Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions Freely distributed, non - commercial, digital publication
1,2,3, --- THINKING ABOUT EXHIBITIONS
Sturtevant, Warhol Silver Clouds, 1987/2004 , Mylar and helium, dimensions vary with installation, 88,5 x 12,2cm (each) Photo: Courtesy of Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main
CONTENTS 01 Editorial 06 Annette Hans and Dorothee Richter Florian Waldvogel Dorothee Richter 02 Rotterdam Dialogues. The Curators , symposium at Witte de With, Rotterdam 5th – 7th March 2009. 07 Talking Back and Queer Interview with Nicolaus Schaffhausen and Zoë Gray Reading – An Essay Dorothee Richter on Performance Theory and its Possible Impacts 03 Intwerview with Paul O‘Neil. Rotterdam Dialogues . on Dissemination of Art The Curators, symposium at Witte de With, Sabine Gebhardt Fink Rotterdam 5th – 7th March 2009 Dorothee Richter 08 A Brief Outline of the History of Exhibition 04 Is a museum a factory? Making Hito Steyerl Dorothee Richter
05 Carte Blanche 09 Inprint / Biographies Martin Ebner and Florian Zeyfang Contributors Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions Freely distributed, non - commercial, digital publication
Sturtevant, G onzales-Torres Untitled (America) , 2004, 15 watt light bulbs, ruber light sockets and extension cords, dimensions vary with installation, 12 parts, 20m with 7,5m extra cord (each) Photo: Courtesy of Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main
Allgemeine. These recent 1,2,3, --- insights are complemented with essays.
THINKING ABOUT An article by Dorothee Richter explores the history of exhibition displays, EXHIBITIONS providing an overview from the French Revolution onwards until today. The article aims to reveal perspectives and the ideology of displays, as well as providing a list EDITORIAL of relevant literature on the topic. In Hito Steyerl’s Dorothee Richter essay Is a museum a fac- tory? Steyerl investigates The issue 1,2,3, --- thinking about exhibitions combines the immense overflow of media discussions, interviews, and articles concerning recent work in recent exhibitions discussions in Rotterdam and Hamburg. The symposium in and the impact on viewer Rotterdam, The Curators , at Witte de With emphasized the role positions. The third article of the curator-subject. This issue includes two interviews by Sabine Gebhard Fink pro- which critically review the contributions and results of the vides a theoretical approach symposium, revealing different aspects and controversial to performative aspects of facets of their topics. The two featured interviews include mediation, showing that cur- one with Nikolaus Schaffhausen and Zoe Gray, those re- ating can be seen as a spe- sponsible for the organization of the symposium, as well cific kind of art mediation as one interview with Paul O’Neill, a contributor. and therefore as a part of a broader educational complex. The second symposium took place in Hamburg. Florian Waldvogel and Annnette Hans chose a more historical As carte blanche in this approach to the field of exhibition making. Forms of issue of On-Curating, the Exhibitions presented influential exhibitions re-worked acryl glass panels of Poor by curators and art historians. For example, Frederick Man’s Expression by Martin Kiesler’s work was presented through Monika Pesler, from Ebner and Florian Zeyfang the Vieanna based Kiesler foundation. Antonia Wunderlich set the stage for a model spoke about Les Immatrieux , Jan Hoet presented Chambres of an expanded understanding d'Amis , and Nikolaus Schaffhausen debated his commission of curating. of the German Pavillion with an journalist from Frankfurter (www.poormansexpression.com) 03 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions ROTTERDAM DIALOGUES
The Curators, symposium at Witte de With, Rotterdam 5th – 7th March 2009
Interview with Nicolaus Schaffhausen and Zoë Gray Conducted by Dorothee Richter
Speakers, among others, were: Jamila Adeli, Anke Bangma, Bart de Baere, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Pablo León De La Barra, Ute Meta Bauer, Lorenzo Benedetti, Iwona Blazwick, Nicolas Bourriaud, Sabine Breitwieser, Adam Budak, Ann Demeester, Barnaby Drabble, Mai Abu Eldahab, Zoran Eric, Bruce Ferguson, Juan Gaitan, Hou Hanru, Jan Hoet, Jens Hoffmann, Manray Hsu, Renske Janssen, Stefan Kalmár, Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Emmanuel Lambion, Enrico Lunghi, Raimundas Malasauskas, Gerardo Mosquera, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Sophie von Olfers, Paul O’Neill, Livia Páldi, Philippe Pirotte, PiST, Irit Rogoff, Beatrix Ruf, The Salford Restoration Office, Brigitte van der Sande, Kitty Scott, Seth Siegelaub, Saskia van Stein, Adam Szymczyk, Andrea Viliani, Rein Wolfs, and What, how & for whom.
Questions to Zoë and Nicolaus: Rotterdam Dialogues. Photos: Barnaby Drabble Dorothee Richter (DR): In your concept for the symposium, you spoke about curating as a topic which is frequently discussed in the art world, but is often neglected by the media so that three: Critics, Curators, Artists – came about following the broader public is largely unaware of it. This comes rather our discussions with colleagues across the art world about as a surprise because it has been widely discussed; on the a number of curatorial questions that we thought needed contrary, curators collect so-called cultural capital from raising, or – in some cases – raising again. As Hans the work of artists and endow them with their own meaning. The Ulrich Obrist stated during the symposium, this was the first historical well-known example is Harald Szeemann in first time in 18 years that such a range of curators had 1972. He used photographs to present to the press a hierarchy come together to discuss their practice in public. There of curator and artists resembling that of a king and his are of course international events such as the IKT and knights, or of god and his angels. Even today curators seem to ICOM conferences that bring together a large number of be mega stars, their names are the only ones which the broader curators, but those tend to put less emphasis on critical public can recollect in connection with an exhibition. The dialogue and more on networking, and – crucially – they symposium in Rotterdam too was a line-up of big names in the are not open to the public. Finally, we were careful to curatorial business. Could you please briefly explain your present a range of speakers and panellists during the starting point? symposium. We brought together some of the 'mega stars' that you mention with a younger generation of people who Nicolaus Schaffhausen (NS): Within the art world, the are working on curatorial projects, but who further role of the curator is clearly one that has seen much problematize the title or the label of curator – for discussion in recent years. However, to the broader public example, the artist duo PiST from Istanbul, the curator/ – those not frequently attending contemporary art exhi- gallerist Pablo Leon De La Barra and the Salford bitions and not reading specialized art magazines and Restoration Office from Manchester, to name a few. journals – we believe that the curator is still somewhat of an unknown element. Whilst the situation is perhaps DR: You organized the symposium as a series of panels, different in the German-speaking context, in the Nether- except for the philosophical contribution of Irit Rogoff lands there is less and less space dedicated to art about Curating vs. The Curatorial with the title: criticism in the media (a topic that we addressed in the the implicated – a model for the Curatorial? Could you first symposium of this sequence: The Critics ). The few please tell us what interests and fascinates you in this articles and reviews that appear tend either to cover the presentation? blockbuster shows (Manet, Cezanne…) or occasional features with museum directors, for example Jan Hoet. When the ZG: The symposium was actually structured around several media does (rarely) cover contemporary art, the curator different formats of discussion, all of which were chosen seldom gets a look-in. We would certainly disagree with with the aim of opening up the dialogue to include the your comment that the only thing an audience remembers people beyond and not simply those sitting at the front of from a show is the name of its curator. the room holding the microphones. We had several panels, we had two interviews, there were some moderated dialogues Zoë Gray (ZG): The impetus behind Rotterdam Dialogues: The and there was one lecture, which served as the opening to Curators was not simply to explain to an imaginary public the symposium. We decided together with Irit Rogoff that what a curator is or does. The symposium – which is one of this monologue construction was the best way for her to 04 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
share her thoughts, and for us to create a concentrated moment at the very begin- ning of the three days of discussion. The topic is a line of thinking that Professor Rogoff has been developing for some time, as part of the PhD program she has initiated at Goldsmiths College, London. It was also an extension of one of the topics that emerged from The Critics , where Simon Sheikh from Malmö evoked the useful distinction between criticism (as the daily practice of the art critic) and critique (as something more philosophical and more closely linked to the creation of new ways of thinking), to summarise briefly. We were interested to see if a similar dis- tinction would be productive in thinking about curating, which it certainly turned out to be. Professor Rogoff’s contribution was picked up upon by several of the subsequent speakers and served as a touchstone for many of the discussions.
