Curating the Affective: Counter-Hegemonic Proposals In Times of “Affective Capitalism”

Abstract

For more than a decade, the affective as critical paradigm and object of analysis has become an inexcusable part of multiple fields of study. Initially linked to the socio-political analysis of neoliberal "affective capitalism", its influence reaches nowadays humanistic analysis and the role of mediating in curatorial processes. This quality exceeds the materiality of the exhibition itself, and is especially useful in those projects focused on meetings, mediations or networks, whose purpose has nothing to do with the exhibition of "works" in the traditional sense, but in setting up experiences and relationships, a cohesiveness or discussion of proposals and communities, and specially in questioning hegemonic history and recovering "lost" stories.

This affective management takes on special importance in such cases as those proposed here as the final object of the analysis, not in vain frequently referred as "affective-sexually diverse". From the queer premises recalled, it is possible to extract some affective possibilities such as the critics of the counterhegemonic critiques, from their initial position to the dynamics that are mobilized during their approach in relation to the different participants, and making possible, in the fields of creation and exhibition, the subversion of the fixed norms of the institutionalized system.