has to be a more concerted effort in curating and facilitating points of access into those spaces—by in fact inscribing into those spaces
protocols, processes and programming that can differentiate those spaces, enabling them to be truly democratising and open. Somebody has to curate that. It’s not about retreat, which has been part of my critique at times of our practice[—]this retreat from that specificity. We want to dwell on this endless ambiguity, where through free imagination, anything could be possible. Where in reality, we need to engage levels of specificity and inscribing it into not only the territory but also generic and neutral conceptions of space, that specificity can enable a more intensified version of social justice and accessibility. So that is the role that The Lab plays—approximating those fragments of specificity that can enable the curating or the conceptualising of the systems and the conditions in which those potentialities could be manifested. If you want to speak of social change, it will not come about magically, it has to be facilitated. The role of institutions, communities and universities in reorganising their own conversations that have been fragmented is at stake. This is a summoning of a very new type of conversation.
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Kathy Waghorn: It’s forms of attention as well I think. The art gallery has been a place to look intently at things, in its traditional role. If you say, if The Lab sits within the gallery, then you are able to put something in the gallery to look at it intently. One of the things that I think is potentially quite useful regarding The Lab is that we could have done this studio at the university but somehow putting it in the gallery says it’s in a place where it needs to have attention paid to it. After all, if it’s in the gallery, it’s part of the cultural institution, it’s valuable. I think that The Lab being in the middle of the gallery says, “pay attention”. It is put into an environment where you are asked to pay attention to it. Interviewer: But it’s kind of interesting looking at these two different kinds of institutions coming together. The gallery is a very old-style kind of institution, and it’s interesting to think about these two coming together. Kathy Waghorn: But the thing that the old-style institution of the art gallery has done is inscribe value. So if the institutional framework of the gallery is able to inscribe value, then what you put in The Lab gets value inscribed upon it by the role of that institution. I think that’s a tremendously useful lever for us actually—to be able to put something like the Muddy Urbanism studio in there, and say it must be of value if it’s in this place.
Left: Site visit to the Whau River with Teddy Cruz. Below: Visit to the Avondale markets with Teddy Cruz. Photographs Kathy Waghorn
universities do not want to take a position towards issues of urgency today. So, in this neutralising of the political, there is a huge problem in a sense. I was invited recently to give a talk in Phoenix, Arizona, which I didn’t want to do because, obviously, Phoenix, Arizona is the epicentre of this anti-immigration policy in the United States. I decided to go even though some of my friends who are activists said why would you want to go there to Phoenix, to engage that kind of place? I decided to go [. . .] because boycotting this type of thing was only hurting the public, the students. It was a major student symposium. But as I was there [. . .] even with the conversations within the event, there was no mention of these anti-immigration policies. There was a need to take a position to suggest that this anti-immigration ended up hurting the city in a way. In other words, what you were saying earlier is that the issue of the fact that institutions not only offer the space for enabling levels of legitimation of certain
information by placing that information in the forum, or the gallery, but [also] enable levels of official precedence within the institutions of the city. But the next question I would have, which is maybe more critical, is: what role would a museum have in shepherding, stewarding and representing those ideas? I’ve been noticing the withdrawal of institutions from the issues of urgency [. . .] I think there has been a neutralisation of institutions, in not taking a position for fear of being politically incorrect and undermining the kinds of economies of support or patronage and so on. It’s a very difficult topic. What role do institutions have in truly being representatives, politically speaking, of the issues that have assembled in the forum? ___________________
i Referring to curator and art historian, Sarat Maharaj, the keynote speaker for the 5th Auckland Triennial. Most recently chief curator of the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, (2011), Maharaj also co-curated the 29th São Paolo Biennial, (2010), and curated the 3rd Guangzhou Biennial, (2008). Maharaj is Professor of Visual Art and Knowledge Systems at Lund University, Sweden and Visiting Professor at Goldsmiths College, London.
Interviewer: But it’s coming into quite a traditional, conservative space. Communicating knowledge in this older system is quite interesting. Teddy Cruz: Something that comes to mind is this issue of the role of institutions in a sense of politicising the debate. In the United States, there has been a fear of institutions. Even public
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