Curating Dystopia: On Too Much and its Anxieties

This talk addresses how collecting—in archives, museums, or in art—copes with the threat of entropy—“too much”—and how such overload contrasts with a certain utopia of the archive that corresponds to the idea that archives balance their holdings with the ideas that correspond to them. In a related parallel track, I’ll be interested in how this dystopian take on collecting is matched by a specific kind of attention, one that replaces focus with distraction and scatteredness.

Sven Spieker’s research focuses on transnational modern and contemporary art with a focus on Eastern Europe and Central Asia; media history; and the historical avant-gardes. He is also interested in aesthetics at the intersection of philosophy and critical theory. He published on a range topics including the archive in art; modern and contemporary art; acousmatic sound; as well as 19th- and 20th-century European literature and film. He is the founding editor of ARTMargins Online and ARTMargins Print Journal as well as a co-founder of the Working Group Cultures of World Socialism and the Contemporary Art and Culture in Central Asia Working Group. His most recent book publication is  Curating Socialism. International Art Exhibitions in the Socialist World, 1950-1990 (co-ed., Toronto University Press).