David Smith will talk about the starting point of Exhibition Histories (a research and publishing project begun by Afterall magazine in 2010) which shifts focus away from moments of artistic “creation” and towards the point at which art becomes public—to address the multiplicity and sociality of how “art” is produced.
The archive is part of this process, from formal collections in universities and biennale basements to piles of papers and boxes in artists' and family homes, in São Paulo, London, Moscow or Chiang Mai. This presentation will explore the archive in relation to these projects, as a threshold between different publics and as a way to intervene in current and future practice.