step #1 : THINK BIG
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step #1 : THINK BIG
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how to do things with curatorship PLEASE NOTE! THIS CHAPTER IS SPECIALLY USEFUL FOR CURATORSHIP BEGINNERS, EITHER YOUNG STUDENTS OR THOSE WITHOUT ART HISTORY BACKGROUND. EXPERIENCED CURATORS ARE ALSO ADVISED TO GIVE THIS STEP A TRY, IF NOT FOR THE THEORETIC INFORMATION THEN FOR A POSSIBLE FRESH PERSPECTIVE ON THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIALLY ENGAGED CURATORSHIP
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step #1 : THINK BIG Welcome to the wonderful world of art practice. The field that you are stepping into has opened up to be much more things than just a simple oil painting in the recent century. Thanks to creative individuals who were thinking big, questioning the norms and innovating, art now stands for a broad range of practices (from editing texts to organizing parties). As a heritage of those pioneers, the role of curators in the society has changed as well, creating a greater playground for you and your ideas for creative activities (Thea 2009:6). Today the borders of ‘what is art’ are opened broadly almost to any answer and the definitions of contemporary art have been extended far beyond the traditional notions of paintings and sculpture. For the past one hundred years the art world has experienced fundamental changes that made it more and more open and inclusive. This process might make it harder for art historians to name, label and define, but for you it can provide a space for experimentation, questioning and discovery (Bridges 2009: 13; Thanks to creative Kortun 2001: 93). individuals who were thinking This might be confusing when big, questioning you start familiarising yourself the norms and with curatorship, another term innovating, art now with various definitions but you stand for a broad should take this overload as an range of practices opportunity, not an obstacle.
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how to do things with curatorship
MARCEL DUCHAMP. FOUNTAIN (1917)
Look at it creatively; you are in the art field exactly for that spirit. This uncertainty can play in your favour.
LEAVE THE MATERIALS, TAKE AN ACTION A brief overview of creatives who were thinking big and made art what it is today, would have to include Marcel Duchamp – who’s practice was questioned at the time (1910s) but now is included as one of the most influential artists of 20th century in every art history textbook. One of his main contributions was the use of Ready Made
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step #1 : THINK BIG - bringing into the art world ‘regular’ materials such as a stool and a urinal a hundred years ago. He provoked a debate of institutional critique against the worship of artworks (Paz 1975: 84). The use of Ready Made also contributed to extending the definition of art beyond the material. 'The Fountain was not made by a plumber but by the force of an imagination’ declared the poet Luise Norton in 1917 about Duchamp's bold attempt to exhibit a urinal titled Fountain (Norton 1917: 70). Following up on Duchamp’s ideas, the Conceptual Art movement advocated in the 1970s America the superiority of an idea over the material status of the artwork. As one of the most dominant American Conceptual artists Joseph Kosuth said - everything is material for art, since art is about the shaping of meaning (Morgan 1994: online). With this approach you can also view a curatorial project as a work of art that has its own meaning, as shall be shown in this handbook. 'The Fountain The memorable curator behind the was not made by rise of the Conceptual movement was a plumber but by Lucy R.Lippard, who had curated the force of an exhibitions, comic books and street imagination’ declared theatre and who is credited with introthe poet Luise ducing the term dematerialization Norton in 1917 about of art (Lippard 1973: 43). This idea Duchamp's urinal was developed by Andy Warhol and
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how to do things with curatorship the Pop Art, who again challenged the borders between artworks and everyday life products. Lippard's philosophy did not just leave art without materials, she spoke of art as action intead (Lippard 1973: 43). The approach that sees a creative gesture in activism aspires to dissolve art with life. It has resonated in various movements inside and outside of the European-North American art circuit, such as the Soviet Collective Action Group, Dakar-based Laboratoire Agit-Art and Indonesian New Art Movement. This was the beginning of the relationship between activ-
LUCY R.LIPPARD, A CAMPAIGN TO SAVE LA JICARITA COMMUNITY JOURNAL (2013)
