Shedhalle

‘Curatorial practice as we see it has to bid farewell to the idea of ‘exhibition spaces’ as places where contemporary art is merely presented and instead discover and invent new paths and locations for art. The conceptual and performative redefinition of the idea of ‘exhibiting’ has long been a focal point of the Shedhalle. It is this search for experimental forms of ‘presentation’ which we wish to continue.’

‘However, we prefer a slower approach by means of exhibition forms that allow for long-term projects with emphasis on content by dividing them into chapters, stages, or works ‘in progress’: “The mental comma instead of the full-stop“.

Working with Shedhalle is a critical piece of investigation for my proposed project. Examining their methods of ‘works in progress’, its ‘in between’ status or “the mental comma instead of the full-stop” are key points and are critical metaphors for today’s working conditions in cultural production. What do these methods signify ? What are the potential dialougues or networks that can be created during the time of work in progress process with the internet, time, distance, space, content and/or archives in mind. There are immeadiate transparenecies, problematics or natural processes that are important to the language of ‘works in progress’, but these areas are also spaces for redifining evidences in cultural production. Cultural production is work in progress in itself or evolutionary – it is participative, we are in essence in cultural production all the time by progress and process, which by transparency and theory the aesthetics of Shedhalle are ideal.

Research and Experience

There are a few main parts of Shedhalle I investigated – the Manifesto, Online Archives 1994-2007, Collaborative Practices Archives and briefly their space set up. I wanted to approach my investigations and research as experimetal as Shedhalle would. I went from traditional approaches to creative approaches, I studied some archives intently as they were very fascinating – a melange of websites, links, artist books, diy zines, leaflets, postcards, posters, cdroms, videos, magazines and books. However, I also created projects “in progress” that would utilize the archives in a more experimental way. Although, I had worked with different kinds of archives before for other projects I had never had the experience of working directly with a full volume of an organization’s archives like that. One really gets the full breadth of understanding different areas of curatorial practice and the presence of an archive is undeniably an integral and informative way to begin working and understanding a specific discourse. It allows one to have a reference point like a bibliography to a book, which for my own project I have realised its usefulness and created an “in progress’ archive for myself and for others who will be interested to work with me.