Marialaura Ghidini
Marialaura Ghidini is a curator whose work explores the intersections between art, technology and society.
She has researched the field of curating on the web since her PhD with CRUMB (University of Sunderland, 2015), contributing her research to publications, conferences, and graduate and post-graduate courses and programmes. Recently, she published the archive project ‘curating.online’ (2021-) in collaboration with the Exhibition Research Lab at Liverpool John Moores University, UK and sponsored by the Italian Council, and ‘The Broken Timeline’ (2022) published by Valiz, conceived with Annet Dekker and Gaia Tedone.
Interested in working with various exhibition formats outside the gallery, Marialaura founded the curatorial platform or-bits.com (2009-2015) and has curated projects online, on a river canal, on mobile phones, on the radio and in printf, such as ‘#exstrange’ (2017) on eBay; ‘Disturbing the Balance’ (2022) on an app; ‘Silicon Plateau’ (2015-) in print; ‘The C(h)roma Show’ (2014) in an electronics shop in Bangalore, India. Recently she launched the online project, ‘UnProductive Solutions’ (2023).
Previous research affiliation are: CRUMB, University of Sunderland (2011-2015) - UK; Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology (2015-2021) - India; Exhibition Research Lab (2022), Liverpool John Moores University -
UK
Currently, she works as curatorial consultant and carries out her practice independently, also under the moniker ://ftp.
Address: Italy
She has researched the field of curating on the web since her PhD with CRUMB (University of Sunderland, 2015), contributing her research to publications, conferences, and graduate and post-graduate courses and programmes. Recently, she published the archive project ‘curating.online’ (2021-) in collaboration with the Exhibition Research Lab at Liverpool John Moores University, UK and sponsored by the Italian Council, and ‘The Broken Timeline’ (2022) published by Valiz, conceived with Annet Dekker and Gaia Tedone.
Interested in working with various exhibition formats outside the gallery, Marialaura founded the curatorial platform or-bits.com (2009-2015) and has curated projects online, on a river canal, on mobile phones, on the radio and in printf, such as ‘#exstrange’ (2017) on eBay; ‘Disturbing the Balance’ (2022) on an app; ‘Silicon Plateau’ (2015-) in print; ‘The C(h)roma Show’ (2014) in an electronics shop in Bangalore, India. Recently she launched the online project, ‘UnProductive Solutions’ (2023).
Previous research affiliation are: CRUMB, University of Sunderland (2011-2015) - UK; Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology (2015-2021) - India; Exhibition Research Lab (2022), Liverpool John Moores University -
UK
Currently, she works as curatorial consultant and carries out her practice independently, also under the moniker ://ftp.
Address: Italy
less
Related Authors
InterestsView All (11)
Uploads
Papers by Marialaura Ghidini
This essay traces the evolution of curating online and discusses how the year 2020, or the COVID-19 lockdown period in general, was a critical turning point in this field of work. It examines trends that arose in the year 2020, whereby the general focus of contemporary art institutions and galleries shifted away from critically observing the characteristics of the technological context in which curating takes place (context-specific curation) leading to the decontextualisation of the role of digital curation in the online environment.
Link to the book: https://munispace.muni.cz/library/catalog/book/2217
Published in (Italian) V. Catricalà and D. Quaranta, (eds), "Sopravvivenza programmata. Etiche e pratiche di conservazione, dall'arte cinetica alla Net Art," Kappabit, Roma, along with the chapter titled "Mostre sul web: formati di reinterpretazione in un contesto performativo (Web-based exhibitions: formats of reinterpretation in a performative context)"
the blockchain-enabled cointemporary (2014), to then draw conclusions about the relevance of this historical trajectory in the field of curatorial studies and the production of web-based and digital art.
"This essay is an opportunity to examine the relationships between labor, netbased media and the market. #exstrange put art in a networked context, on an e-commerce platform based on one-to-one exchanges. In this scenario, artists/makers/jammers were inextricably connected with an active viewing and bidding audience, ready to consume and enact purchases, actions, and tasks proposed through the artworks/auctions. Not only could artists and their audiences respond directly to each other, but we, the curators, were also actively “reaching out” by promoting each auction launch daily through social media. Hence, while net-based and gallery projects often involve a degree of distance, #exstrange, thanks to those who played with us—strangers, friends, collectors, art lovers, hobbyists, artists, and so on—emphasized collectivity and brought to light a varied, subjective, and idiomatic marketplace, bringing together labor and emotional investment in a way that we feel is more personal
than what might happen in an institutionalized space."
