Curating the critical mediation

The Issues of Museology, 2020

The article analyzes the current state of curatorship and curating from a historical, theoretical and practical perspective. The aim is to understand the origin and the nature of the justified critique facing the profession nowadays from art institutions, artists, as well as from curators themselves, while exploring the challenges faced. The key historical developments of the profession are retraced, which nonetheless always had, to a certain extent, to come to terms with the main stakeholders of the industry: the artist, exhibiting institutions and the public. The profession’s interwoven position is further studied through a variety of positive and normative accounts from curators as well as from academia. These accounts make it possible to evaluate a profession whose complexity is reflected in its various practices, functions and officiating venues. Based on the historical and theoretical analysis, the authors explore the current position of the curator in the art field, as well a...

in: E. Hermens (ed.) Authenticity in transition. Changing practices in contemporary art making and conservation. Postprints of the Glasgow NeCCAR symposium, 1st and 2nd of December 2014.

Since 1998, when Michael Brenson's famous article 'The curator's moment' was published, the role of the curator as a creator of the meaning of art has been increasing. The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw is a small, young institution which is currently building its own collection. Some of the acquisitions are made following an exhibition, while others are specially created for a show. Often exhibitions represent a curator's personal choice. Objects may also be part of the artist's archive, a prop from a performance or a material product of an artistic action. The problem starts when such objects enter a public collection as works of art. From the point of view of a conservator of modern and contemporary art, the artist's opinion has always been viewed as more important than any other consideration in terms of care, conservation and restoration but in many cases, artists are not interested in participating in the 'museum' life of their works. This paper discusses whether the curator should become the authority in such a case.

Curation, as a form of labor, is subject to changes in working conditions and methods like any other profession. Both formal and informal economies of labor have contributed to the constant transformation of curatorial practice, informing the ways in which art is organized in the social field. Changes in curation as a discipline, that is, in forms of labor and professionalization, impact how art is produced and therefore conceptualized and organized. The curator is no longer a passive and detached agent from the artist or the art object, but an active one in the cultural field, and in the production and reception of art.

Image & Narrative, 2008

Transtechnology Research Reader, 2013

This paper is intended as a thought experiment around the idea of the artist as a 'found system', open--ended and in constant becoming, as an alternative, more flexible solution to the usual art historical conception of artists. Inspired by René Daumal's Mount Analogue (1952: 2010) and Nina Samuel's The Islands of Benoit Mandelbrot (2012), it makes use of a pataphysical, pragmatist approach, exploring the realm between fiction and reality, and tries to apply Duchamp's concept of the 'infra--mince' to develop a system(atic) thinking about the artist(ic).

2009

časopis za suvremena likovna zbivanja magazine for contemporary visual arts razgraničavanje pojmova kustoska profesija oblik je kulturalne prakse vrlo fleksibilnog tipa. ono što unutar nje možemo označiti kao "fiksno" jest to da se bavi umjetničkim praksama i da se upisuje u ono što nazivamo umjetnički sistem, koji je dio kulturnog i društvenog polja. prema Šuvakoviću, "kustoske prakse su teorijske i praktične, stvaralačke, posredničke i birokratske aktivnosti u koncipiranju, artikulaciji, organizaciji, izvođenju, kolekcioniranju, arhiviranju, dokumentiranju, predstavljanju i promociji koncepcija umjetnosti, kulture i politike, umjetničkog rada, svijeta umjetnosti i povijesti umjetnosti kroz kulturalne institucije i masovne medije". 1 za neke je kustos/ica službenik/ica umjetnosti/umjetnika, katalizator/ica, medijator/ica, kritičar/ ka, po drugima povjesničar/ka umjetnosti, krijumčar/ka, teoretičar/ka, aktivist/ica, menadžer/ ica, kulturalni/a radnik/ica. sve u jednom. svi ti denominatori istovremeno opisuju kontradikcije, potencijale i paradokse prakse. no, bez obzira na to koji termin upotrebljavali, odgovornost i otprije definiran zadatak isti su, a to je odabrati "što će kao (umjetničko djelo) izdržati test vremena, te kako će se na taj rezidij gledati". Drugim riječima, prenositi kulturu odnosno "niz interpretacija i značenja te značenjskih horizonata, a ne znanje o nekoj skupini "neutralnih predmeta" na kojima je moguće daljnje neograničeno, otvoreno istraživanje." 2 presjek kustoske emancipacije kustoska profesija ponajviše se profesionalizirala kasnih šezdesetih godina sukladno s porastom radikalnih i inovativnih umjetničkih i kritičkih praksi nastalih 60-ih i 70-ih koje su inicirale alternativan način umjetničke produkcije, redefiniciju umjetničkog djela, mijenjanje umjetničkih koncepcija te preispitivanje institucionalnih prostora. jedna od važnijih promjena koje je terminological clarification curatorial profession is a very f lexible cultural practice. What we can define as "fixed" within that practice is the fact that it deals with artistic practices; moreover, it is inscribed in what is commonly known as the art system, which is a part of the cultural and social field. according to Šuvaković, "curatorial practices are those theoretical and practical activities of creation, mediation, and administration that contribute to the conception, articulation, organization, performance, collection, archivation, documentation, presentation, and promotion of various concepts of art, culture, and politics, artistic work, art world, and art history, through cultural institutions and the mass media." 1 for some, the curator is a servant of art/artists, a catalyser, mediator, and critic, while according to others he or she is an art historian, smuggler, theoretician, activist, manager, and cultural worker. all in one person. all these denominators describe contradictions, potentials, and paradoxes of this practice. but regardless of the term we use, the responsibilities and the preset tasks remain the same, including the answering of questions such as "what will (as an artwork) stand the test of time and how that residue will be looked upon." in other words, the curator's task is to transmit culture, seen as "a set of interpretations and meaning and meaning horizons-not just a set of 'neutral objects' on which open enquiry is then somehow possible." 2 a cross-section of curatorial emancipation

CURATING in Context : political and performative curatorial imaginaries, 2022