COLLECTIVE

CURATING
2 Contents

The Moscow Art Magazine

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Editorial 3

Collective If man is always counting

Curating
adding, subtracting, figuring,
accountingit is because
nothing is ever really one
thing. No one is alone We
are many, our name is legion, and sometimes we are divided within
ourselves or possessed by more things than we can know. This both
philosophical and practical consideration, registered here by Raqs
Media Collective, has always been the basis of the Manifesta philoso-
phy and practice. Conceived in the early 1990s, Manifestas approach
to curatorship was a reaction to the traditional Documenta model,
that is, one curatorone show. In counterpoint to postwar liberal
glorification of the individual, the first post Cold War decade put for-
ward the idea of collective curatorship. As Magali Arriola explained:
The assumption was that a group of voices can both democratize the
artists access to the so-called mainstream and pluralize the geo-
graphic, aesthetic and political points of view from which to put into
perspective contemporary artistic production.
However the tendency toward group and collective creativity ap-
peared much earlier than these last couple of decades. As Paul ONeill
reminds us, When General Idea declared that working in a group had
freed them from the tyranny of the individual genius, or when Art
& Language described its output as having no grand oeuvre, unified
by romantic personality, or Group Material made a plea for an under-
standing of creativity unrestricted by the marketplace or by catego-
ries of specialization, they were all expressing a common desire for
an alternative to the autonomous figures of the artist, the curator and
the critic. Even the currently popular term collective creativity was
proposed in the same period of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The first
person to use the term, Dutch curator Jean Leering, came up with it
against a background of the political and social movements of May 68.
4 Editorial

A political and socio-economic dimension also lies behind the

more recent collective creativity and curating. Todays collective
practices, according to political theorist Paolo Virno, are connected
to the de-centred and heterogeneous net that composes post-Fordist
social cooperation Distinctive features of post-Fordist produc-
tion (the valorization of its own faculty of language, a fundamental
relation with the presence of the other, etc.) demand a radically new
form of democracy. Micro-collectives are the symptomas fragile
and contradictory as they may beof an exodus, of an enterprising
subtraction of the rules of wage labor. This is whyfor one of these
micro-collectives, curatorial collective What, How and for Whom
(WHW)partisanship in curating is unquestionable.
Yet, as Arriola rightfully remarks, it might be useful to make a
distinction between collective curating as the shared responsibility
of selecting, confronting and putting into dialogue a series of art-
works and curatorial visions, and setting up a collaborative endeavor
of shared authorship uttered as a single voice. That second type of
collective curating is, in fact, what nowadays seems to be the most
challenging and fertile of political potentiality. Co-authorship,
according to Virno, is an attempt to correct on an aesthetic level the
reality of a production in which the whole is less than the sum of the
parts. It is an attempt to exhibit what would be the sum of the parts if
it was not reduced to that whole. That inevitably means that current
collective practices cannot be reduced to homogeneous and non-
conflicting entities. On the contrary, maintains Katharina Schlieben,
collectives interiorize the antagonisms and polyphony of a diverse
constellations of actors, thus reacting to and negotiating within them
in order to create a space where different knowledge contexts may
grow.
It is not an easy task to give an exhaustive answer to the question,
why curate collectively? Let us conclude with one reason given by the
Chamber of Public Secrets for collective work: I get bored working
alone.
Positions Raqs Media Collective 5

Additions,
NOTES

1Dedekind, R., Was sind

und was sollen die Zahlen
(Braunschweig: F. Vieveg,

Subtractions:
1888); English translation:
The Nature and Meaning of
Numbers, in Beman, W.W.
(ed., trans.), Essays on the
Theory of Numbers, Book

On Collectives and
II (1901; repr. New York:
Brownstone Books, 2007).

Collectivities
On Counting Whenever we count, we end up with
In the preface to the first edition of additions, with something more than a
Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen singularity. And then we add additions
(The nature and meaning of numbers) together. We couple, we multiply. When
the mathematician and philosopher we look at a singularity long enough,
Richard Dedekind writes, from up close, things begin to fall away
(Aei O Anthro- from the units seemingly monadic
pos Arithmetizei)Man is always sovereignty. Subtraction and division
counting.1 yield a carnival of decimals, a rebellion
of fractions. Even the solitude of one
is made up of one-thirds and halves
and quarters and morein short, an
infinite number of infinitesimals.

If man is always countingadding,

subtracting, figuring, accountingit
is because nothing is ever really one
thing. No one is alone. Everything
and everyone has a shadow, a past,
a future, a hidden facet, something
invisible, forgotten, as yet uncounted,
still waiting to be figured, still emerg-
ing. We wax, we wane. We add years
to our lives, we come to the end of our
days. We are many, our name is legion,
and sometimes we are divided within
ourselves or possessed by more things
than we can know.

To say that something is just what it is

and no more is almost as good as say-
6 Positions Raqs Media Collective

Above:
Exhibition view of
Manifesta 7 at Ex-Alumix,
Bolzano/Bozen, with
works by Dayanita Singh
and Zilvinas Kempinas

Below:
Professor Bad Trip,
Images, 1995-2002
Photo Wolfgang Trger

All it takes to recognize collectivity

when we see it is to count, and then ad-
mit to the relationships between what
adds up. Looked at this way, we have to
ask, what or who is not an accumula-
tion, a collectivity? Whose name is not
legion?

There is a world of difference, how-

ever, between a collectivity and a col-
ing that it is nothing at all. Everything lective. A collectivity is a fact, whereas
changes in order to persist. And when a collective is a disposition, a way of
things change, they become more, being or doing things. Facts are things;
or less, of what they once were. They dispositions are ways of thinking about
deliver themselves to their own pleni- the thingness of a fact. And as is usu-
tude, to their own divisions. ally the case with dispositions, a col-
lective is something that a collectivity
We are all numbers today. Data, chooses to be. In that sense, a collective
statistics, measures. How many are is a marker of a certain degree of self-
we? How much of ourselves are we? consciousness that enables an entity
How deficient or how much in excess (or several entities) to recognize their
are we? How liquid, how solvent, how divided and/or multiplied, constituted,
current? How prolific? How dense, prolific being.
deep and dubious are we? What are we
worth? How much do we weigh in with A collective is furthermore the history
the world? What discount do we offer and the future of the conversation
on ourselves? What is our rank, the that a collectivity has with itself. Not
percentage of our takings? How high every collectivity chooses to speak.
is our perch, how deep our abyss, how Not every collectivity can speak or
shallow our grave? listen to itself. And those that do speak
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 7

dont always talk among themselves.

Those that do talk among themselves
stand the chance of becoming collec-
tives, provided they enjoy the terms of
their talking. Provided they get used to
listening even to their silences.

Collectives and Art:

Why Not to Paint by
Numbers

What does it mean for a

collective to produce art,
or curate exhibitions?

A collective art practice can never be

reduced to the division and alloca-
tion of a number of pre-determined
tasks, distributed simply because their
volume makes it much more efficient
to put more than one pair of hands to
work. Collective art practices floun-
der when, metaphorically speaking,
one person paints red in all the slots
marked with the number for red, and
others do the same for other colors
and other numbers. To be an artists
collective, or a curatorial collective, is
precisely not to paint by numbers.

We are a collective of three people who

began thinking, working and making
things together almost twenty years
ago. The conversation that transformed
our collectivity into a collective is still
underway, but it began with small, mod-
est acts of friendship and solidarity. We
plugged into each others nervous sys-
tems by passing books from one hand
to another. We wrote in each others and matrix of our conversation is the Denis Isaia in conversation
notebooks, watched films together and author of our work and the studio with Raqs Media Collective,
wondered what we would do if we could where it is realized. Here, we lay the Tabula Rasa: 111 Days on a
Long Table, 2008
work together. We disagreed, when nec- foundations for long-term investiga-
Photo Wolfgang Trger
essary, and agreed, whenever possible. tions. These investigations are our re-
We understood that agreements and sponses to the realities we confront on
disagreements did not cancel each other a daily basis, both in Delhi and in our
out in a zero-sum game, but spiraled journeys elsewhere. We live densely
instead to new levels of connectedness. networked lives. Currents and impuls-
es from all sorts of sources constantly
Connectedness meant conversation. A enter our consciousness and then
great deal of conversation. The space refuse to leave until they have been
8 Positions Raqs Media Collective

accounted for. They could be balance but at the intersection of all our com-
sheets of mineral prospecting compa- munication. The history of every work
nies, a photograph taken while travel- that we make is traceable to a series of
ing, parables and allegories in dead moves made in messages. Everything
languages, a chance conversation with we work with is either found, fished or
a taxi driver, an email or letter from a floated in the current of our constant
long-lost friend, a posting in a discus- chatter and in the things understood in
sion forum or on a blog, a mathematical silences and incomplete sentences.
formula, a memory of a film, footnotes
in the so-called war against terror, This is not to say, however, that our
philosophical treatises, medical text ideasbe they images, fragments of
Exhibition view of books and boxes of photographs and text, sketches or sets of instructions, or
Manifesta 7 at Ex-Alumix, documents in archives scattered across curatorial propositionsautomatically
Bolzano/Bozen, with the world.In todays world, who does travel in the direction charted for
works by David Adjaye,
not contain such multitudes? them by the person who first pitched
Jorge Otero, Charles Lim
Li Yong, Piratbyrn (the them. Like in a game of catch, the
bureau for piracy) In the course of being each others shad- interception of the idea, and the turn
Photo Wolfgang Trger ows, we became each others databases, that may be given to it once it is caught
in the world between our hard drives,
may change the trajectory of its flight
altogether. Things may bounce back
and forth for a long time, or they may
acquire spins and velocities that take
them into completely unexpected
orbits.

This can continue until the ball, the

idea, comes to rest in a momentary
pause in the game. This pause often
occurs the moment when we find that a
work is at a stage when it is more or less
ready to slide into the world outside of
our hard drives. Usually what emerges
is an artwork, although sometimes it is
an exhibition.

This changes the way we look at

the creative process. A work (or an
exhibition) is no longer the concrete
materialization of an ideal-typical
leaning on each others memories, mul- form conceived in the mind of any one
tiplying, amplifying and anchoring the person in the collective. Rather, the
things we could imagine by sharing our work begins to occur when the idea in
dreams, speculations and curiosities. which it germinated meets its inter-
Most importantly, once we began test- locutory challenges and responses.
ing our solidarities in the rough waters The materialization of the work, rather
of actual practice, we came to under- than concretizing and containing a
stand that the genesis and development single persons authorship, disperses it
of an idea or a work takes place not into the history of the network of com-
within the sealed, hermetic spaces of munications that went into its making.
our three individual consciousnesses, In that sense, our practice and our col-
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 9

lective are not so much the accretion of our work gets produced. The alloys Piratbyrn (the bureau
three individuals and their biographies that make the final renditions are real- for piracy), Please Join the
as the lattice made out of the communi- ized in the process of researching an Party, 2008
Photo Wolfgang Trger
cative acts between them. interest. Research for us is essentially
dialogic. We bring different things to
We are sometimes asked who does what the table, and then work through how
in the collective, and the simple answer they speak to each other.
is that we do not believe in a formal
division of labor or in the individual We also work with other peoplecu-
ownership of ideas. We forged a collec- rators, artists, academics, writers, de-
tive practice precisely in order to resist signers, editors, researchers, architects
the particularly deathly alienation of and performers. We enjoy this process
creative work in the media industry and learn from these interactions.
based on a fetish of individual labor. They open up new areas of thinking
and bring new energies into our work.
It is more important for us that an They change and enlarge the neighbor-
idea or an image has strength and hood of our thought and practice.
contributes to an argument than that
its origins can be traced to one person Arithmetic
among us. Each of us has particular in- and Geometry
terests, skills and propensities, but it is To be a collective, it is not enough to
in the interplay of these elements that simply understand the arithmetic of
10 Positions Raqs Media Collective

2Alain Badiou, Number being more than one. Alain Badiou, in ships, such that the work happens in
and Numbers (Cambridge: Number and Numbers, asks, Isnt an- the angles formed by linking the arms
Polity Press, 2008), 4. other idea of number necessary in order of a figure. In our specific case, this
for us to turn thought back against the necessarily produces a triangulation
despotism of number, in order that the that can be acute, oblique or equilat-
subject might be subtracted from it?2 eral, depending on the circumstances.
Any angle of any triangle can find
What might this other idea mooring in any space that is prepared
of number be? to receive it. Triangles can nest in
Graham Harwood, figures shaped to receive them. Collec-
Aluminium, 2008 What is required is the everyday work- tives can find anchorage in collectivi-
Photo Wolfgang Trger ing through of a geometry of relation- ties larger than themselves.
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 11

The data sets that astronomers work of practices and sensibilities to sustain
with at present are so dense that they dialogue with each other, in order to
require collaborative linkages between even begin making sense of where we
various capabilities and locations for are in culture today.
astronomers to even begin to make
sense of them. However, this collabora- This balance between a collaborative
tive imperative does not preclude acute engagement and a singular sensibility
individual insight into the same data. are what we strive for in our practice.
We see this as a form of travel. As in all
The same could be said about the times such journeys, you strike up conversa-
we live in. Contemporaneity is so tions with travelers, conversations that
multifaceted that we need a vast array continue, even as paths diverge and
intersect. Our work in the Raqs col-
lective grows in this way. The first set
of conversations takes place between
the three of us, and then there is an
expanded field of conversations, with
many forking paths, with fellow travel-
ers and guests.

In the end, there is nothing special or

charmed about collective practice. Ac-
countants and architects offices, bands,
design studios, scientific laboratories,
monasteries and law firms are all
collectives that go about their busi-
ness without romanticizing it or being
over-determined by their collective
dispositions. Their dispositions rely
more on the day-to-day tending of
their practices rather than on prema-
ture declarations of collective intent.

The figure of the individuated artist

and the solitary intellectual is actu-
ally just a momentary blip in the long
human history of dividuated prac-
tices and dialogic forms of thought.
Nonetheless, its prevalence may have
suppressed the awareness that the
space of art-making is a commons. But
as artists, intellectuals and curators
go about forging hitherto unimagined
geometries with their peers, both
within and outside the art world, the
collective disposition for doing things
together with others will eventually
overtake the solipsistic turn that art
and intellectual life took under pres-
sure from a generalized alienation
of human beings from their social
12 Positions Raqs Media Collective

environment. As this process gathers from a series of exchanges between

its own momentum, and as we get used different intelligences. We think our
to our own plenitude, we will begin to curatorial framework approaches the
be surprised at the spiritual frugality second model.
of the life of the solitary artist and the
curator alone in his or her exhibition. For The Rest of Now, the exhibition
we curated at Bolzano/Bozen for
That day, happily, is not far. We can tell Manifesta 7 in 2008, we constituted
by counting. an expanded curatorial collegiate of
three people: Anders Kreuger, a cura-
tor based in Lund and professor at the
Curating Collectively Malm Academy, Nikolaus Hirsch, an
for Manifesta 7 architect based in Frankfurt, and Gra-
ham Harwood, an artist and new media
Our collectives practice is built on practitioner based in Southend-on-Sea.
sustained conversation. In curating
Manifesta, we were enlarging the am- Anders, Nikolaus and Graham were
bit of that conversation, inviting a host invited to contribute work to the show
of new interlocutors to respond to us. as artists, but also to respond to our
Harold de Bree, M1 SS An exhibition can be seen as a design curatorial ideas. So in a sense, we were
Bailey Bridge, 2008 conceived by a single intelligence, or enlarging the collective horizon of the
Photo Wolfgang Trger it can be seen as that which emerges curatorial signature, even as we were
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 13

prepared as Raqs to take authorial re-

sponsibility for that very invitation. We
were not anxious that this enlargement
would bring about dissolution, primar-
ily because we are used to working as a
collective.

Yet another interlocutory layer was add-

ed when Denis Isaia, our curatorial as-
sistant, entered the scene. We worked in
conversation with Denis to create a fold
within the exhibition, a program called
Tabula Rasa, which functioned as a
conceptual vestibule located within an
actual architectural annex to the exhibi-
tions venue, the ex-Alumix building,
which stood between the territory of the
exhibition and its outside. It had a door
leading into the exhibition and another
door leading away from it, which meant
that yet another collection of situations
and practices could attach themselves to
the primary axis of the exhibition, even
as they retained their autonomy.

Finally, Manifesta 7 featured another

orbit made up of curatorial intersec-
tions. This was Scenarios, a sce-
nography for the vacant fortress at
Fortezza/Franzensfeste, which became
the fourth site of Manifesta 7. Here,
the three curatorial unitsourselves
(Raqs), Anselm Franke & Hila Peleg,
and Adam Budakcreated a space for
listening and reflection based on our
conversations with each other. What
was interesting about this experience
was not that it meant an accretion of
our individual practices; rather, the
desire to experience a common ground
led each of us to explore a form of al-
most totally dematerialized exhibition-
making that none of us had previous
experience of, or confidence in. It was
as if the necessity to find a common
vocabulary for curatorial practice
required us to create a new language.
That this experiment did not end in the says something about the happy sur- M-city, Bolzano, 2008
stone walls of the fortress turning into prise that collectivity can conjure on Photo Yoeri Meessen
a tower of Babel, despite the fact that its way to finding, even if only momen-
they did end up speaking in tongues, tarily, a collective practice.
Partisanship in curatorship is unquestionable.

ZA ZADNll

VSI
Nikolaj Pirnat: For the last strike: everyone-everything!, 1944, bichrome linocut, The National Museum of Contemporary History, Ljubljana
UDAR

-VSE We are grateful to joze Barsi, Miklavf Komelj, Lidija Radojevic, and Tanja
Velagic who initiated the project How to think partisan art? in Ljubljana,
Slovenia, and supplied all visual materials for this article. We would
also like to thank them for reminding us of the inspiring slogan of the
Yugoslav partisan movement: "Svi-Sve" [Everyone-Everything].
The quote on partisanship in curatorship is from WHW's introductory text
for the 11th Istanbul biennial reader, What Keeps Mankind Alive? [2009].
16 Discourse Katharina Schlieben

NOTES

1Bruno Latour,
Reassembling the Social:

The Crux of
An Introduction to Actor-
Network-Theory (Oxford:
Oxford University
Press, 2005), and From
Realpolitik to Dingpolitik

Polyphonic
or How to Make Things
Public in Making Things
Public: Atmospheres of
Democracy (Cambridge:

Language,
MIT Press, 2005).

2Bruno Latour, From

Realpolitik to Dingpolitik
or How to Make Things

or the Thing
Public, 16.

3Martin Heidegger,
What is a Thing?, trans.
W.B. Barton, Jr. , Vera

as Gathering
Deutsch (Chicago:
Henry Regnery, 1968);
Die Frage nach dem
Ding. Zu Kants Lehre von
den transzendentalen
Grundstzen (Frankfurt
AM: Gesamtausgabe Bd.
41, 1984).

4Latour 2005, 16.

Bruno Latours actor-network-theory the word thing means gathering or
5Ibid. and his notion of Dingpolitik provide assembly.3 Thus, just as thing and dis-
two different approaches to prob- cussion are interrelated notions, dis-
ing the science of living together course and conflict merge in the notion
and tackling the phantom of public of thing. But what about the element
space and representation.1 Because of representation in relation to the
both theories address constellations thing or the issue? Latour links two
of actors and societal realities, they different meanings of the word repre-
are helpful when examining collec- sentation that are seen as separate in
tive forms of collaborative work, in theory, although they are tied to each
terms of social constellations of actors. other in practice.4 The first one refers
Dingpolitik, a German neologism to the ways in which people gather
Latour introduces to replace Realpo- around a specific issue, and the second
litik, or politics based on practicality, represents the object of concern that
provides the starting point to refocus has gathered the participants around it.
political thought on the thing (Ding) While the first one delineates the place
or issue at stake. Latour writes, In a or format of the gathering, the second
strange way, political science is mute one carries a topic or contentious issue
just at the moment when the objects of into this site.5 Thus both meanings
concern should be brought in and made must be considered as inextricably tied
to speak up loudly.2 As Heidegger had to each other. These myriad gathering
already alluded to in What is a Thing? sites, or spaces of representation, have
(1935-1936), the original etymology of their own representation machinery,
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 17

which Latour calls upon his reader to system are not always keen to use 6Latour 2005, 34.
scrutinize: How does each gathering when describing their work structures.
format manage to bring in the relevant They argue that this terminology is
parties? How do they manage to bring charged with functionality, and is thus
in the relevant issues? What change ill-equipped to convey the multi-lay-
does it make in the way people make up ered and complex nature of the work
their mind to be attached to things?6 processes involved. Yet even adopt-
He is interested in the methods and ing other terms would not cast away
topics of debate, the nature of arenas of the unease; one must still question
negotiation and speech processes. the perspectives and context of those
Latours central inquiries about the using the term. Different contexts
nature of gatherings and speech are have offered different perspectives on
also of relevance for collaborative and motivations for collective work, imply-
collective practices in the cultural ing diverse connotations and tradi-
field, including their motivations and tions of thought. Take, for example,
their search for a language suitable collective process, a keyword to both
to convey their processes. In the last activist practices and neoliberal work-
years, there has been a strong call ing situations, which, in spite of the
to address the question of collective utterly different contexts it evokes, has
work processes, group constellations permeated discussions about working
and collaborative practices, in order conditions and approaches to collective
to differentiate and to examine them cultural production. As many political
under the lens of societal, cultural or activists argue (e.g. in the tradition of
political inquiries. Symposia such as the workers protest), a collectivity is
Collective Curating (rum 46, Aarhus a tool to articulate political protest and
2006), Taking the Matter into Common trigger public social attention. In the
Hands (IASPIS, Stockholm 2005), and neoliberal working terrain, the term
workshops like Collaborative Practices, collective process is often paired
Part 1 (Kunstverein Mnchen, Munich with networking or efficient work
2004), Vielstimmigkeit, Collaborative performance. Collectives in cultural
Practices, Part 2 (Shedhalle, Zurich contexts react perforce to both con-
2005), or exhibition projects like texts: the precariousness of working
Collective Creativity (Fridericianum, conditions creates, on the one hand, a
Kassel 2005), to mention only a few, wish and a need to operate in flexible,
mirror this development. The events nomadic structures of exchange that
have often brought up more questions allow for polyphonic activities and lan-
than could be answered by all par- guages, and on the other, the urgency
ties involved. Whether language can and the need for more public visibility
include a variety of voices, and how in order to formulate cultural and
collective work processes may be com- political alternatives to the neoliberal
municated, were ubiquitous questions market.
in the discussions, which could often Instead of opting for one of the above
be summarized as: If there is some- terms (although I mostly refer to the
thing like polyphony, then what does it collective), I would like to concen-
consist of? trate on polyphonic language as it
At the same time, there has been grow- dovetails with the identity construc-
ing skepticism towards the vocabulary tion of collective processes. Because
of collective practices. Teamwork, group work requires a great deal of
network, collective body, col- communication, it calls for a language
laboration and cooperation are of its own. What is the nature of such
terms that some actors of the cultural language? Dialogical exchanges
18 Discourse Katharina Schlieben

