John James Marshall thesis.pdf - OpenAIR @ RGU - Robert Gordon ...

key element of that. It’s not just about the content that gets deployed to those
devices but the devices themselves are the content. PBB is going to set folly on
an interesting road.
4. What did folly expect to get out of the exhibition?
It’s very much seen as a catalyst and it was going to enable us to deliver a wider
festival so it was seen as the anchor project (the Debenhams or Marks & Spencer
of the shopping centre). We knew that we were going to have a critical mass of
quality products which we could actually spin and produce some activity around
it and produce a festival. It served a number of purposes in that respect. Even if
we hadn’t done the festival and we just had PBB it still would have been top
notch and that was the way it was. We all contributed quite heavily to the
success of PBB. Principally it was going to enable us to develop slightly larger
although we couldn’t foresee the scale because it was about development paths
with annual festivals which we haven’t done to date. So PBB was the anchor
that enabled us to be involved with an interesting partner like Fast-uk in an
academic perspective as well so you get much more of a grounding a much more
rounded project.
5. How would you describe folly’s role in the curatorial process for
PBB?
I am pleased that we were equal partners and the discussions that we had about
the selection of work and how the show fitted together was genuinely
collaborative. The discussions we had were really quite interesting for me
because it took in about scoring things and why you liked a particular piece of
work and how did it fit, etc. I know there were some things that we said we
would have liked to have but we didn’t have that wouldn’t fit in at all anywhere.
I was pleased with what we had got the mix of fifteen or so pieces of work or
fifteen participants came out of those discussions and that collaboration and
that was very satisfying. It didn’t feel like we were curating by committee it was
coming out of informed discussion. There was a very clear goal and I thought
that was great. Everything did hang together in that respect and that was the
role from a curatorial perspective and it was interesting because there were
different skills as well. From my particular background things were appealing
to me in a different way. My colleagues in folly have a slightly different feeling
- 452 -