Art Without Authors: Networks, Assemblages and 'Flat' Ontology.

This article examines changes in curatorial practice using a comparison between the 52nd Venice Biennale, 2007, and Documenta 12, 2007, as its point of departure. Through a reading of Manuel Delanda's theory of 'assemblages' it detects a tendency to offer constellations of works rather than collections of individual art pieces presented as self-sufficient aesthetic entities. It argues that progressive exhibitions now tend to orchestrate complex meanings and affects through the adroit juxtapositioning of works even at the price of subordinating authorial intent and the autonomy of discrete works. It suggests, further, that art exhibitions, conceived of as 'assemblages', offer a fertile forum for the presentation of complex and subtle transnational cultural connections that may otherwise be too easily overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]