7The notion of between individuals, just like work performativity is often deployed. For
polyphony has been processes, have polyphonic qualities. instance, names or notions chosen to
conceived and deployed But what is at the heart of polyphony?7 describe collective and collaborative
in a variety of contexts.
The phenomenon of polyphony not approaches imply particular self-un-
Mikhail M. Bakhtin
addressed polyphony only applies to the many voices within derstandings of the collective, and thus
in his literary theory, a collective, but also to the existence propose a specific polyphonic model
starting with his first book of myriad collectives within society, in the sociopolitical sphere. What
Problems of Dostoevskys which push the dynamics of democrat- needs to be inquired into, however, is
Poetics (1929), which
ic and dialogical processes. Chantal not only the nature of this collective
identified the structuring
function of the polyphonic Mouffes On the Political argues that speech acts production plane, but also
form, or of multiple voices democracy is constituted through the kind of critical language required
engaging in speech, as a antagonism and thus runs contrary to to asses it. A critical discussion and
feature of Dostoevskys the consensual ideal. Societal reality translation of polyphonic communica-
novels. is discursive, and identities are always tion processes within collectives could
8Chantal Mouffe, On the outcome of processes of identifi- be useful to question, for example,
the Political (New York: cation. In her view, allowing for the implicit power relations. A first step in
Routledge 2005), 6. emergence of collective identities is this direction could involve screening
crucial: Collective identities play a the language in question and decon-
9See Snke Gau and central role in politics and the task of structing pervasive rhetoric.
Katharina Schlieben, democratic politics is not to over- In speaking about the collabora-
The artwork is supposed
come them through consensus but to tive, the crux of language becomes
to speak to me! A fictive
dialogue aboutcuratori- construct them in a way that energizes obviousin the fact, that communica-
altranslation paradoxes the democratic confrontation.8 Thus, tion, which is integral to collective
and misunderstandings, a society requires heterogeneous col- processes, is in itself permeated by the
Shedhalle Zeitung 01 lective identities because they provide paradoxes and misunderstandings of
(2009): 60-66; Accord-
the basis for antagonistic decision- translation. What we may perceive as
ing to Walter Benjamin,
the aim of translation is
making processes, as well as political understanding each other is based on
not communication or confrontation and development. The a non-understanding; it is the impos-
accurate rendering of an multiplicity and heterogeneity of sibility of this feat that lies at the foun-
original text. Rather, a antagonisms generate a polyphony that dation of communication. To strive for
translation touches the runs counter to articulations of the equivalence between two or more sub-
original fleetingly, like
hegemony, therefore underpinning a jects is impractical, for communica-
a tangent that touches a
circle briefly to pursue political dimension of public space that tioneven within one languagecan
its path into the infinite fosters difference (Derrida), rather only be conceived as a convergence or
(Bertolt Brecht). Walter than consensus. The sheer quantity an ongoing process of translation that
Benjamin, The Transla- of polyphonic identity constructions, operates on an intersubjective plane.9
tors Task, trans. Steven
self-organized collectives and col- The question of translatability could
Rendall, http://id.erudit.
org/iderudit/037302ar,
laborative structures in the cultural enrich the debate about collective
151-165. system not only attests to the need for negotiation processes, as well as the
a diversity of voices and polyphony in interaction between actors, practices
conceptual and political terms, but also and fields of knowledge, particularly in
mirrors that which a democratic, con- what concerns intersubjective dialogue
flictual debate in society is contingent and communication across contexts
upon. and disciplines.
I therefore find it important to examine The act of such translation analysis
approaches to collaborative network- concerns individual subjects and actors
ing and its respective formats along in collective working processes. In-
polyphonic lines. In order to convey deed, discussions on collective identity
the communicative process and struc- construction that address subjectivity
tural organization of many collabora- and collectivity often regard them
tive practices, a specific language or somewhat simplistically as binaries. In
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 19

fact, they are not mutually exclusive, out that the experience of difference
because collective work requires indi- of the self is not located outside of
vidual actors/positions. Just as Chantal it, and Julia Kristeva, in Strangers to
Mouffe proposes that democratic opin- Ourselves, asserted that foreignness
ion formation in our society requires in relation to Freuds theory of the
heterogeneously collective identities uncannyis within us, that we are
in the form of groups, organizations, our own foreigners and thus a inter-
associations and unions, it is equally subjective construction.
decisive that the cultural system be Constructing identity through the
formed by a heterogeneous polyphony experience of difference involves
of collectives. This demands that atten- mechanisms that parallel those in the
tion be paid to collective decision-mak- field of the collective, and vice versa.
ing processes and the power relations Just like subjective identity construc-
involved that shape collective produc- tions, collectives are relational, and are
tion processes. Consequently, collec- generated by dynamics of antagonistic
tive work processes call for a reflection interaction that manifest themselves
on the subject. In The Ticklish Subject: via the experience of difference and
The Absent Centre of Political Ontology, translation, and shape opinion-finding
Slavoj iek defends the Cartesian sub- processes. A critical appraisal of col-
ject in a global and neoliberal society, lective and collaborative work in the
inquiring into his emancipation and cultural system must be highly self-
range of action as an actor of his own reflective and involve careful consider-
existence. Where does identity forma- ation of intersubjective translations.
tion start, if not also with the question Furthermore, issues of translation
of subjectivity? Should not actors and polyphony also affect work across
involved in collective production and disciplines and contexts. Many col-
decision-making processes be the ones lectives or instances of collaboration
to advocate a subjective perspective emphasize transdisciplinary knowl-
that examines dependencies and hege- edge production, which they generate
monic tendencies, rather than leveling by bringing experiences and contexts
the issue? Thus, upon closer examina- of knowledge into dialogue, and
tion, the crux of finding a language conceptualizing them in relation to
of the collective starts at the core of one another. Therefore, the question of
intersubjective communication, that is, translation between actors in the pro-
with the very subject or actor. cess of knowledge production remains
In this sense, it could be interesting to indispensable. In his book Unscharfe
shed light on collective practices and Grenzen. Perspektiven der Kultursoziol-
behavioral patterns from a psychoana- ogie (Blurry boundaries: perspectives
lytic perspective. Discursive traditions in the sociology of culture), Andreas
and models of intersubjective identity Reckwitz delineates theoretical ap-
constructions (including feminist and proaches to a definition of culture that
post-colonial approaches that are often provide different options for its practi-
based on psychoanalytic theories), cal research. One of the questions these
which describe the notion of being theories ask is whether culture may be
in-between, moments of transgression seen as text or as practice, that is, if
and difficulties of translation, could culture can be located on the plane of
enrich the debate on the dilemma of discourse or social practice. Accord-
subject versus collective, and address ing to Reckwitz, the praxeological
the moment of experience of differ- perspective situates culture within
ence as being inter or in-between for the plane of social practices that are
both. Judith Butler has already pointed performed with the body, facilitated
20 Discourse Katharina Schlieben

10Andreas Reckwitz, by artifacts and perceived in the public related? Latours inquiry on the gather-
Unscharfe Grenzen. sphere.10 This perspective demands ing as thing and its representation
Perspektiven der that the understanding of culture be is consistent with the question of the
Kultursoziologie (Bielefeld:
de-intellectualized, shifting the locus performance of collective practices
Broschiert, 2008), 38-39.
of cultures symbolic order away from and their actors, and their respective
11Ibid., 45. discourse and towards the resources mechanisms of representation. It also
of the tool kit, or reservoir of skills/ addresses the implicit moment of the
12Latour 2005, 16. strategies of practical knowledge.11 social per se, which we may regard as
Many collaborative constellations of a network in which elements corre-
actors could be ascribed to a culture late, complement each other and offer
of practice because the component of new scopes for action. Polyphony and
gathering is indeed integral to social translation processes play a signifi-
practice. Cultural practices inter- cant role with regard to antagonistic
ested in knowledge production across articulations in a democratic society.
disciplines and contexts can function This can be said both about collective
either on a temporary or long-term and individual approaches; however,
collaborative basis. At the outset of in the case of group manifestations,
these practices lies fragmented, incom- these phenomena become particularly
plete knowledge or a limited palette multi-layered and visible. The point
of methods that motivate the actors is not to polarize discussions into the
involved to engage in a dialogue that subject versus the collective. Instead, it
may be transformed into joint social is necessary to scrutinize the thing
action. This presupposes generating as such, so that its polyphonous trans-
contact zones or interfaces, and may lation issues are made to speak up
be formulated as a social moment that loudly.12
focuses on the in-between as produc-
tive opportunity, avoids reproducing
dichotomies, acknowledges diverse
speaker perspectives, and reflects
on the dynamics and paradoxes of
translation. Transdisciplinary, or
collaborative work across contexts,
could be described as a performative
and process-oriented practice that
expands and develops in response to
its constellations and phenomena: In
other words, a practice that produces
polyphony and antagonisms in diverse
constellations of actors, thus react-
ing to and negotiating within them in
order to create a space where different
knowledge contexts may grow.
A praxeological perspective that also
locates culture in the sphere of social
practice touches upon Latours ques-
tion with regards to the gathering
or the thing: What happens when
different constellations of actors
are brought together? What is their
object of concern, and how are these
constellations and the issue at stake
Studies Magali Arriola 21

Towards a
NOTES

1Daniel Buren, Where

are the artists? The Next

Ghostly Agency:
Documenta Should Be
Curated by an Artist, 2003,
http://www.e-flux.com/
projects/next_doc/d_

A Few Speculations
buren.html.

on Collaborative
and Collective
Curating
As one starts to map a tentative and know-how, authority and power to re-
unofficial history of collaborative or distribute forces within the field. This
collective curating, it is inevitable that applies in particular when it comes to
these joint efforts are read in contrast biennials, triennials and large-scale
to the more accredited ventures of international exhibitions, since they
the curatorial profession itself. The have come to represent some of the
curatorial professions history can be main gears of that art system. Well
said to have evolved from individual aware of that situation, many of these
initiatives, or rather the initiatives efforts in collaborative and collective
of individuals who had left the art curating have been at times cynical
establishment and the institutional and ironic, conspiratorial or assertive.
setting to create their own speculative They should thus be read in tandem not
curatorial agency, into becoming, for only with a questioning of the function
some, a sort of epidemic, an authorial of biennials, but also with the resulting
maladie that reached its nadir during transformations of the biennials struc-
the late 1990s and early 2000s. Equally ture and forms of operation.More
unavoidable is reading that checkered and more, the subject of an exhibition
history in relation to the notion of tends not to be the display of artworks,
curatorial authorship as a legitimat- but the exhibition of the exhibition as
ing mechanism for all involved, and in a work of art, wrote Daniel Buren in
relation to the shifts brought about in 1972.1 Here, Buren continues, the
the complex engineering of the art sys- Documenta team, headed by Harald
tem, which have rendered the curator Szeemann, exhibits (artworks) and
a mediating figure invested with the exposes itself (to critiques) [] The
22 Studies Magali Arriola

2Ibid. exhibition establishes itself as its own Notwithstanding Szeemanns initial

subject, and its own subject as a work intentions of conceiving the show as a
3Karl Oskar Blas et. of art. The exhibition is the valorizing totality in which to prompt a dialogue
al., Initial Concept for
receptacle in which art is played out between the artworks as individual en-
Documenta 5 in Harald
Szeemann: Individual and founders, because even if the art- tities, artists Carl Andre, Hans Haacke,
Methodology, ed. Florence work was formerly revealed thanks to Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Barry Le Va,
Derieux (Zurich: Jrp- the museum, it now serves as nothing Robert Morris, Dorothea Rockburne,
Ringier, 2008), 93. more than a decorative gimmick for Fred Sandback, Richard Serra and
the survival of the museum as tableau, Robert Smithson signed and published
4Szeemann, Preface
to the Documenta 5 a tableau whose author is none other a petition condemning Szeemanns
Catalogue in Derieux, than the exhibition organizer.2 exhibition and curated exhibitions in
2008, 104. As we know, Harald Szeemann, who general. In the 1972 May/June issue
famously transformed Documenta from of Flash Art an additional letter was
5Jean-Christophe a 100 day museum exhibition (Burens published by Robert Morris stating:
Ammann, Bazon Brock and
sinking repository) to a 100 day event, I do not want to have my work used
Harald Szeeman, Second
Concept for Documenta 5 originally conceived of the exhibition to illustrate misguided sociological
in Derieux, 2008, 95. as an interactive space, and an acces- principles or outmoded art historical
The term individual sible program structure with staggered categories. The artists discontent
mythologies was borrowed centers of action.3 Szeemanns primary with Szeemann, the organizer/au-
from the artist Etienne
intention was to include actions and thor, had to do with the fact that they
Martin, who conceived of
his sculptures and their
happenings as the exhibitions core thought the curator was putting his
involuted structures as components. He soon had to admit, own personal and intellectual inter-
personal mythologies. however, that he couldnt afford the ests before those of the artists, using
Later Szeemann risk of failure within the institutional their work as formal devices, or, in
would explain, These framework of a mainstream event Burens words, as touches of color
individual mythologies
such as Documenta by conceiving an that form a tableau.7 By extension,
are phenomena without a
common denominator; yet ambitious project completely based on their complaints also pointed to some
they are comprehensible precarious actions highly dependent of the problematic side effects of those
as part of a history of on individualities.4 Szeemann felt the projects that attempt to make a general
intensity in art that is pressure to return to the more tradi- statement through multiple artworks
not concerned solely
tional format of a thematic exhibition, and artistic practices while failing to
with formal criteria but
also with a perceivable
justifying his move by the fact that he articulate and address the particular
identity of intention avoided treating artistic practice in social, cultural, political or even physi-
and expression. Thus terms of genres, schools or styles as pre- cal conditions of their conception, their
the boundaries of the vious Documentas had done. Instead, conceptual processes of production
realm of individual he framed his curatorial approach in and their different modes of engaging
mythologies are not
terms of individual mythologies, stating an audience (and this is obviously not a
clearly recognizable to the
viewer as is confirmed by as a special advantage the fact that problem specific to Documenta 5 but to
the majority of exhibition [Documenta 5s] theme developed both large-scale exhibitions in general).
reviews in which critics, from the existing work of individual More than thirty years later, Buren
ignoring the irrational d5 artists or groups and from the present would reissue and update his 1972
section, cling stubbornly state of thought about general social statement as an ongoing critique of the
to the opposing poles
of Conceptual Art and
problems.5 He would later add, The increasingly visible position that the
Realism, because they tour through the exhibition shows the curator had acquired over the years.
delude themselves attempt at bridging the gap between ar- This was the artists response in The
into seeing a common tistic autonomy and thematic basis with Next Documenta Should Be Curated by
denominator in the respect to the direction of the whole an Artist (2003), a collection of short
works that, if one looks
exhibition, which is arranged according essays and statements written by
more closely, is really
not there. Szeemann in to the principle that one surprise will artists and assembled by curator Jens
Harald Szeemann: with by follow the next in a spatial sequence.6 Hoffmann. This compilation aimed at
through because towards questioning both the curators position
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 23

as an exhibition-maker ( la Szeemann cal spaces in which Western capitalism despite; Catalogue of all
and no longer, or not exclusively, as the was meant to take root and disseminate Exhibitions 19572005, eds.
custodian of collections), and curat- its colonial power. It also goes beyond Tobia Bezzola and Roman
Kurzmeyer (Zurich/
ing as the illustration of a thematic much of the discourse around curat-
Vienna: Edition Voldemeer
premise by means of artworks, instead ing that developed out of post-colonial and New York: Springer,
of as the development of a discourse theory and the proliferation of art 2007), 318.
emerging from the sustained dialogue centers, and in which the rhetoric of
and collaboration between artists and place dominated much of the biennials 6Ibid., 316.
curators. Curatorial practice, Bu- discourse.12 As Miwon Kwon suggests,
7Buren, op. cit.
ren claimed in his contribution, has curatorial practice has migrated in
become a sort of epidemic, an artistic recent years from a sedentary model to 8Ibid.
genre in itself, a rampant competition a nomadic one, prompting a shift in the
in which the organizer proclaims as conception of exhibitions as passive 9Ibid. Buren states: We
loudly as possible that he or she is the receptacles to exhibitions developing have come full circle and
the generalized passivity
artist of the exhibition.8 into discursive sites.13 These discursive
of artists in the face of
formations seem to have opened up a this situation is even
Behind Burens updated critique of space for curatorial collaboration and more serious than it was
the spectacular (and, for him, almost collective curatingcollaborations 30 years ago. Since if in
conspiratorial) visibility of the exhibi- that involve both artists and curators 1972 they could still turn
a deaf ear and a blind
tion organizer as yet another luminary which have worked toward question-
eye to the ways in which
in the star system, at times casting a ing the configurations of the art world, they were being used, the
shadow on the artist, are the ensuing and toward providing alternative straightforwardness of our
problematics of legitimation, author- networks within which the works can epoch (which others might
ity and power traditionally posed by circulate, while hopefully alleviating call cynicism) makes it
the authorial figure.9 And beyond and relativising the power relations entirely improbable that
artists today do not know
the French artists causality dilemma that sustain the art world.
what is being plotted and
(what came first, the chicken or the egg, what is being declared and
the artist or the curator?) lies the now In 2000, Jens Hoffman organized, the kinds of discourses
familiar and almost obligatory need together with Maurizio Cattelan, the surrounding them!
to rethink exhibition models not only infamous 6th International Caribbean
10Ibid.
as articulating artistic content, but Biennial Blown Away. This was an event
also as addressing the shifting roles of that played itself out simultaneously 11Jean Christophe
cultural productionin other words, on two fronts: It stood as a critique Ammann, Bazon Brock,
exploring the point where artistic of the repetitive model of large-scale and Harald Szeeman,
and curatorial practice can actually exhibitions that pretend to engage with Second Concept for
meet without competing.10 This is all local contexts, while also exposing Documenta 5 in Derieux,
2008, 95.
the more necessary when it comes to the tautological self-affirmation of a
biennials, triennials and other large- global art network whose functioning 12For an elaboration
scale international exhibitions that and reach depends on its capacity to on this concept see Claire
were originally conceived to provide circulate the information that feeds its Doherty, Curating Wrong
a general and periodic overview of own systemthat is, on its capacity to Places or Where Have
artistic production, as well as of the recycle a reduced list of players in the All the Penguins Gone?
in Curating Subjects, ed.
present state of thought about general mainstream while magnifying their Paul ONeill (London: Open
social problems, to use Szeemanns symbolic value. Editions and Amsterdam:
words.11 As we will see, this situation De Appel, 2006).
goes beyond the frequently voiced The event reportedly sought to establish
questioning of the biennial model as some balance in the trade routes of 13Implicit to Kwons
argument is the fact that
the reflection of a social and cultural contemporary art and in the distribu-
site-specificity seems to
order inherited from nineteenth- tion of power within the cultural field, be transforming itself into
century world fairs and international officially intending to raise the Carib- a contingent discursive
expositionsself-legitimizing politi- beans barely discernable profile on practice that organizes
24
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 25
26 Studies Magali Arriola

itself intertextually, the global art circuit a profile that, the so-called mainstream and pluralize
creating a nomadic quite predictably, was almost invisi- the geographic, aesthetic and politi-
narrative whose path ble.14 Even though this was supposed cal points of view from which to put
is articulated by the
passage of the artist. The
to be the sixth edition of the Biennial, into perspective contemporary artistic
operative definition of no one in either the local or the global production. This not only performs a
the site, she writes, has art scenes had heard of its five preced- re-evaluation of a biennials original
been transformed from ing versions, for they were, actually, function of providing a panoramic
a physical location nonexistent. The project deliberately survey of the arts, but also involves a
grounded, fixed, actualto
played on the plausibility of a low- re-evaluation of the implications of cu-
a discursive vector
ungrounded, fluid, virtual. profile local art event being instrumen- ratorial authorship and guidance in re-
[] to conceive the site as talized in order to put St. Kitts island positioning the main agents in the art
something more than a on the map by adding cultural tourism scene. It might be useful, however, to
placeas repressed ethic to the range of leisure activities that make a distinction between collective
history, a political cause, already defined the islands economic curating as the shared responsibility
a disenfranchised social
resources. To meet these expectations, of selecting, confronting and putting
group. Miwon Kwon, One
Place After Another: Site- its organizers (clearly two key agents of into dialogue a series of artworks and
Specific Art and Locational the global art circuit) drew together the curatorial visions, and setting up a col-
Identity (Cambridge: MIT most predictable list of artists who had laborative endeavor of shared author-
Press, 2004), 2930. secured a captive audience among the ship uttered as a single voice.
mainstream art professionals (includ-
14Jenny Liu, Trouble in
Paradise, Frieze 51 (Mar.-
ing Vanessa Beecroft, Olafur Eliasson, Francesco Bonamis Dreams and Con-
Apr. 2000), http://www. Mariko Mori, Gabriel Orozco, Pipilotti flicts: The Dictatorship of the Viewer,
frieze.com/issue/article/ Rist and Rirkrit Tiravanija, among the 50th edition of the Venice Biennale,
trouble_in_paradise. others). In other words, they simply was exemplary of the first case. From its
put together a list of those names most title, the Biennale announced itself as
15Maurizio Cattelan and
likely to be included in any interna- an attempt to yield and revert curatorial
Jens Hoffman, 6th Carib-
bean Biennial (Dijon/Paris: tional biennial or large-scale exhibition authority by giving the last word to the
Presses du reel, 2001). in 2000, thereby assuring that the event viewer, not without first acknowledging
would be covered by the international that this empowerment might awake
16This wasnt the first art press. However, the very fact that both the viewers desires and con-
time such a strategy
the selection of artists was based on tempt. Avoiding a thematic structure,
was implemented for an
international biennial.
an evaluation of their symbolic capital Bonami also adopted a more democratic
Szeemann had already within the artistic field, to use Pierre approach by inviting other curators
put into practice similar Bourdieus terms, rather than on a among which two artists, Gabriel
collaborative strategy in thoughtful analysis of their artistic Orozco and Rirkrit Tiravanijato de-
Documenta 5. practice in relation to a curatorial velop exhibitions that would be part of
premise, allowed Cattelan and Hoff- the overall project: Zone of Urgency was
mann to take the self-reflexivity of the curated by Hou Hanru; The Structure of
project a step further by exposing the Survival by Carlos Basualdo; Contempo-
legitimating mechanism of biennials as rary Arab Representations by Catherine
cynical manipulations of consensus.15 David; The Everyday Altered by Gabriel
Orozco, and Utopia Station by Molly
It seems that, in recent years, the sim- Nesbit, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Rirkrit
plest and most painless way out of the Tiravanija, among other exhibitions.16
predicament reflected in an event such Many of the individual shows applied
as the Caribbean Biennial has been to different strategies of interaction and
designate a curatorial team to share the display to break with the Biennales
responsibility of providing a periodic traditional exhibition format, and ad-
report on the state of the arts. The as- dressed the urgency of recognizing, and
sumption is that a group of voices can sometimes implementing, all sorts of
both democratize the artists access to participative strategies of social engage-
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 27

ment and political commitment (the collectives) have been participating 17On the institutional
most radical proposal in terms of instal- more actively in the conception and side, this has been
lation and display being the collectively curation not only of their own exhibi- reflected by what was
recently labeled New
curated Utopia Station, for which close tions as comprehensive displays of a
Institutionalism in an
to sixty artists, architects and collec- body of work that extends throughout attempt to redefine artistic
tives were invited to take over the Giar- the years, but also of large-scale exhibi- institutions in the face
dini). Yet the fact that most of the shows tions and biennials. Besides Orozco and of global capitalism.
were still organized by what felt like a Tiravanijas participation in Bonamis Institutions that have
embraced this tendency
curator/ambassador responding to the Biennale, one can also name initiatives
have implemented
characteristics, needs and priorities of as diverse as Cattelans other curatorial structural changes in an
specific regions only reasserted what venture in collaboration with Massi- attempt to respond to the
was already on the verge of becoming miliano Gioni and Ali Subotnik for Of homogenization of artistic
a series of regional stereotypes: Asia Mice and Men, the 4th Berlin Biennial, practices, curatorial
living under a tireless market economy; or Raqs Media Collectives participation discourse and exhibition
making, as well as to the
Latin America continuously implement- in Manifesta 7 with The Rest of Now. In
corporatization undergone
ing resourceful strategies of survival; the case of the 4th Berlin Biennial, the by major artistic
and an exhausted West, striving to fact that the three curators were behind institutions.
reinvent itself as a bastion of utopia. an initiative like the Wrong Gallery, a
space characterized by its particularly 18Of Mice and Men,
press release, http://alt.
The question became then, how can one small size, reduced budget and almost
berlinbiennale.de/eng/
thus avoid thinking about biennials as invisible interventions, brought an index.php?sid=bb_11.
totalizing and self-contained seasonal interesting element to the curatorial
events? How could they become ongo- dynamics of biennials in that their 19Ibid.
ing curatorial gestures whose structure collaboration as curators was based
provides a discursive texture capable on exactly the opposite premises on 20Raqs Media
Collective, Profile,
of sustaining a dialogue with artistic which biennials traditionally have been
http://www.
production that can outgrow both the founded (sheer size, expanded budget raqsmediacollective.net/
authorial hand and the exhibitions and total visibility). Taking its title CV.html.
temporal and spatial frames? The fact from the poem by 18th-century Scottish
that there has been a shift in exhibition- writer Robert Burns, which inspired
making, of which biennials are but John Steinbecks 1937 novel, Of Mice
one symptom, and in the authorial and Men, the Biennial put together a
principles of curatorial practice, might story that [followed] different plotlines
indicate a turning point in the latters and open-ended narrative passages.18
conception as a mediating mechanism. It played with exhibition formats and
tactics (as the curators usually did in
On the one hand, much of the curatorial their gallery), conceiving a biennial that
discourse that was generated during quietly evolved and unraveled in close
the 1990sthe decade that bred the dialogue with the historical narratives
profusion of biennialsembraced the of the city, like a novel, a story involv-
site-specificity of public art practices ing different characters and dissecting
that explored the economic and political their private destinies and universal
folds of the social fabric. Many of these fears.19 Raqs Media Collective, who
artistic practices that were subsumed define themselves as a group of artists,
under relational and dialogical strate- media practitioners, curators, research-
gies have triggered an important ers, editors and catalysts of cultural
discussion in relation to their curatorial processes that infiltrate and operate in
framing and have brought about some liminal zones of society, conceived of a
structural changes to the institutional rather traditional and straight forward
context.17 It is a fact that, in recent display for The Rest of Now.20 Their
years, artists (both as individuals and exhibition elaborated on the concept of
28 Studies Magali Arriola
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 29

Page 2425 and 2829:

Selection of photographs by Armin Linke made
during the 6th Caribbean Biennial in 2001.
Linkes photographs and some special contribu-
tions of artists are the only remains of the project.
30 Studies Magali Arriola

