The Hague, home to the Netherlands’ seat of government and to the International Criminal Court, does not immediately conjure up an image of a contemporary art hub. If anything, it is the heartland of Dutch and International politics. However, it may well be that precisely these factors render it an interesting locus to open a new venue focusing on arts and politics. Gemak was born out of a partnership between The Hague’s Municipal Museum and the Free Academy, and opened its doors to the public on October 20th. Following is an interview with Gemak’s curator-in-chief Robert Kluijver, who previously has worked in Afghanistan for an NGO for the preservation of cultural heritage, then as civil/political affairs officer of the United Nations political mission in Afghanistan, later as a consultant for the World, and finally as the representative of the Open Society Institute (Soros) in Afghanistan and the Executive Director of the Afghan Foundation for Culture and Civil Society (FCCS) which he established with a group of Afghans in 2003. Besides programming art events in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Tajikistan and beyond, he secured the first pavilion for Afghanistan at the Venice Biennial (2005).
Nat Muller: Gemak aims to connect emerging global artistic trends to contemporary political and social debates in the Netherlands (and beyond). In other words it treads into the murky realms of arts and politics in an explicit manner. There is much discussion lately about activist art, political art, activism using artistic strategies, art as conflict prevention, art for social change, etc. An often heard – and not entirely untrue – argument is that if art becomes subjugated to an overtly political or social agenda, the aesthetics become redundant, or when art becomes instrumentalised predominantly for socio-politcal purposes it loses its autonomous status. What is your position on these issues, and what is your curatorial approach within that context thematically, as well as methodologically?
Robert Kluijver: I wouldn't ever try to subjugate art to any agenda. My role as curator is at best to develop fragments of a new language. The language of politics has been emptied of its meaning. This is a phenomenon that seems to intrigue, amuse or fire many artists. It also preoccupies me. Between the reality of our world and our rendering of it into language lies a gap that allows, almost demands individuals to come with their own interpretations. I can juxtapose or contrast these in various ways that accord more with my own experience of reality. I don't pretend this rendering is closer to the truth but I do hope that it's closer to the subjective reality experienced daily by so many non-Western people.
The themes I'm interested in are very general and current issues such as global war, the so-called clash of civilisations and the environmental crisis but also consumerism, the obsession with the body and spiritual disorientation. Having decided on a general theme I next develop a narrative structure within which this theme can be developed through exhibitions, debates, encounters and public projects. Then I start integrating artworks, preferably in a dialogue with artists. This process brings up new angles and developments in the foreseen narrative – it is a very creative process.
NM: The Hague seems to be a strategic locus for Gemak. What kind of interactions do you foresee with the urban setting of The Netherlands’ administrative capital, its local audience, and the possibilities for interesting exchange that would be specific to The Hague?
RK:The Hague is a city with conflicting character traits. It is the seat of government but also a city with large pockets of unemployed immigrants. 40% of the population is of non-Dutch origin. You have skilled expatriates living aside a native 'white trash' population and a mass of commuting bureaucrats. These contrasts don’t lead to polarization but to a wide range of urban experiences that rarely meet. It is tempting to use art in the public space to make one’s own connections between these parallel worlds. That’s why I plan to invite a foreign artist to accomplish a public art project with practically each major exhibition in Gemak.
It is curious that nothing comparable to Gemak exists in this cosmopolitan city. Why is this? It seems all cultural and intellectual activities in the Netherlands are concentrated in Amsterdam. However in size and composition of the population The Hague is comparable to Amsterdam. I hope Gemak will contribute to creating a cultural scene here which is transnational. We’ll leave the self-referential and self-congratulatory art scene to Amsterdam!
NM: The first exhibition “Green Zone/Red Zone” investigates how in Iraq regulating policies of containment and control are implemented within an urban setting, and what its wider global ramifications are. The exhibition successfully merges very different discourses and genres, ranging from an Iraqi car wreck that in and by itself has no art object value, to social artistic projects, such as Open Shutters, to documentary film, to more traditional “white cube” art. Art disciplines of course also have their own boundaries: how have you negotiated breaking these perceptual boundaries in your choice of artists and exhibition design?
RK: I don’t think I agree with your statement that art disciplines of course have their own boundaries. Try to tell the artists that! Documentary movies and photography - or even objects - can be as esthetically moving as art. Meanwhile artists apply more and more documentary processes in their work. Think of the Atlas group’s work, for instance. There are so many examples. I don’t feel any such tension in my own approach. In my next exhibition ‘Future: Afghanistan’ I plan to integrate billboard campaigns and pulp TV entertainment programs with ‘high’ art by international Afghan artists to give a general feeling of the world young Afghans are growing up in.
