First-Person Curating: An Ethics of Autotheory and Curatorial Coming-Togetherness

Author: Celeste MacLeod-Brown

What follows is a brief introduction—a provocation—into some of my thoughts surrounding autotheory and the Curatorial. By treating the Curatorial as a noun, I signal an intention to engage with it as a discursive field, rather than merely as an adjective qualifying exhibitions or practices. My focus here is on how an understanding of autotheory—and more precisely, the discourse it generates—might offer ways to reimagine curatorial infrastructures and approaches. Specifically, I want to consider how notions of collectivity can be informed by the positioning of the subjective self—whether through first-person narrative or other articulations of individual identity within the collective. In doing so, I aim to introduce some exploration into what an embodied, affective, and person-driven curatorial practice might look like, and what this means for ethical curating.

This is a loose mapping of my thoughts—not a fixed argument nor a formalised outcome of any specific case study—and should be viewed as a practice-based process of figuring-out. I’ll touch on autotheory’s curatorial potential, an example of collectiveness formed around autotheory, and what a curatorial “coming-together” might mean in light of autotheoretical methods.

Common Ground

I find it increasingly useful to speak of the Curatorial from a kind of mutable first-person perspective—one that wavers between assertion and hesitation, much like the practice itself. The uncertain, malleable, and indefinite nature of curating demands a language—and perhaps an authorial voice—that mirrors its complexities. In navigating these questions, I often devise tools for analysis that draw upon methods from other cultural disciplines, bringing together disparate yet resonant ideas in ways that, I like to think, are somewhat curatorial in themselves.

When engaging with questions of embodiment and ‘the self’ in curating, I find the most momentum when I draw parallels with modes of self-writing practice—specifically autotheory and its more popular relative, autofiction. These literary modes offer a generative lens through which to consider authorship, agency, labour, power, voice, and gender within the curatorial field. Beyond their thematic overlaps, autotheory and curating also share a certain slippery conceptual looseness: both resist fixed definition, instead operating within evolving, contested spaces of uncertainty and negotiation.

Loosely defined, autotheory is the practice of writing/generating/analysing/performing theory through subjective experience and embodiment—a blending of theoretical and philosophical discourse with personal narrative, individual perspective, and bodily experience. It disrupts traditional boundaries between scholarship and lived experience, inviting a mode of inquiry that is both analytical and affective. This intermingling of the critical and the personal offers curatorial discourse ways to navigate tensions between individual and collective authorship, between fact and fictioned fact, between the institution and the self.

Autotheory’s application to curatorial thought has gained traction in recent years, particularly through Lauren Fournier’s seminal book Autotheory in Art, Writing, and Criticism (2021), where she traces autotheory’s lineage through feminist and queer genealogies, particularly in contemporary video and performance art. The term’s coinage is often associated with written works like Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts (2015) and Paul B. Preciado’s Testo Junkie (2008)—though the practice long predates its rather contemporary usage. Similarly, first-person perspectives have run throughout various feminist histories, but autotheory is most commonly linked to third- and fourth-wave feminisms.

One particularly fruitful way to explore autotheory’s curatorial potential is through attentiveness to embodiment. I recommend Fournier’s 2021 interview with Alicia Reymound in Brand-New-Life, “Embodied Curating: Reflections on Autotheory as Ways In and Through the Work,” where they discuss curating through the lenses of autotheory, subjectivity, and embodiment—while also situating themselves as white women working from intersectional and anti-racist frameworks. When asked what an autotheoretical approach to curating might look like, Fournier responded:

“An autotheoretical approach to curating, for me, is rooted in the belief that there is something politically, ethically, and aesthetically interesting, generative, and important about being self-reflective about how I relate to the works at hand and how I frame them.” (2021)

Coming-Together

While autotheory’s curatorial potential is still emerging, understandings of embodied curating are already more established. But one area of interest lies in a less obvious place: recognising the auto within collective models. Contemporary critiques of authorship, labour divisions, and institutional authority have made collectivity increasingly appealing in curating. Co-organisation, non-hierarchy, cohabitation—there’s a broad, but historically-rooted, sense that collective structures may offer more ethical models.

So why, then, might a practice so centred on the self be relevant to fostering ethical practice? Why allocate space for a form that privileges the individual perspective?

In conversation with Reymound, Fournier reflected on the familiar “auteur” critique in curating, highlighting the problem of the curator’s tendency toward authorial control. Perhaps the clearest link between autotheory and curating lies in the question of authorship. The critiques levelled at first-person writing—self-centering, narcissism, representation—might apply equally to curatorial work. Yet, autotheoretical writing often reflects critically on its own position. Chris Kraus, for instance, has expressed discomfort with the concept of memoir, saying she often finds others’ experiences to be as real to her as her own—a sentiment reflected in Aliens & Anorexia, where her voice merges with biographical writing on Simone Weil.

Here, we might view autotheory as curatorial in itself—through its processes of selection and presentation, and in its need to handle narratives and experiences, beyond the author’s own, with care and attentiveness. I would define this as a kind of coming-together: a melding of voices and theoretical discourse, facilitated by a singular voice through which the collective can, if done successfully, speak. In this sense, the coming-together becomes public, in the interest of reimagining and communicating theory, echoing Beatrice von Bismarck’s framing of curatorial situations as a “coming-together in the interest of the becoming-public of art and culture.”

