attending two / attending to

BACKGROUND 'attending two / attending to' is an interactive installation and book contribution exploring relations between the human body and types of 'edge' conditions in formal spaces for encountering art experience: the physical corners of museum and gallery spaces; the gutter fold of the art book; and the human body encounter with material artefact. Contributing to Douglas and Preston's ongoing 'The Idleness Labouritory', an aesthetic ethos of co-creative experience is proposed through performative ways of questioning, exploring and attributing value in contemporary creative arts practices. CONTRIBUTION 'attending two / attending to' builds on 2016 work 'attending', and is informed by visual arts practices of institutional critique and contemporary performative art to explore the aesthetics of attentiveness that support the institutional place of art and are practiced by art museum visitors. The work interrogates institutional art experience, engaging the embodied spectator in a state of reflexive self-awareness and revealing the role that power, labour and the human body play in the reception and experience of art in museum contexts. The work contributes to Douglas' ongoing creative practice-based research in socially-engaged public art, performance and mobility and inter-cultural, artistic practice. SIGNIFICANCE The project was selected for an international touring exhibition 'Chiado and the Respublica Litteraria: Arts in the Public Sphere', curated by José Quaresma, touring in 2017 to Paris, Maison André Gouveia Salle Vieira da Silva, 2-31 March; Lisbon, Archaeological Museum of Carmo, 23 March - 15 April; Auckland, The University of Auckland Gus Fischer Gallery, Nov; Łódz, The Strzeminski Academy of Fine Arts, 7-26 June.