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step #1 : THINK BIG ism and art, that allows you today to approach protests as curatorial practice. One of the expressions of that wave was when the Feminist movement activists 'forged ties' with artists and performers and used creative actions to push a public agenda that would transform women's place in the political sphere (Giunta 2013: 235-7). Since the 1960s the incorporation of the ordinary in art was in the spirit of a political equality. ‘The activity of art making has been opened wide by the artists’ assertion that anyone could make art... To watch people walk, run, work, eat, sleep, make love, tell stories and smile [...] now seemed the most worthwhile thing an artist could help a spectator to do’ (Banes 2008: 116). PLEASE NOTE! What you can take as the heritage of those artists and much more others who were not mentioned here is a more than ever inclusive notion of art. ‘The idea is not to create a formula for socially engaged collaborative public art practices, but to make visible the variety of practices that fall under such a rubric’ (Bridges 2009: 13) Another innovative individual that was thinking big is John Cage, who challenged the hierarchy of the artist and the audience (see step 3 for his famous 4’33’’ composition). Cage has later influenced another great thinker who opened up the art world - Allan Kaprow. Kaprow has developed Cage's ideas of using the participation of the audience for the realisation of an artwork into Happenings (Schimmel 2008: 9).
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how to do things with curatorship WHAT IS POLITICAL/PUBLIC ART? With the new materials and ideas came also a new role for art in regard to the society. As you can see in step 3, art practitioners around the world use their profession for the society around them. Those different practises got titles like Political or Public Art. Those definitions might be confusing as they can stand for different meanings: • subject / art that reflects on the society around it as a subject matter (like artist’s Brett Murray painting The Spier 2012 of the South African president as a comment on his leadership) • space / art that is exhibited in a public place (like graffiti or monuments) • artists / art that is made by the public (like community painting workshops) • art works / art that involves the public as a participant (interactive projects where the artwork needs the audience to exist, like John Cage’s 4’33 or Relational Art) • purpose / art that was made with the intention to influence the society around it (like Soviet propaganda posters). You will find this check list to be very handy when thinking about
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step #1 : THINK BIG art in socially engaged terms. When you encounter an artwork or a project, you can tick which meanings are relevant to it.
HOW TO DO THINGS WITH ART? Into this developing philosophy of political and public art, steps Dorothea von Hatelmann with the idea of ‘doing things with art’. In her thesis, that later turned into a book, von Hatelmann investigates how art becomes politically significant. In the book she analyses a number of contemporary artworks that question the possibilities and limits of acting with and through art. What von Hatelmann points out is the difference between artists who reflect or critique what they do not like in the world around them (=say things) and artists who rather create and construct alternative concepts with their art (=do things). An artwork that meets all the previously listed criteria (subject, space, artists, artworks and purpose) still can not qualify as one that is doing things. The key to qualify to von Hatelmann’s notion of doing with art would be to act through it (2010). A good example that can better illustrate the difference between doing and saying in art, according to von Hatelmann, is comparing the work of Tino Sehgal with Marcel Duschamp. In 1913 Duschamp criticized the worship of material objects in the museum by provocations like that of the Fountain. Sehgal, on the other hand,
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how to do things with curatorship
TINO SEHGAL, UNTITLED (2013)
is acting through his art. He is not ridiculing the materialism but is demonstrating that it is possible to do art completely without materials and to exhibit or sell art without involving objects at all. He presents the alternative - an artwork with content existing in the body of the people following the artist’s instructions. In 2005, in This is so contemporary he presented, at the Venice Biennale, a work that consisted of three people who were instructed to dance around visitors that enter the exhibition space, while singing to a catchy tune ‘Oh, this is so contemporary, contemporary, contemporary’.The artist used the power given to him as the representative of Germany in the international exhibition to make a statement about contemporariness while
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step #1 : THINK BIG using the ‘oldest means possible’ - people’s movement (von Hantelmann 2010: 156-7). Sehgal follows on the tradition of Conceptual art, Happenings and Relational art. He uses no objects in his art but insists on following after all the other conventions of art making – he exhibits during all Are curators merely the opening hours of the hosting facilitating artists institution, titles his works and who act through their labels them with a date and his art? Or is there a way name and even sells them to to act in the society collectors (von Hantelmann 2010: through curatorship? 159-60). Wouldn’t you agree that This question is the Sehgal’s doing leaves more impact key to this handbook as a crusader of dematerialisation than Duchamp's saying? Another artist that you can find in von Hantelmann’s book is Jeff Koons, whose notion of art explains in other words what it means for him to do things: ‘an art which political effect stems from the attitudes or opinions that an artwork proclaims and from the way in which it addresses a viewer, the public, ultimately society and from the inclusions and exclusions that come with that address' (Von Hantelmann 2010: 185).
