28 Mar 2017

Call for Papers Bibliothèque Kandinsky Summer University 4th edition

Call for papers

The Bibliothèque Kandinsky's Summer University is a Musée National d'Art Moderne/Centre Pompidou research program installed on the very premises of the museum. It focuses on modern and contemporary art primary sources: archives, documentary materials (both written and visual), interviews, records as well as new forms of artistic appropriation and documentary production. Interdisciplinary in format, the Summer University brings together young researchers: historians, art historians, anthropologists, sociologists, artists, critics and curators which share a collective reflection with art professionals and various scholars around primary source materials. It will be held in the museum's space all around a conference table acting at the same time as an exhibition device displaying documents. The space will be invested with facsimiles, reproductions and archival material presented during the working sessions. Several writing workshops will rhythm the 10-days program. The editorial production of this material will be assembled under the format of a journal - 'Journal de l'Université d'été de la Bibliothèque Kandinsky'- both as a critical anthology registering the debates during the sessions and as a graphic experimental production.

For its fourth edition, the Bibliotheque Kandinsky's Summer University will address one of the most complex topics of recent museum studies: the layered history of living art collections and their integration in the museum. This edition echoes the research program « Exposer l'histoire d'une collection: le Musée des Artistes Vivants » [Exhibiting the history of a collection: le Musée des Artistes Vivants] conducted in the framework of Laboratoire d'Excellence « Créations, Arts, Patrimoine » which focuses on the long creation of French national collections of 'living art'. The scope of this new edition of the Summer University will be to study, in the light of documentary resources, the ways of 'collection – making'.
Built upon recent writings in the history of collections and museum studies, the Summer University will interrogate practices and procedures at stake in the laboratory of contemporary art collections and the various negotiations at work in the transition towards the public space of the exhibition.
The mechanisms of 'collection-making' will be investigated under different methodological strategies and historiographical frames, through comparative readings and opening up to international contexts. A particular attention will be given to innovative projects of 'collection-making', both in content construction and in political, economic and institutional assembling. What are the contemporary dynamics of collecting and their multiple exchanges within the public space of the museum? How can we assess their impact onto the public or private institutions which capitalize them and exhibit the artistic heritage of contemporary art? Recent reflections concerning the necessary responsibilities that have to guide and motivate museum policies and heritage constructions enhance the urgency of this debate.
The Summer University will offer the platform for debate regarding the following topics: acquisition policies, parallel practices of collection-making, strategies of display and contextual narratives, alternative collections and their link to the collective action of multiple 'collecting players' (for example, in the cases of community collecting and participative collection-making), debates around deaccessioning practices and restitution policies, itinerary and ephemeral ways of collecting.
This critique, applied on the very body of 'living' art in the space of an institution bound to preserve and exhibit it, has to take into account not only the material history of the objects, but also other active relations in the knowledge- and value- production: terminologies, institutional economies, social circulations, evaluation criteria, conventions. Documentary resources and practices will underpin different ways of building and secure the status of the work of art in its collection environment.
Collecting living art inevitably brings up the question of a problematic anticipation of the collection in its future projection. How can we integrate the prospective discourse and the opening up to future creativities and how can we measure up their potentials in the making of a collection?
The Bibliothèque Kandinsky Summer University 2017 edition will give the opportunity to put sources 'at work' and to bring together young researchers, curators and artists around documentary material – for some part largely unseen. It invites researchers from all horizons to bring up their source material and to put it into debate, through historical creative and inventive writing.

The main topics application dossiers are expected to address are:
- Models/ Case studies of museums collecting 'living' art and their role in transforming modern and contemporary museums;
- Alternative ways of institutional collection-making and diffusion of contemporary art;
- Artist-projects and the rereading of the history of collections
- Economies and policies of 'collection-making'; mediation and sociality practices between the public and the private sphere;
- Value construction, documentary environments, ways of assigning aesthetic value, terms and norms; referential documents
- Innovative collectors, collection biographies and circulating dynamics in the collection – making
- Acquisition policies and the museum, art market and living art: harmonies, gaps, adjustments;
- Exhibiting the history of a collection; narrative strategies of display.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE

The Bibliothèque Kandinsky's Summer University is aimed at young historians, art historians, anthropologists, sociologists, curators, graphic designers and artists at large.

Post-graduate students (PhD candidates, PhDs, post-doctoral researchers), artists and curators who wish to take part in the Summer University are invited to submit a proposal and CV which should clearly assess the candidate's language proficiency. In order to apply is important to have a good command in both English and French.

The proposal (4,500 characters/700 words) may be written either in English or in French. It should be submitted in the form of a PDF document and should include the applicant's name, postal and electronic addresses, the country the candidate belongs to, and the institution the candidate is affiliated with.

Candidates are expected to bring along a selection of sources used in their research.

The proposal dossier will be sent to: bibliotheque.kandinsky@centrepompidou.fr by April, the 23rd.

The proposals will be evaluated by a scientific committee, in charge of drawing up the final Summer University program. The Committee will retain 25 projects.

All applicants, whether selected or not, will be personally contacted before April, 30th 2017.

A participation of € 100 will be required from each participant, who will be provided with tuition. The participation will cover transportation on site and eventual institutional entries.

If requested, the Centre Pompidou will be able to issue any required certificate in order to apply for scholarship or funding from foundations, museums, universities or research institutes.


SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

Didier Schulmann, chief curator, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, MNAM/Centre Pompidou
Nicolas Liucci-Goutnikov, Curator in charge of scientific coordination, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris
Mica Gherghescu, art historian, research coordinator at Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris
Johanne Lamoureux, Director Département des études et de la recherche, INHA, Professor in contemporary art and methodology, université de Montréal
Sara Martinetti, art historian, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris
Scarlett Reliquet, art historian in charge of cultural programming, Musée d'Orsay
Alice Thomine, chief curator, Musée d'Orsay


For any inquiry, please write to:

bibliotheque.kandinsky@centrepompidou.fr

or contact us at:

Tel : +33 (0)1 44 78 46 65