Serpentine Marathons: Endurance, Overproduction, and Event Culture

The Serpentine Gallery's seventh annual Marathon, themed around memory, took place in October 2012 during Frieze Art Fair week in London. The weekend-long events feature 80–90 speakers each given 20 minutes, closely associated with co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist's fast-paced, lateral curatorial style. Critics note the lack of Q&A and reflection time, but the Marathons embrace their format as a positive, emphasizing liveness and collective endurance. The first 24-hour Marathon in 2006 with Rem Koolhaas pushed productivity to an absurd edge, interviewing 65 cultural figures including Doris Lessing. Subsequent Marathons (2.5 days) soften this endurance. The events mirror cultural saturation, allowing audience multitasking (email, tweeting) and sampling. The marathon format has proliferated in creative fields, e.g., Pecha Kucha (Japan, 20 images/20 seconds) and 'Truth Is Concrete' in Graz (24/7 for 8 days). These marathons align with the discursive turn in art, privileging participation over contemplation, and turn talks into spectacular events. The Serpentine Marathons epitomize event culture, testing format limits and overproduction, while reflecting curation beyond gallery space. They mitigate digital surfeit by focusing on a topic but also demonstrate overwhelming ideas. The Marathons often stop short of tangible output beyond catalogues, raising questions about the discursive turn's productivity.