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how to do things with curatorship By creating the theoretical notion of doing with art von Hantelmann opened an interesting question for curators – can we also do something with our profession? Are curators merely facilitating artists who act through their art in the society around them? Or is there a way to act in the society through curatorship? This question is the key to this handbook. But before that, let’s see what curatorship is.
SOCIALLY ENGAGED CURATORSHIP Like art, the definitions and practices that are dubbed curatorship have also changed a lot thanks to people who thought big and extended the limits of this profession to mean and include more things. Please try and keep that context in mind when you go to do things with curatorship. Then, you will also contribute to the constant development of the socially engaged curatorship. PLEASE NOTE! The conventional notion of a curator as an institutional caretaker of a specific collection of art is not able to account for the plurality of positions and roles that define the contemporary curatorial practices Curators act as creative agents in their own right and curatorship is regarded as an expanded field that includes different practices that are gathering under the curatorial umbrella (Bridges 2009: 30-34). Like the many projects described in this handbook will show, you can
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step #1 : THINK BIG organise a party, edit a book, gather a protest, plant a garden, and still call it curating. Most of the books and the essays about curatorship that you will encounter start with the word’s linguistic origins in Latin ‘care’. What the curator cares about? The starting point of this relatively young profession was to (take) care of a given collection of valuable objects in a 18th century colonialist Europe. Today the objects Like art, the of curators’ care vary, reflecting definitions and on the diverse practices of this practices that are profession. dubbed curatorship have also changed a The suggested definitions lot thanks to people of what curators are actually who thought big and doing vary. ’They are translaextended the limits tors, movers or creators whose of this profession to material is the work of others ... mean and include The curator translates the artist’s more things work by providing a context to enable the public’s understanding’ (Thea 2009:6). There are still ‘traditional’ curators who care for collection (be it private, national or commercial) but there also are curators whose
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how to do things with curatorship prime care is no longer grounded in traditional aesthetics, or even in the art world. Those curators’ prime care in their professional practice is for the society around them. The definition of Socially Engaged Curatorship that is used in this handbook is not only based on the intentions of the curator or on the art works being socially engaged ones, it includes a certain way of communicating art to its public, a way of doing . It is not ‘merely’ administrative support to socially engaged art, it is a different curatorial strategy then the ‘traditional’ curatorship. The strategy is engaging within the social context and utilising the same purpose for all the
THE MICHIGAN ARTRAIN (1997)
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step #1 : THINK BIG aspects of the curatorial practice – the choice of space, format, the organisational ‘side effects’ and also the personal life of the curator. For start meet Mary Jane Jacob - a pioneer, an independent curator who has contributed to exploring and developing new forms of curating socially engaged art. After working two decades in institutional frameworks of the American art world she moved to work on socially engaged curatorial projects with more direct and spontaneous relationships with the audience. ‘Opposed to art that functions merely on a symbolic or aesthetic level, her ambition has been to unite a community by commissioning artists to create installations that expand the conventional story of a city’s history. This has been the heart of Jacob’s project: not entertainment for the post-capitalist city, but an aesthetic, intellectual and emotional transformation of the local reality’ (Thea 2009: 7). You can read in step 2 more about curatorial projects which purpose is to leave a social affect on a community. Jane Jacob’s experiments with curatorship started when she was a student and an intern in 1975 with a travelling exhibition on a train (see step 3). Her curatorial strate'It’s not what you see gy has also extended the notions of that is important, traditional exhibitions by includbut what takes place ing non-mainstream artists and between people’ approaching the general public as Rirkrit Tiravanija her audience (Ibid. 20-22).
