Double Agency

Design and curating share related goals, means, and challenges: the mediation of complex objects and ideas; the coordination of multiple actors and networks of production; the creation of conditions for presentation and participation. Both disciplines often serve multiple masters — artists, architects, museums, and publishers, amongst others — while also bearing responsibility to their publics. Similarly, both fields engage in an ongoing negotiation over questions of authorship. Within the situation of an exhibition, a book, or the framing of an institution, multiple voices and agencies overlap. In the best cases, something unexpected emerges.