In the past our world maps used to have depictions of monsters in Africa. Now our picture of Africa is determined by starving children and desolate landscapes of environmental or urban catastrophe. Both images are fictional representations which say more about us, the map-makers, than about Africa. In Gemak I will give representatives of other cultures the chance to make statements not only about their own cultures but about ours as well.
NM:Future exhibitions sport titles like “The Wall” and “Terminal”. Can you tell us a bit more about them conceptually, and which artists will be showing what type of work?
RK:“The Wall” and “Terminal” are parts 2 and 3 of a cycle on ‘The Border’ which started with “Green Zone / Red Zone”. The current phase of history is characterized by the violent reshaping of the world order, with a view to retaining Western hegemony. The concept of the Border is changing but it definitely is not disappearing! The War on Terror signals a new moment in international relations: States are now attacking individuals directly. That used to be a question of law and order, now it is militarized. The border therefore is not only a line between states, between territories, but increasingly among citizens. Of course there were always borders between groups of people, but now the State is drawing them, using its monopoly of violence and its unequalled resources to separate the good citizens from the bad. Real or imaginary threats are amplified and used to convince us that we better accept these borders, even if it means impingements on our privacy, liberties and rights. We all succumb to this moral blackmail: why should one be against these security measures if one is on the ‘good side’?
This is the phenomenon of the ‘green zone’ vs. ‘red zone’ which I think is becoming global. First we create the fear of the other, which is currently the Arab, Muslim ‘fundamentalist’. It could also be (and has been) the yellow or black man, the feminist or the drug addict. The fear justifies building a wall to keep him out. In the exhibition ‘The Wall’ I want to study what happens to a society that isolates itself from what it (irrationally) fears. We can think of Israel but also of Korea, the US-Mexican border or Europe, and draw our lessons from Berlin. However the wall cannot last because we cannot keep out the other. As a Palestinian mentioned to a friend of mine, ‘who builds walls gets tunnels’. So we then build a terminal in the wall to filter the passage and control who gets in. In the third exhibition I will look at this terminal, but from the outside. The terminal, as the etymology of the word indicates, is not so much a passage from one place to another, but the end of a journey – and the beginning of something new. For young African males the passing of the European border, for example, can be like a ‘rite de passage’, an obligatory test of manhood that can result in death. But the terminal is also the bland, impersonal structure that we know from airports – a purgatory of sorts, between worlds, but also a self-contained universe in itself.
In each exhibition I plan to invite about a dozen artists from areas directly affected by the themes, and include documentary works and objects which don’t have the pretense to be art.
NM: The exhibitions are accompanied by an extensive public program of debates, discussions, dinners and workshops. Also here there’s a mix of artists, journalists, political scientists, etc. What role does the critical discourse generated in these events take, within Gemak’s objectives?
RK: I was just comparing my general approach to curating as that of a narrator, building up tension from one part to the next – or, to use a better analogy, from one act of a play to the next – with the elements that the artists bring in. Now the public meetings are like the dialogues of the play. The phrases that emerge in the exchange of ideas between the participants of these meetings animate the exhibition, they give it an ephemeral but concrete meaning (or direction). The public meetings therefore always have to do with the subject matter and they tend to follow each other in a logical sequence. In our first ‘Green Zone / Red Zone’ debate for example we asked experts to give a neutral analysis of integral texts by the most famous ‘terrorists’: what do they want from the West? In the second meeting we discussed what we hear about these terrorists thru the media, and why that is so different from what they say in their own words. In the third meeting we will analyze how the warped translation of what they say is used by the State to reorganize public life. But I won’t be rigid in this approach. We request speakers or performers who happen to be passing by to give a presentation in Gemak, and we can also participate in current debates as they pop up, if they have something to do with our general field of concerns.
NM: Finally, you have a background in political science. What can art do that politics cannot do, and perhaps I also should put the question the other way round: what can politics do, that art
cannot do?
RK: I think I have partially answered this question in my first answer; but very succinctly: art has freedom while politics has power. Vice-versa artists wield little power while politicians enjoy scant freedom.
Tagged as:
art, curatorial strategies, non-westeren art, politics, the hague
LabforCulture è un'iniziativa di partnership della Fondazione Culturale Europea. LabforCulture desidera ringraziare i propri finanziatori per il loro supporto.