The proliferation of online artistic production, which has grown in parallel to the spread and simplification of web-based tools and the fast constitution of a “media-saturated world” (Gere, 2002), has led to the development of a common trait for which the artist as DJ (Bourriaud, 2001) has been replaced by the artist as externaliser (Cloninger, 2009), who appropriates already existing web interfaces to produce and distribute his own work, other artists' works, as well as found cultural material. This tendency reflects the increasingly deeper interweaving of activities of production and distribution, which, on the one side derives from the characteristics of the medium employed, the web (Beryl and Graham, 2010), and on the other side it seems to originate from what Goriunova defines as “organisational aesthetics” (Goriunova, 2012).
By briefly looking at the development of the critical discourse about appropriation of digital material, from the Postproduction approach for which the artist is the author of a re-arrangement and a re-contextualisation (Bourriaud, 2001) to the idea of “enacting a way, and not producing an object” (Cloninger, 2009), this paper will look at strategies of artistic operation on and through web-based platforms, as practices that expand on issues of reprocessing digital material via appropriating (and customizing) already existing web interfaces to produce and distribute work.
Through a series of examples of such artistic practices, amongst which Harm van der Dorpel (Club Internet, 2008-2009), Dump.fm (Dump.fm/IRL, 2010), Constant Dullart (YouTube as Subject, 2009 and YouTube as Sculpture, 2009), David Horvitz (Public Access, 2011-) and IOCOSE (NoTube Contest, 2010-), this paper will highlight how current issues related to appropriation relate both to digital materiality and to digital organisational structures; marking a change in the role of the artist within the socio-cultural environment in which artistic and cultural production are now occurring.
Thesis Chapters by Marialaura Ghidini
This dissertation investigates the theory and praxis of curating web-based exhibitions from the perspective of a practitioner (the author Marialaura Ghidini). Specifically, it investigates how the web as a medium of production, display, distribution and critique has had an impact on the work and research of independent curators and the way in which they configure their exhibition projects.
With a focus on the last decade, curatorial work of production and commission is considered in relation to technological developments, previous theoretical work into the mapping of exhibitions online and the analysis of case studies which are paralleled with the author’s own exhibition projects. What has emerged from this combination of theory, practice and comparison of approaches is the rise of a tendency in contemporary curatorial practices online: the creation of exhibitions that migrate across sites—online and offline—and integrate different components—formats of display and distribution—giving life to exhibition models which this study names as those of the 'extended' and 'expanded'. The figure of the curator as mediating ‘node’ is another characteristic emerging in relation to this tendency. Its features are identified through the observation of six case studies, which include Beam Me Up, CuratingYouTube and eBayaday, and interviews with their curators, and three projects that the author organised with the web curatorial platform or-bits-dot- com, 128kbps objects (2012), (On) Accordance (2012) and On the Upgrade WYSIWG (2013), which experiment with modes of integrating web-based exhibition with other exhibition formats, such as the gallery show and print publishing.
Through combining contextual review and curatorial practice, this study names the tensions existing between online and offline sites of display and modes of production and commission, offering critical and practical ground work to discuss the tendency of migrating exhibitions and integrating formats within the larger context of curating contemporary art.
Books by Marialaura Ghidini
The project was curated by Marialaura Ghidini and Vivek Chockalingam for Walkin Studios.
The publication was designed by Anna Thomas and Tessy Thomas.
Silicon Plateau is an art project and publishing series that explores the intersection of technology, culture and society in the Indian IT city of Bangalore. Each volume of Silicon Plateau is a themed repository for research, artworks, essays, interviews and stories that observe the ways technology permeates the urban environment and the lives of its inhabitants.
About Volume 2:
Volume 2 explores the ecosystem of mobile apps and their on-demand services: What does it mean to be an app user today—as a worker, a client, or simply an observer? The second volume looks at how apps and their infrastructure are impacting our relationship with the urban environment; the way we relate and communicate with each other; and the way labour is changing.The result is a collection of stories about contemporary life in Bangalore; of conversations and deliberations on how we behave, what we sense, and what we might think about when we use the services that are offered to us when we tap on our mobile devices.
