»Stretching Materialities«: Closing an Exhibition-as-Fieldwork

March 24, 2022 - The half-year duration of the research process-based Stretching Materialities exhibition at Tieranatomisches Theater has come to an end. The last weeks were full of events, contrasting with the sluggish covid vibe that has plagued most of the exhibition. The pandemic did not seem to restrain much from the experimentation itself, however. Having a public yet intimate place to work, with opening times and visibility, translated into the strong sentiment of having a hub ready for docking new fast-paced projects, such as the Stretching Senses School, or the multiple performances and talks that bloomed nearing the end of the event. What is an exhibition-as-research? The multifarious experimentations to relate space to objects-in-process is part of what “curation” meant in the first place.

Experimenting with space, things, and people, the exhibition is an alchemical lab for the making of atmospheres conducive to astonishment, wonder, and knowledge. Bringing the right colors and the right arrangement together, under the right light, with the right timing, and with the right story, curating is an art and a science, as well as a boundary method where scientific and artistic disciplines can overlap and feed each other. Hosting a successful feast isn’t an easy feat: trial and error are part of the investigative endeavor.

Was it an exhibition-as-fieldwork or fieldwork-as-exhibition, or just exhibition-as-place-of-work perhaps? Twice during the last week, a team of DJ and VJ had a gig at the center of the exhibition space, with micro sounds and images captured from the environment: the performance »Scattered Diffusion« by Mascha Kobylenko & Siamend Darwesh was a perfect illustration of the concept of the exhibition. A portable microphone and a smartphone with a microscope add-on were handed out to the participants, wirelessly feeding the node-based mixing software of the two artists standing in the middle of the rotunda. The central round sky-light appliance served as a round projection screen for the images of textile, stone, hair, and many other textures explored by curious hands. Mascha was part of the five mediators that were hired to process our unruly research processes and help make them digestible to the visitors. Soon, members of that team came to us with new ideas for participative performances and installations. They participated in stretching the exhibition space and playing around with the boundary conditions of our curatorial experimentations.