Who Comprises the Collective?

In 2019, three Master’s students at HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design initiated a collective enquiry into autotheory’s potential in artistic practice. They quickly realised their questions would benefit from broader multiplicity, and launched an open call to invite others into an evolving, unnamed artist collective. In line with Parse Journal’s reference, I refer to them here as the autotheory group (which I’ll leave purposefully uncapitalised).

Their aim wasn’t simply to explore autotheory beyond the written form, but to use collectivity itself as a site and method of knowledge production. Rather than developing theory from a solitary position, they oriented their inquiry around the reciprocal relationship between individual art practices and the possibilities of autotheory. The autotheory group’s project Exploring Alternative Applications of Autotheory, presented as a performative lecture at the 2019 Parse Research Conference, exemplified this approach—autotheory as aim, content, and method.

Though they didn’t define themselves as a curatorial collective, their practice—especially their attentiveness to voice beyond the self, and that specific performance’s inclusion of internal nuance surrounding autotheory—offers insight into how both collectivity and autotheoretical discourse might inform curatorial thinking. Specifically, as we consider how uncertainty, contradiction, and multiplicity—hallmarks of both autotheory and the Curatorial—can become generative forces when approached within a diverse and non-hierarchical group.

Of course, collective practice is far from easy. Non-hierarchical structures often risk uneven labour distribution and the reproduction of the very inequalities they aim to resist—entangled as they are with race, class, gender, and institutional legibility. Annelies Vaneycken, writing on the autotheory group’s methodology, notes their commitment to a feminist ethos in which “equality rules and the diversity of the many ‘selves’ are addressed with respect”, also reiterating that their refusal to name the group reflects a prioritisation of shared production over individual identity.

Towards an Embodied Collective Ethics

So, we circle back to autotheoretical methods more broadly: the embodiment of lived experience, emotion, and the feelings of those within collective structures. If individuals are enabled to speak, act, and curate as themselves—with all the nuances of their backgrounds and preferences—then perhaps ethical tensions in curatorial collectives can be seen not as failures, but as indicators of plurality and difference.

Instead of a cacophony where only the loudest voices rise, a more nuanced form of collectivity might emerge—one in which each voice retains its specificity while contributing to a shared practice. This is not just a model of care, but a recalibration of curatorial ethics through the lens of autotheory.

Ironically, though I’ve only drawn here from secondhand sources, what I find most useful in devising a curatorial “tool” from autotheory is, quite simply, to write through it. Much curatorial writing relies on the first person—not only because of autotheoretical influence, but because the field is often so niche that theorists must speak from personal experience. Theoretical examples are frequently drawn from the self, because the discourse may scarcely extend beyond one’s department, community, or even self.

I often write by framing personal encounters as curatorial situations in themselves. This allows me to examine power dynamics and the emotional dimensions of cultural organising, while also writing theory through subjectivity—as a critical choice. I could say this disrupts academic language or widens access, though I’m not sure it does. But it does allow me to treat writing as curating, and thus to always write from within a curatorial situation.

Fictioning often enters the picture here, as I consider how to center a person-led approach to curatorial research without simply exposing the personal lives of those involved. So, I’ll end here—on that conundrum—and leave open the broader questions of embodied practice, the recognition of selves within collectivity, and how autotheory permeates so many areas of the Curatorial. We might further embed notions of care within collective organising structures by shifting towards a more nuanced attentiveness to the individual selves that comprise them—but that, too, may unravel the very issue of authorship all over again. Personal narrative can be a tool to amplify a more diverse multiplicity of voices, but it also risks being co-opted to spread specific rhetorics, transforming the subjective into “fact.” The challenge, then, is to consider where this holds potential for ethical practice—and where it might, in fact, pose the threat of the opposite.

References

Autotheory Group (2020) “Script for a Performative Lecture: Exploring Alternative Applications of Autotheory”, Parse Journal (Issue 12: ‘Human’, Autumn).

Bismarck, B. von (2022) The Curatorial Condition. London: Sternberg Press.

Fournier, L. (2022) Autotheory as Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism. Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Fournier, L. (2024) ‘Why Me? ̶ "On the Usefulness of ʻAutotheoryʼ: Toward a Standard of Analysis"’, Cogut Institute for the Humanities. Online video recording. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8BNPPyVfLk&list=PL1vIK9qrbktcsR-IzQou3sjf2jy8KE9Bp (Accessed: 6 April 2025).

Kraus, C. (2000) Aliens & Anorexia. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Preciado, P. B. (2013) Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era. Translated by Bruce Benderson. New York: The Feminist Press at CUNY.

Nelson, M. (2015) The Argonauts. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press.

Reymond, A. (2021) ‘“Embodied Curating: Reflections on Autotheory as Ways in and Through the Work”’, Brand New Life. Available at: https://brand-new-life.org/b-n-l/embodied-curating/ (Accessed: 6 April 2025).

Rumsby, M. (2008) CHRIS KRAUS #5: Aliens and Anorexia, online video recording. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5mmrNCcTlM&t=71s (Accessed: 27 March 2025).

Vaneycken, A. (2020) ‘“Collectiveness as a Form of Autotheory”’, Parse Journal (Issue 12: ‘Human’, Autumn).

All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.