Discursive Documents

2010-2011
solo exhibition

Discursive Documents: Performing the Catalogue
Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA GA)



The word discursive refers to a manner of philosophizing by way of reason and argument, but the word also means digressive and rambling. In Discursive Documents: Performing the Catalogue, John Q explored the idea of discursive documents, a contemporary cataloging practice that takes the forms of printed matter, exhibition, programming, and digital scholarship. By creating links between these various forms of documentation, the material itself took on different forms and occupied different kinds of spaces. What if the catalogue were not simply the printed text and image, but also a dialogic process through which the meaning of past events could be continually renegotiated? Catalogue essays took the form of an essay in Southern Spaces online journal, as well as programming at MOCA GA. Printed matter took the form of a specially curated issue of The JOSH published by Arts & Sciences PROJECTS, now part of the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.