Exhibitions are often conceived as temporary constellations of works: As events marked by a beginning and an end. However, these arrangements embody themselves a series of temporal structures, they host, empower and mediate a variety of dynamics, rhythms and processes, moments of presence and absence, of gathering, displacement, alteration or open-endedness.

Works not necessarily unfold their temporal dimension in sync with the exhibition’s opening or closing or the viewing time; they may exist in time but become manifest only through the act of exhibiting.

How do these temporal dimensions affect the way we understand a work or practice? How do artists intervene, embrace or exhibit the experience of time, in a sense that temporality becomes a strategy of resistance as well as point of entry? And how do exhibitions contribute to and mirror contemporary temporal conditions of structuring and being structured by time?

Biography
Rike Frank, associate professor of exhibition studies, curator and writer. Based in Berlin. Rike Frank studied communication and media science, art history and philosophy, with a focus on film and media history and theory at the University of Salzburg. Her main field of interest is curating and exhibition making with a focus on contemporary artistic practices.

Over the last several years she has researched on textiles as well as the temporal dimension of exhibiting. As a curator and researcher at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig (2010-2012) she has programmed the Academy’s gallery space and founded the exhibition and lecture series «Studio International».

In 2010, she also initiated in collaboration with the curator Grant Watson the long-term research and exhibition project «Textiles: Open Letter», which looks at textiles in contemporary art and at their history, materiality and language; presentations include the exhibition «Abstractions, Textiles, Art» at the Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, the conference «The Haptic Space» at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna as well as a series of seminars at bulegoa z/b in Bilbao.

She was previously a member of the Program Team for the European Kunsthalle in Cologne, and Ludlow 38, New York. Recently, she has edited the publications «Constanze Ruhm. Coming Attractions» (2012), «Sketches of Universal History Compiled from Several Authors» by Sarah Pierce (2013) and the upcoming «Timing–On the Temporal Dimension of Exhibiting» (2014, co-editor) as well as «Textiles: Open Letter» (2014, co-editor).

As a writer she has contributed to a variety of publications including Afterall, Artforum, Texte zur Kunst, Camera Austria and springerin. Rike is an advisory board member of the Kunstverein Tromsø.