Curating in the Post-indexicality Era
Date: Monday, 10 February 2025
Time: 3PM GMT
Duration: 1h 30min
Location: Online (via ZOOM)
Open to: Everyone
Admission: Free
Register: To register for the workshop, please complete the form at the bottom of this page by Saturday, 8 February 2025
The webinar takes its cue from Noam Segal’s essay Notes on the Index in Accelerated Digital Times (2024), exploring how the emergence of AI impacts our understanding of temporality, representation, and cultural signs. This impact is characterized by reconstructions that blend various temporalities and technologies, moving away from the singularity of an original object’s time and place. In this sense, contemporary digital environments and AI technologies are creating new relationships with time, space, and meaning, reshaping how we understand images in both historical and contemporary contexts. According to Segal, AI’s influence on image-making in digital culture creates what could be termed a “post-indexical” reality. What role does curating play when AI cannot account for the historical context or material conditions of an artwork? How can these issues be addressed within museological practice, which increasingly strives to contextualize artworks through provenance research and restitution practices?
Keynote speaker
Dr. Noam Segal
LG Electronics Associate Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Dr. Noam Segal is the LG Electronics Associate Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in NYC. Her work explores the intersection of the digital, political, and social in contemporary art. She was the curator of the 2020 Aurora Biennial (Dallas, TX) and was part of the curatorial team for the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. Segal also curated a project for FRONT International 2022, the Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, and recently curated the 15th Gwangju Biennale symposium titled Echoes of Tomorrow: Soundscapes in the Age of Advanced Computing.
She is a faculty member in the Curatorial Practice department at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. Segal was a Visiting Scholar at the Tisch School of the Arts in the Department of Performance Studies and a Visiting Faculty member at Virginia Commonwealth University in the Department of Painting and Printmaking.
Recent publications include The Serpentine Galleries Future Art Ecosystems, CryptoPunks: Free to Claim (PHAIDON), and In Place of a Missing Place at “Middle East Art: Memory, Tradition, and Revival”, a special issue of Arts. Her distinguished essay, “Notes on the Index in Accelerated Digital Times” at Pompeii Commitment, serves as a departure point for this webinar.
Speakers
Christiane Paul
Curator of Digital Art, Whitney Museum of American Art
Christiane Paul is Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Professor Emerita in the School of Media Studies at The New School. She is the recipient of the 2023 MediaArtHistories International Award and the Thoma Foundation's 2016 Arts Writing Award in Digital Art, and her books are Digital Art (Thames and Hudson, 2003, 4th ed. 2023); A Companion to Digital Art (Blackwell-Wiley, May 2016); Context Providers – Conditions of Meaning in Media Arts (Intellect, 2011; Chinese edition, 2012); and New Media in the White Cube and Beyond (UC Press, 2008). At the Whitney Museum, she curated exhibitions including Harold Cohen: AARON (2024), Refigured (2023), Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art 1965 - 2018 (2018/19), Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools (2011), and Profiling (2007), and is responsible for artport, the museum’s portal to Internet art. Other curatorial work includes Chain Reaction(feralfile.com, 2023), DiMoDA 4.0 Dis/Location (traveling show, 2021-2023), The Question of Intelligence (Kellen Gallery, The New School, NYC, 2020), Little Sister (is watching you, too) (Pratt Manhattan Gallery, NYC, 2015), and What Lies Beneath (Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2015).
Barbara Cueto
Independent curator and researcher / Online Curator at LAS art foundation in Berlin
Barbara Cueto is an independent curator based in Berlin. Her projects are at the intersection of contemporary art, new technologies, and activism. She is currently working as an online curator for LAS - Art Foundation in Berlin.
She has convened and curated projects at institutions such as Photo Wien in Austria, C/O Berlin, InterAccess in Toronto, Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Fundación La Caixa in Barcelona, MMOMA in Moscow for the 6th Moscow Biennale for Young Art in Russia, Asian Culture Centre in Gwangju, South Korea; La Casa Encendida in Madrid, Bétonsalon in Paris, Marres in Maastricht, Impakt Festival in Utrecht, and de Appel arts centre in Amsterdam, all in the Netherlands. She has held curatorial and research fellowships at Singapore Art Museum, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, and has also been a resident at Tokyo Wondersite in Japan, Rupert in Lithuania, and Cité des Arts in Paris.