DR: Did some of the ideas Rotterdam Dialogues. developed in the panels come Photos: Barnaby Drabble as a surprise to you? Which new idea did you like best? members of a more critical have just now published the 1 Oliver Marchart, NS: For us it was not a German-speaking academic last of three publications Hegemonie im question of choosing a group, who are concerned accompanying a research Kunstfeld. Die documenta favourite idea from the with curating (and other project on exhibition dis- – Ausstellungen three days of intense ways to address the public) plays. 3 From my point of dX, D11, d12 und die Politik der discussion. It was about had made some specific view there seems to be a Biennalisierung , setting up a platform for contributions to this field. difference between a German- Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung debate and bringing together To name only a few: Oliver speaking context and an Walther König, people that we thought would Marchart’s new publication English-speaking one, rather 2008. have something to say to on hegemony in the field than a generational gap to 2 each other. We were not at of fine arts, in which he which you refer to in one Marianne Eigenheer, Barnaby all disappointed, in fact discusses the shifts in of the panels. How do you Drabble and the most pleasant surprise the field along dX, D11, see this now, reviewing Dorothee Richter, eds., CURATING was the large number of d12 and thus analyses the the symposium? CRITIQUE: people attending – over conservative rollback of the ICE - Reader No. 1. Frankfurt, 1 300 each day – many of last documenta in detail. ZG: We asked whether there 2008. whom had travelled to the Marion von Osten who works was a generation gap in Netherlands especially for as a curator and writer, curating and it emerged that 3 this event. The level of has for instance published in fact there were several. Jennifer John, Dorothee Richter concentration and attention an article dealing with Both Jan Hoet and Gerardo and Sigrid Schade, eds., remained high throughout the the male subjectivity in Mosquera – each representa- Re-Visionen des three long days and there curating, see our reader tive of a different curato- Displays , Zurich: Curating Critique 2 JRP Ringier was excellent interaction ; others rial generation – mentioned Kunstverlag , between the public and the like Nora Sternfeld have the changes that they wit- 2009. invited guests. pointed out that it is the nessed in the profession, and institutional framework and some of the younger speakers DR: As I told you before, setting which are telling, that attended certainly saw we were a bit sad about the art institution that their own practice in a dif- not being invited to decontextualises and resig- ferent light from the curators participate, because we nifies as its underlying who are now in their early believe that we and other structure, and in Zurich we 40s and running institutions. 05 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
Rotterdam Dialogues. Photos: Barnaby Drabble 06 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
Rotterdam Dialogues. Photo: Barnaby Drabble
But to return to your question, there are certainly The collective aspect of the Comité van Roosendaal is differences between some Germanophone and Anglophone important to get our point across, a group is better heard practices, largely linked to the differences in university than one voice speaking alone. Additionally, the Comité education in the two countries – whether this will change van Roosendaal creates a lively platform for exchange that as the Bologna Accord comes into effect, who can say? We gives life to many artistic collaborative projects in invited Barnaby Drabble to participate partly because he has which our political concerns are reflected. Even during a foot in each of these 'camps', as you see them, and due to its pre-formalised phase some projects of a specific his co-editorship of Curating Critique . We intentionally political and social engagement have sprung forth. To give chose not to invite the founders of the curatorial training you some examples: The Prize for Young Dutch Art Cricism programmes (including those from the RCA, Goldsmiths, De was conceived within the group between Ann Demeester and Appel or Le Magasin) and instead invited people who had myself, and it might be said that the seed of BAK‘s and either been through these educational programmes, or who the Van Abbemuseum‘s critical and ambitious Former West had tried to establish alternatives, for example Zoran Eric. project (in collaboration with Kathrin Romberg) was planted due to these meetings. DR: And who benefits from curatorial training programmes according to the panel? Zoë, you as someone who has completed DR: In what ways do you both believe that curatorial a curatorial training programme, what would you say? practice can change the (art) institution? And when you speak of institutions do you use the word in the sense ZG: Well, we would have to admit that this was one of the of Peter Buerger or in the common sense of a specific art panels where the panellists avoided the question put to institution such as museum, kunstalle, kunstverein? them! Personally, I would say that I benefited from the education I received at Goldsmiths, in terms of the range NS: We were using the term 'institution' in a broad sense, of thinkers and ideas it put me into contact with, and but informed by the discussions about new institutionalism in terms of the professional network it connected me – that have taken place over the past 5 years or so. Curato- although not without some effort on my own part. I think rial practice – teamed together with artistic practice – I can say without being accused of immodesty that such can indeed challenge and change an institution, whether a training – combined with several years work experience – in small ways such reassessing ticketing policy to fit the benefits the institution that employs me. And I think that artwork (as we did for Geoffrey Farmer’s 2008 exhibition it benefits the artists that I work with, in most cases, at Witte de With) or by invited artists to alter the as it ensures that I have an understanding of a variety of conventions of programming (as Liam Gillick did with his artistic practices and of various histories of exhibition mid-career retrospective, a consciously 'empty' exhibition making. One possible downside of curatorial courses is that lasted six months and gave half the space back to that if they become de rigeur for anyone hoping to enter the institution). Each exhibition, event, symposium that the profession, the range of curators risks being reduced I programme at Witte de With should have the capacity and curatorial practice standardized. But this is also to change the current reality and the future of Witte a problem with MFAs for artists. de With.
DR: How do you (Nicolaus and Zoë) see the possibility of DR: How do you think that the market affects curatorial influencing politics and society through an input inserted practice in the institution as for example in Witte de With? by curatorial practice? NS: The impact of the market is negligible on our NS: Witte de With has recently been one of the instigators programming at the current time. This may change in the of the Committee van Roosendaal, a network connecting near future, as state funding is increasingly reduced contemporary art institutions in the densely populated and and institutions are forced to explore alternative avenues concentrated economical zone spanning from Amsterdam to of finance. Luxembourg, Brussels to Cologne, that forms the heartland of North-Western Europe. The Comité van Roosendaal is a DR: Which idea, insights or concepts developed in the platform to discuss how artistic and practical policies symposium do you think might be valuable to participants connect, intersect and how thay can be enhanced. In these of programmes in curating? discussions, we cannot be negligent of the political and societal frameworks in which we operate. ZG & NS: All of them! 07 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
whereby the curatorial implies a space of potentiality for new kinds of as yet unknown knowledges to emerge, whilst shifting INTERVIEW: focus away from exhibition production whilst including activist, discursive and self-organisational initiatives as part of a wider discourse on the 'curatorial'. The notion of PAUL O‘NEIL curating emphasized an activity as doing-as-making with the authorial position functioning as the basic premise of a contemporary curatorial discourse. From Irit’s perspective we The Curators, symposium at Witte de With, are all implicated by our understanding of our place in an art Rotterdam 5th – 7th March 2009 world, its sociality, its economies, and only in recognition of our own implication within it, can we begin by taking a more Intwerview by Dorothee Richter transitional space as a move forward, but without predicating what that might become. There is a co-dependency for all Dorothee Richter (DR): The announcement of the symposium, The curators within the art world as an operable social sub- curators in big letters in a green/ blue shining surface was a system whereby to achieve anything within the field forms bit scary, it seems to so clearly express the hierarchy that of immaterial labour get to be translated into a form of was installed in the art field from the 1970s, which made it celebrity culture and so on. The curatorial offers a still- possible to subsume the most different kinds of art under open space that has yet to be saturated, fixed, closed off. On one heading. To see curating as a multi auctorial cultural some level I would agree that idea, but I also see exhibition- production, as a platform where images, ideas and visibility making as a potential space of cooperative thinking, whereby are at stake, would make it less centred on a male white modes of knowledge might emerge that could not been foreseen subjectivity and more based on an idea of access versus without the initial impetus to make something happen out of exclusion. Which curatorial perspectives were introduced nothing and without restricting what that might end up being. in this respect and who brought them forward? DR: Could you please comment the format of the symposium, Paul O'Neil (PO): Of course this sets up a staging or framing especially because we are now in the process of preparing of hierarchies, not only by focusing on curating as a primary a symposium at the Kunsthalle Fridericianum for 2010. subject, but with the emphasis on 'The…' rather than merely 'Curators', it also implies a further echelon within the PO: Well firstly, it must be acknowledged that it was well curatorial field itself. Personally, I have always said that organised and programmed, although the configuration of curating is an adaptive activity, allowing certain critical certain panels occasionally seemed arbitrary and there was and discursive potentialities to emerge rather than be little room for speculative thinking. Speaking from my own curtailed by limitations as to what might be constituted by 'implicated' perspective, the panel I moderated attempted to the term. The Curatorial is about opening up rather than be critical of the separation of critics, curators and artist, closing down meaningful relationships between things, peoples but I also understood the organisers desire to establish an and ideas. I see the curatorial as a form of ideological internal dialogue within the curatorial field, but of course production, such as how exhibitions, in whatever form they there are many curatorial fields. Many of the more interesting take, as being akin to a cluster of differential positions, curators, for me, often shift between artist, critic, pedagogue and when brought together there is a multilayered interface and curator. Also artistic practice is often invested in the of ideologies and statements, which may agree, contest or curatorial, either at the level of the organisational, the antagonise each other. In many ways such symposiums operate as discursive or taking presentation and display factors into 'an exhibition of discourse', a public display of curatorial account. So I am critical of this separation, although I positions within a narrow field, where individual articul- understand the organisational desire to frame the discussion ations attempt to gather a certain symbolic value within a in such a way. Also, some specific clusters of either artists reputational economy already in operation within the so- or curators already implies a level of order to things, it called art world – where such events always re-enact these reifies and accepts that this is how things are already, value systems that we have grown to be accustomed to during without affecting it on any great way. I’m interested in the 'the curator’s moment' of the last twenty years, and rather possibility of the space of the curatorial being a form of than see such eventful moments as spaces, which are available artistic practice in its own right as an expressed desire to to us for critique from within the field itself. move beyond the parameters of semi-autonomous practice, but also in the idea of the curatorial as a space within which DR: The symposium was organised as a series of panels, except phrased certain organisational principles can be used, adapted for the philosophical contribution of Irit Rogoff about and applied, and where different and multiple artistic positions Curating vs. The Curatorial with the title: the implicated – and points of access can be brought together to create some- a model for the Curatorial? Could you please tell us what thing that couldn’t been foreseen without those principle interests you in this presentation? categories of organisation being initiated from the outset. In a sense I also played, or was aware that I was performing PO: Recent histories of contemporary art curating come with my part in the game I was asked to join up to. their own inheritance, mythologies and amnesiac tendencies. Curating is an activity often limited by its association with On the whole, the symposium also marked a type of ending point self-representation, degrees of taxonomic order, canons, and of the emergence of a new focus on curating over the last twenty certain value systems linked to western modernist traditions years, in particular the 1990s generation of curators, and of exhibition-making practices, which might be summarised as more specifically how it functioned alongside the expanding having a late capitalist tendency for over-production with an and proliferating biennials during this time, and its accomp- emphasis on individualism. Curating also centralizes the role anying discourse specific to a professional field aligned to of the curator as an individual author within such an emphasis nomadic or global curation in the context of large-scale on production, visibility and containment – expanding out exhibitions. It felt like a ‘where to next?’ moment, which was of a longer history of museums as conveyors of truth and as interesting in itself as a provocative statement, but without performed spaces of civilizing processes. So the curatorial really trying to offer a productive way forward, although the might be positioned differently in Irit’s argumentation for a suggestion by Ute Meta Bauer’s panel that the academy and the more productive critical distance within the art field, curatorial field could benefit from one another from a peda- 08 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
gogical perspective was productive. In retrospect, there was also a strange melancholy underlying the symposium whereby a linear narrative began to emerge across the three days. It was clearly developed through by the one to one interviews with Seth Siegelaub (for the late 60-70s), Jan Hoet (for the 80s) and Hans Ulrich Obrist (for the 90s). This can be read as a heroic representative for every decade, and it was a clearly gendered model, because there could be many other versions of this trajectory such as Lucy Lippard (70s), Ute Meta Bauer and Maria Lind who could also be seen as bridging the 80 and 90s. I was somehow astonished about that.
So many of the framing questions functioned as a kind of tool- box for the discussions, but in many of the panels participants did lack some shared background, even a shared language or knowledge-base from which to commence a dialogue with one another. The format of small talk shows fitted well into an already saturated event-based culture, with one quite complicated philosophical lecture at the beginning, but this stood as a singled out moment, although it was useful as a reference point across the three days, but we could have done with more reference points, and there was no dominant or alternative theoretical viewpoint that might have brought another theorized approach to either curating (or the curatorial). As such, the symposium might be measured as a kind of success, as it was well attended and highlighted a high degree of interest in curators, and what they have to say about curating, as much as it might be deemed a failure because of the very nature of how we have accommodated and sustained a certain self-referential curatorial discourse and allowed it to govern, to perpetuate and to discipline its form, format and level of critique.
