I had very much been looking forward to seeping myself in 3 days (5-7 March 2009) of debates, lectures, interviews and panels at Rotterdam’s Witte de With Center of Contemporary Art, second edition of the http://www.wdw.nl/project.php?id=186”" target="_self">Rotterdam Dialogues Symposium: The Curators. Unfortunately I did not make it to the first symposium http://www.wdw.nl/project.php?id=183“" target="_self">The Critics (9-11 October 2008. A quick glance at the impressive list of speakers proved that this weekend would be a get-together of the crème de la crème of contemporary art curators. Knowing the Witte de With space, I was wondering at their limited seating capacity, and where they were going to squeeze everyone in. If “everyone” was going to be there, then probably everyone would want to attend too. I was proven right: it felt more like treading the grounds of a pop concert than the normally rather sleepy white cube art space. This trend has been going on for years of course: the curator as the new rock star, the self-proclaimed priests and priestesses of the art scene, the critics’ darlings or foes, the curator as genius, the curator as fascist, the curator as the icon we love to hate, or adore. It’s a lot of pressure…expectations were high.
Back to the symposium: it was like attending your auntie’s tea party where everyone seems to know everyone, but some distant cousins seem somewhat out of place. Those few distant cousins were the general audience and a few students. These get-togethers are important, they happen far more informally on exhibition and biennale openings and parties. It is here where peers share knowledge and gossip. But when one gives 3 days time to actually learn something and expects to participate in the “production of knowledge” (a versatile term very much en vogue now), then “The Curators” massively disappointed. To be fair: after day 2, I quit. And to be even more fair, even on day1 and day2, I skipped some sessions. With these limitations in mind allow me to indulge in a few generalisations: there was very little said that either addressed the topics of the preconceived panels in an intelligent fashion, there was almost no mention of artists and art as such, there was very little speech that transcended the amusing anecdotal (in the good case), the generic have-heard-that-one-before (in the worst case). And why was that the case? Why didn’t the speakers take their audience serious? There was almost a refusal to engage in conversation that was topical. But perhaps this happens and is unavoidable if one takes oneself as object of study. In the end if we would have spoken about “curating”, something interesting might have come out. Perhaps the symposium’s title indicated it all: it really was the curator on the operating table here, and being dissected as some patient refusing to be anaesthesised.
In retrospect it would have been so much more refreshing a concept had the organisers done away with all the formal panel and presentation structures and just opened a 3-day bar: free drink and chat (up), with the invited curators. That would have been perhaps more constructive. Nevertheless, as a curated event, the most interesting way to read this symposium is to consider it as an art piece in and by itself. A performative live art installation of sorts with a pre-defined script. Someone even joked that if a bomb were to be dropped on Witte de With during the symposium, contemporary art’s future course would be changed forever. It is amusing to ponder that hypothesis: what and who would be shown in the trendsetting museums, Kunsthauses, Kunsthalles and other art venues. Who would be doing the Biennials and Triennials, and what would they mean? What would be taught at curatorial training programs? Would artists be producing work differently? Who would be the new superstars?
Criticism aside, Professor of Visual Culture at Goldsmith’s College, http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/visual-cultures/i-rogoff.php“" target="_self">Irit Rogoff gave a wonderful opening lecture titled “The Implicated – A Model for the Curatorial?” Her point of departure was to collapse artists, critics, curators and audience into one category, namely those of the “implicated”. She criticised how curatorship often has been reactive, rather than generative. For example, shows focussing on identitarian matters have often been put together with a gesture that is compensating or corrective. How then can we support a practice that gets away from setting oneself in critical opposition to something which ultimately does little more than reiterate the logics of that what one is attempting to critique? She discerned that nowadays within curatorial practice there is a shift from the spectacle to an event of knowledge, wherein there is a difference between “curating” and “the curatorial”. The former according to Rogoff produces a moment of promise, whilst the latter breaks up the stage by producing a narrative, an utterance, a disturbance. In the realm of the curatorial works of art behave in a precipitating fashion. It is of course not entirely clear how these theoretical suggestions are to be translated in a more pragmatic fashion, but I liked Rogoff’s suggestion to replace the word “exhibition” with “occasion”, and the term ”art” by “the manifest”. The curatorial is then not a position as such, but more a state which has to produce itself over and over again.
Up next was a panel on curatorial training programs, featuring Zoran Eric (curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade), Mai Abu ElDahab (artistic director of http://objectif-exhibitions.org/“" target="_self">Objectif in Antwerp), and writer and curator http://www.rye.tw/“" target="_self">Raimundas Malasauskas, After 2’ moderator Sophie von Olfers voice (curator at http://www.mmk-frankfurt.de/”" target="_self">Frankfurt’s Museum fur Moderne Kunst) got significantly on my nerves. The job of a moderator is to shape, guide and direct a panel. Obviously Ms Olfers did not understand that very well. Performatnce-wise it was an interesting spectacle: Raimundas looking uncomfortable, cold and bored. Mai looking somewhat bewildered – though she was extremely articulate in saying nothing meaningful. Only Zoran Eric amused with some anecdotes how he as a young curator in the 90’s joined a curatorial workshop and how later he set out the curate ‘The Last East-European Show” with a group of regional colleagues.