She holds a PhD in Cultural Analysis from the University of Amsterdam, titled "White Papers on Dissent: Politics & Poetics of Blockchain," which investigated decentralized ledger technology as a tool for radical imagination. She is an alumna of the de Appel Curatorial Programme in Amsterdam, holds an MA in Arts Management from the University of Maastricht (NL), and a BA in Journalism from the Complutense University of Madrid (SP).
In addition, she has been awarded Comisart, a curatorial award by LaCaixa/MACBA in Barcelona in 2022, Inéditos 2017, a prize for emerging curators in Spain, and numerous grants and scholarships, such as the Botín Foundation grant for young curators in 2014/2015.
Moderator
Giulia Colletti
Curator, Public Programs and Digital Sphere, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea
Giulia Colletti is a curator and art historian. She serves as Curator of Programs and Digital at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea. She is Co-curator of the 5th Industrial Art Biennial, supported by the 13th Italian Council. Her recently curated group and solo exhibitions include Allegory of Public Happiness (2024), Galleria Civica – Mart Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto; Dominique White. The Fugitive of the State(less) (2023), Art City – MAMbo, Bologna; and Fragile Soil, Fertile Souls (2022), United Nations College, Turin.
She lectures in Contemporary Art and Curatorial Practice at Abadir Academy. She was a Visiting Lecturer in 2024 at Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien and was the Inaugural Curatorial Fellow in 2019 at The Glasgow School of Art. She delivers New Media Special Projects for CURA. Her essays, reviews, and compiled readers have also been featured in museum catalogues and published by Flash Art, OnCurating, and e-flux, among others.
She is an honoree of Forbes Under 30 Europe (2021) and an alumna of the Gwangju Biennale International Curator Course and Independent Curators International (ICI). She is a member of IKT.
Registation
This webinar is open to everyone, and you do not need to be an IKT member to attend.
To register, please complete the form below by Saturday, 8th February 2025. The Zoom link will be sent to your email on Sunday, 9th February 2025. If you don’t see it in your inbox, kindly check your SPAM folder.
Important Notice: Please be aware that the online session will be recorded. By participating in the workshop, you consent to the recording of the session, which will include audio, video, and any shared content. The recorded webinar will be published on the IKT YouTube channel and website for future reference and for the benefit of members who are unable to attend the live session.
This webinar is part of a series of four webinars selected through an open call for IKT members. The proposals were reviewed and chosen by the IKT Board. Each of these webinars offers an opportunity for curators, artists, and art professionals to engage in deep, thought-provoking conversations, while also providing actionable insights into how curatorial practices can respond to contemporary challenges. Together, the webinars will create a dynamic exchange of ideas and offer a comprehensive look at the intersection of curating, art, and society in an increasingly complex global context.
Other webinars in this series include:
Navigating New Realities: Curatorial Work and Global Challenges (27 January 2025): How can curators address the pressing geopolitical, social, and environmental challenges of our time? This webinar will explore the critical role of curators in shaping narratives, amplifying voices, and envisioning alternative futures in an increasingly interconnected and fractured world.
Curating ‘Disability’: Challenges and Opportunities for the Inclusive Museum (Date TBC): This webinar will explore the increasing recognition of art made by artists who self-identify as disabled, focusing on how they are breaking boundaries and entering the mainstream art sector. Curators Elinor Morgan, Aidan Moesby, and Iarlaith Ní Fheorais will discuss the challenges faced by these artists, curatorial approaches, and the barriers encountered by both curators and audiences. Participants will gain insights on collaborating with artists who self-identify as disabled and learn how to create more inclusive spaces for their work.
Longing / Belonging - Just Places (November 2025): This webinar will focus on the timely and complex issue of repatriation of art and cultural objects, exploring the roles of contemporary art curators in addressing this topic. It will highlight the importance of curators understanding the challenges surrounding repatriation, particularly in the contexts of colonialism, disappearing cultures, and restitution. The webinar will also delve into the impact of technological innovations on art presentation, covering topics such as digital repatriation, 3D printed replicas, virtual museums, big data, provenance analysis, and the role of generative AI in curation.