This essay traces the evolution of curating online and discusses how the year 2020, or the COVID-19 lockdown period in general, was a critical turning point in this field of work. It examines trends that arose in the year 2020, whereby the general focus of contemporary art institutions and galleries shifted away from critically observing the characteristics of the technological context in which curating takes place (context-specific curation) leading to the decontextualisation of the role of digital curation in the online environment.
Link to the book: https://munispace.muni.cz/library/catalog/book/2217
Published in (Italian) V. Catricalà and D. Quaranta, (eds), "Sopravvivenza programmata. Etiche e pratiche di conservazione, dall'arte cinetica alla Net Art," Kappabit, Roma, along with the chapter titled "Mostre sul web: formati di reinterpretazione in un contesto performativo (Web-based exhibitions: formats of reinterpretation in a performative context)"
the blockchain-enabled cointemporary (2014), to then draw conclusions about the relevance of this historical trajectory in the field of curatorial studies and the production of web-based and digital art.
"This essay is an opportunity to examine the relationships between labor, netbased media and the market. #exstrange put art in a networked context, on an e-commerce platform based on one-to-one exchanges. In this scenario, artists/makers/jammers were inextricably connected with an active viewing and bidding audience, ready to consume and enact purchases, actions, and tasks proposed through the artworks/auctions. Not only could artists and their audiences respond directly to each other, but we, the curators, were also actively “reaching out” by promoting each auction launch daily through social media. Hence, while net-based and gallery projects often involve a degree of distance, #exstrange, thanks to those who played with us—strangers, friends, collectors, art lovers, hobbyists, artists, and so on—emphasized collectivity and brought to light a varied, subjective, and idiomatic marketplace, bringing together labor and emotional investment in a way that we feel is more personal
than what might happen in an institutionalized space."
The proliferation of online artistic production, which has grown in parallel to the spread and simplification of web-based tools and the fast constitution of a “media-saturated world” (Gere, 2002), has led to the development of a common trait for which the artist as DJ (Bourriaud, 2001) has been replaced by the artist as externaliser (Cloninger, 2009), who appropriates already existing web interfaces to produce and distribute his own work, other artists' works, as well as found cultural material. This tendency reflects the increasingly deeper interweaving of activities of production and distribution, which, on the one side derives from the characteristics of the medium employed, the web (Beryl and Graham, 2010), and on the other side it seems to originate from what Goriunova defines as “organisational aesthetics” (Goriunova, 2012).
By briefly looking at the development of the critical discourse about appropriation of digital material, from the Postproduction approach for which the artist is the author of a re-arrangement and a re-contextualisation (Bourriaud, 2001) to the idea of “enacting a way, and not producing an object” (Cloninger, 2009), this paper will look at strategies of artistic operation on and through web-based platforms, as practices that expand on issues of reprocessing digital material via appropriating (and customizing) already existing web interfaces to produce and distribute work.
Through a series of examples of such artistic practices, amongst which Harm van der Dorpel (Club Internet, 2008-2009), Dump.fm (Dump.fm/IRL, 2010), Constant Dullart (YouTube as Subject, 2009 and YouTube as Sculpture, 2009), David Horvitz (Public Access, 2011-) and IOCOSE (NoTube Contest, 2010-), this paper will highlight how current issues related to appropriation relate both to digital materiality and to digital organisational structures; marking a change in the role of the artist within the socio-cultural environment in which artistic and cultural production are now occurring.
This dissertation investigates the theory and praxis of curating web-based exhibitions from the perspective of a practitioner (the author Marialaura Ghidini). Specifically, it investigates how the web as a medium of production, display, distribution and critique has had an impact on the work and research of independent curators and the way in which they configure their exhibition projects.
With a focus on the last decade, curatorial work of production and commission is considered in relation to technological developments, previous theoretical work into the mapping of exhibitions online and the analysis of case studies which are paralleled with the author’s own exhibition projects. What has emerged from this combination of theory, practice and comparison of approaches is the rise of a tendency in contemporary curatorial practices online: the creation of exhibitions that migrate across sites—online and offline—and integrate different components—formats of display and distribution—giving life to exhibition models which this study names as those of the 'extended' and 'expanded'. The figure of the curator as mediating ‘node’ is another characteristic emerging in relation to this tendency. Its features are identified through the observation of six case studies, which include Beam Me Up, CuratingYouTube and eBayaday, and interviews with their curators, and three projects that the author organised with the web curatorial platform or-bits-dot- com, 128kbps objects (2012), (On) Accordance (2012) and On the Upgrade WYSIWG (2013), which experiment with modes of integrating web-based exhibition with other exhibition formats, such as the gallery show and print publishing.
