Talk by Francesco Manacorda

SALT Galata, Workshop IV

Francesco Manacorda will investigate the overlap between notions of the archive and the monument – two charged places in Western culture conceived to preserve memory for future generations. Within contemporary art practice, the museum can be compared to a machine that articulates a double movement towards archiving: on the one hand, collections are built as receptacles of art history; like an archive, they gather traces of past events. On the other hand, temporary exhibitions of contemporary art postulate a possible archive of the future, “gambling” on what might in a few years join the collection. The former is kept and never decommissioned; the latter is temporary and dispersed after no longer than three months. Examining how these movements may enhance our ability to write histories, Manacorda will explore recent interest in archaeology and monuments deployed by contemporary artists, and its potential to be integrated into new understandings of the archival mission of art institutions.

Francesco Manacorda has an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, London. As a freelance curator, he has curated The Mythological Machine – Images in the Media (2004), Mead Gallery, University of Warwick; A Certain Tendency in Representation - Cineclub at Thomas Dane (2005), Thomas Dane Gallery, London; Subcontingent – The Indian Subcontinent in Contemporary Art (2006), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; and national pavilions for Slovenia (2007) and New Zealand (2009) at the Venice Biennale. Between 2007 and 2009, he was the curator at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, where he realized the exhibitions Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art (2008) and Radical Nature (2009). From 2006 to 2010, he was a visiting lecturer for the Curating Contemporary Art program at the Royal College of Art, and from 2010 to 2012, he was Director of Artissima in Turin. Manacorda has written extensively for Domus, Flash Art Italia, Flash Art International, Frieze, Metropolis M, Mousse, Piktogram, Untitled and Art Review. In April 2012, he will join Tate Liverpool as Artistic Director.

The talk will be held in English.

Accommodation Sponsor: Karaköy Rooms