21Raqs Media Collective, residue of the narratives of progress, as Black Market Worlds, the 9th edition
Curatorial Statement, an attempt to come to terms with the of the Baltic Triennial of International
http://www.manifesta7.it/ self-fulfilling amnesia of Capitalism.21 Art, conceived and curated in 2005 by
locations/show/.
Sofa Hernndez Chong-Cuy, Raimun-
22For an elaboration on On the other hand, this shift in the das Malasauskas and Alexis Vaillant on
the concept of discursive perception of curatorial work as a me- the basis of an inability to distinguish
exhibitions, see Fergusons diating mechanism between artists and between self and other, used many of
participation at the Bergen audiences seems to be paving the way these flows to navigate the circuit of
Biennial Conference, To
for the transformation of the spatial biennials in the context of global capi-
Biennial or Not to Biennial,
organized at the Bergen framing of curatorial practice into a talism.24 Its alternative titles (besides
Kunsthall (September self-reflexive, durational and enun- the official title, the curators made
1720, 2009) by Elena ciative experience, something close public a series of potential or alternative
Filipovic, Solveig vsteb to what Bruce W. Ferguson recently titles to be used for the show), its out-of-
and Marieke van Hal, termed discursive exhibitions.22 Dis- synch and off-site events (both in terms
http://www.bbc2009.no/
cursive exhibitions privilege exchange of sites of the artists interventions
default.asp.
and participation over the production of and in terms of venues such as Vilnius,
23It should be noted that objects, making visible their processes London and connecting flights between
many of these features of research, strategies of display and the opening of the Lyon and Istanbul
are also present as New engagement of the audience. Fergu- Biennials), its multiple press-releases,
Institutionalisms main
son asserts that biennials frequently rumors and undisclosed accomplices,
characteristics.
disclose the main characteristics of dis- and the parallel publications contained
24Black Market Worlds, cursive exhibitions: enhancing a self- in The Black Box, the exhibitions
Press release 1, 28 July reflexive curatorial model (one that ac- catalogue, are alternative strategies
2005, http://www.rye.tw/ knowledges, reflects and problematizes to circumnavigate the art world.25
ultimiere/en-press-1.htm. its own discursive context, its modes In that sense, more than a theme, the
of articulation and reception, as well events title stood as a backdrop to the
25Ibid. Accomplices:
The 9th Baltic Triennial as its frame of operation), using self- underground economies and hidden
will include the work of proclaimed methods of working that exchanges between the official and the
approximately 35 artists privilege time over space and thereby marginal, the licensed and forbidden,
(some of them preferred experimenting with the possibilities of the visible and the invisible. This was
to remain undisclosed.)
their format rather than with the rheto- all based on the paradox of knowing
During the research
period, a number of these
ric of a theme. In other words, rather that established approaches to exhibi-
artists were engaged in than encapsulating artists, artworks tion making and viewing presupposed
conversations about artistic or artistic practices in a prefabricated the need to communicate by way of
practices and aesthetic argument, biennials aim at establishing exposure, representation, demonstra-
strategies that creatively a non-linear reading of their compo- tion or revelation.26 The triennial
approached artmaking
nents, thereby transcending the cumu- implicitly questioned the visibility both
or the history of art with,
or in relation to, black lative and self-contained character of of authorial messages (coming from the
markets, shadow networks, traditional exhibitions, which usually artists, the curators and the undisclosed
magic, the occult, stolen succeed one another in an institutional accomplices) and of their channels of
identities, strategies of frame, in order to address a larger field communication, also contending that
disappearance, invisible of cultural transactions.23 These kinds contradictionthat is, the disclo-
doubles, copyright
undercurrents, illicit
of exhibitions explore a curatorial sure of the opacity of their curatorial
knowledge, oral futures, model that is frequently developed in statementis a premise through which
pirated relations and close collaboration with the artists who to enter a terrain beyond knowledge
offshore laws, post- are invited to infiltrate the operating and power.27
communism, gray or systems of the exhibition, to consider
informal economy,
its forms of organization and to actively Questions that the curators reportedly
supernatural secrets,
clones, hoaxes, the devil participate in its modes of communica- received from the future helped to
and related dealings. tion and dissemination. anticipate a retrospective evaluation of
the consequences and repercussions of
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 31

their collaboration: How a triennial/ ographies of European modernism [] 26Ibid.

biennial can become a show? / How did in order to produce temporary agencies
you manage to lose control and allow of perception.30 It took its title from 27Ibid.

parallel structures to happen? Or was The Threepenny OperaBertolt Brecht, 28Black Market Worlds,
it carefully planned and staged? How Elizabeth Hauptman and Kurt Weils fe- http://www.rye.tw/
did you become two? Were you one rocious critique of capitalist ideology ultimiere/en.html.
or three in the beginning? / Do you and, in the curators words, sought to
think interesting curators work is to rethink the biennial as a meta-device 29See David Spalding,
Ivet Curlin of What, How
provoke, challenge, unsettle, question with the potential to facilitate the re-
and for Whom, Wants to
and offer the keys to a door he or she newal of critical thinking [by provid- Keep Hope Alive, Modern
has never noticed in a side corridor of ing] a prism for viewing the works, a Painters (Dec. 2009Jan.
their minds?28All of these questions, context in which they can be read in 2010), http://www.artinfo.
however, remained unanswered. In explicit reference to Brechts conscious com/news/story/33211/
other words, trying to question the political engagement and methods.31 ivet-curlin-of-what-how-
and-for-whom-wants-to-
triennial structure and operational Facing the increasingly obvious pene-
keep-hope-alive/?page=1.
forms without attempting to offer a tration of the forces of global capitalism
conclusive response. into the realm of artistic production, 30Ibid.
There have been other attempts to ad- distribution and consumption, of which
dress many of these issues. Retrospec- artistic institutions such as biennials 31What, How and for
Whom, Curators Text,
tively, an initiative like What, How and and triennials are but one gear of the
What Keeps Mankind
for Whom (WHW), the curatorial collec- whole mechanism that keeps the artistic Alive? The Guide (Istanbul:
tive based in Zagreb that was in charge field in motion, there is a pressing need Istanbul Kltr Sanat,
of curating the 11th Istanbul Biennial, to figure out empowering strategies to 2009), 39.
can be seen as speaking to many of the inhabit these forces, instead of being
questions raised by the displacement instrumentalized by them. The joint
of visibility and power. The group of reflections provided by some of these
curators behind WHW (Ivet Curlin, Ana curatorial collaborations and instances
Devic, Natasa Ilic and Sabina Sabolovic) of collective curating suggest that these
named their collective after the title of strategies might have less to do with a
an ambitious exhibition they curated democratic mission (i.e. allowing for a
in 2000, What, How and for Whom: On larger number of artists and practices
the Occasion of the 152nd Anniversary to get into the system) than with the
of the Communist Manifestoa choice possibility of generating alternative
indicative of the importance they discursive formations capable of call-
place on their curatorial practice over ing into question the transactions and
their curatorial identity. The show exchanges that animate our globalized
dealt with the historical, political and capitalist art world and its systems
economic legacy of the Manifesto, and of legitimation. If, as the 6th Carib-
hoped to trigger a public debate about bean Biennial cynically demonstrated,
its universal heritage at a time when names can be instrumental in shaping
the advance of capitalism seemed to the experience of an exhibition, this
have obscured a fragment of history might suggest that what is actually
and prevented any serious reflection on needed is the constant reformulation
both the immediate past and the present and reassessment of the basis of that
transitional moment.29 very experience. As stated by WHW,
what?, how? and for whom? are
The 11th Istanbul Biennial What Keeps three questions that must be posed over
Mankind Alive? took its cue from those and over again when conceiving any cu-
early reflections, and brought together ratorial project. Who? seems to be the
artists of different generations, many only question that has been, if perhaps
of them from the marginal or ghost ge- only temporarily, set aside.
32 Positions Vt Havrnek / tranzit.org

NOTES

Theory, Practice
1A real, perhaps, in
the Lacanian sense: the
un-accessibility of an
impossible, empty reality

and Reality:
under the sign of eternity.

A Few Remarks on
the Micro-Politics
of Curating
There is a well-known gap between works, exhibitions and audiences. Here
theory and practice in curatorial we mean not reality in the physical
undertakings, however this gap is not sense, an empirical reality, but rather a
evident when a curator is involved curatorial real.1
in his or her everyday activities. A The theoretical sphere includes written
curator speaks and deals with artists, and unwritten texts by artists and the-
views artworks and reflects on them, orists, which deal with the conceptual-
takes part in the publication of texts by ization of artworks and their contexts
artists, writes, comments on and keeps (the imaginary), as well as meta-theory,
abreast of critical theory, organizes ex- which criticizes and reflects art theory
hibitions, helps raise money, assesses (the symbolic).
artworks, comes up with projects and
enters into dialogue with institutions, The last sphere is that of practice
the media and exhibition visitors. organizing, negotiating and conceiv-
The gap between theory and practice ing exhibitions and non-exhibitions
is hard to distinguish in this list of (the status of this type of activity will
functions. It is brought into focus in be discussed below) and assessing art-
the conflict that exists between the works with an eye toward established
exhibition and its conception, between goals (of the exhibition, etc.). From
imagination (the possibilities of a here on, I will refer to this component
theoretical conception) and reality (the of curating as micro-politics.
exhibition). I would like to draw attention to the
In order to illustrate this conflict, let us conflict between the transfer of theory
characterize three components of the (both imaginative and symbolic) to
curators activity: theory, practice and exhibitions (described here as a part of
reality. Reality consists of artists, art- reality). Curators work oscillates be-
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 33

tween two extremes: On the one hand, an exhibition institutionalizes the 2Jean-Christophe
curators operate within the artistic re- hegemony of curatorial activities and Ammann, Vade Mecum
alitythat is, they find arguments for has a ritual character. That process is for Curators in Men
in Black, Handbook of
their activities in artistic forms and the usually considered a theoretical en-
Curatorial Practice, eds.
attitudes of artists themselves (Trust deavor, but in reality, it is a theoretical- Christoph Tannert, Ute
art, not discourses that supposedly practical hybrid. The conception of an Tischler, (Frankfurt am
generate art). 2 On the other hand, exhibition is like that of a film, which, Main: Revolver, Archiv fr
they might become politicians of the in Pasolinis words, is a structure that aktuelle Kunst, 2004), 87.
imaginary and symbolicas readers, wants to be another structure. In the
3Georg Schllhammer,
writers and participants in discussion text of the same name, Pasolini calls Curated by... Curators.
and polemics, people who generalise attention to the fact that a screenplay They used to search the
the particular, reduce it on curatorial (or scenario) cannot be conceived and storage rooms of their
decisions, and tell stories to diverse judged as a literary work because it in- collections, in Tannert
and Tischler, 2004, 31.

4Pier Paolo Pasolini,

The Screenplay as a
Structure That Wants to
Be Another Structure,
The American Journal of
Semiotics 4, 1/2 (1986): 53.

groups of viewers and listeners in the volves an autonomous technique: the

spirit of wide-ranging free association, so-called screenplay-text, in which
couched in the eloquent phraseology of the reader must read signs in two
post-ism authenticity.3 opposing sensesas a sign-meaning
Both of these stances stand at a com- and, at the same time, as a sign-kineme
mon crossroads where two processes (in connection with the cinematic
meet: the selectionthe binary opera- medium).4 Similarly, a concept of an
tion involved in evaluating an artwork exhibition is not written merely for a
(yes/no)and the conception of an theoretical gaze (imaginary/symbolic);
exhibitionthe process of imagin- rather, it is a new form, a hybrid sign-
ing and writing a proposition for an visual where the words have double
exhibition. The process of conceiving meaningsliterary as well as visual.
34 Positions Vt Havrnek / tranzit.org

5As Gayatri Spivak I believe that neither of the extreme in another, on the supposition that the
notes, the creation and positions indicated above (neither reason for operating with a particular
articulation of the term a practitioner of art nor an agent of work rather than another is contained
subaltern does not
theory) correspond to our conception and legitimized in the work itself.
yet mean that we have
found a way to improve of the curators work, because both are The two modes of curatorial work
the standing or life of a based on imaginary ideas of autonomic described above illustrate the gaps
subaltern person. That can transcendence. As is well known just between theory and reality and between
only be done (temporarily) because a problem is articulated does practice and reality. Neither of these
through political
not mean it automatically transpires modes is, in itself, sufficient; however,
representation.
into real solutions for the problem, neither may be rejected, because cura-
politics or micro-politics.5 torial activities do not preclude pure
Likewise, we should not assume that theory and should not be pure prac-
theoretical ideas (comprising theo- tice, either. Curatorial work should be

retical texts by artists, art theorists grounded on the dialectic of these two
and meta-theorists) spontaneously principles, held together by means of a
transcend into exhibitions through third factor, which is no less significant
the practice of assessing artworks and and perhaps, from our perspective, even
conceiving projects. We encounter a more important: temporary curatorial
similarly vague transfer when an ex- micro-politics. The products of these
hibition is conceived out of deductions micro-politics are not limited to theore-
from artworks or discussions with tical postulates, illustrations, metaphors
artists. This process of mechanical op- or models, but also include possibilities
eration within the artistic reality does for sustaining these two poles in a pro-
not produce another reality; it simply ductive, dynamic opposition. They are
extracts it from one spot and places it just as real as a work of art.
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 35

Curators are micro-politicians who artist is a particularity with which the 6As described by
formulate (or obtain) their own theoret- curator should enter into a profound, Immanuel Wallerstein in
ical/practical imagery and then make temporary polemical relationship, European Universalism:
The Rhetoric of Power (New
that imagery a reality. If curators reject reflecting on his or her own theoretical
York, London: The New
the principle of the autonomic (or universalities. This process should Press, 2006), 51, There
metaphorical) transcendence of con- generate numerous temporary micro- have been two contesting
tent and replace it with the principle of political dimensions of curatorial ac- modes of universalism
temporary, active micro-politics, they tivity involving each individual work. in the modern world.
Orientalism is one style
will think quite differently about the Such a profusion of micro-concerns
the mode of preceiving
routines and challenges they must face casts the significance of the collective essentialist particulars.
every day. exhibition as a whole into doubt, since Its roots are in a certain
As mentioned above, the two main it cannot bestow any determinate, version of humanism. The
mechanisms for the transfer of theory general meaning on the works apart universal quality is not a
unique set of values but
the permanence of a set of
essential particularism.

7Or, universal
universalism, as
Immanuel Wallerstein
writes.

and practice into reality are the prin- from their difference.6 Therefore,
ciple of binary assessment (selection) selection corresponds to the idea of
and the principle of project creation life as a performance of temporary
(the conception of an exhibition). These universalism in which the subject does
two principles must thus be situated not back away from his or her projec-
at the forefront of our concerns and tion of a universalist approach, but
become the performative instrument consciously accepts the condition of
of temporary micro-politics. an unbalanced, polemical relationship
We can speak of selection as the subjec- with the other universality. 7 A cur-
tive projection of a universality enter- rent dimension of this relationship is
ing into conflict with particularities the consciousness of individual histo-
and local contexts. Each artwork and ricities that is proper to any universal-
36 Positions Vt Havrnek / tranzit.org

ism. This type of practice leads to the conditions for the decision-making,
repeated bending and hybridization spatial, temporal, financial and cultur-
of the universal; we gradually find out al-institutional modalities of Manifesta
that universalism cannot exist without 8. The idea of this debate is to subject
its own one-way historical temporal- the rules governing the exhibition to a
ity. The performance of universalism collective micro-political investigation
beyond its own boundaries is thus com- and subsequent reformulation. This
posed of limited temporal polemics in investigation into and reformulation
which universalism as such loses its should comprise both rules that could
essentialist grounds, becoming simply be changed and rules that seem impos-
a succession of transformations. Hence sible to changerules and conditions
selection is a constantly evolving ex- distinguishing the exhibition from
perience which must always contradict other temporary social and artistic
its own universality again and again. activities.
As I have suggested, the concep-
tion (scenario) of an exhibition is the In closing, a few words in explanation
structure that wants to be another of the moment when this text was writ-
structure. For this reason, the sce- ten. Following collective discussions
nario must be careful to avoid being during which tranzit.org defined its
pure theory or merely a motto. In the conception of Manifesta 8, we, tranzit.
case of tranzit, we decided to create a org, decided that the most apt term to
micro-political scenario as the creation describe that conception was tempo-
Images: of a constitution for temporary display. rary micro-politics. If this text is gen-
Zbynek Baladrn, on This constitution was first inspired by eral and lacking in concreteness, this is
Theory, Practice and
Reality, a Few Remarks
historical realizations of the ideal polis because the discussions with the artists
on the Micro-Politics of and has since turned into the present that will constitute that temporary
Curating, 2010 debate on the prerequisites, rules and micro-politics are just beginning.
Studies Paul ONeill 37

Beyond
Group
Practice
SHUT THE FUCK UP! shout General in a falsified image of the creative
Idea in their video mock documentary individual. General Ideas enduring
of the same name from 1985. Looking relevance also serves as an indicator
directly into the camera, three young of how little has changed since their
artists, AA Bronson, Felix Partz and time in relation to the institution of the
Jorge Zontal, continue their rant: I am individual producerthe artist, the
not going to be a media whore, I wont
play bad guy to your good guy, boho General Idea, P Is for
to your bourgeoisie, we are supposed Poodle, 19831989
to be romantic, untamed, while our
artworks are slipped back into the
marketplace, blue chip investments
for level headed fetishists [] Id like to
paint them into a corner, I am not going
to shit on a canvas and theyll call it art,
it doesnt matter what they are saying
as long as they are talking [] no mat-
ter what they will dress you up [] do
you get the picture, do you know what
to say, SHUT THE FUCK UP!
In General Ideas high camp critique
on the art world, the mass media and
its clichd image of the unique artist,
there is a timely reminder that both
the populist media and art-worldly
discourses can often translate the
complexities of any group practice into
quantifiable products and marketable curator or the critic. Can the merg-
identities. In their attempts to under- ing of people and practices offer any
mine the role of mediation within the sustainable resistance to the cult of
art world, General Idea highlighted the creative individualism, or is the col-
art worlds capacity, in spite of such lective just another marketable brand
critiques, to maintain its investment in disguise?
38 Studies Paul ONeill

Left: When I interviewed Bronson in 2005, distribution and collaborationwhich

IRWIN, Like to like / he said that General Idea was modeled included the publishing of other art-
Mount Triglav,
on the idea of a rock band: We thought ists projects alongside their own in
2004 (Photographic
reconstruction of the of ourselves in really pragmatic terms their self-published magazine, FILE
group OHOMilenko, as a group. I think if any of us had Megazine (since 1972), and the estab-
Matanovic, David Nez, played instruments, we would have lishment of a distribution center and
Drago Dellabernadina formed a proper rock band. So we exhibition space for artists editions
Action Mount Triglav
from 1970),
didnt think of ourselves as a collec- and multiplesextended the param-
Photo Toma Gregoric tive. Bronson highlighted a distinction eters of group curatorial work beyond
between the liberating potentiality the gallery space and into multiple
Right: of a group, formed out of mutual channels of dissemination.
Group Material, friendship, and a collective, a restric- Group Material, with its rotating cast
Democracy, Dia Art
tive structure limited by a dominant of members between 1979 and 1996,
Foundation, New York,
1988 ideological or organizational principle. also employed the process of group
Artists groups such as General Idea exhibition-making as a space for
or Group Material were central to es- political and social formation: the
tablishing the idea that exhibitions are exhibition functioned as a shared site
group formations, in as much as they of participation among individuals,
speak on behalf of the group about how the event of the exhibition enabling a
art is seen as much as about which art further place for discussion and social
is seen, and that artists who consider public forum. Exhibitions such as The
the spaces in which their work is dis- Peoples Choice in 1981 subverted the
played, as part of their strategic remit, standardized manner in which art had
are already curating from within their come to be displayed and how such
own extended practice. General Ideas formations were established. Interrupt-
multifarious approaches to mediation, ing the traditional museum collection
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 39

the need for a trans-disciplinary and NOTES

discursive approach to exhibition-mak-
ing. All group exhibitions, whatever 1In his keynote
address for the Banff
form they take, are the result of diver-
2000 International
gent, complex and dialectical relations Curatorial Summit at
between curators, artists and all those the Banff Centre on
provided with agency in the process as August 24, 2000, Bruce
co-producers. By making these inter- W. Ferguson highlighted
three recurring issues in
relations apparent from the outset, and
contemporary curating,
in articulating the means of production, the third of which was
the difference between collaborative the difference between
and authorial structures converges collaborative and authorial
during a process of co-production, lead- structures. See Melanie
ing to the construction of co-operative Townsend, The Troubles
With Curating in
and co-authored group exhibitions.1
Beyond the Box: Diverging
Curatorial Practices, ed.
The significance of both Group Mate- Melanie Townsend (Banff,
rial and General Idea as precedents for Canada: Banff Centre
a current trend for group work was Press, 2003), xv.
highlighted when they were selected
as part of the exhibition Collective Cre-
ativity at Kunsthalle Fridericianum in
Kassel in 2005. This major exhibition
and supporting publication posited the
view that all creative work was already
model, The Peoples Choice presented collaborative, in principle if not in
material selected by non-professional name, while evidently articulating Below:
cultural experts: locals were invited group work as some form of resistance Exhibition view of
Collective Creativity,
to contribute things from their homes to the dominant, market-driven model
Kunsthalle Fridericianum,
to the exhibition on East 13th Street in of production already supported by our 2005 with work by B+B,
New York City. Americana, shown in the existing socio-cultural institutions. The B+B Meeting Point
context of their first institutional show The curators of the show, Zagreb-based Photo Nils Klinger
at the 1986 Whitney Biennial, presented
a Salon des refuss of marginalized
artists with socio-political concerns,
alongside products from supermar-
kets and department storesbreaking
the boundaries between high and low
culture by questioning the function of
cultural representation and hierarchies
of cultural production. Democracy, at
the Dia Art Foundation between 1987
and 1989, was organized as a cycle of
discussion-led events and collabora-
tive shows divided into four sections:
Education and Democracy, Politics
and Election, Cultural Participation
and AIDS and Democracy: A Case
Study. All of these projects examined
the complexities of classification and
conventional display while stressing
40 Studies Paul ONeill

2See Ren Block and curatorial collective What, How and access to their means of production,
Angelika Nollert (eds.), for Whom (WHW), called for greater as much as they also demonstrate how
Collective Creativity visibility of group practice over the all work is collaborative. Why is there
(Frankfurt: Revolver,
years, with collective work presented this need to conceive of collectivity
2005).
as the results of alternative forms of as a single unified creative body?
3See www.spike-island. sociabilityeven if their objectives fail WHW offered a similar assessment as
org.uk/?q=node/285 to have any lasting effect beyond the self-critique sometime later when they
social subsystem that is the art world. stated, We are not primarily inter-
4For example, in the
Collective Creativity documented ested in exploring the formal structure
catalogue essay, they
stated that 28% of the historical avant-garde models such as of organizations (networks, communi-
artists selected were dada, surrealism and fluxus alongside ties, groups, platforms etc.), as much as
born in Europe and an eclectic mix of recent and contem- their attempts to redefine the catego-
North America, but 45% porary group activities from Europe, ries of site, status and the function of
are now residing there. Eastern Europe, Latin America and art in the public space. Although there
Of the seventy artists
the United States. As such, the project are many common sites of departure,
represented, twenty-two
were living outside of reflected upon a wide variety of organized networks and self-organized
their country of origin heterogeneous approaches to multiple- practices are not a unified movement.3
(twenty-seven artists authorship across social, cultural and Such an assessment is noted through-
originally being from historical divides. WHW presented out their ambitious Istanbul Biennial
the Middle East, eighteen
the project as an act of kinship, a show of 2009, What Keeps Mankind Alive?,
from Eastern Europe, ten
from Western Europe, five
of solidarity with the general spirit in which they portrayed an allied but
from Central Asia and so of collectivism shared by many of the non-unified global art multitude, while
on). Thus with less than assembled exhibitors, for whom joint being explicit about the demographics
half of the artists residing work provides a potentially utopian of their selection. They demonstrated
in the West, there were space for discourse. how extensive group research is part
nonetheless thirty-eight
Collective Creativity was an important of any curatorial process, which like
different nationalities
represented, providing an survey. In their introductory essay for art, is often curtailed by the measure of
indication of the diasporic the catalogue, WHW declared that col- access to the means of production.4
nature of the art world via lective creativity calls upon the eman- In the last twenty years, terms such
a curatorial statement. See cipatory potential of communist(ic) as biennial art, museum art or
What How and for Whom
forms of work and collaborative art fair art have indicated how any
and Ilkay Bali (eds.), What
Keeps Mankind Alive? The
production for the good of the whole, art shown in a given context can be
Guide (Istanbul: Istanbul where individual energies are bundled absorbed by (sometimes intentionally)
Foundation for Culture together and common interests prevail the very conditions of their display
and Arts, 2009), 2227. or a shared result is achieved.2 Herein with the utterance of the word art
lies one of its problems. The packag- regularly exploited by event organizers
5See Paul ONeill
ing of all these groups as a common as a generic term for everything that is
and Mick Wilson
(eds.), Curating and collective translates into a flattening- displayed under these circumstances.
the Educational Turn out of each specific group formation. Alongside many of these events, there
(Amsterdam: De Appel/ Group Material becomes interchange- is now a concession made for inter-
Open Editions, 2010), and able with General Idea; with Gilbert & disciplinary discussion, talks, confer-
Mick Wilson, Curatorial George; with IRWIN, and so on. It was ences and educational programs as
Moments and Discursive
Turns in Paul ONeill
hard to avoid perceiving collective an integral part of mega-exhibitions
(ed.) Curating Subjects creativity as representing a benevo- and art fairs alike, accommodating
(Amsterdam: de Appel/ lent, idealistic, notion of all collective the participation of less materialized
Open Editions, 2007). work. Surely, what is common to each and more discursive modes of group
group is that the individuals in them practice. Historically, these discussions
6Ibid.
prefer to work with each other rather have been peripheral to the exhibi-
than with others. Each initiative has tion as such, operating in a secondary
distinct cultural formations and ca- role in relation to the display of art for
pacities for action, depending on their public consumption. More recently,
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 41

these discursive interventions and ably alluding to the necessary function 7Kristina Lee Podesva
relays have become central to contem- of such questions for sustaining his proposed that education
porary practice; they have now become eternal interviews project, but equally as a form of art making
constitutes a relatively
the main event or exhibition.5 This he may have been thinking about
new medium. It is
is part of a wider educational turn in how collaborative practice is so often distinct from projects
art and curating, prompted by consid- reduced to an individual subject state- that take education
eration of the recurrent mobilization ment and deemed to be on behalf of and its institution, the
of pedagogical models within vari- someone.8 Widespread interest in col- academy, as a subject or
facilitator of production.
ous curatorial strategies and critical laboration has seen an increase in self-
Drawing on research in
art projects.6 Projects that manifest organized initiatives over the last few the Copenhagen Free
this engagement with educational and years, accompanied by a large number University and elsewhere,
pedagogical formats and motifs diverge of survey exhibitions, publications Podesva itemises ten
in terms of scale, purpose, modus and projects that have brought these characteristics and
operandi, value, visibility, reputa- agencies and organizational networks concerns across a
spectrum of education-
tion and degree of actualization. They together under a single rubric. In this
as-medium projects.
include the Platforms of Documenta context, does any collective art project These include: A school
11 in 2002; education as one of the three or group-work still have the potential structure that operates
leitmotifs of Documenta 12 in 2007; the to be subsumed by a single author as a social medium; A
unrealized Manifesta 6 experimental in the same way as a self-contained tendency toward process
(versus object) based
art-school-as-exhibition and the asso- artwork? When General Idea declared
production; An aleatory
ciated volume, Notes for an Art School; that working in a group had freed them or open nature; A post-
the subsequent unitednationsplaza from the tyranny of the individual hierarchical learning
and Night School projects; Protoacad- genius, or when Art & Language de- environment where
emy; Cork Caucus; Be(com)ing Dutch: scribed its output as having no grand there are no teachers,
Eindhoven Caucus; Future Academy; oeuvre, unified by romantic personal- just co-participants; A
preference for exploratory,
Paraeducation Department; Copenha- ity, or Group Material made a plea
experimental, and multi-
gen Free University; A.C.A.D.E.M.Y.; for an understanding of creativity disciplinary approaches
Hidden Curriculum; Tania Brugueras unrestricted by the marketplace or by to knowledge production;
Arte de Conducta in Havana; Art School categories of specialization, they were An awareness of the
Palestine; Manoa Free University; all expressing a common desire for an instrumentalization of the
academy. See Kristina Lee
School of Missing Studies in Belgrade; alternative to the autonomous figures
Podesva, A Pedagogical
Art School UK; The Centre for Possible of the artist, the curator and the critic. Turn: Brief Notes on
Studies in London and so on. This is just This rallying cry for collaboration Education as Art, Fillip
a short list serving to indicate the broad as a productive strategy for coun- 6, 2007 [http://fillip.ca/
distribution of the work placed under tercultural organization has been a content/a-pedagogical-
consideration by the term educational recurrent theme in recent exhibitions turn]. It is worth also
looking at Anton Vidokles
turn and to note the propensity of this and publications. Examples include
Incomplete Chronology of
work to foreground collective action the exhibition and accompanying Experimental Art Schools
and collaborative discursive praxis.7 users guide The Interventionists: in Notes for an Art School
These initiatives question how we Art in the Social Space at MASS MoCA, (Amsterdam: International
might restructure, re-think and reform which ran from May 2004 until March Foundation Manifesta,
the way in which we speak to one an- 2005, and Get Rid of Yourself at Halle 2006), 19.

