Artistic and Curatorial Research: Institutional, Urban and Digital Epistemologies
The ARCADE project explores the relationships between artistic and curatorial research practices in the context of contemporary environmental, technological and social crises.
It is carried out in partnership with the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (NABA) in Milan, and arises from the need for critical reflection on the relationship between artistic and curatorial research practices in the context of the planetary ecological, technological and social crisis. Starting from the recent theoretical literature on the "curatorial turn" and the paradigm of the "artist-as-curator", the project focuses on the research of hybrid, artistic-curatorial research models that are considered through three complementary spatial-organizational types: gallery space, urban space and digital space. The aim of the project is to explore how different epistemologies are shaped in the relations between curatorial and artistic practices, and within the three spatial-organizational types, and how their affinities and translational tensions produce specific forms of "situated knowledge". The research connects the methods of the humanities with the methods of artistic research, and the emphasis is also on the development of a digital platform that will unify documentation and audiovisual materials, which will test a new model of collective research at the intersection of digital humanities and arts. The activities of the project include international field research, a series of "exhibition prototypes" developed with students, presentations at international conferences, publication of peer-reviewed scientific articles, organization of a final conference with partner institutions, and editing of a thematic proceedings.
Project objective
In the national context, ARCADE is the first systematic research of this type, while in the international context, the project is related to transdisciplinary initiatives that reflect on the liminal positions between science and art, institutional and independent action, affect and exactness. At the same time, the project responds to the institutional need to strengthen the capacities of artistic research and education through the development of new curricular models, the internationalization of research practices and the implementation of innovative methods in theoretical and artistic teaching. This actively contributes to the strategic goals of the Academy of Fine Arts, transdisciplinarity and international cooperation, but also to the professional need to articulate the criteria for evaluating artistic research within a primarily scientifically oriented academic context. Finally, the project aims at academic inclusion and connection of contemporary curatorial practices, which in the national context are developed mostly outside the academic system.