Infrastructural Praxis: New Model for Art & Technology Curation, and Organisational Innovation

This thesis concerns itself with the development of a new branch of curatorial functions and organisational capabilities in support of the evolution of art institutions as mediators between culture, technology and society. On the basis of fieldwork conducted at Serpentine, – a public contemporary art organisation in London, between 2018 and 2021, this thesis puts forward ‘infrastructural praxis’ as one possible operational pathway for advancing beyond the established curatorial and art institutional roles associated with historical and conceptual contextualisation of art practices through artworks, collections and exhibitions. The fieldwork encompassed the development of a new R&D Strategic Lead role, R&D labs and the Future Art Ecosystems (FAE) strategic briefings, all hosted by Serpentine’s Arts Technologies department. The R&D Strategic Lead role, the R&D labs and FAE serve as examples of processes and outputs that can emerge when curation and organisational investment into art and technology are approached from the perspective of developing new infrastructure for cultural production rather than exclusively oriented towards production of artworks and exhibitions. While the R&D labs and FAE are specific to Serpentine, this thesis argues that their underlying modi operandi are generalisable and extendable to other settings. This thesis proposes a new conceptual category for such modi operandi, namely, – infrastructural praxis. It also proposes that systems curating, as a curatorial modality of infrastructural praxis, can lead to meaningful organisational innovation in the arts.