ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the role of reflective practice and autoethnography in curatorial practice. It examines two case studies, the first focusing on the methods articulated in a curatorial case study as part of a practice-based PhD on curating interactive art; the second focusing on an enquiry into methods acquired academically being useful professionally. The first, titled ISEA2015: disruption, was the central study in a series of three, resulting in one of three sets of criteria for a multiple voices approach to curating. This is particularly fitting for understanding language and organising criteria around experience-based over objects-based artworks and events. The voices captured in the resulting criteria were a) the audience’s (through survey), b) the independent producer-as-curator (my own, through autoethnography and reflective practice), and c) a wider audience of curators working across art, science, and technology with interactive, engaging, or media based-artists and their work (through in-situ and focused interviews using conversation analysis). This chapter both situates my practice in the PhD case study and expands on the criteria in a new case study that uses method b) utilising interviews, autoethnography, and reflective practice to understand if knowledge gained within a PhD is useful in professional settings that support contemporary curatorial practice.