Rotterdam Dialogues. Photo: Barnaby Drabble 09 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
1 reality, political films are Grupo Cine Libera- very often screened in the ción (Fernando E. Solanas, Octavio IS A MUSEUM exact same place as they Getino), Argentina, 1968. always were: in former The work is one factories, which are today, of the most important films of more often than not, A FACTORY ? Third Cinema. museums. A gallery, an art 2 space, a white cube with A quote from By Hito Steyerl abysmal sound isolation. Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched Which will certainly show of the Earth . The film La hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces, political films. But which The film was of course banned and 1968) , a Third Cinema manifesto against neocolonialism, also has become a hotbed of had to be shown has a brilliant installation specification. 1 A banner was contemporary production. Of clandestinely. to be hung at every screening with text reading: "Every images, jargon, lifestyles, 3 spectator is either a coward or a traitor." 2 It was intended and values. Of exhibition Or videos or video/film to break down the distinctions between filmmaker and value, speculation value, installations. To audience, author and producer, and thus create a sphere and cult value. Of enter- properly make the distinctions of political action. And where was this film shown? tainment plus gravitas. Or (which exist and In factories, of course. of aura minus distance. A are important) would require flagship store of Cultural another text. 3 Now, political films are no longer shown in factories. Industries, staffed by eager 4 They are shown in the museum, or the gallery – the art interns who work for free. I am aware of the 4 problem of space. That is, in any sort of white cube. treating all these A factory, so to speak, spaces as similar.
How did this happen? First of all, the traditional Fordist but a different one. It is 5 factory is, for the most part, gone. 5 It’s been emptied out, still a space for pro- At least in Western countries. machines packedup and shipped off to China. Former workers duction, still a space of have been retrained for further retraining, or become exploitation and even of 6 The context of software programmers and started working from home. Secondly, political screenings. It is Godard’s comment the cinema has been transformed almost as dramatically as a space of physical meeting is a conversation — a monologue, the factory. It’s been multiplexed, digitized, and sequel- and sometimes even common apparently — with ized, as well as rapidly commercialized as neoliberalism discussion. At the same young installation artists, whom he became hegemonic in its reach and influence. Before cinema’s time, it has changed almost reprimands for recent demise, political films sought refuge elsewhere. beyond recognition. So what their use of what he calls technolo- Their return to cinematic space is rather recent, and the sort of factory is this? gical dispositifs cinema was never the space for formally more experimental in exhibitions. See "Debrief de works. Now, political and experimental films alike are Productive Turn conversations avec Jean-Luc Godard," shown in black boxes set within white cubes – in fortresses, the Sans casser bunkers, docks, and former churches. The sound is almost The typical setup of the des briques blog, March 10, 2009, always awful. museum-as-factory looks like
OMA model for the Riga Contemporary Art Museum, to be built in a converted power plant, 2006. (top left) Workers Leaving The Lumière Factory, Luis Lumière, 1895. (top middle) Andy Warhol's Silver Factory. (top right) Visitors entering the museum, Edo-Tokyo Museum, 2003. courtesy istaro. (bottom) 011 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
9 the Lumière entangled in a blurred zone of hyper-production. attention. How do its Jonathan L. museum, the spectators look inside this Beller, "Kino-I, opening of the Kino-World," in former gate is now In the museum-as-factory, something continues to be new factory? The Visual Culture blocked by a Reader , ed. transparent glass produced. Installation, planning, carpentry, viewing, Nicholas Mirzoeff pane to indicate discussing, maintenance, betting on rising values, and Cinema and Factory (London and New the framing of the York: Routledge, early film. Leaving networking alternate in cycles. An art space is a factory, 2002), 61. spectators have to which is simultaneously a supermarket – a casino and a At this point, a decisive go around this 10 obstacle, and place of worship whose reproductive work is performed by difference emerges between Ibid., 67. leave through the cleaning ladies and cellphone-video bloggers alike. classical cinema and the former location of 11 the gate itself, museum. While the classical For a great essay which no longer In this economy, even spectators are transformed into space of cinema resembles about this work exists. Thus, the see Harun Farocki, current situation workers. As Jonathan Beller argues, cinema and its the space of the industrial "Workers Leaving is like a negative derivatives (television, Internet, and so on) are factory, the museum cor- the Factory," in of the former one: Nachdruck/Imprint: people are blocked factories, in which spectators work. Now, "to look is to responds to the dispersed Texte/Writings , by the former labor." 9 Cinema, which integrated the logic of Taylorist space of the social factory. trans. Laurent opening, which has Faasch-Ibrahim now turned into a production and the conveyor belt, now spreads the factory Both cinema and Fordist (Berlin: Verlag glass screen; they wherever it travels. But this type of production is much factory are organized as Vorwerk, New York: have to exit Lukas & Sternberg, through the former more intensive than the industrial one. The senses are locations of confinement, 2001), reprinted walls of the drafted into production, the media capitalize upon the arrest, and temporal on the Senses of factory, which Cinema Web site, have now partly aesthetic faculties and imaginary practices of viewers. 10 control. Imagine: Workers
Harun Farocki, Workers Leaving the Factory in Eleven Decades, 2006, video still. Courtesy of the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery. (top left) Mercedes-Benz Museum, Stuttgart. (top right) OMA diagram for the Riga Contemporary Art Museum, 2006. (bottom) 013 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
18 The difference between mass and multitude arises on the to the artist who – in Godard on Tout line between confinement and dispersion, between homo- a state of exception – va bien (1972),
In his choice of words, Elsaesser also addresses a less reconfigure yourself as its 23 democratic dimension of this space. By, as he dramatically subject. Cinema in the museum Boris Groys, "Politics of phrases it, arresting cinema – suspending it, suspending renders overview, review, Installation," its license, or even holding it under a suspended sentence and survey impossible. Par- e-flux journal , no. 2 (January 2009), – cinema is preserved at its own expense when it is taken tial impressions dominate
informed, inclusive discourse becomes difficult, if individual sovereign master, 24 not impossible. nor, more precisely, of the A good example would be selfdeluded sovereign (even "Democracies" by Artur mijewski, an The question of cinema makes clear that the museum is not if "just for one day," as un-synchronized a public sphere, but rather places its consistent lack on David Bowie sang). It isn’t multi-screen installation with display – it makes this lack public, so to speak. Instead even a product of common trillions of of filling this space, it conserves its absence. But it labor, but focuses its point possibilities of screen-content also simultaneously displays its potential and the desire of rupture on the paradigm combinations. for something to be realized in its place. of productivity. The museum- as-factory and its cinematic As a multitude, the public operates under the condition politics interpellate this of partial invisibility, incomplete access, fragmented missing, multiple subject. realities – of commodification within clandestinity. But by displaying its Transparency, overview, and the sovereign gaze cloud over absence and its lack, they to become opaque. Cinema itself explodes into multiplicity simultaneously activate a – into spatially dispersed multi-screen arrangements that desire for this subject. cannot be contained by a single point of view. The full picture, so to speak, remains unavailable. There is always Cinematic Politics something missing – people miss parts of the screening, the sound doesn’t work, the screen itself or any vantage But does this now mean that point from which it could be seen are missing. all cinematic works have become political? Or, rather, Rupture is there still any differ- ence between different forms Without notice, the question of political cinema has been of cinematic politics? The inverted. What began as a discussion of political cinema answer is simple. Any con- in the museum has turned into a question of cinematic ventional cinematic work politics in a factory. Traditionally, political cinema was will try to reproduce the meant to educate – it was an instrumental effort at 'repre- existing setup: a projection sentation' in order to achieve its effects in 'reality.' of a public, which is not It was measured in terms of efficiency, of revolutionary public after all, and in revelation, of gains in consciousness, or as potential which participation and triggers of action. exploitation become indisting- uishable. But a political Today, cinematic politics are postrepresentational. They cinematic articulation might do not educate the crowd, but produce it. They articulate try to come up with something the crowd in space and in time. They submerge it in partial completely different. invisibility and then orchestrate their dispersion, movement, and reconfiguration. They organize the crowd What else is desperately without preaching to it. They replace the gaze of the missing from the museum-as- bourgeois sovereign spectator of the white cube with the factory? An exit. If the incomplete, obscured, fractured, and over-whelmed vision factory is everywhere, then of the spectator-as-laborer. there is no longer a gate by which to leave it – there is But there is one aspect that goes well beyond this. What no way to escape relentless else is missing from these cinematic installations? 24 Let’s productivity. Political return to the liminal case of Documenta 11, which was said cinema could then become the to contain more cinematic material than could be seen by a screen through which people single person in the 100 days that the exhibition was open could leave the museum-as- to the public. No single spectator could even claim to social-factory. But on which have even seen everything, much less to have exhausted the screen could this exit take meanings in this volume of work. It is obvious what is place? On the one that is missing from this arrangement: since no single spectator currently missing, of course. can possibly make sense of such a volume of work, it calls for a multiplicity of spectators. In fact, the exhibition This article was first could only be seen by a multiplicity of gazes and points published by e-flux journal, of view, which then supplements the impressions of others. no 7 (June 2009) Only if the night guards and various spectators worked
Cinema inside the museum thus calls for a multiple gaze, which is no longer collective, but common, which is incomplete, but in process, which is distracted and singular, but can be edited into various sequences and combinations. This gaze is no longer the gaze of the 015 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
As a point of departure we have assumed that there was once a close relationship between forms that now exist CARTE rather separately, namely the realms of visual art, experimental film, literature, poetry, music – and very much the development of technology, too. What is it BLANCHE supposed to mean that 16mm projectors now occupy their luxurious final performance sites at art societies and Martin Ebner and Florian Zeyfang galleries, while iphone youtube (without open source codecs, to be sure) is the current way to watch a hollis On-Curating invites for the first time an artist frampton interview. contribution for a carte blanche. Martin Ebner and Florian Zeyfang designed five pages on the basis of Poor Man’s The other way around, isn’t the gentle entry of the genre Expression , using the model for their eponymous exhibtion of 'experimental film' into the realm of 'media art' of project in 2006 in Berlin, which will be represented in the 1980s and 1990s itself a transformation analog to an upcoming publication with Sternberg Press. Poor Man’s general social and medial development brought about by Expression examined the relationship between film, video, the development of individualization and consumer society? technology, and art, with a particular focus on the re- in poor man's expression we have sought, through an ad- ciprocal influences between conceptual art and experimental vanced setting (neon light surfaces, and the exhibition's film. The publication will respond to the questions that bipartite spatial principle) to address the surrounding arise as to the semantics of critical and experimental 'corporate public' architecture of the sony center as well conceptual art, medial representation, and the expansion as the film archive deep underground and the dark cinema of a concept of technology towards social functions and space of the 'avant-garde film.' psychology; it explores problems of medial control, intel- lectual property, and a changing concept of the public. (www.poormansexpression.com)
021 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions ANNETTE HANS AND FLORIAN WALDVOGEL
Interview by Dorothee Richter
Dorothee Ritcher (DR): The symposium Forms of Exhibitions in July 2009 at Kunstverein Hamburg did look for the historical positions in exhibition making that are still relevant for artists and curators. For example Frederick Kiesler’s work is a strong reference point for many artists and curators, lately Markus Schinwald and Liam Gillick made this obvious. What do you think were the most interesting aspects of Kieslers work?