Whereas the former panel at least amused in performance, the following one was just plain boring. Titled “What are the responsibilities of the curator?, Austrian independent curator Sabine Breitwieser, artistic director of http://www.fridericianum-kassel.de/“" target="_self">Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel Rhein Wolfs, and independent curator Brigitte van der Zande did little other than list the bureaucratic side of their responsibilities (and complain about it), but could not expand into other realms. Rhein Wolfs did have a few eyebrow-raising statements which are good to share, such as his desire for “sensible, workable and functional art”. It seemed more like a call for sensible, durable and proper shoes. Since when does art have to subscribe to these criteria? At some other point he exclaimed: ”I like to work with complex artists.” Now what does that mean exactly…?
I ditched the rest of the day’s panels which might have been a good thing as the next day everyone was referring to Hou Hanrou’s Al Qaida contemporary art curator analogy. In any case, the panel with the illustrious heading “Is the curator per definition a political animal” started promising. Moderator http://www.uwe.ac.uk/sca/staff/oneill.shtml”" target="_self">Paul O’Neill had come up with a funky format where he had sent artists a rather lengthy quote of Aristotle relating to humans as political animals, and asked the artists to formulate a question to the panel or to an individual curator specifically. On the panel were http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourriaud”" target="_self">Nicolas Bourriaud (Gulbenkian Curator at Tate Britain), Beatrix Ruf (director of the http://www.kunsthallezurich.ch/”" target="_self">Kunsthalle Zurich) and Enrico Lunghi (director of http://www.mudam.lu/”" target="_self">Mudam, Luxemburg). The questions varied from the silly to the more profane. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liam_Gillick“" target="_self">Liam Gillick asked “Where is Nicolas”, expecting Bourriaud not to have shown up. An equally silly discussion ensued on the topic whether Bourriaud had ever not turned up at an event without a good reason. The answer eventually was YES. Another question to Bourriaud was “Do you swallow?” Also here the answer was YES. Subsequently – and beats me how we got there – Lunghi was making a very lengthy argument about how curators are the best providers of capital in a neo-liberal world. Hou Hanru’s Al Qaida analogy – something to do with the exterritorialisation of Islam – was employed, to conclude that a neo-liberal system wants to destroy every form of tradition. Nicolas Bourriaud had a few intelligent and interesting things to say nonetheless, and saved the panel by charm and wit. I particularly liked his refusal of the traditional vs. neo-liberal dichotomy. In an Althusserian vein he stated that we cannot be outside any system, because we are linked to it through ideology. Lunghi came up with another quite pedantic platitude that even from traditional and conservative people we can learn something. That put an end to that tangent. Bourriaud went on to cast the curator as the one who facilitates a dialogue between concept and meaning of an artwork, though every artwork produces its own concept of art. In effect, curating is about the battle of ideas. I liked how he noted that now the audience is the big Other and that everything that cannot find its audience is a priori suspicious. In that respect, to show something that is not immediately consumable, is in and by itself a political gesture. His advice was to “never to give up on your desire.”
The panel with the sexiest and imho most timely title “Radical-Chic curating: curatorial practice vs. curatorial fashion”, also failed to deliver because it simply veered away from its topic. To be more precise, it never even really approximated it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jens_Hoffmann”" target="_self">Jens Hofmann (director of CCA Wattis institute and Sarkozy lookalike) replied to the question “what is an exhibition” that more and more curators curate exhibitions without art and artists make work without exhibitions. To him an exhibition is still a very traditional notion of art works displayed in a gallery space. He went on to cite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Ulrich_Obrist”" target="_self">Hans Ulrich Obrist and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okwui_Enwezor”" target="_self">Okwui Enwezor as influences. His co-panellist Stefan Kalmar (director of the http://www.kunstverein-muenchen.de”" target="_self">Kunstverein Munchen) indicated that he is more interesting in creating social milieus wherein the exhibition is only a part of the overall structure. Pablo Leon de la Barra who directs the http://centrefortheaestheticrevolution.blogspot.com/”" target="_self">Centre for Aesthetic Revolution went into a long lengthy account of the origin of the notion of http://nymag.com/news/features/46170/”" target="_self">radical chic, which political roots lie apparently a party that composer’s Leonard Bernstein’s threw in 1966 for the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party“" target="_self">Black Panthers. The term was used by journalist Tom Wolfe. This is the best thing this panel yielded: a great reference. After reading Tom Wolfe’s original piece Radical Chic I was amazed how well it fed into what Irit Rogoff called the reactive in curating. Radical chic and elegant slumming is still about “producing a legibility of otherness which remains safe and contained.
Finally, were all the panels self-fulfilling prophecies and rhetorical questions? Is curating as everything else in crisis so that the subject (the curator) is the best positioned to analyse its own object of study (the curator/curatorship/curating)? Isn’t it quaint that the whole series of the Rotterdam Dialogues at Witte de With started with critics, moved on to curators and ends with artists? It somehow feels like the wrong order, or does it reveal the true priorities of things?
Taggé comme:
curators, irit rogoff, radical chic, witte de with
LabforCulture est une initiative partenaire de la Fondation européenne de la Culture.
LabforCulture aimerait remercier ses investisseurs pour leur soutien.
But I would like to correct a wrong element in it. My answer to AA Bronson's question, "do you swallow", was not : "yes."
But : "No, I absorb."
Please respect the historical truth !--)
Nicolas Bourriaud Anonymous User | 17 mars 2009