other in a group setting. Without over- 14 in Leipzig and the ACC Gallery 8This is one of Obrists
simplifying all of these projects, they in Weimar, Germany in July 2003, most commonly cited
can generally be described as a critique which attempted to map out common, quotations of the last ten
of formal educational processes and the autonomous approaches to social years, see for example in
way these processes form subjects. relationships through gatherings of Hal Foster, Chat Rooms
in Participation, ed.
collective initiatives. Make Everything
Claire Bishop (London:
When Hans Ulrich Obrist remarked New: A Project on Communism (2006), Whitechapel Gallery and
that collaboration is the answer but by Grant Watson, Gerrie van Noord and Cambridge MA: MIT Press,
what was the question? he was prob- Gavin Everall, is a Book Works publica- 2007), 194.
42 Studies Paul ONeill

tion which seeks to rescue commu- co-productive models that use social
nism from its own dispute through processes of communication based on
collective imaginations. Publications a shared language.
such as Claire Bishops edited anthol- In addition, models of collaboration
ogy on Participation (2006), or Maria (often as social networking projects)
Lind, Johanna Billing and Lars Nils- have increasingly been associated with
sons Taking the Matter into Common contextual and dialogical procedures
Hands (2007) and Self-Organisation/ rather than material outcomes, and led
Counter-Economic Strategies (2006), to new terms of engagement. Terms
co-initiated by Superflex, brought a such as conversational art (Homi
range of texts and documented projects Bhaba), dialogue-based public art
(both past and present) together as (Tom Finkelpearl), dialogical art
toolboxes for self-organized activities (Grant Kester), new genre public
as well as reflections upon the theoreti- art (Suzanne Lacy), new situation-
cal formulations of the many kinds ism (Claire Doherty) and connec-
of participation and collaboration in tive aesthetics (Suzi Gablik) have all
art and curating. Even a brief glance attempted to encapsulate the discursive
at all these projects will reveal how qualities inherent in more immaterial
ubiquitous certain collective and self- forms of collective artistic co-pro-
organized models have become across duction predominantly experienced
the board. With all this togetherness beyond the art institutional setting
going on, it might be now worth con- or the gallery frame. All these terms
Below: sidering making a distinction between have attempted to grasp how multiple
Exhibition view of
Collective Creativity,
those self-enterprises under disguise, participants in art are involved as
Kunsthalle Fridericianum, which function as a self-help conduit co-creators, with a view to shaping
Kassel, 2005 to the curatorial market, and group-led public spacesas seen in some of the
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 43

people-based projects by Temporary approaches to exhibition production, 9For example, see Claire
Services, Oda Projesi, Skart, Park Fic- with curators tending to work closely Bishops The Social Turn:
tion, Apolonija uteric or Jeanne van with artists on the overall exhibition Collaborations and Its
Discontents, in Artforum
Heeswijk.9 In these cases, the function schema or on longer co-productions.10
XLVI, 6 (February, 2006):
of the artwork is to create situations What is also apparent in the last twenty 178-183.
where the group can potentially have years is how key discussions and
agency in the processes initiated by the debates on large-scale exhibitions have 10For example, when
artist. The artwork is put forward as continued to mobilize an expanded, Maria Lind curated What
If? Art on the Verge of
the accumulation of interactions, and centralized position for the figure of
Architecture and Design,
configured as a cluster of participant- the curator; however, there has been a at the Moderna Museet
driven social- and community-respon- notable punctuated shifts away from in Stockholm in 2000,
sive interventions gathered together the single-author curatorial model, she invited artist Liam
over time that eventually result in gradually moving towards more col- Gillick to participate as
some kind of public manifestation. The laborative, discursive and collective a filter through which
the artworks would take
result is group-work conceived as pro- models of curating. Curatorial groups
shape in the design and
cessual curatorial endeavor as much as from WHW to Raqs Media Collective, layout of the exhibition.
post-autonomous artistic practice. and established curators from Charles Delegating responsibility
One of the key shifts in curatorial prac- Esche to Okwui Enwezor and Ute to an artist to make the
tice of the last twenty years was when Meta Bauer have sustained a common installation decisions
meant that dynamics
a new generation of curators emerging argument for collaborative curatorial
within the design of the
in the 1990s began to show an interest models throughout their practice, ac- exhibition occurred that
in co-operative, process-orientated, knowledging the failure of the single- may not have been possible
discussion-based views of exhibitions. author model of exhibition-making, had the curator taken sole
These curators worked closely with particularly when such exhibitions responsibility. The same is
artists and one another on projects. demand access to a wider network of true of Utopia Station, for
which Rirkrit Tiravanija
Both curators and artists began artistic and cultural practices. In order
realized the exhibition
adopting activities that traditionally to sustain an inclusive model of exhibi- design and Liam Gillick
associated with each others approach tions, curators have increasingly taken designed the seating.
within their specific fields of enquiry. on collective models that manifest the There are numerous other
These collaborations happened on the merits of group work. Even a brief examples of artistssuch
as Julie Ault, Martin Beck,
basis that concealing the curators role glance at recent developments of large-
Judith Barry and Josef
as something akin to a neutral provider scale international events reveals how Dabernigworking as
only reinforces a modernist myth that group curating has become a mainstay exhibition designers with
artists work alone, their practice unaf- on the biennial circuit for a while now, curators.
fected by those with whom they work. for either pragmatic or ideological
Thus artistic and curatorial practice reasons. Whether working as part of
converged in a variety of projects seek- an enforced team (Manifesta, since
ing to undermine the notion that the 1996) or selected by the artistic director
production, reception and interpreta- to work on the overall concept as co-
tion of art could ever occur without the curators (Okwui Enwezors Documenta
advice, suggestions and interventions 11, 2002), or as a semi-autonomous
of procreative curators, critics, and component (within Francesco
production partners. This was the Bonamis 50th Venice Biennale, 2003),
emergence of curatorial practice as a co-curating has continued to develop
central focus and paradigm for experi- as a dominant working model for most
mentation, for new formats of collec- perennial shows from Istanbul, to
tive cultural action, and for greater em- Tirana, Sao Paulo, Lyon, Berlin and so
phasis on self-organization within the on. Although not without its problems,
contemporary art field. The newly as- such group work has demonstrated
cendant discourse of curating brought the advantages of pooling knowledge
with it an intensified discursivity in resources, networks and opinions
44 Studies Paul ONeill

11See Charles together as well as prefacing them with context of more recent curating, the
Esche, Curating and a symbolic critique of the cult of indi- triangular network of artist, curator
Collaborating: A Scottish vidualism. Whereas other significant and audience is replaced by a spectrum
Account in Mika Hannula
co-operative projects such as Eastside of potential inter-relationships. Such
(ed.), Stopping the Process?
(Finland: NIFCA, 1998), Projects in Birmingham, or Grizedale a shift in the understanding of arts
249. Arts in Cumbria, HomeWorks in Beirut, authorship, as something beyond the
or Annie Fletcher and Frdrique hand of an individual, acknowledges
Bergholtzs nomadic If I Cant Dance the idea that art is neither produced in
are rethinking the group exhibition- isolation nor should it be understood as
format by taking an accumulative being autonomous from the rest of life.
approach, where on-going curatorial As curator Charles Esche stated well
projects stretch out over time, working over ten years ago, We are all collabo-
things out through doing them, mak- rators in the pursuit of the art experi-
ing things appear by performing them, ence as a transformative, hopefully
employing the exhibition moment as life-enhancing thing.11
a research tool for further investiga- In spite of these developments, and
tionand thus configuring curato- after more than four decades of insti-
rial practice as part of an evolving, tutional critique, the prevailing image
Below: episodic, discursive and perpetually of the artist or curator is still one that
Exhibition view of unfolding collaborative network. adheres to a vanguard position for the
Collective Creativity, with As curatorial work has become artist as an autonomous subjectan in-
works by Taller Popular more collaborative, exhibitions have dividual author and/or producer of the
de Serigrafia, Kunsthalle
Fridericianum, Kassel,
tended to include non-specialist art unique work of art within the context
2005 practitioners and involve participation of the institutions of art and beyond.
Photo Nils Klinger across cultural fields of inquiry. In the For example, in discussing institutional
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 45

critique, it is hard to come up with a list

beyond the established canon made up
of the usual suspects, whether it begins
with Michael Asher, Marcel Brood-
thaers, Daniel Buren or Hans Haacke or
ends with Mark Dion, Andrea Fraser or
Rene Green. Might we consider Gen-
eral Idea or Group Material as part of a
parallel history of institutional critique
of individual creativity, which has been
taken up by the curatorial field? Simi-
larly, even considering how much cu-
ratorial practice has been collaborative
over the last decade, we still have more
of an understanding of who certain
curators are than what they actually do,
which may also be the result of celeb-
rity culture and the popularization of
art as part of the global entertainment
industry. This is also in spite of what I
would call the Obrist paradox, where-
by the most visible curator of the last
decade, Hans Ulrich Obrist, has curated
almost all of his projects in collabora-
tion with many othersa fact that is
rarely acknowledged. The enunciation
of curating as a multi-authored practice
within at least some of the more recent in multi-colored bedclothes, his head is General Idea, FILE
large-scale exhibitions finally seems to resting upon a bright yellow pillow. He Megazine, 1984
be acknowledging this as a fact. But it is wearing his favorite shirt, buttoned
is worth asking whether we are finally all the way up, covering his body, ema-
beginning to see a noticeable paradigm ciated by the illnesses that have brought
shift in recognition of the collective as a about his demise. It is a beautiful, yet
dominant, and no longer merely emer- unsentimental picture of death. An im-
gent, paradigm of the moment. Is all age of a lost friend, taken by AA Bron-
this interest in the collective merely son, it reminds us that the foundation
a fleeting attraction, or a more genuine of any group creativity is the common
falling out with the cult of the individ- bond of friendship. Felix, June 5th, 1994
ual producer? Are we witnessing brief acts as an emotive signifier for all group
love affairs, instrumental alliances, or work. It tells us that they are all made up
committed partnerships? of individuals who happen to believe in
Returning to where I started, with art, who like working together and who
General Idea, it may be possible to shed sometimes even love each other. Maybe,
some light on the matter. Felix, June 5th, unintentionally, or perhaps unwitting-
1994 (1995) was General Ideas final col- ly, it also shows us how much so many
laborative work: a large public billboard of us would rather not go it alone.
depicting a scaled-up image of Felix
Partz laid out in his bed, eyes wide open, This is a significantly expanded and
his skeletal face looking down from a updated version of a much shorter text
height up above. He is surrounded by called Group Practice, first published
his most beloved possessions. Wrapped in Art Monthly in March, 2007.
46 Discourse Alexei Penzin interviews Paolo Virno

The Soviets of
the Multitude:
On Collectivity and
Collective Work

Paolo Virno is one of the most radical Collectivity and subjectivity are two
and lucid thinkers of the postoperaist poles of the contemporary culture in-
political and intellectual tradition. Of dustry. Virno proposes to rethink the
all the heterodox Marxist currents, meaning of this Adornian notion. Cul-
postoperaismo has found itself at the ture industry is a model for the whole
very center of debates in contemporary network of production in the post-
philosophy. Its analytics of post-Ford- Fordist economy in which each subject-
ist capitalism refer to Wittgensteins producer is a virtuoso. In fact, in
philosophy of language, to Heidegger the actual conditions that have led to
and his Daseinsanalysis, to German the disappearance of the standardized
philosophical anthropology, and molds of the industrial Fordist epoch,
to Foucault and Deleuze with their there has been a profusion of perfor-
problematization of power, desire and mances without any pre-established
control apparatuses. Subjectivity, lan- scripts. This is one of the reasons
guage, body, affects or, in other words, why contemporary art provides the
life itself, are captured by this regime quintessence of virtuosic practices: the
of post-Fordist production. These ab- subjectivity of the contemporary artist
stract concepts and discourses have is probably the brightest expression of
entered the reality of contemporary the flexible, mobile, non-specialized
capitalism and become fundamental substance of contemporary living la-
to it, as real, functioning abstractions. bor. However, there is still the need to
Such theoretical suggestions have identify its antipode, which classically
launched enormous polemics over the is the collectivity.
last two decades.
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 47

To outline the opposite pole of subjec- the case that, in the end, State social-
tivity, I questioned Paolo Virno about ism has to become the communism of
the use of the term multitudeas a capital, to use Virnos words? Virnos
new political articulation of labor that contribution is especially pertinent
avoids a repressive unification in the to understanding whether these new
One (the State, nation, or a cultural developments are forcing us to recall
grand style)in order to understand those revolutionary political institu-
how it is possible to think its mode tions after which the Soviet Union
of unity, how new forms of micro- was named: the soviets, or workers
collectives work and how one might councils, which served as tools for
explain their explosive proliferation democratic self-organization. This is
and creativity. the context in which we finally came to
It is particularly interesting for me to discuss The Soviets of the Multitude.
ask the following questions not from a
post-Fordist position, but rather from AP: Re-thinking the collective or
the post-socialist world, being myself collectivity occupies an important
part of a collective initiative that works place in your theoretical work. In
in a space between theory, activism and A Grammar of the Multitude, you
artistic practices. In the post-socialist speak of the necessity for a new
zone, new forms of labor (as well as articulation of relations between
poverty, extreme precariousness and the collective and the individual.
anomie), which replaced the Soviet an- That would mean blurring the
cient rgime under neo-liberal slogans borders between the individual and
with furious, destructive negativity, the collective, private and public in
presented themselves as urgent or contemporary post-Fordist produc-
necessary components to the transi- tion, understood as a broad-based
tion to free market and democracy. experience of the world. You take as
We witnessed the atomization and a point of departure Gilbert Simon-
fragmentation of post-socialist societ- dons conception of the collective as
ies, the horrifying violence of primi- something that is not opposed to the
tive accumulation (Marx) in the 1990s, individual but, on the contrary, is
followed by the violence of primitive a field of radical individualization:
political accumulation (Althusser) as the collective refines our singularity.
the rebirth of some mutant form of a Recalling Marxs notion of the so-
repressive State in the 2000s. Maybe cial individual, which presupposes
we should break up forever with the that the collective (language, social
historical past of State socialism with cooperation, etc.) and the individual
its pompous glorification of monumen- coexist, you elaborate quite a para-
tal collectivity. However, is it really doxical definition of Marxs theory
48 Discourse Alexei Penzin interviews Paolo Virno

NOTES as a doctrine of rigorous individu- the social to the individual. Gradually

alism. On the other hand, taking the child acquires the collective us,
1Lev Semyonovich into account contemporary forms which we can define as an interpsy-
Vygotskij (18961934) was
of labor, you propose the model of chical dimension, turning it into an
a Soviet psychologist and
internationally-known the individual virtuoso, which, intrapsychical reality: something
founder of cultural- as it seems, does not presuppose intimate, personal, unique. However,
historical psychology. any other dimension of collectivity this introversion of the interpsychi-
Vygotskij was a highly with the exception of the situation cal dimension, this singularization of
prolific author. His major
of public performance itself. Can we the primordial us, does not happen
works span six volumes,
written over roughly ten think of the realm of the collective definitively during childhood: it always
years, from his Psychology as just a background, or a pre-indi- repeats itself during adulthood. Expe-
of Art (1925) to Thought vidual material involved in a kind of rience is always measuredeither in
and Language (1934). The teleology of individuation, or is the an insurrection, a friendship, or a work
philosophical framework collective just a passive audience? of artthrough the transformation of
he provided includes
Is the collective deprived of any the interpsychical into intrapsychical.
not only insightful
interpretations about the constituent, affirmative or creative We constantly have to deal with the
cognitive role of tools function? Could you clarify the place interiority of the public and with the
of mediation, but also of the collectivity in your thinking? publicity of the interior.
the re-interpretation of This means that the human nature
well-known concepts in
PV: I owe a lot to Lev S. Vygotskijs cannot be defined through the observa-
psychology such as the
notion of internalization
thoughts on the collective, on the tion of a single member of its species,
of knowledge. relation between the collective and of his own perceptions, affects and
singularity.1 His main idea is that the cognitions. Instead, the human nature
social relation precedes and allows for consists of a set of relations established
the formation of the auto-conscious between a plurality of individuals. To
I. Let me explain: initially there is an be more precise: instead of connecting
us; yetand here lies the paradox given singularities, this set of relation-
this us is not equivalent to the sum of ships constitutes these single individu-
many well-defined Is. In sum, even als as such. Human nature is located
if we cannot yet speak of real subjects, in such a thing thatnot belonging to
there is still an inter-subjectivity. For any individual mindonly exists in the
Vygotskij, the mind of the individual, relation between the many. To speak of
rather than an incontrovertible depart- human nature means to develop a phi-
ing point, is the result of a process of losophy of the preposition between.
differentiation that happens in a pri- I understand your objection regarding
meval society: the real movement of the virtuoso: in this case transin-
the development process of the childs dividuality, the collective dimension,
thought is accomplished not from the seems to remain in the background,
individual to the socialized, but from reduced to being the stalls of passive
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 49

spectators, that in the maximum can deconstructs politically dangerous

applaud or boo the performance they essentialist representations of com-
are seeing. munity as One (a unified political
But is that really the case? Maybe not. body, the Leader, the State). At the
Lets try to consider lartista esecu- same time, by introducing the logic
tore (the performing artist) through of multiplicity and singularity, this
Vygotskijs eyes. The audience thought confronts the vision of sin-
with its habitudes, competences and gularities as active and productive
emotionsconstitutes the interpsychic forces, considering them as a kind
ambit, the preliminary us that the of static being-together of passive
virtuoso introverts, turning it into existences exposing themselves one
something intrapsychic, singular. The to another. How does a political
virtuosic execution stages this trans- thinking that elaborates the concept
formation. If we think of contempo- of the multitude relate to this com-
rary production, we must understand munity discourse?
that each individual is, at the same
time, the artist performing the action PV: The thought of community car-
and the audience: he performs indi- ries a basic defect: it neglects the prin-
vidually while he assists the others ciple of individualization, that is, the
performances. process of the formation of singularities
In those factories in which cogni- from something all its elements share.
tive work is predominant and verbal The logic of multiplicity and singularity
language constitutes the main produc- is not sufficient, and we need to clarify
tive instrument, the public is made the premise, or the condition of pos-
of other virtuosi who, in their turn, sibility, of a multitude of singularities.
head for the stage. At the end, what the Enouncing it as a provocation: we need
single producer executes is the score, to say something about the One that
be it either collective or transindividu- allows the existence of many unrepeat-
al. In fact, this score is made of social able individuals. The discourse about
cooperation, of the set of relations that the community prudishly eludes the
define us, of the faculty of language, discourse about the One. Yet, the politi-
and so on. cal existence of the many as many
is rooted in a homogeneous and shared
AP: Contemporary philosophical ambit; it is hacked out of an impersonal
thought proposes critical models background.
for understanding collectivity, It is with respect to the One that the
reintroduced under the name of opposition between the categories
community (Jean-Luc Nancy, of people and multitude clearly
Giorgio Agamben). This thought emerges. Most importantly, there is
50 Discourse Alexei Penzin interviews Paolo Virno

a reversion in the order of things: of the multitude as the raw matter to

while the people tend to the One, the define a well-rounded political model
multitude derives from the One. For that moves away from that mediocre
the people, the One is a promise; for the artefact of the modern State, which
many, it is a premise. is at once rudimentary (regarding
Furthermore, it also mutes the defini- the social cooperation) and ferocious.
tion of what is common or shared. The What is fundamental is to conceive the
One around which the people gravitate relation between the One and the Many
is the State, the sovereign, the volont in a radically different way from that
gnrale. Instead, the One carried on of Hobbes, Rousseau, Lenin or Carl
the backs of the multitude consists of Schmitt.
the language, the intellect as a public or
interpsychical resource, of the generic AP: Your argument related to
faculties of the species. If the multi- our subject also develops on the
tude shuns the unity of the State, this level of the critical appropriation
is simply because the former is related of concepts in German philosophi-
to a completely different One, which is cal anthropology (Arnold Gelen,
preliminary instead of being conclu- Helmut Plessner). As you say, what
sive. We could say: the One of the mul- we nowadays call human nature
titude collimates in many ways with is the basic raw material for the
that transindividual reality that Marx capitalist production. Human
called the general intellect or the nature interpreted as a set of
social brain. The general intellect cor- bio-anthropological invariants,
responds to the moment in which the as a kind of potentiality referring to
banal human capacity of thinking with the faculty of language, to neoteny
words becomes the main productive as the retention of juvenile traits
force of matured capitalism. However, in adult behavior, to openness to
it can also constitute the foundations of the world (i.e. the absence of fixed
a republic that has lost the characteris- environment), etc. You state that
tics of stately sovereignty. these anthropological invariants
become sociological traits of a
In conclusion, the thought of the post-Fordist labor force, expressing
community, even if laudable in many themselves as permanent precari-
respects, is an impolitic thought. It ousness, flexibility and the need to
takes into account only some emotional act in unpredictable situations.
and existential aspects of the multi- Post-Fordist capitalism does not
tude: in short, a lifestyle. It is obviously alienate human nature, but rather
important, but what it is fundamental reveals it at the center of contempo-
to understand the work and the days rary production, and by the same
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 51

move, exposes it to apparatuses of monopoly of the political decision 2Chto delat/What is to

exploitation and control. Former incarnated by the State. It should be done? (www.chtodelat.
ways of easing the painful uncer- single out the institutions that meet the org) was founded in
2003 in Petersburg by a
tainty and instability of human be- general intellect referred by Marx,
group of artists, critics,
havior through ritual mechanisms that social brain that is, at the same philosophers and writers
and traditional social institutions time, the main productive force and a from Petersburg, Moscow,
melt into air. How does this new principle of republican organization. and Nizhny Novgorod
moment change the specificity of The modern central state is facing a with the goal of merging
political theory, art and
collective work today? Is it possible radical crisis, but it has not ceased to
activism. Since then, Chto
to speak of the collective dimension reproduce itself through a series of delat has been publishing
as a practice of self-organization, disturbing metamorphosis. The state an English-Russian
mutual aid and protection without of permanent exception is surely one newspaper on issues
any institutional framework? Can of the ways in which sovereignty sur- central to engaged culture,
we say that this collectivity is now vives itself, indefinitely postponing its with a special focus on the
relationship between a re-
forming in the context of life outside decline. The same applies to what Marx
politicization of Russian
of the sites of production, in the said about joint-stock companies: these intellectual culture and
space of socialization outside of constituted an overtaking of private its broader international
the working place? property operated on the same basis of context.
private property. To put it differently,
PV: Let us agree on the use of the word joint-stock companies allowed the over-
institution. Is it a term that belongs coming of private property but, at the
exclusively to the vocabulary of the same time, articulated this possibility in
adversary? I dont think so. I believe such a way that they qualitatively rein-
that the concept of institution is also forced and developed that same private
(and perhaps mainly) decisive to the property. In our case, we could say: the
politics of the multitude. Institutions state of permanent exception indicates
constitute the way in which our species an overcoming of the form of the State
protects itself from uncertainty and on the same basis of its statuality. It is
with which it creates rules to protect its a perpetuation of the State, of sover-
own praxis. Therefore, an institution eignty, but also the exhibition of its
is also a collective, such as Chto delat/ irreversible crisis, of the full maturity
What is to be done?2 of a past statal republic.
The institution is the mother tongue. So, I believe that the state of excep-
Institutions are the rituals we use to tion allows us to reflect on the institu-
heal and resolve the crisis of a com- tions of the multitude, about their
munity. The true debate should not be possible functioning and their rules.
between institutional and anti-institu- An example: in the state of exception,
tional forces; instead, it should identify the difference between matters of
the institutions that lay beyond the right (de jure) and matters of fact
52 Discourse Alexei Penzin interviews Paolo Virno