A. Hans and F. Waldvogel (AH + FW): Kiesler had a two-fold outset when developing his exhibition designs. The one was working with the art work, the other with the viewer and both were aimed at creating a continuous environment. He worked with the exhibition space in a way that is closer related to theatre than exhibtion making. To look back at his practice can be very fruitful after the extensive rise of the white cube and thus the idea to present art as uninfluenced as possible by an outer situation to bring its potential fully afore. Kiesler follows a very different understanding in that sense when even developing viewing machines for certain artworks, like for example works by Paul Klee or Marcel Duchamp. Such machines, his seating designs, his making use of the whole space and placing works at certain angles, the implementation of sound, all these are methods that directed the viewer in a Ann Demester, Jan Hoet. certain way. But first and foremost they allowed the artwork Photo: Courtesy Kunstverein Hamburg. and the viewer to share a space – a quite specific and maybe almost fictional space that engaged the viewer. To work with the space and both, artworks and viewers, the way Kiesler did relation to situations and issues outside the respective may encourage us to approach these aspects with a mandate to institution, the people involved, the art world so dare – if one can say so. to say, to be able to develop adequate formats and activate potential. DR: In the discussions where I made some inputs as a commentator it became clear, that some aspects were not DR: Martin Beck developed a historical change of meaning visible in the presentations, for example the economic of the term 'display' in the 50ies, which suggested a situation was a point of departure for Chambres d'Amis or strong pedagogical viewpoint, oriented on the idea of the title Westkunst was a position against the western convincing the viewer. The idea of spectacle and a general concept of a universal 'Weltkunst' but also a problematic emphasize on the numbers of viewer is a later development. politically relevant term. Could you specify on that In what way do you think the expectations are differentiated topic? And in what way is this interesting for your and changed today? situation today? AH + FW: Given that Lissitzky, Kiesler and others had AH + FW: In the course of history writing, representation developed displays that were focussed on engaging and and remembrance certain aspects tend to become somewhat emancipating the viewer and expanding the single artwork hidden in a bigger picture. The knowledge of the cir- into a spatial surrounding, there have been more cumstances under which Chambres d'Amis evolved – and many differentiated aspects to the term then as well. The other exhbitions and experimental formats as well – is convincing moment of the display is one that is – and maybe not essential in judging the exhbition as such and then was – rather inherent to commercial strategies such questioning its potential and problematics, but it certainly as the presentation at fairs. One will find a lot of is a reason to engage productively with problematic literature for example concerning the exhibition displays issues. In very common means, as when it comes to money of fair booths. And this concerns most likely other fairs, problems, and also in the sense of taking political and not art fairs where the white cube is preserved in its societal situations into account. little, half shrunken brother most of the time.
Everything we do is placed in a current context and every As Martin Beck pointed out in his lecture, it is very exhibition making ideally reflects this situation and difficult to define the term display as it is used in many accepts this challenge – needless to stress the 'ideally' contexts and there is a whole field of possible research in the sentence. Nonetheless this is something to strive around this topic. Therefore it is rather difficult to jot for and thus to continually question ones practice in down changes and differences in a few lines. We are still 022 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
Audience and participants (left). Monica Pessler, Kiesler Foundation (right). Photo: Courtesy Kunstverein Hamburg.
today, or maybe even more so, confronted with a con- product/commodity in the 60ies alongside Gerry Schums Video notation of display as convincing strategy instead of Gallery. In what way do you think it is possible to address pointing strategy (stating this knowingly that both are these crucial issues in contemporary exhibition making again? intertwined). In the exhibition context displays are most of the time used in more remote ways (than Lissitzky AH + FW: Concerning the question of authorship in and Kiesler did for example) to not interfere with the exhibition making, we would go with an understanding artworks. Nevertheless, display is booming. closer related to Jan Hoet’s exhibition making practice. He opts for the curator as agent of the artist trying to Todays resurrection of the display can be seen closer realize an artwork or a project as ideal as possible and related to the art practice maybe than the exhibition in accordance to the artist’s needs. Exhibition making is practice in itself. The context, the spatial surrounding of course being in a dialogue and developing projects and the presentation of single pieces, the extension of together but in the end one is assisting in making an idea the singular work into the installation are important become reality instead of participating in a sense of a aspects in that sense and gave way to the growing tendency collective authorship. The case with Gerry Schums Gallery to have an exhibition design or ask an artist to develop was a slightly different one as he, as camera man, was overall displays. By means of contextualizing, creating a directing the shots in the end and also did the cutting. certain setting and atmosphere, art is being reimplented But, every exhibition making introduces a perspective and into the experiential surrounding of the viewer. contextualizes which is not to be seen equal to authoring a piece. Maybe today, these issues of authorship, work/ DR: Beatrice von Bismarck developed the change in posi- production and product/commodity have become less crucial tions of authorship, of work/production and of art as a than they once were? 023 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
repetition of actions as 1 a whole that regenerates Judith Butler, "Performative Acts TALKING BACK AND agency on each occasion as and Gender 2 Constitution," social construction. On the first published in: other hand, however, it is Theatre Journal 40/4, 1988, exactly this ornamented QUEER READING – pp. 519-513, repetition of actions that reprinted in: Auslander, London creates a subversive 2003, Vol. 4, AN ESSAY ON possibility, and thereby pp. 97-110. enables the politics of 2 divergence in the consti- Butler, 2003, p. 97/98. PERFORMANCE tution of gender. The limits of this deviation are marked 3 I am grateful to in societies by operations Dorothee Richter THEORY AND ITS of what Althusser called the and Carmen Mörsch for this hint to apparatus. In later texts, Althusser during Butler also accepted that the our discussion in Kassel. POSSIBLE IMPACTS performative act in social life is not free to produce 4 Sabine Gebhardt unsanctioned deviations like Fink, "Situierter a critical practice would Körper und ON DISSEMINATION Sexualisierter do, nor indeed to transgress Raum," in: Martina Oster, Geschlecht the patterns of bodily in Musik, Kunst OF ART actions without negative und Neuen Medien , Hamburg 2008. consequences. 3
Sabine Gebhardt Fink To develop my own theories on performative acts, I have The following reflections on performance theory and the re-interpreted Butler’s dissemination of art are based on a paper that I gave at statements in the context the symposium on Performing Art in Kassel on 20th July of contemporary performance 2009, co-organised by the Institute for Art Education at art. This has led me to the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHDK) and the Kunsthalle recognition of a twofold Fridericianum. My lecture there was conceived as a dia- performative act. Following logue between Nora Landkammer, Anna Schürch, and myself. Butler, the first performa- The aim was to enable a talking back and, in doing so, to tive act that defines agency create a method for performative lecturing. Nora and Anna in everyday experiences both responded to and intervened in my thoughts on per- is the performative act. formance theory from their point of view as art educators. Secondly, this act is re- While their voices are not explicitly present here, I enacted and re-presented in nevertheless wish to let their statements reverberate in the field of performance my thoughts on the impacts of performance theory in the art. I will call this act dissemination of art. It is clear that I am speaking as a the twofold performative performance theorist, which means that I am trying to talk act. 4 This concept of back a second time. performativity, which is based on Butler’s concept My thoughts here start from Judith Butler’s theses in her of 'performative acts,' essay Performative Acts and Gender Constitution (1988). explicitly contradicts all From my point of view, her thoughts are still relevant the essentialist notions of today. In particular, Butler’s political goal to establish performance art, and of a critical theoretical practice to define new modes of performativity and the given performative acts is worth re-reading. In order to talk body, embodiments that were back to Butler’s ideas, I will address the following propagated by the so-called issues in what follows: presence and embodiment, strategies new phenomenologists. My of self-enactment in collective social practices, and concept of the twofold constructions of place and mediality. I will analyse these performative act also themes within various performative art projects, from contradicts the idea that Alexandra Bachzetsis and San Keller to William Hunt and agency could be established Katerina Šedá. through the presence of a body per se. Thirdly, it criticises the notion of Performative Acts and the Apparatus space as an 'empty container' waiting to be filled, for It is worth recalling that Judith Butler defined a example with meaning, which 'performative act' as something that should be repeated is then assumed to be and must be legitimated socially through the repetitions exposed by objects and of bodily styles. 1 A paradigmatic act of this kind is – 'auratised' by bodies and still following Butler – the constitution of gender. Even their presentness. Butler neglected the idea of a fixed place, that is, a locus for agency, from which actions in the social realm Interestingly, a wide variety should and could start. It is this very stylisation of the of current performative 024 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
Top 2 images Katerina Šedá, OVER AND OVER , 2008, Installation view of the 5th berlin biennial for contemporary art at Skulpturenpark Berlin-Zentrum, Installation, mixed media, Diameter 9,55 m Photo: Courtesy Katerina Šedá, Franco Sofiantino Arte Contemporaneo, Torino. © berlin biennial for contemporary art, Uwe Walter, 2008
Bottom image Katerina Šedá, OVER AND OVER , 2008 Installation view of the 5th berlin biennial for contemporary art at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Drawings, models, mixed media, Dimensions variable Photo: Courtesy Katerina Šedá; Franco Soffiantino Arte Contemporanea, Torino, © berlin biennial for contemporary art, Uwe Walter, 2008 025 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
