As part of the research phase for a comprehensive retrospective of a prominent Southern Californian media artist, Beatriz da Costa, part of The Getty's Pacific Standard Time Initiative's Art & Science Collide, I designed the syllabus and programming for a public study group called A Preemptive Study. The study group can be thought of as an experiment in so-called citizen curating, a curatorial approach that pushes back at the model of the museum as a custodian of sacred artifacts held in the public trust.
A Preemptive Study spanned the course of eight months in which twenty-two researchers, selected from an open-call process, and I immersed ourselves in the historical field in which Beatriz da Costa rose in prominence, specifically the tactical media art scene that spanned the last decade of the twentieth century into the first decade of the twenty-first. Members came from diverse backgrounds, from the sciences to the humanities to those who simply wished to participate in the preliminary research that is central to the curatorial process.
Members studied a host of issues that pervade the artist’s essays such as the public accessibility of science, the politics of technology, and the state of the modern university. We invited guest speakers to gain insight into da Costa’s personal and professional life. And finally we produced original scholarly visitor aids that aim to contextualize the historical artifacts held in the ultimate exhibition.
A Preemptive Study spanned the course of eight months in which twenty-two researchers, selected from an open-call process, and I immersed ourselves in the historical field in which Beatriz da Costa rose in prominence, specifically the tactical media art scene that spanned the last decade of the twentieth century into the first decade of the twenty-first. Members came from diverse backgrounds, from the sciences to the humanities to those who simply wished to participate in the preliminary research that is central to the curatorial process.
Members studied a host of issues that pervade the artist’s essays such as the public accessibility of science, the politics of technology, and the state of the modern university. We invited guest speakers to gain insight into da Costa’s personal and professional life. And finally we produced original scholarly visitor aids that aim to contextualize the historical artifacts held in the ultimate exhibition.
