What kind of documents do curators produce? Contemporary cases from Estonia

Abstract

In this article, I study curating as a way of producing documents. By looking back retrospectively to the array of documents produced during my art projects and reviewing theoretical approaches relevant to the development of archival documentation, I will discuss how art documents can be constitutive of both knowledge and relations. Art documents help to account of and multiply the knowledge that is mobilized during the making of an exhibition, but they also have performative efficacy as connectors—contributing to reach different audiences, to involve diverse participants, and to bring together dissimilar things. Curation activities demand a proactive documentation and archiving since documents play a key role in consolidating the aesthetic value and relational potential of artworks. As a result, an important part of curation has to be dedicated to documentation.