Update: From Living History to Visual Culture Theory

 Due to sickness this past Monday, my first project update arrives a week later than my peers. I am actually glad that it worked out this way as prior to the submission of the first draft of the lit review I likely would have focused the uncertainty in my ability to actually complete that assignment, having never done one before. In the wake of our first submission, I am reflecting on some gaps in my project that are included in my thesis but not supported by the exhibition at present. For example, an exhibition in the University Gallery is advantageous for numerous reasons. The fact that it's a white cube type of infrastructure lends itself well to the problem I address through my criticism of Modernist curatorial methodology. Additionally, it also functions as an event space so audiences with varying levels of investment in and understanding of art exhibitions will experience my subversive method of curatorial praxis. However, I do not have access to the institutional documentation that supports that gallery space and it does not have an interpretive development policy in the way that art museums ideally would. In this way, the gallery space is almost a transplant environment and my exhibit analogous to a traveling show. Communal response should directly influence RIT Archives institutional management approaches. This presents a unique challenge as visitors are disassociated from the Archives central collection and exhibit spaces when interacting with my exhibit. I'm currently mulling over a tagging interactive that could be utilized by the art team once the exhibit comes down.

The most significant change my project has underwent since I last posted is that I am no longer primarily pulling from living history and am instead am focusing on different visual culture theorists like Eileen Hooper-Greenhill, Grant Kester, Amelia Jones, and Tracey Warr. Feminist performance art remains one of the primary arbidges between passive and active viewership, and for the most part the project has stayed fundamentally the same. I'm looking forward to further developing curatorial text for my exhibition in the coming weeks.