(de facto) is so attenuated that it almost around this or that event, etc. How
disappears. Once more, the rules would you locate this proliferation
become empirical data that can even of micro-collectives in a broader
acquire a normative power. Now, this context of recent developments in
relative distinction between norms and post-Fordist production?
facts that nowadays produces special
laws and such prisons as Guantanamo PV: Micro-collectives, workgroups,
can suffer an alternative declension, research teams, etc. are half-produc-
becoming a constitutional principle tive, half-political structures. If we
of the public sphere of the multitude. want, they are the no mans land in
The decisive point is that the norm which social cooperation stops being
should exhibit not only the possibility exclusively an economic resource and
of returning into the ambit of facts, starts appearing as a public, non-
but also to its factual origin. In short, stately sphere. If examined as produc-
it should exhibit its revocability and tive realities, the micro-collectives
its substitutability; each rule should you mention have mainly the merit of
present itself as both a unit of measure socializing the entrepreneurial func-
of the praxis and as something that tion: instead of being separated and
should continuously be re-evaluated. hierarchically dominant, this function
is progressively reabsorbed by the
AP: On an empirical level, the living labor, thus becoming a pervasive
specificity of contemporary element of social cooperation.
production saturated by mass We are all entrepreneurs, even if an in-
intellectualityboth in main- termittent, occasional, contingent way.
stream currents of business and But, as I was saying, micro-collectives
cultural industry, and on the side have an ambivalent character: apart
of alternative or resistant politi- from being productive structures, they
cal and cultural formsconsists are also germs of political organiza-
of the formation of relatively small tion. What is the importance of such
collectives, workgroups, research ambivalence? What can it suggest in
teams, organizational committees, terms of the theory of the organiza-
various collaborations, initiatives, tion? In my opinion, this is the crucial
etc. They have definite and more or issue: nowadays the subversion of the
less long-term tasks like realizing a capitalistic relations of production can
project, preparing a publication or a manifest itself through the institu-
conference, designing an exhibition tion of a public, non-stately sphere,
or, on the other hand, organizing a of a political community oriented
social movement with regard to this towards the general intellect. In order
or that pretext, initiating protests to allow this subversion, the distinctive
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 53

features of post-Fordist production work produces a feeling of strong

(the valorization of its own faculty of subjectivity and strength, valorizing
language, a fundamental relation with each member of the collective. What
the presence of the other, etc.) demand is your opinion? Would it be possible
a radically new form of democracy. to connect this subtractive mode
Micro-collectives are the symptomas of functioning with the disap-
fragile and contradictory as they may pearance of a measure for work in
beof an exodus, of an enterprising contemporary production?
subtraction of the rules of wage labor.
PV: Thats the perfect way of saying
AP: In the contemporary creative it, that in post-Fordism, the whole is
industry, collective work often less than the sum of the partsI will
takes the paradigmatic form of repeat this expression from now on. It
brainstorming. It consists of the is a formula that correctly expresses
discussion and production of both the copiousness of social cooperation
ideas and solutions, even if a con- regarding its economical-productive
siderable part of them are rejected finality. We are currently witnessing a
after critical examination, though phenomenon in collective intelligence
this work sometimes opens the door that is identical to what happened
for unexpected innovations. In the thirty years ago in Italy, with the Sicil-
conditions of Fordism, massive ian oranges, when tons of fruit were
collectivitiesorganized through destroyed in order to keep prices high.
a strict disciplinary division of But this comparison only works to a
laborproduced the well-known ef- certain extent. Nowadays, the quota of
fect of the multiplication of separate collective intelligence that is thrown
productive forces of workers (the away in the production of goods is not
whole is more than the sum of the physically destroyed, but somehow
parts). Maybe it would be possible remains there, as a ghost, as a non-
to make a (disputable) assumption: used resource that is still available.
under the conditions of post-Ford- The power that is freed by the sum of
ism, collective work can be orga- the parts, even if not expressed in its
nized through subtraction when whole, meet a very different destiny.
the result of the work is inferior to Sometimes it becomes frustration and
the sum of the collective effort. This melancholic inertia, or it generates
becomes a sort of exception, an pitiless competition and hysterical
unexpected innovation (the whole ambition. In other cases, it can be used
is less than the sum of the parts). as a propeller for subversive political
On the other hand, if not considered action. Also, here we need to bear in
in terms of products, such collective mind an essential ambivalence: the
54 Discourse Alexei Penzin interviews Paolo Virno

3See, for example, Sonja same phenomenon can become both pragmatic paradoxes. What is that
Lavaert and Pascal Gielen, a danger and a salvation. The copi- all about? Of exhortations or intrinsi-
The Dismeasure of Art: ousness of collective intelligence is, cally contradictory orders, such as
An Interview with Paolo
altogether, heimlichfamiliar and I order you to be spontaneous. The
Virno in Open. Cahier on
Art and the Public Domain propitiousand unheimlichdisturb- consequence is an obvious antinomy: I
17, 2009. http://www. ing and extraneous. cannot be spontaneous if I am obeying
skor.nl/article-4178-nl. to an order and, vice-versa, I cannot
html?lang=en. AP: In one of your statements in obey to an order if I am behaving in
which you discuss the contemporary a spontaneous way. Alas, something
culture industry, you argue that similar happens in contemporary pro-
post-Fordist capitalism provides duction in which there is the impera-
relative autonomy for creativity.3 tive to be efficacious through behav-
It can only capture and appropri- iors that cannot be conformed to any
ate its products, commercializing predetermined obligation. To show this
and instrumentalizing the inno- paradox, I sometimes speak of a return
vations emerging in subcultures, of the formal subsumption of labor
in ghettosalternatives to the under capital. With this expression,
mainstreamas well as, we can Marx designates that moment in the in-
suppose, in the field of production dustrial revolution in which capitalists
of critical knowledge and art. Refer- appropriated a production that was still
ring to Marxs dichotomy, you say organized in a traditional way (crafts-
that this means a return to formal manship, small rural property, etc). It
subsumption. Therefore, capital- is obvious that, in our case, it is a very
ists do not organize the whole chain particular formal subsumption, for
of production process, they just cap- the capitalists appropriate not some-
ture, and commodify, spontaneous, thing that already existed but, on the
self-organized social collabora- contrary, an innovation that can only
tions and their products. This thesis exist with the recognition of a certain
seems to be contrary to the position autonomy of social cooperation. This
of Negri and Hardt. They describe is a rough similarity. It is obvious,
postmodern biopolitical produc- however, that the paradox I order you
tion as an effect of real subsump- to be spontaneous tests the contempo-
tion of labor under capital. Could raneous social conflict: the match point
you explain your argument and the lies in the stress of either I order you
differences of your position regard- or of to be spontaneous.
ing this question? In our present time, the labor force
enriches the capital only if it takes part
PV: Those who study communications in a form of social cooperation that is
are very attentive to the so-called wider than the one presupposed by the
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 55

factory or the office. In post-Fordism, and co-authorship? Could we say 4Alexey Stakhanov
the efficient worker includesin the that the moments of co-innovation (19061977) was a miner
execution of his own laborattitudes, are simultaneously the moments in the Soviet Union,
member of the CPSU (1936)
competences, wisdoms, tastes and in which the subjectivization of the
and Hero of Socialist
inclinations matured somewhere else, collective takes place? Labor (1970). He became
outside that time specifically dedicated a celebrity in 1935 as
to the production of goods. Nowadays, PV: I believe that there are two main part of a movement that
he who deserves the title of Stakhanov differences between the avant-gardes was intended to increase
worker productivity
is he who is professionally entangled of the first part of the twentieth cen-
and demonstrate the
in a net of relations that exceeds (or tury and the present collective artistic superiority of the socialist
contradicts) the social restrictions of practice. The first concerns the relation economic system.
his given profession.4 with reproducibility of the work of
art. Walter Benjamin noted that the
AP: As is well known, many avant- dadaists and surrealists anticipated,
garde movements in twentieth-cen- with their expressive inventions, the
tury art were organized by the logic functioning of techniques that, within
of groups and collectives, which a short period of time, would guarantee
claimed that their programs aimed the unlimited reproduction of artistic
at revolutionizing the traditional objects. The historical avant-gardes
aesthetic forms (dada, surrealism, tried to manage the transformation
Soviet avant-garde, situationism, of the unicity attributed to the aura of
etc). Over the past twenty years, the work of art into the condition of
artists and curators have visibly seriality in which the prototypethe
become more and more interested original modellost its weight. Obvi-
in collective work, and they make ously, the present collective artistic
this interest the subject of research work accepts, from the beginning,
and representation in their practice. technical reproduction, using this
Probably, the logic of innovation characteristic as the starting point to
in contemporary art depends on produce a sparkle of unicity, of unmis-
collective work and co-authorship, takable singularity. Using a slogan, I
and the artistic collectivity is not would say that the challenge is a sort
just a matter of some Party-style of unicity without aura: a non-orig-
sharing of a common program. You inal unicity that originates inand
work on a theory of innovation in exclusively inthe anonymous and
your recent texts, which has been impersonal character of the technical
partially published in the book reproduction.
Multitude between Innovation and The second difference concerns poli-
Negation. How do you take into ac- tics. The historical avant-gardes were
count this dimension of collectivity inspired by the centralized political
56 Discourse Alexei Penzin interviews Paolo Virno

parties. In contrast, todays collective movements in post-Soviet countries

practices are connected to the decen- try to rethink this political, histori-
tered and heterogeneous net that com- cal and aesthetic experience. What
poses post-Fordist social cooperation. is your relation with the experience
Reusing your nice formula, I would of the soviets? Was it important for
say that co-authorship is an attempt to your political formation?
correct on an aesthetic level the reality
of a production in which the whole is PV: Before saying something about
less than the sum of the parts. It is an the soviets, Id like to gesture to the
attempt to exhibit what would be the political-intellectual tradition from
sum of the parts if it was not reduced to whichwithout meriting itI come.
that whole. The critique of that modern barbarity
that is the wage labor, dependent on the
AP: In conclusion, Id like to ask employer, the critique of that monop-
you a question that departs from oly of the political decision that is the
the local situation I share with my Statethese were our references in the
friends from the Chto delat/What 1960s and 1970s, and they still are to-
is to be done? group as well as other day. These references made us enemies
new initiatives, movements, politi- of the real and ideal socialism. From
cal and artistic collectives from the the beginning, our tradition longed for
post-socialist, or post-Soviet world. the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dis-
Here, collectivity has a different solution of the CPSU. It was divorced
wager in the course of the history of from the culture and the values of the
the revolutionary movementfrom labor movement, and this allowed it
the soviets (worker councils) as to understand the meaning of the labor
organs of direct democracy and fights against the wage. It recognized
self-government, to their function capitalisms devotion to the perma-
as organizers of the production nent revolution, to the continuing
process in the early USSR, and innovation of the labor process and the
finally their bureaucratization and ways of life, in order to avoid astonish-
submission to Party control. We are ment or lament, since the production
also aware of Stalins collectiviza- of surplus value is no longer connected
tion. This complicated historical to the factory and sovereignty does not
experience also had an artistic coincide any more with the nation-
dimensionjust think of Alexan- states.
der Rodchenkos famous idea of No nostalgia, hence. On the contrary,
workers clubs as places of mass there is a lasting sense of relief for the
engagement and politization. Nowa- fall of a regime founded on the cancer-
days, the activists of new political ous metastasis of the State and on the
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 57

glorification of labor (of that work that why not, councils (soviets in Rus- All images:
any laborer desired to suppress). Say- sian). Except that, contrary to Hobbess Videostills from
ing so, now we can speak of the soviets. negative judgment, here we surely are 2+2 Practicing Godard
by Chto delat / What is to
The problem is: how do you articulate a not dealing with ephemeral appear-
be done? 2009
public sphere that is no longer connect- ances. The leagues, the assemblies, the
ed to the State? What are the institu- sovietsin short, the organs of non-
tions of the multitude? representative democracygive politi-
The democracy of the multitude takes cal expression to the productive coop-
seriously the diagnosis that Carl eration that has at its core the general
Schmitt proposed, somewhat bitterly, intellect. The soviets of the multitude
in the last years of his life: The era produce a conflict with the States ad-
of the State is now coming to an end ministrative apparatuses, with the aim
[]. The State as a model of political of eating away at its prerogatives and
unity, the State as title-holder of the absorbing its functions. Those same
most extraordinary of all monopo- basic resourcesknowledge, commu-
lies, in other words, the monopoly of nication, etc.that are the order of the
political decision-making, is about to day in the post-Fordist production are
be dethroned. With one important translated into political praxis.
addition: the monopoly of decision What I mean is that the word soviet,
making can only really be taken away which became unpronounceable due to
from the State if it ceases once and for solid historical reasons, has now, and
all to be a monopoly. The public sphere maybe only now, acquired a pregnant
of the multitude is a centrifugal force. meaning. We can only realistically
In other words, it excludes not only speak of the soviet at the dawn of the
the continued existence, but also the State, in the period of the cogni-
reconstitution in any form of a unitary tive work in which we must valorize
political body. But here, the crucial whatever is singular and unique in the
question returns: which democratic experience of each member of our spe-
bodies embody this centrifugal force? cies. Of course, to say that, we need to
Hobbes felt a well-known contempt for find other words.
those irregular political systems in
which the multitude adumbrated itself:
Nothing but leagues, or sometimes
mere assemblies of people, without
union to any particular designee, nor
determined by obligations of one to
another. Well, the democracy of the
multitude consists precisely of such
institutions: leagues, assemblies and,
58 Documents Jean Leering

Interview with
Jean Leering
From 1964 to 1973, Jean Leering (1934 sages from Leerings former writings
2005) was the director of the Van were included in this interview. The
Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. He left the interviewer, however, was a fictional
Van Abbemuseum to become director character; in fact, Leering conducted
of the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, the interview himself. The name
a remarkable career move that has was a pun on the initials of another
not been understood by many of his well-known Dutch curator, Wim. A. L.
colleagues. The key topic of his work Beeren. [eds.]
as a museum director has been how
to integrate the museum into society.
In 1975, Leering published the article WAlb: Your article appeared just at
The Future of the Museum in the 20 the time you had resigned from your
December 1975 issue of Hollands Diep, position at the Tropenmuseum, and
a magazine on culture, in which he so effectively left the museum world.
clearly states his ideas on this matter. What was it that persuaded you at
His article inspired considerable reac- that point to write about integrating
tions, both for and against his claims, museums and society?
which were published in subsequent
issues of the magazine. To round off JL: Two things. On the one hand I felt
the debate, Hollands Diep asked Leer- a personal need to resume where I had
ing to write a reply, which appeared left off, say, as far as public opinion
in the 19 June 1976 issue under the title was concerned, when I left the Van
Against Entrenched Positions. In Abbemuseum in late 1973. On the other
the publication Museum in Motion? hand, the situation of the museum in
Het museum voor moderne kunst ter general, I think, demanded it: the fact
diskussie by the Van Abbemuseum and was that almost everywhere people
the former Staatsuitgeverij in 1979, were falling back on pre-1968 ideas
Leering elaborated on his ideas on the and methods.
social integration of the museum, and Going back to the first point, my
specifically his concept of collective move from the Van Abbemuseum to
creativity. This text, which is reprint- the Tropenmuseum, together with
ed below, was introduced by the editors an interview about the forthcom-
as an interview conducted by one Wim ing Bruce Nauman exhibition, which
Albatros. The most important pas- appeared in the Museumjournaal six
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 59

months earlier, created considerable important in determining the relation

misunderstanding. Many people in the between the museum and the public
art world drew the conclusion that I as developments in art. So I reasoned
was unhappy about recent art. I think that the program of museum activi-
the way I arranged the Bruce Nauman ties (exhibitions, education, provision
exhibition in Eindhoven, and above of services, etc.) should also deal with
all the Foreword I wrote for the ac- socio-cultural topics in the visual field
companying catalogue, showed clearly IN ADDITION TOnot INSTEAD
enough that this was not so. OFthe normal program. I thought
about the link between the two, the line
WAlb: But wasnt your move to the which would connect both phenomena.
Tropenmuseum just exactly what Gradually the concept of collective
bore out that impression? creativity evolved, which was the
connection between socio-cultural
JL: No although I can well imagine matters and art, the latter defined as
that people took it that way. In fact it individual creativity. I conceive of
was a question of giving priority to these two kinds of creativity as each
Above:
other things. Towards the end of my lying at one of the two different ends
Exhibition view of
time at the Van Abbemuseum I became of the same line. Well, during that Bruce Nauman, Van Abbe
increasingly aware of cultural and period I realized that the one end point, museum, Eindhoven, 1973
social factors, which are in fact just as collective creativity, represented the Photo V.d. Bichelaar
60 Documents Jean Leering

WAlb: These concepts of individ-

ual and collective creativity have
come to play a large role in your
mind and have been very influential
in shaping your ideas about the
museum and its place in society. In
the introduction to the catalogue
for the exhibition The Street (1972),
you wrote, The revolution in Paris
in May 1968 and the demonstrations
in Holland in 1969 by the BBK [an
artists organization], together with
other things, gave rise to discus-
sion about the social relevance of
art, which of course had repercus-
sions for the place and function of
the museum in society. The Van
Abbemuseum took a quite active role
in this discussion: see for example
the article From Mausoleum to
Living Museum, which appeared
in the weekly Intermediair (No. 25,
1970) and elsewhere, and the com-
ments it inspired. The ideas, which
were developed in that article with
regard to the museum having a more
socio-cultural function, should
also be embodied in the exhibition
program. That article did in fact
include, as an example, a plan (since
changed) for the exhibition called
The Street. In choosing a theme of
this nature, the Van Abbemuseum
has proceeded from the idea that
the activities of a museum can be a
means of encouraging public aware-
ness of and participation in socially
new element in the museum program, significant developments. The street,
which needed to be developed. That seen in particular as an element of
was the way to make clear the rela- urban society, represents a prime
tion between the two phenomena, and example of the themes a museum
it is that relation with which we are might select in the interests of
primarily concerned. That develop- broadening its sphere of activity as
ment must be given a chance. At that described above. In fact, the theme of
time the Tropenmuseum seemed to me the street is related to the concept
to offer far more opportunities in that of design in more ways than one, i.e.
respect than the Van Abbemuseum, to a larger extent than has gener-
where the municipal authorities of the ally been adopted by museums up to
day had put a stop to further develop- now. The appearance of the street
ment in that direction because of the is determined not only by those
political implications. who commission its design and the
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 61

Images page 6061:

Exhibition view of
Bruce Nauman, Van Abbe
museum, Eindhoven, 1973
Photo V.d. Bichelaar
62 Documents Jean Leering

gradually. What I was primarily aware

of with The Street exhibition was that
taking a theme like that one was break-
ing new ground and adding to an exist-
ing area of endeavorartwith the
aim of achieving the newly formulated,
socio-cultural aim of the museum.
But only a short time later, in 1972, on
the occasion of the exhibition by the
American artist Ad Reinhardt that
same year, I first defined the relation
between individual and collective cre-
ativity. That was also the first time that
I used the term collective creativity.
In the catalogue for the Ad Reinhardt
exhibition I wrote:
Ad Reinhardt confronts us with the
intangible limits of creativity based on
the genius of an inspired individual,
just as the exhibition The Street, at the
opposite pole, showed the limits of the
collective creativity of a society. The
Van Abbemuseum is interested in these
two poles because, like two intersect-
ing vectors, they determine the visual
image of our time and its significance,
at least as we experience it in the West.
creative designer (architect or town- This is why the Van Abbemuseum
planner)on whom museums have recognizes that there are these two op-
almost always concentrated their posing forces, as it were, in the creative
exclusive attentionbut also by field and is interested in both.
the user, and in a very obvious way.
Without the user the street is like a WAlb: You refer to this concept or
theater without actorsan empty phenomenon of collective creativ-
stage. Everyone takes part in the ity very often in the context of
life of the street and this is why the the exhibition The Street. But it is
street, when viewed as the product noticeable that you do not offer any
of a creative design process, is of, for closer, more generally applicable
and by us all. It is both an expression definition of the term not related to
and a manifestation of society: The that one special exhibition.
underlying idea of collective cre-
ativity is present here, but you do JL: Yes, that is correct. I also felt,
not yet use the term as such. When particularly after the first article in
did you first do that? And you do Hollands Diep, that the idea of collec-
not talk about the relation between tive creativity and its relation to the
a socio-cultural theme such as the integration of museums and society did
street and art. Was that relation not not emerge clearly enough. Too many
clear to you at that stage? references to the exhibition The Street
made it useless as an illustration. So
JL: Seeing the relation between the I returned to that point in my second
two was indeed something which came article in Hollands Diep. I wrote:
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 63

If I am to clarify the scope and sub-

stance of this idea of collective creativ-
ity, I cannot avoid going into what to
some may seem pretentious philoso-
phizing. In my view man comprehends
his world or reality by means of expe-
riences which take the shape of notions
and ideas (images) in his conscious-
ness. These notions and images [] are
essential to mans orientation in and
identification with reality: in this way
he is able to recognize his own reality
and feels secure in his world.
Each individual builds up his own
personal notions and ideas, but that
does not mean that they are completely
unique to that individual. Both during
childhood and in the course of every-
day contacts they are to a large extent
influenced by others: by society at
large and by the particular groups to
which the individual belongs or from
which he dissociates himself. So there
is an element of tension, [in] some way
dialectical, between the individual
and the collective in our conception of
reality. The relation between the two is
not however fixed but varies with the
extent to which the nature of the activi-
ties of man is more individual or more
collective. For example, shaking hands
is more closely tied to the collective
pattern than speaking. I like to use the
example of language because not only
is this tension especially evident in that
field but it also relates to the field of art.
I am referring here to the tension be-
tween poetry and everyday language.
What they have in common is that both
are language used by man to discuss Viewed in this way, poetry is a special
himself and the world, but there is form of communication. A form which
also a difference. Everyday language has generally been accomplished, at
serves a practical purpose in daily life: least for the last few hundred years
communication in thought, feeling and in the West, by specialized individual
action, in experience, understanding creativity. Poetry, and the other forms
and anticipation, in short, in everyday of art as we know them at the present Images page 6263:
contact and behavior. Poetry is not time, can therefore be characterized as Exhibition view of
useful in this sense, but [is] rather the product of INDIVIDUAL creativity. The Street. A Form
of Living Together,
the expression or conception of an While everyday language is a more Van AbbemMuseum,
intensified dimension of the relation normal form of communication, it is Eindhoven, 1972.
between man and his world. nonetheless equally creative: it gives Photo V.d. Bichelaar
64 Documents Jean Leering

form to a comprehensive system of

words and concepts and their inter-
relations with reality. This creativity is
however, collective in nature: everyday
language in fact takes shape within a
community which is both a linguistic
and a non-linguistic entity. It can be
regarded as a socio-cultural product of
COLLECTIVE creativity.
Hopefully, these examples based on
language have helped to clarify the con-
cepts of individual and collective cre-
ativity, but it remains difficult to apply
them to the visual field. It is clear that
the visual arts are analogous to poetry
in the example given above. However, as
yet it is less clear what can be described
as the equivalent of everyday language.
In a quotation (cited earlier in this
article, W.Alb.) Fuchs talked about pat-
terns; you could also think in terms of
habits and customs, that is, types of be-
havior, but the visual or image-forming
element in them is not immediately ap-
Exhibition view of Meer parent. Some examples however, can be
minder mensen, Koninklijk
given. If we look for instance at the way
Instituut voor de Tropen,
Amsterdam, 1974
in which reclaimed landthe polders
is laid out in Holland, the visual element
is one of the most striking features. It
is no accident that we have coined the
term polder landscape. Moreover, the
layout and shape of the farms, with the
stalls, wash-house, haystack and the
farm house itself, underlie strong visual
conceptions.
But who, other than the farmers
themselves and the small local building
contractors, was and is responsible for
creating these shapes and forms? So the
creative process in operation here is just
as collective in nature as that involved
in everyday language. Now I am not
concerned here with a nostalgic wish to
return to the folk art forms of the past
or anything of that sort. I could just
as well have chosen an example from
what goes on today: the glasshouses for
vegetables and fruit and the new forms
to which the use of plastics has given
rise in this field. But this is also just one
example. Detailed study will be needed
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 65

to throw more light on the way in which Briefly, these two approaches offer two
the processes of orientation and identi- alternatives: either you take the muse-
fication occur in each individual, and to um to the people, or you bring society
see to what extent they are permeated with its predominantly political pro
by images and concepts which are col- blems into the museum. The problem
lective in origin. with the first approach is whether the
aim can be achieved by making only
WAlb: Put that way, that last point technical and methodological changes
dealing with the need for detailed in the museum. The problem with the
study sounds suspiciously like the second approach is whether, after you
subject of an academic thesis. What have finished politicizing, anything
has this got to do with the integra- will be left of the art which is, after all,
tion of museums and society? the whole point of the art museum.

