About Constructing Curatorial Practices as a Collage

Abstract

Merce Cunningham Centennial: The Elemental, The Unpredictable, The Unexpected is a curatorial collaborative project realized between the Merce Cunningham Trust and REDIV (Screendance Ibero-American Network) at the occasion of the centennial of this important choreographer in the history of dance and a key figure in the history of screendance. The world-wide celebration happened all through the year 2019 with all kinds of activities, including this project which circulated through some 20 member festivals of REDIV. It was proposed as a curatorial practice, a term which, according to Marcelo Pacheco (2001), “defines from its very meaning and etymology an action, exercise and method, and it as the surgical implication of any exhibition management.” The curatorial concepts were built as a collage, where a porous exchange between the members of the international curatorial committee took place, which was woven in a transatlantic way with the aim of taking to Ibero-American countries the hybrid choreographic work of Merce Cunningham to a broad circulation.

Cunningham built his choreographies as collages, with fragments of movement that had heterogeneous and diverse origins and yet they acquire a nexus in his own discourse. How to achieve the same in our curatorial discourse? As a result of this collaborative process, a curatorial program reveals itself as a manner of kaleidoscopic windows, through which the diverse facets and perspectives of Merce Cunnigham’s expanded choreography are shown. This paper will be an attempt to reconstruct this collaborative experience by putting it in relation to some conceptual aspects developed by this great dance artist.

Keywords: collage, curatorial practices, centennial

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