Through combining contextual review and curatorial practice, this study names the tensions existing between online and offline sites of display and modes of production and commission, offering critical and practical ground work to discuss the tendency of migrating exhibitions and integrating formats within the larger context of curating contemporary art.
The project was curated by Marialaura Ghidini and Vivek Chockalingam for Walkin Studios.
The publication was designed by Anna Thomas and Tessy Thomas.
Silicon Plateau is an art project and publishing series that explores the intersection of technology, culture and society in the Indian IT city of Bangalore. Each volume of Silicon Plateau is a themed repository for research, artworks, essays, interviews and stories that observe the ways technology permeates the urban environment and the lives of its inhabitants.
About Volume 2:
Volume 2 explores the ecosystem of mobile apps and their on-demand services: What does it mean to be an app user today—as a worker, a client, or simply an observer? The second volume looks at how apps and their infrastructure are impacting our relationship with the urban environment; the way we relate and communicate with each other; and the way labour is changing.The result is a collection of stories about contemporary life in Bangalore; of conversations and deliberations on how we behave, what we sense, and what we might think about when we use the services that are offered to us when we tap on our mobile devices.
#exstrange was a live exhibition project that used the online marketplace eBay as a site of curatorial operation, artistic production and cultural exchange; a project that operated within the geographical boundaries enabled by the commercial platform the curators, Marialaura Ghidini and Rebekah Modrak, appropriated—the various ‘national’ eBay sites.
Silicon Plateau is an art project and publishing series that explores the intersection of technology, culture and society in the Indian IT city of Bangalore. Each volume of Silicon Plateau is a themed repository for research, artworks, essays, interviews and stories that observe the ways technology permeates the urban environment and the lives of its inhabitants.
About Volume 1:
While observing the role of the IT industry in Bangalore — its tech parks with highways built to ‘bring’ the city to them and the promises of change for the better it brought about — we explored how this industry has affected the urban landscape and the way in which its inhabitants relate to it. Silicon Plateau Volume 1 looked at how the IT industry ‘settled’ in the city, impacting the representations of urban life and the imagination of its dwellers.
On the Upgrade – WYSIWYG is a book exhibition, or an exhibition in a book. It is a new configuration of selected material that was first presented online or for web broadcast and operates as an artistic, curatorial and design re-alignment of material originally compiled for online consumption for the book interface. The starting point of this project was that of conceiving the book format as an interface and reflecting upon the tensions that might exist between this holdable interface and the web interface along with that of the computer. Thus, reading patterns, the specificity of engagement with the material presented in a book and what site-specificity might mean in relation to moving between online and offline modes of presentation are some of the aspects that have been considered at the time of the making of the book.
“What are the representational languages of the interface? How does it work as text, image, sound, space and so forth, and what are the cultural effects, for instance of the way it reconfigures the visual, textual or auditory?” From Soren Pold, Interface Realism: The Interface as Aesthetic Form, 2005
This WEBINAR aimed to stimulate and expand critical and practical thinking about curatorial work on the web. It focused on curatorial interventions online that challenge the mechanisms and traditional models of producing and displaying contemporary art; offering a historical overview and new perspectives and ways of imagining the system of contemporary art and ‘being online’. The webinar also examined the role of curating on the web in confronting structural transformations and moments of systemic crisis.
Invited speakers: ZHANG Ga (US) / Guido Segni (Green Cube Gallery) (IT) / Aarushi Surana and Kaushal Sapre (IN) / Virginie Tan and Astrid Lours-Riou (FR) / Guildor (IT) / Nimrod Vardi and Rebecca Edwards (arebyte Gallery) (UK)
Collaborators: Vivek Chockalingam, Vydia Shivadas, Padmini Ray Murray, Gaia Tedone and Marialaura Ghidini
curating.online is an ongoing research space dedicated to exploring and stimulating practical thinking about curatorial work on the web. It is a space for the discussion, practice and research of modes of action and thinking that propose a critique of the impact of digital technology on artistic production, society and networked culture, as well as new ways of creating spaces for art and support structures.