Expanded Cinema: Curating Problems

Abstract

In the preservation and dissemination of the historical avant-garde through curatorial projects, the dialogue that occurs among different artistic media is often neglected.1 Despite the diversity within what is considered the avant-garde canon, one of the characteristics that tied together the movements within the historical avant-garde was how their experiments went beyond the scope of a single medium and instead built relationships of reciprocation between artistic expressions that are usually considered separate. In an attempt to challenge existing frameworks for creating and presenting art, the artists that were positioned in the peripheries of artistic genres looked beyond their own habits and traditions for progressive influence. Avant-garde artists communicated and collaborated with those who worked in other media, harnessing the porosity between distinct art forms for creative inspiration by integration, imitation, or usurpation. Arguably irreducible and resistant to empirical definition, such artistic dialogue has complicated archival and curatorial endeavors to categorize artistic practice in coherent and self-contained units. In consequence, this dialogue has often been neglected.2 Indeed, the practical dilemmas for curators are complex—how do we begin to arrange books, poems, theater, live performances, dance, film, and video, as well as indicate the conduits of their influence and interconnections, within a singular spatial framework? The possible solutions are manifold. Nevertheless, a complication emerges when we attempt to negotiate the preservation of works that were created to agitate precisely these concerns. How are we to curate art that was made with the purpose of resisting categorization and documentation?