The Slowness of Sandkind
On the Potential and Challenges of Curating Environmental Performance Art Inside the Exhibition Space
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Abstract
In this article, I examine the potentials and challenges of curating performance art inside an exhibition space for raising environmental awareness. I begin by offering a short history of environmental performance art. While early works were inspired by social ecology, more recent works are better elucidated by Greg Garrard's notion of “deep ecology” and theories of the Anthropocene. I then move on to my case study: the performance SANDKIND by Danish artist Tora Balslev that I curated at Agder Art Center in Kristiansand, Norway. I combine Jean-Paul Martinon and Irit Rogoff's concept of “the curatorial” with Brad Haseman's performative methodology for practice-led research to develop my method of inquiry. I argue that the caring slowness of SANDKIND was its key feature, and that the meditative state that the slowness induced in the performer and audience created a heightened awareness of the other-than-human material of sand, thereby transforming the exhibition space into a multifaceted zone for more-than-human engagement.
Contributor Notes
Joachim Aagaard Friis is a PhD fellow at the Department of Visual Arts and Drama at the University of Agder, Norway, and a freelance curator and art critic. He is doing a practice-led research project that investigates his own curatorial work with themes related to ecology and sustainability. He holds a master's degree in art history from the University of Copenhagen and McGill University, Montreal.