5 projects address this issue by focusing on the recipient The reasons for the emergence Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason: of an action. They thus provide a range of models of of new forms of reception On the Theory of agency in performative artistic acts situated between in the 1990s, like Šedá’s Action . Stanford artist and addressee. The dissemination and teaching of above work, can be found in 1998, p. 3. art could then envisage a reflection of this twofold act the structure of urban space 6 Sigrid Schade, in general. itself, specifically within "Das unabgegoltene the sites of so-called 'so- der Vergangenheit," in: Jahrbuch 3 cial computing' and public HGKZ, NOW! / Presence and Embodiment – San Keller // Read it from my 'screenings,' or 'mobile Gegenwart in den Künsten , eds. lips, Zurich 2009 phone networks' and the Sigrid Adorf / increasing aggressiveness Sabine Gebhardt Fink / Sigrid During his May 2009 performance of Read it from My Lips in which the public sphere Schade / Steffen at the Gessnerallee Theatre in Zurich, San Keller asked is reoccupied as a private Schmidt, 2007. those present to comment on the performances during the terrain of commodity and 7 intervals between the acts. Audience comments were private property. Former The original German reads: recorded on camera in a separate room, with the sound public zones tend to be "potentiell muted. Afterwards, the clips were projected via closed reserved for specific Gesehenes im aktuell Gesehenen circuit into the exhibition space opened for the next communities and new private auf bestimmt- performance. Those members of the audience who had stayed owners, thereby domestic- unbestimmte Weise vorgezeichnet." in the auditorium were confronted with the faces of the ating the public space into Bernhard Waldenfels, interviewees in close-up and in silenced speech, seeking spheres of private control Phänomenologie der to decode the 'silent' words from their lips and looking and governmentality. It is Aufmerksamkeit , Frankfurt M., around the auditorium to identify the speakers as thus clear that a critical 1998, p. 208 neighbours when watching the last performances. artistic practice of that 8 time addressed these ten- Waldenfels, In which way is the aesthetic structure to be read and the dencies and intervened into Ibid.: "...und gleichzeitig social coding to be revealed as a signifying mechanism these newly built spaces. wird...im that leads to the construction and to the representation Šedá’s political spatial Gesehenen Nichtgesehenes, 5 of an action during read it from my lips? And what is the practice attracts dominant bis zu einem signifying operation of that performance? In read it... , concepts of space, which gewissen Grade... nachgezeichnet." presence is shown as mediated and produced; that is, the Henry Lefebvre has described p. 211. "... at acts of producing and perceiving the performance are in the following words: "The the same time ... the seen becomes 6 separated. Presence is shown as something to be con- more carefully one examines to a certain structed during a performative act and finished somewhere space, considering it not extent traced in the non-seen" 7 else, or indeed 'later.' Only by accepting this state of only with the eyes, not only (translation Mark constructedness could the 'non-seen' be judged as "the with the intellect, but also Kyburz). potentially seen, delineated in the currently seen in a with all senses, with the 9 8 Henry Lefebvre, determinate/indeterminate manner," as Bernhard Waldenfels total body, the more clearly The Production of observes. Instead of assuming a 'here and now' and an one becomes aware of the Space , translated by Donald omnipresent presence in performance art, this work makes conflicts at work within it, Nicholson-Smith, explicit that the idea of a 'here and now' is something conflicts which foster the 2007, 25th ed. (1st English to be constructed through speech acts and through bodily explosion of abstract space edition 1991; the styles during those acts. The aesthetic of acting enfolds and the production of a original French 9 version appeared or signifies a 'folding' between 'participation' and space that is other." For in 1974), p. 391. 'partaking' in the encounters between author, curator, Kluge and Negt, this abstract 10 educator, spectator, theorist, and performer. Conse- space represents a system of "The missing quently, the insights of Keller’s work should be taken governance that follows eco- space is precisely the singularly as proposals for the 'seen' as a starting point for nomic rules. Against those plural. It is further possible performative acts, as Alice Creischer rules, Šedá’s project pits thus, too, that of being – and thus once assumed for her own socio- aesthetic practice. a 'being-with,' as Jean-Luc also that which is What Kellers work proposes in the context of education Nancy once formulated the decidedly not the substratum of that 10 and dissemination is this possibility of reflection being-in-common. which exists in through re-reading and analysing the present as the toto, but rather brings existing 'uncompensated past.' To be clear: this site of beings onto the 'being-in-common' does not same path, to be with all others already exist. Instead, it [...]. The With, Strategies of self-enactment in collective social acts of its irreducible is a place to be produced, structure of reception – Katerina Šedá // Over and Over , Berlin 2008 and it is as such the missing proximity and distance, its space. Nancy postulates for irreducible In her performative art project Over and Over , Katerina this kind of place a new form tension, which it produces between Šedá asked the inhabitants of her hometown Líšen in the of presence: it is something one and the other, Czech Republic to open up the fences surrounding their to be constructed. Although is now before us and must be private grounds after the 'opening' of their country in Nancy is convinced that it considered: for 1999. The idea was to revitalise civic life that had died is not possible to define only the With makes sense." Jean out during the new capitalistic era. What was exhibited of this kind of place through Luc Nancy, Être this project during the Berlin Bienniale was a model of art or artistic processes, singulier pluriel (Paris: Galilée, the fences and the constructions built by the inhabitants I am not sure whether he is 1996) (translation to cross or open them up. This mise-en-scène of a 'latent' right. 11 Šedá’s project, for Mark Kyburz). form of interaction can be seen as an artistic strategy example, articulates in the 11 for criticising and deconstructing atmospheres of presence of a number of Jean-Luc Nancy, 2004, p. 20. commodity and possession. speakers a 'being-in common' 026 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
12 18 between the generalising 'We all' and the individualistic and of pole dance. Bachzetsis Jean-Luc Nancy, Anna McCarthy, 2004, p. 35. Ambient Tele- 'me I'. This also implies that the action is located in a thus attempts to create in vision. Visual specific place. Being is neither a state nor an essence, one single place the dis- 13 Culture and Public Jean-Luc Nancy, Space , Durham Duke but rather that kind of action/passion in whose aftermath orientation of the fixed La communauté University Press what Kant termed the 'mere position of an object' occurs. 12 patterns involved in the désoeuvrée 2001, p. 10. See (Paris: Christian also Arnold von production of sex and gender. Bourgois, 1983) Gennep, Les rites If once accepted as a being-in-common, it is no longer (translation de passage. 1909. Mark Kyburz); possible to conceive the public as whole. However, it Contrary to postmodern and see also Die 19 would be equally mistaken to believe in a neo-utopian site-specific works, which herausgeforderte Nancy Fraser, Gemeinschaft , "Die Trans- concept of community. What is really addressed in artworks adjusted bodily movements to trans. Esther von nationalisierung like Šedá’s is the idea of an opening up of the unique time-space environments and den Osten, Berlin der Öffentlich- 2007, p. 14. keit," p. 24, in: community. In 1996, Jean-Luc Nancy analysed this kind of disciplined them without Publicum. Theorien community as follows: "… when the community begins to being noticed by their 14 der Öffent- Jean–Luc Nancy, lichkeit , eds. stammer a strange uniqueness […], then the community users, because "abstract Ibid. Gerald Raunig and understands that it is itself that gapes open – gapingly space asphyxiates whatever (see also Die Ulf Wuggenig, herausgeforderte Vienna 2005, opened to its absent unity and essence. It understands is conceived in it," as Gemeinschaft , pp. 18-30. that it is confronted within itself with this rupture. Lefebvre remarks, 17 site- Zürich/Berlin 2007, p. 30). 20 Community stands against community, strangers versus reflecting practices in Hal Foster, strangers, those acquainted versus those acquainted; it contemporary art, such as 15 The Return of Jean-Luc Nancy, the Real: tears itself apart by tearing apart others, who have no Bachzetsis’s handwork , Zürich/Berlin The Avantgarde at 13 2007, p. 29. Nancy the End of the possibility of community and communion." seek a concept of place that thus prefers the Century , Cambridge overruns those fixed mean- neutral term Mass. 1996, 'with,' which I pp. 125-168, On the level of the performative act, the 'being-in-common' ings and includes experiences also use here, to p. 156. of an urban society in Nancy’s sense, 14 which Šedá only that are 'other.' This place 'community.' "(It was clear) that indicates on a metaphorical level through the opened fences, is also defined by power the accentuation is constructed through participant interaction. It is a relations and influenced by of a necessary, yet forever being-in-common that remains unhomogeneous during the entire the operations of the ap- insufficiently project because of the participants' different aims and paratus, which regulates clarified concept (of a community) interests. This kind of being-in-common, moreover, only individual agency and the went hand in hand exists for a short period of time although the processes agencies of groups and at the time with a revival of documented can remain in the cultural memories of those collectives. It was space, communitarian and involved. This being-in-common is very close to Nancy’s namely, the domestic place, sometimes even fascist driving concept of community: "Being-with is the community, which property, money, and forces," see p. 31 […] does not allow itself to be made manifest […]. Conse- consumerism that offered (translation Mark Kyburz). Compare quently, it cannot be communicated even if it is itself participation in the Nancy’s Being that which is shared and probably because this is what it bourgeois world of Fordism. 18 Singular Plural : "it is a question is." 15 He continues thus: "Instead, the With is dry and Place, moreover, offers the of the alterity or neutral: it is neither communion nor atomisation, merely same in poststructuralism alteration of the world. In other the sharing of a place, at best contact: a being-together and post-Fordism. I agree words it is not 16 the question of an without a joining-together." with Nancy Fraser when she aliud, or an alius assumes that in our 'post- or an alienus, or Over and Over another in general With and against Nancy, provides an national' times, new forms as the essential instrument for constructing a community as a being-in- and structures of sovereign- stranger, who is opposed to what is common. Documenting the acts of Over and Over during a ity can be recognised and proper, but of an short period of time and in a concrete situation allows the change from space to alter, that is, 'one of the two.'" for divergent participation. This implies for the dissem- place is only one index of Translated by ination of art that it should provide different patterns this change. 19 In this social Robert E. Richardson & Anne of meaning and reading, and open up opportunities for context, the meaning of E. Byrne, Stanford 'being-in-common.' artistic practice can be af- University Press 2000, p. 11. firmative or contradictory. Constructions of place – Alexandra Bachzetsis // handwork , And Hal Foster warns us 16 Nancy, Zürich/ Basel 2008 that even critical art can Berlin 2007, p. reaffirm existing exclusions 31. Similar thoughts are Producing this kind of being-in-common in an collective and abjections: for Kristeva, expressed by Nancy act of reception makes necessary the development of a the operation of abjection in Etre singulier pluriel : "(...) sensorium of community and historicity in the context of is fundamental to the main- the mode of Being which is that of ephemeral constructions of place. Realising this requires tainance of subject and disposition/ performative acts. Alexandra Bachzetsis’s performance society alike, while the co-appearance and handwork which, strictly helps us explain what is meant by the construc- condition of being abject speaking, is tion of a site as process. Here, the performance space is corrodes both formations. 20 neither negative nor positive, but a combination between a ballet training studio (mirrors on With regard to Bachzetsis’s instead the mode the walls and light) and bar (pole dance and highheeled performance, we need to of being-together or being-with." shoes). Besides Bachzetsis, the setting also involves consider whether it produces in: Being Singular fellow artists Ayelene Parolin and Saga Sigurardottir. exactly that kind of critique Plural , p. 13.