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how to do things with curatorship Another key figure in the written history of socially engaged curatorship is Rirkrit Tiravanija who follows the philosophy that in curating, ‘it’s not what you see that is important, but what takes place between people’ (Thea 2009: 8, 82). His curatorial practice is an example of testing the limits of institutional critique, questioning the nature of the institution while working in it (Ibid. 82). You can learn from him all about Relational Aesthetics, an approach that focuses on human interactions and the social context (Bourriaud 2002). Born in Argentina to Thai parents and living in New York, Tiravanija has been working around the globe doing innovative things with curatorship but his most famous projects are installation performances in which he cooks for the visitors of a museum or a gallery. He creates situations that blur the distinction between institutionally and social spaces and between the artist and viewers, with the phrase 'lots of people' appearing on his lists of materials (Bishop 2004: 55-6).
BETWEEN ART AND CURATORSHIP Tiravanija is a great example for artist-curator. ‘The position of the curator appears highly porous... at times it is difficult to distinguish the curatorial activity from the artistic’ (Bridges 2009: 32). Contemporary projects make it hard to point where the art ends and its exhibition begins. You might even wonder if the line between art and curatorship exists. The exhibition and the artwork sometimes are
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step #1 : THINK BIG
RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA, SOUP / NO SOUP PROJECT (2012)
BOURRIAUD's 'LABORATORY' PALAIS DE TOKYO IN PARIS
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how to do things with curatorship one and the traditional separation of responsibilities between an artist (for the artwork) and the curator (for the exhibition as a whole experience) seems to dissolve. WARNING! I encourage you to choose the more ‘peaceful’ approach that blurs the lines between what constitutes artistic practice and what constitutes curatorial practice. According to this approach, the separation between the two can only be explained with tradition, habits and history of development of art and museums; not with present practices. An artwork can take the form of a structure, a work that contains works by other artists but is independent in meaning from the work that comprises it, an exhibition as an artistic medium. If you wish to explore more on the boundaries of the two, to understand where your practice lays, and get more familiar with the main approaches – start by reading the debate between artist Julieta Aranda and curator Jens Hoffmann (Hoffnann and Aranda 2008: online). As an emerging curator you will surely encounter in this context the works of Joseph Kosuth, who also falls under this hybrid identity of artist-curator. In his famous installation The play of the unmentionable (1990) he has approached the mission of re hanging Brooklyn Museum's collection as a work of art. Kosuth: 'I much prefer it when artists make exhibitions, take responsibility for the surplus meaning
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step #1 : THINK BIG
JOSEPH KOSUTH, THE PLAY OF THE UNMENTIONABLE (1990)
that the collectivity of individual works produces' (Morgan 1994: online). This work is relevant for socially engaged curatorship since it was acting in a social context and has even influenced local politics. With his innovative use of texts and display compositions Kosuth has made a statement about public freedom of speech in the United States (Aagerstoun 2004: 290). You will find many more examples of historic and contemporary socially engaged curatorial projects in the next pages of the handbook.
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how to do things with curatorship NOTES :
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HOW TO DO THINGS WITH CURATORSHIP SELF-HELP HANDBOOK FOR SOCIALY ENGAGED CURATORS By Valeria Geselev Hounours In Curatorship Michaelis School Of Fine Art University Of Cape Town 2013
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