This exhibition represents the culmination of a semester's work in the Curating Data elective at Aarhus University. As a collective of four students, we have revisited our individual archives—datasets, reports, and visualizations—to articulate the histories that unfolded in our learning during this course, taught by Midas Nouwens and Magdalena Regina Tyzlik-Carver.
Throughout the semester, our curating data efforts have been shaped by the understanding that data are not neutral facts but constructed artefacts. Guided by Wernimont’s notion of quantification as world-making and Kitchin’s definition of data as capta, we have approached data practices as interpretive, political, and situated. Working with the Curating Data Model has allowed us to conceptualise our assignments, workshops, and fieldwork within a shared taxonomy of data practices, highlighting how collection, classification, cleaning, and visualisation actively shape meaning.
Our practical work has involved critically observing and performing data practices, identifying the assumptions embedded within them, and contributing to the ongoing expansion of the model. In this way, we have come to see curating data as a critical, reflective, and methodological practice that negotiates theory and technique to reveal how data come into being and how they participate in making worlds.