When the sexualised body, as Butler says, needs training that reaffirms existing role- 17 and disciplining as a naturalised construct in ritualised models and gender-images, or Henry Lefebvre, The Production of actions, then the actions of Bachzetsis and her colleagues, not. The dissemination of art Space , Malden, which border on stereotyped sexualised acts, intend to should offer different types Oxford, Victoria 1991, p. 370. make evident those slight differences, and to produce of gender-constructions, and critique and desorientedness. This particular setting open up fixed stereotypes aimed to deconstruct both the movement patterns of ballet of sexuality. 027 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
21 Mediality and Performativity – William Hunt // The Peggy Phelan, impotence of radicalism in face of all these extreme Unmarked: The Politics of positions 2005 Performance , London 1993.
I would like to close with an example from William Hunt’s 22 The impotence of radicalism in face of all these extreme Judith Butler, London 2003, positions (2005). In this performance, Hunt declares the reprinted in Auslander, mediality of the work to be the theme of the artistic pp. 98/99. process. Hunt’s guitar-playing pose cites the gestures of a rockstar. But he turns both these and himself upside down: in a self-constructed instrument, he performs amusing and bizarre actions to remain balanced while his head inclines over the floor and his feet swivel in the air during his playing. In this constant production of an inverse pose, the performer gives no chance to either fantasies of completeness or to "representation without reproduction," as Peggy Phelan once hoped to find in the ontology of Performance Art. 21 Instead, Hunt shows us that the medality of performance is a "subversive repetition of [...](a bodily) style," as Butler has observed. Furthermore, he also draws attention to the other three aspects of the 'structures of embodiment' indicated by Butler, namely, 'to do,' "to dramatize," and 'to reproduce.' 22
For the dissemination of art, this also means to do, to dramatise, and to reproduce!
Katerina Šedá, OVER AND OVER , 2008, Installation view of the 5th berlin biennial for contemporary art at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, drawings, models, mixed media, dimensions variable. Photo: Courtesy Katerina Šedá; Franco Soffiantino Arte Contemporanea, Torino, © berlin biennial for contemporary art, Uwe Walter, 2008 028 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
1 David Teniers the Younger, Painting Gallery of Archduke Leopold William of Austria , 106 x 129, 1653
exhibited in different 1 places, or they were copies, See Ekkehard MAI, "Ausgestellt A BRIEF OUTLINE or indeed they were in the – Funktionen von Museen und possession of the respective Ausstellungen im ruler only at a certain Vergleich." in: Kunst des OF THE HISTORY point in time. The guiding Ausstellens, principles of the collection Beiträge, Statements, were size, the number of Diskussionen , ed. OF EXHIBITION figures, and theme. "It was Hubert Locher, Stuttgart: not until the eighteenth Schulte, 2002. century,” Mai observes, 2 MAKING “that nation, state, and See also Hubert history became equally valid LOCHER, "Die Kunst des Ausstellens, points of reference, not Anmerkungen zu Dorothee Richter only for contemporary art einem unübersichtlichen but also for that of the Diskurs," in: past and so the representa- Kunst des Using various illustrations, this paper delineates the Ausstellens, history of exhibition display and establishes connections tive discourse changed into Beiträge, within that history. It also provides a list of suggested a public discourse." 2 Statements, Diskussionen , ed. further reading. The outline begins at a point in history Hubert Locher, Stuttgart: when art emancipated itself from being a cult object and Cartesian perspective is Schulte, 2002. became an exhibition object. Interpreting various depictions mostly associated with the of exhibitions, I raise questions about representation, abstract and detached specifically who or what is represented, and about the subject of central human subjects involved, specifically how these are ad- perspective, who observes dressed as recipients or as depicted figures. How did such matters from a safe address and depiction affect the formation of identities? distance. The gaze from Which kinds of being-in-the-world, arrangements of power, within Teniers’s painting and gaze regimes are conveyed by these illustrations? Which gallery falls directly and status do art objects have within the context of an entire authoritatively upon the staging, and how does its arrangement predetermine meaning? viewer. The geometry of the mathematical certainty 1 David Teniers the Younger, Painting Gallery of Archduke afforded by central Leopold William of Austria perspective seems to be The painting by Daniel Teniers does not depict a particular equated with the certainty exhibition, but instead a fictitious and programmatic of an order established by exhibition, or what Ekkehard Mai has called a "personal God. Inscribed in the pantheon of painting." 1 Depictions of galleries from 'show'-room, moreover, are Francken to Teniers, Pannini and Robert exhibit an art the concepts and effects of collection whose displaying was meant to demonstrate the gender differences, which connection between power and spirit, in order to substan- since the Renaissance had tiate the claims of one’s own dynasty against the claims been constructed upon to power asserted by an array of courts, states, churches, distancing effects and upon and countries. The paintings need not necessarily reflect the male subject as the actual collections, and those on display were probably subject of central 029 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
2 Pierre Subleyras, The Studio of the Painter , 125 x 99, after 1740 3 Gabriel Jacques de St. Aubin: The 1767 Salon, Aquarelle and Gouache, 1767 4 Johann Zoffany: Charles Towneley’s Library in Park Street , 127 x 99, 1783
perspective. 'Woman' became an object – of the male gaze – public to the exhibition 3 6 Anja ZIMMERMANN, and she thus became readily available and her image event." The profane and Skandalöse Bilder. commodified. The gaze is as a rule associated with the direct trading with art Skandalöse Körper. Abject Art vom male (subject) and the viewed or displayed with the female became increasingly Surrealismus bis (object). In structural terms, 'woman' bears within invisible; competition among zu den Culture Wars . Berlin 2001, herself the place viewed and taken aim at. Anja artists, and the discourse p. 119. Zimmermann, for instance, identifies this structure when on their works, now moved 7 4 she summarises the insights that many contemporary into the foreground." For a detailed cultural studies scholars have arrived at: "Both the Moreover, "this shift discussion and extensive position 'within' the image and the position of whoever is occurred in the second half bibliography, see gazing at the image are gender-specific positions. Not so of the eighteenth century, Sigrid SCHADE and Silke WENK, much by way of attribution to concrete subjects, but in especially in France and "Inszenierung des relation to the significance of this gaze regime for the England. The exhibition Sehens, Kunst, Geschichte und 3 definition of gender difference itself." The eroticising artist now became the new Geschlechter- of the gaze, that is, the pleasure derived from looking, leading type of artist, differenz," in: BUSSMANN, HOF: remains the unalterable prerequisite for addressing taking the place of the Genus, zur Geschlechter- viewers: the sexually charged nature of the exhibited employed court artist; the differenz in den results from this particular structure. 4 second leading type who rose Kulturwissen- schaften , to the fore was the artist- Stuttgart 1995, 2 Pierre Subleyras, The Studio of the Painter as-entrepreneur who accepted pp. 340-407.
Subleyras’s representation of the painter’s studio leaves commissions for different 5 a striking impression of exhibiting what were still pre- clients or worked for the Malcolm BAKER, (Deputy Head of modern values at the time. The atmosphere seems calm and market," as Oskar Bätsch- Research at the inward, focused on the painter’s craft. mann’s extensive historical Victoria & Albert 8 Museum in London), research has revealed. in: Dumont, Malcolm Baker has outlined how the places where art objects Geschichte der Kunst, (The Oxford were traded were transformed over time: "The artist’s studio 4 Johann Zoffany, History of Western or workshop, as apparent in Subleyras’s painting [...] Charles Towneley’s libary Art) , London 2000, Cologne 2003, were a place where art was presented and where business in Park Street pp. 288/289 transactions between artists and clients could be conduc- In the eighteenth century, 6 ted. But the commodification of art, which the growing art art was increasingly BAKER, Ibid., market indicated on the one hand, and the way in which art depicted as a place of pp. 288/289. took on a life of its own as a separate aesthetic category tasteful pleasure and 7 on the other, both led to the establishment of new spaces critical judgement. Being LOCHER pp. 22/23. serving the viewing of images and sculptures by an increas- able to speak appropriately ing wider public." 5 The fine arts emancipated themselves about art was regarded as an 8 Oskar progressively from their status as an artisanal, manual expression of educated BÄTSCHMANN, Ausstellungs- craft, while their commodity character became nebulous. behaviour. The ability to künstler, Kult und pass individual judgement Karriere im 3 Gabriel Jacques de St. Aubin, The 1767 Salon modernen and to behave accordingly Kunstsystem , One such newly established space was the Salon de Paris imputes a self-responsible Cologne 1997, p. 9. (or simply the Salon), as shown in Aubin’s acquarelle. The subject, an ideological Salon was first held following a royal sanction. Various construction that assumed genres were exhibited alongside each other, including increasing significance. For history paintings, portraits, landscapes, portrait busts, Immanuel Kant, one of the and stucco models for large sculptures. Exhibits were most important Enlightenment displayed hierarchically, depending on size. Malcolm Baker philosophers, aesthetics has observed that "the exhibitions at the Salon were assumed a prominent place: discussed extensively in contemporary periodicals and art for instance, the current literature, thereby attracting the attention of a wider Suhrkamp edition of his 030 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
5 George Baxter, Gems of the World Fair, (Belgian section) , wood engraving, coloured, 12,1 x 24,1, 1854
Critique of Judgement, in which the first and second was the Republic, that is to 9 Terry EAGLETON, Ästhetik. versions of the text are reprinted, runs to 456 pages. say the nation, and no longer Die Geschichte ihrer Terry Eagleton has shown that Kant discusses aesthetics as an individual ruler, around Ideologie , Stuttgart, Weimar 1994. an ideological function through which aesthetic judgement whose gesture of display art produces individuality. 9 Jointly savoured judgement renders objects had previously been 10 BAKER, pp. 288/289. aesthetics a utopian place, the only place where a sense grouped. The context of of community can arise. Such thinking differs markedly exhibitions therefore had to 11 LOCHER, p. 20. from the Middle Ages, where human beings occupied a fixed, be organised around another unalterable position in a certain social strata, for in- (imaginary) place of stance a guild, family, or system of belief, and regarded representation. themselves as part of a group, from whose determined positions behaviour and moral stance largely resulted. 5 George Baxter, The ideology of the autonomous subject coincided with the Gems of the World Fair, development of a mercantile class. (Belgian section) During the nineteenth Dating from 1883, Zoffany’s painting shows the British century, national gallery officer and collector Charles Towneley (1737-1805) exhibitions and world fairs surrounded by sculptures or their casts amid a group of were held across Europe and men engaged in discussion. The men are positioned at in the United States. World eye-level between the Greek sculptures. The casts of fairs were still exhibitions ancient sculptures refer to the democratic ideal of that jointly displayed com- ancient Greece, as the pictorially represented historical mercial products, technology, legitimation of democratic values claims. 10 and art as expansive, large-scale international The first public exhibition for the 'common people' was exhibitions: 1851 in London held at the Louvre in 1792, as a 'Museum of the French (Crystal Palace), 1855 Paris, Republic.' Images, furniture, and art objects taken from 1853 New York, 1854 Munich, the defeated aristocracy were placed on public display. 1867, 1878, 1889 Paris, 1876 Written into this spectacle were both the appropriation Philadelphia, 1879 Sydney, and affirmation of prevailing circumstances. Hubert Locher 1880 Melbourne, 1885 Amster- describes how exhibitions were increasingly regarded as dam, and 1888 Brussels. From narratives or stagings, in which the meanings of single, about 1850, museum associa- autonomous works of art were placed within a overall tions began establishing context: "Shortly after 1800, Friedrich Schlegel, the bourgeois museums. German philosopher and theorist of art and literature used the term 'exhibition' in the context of a museum Sculptures on display at presentation. While in Paris, he visited the Louvre to see world fairs included items displayed the works that Napoleon had looted, especially assembled from what we would in Italy. Schlegel described his experience for German today consider unusual readers interested in art in a journal that he edited. combinations of materials, In the light of a series of the most important canonical for instance volcanised rub- paintings, he observed that each arrangement of a series ber or papier-mâché, since of paintings in an exhibition presented the viewer with at the same time they rep- a new 'body,' and that such presentation entailed a new resented new technologies. concept." 11 The rightful owner of the Louvre art collection The participating countries 031 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