JL: Hold on a second there. In what WAlb: Doesnt that leave you with a
I have just quoted, I was concerned dilemma? Or do you think your idea
with defining more closely the idea of of collective creativity offers a
collective creativity, not with the use solution?
that a museum can make of the idea in
its policy and program. I dealt with the JL: I would not go so far as to call it a
latter point, the question of its use, in solution, but it is certainly a step in that
the first article in Hollands Diep. direction. However, it is not only the
If I am not mistaken, up to now two idea of collective creativity which
attitudes to the social integration of the is involved here, but, as I pointed out
museum have been current. The first, earlier, it is the connection between
and in my view the more conventional, individual creativity, that is art, and
technical attitude, is based on getting a collective creativity which is so crucial.
wider cross-section of the population In the second article in Hollands Diep
into the museum. Those who take this I wrote: Although it is perhaps more
approach have firm opinions about the clearly seen in the field of language, it is
way in which exhibitions are presented, precisely this link between individual
but are less, if at all, concerned about and collective creativity, and between
their content. They put their faith in the results of each, which I think is of
stepping up the museums educational such great importance for museum pol-
activities and advocate more easily un- icy. In my view, this is also the essence
derstandable exhibitions, e.g. by basing of the social task facing the museum:
each one on a theme. This is a largely to relate the conceptual world of
quantitative, technical or methodologi- individual creativity, that is art, with
cal approach. It is completely in tune that of collective creativity, in which
with the policy of broader dissemina- in principle everyone participates and
tion of culture, which the government which thus enables everyone to feel
adopted after the Second World War. himself to be its creator. This points
The second approach is qualitative. The the way to the emancipatory influence
aim is to change the content of what the which such an approach on the part of
museum presents, or at least the point the museum can have in a cultural and
of view from which the museum pres- political sense.
ents it. The most outspoken proponents In relation to your question, perhaps I
of this second approach to social inte- should expand on that last statement.
gration of the museum argue in favor of
politicizing, or taking the obvious short WAlb: Yes, if you would, because it
cut you might say. is not immediately clear to me how
66 Documents Jean Leering

you arrive at a term so full of politi- identifying itself, broadly speaking,

cal associations as emancipatory with the currently available product,
influence. i.e. the existing situation. It simply
makes a more or less valid selection
JL: To my mind the purpose of the from it. The second critical attitude
museum as a social institution in this which the museum can adopt is in
day and age involves more than putting relation to the existing situation itself.
things on display in the interests of This can take the form of raising issues
enriching peoples minds and refin- which lie outside the present scope of
ing their taste. That was the classic art (e.g. the exhibition The Street) or
cultural ideal and it meant that culture of continuing to look critically at its
was only accessible to those mem- choice even though it has been made
bers of society who could afford it, as with conviction. Is the latter alterna-
Hauser rightly points out in his Social tive feasible? Both practically (is it
History of Art. The emphasis was on likely that a living artist would tolerate
passive contemplation. Now dont that kind of critical attitude to his ex-
misunderstand me: that does not have hibition? Would it not lead to the public
to go, but now, more is required. What becoming even more confused?) and
is wanted is that not only more people theoretically (is the museum assuming
from a broader cross-section of society the role of a Supreme Court sitting in
should take part, but that it should judgment on contemporary art?). This
also be of some use to them. To make seems very doubtful and at present the
this clearer I would like to quote again answer must probably be in the nega-
from the introduction to the exhibi- tive. Nonetheless a critical and well
tion The Street: In choosing a theme informed public might demand such
of this nature, the Van Abbemuseum an approach. In the same way that the
has proceeded from the ideal that the press, and in particular weeklies and
activities of a museum can be a means monthlies, carry both news and com-
of encouraging public awareness of mentary and thereby influence public
and participation in socially significant opinion, the museum could exercise a
developments. critical influence. This critical attitude
Put another way: to make the public should be apparent not just in the in-
more critical, thematic exhibitions troduction to the catalogue, but above
such as The Street and those held in the all in the exhibition itself. It should
Tropenmuseum, Meer minder mensen not take the form of pronouncing final
[More less people], on the population judgment (the Supreme Court role), but
explosion, and Vrouw ben je [Woman of making it possible for the public to
you are], on the situation of women in arrive at its own assessment, since an
the third world, concentrated exclu- exhibition is after all organizedto a
sively on these social phenomena. Art large extent at any ratefor them. Ul-
was hardly involved. That was their timately this is the point of and reason
limitation. In the field of art, too, what for associated educational activity.
is at issue is this critical attitude. In the
foreword to the catalogue for the Bruce WAlb: All right, I see what you are
Nauman exhibition (1973), I discussed getting at when you speak of the
this in relation to the museum: emancipatory influence of the
A museum can adopt a critical attitude museum, although I feel you are
in two ways. The first is by making a still putting it in fairly abstract and
critical selection, a well thought out, academic terms. When you relate
conscious choice from what is avail- shaping opinion and increasing
able. But this leads to the museum the publics critical awareness, for
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 67

which the museum provides the WAlb: Yes, but surely you are not
means, to something like The Street, saying, if I may interrupt, that art
including the role played by the vi can be equated with the stereotypes
sitor of the exhibition in the reality which usually result from these col-
of that kind of social phenomenon, lective visual images?
(thereby pointing out to him his own
responsibility for it), then I can very JL: No, not at all, I am talking about the
well see the political and eman- connection between the two. I readily
cipatory implications of such an admit that collective images include a
approach. But I am less convinced great many stereotyped clichs, but that
when you talk of the public taking a does not necessarily mean that they are
critical attitude to art. Yet you point therefore incompatible with the image-
to the connection between these forming process as it occurs in art. It is
two as being so crucial. How do you true that in the last few hundred years,
conceive of that connection? it has been the originality and authen-
ticity of art which has attracted the
JL: Well lets deal first with the politi- most attention, but that was not always
cal implications you mentioned. Do so. I doubt whether the way animals are
you see that such an approach is much depicted in the Lascaux cave paintings
subtler than what is generally under- was very different from the way in
stood by politicizing? A museum is a which society at that time collectively
cultural, not a political, instrument. visualized them. And isnt the essence
Political decisions are not taken in the of icons the fact that they corresponded
museum, but in Parliament and the to a collective pattern of expectations
Municipal Councils, and occasionally which was so strong that it resulted in
in pubs. Nonetheless the museum can extensive rules being drawn up which
make a real contribution to shaping had to be observed by the painter? Even
critical opinion. You asked about the in explicit art, in the sense in which we
connection. You recall the passage currently understand that term, includ-
already quoted from the second article ing even Rembrandt and Rubens, a work
in Hollands Diep describing the concept of art is an individual statement about a
of collective creativity. There I talked collective concept, such as, in the case
about the visualizing process which of the artists mentioned, the Bible or
occurs in all individuals everywhere history or mythology. This changed at
and which, together with conceptual- the time of Watteau, but it was not until
izing, is essential to our orientation in the age of Romanticism that the concept
and identification with reality. In this of originality came to be so crucial
way, I wrote, he is able to recognize to evaluating creativity that the two
his own reality and feels secure in became virtually synonymous.
his world. In addition, I contended On the other hand, in the field of col-
that each individual goes through this lective creativity during the same pe-
process of forming images by himself, riod you see a rapid spread both of the
although to a large degree under the stereotype images already mentioned
influence of his environment. I like and of kitsch. I have always wondered
to call this process, which is basic to why there should be this rise of clichs
everyones orientation and identifica- and kitsch in the field of COLLECTIVE
tion, the fundamental image-making creativity, and also why this strong
process. Not only do we all have this emphasis on originality and authen-
faculty in common, we all actually ticity in art, the field of INDIVIDUAL
make it happening. I believe that art has creativity, should exist. Is there a con-
its roots in this same process. nection between the two?
68 Documents Jean Leering

Although this question requires vass stretched on a rectangular frame,

detailed study from the perspective of the use of brushes and paint, ideas on
art history, or rather from a cultural- the significance of the different charac-
historical perspective, which I have not teristic ways of applying paint, brush-
done, I am prepared to back my hunch, work, materials, etc. Positive aspects of
my conviction, in fact, that there is this connection can also be demonstrat-
a connection. In his book Les mots et ed in a broader context, for example
les choses, Michel Foucault attaches the influence of landscape painting on
importance to the common ground the way many people perceive nature.
between the contrasts particular to any You only need to look at their holiday
period. In the same way I believe that snaps to see this. It is safe to say that
it is no coincidence that the concepts the harmony which so many find in
of originality and authenticity on the certain landscapes has its roots in the
one hand and clichs and kitsch on the landscapes by the seventeenth-century
other are so diametrically opposed. It Dutch masters which are our heritage.
was precisely because they formed such What would our feelings be when faced
complete contrasts at that period in his- by a wild mountain landscape if our
tory that they became so predominant, eyes had not been opened by Brueghel,
and rapid diffusion is the social phe- Ruysdael and Romantics such as Caspar
nomenon which links them. The spread David Friedrich? We still see Paris
of clichs and kitsch was made possible through the eyes of the Impressionists,
by the concurrent increase in the value and the gravel in the Tuileries in the
attached to originality and authenticity. shades of color used by Corot.
Positive aspects are also to be found
WAlb: Those are the negative as- by adopting the other point of view, al-
pects of this relationship. Are there though this is perhaps more difficult, at
positive aspects and, if so, in what least in our Western culture. But havent
way can todays museums make use ethnologists and cultural anthropolo-
of them? gists been studying and uncovering pre-
cisely this connection between collec-
JL: Yes, of course there are positive tive, material culture and individualistic
aspects. You can look at the connection artistic expression among primitive
from either of two points of view in peoples? You could do the same thing in
order to identify them: from that of the our culture, by studying, for example,
individual towards the collective and the origins of modular architecture, or
vice versa. In practice, they virtually al- building according to a pattern of size
ways occur in a particular combination ratios, as introduced at the beginning of
or relationship. We have already talked the nineteenth century by Durand in his
about everyday language as a product of Leons darchitecture and by other ar-
collective creativity, but, since everyone chitects as well. In my view, such a study
who uses everyday language does so could not avoid taking into account the
in his own way, this is also a case of an methods and ideas which were then
individual statement about a collective gaining ground in the new processes of
concept or in a collective medium of industrial manufacture and which were
communication. Similarly, the artist, to a large extent collective in nature.
for instance a painter, does not conjure Rational ideas about economics, a term
the product of his individual creativity first used in the Age of Reason, had a
out of thin air. The means of expression great influence on the use of architec-
he uses are largely based on a tradition tonic and artistic resources. To take an
which predates him: the form of the example closer to our own time, how
painting as a piece of pretreated can- could Pop Art have originated if there
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 69

was no certain connection between the

collective and the individual?

WAlb: That is all very well, but is it

possible for todays museums to do
any more than just draw attention
to this sort of thing in educational
programs?

JL: The important thing is to encour-

age the public to take a critical ap-
proach; and the museum, being one of
the means of creating cultural aware-
ness, can contribute to this. It is
not a matter of putting together a pro-
gram about collecting these or those
works of art or organizing this or that
exhibition, which the museum then
displays to the public like a zoo putting
on show its collection of exotic species,
as objects for impartial observation
The museum must constantly ask itself
how it can present exhibits in such a
way that the spectator can do some-
thing with them, relate what is shown Exhibition view of
Vrouw ben je, Koninklijk
to his own life and circumstances. In Instituut voor de Tropen,
my article From Mausoleum to Living Amsterdam, 1975
Museum published in 1970, I indicated
how this could be done by giving as
an example one way of organizing a
one-man show by the American artist
Frank Stella. I tried to put this idea into
practiceto some extent at leastin
the Warhol, Reinhardt and Nauman
exhibitions in the Van Abbemuseum.
As regards the last exhibition in
particular, the notable thing about it
was, to my mind, that the educational
element, that is, the informative part,
was integrated with the exhibition it-
self and not presented separately in the
form of conducted tours or audiovisual
programs. At that time, definitive plans
for the other museum activities such
as the permanent collection and the
provision of services had not yet been
developed. This is a terribly difficult
XII
problem, especially as regards the
Exhibition view of
permanent collection and acquisitions Vrouw ben je, Koninklijk
in particular. I think that Wim Beeren, Instituut voor de Tropen,
whom we invited to organize the win- Amsterdam, 1975
70 Documents Jean Leering

ter arrangement of the collection at the in Haarlem and by the Rotterdam Art
beginning of 1973, made a good start Foundation with its mobile exhibition
in this direction. This latter example scheme. Amsterdam is also active in
also shows, as regards methodology, the field, in particular the City Histori-
one of the courses which, in my view, cal Museum. Experience has shown
must be followed if we are to resolve that there are enough opportunities for
the problem facing us. If the public development available to the museum,
are to be encouraged to form their especially in relation to this part of its
own judgments, the museum must activities. This is why, in the second
bear in mind the pluralism of opinion article in Hollands Diep, I pointed to
which this aim implies. By calling in the example of public libraries, where
guest-directors with differing views of social integration has generally been
meanings for the contemporary situa- begun earlier and taken further as
tion, this requirement can be met. Then regards both aims and policy. The
there is the sector concerned with the problem is that, while the opportuni-
provision of services. When it comes ties are there for the museum, the
to visual communication, the museum people in charge must be willing to
has at its disposal considerable exper- take advantage of them.
tise, which can be made available to
outside bodies. Local authorities, for WAlb: Do you have your doubts
instance, sometimes need to convey about whether they will?
information visually, but it might also
be used in connection with participa- JL: Yes. I have mentioned some places
tion procedures or public hearings, or and institutions where this line of
exhibitions in a particular neighbor- development is being encouraged. But
hood or district. Museums could also there are too many others where this
offer useful services in other fields. is not the case, and in particular those
Many of them seem to have let slip a with the largest resources who are thus
perfect chance to build up a real and in the best position to do it. Instead,
useful relationship with the public by they allocate the funds available to
not becoming involved in the devel- them to new buildings or to improving
opment of art lending libraries and the existing ones. Large sums of money
similar projects. A whole range of op- are spent, for example, on increasing
portunities in the form of participation the strength of the artificial lighting,
in the activities of cultural centers for although European paintings espe-
the young and the elderly, for example, cially benefit most from well-regulated
is being neglected. Moreover, such daylight. As in many areas of political
participation could lead to tremendous management in Holland, and elsewhere
savings for the government in terms of these days, there is a tendency to think
administration and finance. Provided more in terms of form and technical
that this is not approached exclusively means than of content. Particularly as
from the point of view or aims of the regards policy in the cultural field, the
museum, but also on the basis of the main concern should be with objec-
cultural needs arising in the section of tives determined by content.
the public involved, the museum could
penetrate much deeper in and acquire
more meaning for the population at
large than ever before. Happily, experi-
ments in this field are being undertak-
en at present by the Municipal Museum
in The Hague, the Frans Hals Museum
Mapping Chamber of Public Secrets: 71
Alfredo Cramerotti, Ran Lozano
and Khaled Ramadan

A Subjective Take
on Collective
Curating
To begin with, there were a couple of seeable reasons because it involves
questions from the editors, such as a greater number of actors. In this
If not you, who? If not now, when? context, I work within a territory
A number of responses came from that is (and remains) uncharted.
thinking out loud: Calculated risk is a chimera.

a) Collective curating is a matter of c) The crucial question, which exists

being able to renounce what I al- independently from the activity of
ready know in order to learn what curating, is why curate collective-
I do not knowand learn some- ly? The first response would be that
thing someone else in the team I get bored working alonea good
does know. How far can I embrace enough reason. There is something
this attitude and renounce my else. In a collective, there is less of
individual knowledge? Collec- a risk for overwhelming ideologies,
tives (should) resonate wider; they blind faith or devastating emotion-
should produce something bigger al responses. Everything is diluted
than the sum of their parts. Their in relation to space and time. Of
dynamic works by subtraction course, groups can have their own
rather than addition, extending its ideologies and those ideologies are
reach but renouncing an autocrat- no less effective than ones imposed
ic position. by a single hand. But even if the
process is slower and sometimes
b) Furthermore, collective curating unnerving, there is a good chance
is also interesting to those outside that thinking, working and decid-
the field of art and thus important ing together may bring about a less
for building and expanding ones self-centered and more interesting
audience, be it an art public, the outcome. If people stick around
viewers of a television channel or long enough, that is.
a community of peers. Collective
production can go awfully wrong It is no coincidence that this contribu-
or fantastically well for unfore- tion, which is dedicated to matters
72 Mapping Chamber of Public Secrets

Middle East, East Asia and the Balkans,

has now been almost replaced by the
current preoccupation with the col-
lective, and what this collectivity rep-
resents. The popularity of curatorial
grouping on the visual culture scene
did not happen overnight. Rather, it
grew from an object-based, individual
artistic approach (as in the artists
studio practice) into participatory and
community projects, from journalis-
tic art and investigative approaches
into activism and the production and
distribution of information via alter-
native media. Collective curating is
merely the latest stage of this process,
which may be far from finished.

The question is: how can I make a

meaningful reading of this collabora-
of collective curating, is written by tive curatorial format? Is collaboration
three pairs of hands but told in the just pragmatic in the very competitive
first person. In fact, if you take a look arena of curating? Or is it significant
at some curatorial activities over the from the standpoint of theory and
last few years in different parts of the practice? Let us consider for a moment
world, you can observe that writing Nicolas Bourriauds relational aesthe
in collaboration, as well as editing in tics. Here, the audience is envisaged as
collaboration and organizing discus- a community, rather than a set of in-
sions, seem to be the defining feature dividuals each encountering an object
of the work of curators. Collective on their own. Relational art produces
production and distribution has been encounters through which meaning is
an interesting business throughout the elaborated collectively, rather than in
history of mankind, whether applied to the space of individual consumption.
hunting and gathering, agriculture or Why am I taking on board something
the revolution of the masses. However, so 1990s? In the shadow of Bourriauds
what fascinates me is not the act of concept, I find an increasing number
charting this history, but rather what of parallels with different curatorial
lies at the periphery of ones sight: the collective productions, each of them
unwritten and untold part of the story, testing their hypotheses on their own
of many stories. terms. Almost every curatorial col-
lective I encounter has disclosed, or
To provide an overview of the features is in the act of disclosing, not only the
of a few curatorial collectives does not mechanisms of producing and staging
contradict the necessity to analyze and exhibitions or events, but the policies
to explore them. The activities of these and ideologies of each choice they
collectives can be seen as dependent make. They do so by means of a rela-
experiencesdependent, that is, on tional approachorganizing encoun-
space, time and individual situations ters, creating opportunities for chance
that affect the other members of the meetings, initiating shared processes
group. The early 1990s obsession with and so on. What this collective curating
curating geographies, such as the does (and individual curating does not,
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 73

or does only to a much lesser degree)

is to reveal what lies not behind but
within the exhibition-making process:
the ideology behind a display color, a
venue choice, or the fundraising pro-
cess. This is in itself an endeavor that
intentionally or notmakes a differ-
ence in todays curatorial panorama.

In the next pages, I will briefly outline

some of the collective and cooperative
activities that I consider interesting in
terms of specific, distinct features. The
groups are mainly European-based,
since I grounded the text on personal
encounters and this is the geographical
area that I frequent most. The groups
are very different from each other, and
some of them barely meet the criteria of
curatorial collective, but what inter-
ests me is less their curatorial program
than their curatorial approach. That is
to say, not what they have or have not
done, but rather what angle they adopt
in realizing their projects. This feature
of their operation is the thread with
which I sew a narrative made of places,
times, ups and downs. Not in chrono-
logical or alphabetical order, but simply
in an attempt to describe a model of When first asked, my friend refused to
working that can get close to reality. talk about the collective experience.

I have not experienced in person any of From what I understood of the con-
the Electric Palm Tree (EPT) projects, versations I had with her, EPT wanted
but one of the former members of the to question the canonical representa-
collective happens to be a close friend. tion of art (and its political and power
I say former because EPT is no longer structures) in the West, while bring-
active. Initially a two-year project ing to the table different modes of
(20072008) funded by the Fonds BKVB understanding art and those structures
and based in Amsterdam, it aimed to in other cultural and geographical
generate long-term activities on a trans- landscapes. I think this is an interest-
national scale, allowing experimental ing goal; pity EPT as a collective effort
approaches and even their failures. In did not work out, I suspect due to
the three project or activities organized personal incompatibility. As my friend
by EPT, all in 2008 (a workshop/lecture states, Im one of three who made the
with a cartographer in Amsterdam; the mess, but still cant see how things
so-called side process 15 Seven Times could have turned out differently with
Two or Three in London; and Open the three. The impression I have from
Circuit #1: Yogyakarta), the major direc- all this is that EPT was the right project
tions of investigation concerned issues at the wrong time, or vice versa. Id ap-
of globalization and cultural diversity. preciate it if theyd try again.
74 Mapping Chamber of Public Secrets

In 2009, I took part in the organization involved has time to work on other
of the 1st International Workshop on things that are economically rewarded,
Art Criticismhosted by lUniversit because sometimes books, unfortu-
Rennes 2 in collaboration with the nately, are not enough.
Institut National dHistoire de lArt
(INHA) in Paris and the Archives de la Annual General Meeting (AGM, www.
critique dart de Chteaugirond. Over annualgeneralmeeting.net) is a roam-
a period of four days, we attended and ing collective project of whichfull
participated in the meetings of about disclosureI am one of the initiators.
twenty professionals and research- It kicked off in 2003 and developed
ers whose work is related to criticism, over time into a curatorial project
art history and curating. Among with a parasitic feature: it is hosted
the guests to this workshop was a and funded every year by a different
member of the Parisian project space organization, festival or program in
and gallery castillo/corrales (www. a specific location (Trento, 2003; Rot-
castillocorrales.fr). This space was terdam, 2004; Toronto, 2005; Copen-
set in motion at the beginning of 2007 hagen, 2006; Innsbruck, 2007; on-line,
by a curator, two critics, an artist and 2008; Derby, 2009; Murcia, 2010). In
a sociologist. A shared office space tough times, it has even been (foolishly)
and collectively-run gallery, castillo/ self-funded. It is not a big eventwe
corrales promotes activities such as purposefully keep it small for financial
exhibitions, residency programs, con- and logistical reasons, and also because
ferences, a bookstore (Section 7 Books) it is better to work at a relaxed pace.
and a publishing house (Paraguay This intimacy, however, produces great
Press). intensity, because the people involved
Books in particular are seen as a sort of spend time together and help each
extension of the critical and curatorial other in the months leading up to the
thinking of the collective, embracing project (which may be a symposium, a
a portable and durable form which is video exhibition, a magazine or a radio
rather different than the site-tempo- program).
rality of the exhibition. The bookstore
is a prototype of a mechanism of I admit the whole AGM idea is more of
sustainability, like other experiences a little obsession than anything else: a
of this kind such as b-books in Berlin. constant challenge to realize a project
Section 7 Books pursues financial on a shoestring budget, which may
independence by selling books while at involve either well-known or emerging
the same time engaging intensely with artists, and which stems from a desire
the books they stock, dissecting their to share some time and space with a
publications in workshops, readings group of people we like. Year after year,
and meetings. One of castillo/cor- this small art/media project is building
raless members told me that all these a form of trust between us initiators
events are part of the unpremeditated and curators (AGM members may vary
activity of looking and thinking about according to the project) but also among
art, which is always tied to reading, artists and hosting bodies. Sometimes
discussing and circulating printed we cannot raise funds until the last
material. This dynamic of collective moment, and yet somehow tickets get
work is at the same time the practical bought and venues get booked. Due to
response to a situation shared by many the relational angle of each event,
independent actors in the art scene. participants feel particularly involved.
Sharing the tasks involved in running Maybe not all of these relationships are
castillo/corrales ensures that everyone genuine, but Id like to think so.
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 75

The feature of (dis)location is obvi-

ously more intellectual than practical,
as it involves citizens and non-citizens
who are asked to question their own
environment and community.

In 2005, D.A.E. attempted to apply

the ethics from their own working
methodology to the situation of an
educational workshop called We Rule
the School: Conversations and Research,
Another recent example of a collective which took place in Arteleku Art
proposal is societat i cultura (sic, www. Centre in Donostia-San Sebastian from
societaticultura.org). Strictly speak- September 26 to October 7, 2005. The
ing, sic is not a curatorial collective. discussions resulted in a manifesto of
Their 2007 exhibition project consisted sorts. The mechanisms of survival for
of a periodical (twelve issues in total) an independent art structure in a small
about Vellutersa historic district in city were laid bare in the twenty-three
Valencia where silk was manufactured. points, statements or paragraphs of
The exhibition device here was almost the resulting document, On Alternat-
secondary: located in MUVIM (The ing, Dynamics and Movement. D.A.E.
Valencian Museum of Enlightenment revealed what they have been thinking
and Modernity), it simply functioned as and doing, and how they have been
storage space and as a place for read- compromising or notmaking a virtue
ing. The objective was to swap the two out of necessity. They put on the table
locations involved: introducing Vellut- the way they were working (and still
ers to the museum context, and taking are), invited twenty people to scruti-
MUVIM out into the district streets. nize them for two weeks and distrib-
This could only be achieved with the uted the results. That is what I would
active participation of some eighty call brave new curators.
collaborators (journalists, writers,
district inhabitants, artists, illustra-
tors, designers, sociologists, university
teachers, architects, town planners,
anthropologists, philosophers, critics
and curators). A wish list of profes-
sions, maybe. Or, an incredible array of
skills that worked together for a shared
objective. This can and should also be
read in terms of collective production.

