Set Up at Punta della Dogana. A Multidisciplinary Experience, a Curatorial Perspective

Abstract

The article proposes an analysis of the curatorial approach to the programing of Set Up, a biennial event promoted and hosted by the Fondazione François Pinault Palazzo Grassi - Punta della Dogana in Venice, which aims to build a participatory dramaturgy and a relationship with a museum space temporarily devoid of tangible artworks. The survey gives back the curatorial strategies that substantiate this activity from an aesthetic, conceptual and productive point of view, putting them in dialogue with the current trends in the curatorship of the performing and live arts, which in recent years has meet the new needs of museums and art galleries and is producing a rich theoretical litterature. The essay highlights how the performances selected and commissioned at each edition of Set Up build a dimension in which hierarchies and distances between performers and spectators are continually negotiated to generate a "redistribution of attention" and encourage the creation of a sense of belonging to a community of spectators rather than conformity to an exhibition space.