The Edinburgh Companion to Curatorial Futures

The first curatorial studies volume to engage with the concept of ‘the future’.

What function do concepts like the future and futurity play in the field of curating and the curatorial? The Edinburgh Companion to Curatorial Futures is the first curatorial studies volume to engage with the increasingly ubiquitous idea of ‘the future’ and its exponential growth in the fields of artistic research, curating, art and academia. In thirty-two original chapters, the contributors to this volume go beyond Western Europe and the United States to highlight new voices pushing against disciplinary boundaries and engaging with practices outside of established institutional, political and geographic contexts. Exploring themes such as sonic intervention, Indigenous curating, datafication, ‘bio-fiction’ and questions of worlding, they emphasise the global relevance of ‘non-standard’ curatorial practices, strategies and activism for opening up spaces of possibility and collectivity. At a time when techno-capitalist societies are experiencing intense financialisation and overtourism and rapid advances in machine learning are challenging conventional artistic and curatorial labour, this volume reflects on both the shape the future may take and the purchase it has in the present. Ultimately, it asks the question: how can the curatorial help build alternative futures?