D.A.E. stands for Donostiako Arte

Ekinbideak, which in Basque means The venue-based collective <rotor>
Contemporary Art Activities. Based in Graz (http://rotor.mur.at) has been
in Donostia-San Sebastian since 1999, maneuvering in the curatorial and ar-
D.A.E.s objective has always been tistic field for more than ten years now,
to bring to the surface the dynamic hosting discussions and projects about
between art production and the public global concerns on its territories
sphere, asking questions such as What whether it be the exhibition space itself
is a site? What is community? What is or another structure. In its institution-
artistic production or collaboration? alized form (eight people in the office,
76 Mapping Chamber of Public Secrets

four people on the managing commit- I suppose the pupils are the artists
tee, five people on the advisory board how fantastically twisted. Aiming to
andaboutsixty members of the associa- revive the ethos of collaborative work
tion), <rotor> develops a form of curato- by staging various kinds of events, the
rial knowledge by contextualizing collective raises funds and, in a sort
exhibitions in theoretical frameworks. of productive parasitic process (a bit
By applying critical thinking to move like AGM), directly applies these funds
toward the edges of political philoso- to commissions for new works from
phy, activism and artistic engagement, dancers, theater and film people, politi-
<rotor> takes up issues like intersubjec- cal activists and comedians. When they
tivity and promotes discussion around do not manage to raise funds, they
concepts such as the multitude. make do with what they find available.
The whole things sounds pretty much
In a typical project, the curatorial like twentieth-century avant-garde,
collective questions the ownership only later.
and function of public space and asks
its contributors (artists) and audience The spaceless Wooloo collective has
alike how they might challenge such been active since 2002 (www.wooloo.
ownership. If I understand their vision org) and operates worldwide using the
correctly, it seems to me that <rotor> means of electronic activism. Wooloo
tests socially and politically engaged has developed a curatorial approach
art in both artistic and non-artistic based on the advocacy of collectivity
formats. itself. They organize mass events
mixing electronic communication and
In the field of curating performance, logistic organization with physical
the collaboration named Brown participation by a large number of
Mountain College of Performing Arts people. The activities of the partici-
(started in 2006, however they claim it pants range from hosting someone at
was founded in 1906) delivers a focused home to organizing a protest march,
program and at the same time expands with all the shades in-between.
the idea of what qualifies as perfor- The collective experiments by building
mance art. With a wink to the more the logistics of web-based participa-
famous Black Mountain College (BMC, tion into the concept and the outcome
19331967, North Carolina), the brown of their work. For instance, they facili-
version (www.brownmountain.org.uk) tated the creation of a spontaneous col-
organizes performance-based events, lectivity based on the shared interest of
which range from single interventions climate change at the recent climate fo-
to entire festivals, with an array of rum in Copenhagen (December 2009).
contributors from socialist magicians They first organized a network of pri-
to stage fighters, from professional vate, free accommodation infrastruc-
knitters to re-skilling coaches. ture for people to be in the city (people
What I like about this collective-coop- were lodged with other individuals
erative venture is the light approach with the same concerns), then invited
and tongue-in-cheek language that groups to organize themselves for this
BMC uses to communicate what they or that discussion or protest. My next-
do. This mirrors who they are without door neighbor, a spokesperson for a
pretentious statements or faades. The climate change group, came back from
Deans of the College (departments in- Copenhagen an enthusiast not for the
clude circus skills, magic, activism, bar summit talks but for this very unusual
tending, sports, creative accounting and pleasant experience. Which made
and dating) are actually the curators. me wonder how a collective project, far
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 77

from the artistic realm here discussed, is a Basque/Catalan curatorial team

can actually turn into a meaningful that positions itself between insti-
experience for the individual. tutional recognition and grassroots
As a curatorial partnership, B+B (www. approach. The collective received in
welcomebb.org.uk) takes on the issue 2008 the Abisal Award (Bilbao) for
of the role of the artist in society and their project Copyzine, a publication-
their potential for change andas they exhibition composed of texts related to
put itshifting understandings. I authorship reproduction and distribu-
encountered them in two seminars, tion, as well as twenty-five works by
both in 2005, on different topics: one artists, produced specifically for the
about politics and art and the other publication. The fanzine was freely
precisely on the idea of collaboration available to copy and redistribute,
and collectivity. Active since 2000, B+B allowing readers to take home the
works with institutions for projects reproduction of the art piece.
involving interpretation, education
activities, residencies and workshops; Although nowadays, the two members
they also organize exhibitions and of the group are working on different
commission new works; lastly, they tasks (that is, technically the collective
take on research commissions and no longer operates), their respective
consultation jobs. experiences illustrate that the wish and
will to take the production out of the
What really struck me about this col- exhibition area are grounds onto which
lective is their professional attitude to- build ones own critical path. When
wards not only what they do but also in asked, one of the members insisted on
regard to the unseen consequences that understanding the collective produc-
their activity may bring about. When I tion as a working method, a way of
met them, B+B addressed what was go- doing in which discussion, debate,
ing on in the UK at that time (and still exchange of positions and points of
is)namely, the government policy view end up dimming the traditional
that sees the arts as crucial to solve concept of authorship and the limits
what went wrong in deprived areas that define and separate the work of
where racism, illiteracy and crime curators, artists and critics. One exam-
are the norm. Political agenda here ple would be Wiki-Histories of Art in
dictates that art has a positive power the Basque Context Told by Artists and
for change, thus the artist is central to Mediators, a project coordinated by one
this process. B+B carefully considered of Damass members and another cura-
their role as a service-provider in the tor. This wiki platform seeks to build
cultural industry, and opened the dis- a shared history or stories of the art
cussion about its potential, its benefits in the Basque area, told by the women
and also its contradictions. It has been artists and mediators that are part of it
crucial for me to encounter their work; themselves (www.wiki-historias.org).
it helped me to realize how I wanted to The users of this platform are invited
negotiate my professional position as to participate in the process of collec-
curator, writer and artist, oras one of tive construction of history by means
B+B nicely put itto rethink [...] what of wiki tools: a collaborative medium
it means to be paid to be critical. by definition. A straightforward idea
realized with relatively simple tools,
Another team met during the 1st Inter- accessible to a great number of users
national Workshop on Art Criticism who turn themselves into a critical
can be seen as an intermediate stage mass. This is what it means to adopt a
among those considered so far. Damas media strategy.
78

The name and curatorial approach going back to my initial mode of think-
of What, How and for Whom (WHW) ing out loud in this text. It is striking,
stems from the consideration that for instance, that what I have encoun-
what, how and for whom are tered so far stems not from necessity
the three essential questions that any but from will. It seems that there is
economic organization that wants to a positive attitude around the idea
operate and thrive must answer: what of working collaboratively that goes
is produced, and for whom and how it beyond the mechanisms of creating
is distributed. WHW (started in 1999) opportunities for oneself or the group
has converted these questions almost and has more to do with the pull/
into a checklist for every project they push dynamic of experimenting with
curate. Like B+B, theirs is a sort of self- formats and approaches. It might only
conscious reflection, put into practice, last for a certain time, and that is okay.
of the artist and curators position in In this sense, collective thinking and
the current labor market. Like AGM, acting works as a sort of training camp.
through their projects, whether they
are exhibitions, books or entire bienni- Furthermore, it also works on the level
als, B+B seek out ways to act as a para- of shaping ones attitude toward the
site on the cultural industry, with the balance of career and personal life. I
aim of discussing social and economic might be stretching this a bit, but I am
issues in an open way. convinced that to work collectively be-
comes an instrument of self-coaching.
However, when I met one of the mem- Do not get me wrong: sometimes work-
bers during a seminar in 2009, the ing together is a pain. But especially
question I had to ask was not gener- in the long term, the constructive
ated by their curatorial approach. My outcomes vastly outweigh the difficul-
urgent question was: what happened ties faced in the beginning; not least
to Why? I did not ask, but someone else for the skills developed in negotiating
did (the course leader). If I remember everything, everywhere and at any
correctly, the answer was simply this: time, and the number of occasions,
the reason is implicit in the nature connections and experiences one can
of humankind. That is to say, we do touch via group activities. Obviously,
things because we process signs and it depends on the extent to which the
signals from the environment, and group is willing to share responsibili-
then act upon them. Which leads me ties, failures and successes, but if the
to think that the Whats, Hows and for members of a collective are not pre-
Whoms are ways to organize, negotiate pared to do this, they better find other
and control what we caused in the first ways of working: alone.
placean interesting thought, in rela-
tion to curatorial activity. Basically, I Finally, I would like to close with two
am engaged in taking care of situations questions you might have already
that I set in motion, without having any heard: If not me, who? If not now,
clue as to whether they are going to when? These questions, I believe, are
benefit or harm others or myself. Better the engine of working collectively. It
change my job, one might think (I am is too late to find excuses for not doing
only half kidding). it, and too urgent not to be personally
involved in trying to engage with it. If
What kind of knowledge, or perhaps you think something is too daunting
wisdom, can we gather from the col- to do yourself, well, take a deep breath
lective experiences above? There are a and look around. You know the way.
few connections I would like to make,
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 79

The Russian Linesman:

London has been a fervent playground for these
experiments. It happened in 1989, when Damien

Frontiers, Borders and

Hirst organized Freeze with his College mates as
a response to the lack of exhibition opportuni-

Thresholds
ties for their work. It happened again in 2000
with the splendid Dream Machines curated by
Susan Hiller at the Camden Arts Centre. And
The Russian Linesman: it happened most recently with The Russian
Frontiers, Borders and Thresholds Linesman: Frontiers, Borders and Thresholds,
Curated by Mark Wallinger the exhibition curated by Mark Wallinger
Hayward Gallery, London at the Hayward last winter. Both Hiller and
February 18 May 4, 2009 Wallingers exhibitions were part of a series of
artist-curated, touring exhibitions organized
By Michele Robecchi by the Haywards senior curator Roger Malbert.
Other artists who have curated exhibitions
Theres always a bit of anxiety in the curatorial within the program include Michael Craig-Mar-
world when an artist of renewed fame decides to tin, Tacita Dean and Richard Wentworth.
organize an exhibition. Its not just professional Curating an exhibition certainly represents
jealousy or resentment for a territorial invasion a diversion in the career of an artist, however
that the curator is not in a position to recipro- it can often complement the artists work.
cate. Trading places has generated authentic The exhibition offers a privileged view of the
earthquakes in the past, shaking up a profes- influences and strands of thought that form his
work. Wallinger is an artist with a keen interest
in history. When he was a student, he wrote his
thesis on James Joyce, and its not a coincidence
that one of the most popular aphorisms of the
great Irish writer, History is a nightmare from
which Im trying to awake, was used to preface
The Russian Linesmans press release.
The title of the show wont mean much to those
who are not English, football fans, or both. It
refers to a controversial episode that took place
during the World Cup final between England
and West Germany at Wembley Stadium in 1966,
when a Russian linesman named Tofik Bakh-
ramov awarded a phantom goal to the English
side, paving their way for a 4-2 victory. More
than forty years later, the unfortunate episode
is still matter of heated debate (a group of stu-
dents from an Oxonian University even went so
I
far as to produce a paper on the subject, conclu-
sively stating that the ball didnt cross the line),
sion often busy digging in its own wheels in the and it gives a clue as to why Wallinger decided to
interest of convenience or self-preservation. use it as the title of his show. Just like his art, the
Its the old story of the outsider and the freedom exhibitions trademark is to deal with complex
that comes from adopting that position, where conceptual issues in a light way. It is deep, in-
the pressure is high but expectations are lower. tense, but not at all highbrow or pretentious. We
Still, it is undeniable that when artists seriously are, after all, talking about the same artist who
undertake the organization of an exhibition, the won the Turner Prize by recreating peace cam-
outcome will very likely cause serious reasons paigners Brian Haws Parliament square protest
for debate. inside the Tate Britain (State Britain, 2006). An
80 Reflections

action in the streets of London became a tempo- And Tofik Bakhramov, the Russian Linesman,
rary sculpture in possibly the most prestigious is no longer Russian. He was originally from
of its galleries, blurring the line between official Azerbaijan, a region that gained independence
and unofficial history. in 1991. Another consequence was that Bakh-
Football references notwithstanding, the exhibi- ramovs national recontextualization brought
tions title suggests at least two important con- about his revaluation, from anonymous referee
siderations about the fallibility of history. First, to national hero. Today, the National Stadium
the Russian linesmans mistake permanently of Azerbaijan in Baku is named after him. But
altered the sports record of both countries. the borders, frontiers and thresholds Wallinger
England won its first and so far only important is referring to are not just geographical. The
international competition, and West Germany Russian linesman story is the foundation upon
had to wait almost a decade before winning one which Wallinger lays an exhibition dealing with
over two thousand years of history, from ancient
Roman sculpture to eighteenth-century hyper-
realist painting, from photographys early days
to the internet era, from obscure and anonymous
artifacts to contemporary art, according special
attention to the relationship between facts and
fiction and how they feed each other.
A brilliant example is a seventeenth-century
painting of a dead soldier originally (and
wrongly) attributed to Diego Velzquez. A pow-
erful work, it allegedly influenced Edouard Ma-
net when he painted The Dead Toreador (1864).
Once it was established that the dead soldier
wasnt Velzquezs work, however, the painting
was reduced to minor status in the official histo-
ry of art despite its qualities. Its a delicious par-
adox. Historians had to accept long ago the no-
tion that discounting anonymous works would
make the reconstruction of determinate periods
impossible. The problem is that such theoretical
approach is often subjected to double standards.
Paintings/artworks by anonymous eighteenth-
century artists are not considered too relevant,
although the majority of ancient Greek and
Roman sculpture is anonymously-attributed, as
is testified by another piece in the show, an early
Roman bust entitled Double-Headed Herm with
Heads of Dionysus and Bearded Silenius. The
dichotomy of this sculpture presents interesting
II
resemblances with another work in the show,
Renato Giuseppe Bertellis Profilo Continuo:
(it eventually happened on its home soil during Testa di Mussolini (Continuous Profile: Head of
the World Cup in 1974). Second, two of the three Mussolini) (1933), a multi-faceted portrait of the
nations involved in this affair today no longer Italian dictator designed to reflect the dynamic
exist, or better, they do, albeit in different forms. principles of Futurism, with the dictators head
West Germany would become Germany again facing all directions at once. It is proof that even
twenty-four years later, closing a chapter that a movement that took exception to everything
started in 1961 with the construction of the Berlin from the past couldnt escape the heritage of its
Wall, only five years before the Wembley final. own history.
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 81

III

Another remarkable item is Ernest Eugene Ap- initially looked like an athletic performance is a
perts photograph about the assassination of two torture session.
French generals, A Firing Squad, Paris Commune In Wallingers Wunderkammer, contemporary
(1871). The photograph is a fake. The two gener- art has its own space. Cosmos and Damian
als werent shot by a military squad at the same Polished (1975) is the title of a work by Joseph
time but separately, and in a much more violent Beuys about the Twin Towers in New York. In
manner. Today, forging documents is a rather those days, the two buildings were the ultimate
diffuse if no less effective practice. The increas- symbol of the new. When Beuys visited New
ing perfection of forging techniques has been York, he re-baptized them with the names of
inversely proportional to the credibility of au- two martyrs, early Christian healers and patron
thentic documents. But in the late 1800s, when saints of pharmacists. Next to it, a brief black-
photography was still a relatively new medium, and-white film tells the story of Philippe Petit, a
images arguably had a lot more power. twenty-four-year-old Frenchman who illegally
Eadweard Muybridges Men Performing Contor- strung a tightrope between the two towers to
tions from Animal Locomotion (1887) is another give a stunning acrobatic performance before
poignant example of the deceptive power of pic- security managed to bring him down about an
tures. At first sight, it looks like the documen- hour later. Forty years later, with the location
tation of a vaudeville number. The man in the that inspired these two pieces destroyed by an
images is portrayed striking the most bizarre event that left a profound historical and politi-
and impossible poses. It is only upon examin- cal mark, Beuyss and Petits gestures assume
ing the piece carefully that you notice that the very different connotations.
grid in the background is actually the periph- In contrast with Beuys and Petit open refer-
eral fence around a concentration camp. What ence to the Twin Towers, Thomas Demands Poll
82 Reflections

the art it exhibits. Though it could be initially

perceived as vaguely dispersed and deliberately
clever, it is actually one of the most coherent
exhibitions seen in a long time. The narrative
path is clear, and although every single element
serves a bigger cause, you never sense that the
artworks have been treated as mere links to
support a curatorial chain. There is a genuine
dialogue between the pieces. They dont reduce
each others impact; their conceptual and formal
affinity suggest that certain issues of human or
social proportions periodically resurface to be
re-addressed and re-discussed.
Wallingers exhibition isnt just a curatorial
strategy calculated to give the exhibition an
apparently deeper structure. It is an honest
attempt to give a well-rounded picture of our
present by establishing links between artists
from different times. Educational, entertaining
and ambiguous, The Russian Linesman is the
kind of exhibition destined to win universal ap-
proval, even from those who never much liked
Mark Wallingers work.

IV

(2001) fits in with the subject in subtler fashion.

Made shortly before 9/11, it is a cupboard recon-
struction of the Palm Beach Countys Emer-
gency Operations Center, the electoral office in
Florida where the controversial recount that
cast a shadow on George W. Bushs presidential
victory over Al Gore took place.
The fictional recreation of a real object is also
at the core of Vija Celminss To Fix The Image
in Memory XII (197282), a sculpture formed
of a rock and its exact replica in bronze. Both
Beuyss and Celminss works are an indication ILLUSTRATIONS
of artists concerns with the interpretation and
I Renato Giuseppe Bertelli. Continuous Profile
filtering realityanother typical trait in Wall- (Head of Mussolini), 1933
ingers work. His self-inclusion in the exhibition II Anon. Double Headed Herm, with Heads of
could raise a few eyebrows, but it makes perfect Dionysos and Bearded Silenus, Early Roman,
sense. Time and Relative Dimensions in Space Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
(2001), a life-sized mirrored representation III Edweard Muybridge. Man Diving Forwards
Animal Locomotion, 19th Century V&A
of the Tardis time-machine from Doctor Who,
Images/Victoria and Albert Museum
sums up the spirit of the show. IV Mark Wallinger. Time and Relative Dimensions
In short, The Russian Linesman is tricky as in Space, 2001
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 83

Curating Africa
of identifying and characterizing such art in
times of cultural globalization, where the
other has become an ally.1 Instead, they chose
Hypocrisy: The Site-Specifity of Morality to tackle issues of contemporary imperialism,
Curated by Stina Hgkvist and Koyo Kouoh which in their view should not be pinpointed
National Museum of Art, Architecture and geographically, but rather should be treated as a
Design, Oslo universal attitude (even though imperialism in
February 21 May 10, 2009 conjunction with Africa automatically evokes
a specific history of colonialism and its after-
By Jelle Bouwhuis math). They thus mingled artists of African and
non-African origins in the exhibition.
Last spring, Oslos contemporary art scene was
defined by a number of exhibitions grouped Hgkvist and Kouohs focus on hypocrisy led to
together under the umbrella initiative Africa an exhibition that heavily depended on a moral-
in Oslo. On the whole, they formed a nice set ist perception of the economic relations between
of region-specific exhibitions of contemporary the European and the African continent. For
art perfectly addressing the curiosity for exotic instance, the Nigerian artist Georges Osodi
flavors, and drifting in a natural way on the flow showed slides of his photographs depicting liv-

of globalism, the spectacularization of economy, ing conditions under the spell of the oil industry
and the instrumentalization of culture. in the Niger Delta, which he juxtaposed with
Despite the motto Africa in Oslo, Stina Hg- photographs of oil processing plants and their
kvist and Koyo Kouoh, curators of the exhibi- surroundings in Norway. Even without any com-
tion entitled Hypocrisy: The Site-Specificity of mentary, this contrast could hardly be misunder-
Morality, refused to contribute to an exhibition stood. The ethical implications were amplified
project focusing exclusively on African Art by Steve McQueens film installation Gravesend
because of its standard problematic repertoire (2007). In a protracted, minimalist way, the film
84 Reflections

exposes the deprived circumstances of coltan The exhibition could be labeled as a convention-
mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo al group showas does the initiator of Africa
and the subsequent processing of this precious in Oslo, Gavin Jantjes, in the preface to the
material into high-end consumer electronics for catalogueaddressing moral issues through a
the world market, subtly addressing the moral politicized curatorial perspective. It can also,
appeal of Joseph Conrads novella Heart of Dark- however, be discussed as an example of what
ness more than a century ago. Pascale Marthine could be called the collective practice of curat-
Tayou exhibited his recent series Spams! (2008), ing Africa, a practice embracing more than
printouts of the well-known chain e-mails beg- shows alone, given the host of recent publica-
ging for money that claim to originate in Nigeria tions specializing in contemporary African art,
(but more likely come from Amsterdam), accom- among which are Angaza Africa: African Art
panied by hand-written comments and childish, Now (2008) by artist Chris Spring and Contem-
primitive drawings. Other contributors who porary African Art Since 1980 (2009) by Okwui
regularly exhibit internationally were Georges Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu, which both
followed the successful traveling exhibition
Africa Remix, curated by Simon Njami and
others (20042007). Not to mention the annual
art auctions of contemporary African art initi-
ated last year by the renowned auction house
Bonhams. From its former connotations of
shameless ethnocentrism, African art in its con-
temporary guise has become a popular brand
that sells, founded on what seem to be rather un-
defined geographical, if not ethnic parameters.

At first sight, that might seem regressive. How-

ever, in the light of Enwezor and Okeke-Agulus
thorough introduction to their book, it becomes
clear that the label contemporary African
art is more the outcome of a set of ideas and
theories than a mere geographical definition.
Their book analyzes African Art without mak-
ing appellations of ethnic origin essential to
the term.3 Rather than deliver an art-historical
survey, they address the socio-cultural-polit-
ical-historical issues that surround the devel-
opment of the field.4 That field then is mainly
defined by the larger context of African Art
Studies.5 Hence the sense of completeness of
III
their vast volume, which includes a historiogra-
phy of African art and its criticism, a vast array
Adagbo, Wilfredo Prieto, Moshekwa Langa of postcolonial theory, partly fueled by African
and Olaf Breuning. The show also provided activism and the idealism of the 1960s and 1970s
the necessary local color with works by Birgir and issues such as globalization, and, last but
Andrsson, Marianne Heier, Gunilla Klingberg not least, statements on African late- and post-
and the Oslo-African collective El Parche. El colonial history in combination with thematic
Parche contributed an extensive structure of analyses of works by no less than 157 artists.
Euro Pallets throughout the main exhibition hall,
intending to illustrate the global transportation For Chris Spring, curator of the African depart-
of goods while providing the exhibition with a ment at the British Museum, it seems much more
spectacular element.2 important that modern African art somehow
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 85

evinces a rootedness in African crafts and ritu- of framing African art are essentialist in ethnic
als (even though an artist like Yinka Shonibare terms. One might argue here that this is simply
might deviate from that track as far as possible). a matter of clever marketing, but even then
For that matter, the selection criteria that Spring there remains a sense of over-compensation (to
used in his Angaza Africa, which is built upon use a phrase by Kobena Mercer in a recent lec-
an anthology of sixty artists, resemble those of ture held in Amsterdam), reinforced by the fact
the ground-breaking show Magiciens de la Terre that, as far as I know, theres no such thorough
of 1989 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. But for anthology available of contemporary European
Contemporary African Art Since 1980, such an art.6 Would such an anthology be superfluous
exclusive focus on formal qualities wouldnt be or would it be simply very complicated, and if
satisfying. The book mines the field of post- so, would it be more or less complicated than its
colonial theory around what hitherto could be African counterpart?
called African art. As such, it is also a response Hgkvists and Kouohs project is one answer
to Simon Njamis rambling justification of Africa to that question. Basically, their show resulted

II

Remix, an exhibition of almost ninety artists and from the consideration that African art, made
photographersan enterprise which he grounds by artists who have careers that bring them
on several subjective impressions of how African around the globe, is only partly located in Afri-
art might be defined, impressions which he ad- ca, and that the larger field of African art stud-
dresses in his introduction to the catalogue. ies is a socio-cultural-political-historical con-
struct drawn up mostly outside the continent
Although questioning the exhaustiveness of that is central to it. In short, both in Contempo-
Enwezor and Okeke-Agulus recent publica- rary African Art Since 1980 and in Hypocrisy:
tion might come across as presumptuous, it still The Site-Specifity of Morality, contemporary
should be said that all the discussed examples Africa is the locus around which the respective
86 Reflections

IV
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 87

cases are construed. But the Oslo exhibition NOTES

took another turn by deeming its subject valu-
able both to artists from Africawhether they 1Stina Hgkvist, K. Kouoh (eds.), Hypocrisy: The Site-
Specifity of Morality, exh. cat. (Oslo: National Museum,
live there, such as Benin-based Adagbo, or not,
2009), 17. The quote refers to the Francophone
like the restand artists on the other side. If movement in the 1960s. Here I use it in response to
post-colonial ideas and theories were a point of the sentiments regarding inclusive exhibitions that
departure, artists from around the globe have focus on the other rather than the art, expressed in
become allies in the course of the fifty-year- various essays in the catalogue of the exhibition South
Meets West, Accra/Bern, 19992000, especially the
long process enforcing the crystallization of
contribution of Oladle Ajiboy Bamgboy. He notes
post-colonial thinking in the visual arts. that these days, the participating artists profit from
exhibitions that focus on African art, which is a huge
This crystallization is an indication of the apo- difference when compared to the situation before the
theosis of that very process. The Oslo project 1980s when contemporary African art, and thus the
elaborates on the suggestion that the post in contemporary African artist, seemed non-existent in
the occidental world.
post-colonial actually means the continuation of
colonialism in another guise. In the age of neo- 2The curators did not address whether such an
liberalism, for example, this would mean forms invention was also meant as a reference to the fact that
of economic dependency, human exploitation, the production of cultural spectacle and its tendency to
difference in access to capital, media and border disguise important social issues is an inherent aspect
of hypocrisy in the global economy.
travel, limited democracy, etcetera, which can
be encountered anywhere, even within nations 3Okwui Enwezor, Chika Okeke-Agulu,
themselves. Whatever the case, a more analyti- Contemporary African Art Since 1980 (Bologna:
cal take on the issue of decolonization is the Damiani, 2009), 12. Note the tautology in the title of
subject of a promising project recently begun the book, which might be understood as intentionally
by the Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos, differentiating its subject from traditional or tribal
African art since 1980preconceptions of which still
featuring a host of participants from all around
linger in the art world.
the world. The project rather seems to look
inward into the term postcolony instead of 4Ibid.
buying into post-colonialism as an exclusive set
of external relations.7 5Ibid., 13.

