Noticing Otherwise: Relationality, Opacity, and the Political in Curatorial Practice.
In Displaying Engagement: The Political (and Politicized) Exhibition in the 21st Century, edited by V. Locatelli and H. Wiedmer-Newman. Bloomsbory Academics.
Forthcoming end of 2026.
Abstract
Political exhibitions are often understood as spaces that foster a call for action, where injustices are exposed, histories are reclaimed, and activism is amplified. However, in an era of hypervisibility, data extraction, and digital surveillance, this paper explores the potential of a curatorial methodology that engages with opacity, relationality, and slowness as political acts. Drawing on Anna Tsing’s “arts of noticing,” Édouard Glissant’s concept of opacity, and the field of media archaeology and its critique of digital materialities (Jussi Parikka), this paper asks how exhibitions can engage with the political beyond what is immediate and visible in contemporaneity. The Helsinki Biennial 2023: New Directions May Emerge serves as a case study, demonstrating how an exhibition’s methodology can affect its own narrative. The biennial foregrounded a critical exploration of hidden infrastructures—submerged data cables, the material politics of digital networks, environmental collapse, and digital colonialism—rather than relying on overt political statements. This paper examines how exhibitions like the Helsinki Biennial 2023 complicate the role of the political in curatorial practice through a relational approach to the curatorial, inviting attention to hidden ecologies, more-than-human agencies, and environmental interdependencies. By drawing from curatorial research, ideas of relationality, and media archaeology, this paper reflects on the role of the political exhibition—one that does not simply seek to expose but instead cultivates a critical practice of noticing in response to the accelerated demands of the digital age.
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