stages they are at together with scrapbooks. The presentation will be focused in particular on what will be your final project: the proposal of an exhibition to the Sabanci museum. The presentation will have the following requirements:

• Be 10 minutes long, you will be stopped at 10 minutes and asked questions;
• The presentation should be rehearsed;
• The audience (fictional, made of your colleagues) is composed of experts assessing

the suitability and conceptual validity of your artwork and/or exhibition project;

• Prepare ad hoc answers to possible questions and critiques you may feel could be

asked (both positive and challenging ones, prepare for the challenging ones);

• English is our second language, my personal experience in the past is that if I was

presenting ideas and I was not conveying an impression of professionalism and fluency in the language, people would struggle to follow my ideas and become less prone to value my proposal and work positively. Therefore pay attention to your presentation skills in a second language. In your presentation you may wish to focus on: 1. Fundamental concepts and inspirations; 2. Research and selection of materials: e.g. fabrics, pieces of frames you have selected for your photographs, feathers, rubbish, etc.; 3. Sketches of how you will assemble the exhibition; 4. Sketches of how you have re‐assessed the artworks/exhibition concepts according to the spaces we have visited so far; 5. How the artworks will be exhibited: e.g. photographs spread on the floor and covered in broken glass, photographs glued onto daily objects, on specially shaped walls, etc. (please provide details of how your work is innovative and original both in its approaches and usages of space); 6. You may wish to use 3d representations and ensure that the viewer has a short video in which you quickly show the ‘aesthetic innovative’ characteristics of your exhibit; 7. You may want to offer insight in how the space has changed your technical approach to the artwork: e.g. I shot a piece in studio, with blue light and at 800 iso, all choices determined by the conceptualization of the artwork and its contextual space. 8. How the captions will be if you will have any; 9. List which organizations you are thinking of asking for funding and support;

• 10. Will you have an artist’s talk or panel and who are the guests?;
• 11. How you will publicize the project;
• 12. Prepare a provisional budget.

You may want to provide the audience with a paper version of the presentation (paper folder of information ‐ PFI) that addresses other issues, e.g.:

• The conceptualization framework;

• The artwork’s recontextualization process.

My suggestion is to use the essay as the basis for this writing in support either of your artworks and/or your curatorial exhibition to be proposed to the Sabanci Museum, Kasa Gallery, Istanbul Modern or any other international venue. I would write it like an academic paper and/or a professional article. I will accept both for the final assessment. (The differences between the two are in the writing style and in less footnotes for the professional article, which does not mean a lack of bibliography. You will still have a literature review to write as a proof of your research skills.) (This is conceptual groundwork that you have already done during the course and is just a question of reframing it.) You may wish to have a literature review of the field, which in this case is like a bibliography that follows a brief paragraph or two of introduction to the area of study within which your artwork and/or curatorial strategy fits in. Either at the beginning or at the end of this folder of information you may want to have either your curatorial statement and/or your artist’s statement. The cover page of this paper presentation could be a picture of the artworks, of the exhibition proposed, a possible design of the poster, a word in an interesting font conceptually linked to your artwork/curatorial conceptualization, a color, or anything else you may see fit. The paper presentation should be closed with your Curriculum Vitae, no more than one to two pages max, and with your contact details. As an extra page you should have a SWOT analysis. http://www.creativepro.com/article/the‐art‐of‐business‐deploy‐the‐swot‐team‐ http://www.arts.qld.gov.au/publications/topics/market/targeting/swot‐analysis.html http://www.arts.qld.gov.au/publications/casestudies/index.html The deadline for putting together this presentation and material is the beginning of April. Assessment: all elements of this portfolio will be analyzed together, keeping in mind that is mid‐term and therefore I do not expect flawless work. You will have time to refine it for the final presentation in June. Regarding the writing part you should be at a good level now, since we have started the paper at the very beginning of the semester. FAQS Is this our only final assignment? Yes, the PFI and the presentation are going to be your only

• assignment. You will present this work in a session at the Sabanci Museum at the end of the

semester.

It will be assessed and marked at the end of the semester? Throughout the semester, the final mark will be in June. How many assignments do we have to write? Only one, the PFI (paper folder of information which is constituted in the major part by the paper, accompanied by a curatorial project presented in 3 different spaces, sketches and/or artworks.) Do I have to create new artworks? Yes and please do not present work you have been doing for other courses unless it is agreed with the tutor from the other course and myself. Does my final project have to be for the Sabanci Museum only? I would prefer if you tried to be challenged by the difficulties presented by the mission statement of the institution and the space. I am aware that some of you have highly unsuitable work and it would be better for you not to focus on the Sabanci Museum but on other museums. Even in these few (one or two) particular cases, I would still want you to write two pages on how you would adapt the theme to the museum and the struggle you face in this adaptation process, although the main focus of your project is an exhibition in an alternative space. Should you wish to target your final proposal to more than one museum, beside the Sabanci Museum, you are at liberty of doing so. It will be a bit more work, but you will have all the ground work done. Of course I will consider in this case in the final assessment the quantity and level of work you have done. This would actually offer me the possibility of evaluating how able you are to respond to the challenges of different spaces and mission statements and would provide you with valuable experience in evaluating your own artworks and curatorial strategies according to opportunities available. Conclusions I would like to stress that having gone through this process you will have a portfolio developed by the end of the semester that is made of:

• Artworks/curatorial proposal changing according to place;
• A flawless presentation;
• A description pack of your artworks/curatorial proposal;
• An artist and/or curator’s statement;
• A scrapbook/artist book that you could use as artwork in itself to be exhibited (real

space or online) and/or as your more personal portfolio for gallery curators.