6Lecture delivered on 12 October 2009 in Maison

In the meantime, perhaps the time is ripe to Descartes, Amsterdam, as part of the research project
found a museum for post-colonial art, which Africa Reflected organized by Stedelijk Museum
serves the interests of art that has come into Bureau Amsterdam.
being within a shared post-colonial conscious-
ness, and which defines such a consciousness 7The postcolony is a term coined by Achille Mbembe,
see for example his On the Postcolony (Berkeley, Los
one way or another while reckoning with the
Angeles: University of California Press, 2001). For
somewhat obsolete parameters of geographical the project of CCA Lagos, On Independence and the
dichotomies. When given its proper physical Ambivalence of Promise, see www.ccalagos.org.
space, such an enterprise would then leave
ample roomroom to take a step further, so
to speakto contemplate artistic essentials, ILLUSTRATIONS

including artistic and curatorial strategies,

Exhibitions views of Hypocrisy: The Site-Specifity of
that might not be as easily incorporated into
Morality with works by:
the framework of African art or post-colo- I Birgir Andresson and Olaf Breuning
nialism. A framework that by now has become II Wilfredo Prieto
yet another mainstream tendency, prone to III El Parche
overlooking the refinements of art practices IV Georges Adeagbo
worldwide. Indeed, hasnt this framework be-
come liable to miss exactly that diversity which
was so sought after in the first place?
88 Reflections

Self-Orientalize:
Iran Inside Out
Iran Inside Out. Influences of Homeland and
Diaspora on the Artistic Language of 56
Contemporary Iranian Artists
Curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath
Chelsea Art Museum, New York
June 26 September 5, 2009

By Yulia Tikhonova

The West imagines the East through a particu-

lar set of stereotypes that Edward Said called
orientalism in his classic book of the same
name. Orientalism is a cultural repertoire of
fabulously rich tropes: the Scheherazade scenes
of monsters,devils and heroes that inform the
images of the Oriental and the fear, pleasure
and desire with which the West regards them.
What Said omitted is the fact that the East itself
is capable of reproducing and perpetuating
the stereotypes that the West has invented, a
process of adaptation that might be called self-
orientalization.1 These strategies of exoticizing live outside the country. Crowded into three
visual codes have recently been deployed in the museum floors, a great number of photographs,
practices of both artists and curators.2 Mostly paintings and sculptures vied for attention. The
driven by the demands of the art market, these exhibitions two curatorsTill Fellrath, who is
exhibitions were curated to feed the market the Chelsea Art Museums managing director,
through the introduction of unknown and exo and Sam Bardaouil, a professor of Middle East-
tic names. Lured by the opportunities that such ern Artat the Tisch School of the Arts at New
exhibitions offer, the artists eagerly produced York Universitypresented opportunities for
works in response to the curatorial positions. playing out the Oriental tune both for the artists
In other words, self-orientalization is not about and themselves.
political or cultural empowerment, but rather
about economic gain. As interest in contemporary Iranian art con-
tinues to boom, references to the arabesque
The exhibition Iran Inside Out (with its ponder- that populated the exhibition seemed directed
ous subtitle, Influences of Homeland and Diaspora toward market expectations. Most desirable
on the Artistic Language of 56 Contemporary Ira- are thecharacteristics ofotherness, for-
nian Artists), at the Chelsea Art Museum in New eignness and impuritytraits described by
York last summer, presented art works trading Homi Bhabha as articulated from positions of
in controversies of orientalism. The 56 artists power and resistance, domination and depen-
played out every Western clich of Persian cul- dence.3 Ranging from the villainous at worst
ture, including the veil, elaborate traditional pat- and subservient at best,images of the other
terns and erotica. The mostlyunknown names of are attractive because they conjure up every-
artists working from within Iran were included thing that the Western audience thinks it is not:
alongside more familiar figures, such as Shirin kitsch, aggressive and fearful. By articulating
Neshat (b.1957) or Mitra Tabrizian (b.1959), who both racial and sexual forms of difference, the
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 89

exhibition ultimately strengthens negative Commenting on the general complicity with

stereotypes, confirming the worldview that market trends, curator Vasif Kortun described
splits cultures into a civilized us and barbaric such artists as members of a Yes Generation
them. Although the curators stated their they jump at any exhibition opportunity that
intent to fightprevalent stereotypesaccording comes their way, seeing that exposure as a kind
to Fellrath in the catalog introduction, Iran of podium or catwalk, with a bit of travel, rest,
inside Out is a statement against cultural preju- relaxation, and networking as added perks.7
dices and misperceptions on all sidesthey Many exhibitions featuring so-called Yes Gen-
were not able to escape the dominant frame- eration artists fit all too well into political agen-
works for presenting art from the Middle East das. Hans Belting claims that exhibition prac-
in the United States.4 tices are never neutral processes, but instead
are deeply political actions governed by the
The market and the museum require clearly intent to reproduce the terms of conflict.8 In the
defined selections based on culture, region case of the Middle East, this agenda is to lessen
and religion, as these tropes often attract large the residual animosity and suspicion caused by
audiences.Iran Inside Out was wildly popular, the events of 9/11. The exhibitions assumed the
in part because it set up scenes forother- role of bridging the cultures and minimiz-
ness throughtwo trajectories: artists seemed ing cultural differences. Instead, artists in the
to appropriate either Western clichs or local region highlighted the differences, and took up
references. Theirself-othering tactics often exotic subjects and self-orientalizing modes.
encouraged fantasies about, as Bhabha writes, Their self-promoting intentions were given a
the Wests contempt for what is familiar and its green light in this exhibition.
shivers of delight inor fear ofnovelty.5
It is wrong to claim that every artist in the ex-
The exhibition included a constellation of pre- hibition belongs to the Yes Generation; several
dominantly young female artists who traded in artists, indeed, offered strong critiques of its
erotic and tantalizing motifs. They revealed reductive premise. In contrast to reviews in the
what is thought to be under the veil: unbound popular press, which were almost uniformly
sexuality and exotic desires. Images of oppressed complimentary, some of the artists were alert
Middle Eastern femininity triggering varied to the political maneuvers made by the cura-
sentiments about whiteness and male power tors.Photographer Ghandchi proposed a
were a theme for Brooklyn-based painter Negar perceptive view. In the text she wrote for the
Ahkami (b.1970).A mix of Western and Eastern exhibitions catalog, the artist noted the exoti-
canons of beauty presented an updated version of cizing factor that underlies the project, making
female seduction in works by Nazanin Pougan- her question how the artworks were located
deh (b.1981), a painter who resides in France. This in geopolitical and social settings. Similarly,
artist picked up the typology of cookie-cutter artist Barbad Golshiri (b.1982) openly criti-
faces and cookie-cutter bodies promoted by mi- cizes both the current socio-political situation
sogynistic pageants and advertising. Her paint- inIranand the hegemony of the new art market:
ings borrow a certain camp quality and exagger- Exoticism has little to do with being exotic, he
ated theatricality from the Iranian film industry, writes in the article For They Know What They
which uses a canon similar to Bollywood produc- Do Know published in the e-f lux magazine.
tion. There were several other artists, such as Golshiri continues, It is rather a trend that
Alireza Ghandchi (b.1976), or Shirin Fakhim (b. operates within an ideological apparatus, []
1973) who, to quote T.J. Mitchell, exposed the co- Exoticism is the representation and production
lonial gaze toward the Easts supposed luxury, of ideological commodities and the symbolizing
lust, and indolence.6 In contrast to the work of parts of a culture for consumption.9
Neshat, who in the past exploited conventions to
criticize regimes and patriarchies, these works Golshiri has developed a distinctive body of
lacked a critical position, and perpetuated the language-based work that mixes foreign and
excess of stereotypes. Iranian references. Largely evolving from au-
90 Reflections

tobiographical experiences, his work addresses premises, such as supply and demand, artworks
the politics of media, identity and the market. become goods. Such practices raise questions
The videomAmI-06(2008) addresses the role of of integrity and professionalism with regard to
the media, which, like Islam itself, has become a curatorship.
powerful tool of persuasion.
Fellrath and Bardaouils themselves adopted
If many artists played with typical sensualized roles as emissaries for Iranian art. Following
images of the Orient, Khosrow Hassanzadeh the typical practices of globalized contempo-
(b.1963) tackled ethnographical clichs by rary curating, they went on a research trip
providing a voyeuristic glimpse into rituals, around galleries in Tehran and Europe.The
relationships and conflicts. In Ready to Order Ministry of Nomads, a London-based hybrid
(200708), a series of silkscreen prints on can- platform that supports but also sells lucrative
vas, set into the wooden containers, the artist Iranian and Cuban art,joined the support team
explored the popular definition of death rituals. of the exhibition. The curators delivered art that
Wooden boxes filled with memorabilia and plas- reflected ways the West imagines the Orient.
tic flowers framing portraits of local martyrs or Even the titleIran Inside Outpresumptu-
saints were prototypes for his artifacts. ously implied that the organizers knew the art
from every perspective, from A to Z and inside
Hassanzadeh replaced faces of the martyrs with out. Their strategies of persuasion worked on
images of either his family or pop-stars, ironi- two levels, affirming existing stereotypes and
cally referencing the Western cult of veneration instructing those clichs which have not yet
that packages grief.Adopting folkloric clichs, been formed. After visiting the exhibition, a
the artist remains aware of the drawbacks of supposedly uninformed public learned about
mainstream culture: People love kitsch, they Iran (and about the image of the East), thanks to
live by kitsch, he says in an interview with curators who implied their authoritative know
Tirdad Zolghadr.10 Similarly, the printsTer- ledge about the art from the region. The lack of
rorists (2007)which are very popular among consideration and sensitivity toward the issues
European collectorspresent portraits of the rendered this curatorial agenda suspect. Iden-
artist and his family disguised as terrorists. tifying countercurrents between the curatorial
Exploiting the aura of suspicion that surrounds intentions and outcomes can begin to under-
Iran, Hassanzadeh puts himself forward as an mine the hidden power of curatorial representa-
artist-terrorist. tion in which certain nation-based conceptions
of culture and ethnicity are presented from a
Fellrath and Bardaouils exhibition design position of knowledge and power.
also played on Oriental expectations. Several
subsections were established in the three floors Another feature of the exhibition title is its
of the exhibition, with titles such as In Search echoes of the popularbrand of city guide-
of the Axis of Evil, From Iran to Queeran and booksthe phrase Inside Out disseminates
Everything in Between, Iran Recycled: From a tourists gaze, one ofcuriosity, stereotyping,
Vintage to Vogue, and Where in the World: City and the reproduction of clichs. Like tourists,
Quiz, and The Culture Shop: Special Sale on the curators became voyeurs, with an eye to co
StereotypesAll Must Go! Their categories lonizing the arts, whether actual or metaphori-
seemed borrowed from catchy marketing lines, cal. In unveiling the art works, they conquer
using tropes ofethnic advertising and brand- them, revealing forms of otherness that are at
ing. This phenomenon even has a buzz word once the object of desire and derision.
ethnic marketing, which entered the art world
along with the large number of Middle Eastern Iran Inside Out falls into a sequence of other
and other geographically-bound exhibitions.11 geographically-oriented market discoveries,
The product here is art from exotic locales which started with the first stages of globaliza-
marketed for Western society. The strategy is tion. Along with the emerging economies of
one of bold importation: following economic Russia, followed by China, and now India, the
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 91

waves of regional surveys have been cease- NOTES

less. Other projects that have recently brought
art from Iran into the spotlight are Far Near 1The issue of self-orientalization is more complex
than what can be outlined in this essay. Artists also
Distance, at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt,
reach out to connect with their cultural roots as a
Berlin (2004); Unveiled: New Art from the Middle source of political and cultural empowerment, but
East at the Saatchi Gallery in London, and these are subjects for a separate investigation.
Tarjama/Translation, a group show of art from
the Middle East and North African countries, 2Brian Wallis, Selling Nations: International Exhi-
bitions and Cultural Diplomacy in Art After Modern-
both early 2009. These exhibitions displayed
ism: Rethinking Representation, ed. Brian Wallis (New
the diversity and sophistication of Iranian art, York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984).
but also reinforced Western clichs. They also
provided platforms for practices of self-other- 3Homi K. Bhabha, The Other Question: Stereotype,
ing, self-exoticizing, and self-orientalizingin Discrimination and the Discourse of Colonialism in
other words, using forms of self-impersonation The Location of Culture (London, New York: Routledge,
1994), 66.
to play the market game.
4Fellrath continues, In contrast to the proclamation
History teaches us that market favorites that of an Axis of Evil that negatively labeled Iran and a
are geographically-based, including Indian, handful of other nations in a very specic way, this
Chinese and Russian art, each have their mo- exhibition explores the individual human spirit from
both inside and outside a country that is at the center of
ment. The specters of Chinese communist
a global controversy, and aims to promote the common
symbolism and the iconography of Perestroika humanity that binds all people together in Iran Inside
still haunt the artists imagination of these Out, eds. Sam Bardaouil, Till Fellrath, exh. cat. (New
countries. Yet these themes now seem pass. York: Chelsea Art Museum, 2009).
Kortun has criticized the bracketing of artistic
practice within the confines of a territory, 5Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Roughledge &
Kegan Paul, 1978), 5859.
region, country, or geography as a liability.12
As passing fads, such classifications are detri- 6W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Visual
mental. Furthermore, as every exhibition is a and Verbal Representation (Chicago and London: Uni-
field where particular political ideas have been versity of Chicago Press, 1994), 308.
articulated, the curators are responsible for
7Vasif Kortun in discussion with Erden Kosova,
categorizing the art of the region within param-
Romanian Pavillion Publication with Daniel Knorr
eters of otherness. Not heeding this warning, and Marius Babias for the 51st Venice Biennale, 2005,
Fellrath and Bardaouil were responsible for a http://vasif-kortun-eng.blogspot.com/2007/10/discus-
one-sided reading of the subjects and contexts sion-with-erden-kosova.html.
of Iranian art.
8Hans Belting, Exhibiting Cultures, in Contem-
porary Art and the Museum: A Global Perspective, eds.
The time since these exhibitions has provided
Peter Weibel, Andrea Buddensieg (Ostfildern: Hatje
a valid period for reassessment of their specific Cantz Verlag, 2007), 163.
curatorial agendas. We can revisit the conversa-
tions and examine the use of ethnic, geographic, 9Barbad Golshiri, For They Know What They Do
cultural, or political realities to package artistic Know, e-flux journal, no. 80. February 2009, <http://
identities. Iran Inside Out suggests that aes- www.e-flux.com/journal/view/80>.

thetic investigations have been prompted by the 10Tirdad Zolghadr, Khosrow Hassanzadeh: The Man
demands of the Western market, resulting in a Who Gets Away With It, in Khosrow Hassanzadeh, ed.
pressure to orientalize production within the Mirjam Shatanawi (London : Saqi in association with
country. Above all, unless the artists stop defin- Amsterdam KIT Tropenmuseum, 2007).
ing themselves through stereotypes constructed
11See Tirdad Zolghadr (ed.), Ethnic Marketing (Zur-
by outsiders, there will be no room for artistic
ich: JRP|Ringier, 2007).
development.
12Kortun, op cit.
92 Report

Keeping Becoming
Wunderlichs dissertation on Jean-Franois Lyo-
tards 1985 exhibition Les Immatriaux in Paris,
Birnbaum makes a convincing case for curating
Cultures of the Curatorial as speculative thought on display. Regret-
Conference conceived by Beatrice von tably, it is just as easily dismantled by Wunder-
Bismarck, Jrn Schafaff, Thomas Weski lich, who is among the audience, and remarks
Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig that Lyotard merely accepted an invitation by
January 22 24, 2010 the Pompidou rather than realizing any inner
drive towards the exhibition format. Indeed,
By Julia Moritz speculative thought still critically interrogates
the form of the intellectual argument rather
A peculiar premiere: the first international than subscribing to the imperatives of display.
event of Cultures of the Curatorial at the Acad-
emy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, an institution
known mostly for authoring Leipzig School
paintingsocialist realism and its muta-
tion under late-capitalist market logic. The
Academys art history professor Beatrice von
Bismarck, however, has steadily accompanied
the last decade of locational queries with a
complex combination of theory and practice.
Projects such as /D/O/C/K, an intermediary
platform between the Academys gallery, theory
department and various art departments, have
manifested this claim for interrelating experi-
mental cultural work with urgent socio-political
questions. But it wasnt until last fall that,
together with well-established German curator
Thomas Weski and art historian Jrn Schafaff,
Von Bismarcks efforts resulted in a study
program proper, the postgraduate M.A. course
Cultures of the CuratorialGermanys first (!)
transdisciplinary and transcultural possibil-
ity for academic qualification for professional
practice in the realm of the curatorial.1

Nora Sternfeld opens the floor with the lecture

Gabriele Brandstetter
What Does the Educational Have to Do With the
Curatorial? The Austrian curator and educa-
tors talk is as straight and avid as its title, argu- That seems to be the case also in Irit Rogoffs
ing that tedious and unglamorous pedagogical lecture The Implicated. After introducing
labor lays the foundation for any academic her methodological positionsfrom criticality
achievement in or study of curatorial practice. to participation and smuggling to the Deleuz-
The considerable number of teachers in the first ian fold, Rogoff articulates her opposition to
row nod in agreement. Not tedious however, is the humanist implications of critical theory:
Daniel Birnbaums subsequent presentation. While the tradition of the Frankfurt School
His delightful philosophical name-dropping would construct the object of inquiry upon
and congenially distracting video projection of the foundations of identitarian representa-
curatorial backstage encounters culminates in tion and the production of legible difference,
the suggestion of a curatorial turn in the work Rogoff argues for the realization of a critical
of true philosophers: Drawing from Antonia epistemology that emphasizes modes of activity
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 93

that do not depend on a certain reaction to or tural industry complex. Steyerls allusion to
resistance of a preconceived system. Instead, a the disciplinary politics of art institutions is
self-critical entanglement of curatorial practice contrasted and completed by theater scholar
and its conditions of production would create Gabriele Brandstetter. Her presentation Writ-
occasions rather than events and establish ten on Water: Choreographies of the Curato-
an active audience that inhabits, enacts and rial clearly ranks among the most refreshing
ultimately becomes the work rather than merely contributions of the conference. Unpacking the
being invited to participate in it. A situation spaces of contemporary dance with German
instead of an object resultsa fugitive site of romantic philosophy, Brandstetter suggests
knowledge built on affect, not analysis, which a performative definition of the curatorial
thus betrays the possibility of explanation. grounded in strategies such as permeability,
For the regular attendee of such conferences, incomprehensibly and figuration. While Stey-

Hito Steyerl Daniel Birnbaum

this might be no news from Rogoff; still, her erls position was difficult to discern from the
talk thoughtfully rounds off a stimulating first traditional argument of critical cultural poten-
day, spanning the many discursive levels of the tial being absorbed by the (globalized) cultural
curatorial. industry, Brandstetter invoked the possibility
of a systemic exit from these recuperations by
The next morning starts with filmmaker Hito means of artistic productioneven though her
Steyerls inspection of the harsh realities of choice of romanticism as a philosophical model
cultural production. In her talk Is a Museum of re-subjectivization anticipates the political
a Factory? she presents her current inquiries shortcomings of that approach.
into the interrelation of cinematic reference Hannah Hurtzig then opens the sequence of
to sites of industrial production and the recent lectures into a dialogue with Beatrice von Bis-
instrumentalization of these sites by the cul marck, which eventually includes the audience
94 Report

as well. The headline chosen by the dramaturge over the collisions and coalitions of his own
and festival organizer, Why Curating is Not exhibition critique. Expectations are rising
Always the Best Choice in Getting Stuff Done, towards Maria Linds subsequent lecture. A key
hardly needs comment. Hurtzigs informal figure of curatorial critique, her comparison of
talk extends the preceding proposals into an Lisi Raskinthe current artist-in-residence at
actual as well as methodological adaptation of Bard College, where Lind directs the Center for
performative strategies into the vocabulary of Curatorial Studieswith Philippe Parrenos
the curatorial. Yet the main example of this curatorial concerns lead her to question the di-
strategy in Hurtzigs workher video series vision of curating and the curatorial. How far
Nation Builders, produced for the Pavilion of the can we really maintain this analytical divide?
United Arab Emirates at the 2009 Venice Bien- Sharing the history of her institution as well as
nale and consisting of filmed conversations of her observations on the daily business of cura-
leading figures on the UAEs implementation of
an arts infrastructureraised questions that go
beyond the pragmatic scope of her presentation
here. After the mornings presentations, Im left
wondering, how do you reconcile the factory,
choreography and Mishaal Al Gergawi?

While the diversity of the talks during the first

day opened up a provocative range of possible
perspectives on the curatorial, they also fueled
the need for a more concise focus for the second
morning. What is at stake in all this talk about
work, performativity, and action?
Barbara Steiner seems to have an answer: Fore-
shadowed by the replacement of conflict for
curatorial in the title of the her talk, Cultures
of Conflict, Steiner presents her view of the
curatorial as informed by Chantal Mouffes
controversial discussion of antagonism. In the
modification of agonismthe negotiation of
a common symbolic ground, antagonism,
argues Steiner following Mouffe, could provide
the basis of a truly political public sphere. This
is mirrored by the many outright conflicts and
subtle complicities of Steiners own experi-
Shuddhabrata Sengupta
mental curatorial fusion of privately-funded
exhibition-making and the politics of precari-
ous public museums, as shown in the research torial education, fundraising and formalitism
project Carte Blanche in Leipzigs Galerie fr (Linds terms for the fatigue of conventional cu-
Zeitgenssische Kunst, across the street from ratorial protocols), she exemplifies the confer-
the Academy. But it also illuminates Tirdad ences implicit assumption that curating is only
Zolghadrs following talk, unfortunately, not to one technique of the curatorial with limited
his advantage: While listening to his eloquent conceptual consequence for the latter. Linds
Its Not You, Its Me: The Making of the UAE Pa- curatorial microphysics instead significantly
vilion Venice Biennale 2009 before Hurtzigs grounds the elevated notion of the curatorial.
presentation would certainly have mattered for This praxeology becomes even more compli-
both of the talks, with the stakes of Steiners cated with the presentation by Shuddhabrata
Mouffian project still resonating in the room, Sengupta and Monica Narula of the Delhi-based
Zolghadr appears to self-consciously glossing Raqs Media Collective. Performed as a discus-
Manifesta Journal 8 2010 95

sion between the two artists-curators-thinkers, outskirts, displayed in The Desert of Modernity
To Culture: Curation as an Active Verb at the Berlin Haus der Kulturen der Welt, are
delivers the missing theoretical bridge to actual fervently set out by her as artist and curator, in-
production. Their invocation of crystals, stallation assistant and planner, author and ad-
time, transcience, knowledge, wonder, dressee of the project. Her avoidance of Micro-
the Indian song riyaaz (including its method soft PowerPoint subtly echoes her plea for the
of keeping becoming), and blur brightly creation of anti-imperialist contact-zones and
summarizes the cultivation of affirmation and her detailed analysis of the material means of
criticality throughout the day, defining as much display. Dorothee Richters subsequent lecture
as pushing the conferences scope. The day ends Artists and Curators as Authors: Competitors,
with a lively discussionand a sigh. The work- Collaborators, or Teamworkers? generously
load was huge and so are our questions: Where gives insight into Harald Szeemanns radiant
authorial claims and fluxus arts potential but
not fully articulated dissidence. Richters argu-
ment on curatorial accountability, however,
slackens in the concluding presentation of her
own Curating Degree Zero Archive.
By that time, the word that Liam Gillick
wouldnt join us in Leipzig has been officially
confirmed. It is Anton Vidokles challenge
then to close the conference after just hav-
ing arrived. His lecture Art without Artists
drops the bomb by declaring the position of the
curator to be merely a disciplinary tool in order
to ultimately supersede art and thus a posi-
tion that must be abolished as soon as possible.
Agonism is back in the room. Vidokles friendly
fire successfully troubles the all-too-cozy con-
sensus in the conferences last few hours. And
yet this final hands-on demonstration of the
scarcity of cultural capital and time within the
labor of curating (the financial dimension still
unspeakable) wraps up the event by highlight-
ing the limits of the curatorial and its at times
irreconcilable cultures. In sum, the Leipzig
Academys debut in making explicit curatorial
practices within an educational framework re-
Marion von Osten
flects the necessity to continuously revisit both
institutional protocols in order to adequately
in all this is the blood, sweat and tears of our inhabit the curatorial as a methodology of keep-
precarious professional conditions? And what ing becoming.
does the disparity of professional roles and
geopolitical positions among the participants on
stage imply for their competing versions of the
curatorial? note
The final round begins with Marion von Osten.
Her contribution Displaying the Absent: Ex- 1www.kdk-leipzig.de
hibiting Transcultural Modernisms turns out
to be the political straight-talk we needed. The ILLUSTRATIONS
intricacy of researching colonial implications
of modernist architecture in North African Photos Florian Wenzel
96 Contributors to this issue

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