6 Adolph von Menzel, The Studio Wall , 111 x 79,3, 1872 7 The New Salle des États, Par is. Louvre , Illustration, 1886 8 Jules Alexandre Grün, Friday at the Salon des Artistes Francais , 3,60 x 6,16, 1909
and their products competed against each other, in an titles." While the audience 12 attempt to draw attention to themselves. Statues, had now expanded to the See Philipp WARD-JACKSON, in: industrial products and other arti-facts were exhibited affluent citizenry, large Dumont, Geschichte 12 der Kunst, (The side by side. Writing about the spectacle that such large parts of the population Oxford History of exhibitions involved, Walter Benjamin wrote: “The world nevertheless remained ex- Western Art) , London 2000, fairs glorify the exchange value of goods. They create a cluded from the outset, or Cologne 2003, p. framework in which their use value recedes. They open up as Duncan mentions, "the 348. phantasmagoria, into which the human being enters for the Hermitage Museum in St. 13 purpose of distraction.” 13 The inter-relation of mass Petersburg, for instance, See Walter BENJAMIN, Das audience, industrial products and art can be seen as a still required visitors to Passagen-Werk, precursor of the 'culture industry,' that is, the blending wear glamorous gala dress Collected Works , vol. 1, eds. 16 of commerce, spectacle and culture that became subject to until 1866." TIEDEMANN, Adorno’s critique and that of other representa-tives of SCHWEPPENHÄUSER, Frankfurt a.M. the Frankfurt School in the mid-twentieth century. An expanded circle of 1974 visitors was subject to 14 6 Adolph von Menzel, The Studio Wall disciplinary measures, as See WARD-JACKSON, Access to studios was still reserved for an exclusive Tony Bennett has discussed p. 348 audience, and art was disseminated to bourgeois society at length. 17 Bennett con- 15 through illustrated journals. Phillipp Ward writes that ceives the museum not only Carol DUNCAN, in: Dumont, "in the early nineteenth century it became a fashionable as a place of instruction, Geschichte der Kunst, (The Oxford obligation for highbred foreign visitors to Rome to tour but also as a place that History of Western the workshops," and that "engravings depicting artists’s ostentatively altered be- Art) , London 2000, Cologne 2003, studios appeared in popular illustrated journals and havioural norms and inscribed p. 405. sculptors explained works in progress to select visitors." 14 them in the body. From the 16 Adolph von Menzel’s picture shows a later atelier situation, mid-nineenth century, a DUNCAN, p .405. and the serial hanging of casts and death masks conveys series of measures was 17 a notion of serial, industrial work. There is an uncanny developed to educate broad See Tony and dramatic air about the death masks, and bodies are social strata to appreciate BENNETT, The Birth of the Museum: shown in dismembered form. Viewers are emotionally art. Brochures, guided History, Theory, involved in the picture. A threatening feeling looms, tours, and instructions Politics , London 1995 evoked, among others, by the fact that we can see but served to inculcate a a small excerpt of the whole space. Viewers are kept in specific chastened habitus. 18 See Oliver the dark about the remaining space, and no autonomous The paternalist instruction MARCHART, "Die subject position exists. This is no longer a simple work of manual labourers at the Institution spricht, and sales space; instead, the 'studio' is here charged world fair in Glasgow Kunstvermittlung in variable and mysterious ways. included a ban on spitting, als Herrschafts- und als raising one’s voice, or Emanzipations- 7 The New Salle des États, Paris. Louvre 18 technologie," in: excessive movement. This Wer spricht? The doors of the new Salle des États are flanked setting of instruction Autorität und Autorschaft in protectively by neo-Baroque figures, personifications of effectuated choreography Ausstellungen , France. The discourse attendant upon exhibitions and the with implicit actors, eds. JASCHKE, MARTINEZ-TUREK, founding of museums at the end of the nineteenth century behavioural drills, and STERNFELD, Vienna, was oriented toward the national. Collections, moreover, distance-maintaining 2005, pp. 36/37 were organised along historical and stylistic lines. 15 regulations. Carol Duncan stresses the ideological benefit of public art museums in a world increasingly determined by the 8 Jules Alexandre Grün, bourgeoisie. Existing princely and royal art exhibitions Friday at the Salon des were often rededicated as public exhibitions. She observes Artistes Francais that "in 1815, almost every Western capital, whether a Sculptures were exhibited at monarchy or a republic, had such a museum. Some of the large fora, like the Salon de so-called 'national galleries' were obviously nothing Paris and the Royal Academy other than established princely collections bearing new in London. These fora partly 032 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
9 Galerie 43 at the Landesmuseum Hannover 10 Dome Gallery, Landesmuseum 1917 11 Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich: The Velvet and Silk Café, Ladies Fashion Exhibition , Berlin 1927
represented the performance of a bourgeois public sphere, early exhibitions of the 19 comparable to cafés, parliaments and newspapers, thereby Russian Constructivists LOCHER, p. 23. rendering obvious that access to the 'public sphere' and were important stations 20 Walter thus to the discursive power was reserved for a small for abandoning the picture GRASSKAMP, section of the population. How images were assessed was frame; exhibits were, "Die weisse 19 Ausstellungswand," now related to a 'public' discourse. however, not hung in linear in: Wolfgang fashion. As Grasskamp ULLRICH, Juliane VOGEL, Weiss , 9 Galerie 43 at the Landesmuseum Hannover observes, it was the Große Fischer 2003, Walter Grasskamp’s exhaustive chronology shows that the deutsche Kunst-ausstellung pp. 29 -63. practice of hanging images in a single row on a white wall [Great German Art Exhibi- was largely established in German museums. 20 While eighteenth tion] of all things, held in and nineteenth-century museums commonly adopted the former the newly built Haus der courtly practice of presenting art objects on coloured wall deutschen Kunst [House of spans and vivid wallpaper, a gradual shift occurred toward German Art] in Berlin in upper-class interiors featuring quasi-residential collection 1937, that bears witness arrangements. The Impressionists assumed a pioneering role to the triumph of the white when they mounted sales exhibitions in their workshops-cum- exhibition wall. studios around 1870. In 1888, Paul Signet demanded exhibits to be hung in a single row, and already in 1888 gray fabric 11 Mies van der Rohe and was used preferably to cover exhibition walls. We can never- Lilly Reich: The Velvet and theless imagine late nineteenth-century exhibition spaces Silk Café, Ladies Fashion as distinctly colourful and splendid. Between 1870 and Bxhibition, Berlin 1927 1900, single-row handing became the preferred convention; Nevertheless, numerous human eye-level became the basic measure, and exhibitions experimental exhibition and spaces were planned accordingly with lower ceilings. spatial designs existed, especially in the twenties 10 Dome Gallery, Landesmuseum 1917 and thirties, to which The white wall, however, derives from architecture and the contemporary artists often interior furnishing of modernity, and can be traced to the refer these days. One such brighter design factories and workspaces. In 1906, white example is Mies van der Rohe walls were used to design one part of the Jahrhundert- and Lilly Reich’s Velvet and ausstellung deutscher Kunst [Centennial Exhibition of German Silk Café (1927). Visitors’ Art] at the National Gallery in Berlin. The director of bodies were conceived here the National Gallery thereafter retained this exhibition not as disembodied pairs of technique on the upper floor. Almost concurrently, this eyes, but also as subjects form of presentation was also introduced in the Rhineland. enjoying themselves and Initially, walls were mostly covered with white or pale- exchanging ideas. The softly gray fabric, and a white or light-coloured wall design flowing fabrics create niches also began to assert itself in the academies. Especially and blinds, providing spaces in the Vienna Secession exhibition arrangements became for smaller groups. increasingly colder from 1903 onward. In 1910, a solo exhibition of the works of Gustav Klimt presented the 12 Herbert Bayer, Walter modern exhibition practice to an international audience. Gropius and Laszlo Moholy- The Venice Biennale, founded in 1895, played a decisive Nagy. Trade Union Building, role in spreading this practice. In the second decade of Berlin 1936 the twentieth century, studio aesthetics increasingly Another example is the became a convention of museum exhibition practice. The education of workers in a 033 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
12 Herbert Bayer, Walter Gropius and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Trade Union Building, Berlin 1935 13 A Glance at the Exhibition on Cubism and Abstract Art , The Museum of Modern Art, New York 1936 14 Exposition internationale du Surrealisme , Man Ray, Max Ernst, Miro, Dali, Tanguy, Ceiling installation: Duchamp, Paris 1938 15 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Atrium 1959
very modern-seeming exhibition set-up, which provided a developed with the differ- 21 predetermined itinerary on different levels. The viewer entiation of the art system, BÄTSCHMANN, pp. 189/190. became the subject of instruction. Visitors were offered in which spectacular museum 22 the possibility of a change of perspective, together with buildings played an impor- See Serge different lines of view and vistas. At the same time, they tant role in the competition GUILBAUT, Wie New York die Idee der could draw close to the artifacts on display. Auratising for public favour. The para- Modernen Kunst the objects was dispensed with; instead, they served as digm of such buildings is gestohlen hat , Dresden, Basel, print media conveying knowledge and as means of directly Frank Lloyd Wright’s sensa- 1997. addressing visitors as a political group. tional Solomon R. Guggenheim 23 Museum, designed in 1943 to See Brandon 13 A Glance at the Exhibition on Cubism and Abstract Art . house the collection of ab- TAYLOR, "Kunstmuseen," in: The Museum of Modern Art, New York 1936 stract art, and built between Geschichte der The exhibition convention now widely known as the White 1956 and 1959 on a corner Kunst, (The Oxford History of Western 23 Cube asserted itself on an international scale in the plot on Fifth Avenue. Such Art) , London 2000, thirties and forties, among others at the Museum of Modern spec-tacular buildings de- Cologne 2003, p. 514. Art in New York where the opening exhibition was mounted viate from the linear design in 1936 in what was now acclaimed as an 'international of former museum buildings, style.' From 1945, this type of exhibition was considered enabling vista and relations the generally accepted norm. almost capable of producing hallucinatory effects. Archi- 14 Exposition internationale du Surrealisme , Man Ray, tecture often competes with Max Ernst, Miro, Dali, Tanquy, Duchamp, Paris 1938 and stands in a conflicting Artists also began to question the single-row, auratic relationship with the art on hanging of exhibits and its implications, among others display. In the exhibition at the 1938 exhibition of Surrealist work in Paris. Of hall, visitors are positioned special interest here is Duchamp’s installation using bags less as individuals, than as of coal suspended from the ceiling. The only source of a mass divided into small light was the stove at the centre, said to be coal-fired. sections. Central perspective In effect, the bags were empty, stuffed with paper, and is no longer the exclusive the stove was lit with electricity. Duchamp thus established architectural paradigm; vistas a relationship between the gallery space and its implicit and open spaces no longer presuppositions. An abundance of artifacts, things and deploy the subject as a ruler fabrics, odour (a coffee roaster), the laughter of asylum of perspective but instead inmates via a loudspeaker were supposed to evoke a syn- subject it to events occur- aesthetic and confusing experience, and to arouse desires. 21 ring in the exhibition space.
