Expecting the Unexpected

Unpredictability as part of a curatorial practice

An Individual Research Project by, Katerina Matheson. Completed as part of MA Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art (2024)

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The curatorial is a relational practice, engaging with a constellation of participants, objects, and ideas, suspending them in a state of continuous dialogue. As described in Beatrice von Bismarck’s text, “The Curatorial Condition,” the curatorial involves an entanglement of different contexts, making them visible and “setting them in motion by means of performative repetition.” This positions the curatorial as an experimental stage, forming tangible relations but leaving them open to interpretation and endless iteration. With this understanding, the curatorial has an embedded potential to facilitate complexity, questioning, and flexibility in the creation of meaning.

Through the mapping of curatorial projects, methodologies, and institutional approaches, this study explores the extent to which unpredictability can become manifest in formal structures. Considering the tumultuous context of our globalised world and its incessant changes, it is necessary to develop different methods of structuring, collaborating and working. This is important not only in terms of progressive ideological thinking, but also in the pursuit of relevancy and meaningfulness on a local and global scale.

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Figure 1. Mindmap diagram for “Expecting the Unexpected”, 2024