Every program is a rehearsal for the next program—unless the next program is forever. Revising, revisiting, and reprising a short 2016 talk by Krishnamurthy entitled "Endless Archive", this performance-lecture-manifesto proposes a speculative scenario: What if every art exhibition, from now into the future, were permanent? How would this change the practice of exhibition making today?
Part of his ongoing investigation into reflexive display, installation, and archival methods, these questions suggest expanded opportunities and responsibilities in rethinking exhibition models and institutional formats. By articulating its conceptual framework as a continuous rehearsal, "Endless Exhibition, or, K.’s Last Lecture" simultaneously introduces and initiates Krishnamurthy’s meta-program for the new Kunsthal Gent.
Prem Krishnamurthy is an exhibition maker based in Berlin and New York. He founded and directed the experimental institutions P! in New York and (currently) K, — a yearlong “workshop for exhibition making” in Berlin, established in collaboration with KW Institute for Contemporary Art. Other curatorial projects include exhibitions at Austrian Cultural Forum New York; The Jewish Museum, New York; Para Site, Hong Kong; and Stanley Picker Gallery at Kingston University London. Co-founder of award-winning design studio Project Projects, he is now a partner and director of Wkshps, a multidisciplinary design workshop that seeds and shapes identities for the arts, culture, and beyond. He is a member of the Creative Team for the Carnegie International, 57th Edition, 2018 in Pittsburgh, US and is Artistic Director of the inaugural Fikra Graphic Design Biennial in 2018 in Sharjah (UAE). His interactive, ever-changing monograph/memoir/manifesto, P!DF, was first published in 2017 by O-R-G