Fictional world enactments : curating 'The Real and Other Fictions' at Lisbon Architecture Triennial, 2013

This thesis explores through fiction how curatorial practice can critically assess the actual world and enact alternative possibilities, through the formulation of spatial constructions composed of physical scenarios and programmes of use collectively imagined and performed. The research examines an...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Pereira Pestana, Mariana Mafalda
Format: Dissertation
Language:English
Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-2019
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Summary:This thesis explores through fiction how curatorial practice can critically assess the actual world and enact alternative possibilities, through the formulation of spatial constructions composed of physical scenarios and programmes of use collectively imagined and performed. The research examines and reflects upon my own curatorial practice in the exhibition 'The Real and Other Fictions' (2013), comprising the project element of this practice-led thesis. The term 'fictional world enactments' is developed in relation to literary theories of fiction, particularly those concerning the construction of fictional worlds, known as possible worlds theories [Lubomír Doležel, Umberto Eco, Doreen Maître and Marie-Laure Ryan]. The thesis asks how fictional worlds can be constructed by human minds and hands [Lubomír Doležel, 1988], and what role curators, designers, users and visitors of architectural exhibitions play in the making of worlds other than the actual. In bringing theories from literature into the field of architectural design and curation , I seek both to reconceptualise the curation of architecture through fiction, but also to critically re-evaluate how fiction operates as an aspect of literary theory. This thesis proposes that one role of fiction in the curation of architecture is as a tool for social transformation. This understanding is conveyed in the formulation of a theoretical framework resulting from the intersections of three conceptual maps - the critical [AntonyDunne and Fiona Raby, Jane Rendell], the imaginative [Arjun Appadurai] and the utopic [Louis Marin]. Overlaying these maps, the thesis aims to theorize a curatorial practice informed by what I call a 'radical hospitality policy', one that embraces use and participation in collective enactments of fictional worlds. These 'fictional world enactments' take their point of departure from the material presented at the exhibition, 'The Real and Other Fictions', and the thesis takes the sixroom spatial organisation of the exhibition as its structure.