Theater, Garden, Bestiary: A Materialist History of Exhibitions

This volume gathers and expands upon the results of the research project “Theater, Garden, Bestiary: A Materialist History of Exhibitions,” held at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, and proposes a history of exhibitions sourced from a wide corpus reaching beyond the framework of art institutions. It undertakes a transdisciplinary history at the nexus of art history, science studies, and philosophy, exploring the role the exhibition played in the construction of the conceptual categories of modernity, and outlines a historiographical model that conceptualizes the exhibition as both an aesthetic and an epistemic site.
Contributors
Etienne Chambaud, Elitza Dulguerova, Anselm Franke, Tristan Garcia, Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni, Dorothea von Hantelmann, Yuk Hui, Pierre Huyghe, Sami Khatib, Jeremy Lecomte, Stéphane Lojkine, Rafael Mandressi, Vincent Normand, Peter Osborne, Filipa Ramos, Juliane Rebentisch, João Ribas, Pamela Rosenkranz, Anna-Sophie Springer, Lucy Steeds, Olivier Surel, Etienne Turpin, Kim West, Charles Wolfe
Tristan Garcia is a philosopher and writer. He codirected the research project Theater, Garden, Bestiary: A Materialist History of Exhibitions at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne (2015–17). His academic publications include: Form and Object: A Treatise on Things and The Life Intense: A Modern Obsession. In 2008 he won the Prix de Flore for his first novel: Hate: A Romance.
Vincent Normand is an art historian, writer, and occasional curator. He teaches at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, where he codirected the research project Theater, Garden, Bestiary: A Materialist History of Exhibitions (2015–17). He is codirector and coeditor of the research platform and journal Glass Bead. He has curated exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, Paris; LABOR, Mexico City; David Roberts Art Foundation, London; and elsewhere.
Lucy Steeds is Reader in Art Theory and Exhibition History at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London. She is coeditor of The Curatorial Conundrum: What to Study? What to Research? What to Practice? and How Institutions Think (both published by the MIT Press).
Filipa Ramos is editor-in-chief of art-agenda and a Lecturer in Experimental Film at Kingston University and Moving Image at Central Saint Martins, London. She is the author of Lost and Found: Crisis of Memory in Contemporary Art (2009).
Vincent Normand is an art historian, writer, and occasional curator. He teaches at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, where he codirected the research project Theater, Garden, Bestiary: A Materialist History of Exhibitions (2015–17). He is codirector and coeditor of the research platform and journal Glass Bead. He has curated exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, Paris; LABOR, Mexico City; David Roberts Art Foundation, London; and elsewhere.