Dr Jean-Paul Martinon

After completing a master’s degree in International Law in Paris, I moved to London in the late 80s. Very quickly and with no previous experience or training, I found myself curating exhibitions of contemporary art. In 1991 I co-founded Rear Window, an independent arts trust that staged a series of exhibitions and conferences in temporary sites across London throughout the 90s. Each project presented, outside the conventions of the gallery space (in and around different frames, themes, media, and locations), new or collaborative work by young or established contemporary artists, writers, and poets.

One such project, Care and Control (1995), was sited in a fully functioning psychiatric hospital in East London and involved 30 psychiatric patients and 18 contemporary artists. It is in the context of this project that I completed my first monograph, a social history of Hackney Workhouse, Swelling Grounds, 1995. I stopped curating exhibitions by the end of the millennium and started working in academia, completing a PhD in contemporary art theory in 2001.  My interest in contemporary curatorial practices developed with the creation of the Curatorial Knowledge PhD Programme and the editing of a new book on this topic,  The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating (Bloomsbury, 2013).

Over the years, I have developed an interest in contemporary philosophy. This interest led me to complete a second monograph, On Futurity / Malabou, Nancy & Derrida  (Palgrave, 2007), which comprises a series of essays on the notion of futurity in contemporary continental philosophy and a short monograph on the relationship between masculinity and time:  The End of Man  (Punctum Books, 2013). I have also developed an interest in African philosophy, especially the work of Valentin Y. Mudimbe and contemporary Rwandan thinkers. This interest led me to write After "Rwanda" (Rodopi, 2013), which focuses on the ethical dimension of the Genocide Memorial Centre in Kigali, Rwanda. I am currently completing a new monograph on curating and ethics, entitled Sharing the World, which will comprise a series of reflections on the multiplication of platforms for curating and their ethical potential. 

Book

Martinon, Jean-Paul and Madani, Adnan. 2023. Visual Cultures as World-Forming. Berlin: Sternberg. ISBN 9783956795374

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2020. Curating as Ethics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 9781517908652

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2013. After "Rwanda": In Search of a New Ethics. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. ISBN 978-90-420-3711-3

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2013. The End of Man. New York: Punctum Books. ISBN 9780615766782

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2007. On Futurity / Malabou, Derrida and Nancy. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230506848

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2005. Swelling Grounds: A history of Hackney Workhouse. Rear Window Publications. ISBN 0 9521040 4 0

Edited Book

Martinon, Jean-Paul, ed. 2013. The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating. London: Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781472525604

Book Section

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2021. Alexis Kagame. In: Eugene O’Brien, ed. Oxford Bibliographies in Literary and Critical Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2015. Im-mundus or Nancy’s Globalising-World-Formation. In: Sanja Dejanovic, ed. Nancy and the Political. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 219-244. ISBN 9780748683185

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2015. Shame: Intentionality in Reverse. In: Suzana Milevska, ed. On Productive Shame, Reconciliation and Agency. 16 Berlin: Sternberg Press, pp. 66-78.

Doussan, Jenny. 2013. Eros, Plague, Olfaction: Three Allegories of the Curatorial. In: Jean-Paul Martinon, ed. The Curatorial A Philosophy of Curating. London: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, pp. 79-92. ISBN 9781472525604

Rogoff, Irit. 2013. The Expanding Field. In: Jean-Paul Martinon, ed. The Curatorial: A philosophy of curating. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 41-48. ISBN 9781472525604

Crone, Bridget. 2013. Curating, Dramatization and the Diagram. In: Jean-Paul Martinon, ed. The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating. Bloomsbury, pp. 207-214. ISBN 9781472525604

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2010. Bearers and Proper Names. In: Suzana Milevska, ed. The Renaming Machine. Ljubljana: PARASITE Institute Slovenia, pp. 60-71. ISBN 9789616807029

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2008. 33, 34, 35… The Life of The Limits. In: Josef Steiff and Tristan D Tamplin, eds. Battlestar Galactica and philosophy : mission accomplished or mission frakked up? 33 Chicago: Open Court, pp. 249-260. ISBN 9780812697087

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2006. Museum and Restlessness. In: H. Genoways, ed. Museum Philosophy for the Twentieth-first Century. Alta Mira Press, pp. 59-69. ISBN 9780759107540

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2005. Grafts, Repetitions, and Polymorphous Bodies: Daniel Buren at the Wordsworth Trust. In: Robert Robert, ed. Daniel Buren. The Wordsworth Trust, pp. 29-44. ISBN 1905256019

Martinon, Jean-Paul and Ogg, Kirsty. 2004. To Change an Opinion. In: , ed. The Showroom Annual 2003/4. The Showroom, pp. 25-29. ISBN 0952104040

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2003. Fact or Fiction? In: A. George, ed. Art, Lies and Videotape: Exposing Performance. Tate Publishing, pp. 40-51. ISBN 1854375377

Article

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2021. Curators Serving the Public Good. Philosophies, 6, 28. ISSN 2409-9287

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2019. Race and Universality: Meillassoux Meets Eze and Wiredu. Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 30, pp. 49-71. ISSN 1367-3769

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2019. Marx 1845 or the Fateful Rejection of Anschauung. CR: The New Centennial Review, 18(3), pp. 73-96. ISSN 1539-6630

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2018. The Birth of Language or the Necessity of Rule. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 81(3), pp. 413-424. ISSN 0041-977X

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2017. Edging Disciplines. Journal of Curatorial Studies, 6(2), pp. 221-229. ISSN 2045-5836

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2017. Time Unshackled. New Formations, 92, pp. 11-24. ISSN 0950-2378

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2016. Between Earth and Sky. Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, 24(1), pp. 25-44. ISSN 1936-6280

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2015. The Equivocal Concept: The Work of Bourahima Ouattara. International Journal of Francophone Studies, 18(2-3), pp. 339-358. ISSN 1936-6280

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2012. Valentin Mudimbe or the Work of Invention. Darkmatter, 8, pp. 1-4. ISSN 2041-3254

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2011. Between Freedoms: Jean-Luc Nancy’s Haunting Categorical Imperative. Mono Kurgusuz Labirent(10-11), ISSN 1306-715X

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2008. Switzerland: Joanna Hodge’s Derrida on Time. Radical Philosophy(149), pp. 62-64. ISSN 0300-211X

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2006. Museum, Plasticity, Temporality. Museum Management and Curatorship, 21(2), pp. 157-167. ISSN 0964-7775

Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2005. Strategies of (In)visibility. Republicart - EIPCP Web Journal, pp. 1-6. ISSN 1811-1696

Conference or Workshop Item

Andrews, Jorella G. and Martinon, Jean-Paul. 2018. 'A Fearless Look at the Unspeakable: Visual Cultures Public Programme Sping Term 2018'. In: Visual Cultures Public Programme. Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom Jan-Feb 2018.