15 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Atrium 1959 16 Yves Klein, Anthro- A new wave of museum building began in 1945. Due to the pométrie et Symphonie migration movements and the altered international balance monotone , Paris, 1960 of power brought about by the Second World War, American The new art forms, like collectors now had huge collections of Impressionist and video and performance, also Post-Impressionist works and, morever, they collected provided women with access modern and abstract works. 22 New economies of attention to art, since these fields 034 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
16 Yves Klein, Anthropométrie et Symphonie monotone , Paris,1960 17 Andy Warhol, Silver Pillows , New York Castelli Gallery 1966 18 Palermo: Wall painting, 1971 19 8.10.72, Last day of Documenta 5 , Harald Szeemann among artists
were less occupied by men than traditional genres like like freelance artists. This 24 painting and sculpture. The new media of art were never- brought the various actors Abigail SOLOMON-GODEAU, theless pervaded by patriarchal patterns, even though in the field of art into "Die Beine der Gräfin," in: these had meanwhile been modified. The ideal of the idle, competing positions, whose Weiblichkeit als culturally refined aristocratic male had shifted into the structure was clearly hier- Maskerade , ed. 26 Liliane WEISSBERG, ideal of the energetic, enterprising male. This relat- archical. Daniel Buren has Frankfurt a.M., ionship also emerged in the new art directions, and the commented on the curator’s 1994 p. 121. topos of the genius was once again revived. As Abigail unifying meta-function: 25 Solomon-Godeau writes: "This development is largely the "More and more, the subject TAYLOR, p. 515. consequence of the redefinition of masculinity under the of an exhibition tends not 26 auspices of a bourgeois culture. The aristocratic, courtly to be the display of Beatrice von BISMARCK, ideal of male comeliness and elegance was irreconcilable artworks, but the exhibition "Curating," in: Du with a new gender ideology, according to which the concept of the exhibition as a work Monts Begrifflexikon zur of beauty and grace was increasingly and exclusively of art. [...] The organizer zeitgenössischen associated with feminity." 24 assumes the contradictions; Kunst , ed. BUTIN, Cologne 2002, 27 it is who safeguards them." pp. 56-59 17 Andy Warhol, Silver Pillows , New York Castelli While this critique became 27 Gallery 1966 visible as a contribution to Daniel BUREN, The exhibition space also became a subject for discussion the catalogue for Documenta "Exposition d’une expostion," in: increasingly among conceptual artists. Andy Warhol’s work 5, it was also integrated Documenta5, Ausstellungs- follows on iconographically from Duchamp’s ceiling instal- into the exhibition as a katalog ; quoted in lation. Nevertheless, this work does not negate the white whole. Robert Smithson BÄTSCHMANN, p. 222 The original space, but instead renders it visible. cancelled his participation. English version is reprinted at: http://www.e-flux. 18 Palermo, Wall painting, 1971 Positionings in the field com/projects/ In the 1960s, a radical paradigm shift occurred in the now had to be negotiated be- next_doc/d_buren_ printable.html fine arts: Pop Art, Fluxus, Concept Art all focused at- tween curators, artists, and tention on 'the institution of art' and the relationship institutions. Power – and between art and the financial market. Artists integrated social, cultural and economic references to philosophical discourses into the works. On capital – is subject to nego- a theoretical level, moreover, the fine arts were subject tiation. Professionalisation to review, as Brandon Taylor, among others, has observed: points to the emergence of "A sociology based on statistical empiricism, as developed courses in curating. Post- for instance by Pierre Boudieu in The Rules of Art (1969), graduate courses, like the related a dedication to art institutions with factors like Postgraduate Program in education and class membership. Since the 1960s, conceptual Curating at Zurich Uni- artists have repeatedly and directly addressed the relation- versity of the Arts (ZHdK), ship between art museums and the power to define culture; aim to provide theoretically for instance, Michael Asher and Hans Haacke, and most well-grounded training, lead- recently Louise Lawler and Andrea Fraser, have debated ing to collaborative working institutional structures and the meaning of gaze conditions methods and projects. in the work." 25 20 Daniel Buren, Une Peinture 19 8.10.72, last day of Documenta 5 , Harald Szeemann en 5 sur deux murs , 1973/76 among artists Brian O’Doherty’s collection Harald Szeemann was the prototype of the free curator. His of essays The White Cube , exhibitions became 'works,' and the impressario staging published in 1974, attempted them an author. This development occurred, since curators to describe the framing power no longer worked only as salaried staff for museums or of the white exhibition space other institutions, that is to say, as a 'function' of the as an institution within art, museum, but as independent guest or migrant workers, especially its elevating, requiring them to make themselves known and recognisable, charismatic, and ideological 035 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
20 Daniel Buren. Une Peinture en 5 sur deux murs , 1973/76 21 Entrance Hall, Architecture and Design Collection, MoMA, New York, 1984 22 Materials – A Temporary Archive of Feminist Art Practices in Contemporary Art , Künstlerhaus Bremen, 1999
effects. O’Doherty’s polemical and combative tone revealed performative presentation as 28 Brian O’DOHERTY, that aesthetic debates also involved social groups a hegemonic demonstration: In der weißen formulating and rejecting claims. Thus, he writes: "During "[…], the hard facts are Zelle. Inside the White Cube. Part the classical period of the polarisation of artist and that Bell helicopters are 3: Kontext als audience, the gallery space preserved its status quo by manufactured by the Fort Text . Eds. KEMP and BRÜDERLIN, implementing its contradictions in the described socio- Worth corporation Textron, Berlin, 1996, aesthetic imperatives. For many of us, the gallery space a major U.S. defense pp. 84/ 85 has negative associations to this day. Aesthetics becomes contractor, which supplies 29 an elitist affair: the gallery space is exclusive. Neatly the Bell and Huey model See Film by Stefan RÖMER: isolated from each other, the objects on display somewhat helicopters used against the Conceptual resemble precious items, jewelry or silver – aesthetics civilian populations of El Paradies , 2006 becomes a commodity: the gallery space is expensive. What Salvador, Honduras, Nicar- 30 it contains is almost incomprehensible without specialist agua, and Guatemala. But Crimp Douglas: "The Art of guidance: art in the gallery space is difficult. An exclusive because the contemporary art Exhibition" in On audience, valuable objects, difficult to understand – these of exhibition has thought us the Museum’s Ruins , London ingredients make for social, financial and intellectual to distinguish between the 1993, p. 275 snobbery, which our system of limited production, our political and the aesthetic, 31 values, and our social behaviour wholly reproduce (and in a New York Times editorial The eponymous the worst case parody). No other space corresponds better entitled 'Marvelous MOMA' publication emerged from the to the prejudices and values of the upper middle classes was able to say of MOMA’s exhibition in Graz; see Peter and boosts its self-image more effectively. proud new object: 'A heli- WEIBEL, Kontext copter, suspended from the Kunst , Cologne, 1996. The classical gallery of modernity hangs in limbo between ceiling, hovers over an studio and lounge. Here, the conventions of both zones escalator in the Museum of move around on neutral ground. Here, moreover, the respect Modern Art…. The chopper is for the artist’s achievement utterly reshapes the bourgeois bright green, bug-eyed and striving for private property. It does so because ultimately, beautiful. We know that it the gallery is a sales facility, quite unobjectionally so. is beautiful because MOMA The mysterious social customs clustering around this fact, showed us the way to look the stuff of which our social comedy is made, deflect at the 20th century.'" 30 attention from business, which is about attributing a material value to an object that effectively has none.” 28 22 Materials – A Temporary In these essays, O’Doherty referred to illustrations of Archive of Feminist Art concept art, which used visual means to formulate strategic Practices in Contemporary counterdiscourses, and which reflected their fetish Art , Künstlerhaus Bremen character of art and the conditions of its production, Works of the eighties and distribution, and reception. Prompted by philosophy, nineties were subsumed under linguistics and structuralism, art, its installations and the term context art and objects were subject to a radical reinterpretation. These displayed in an eponymous visual rereadings remained not only on a formal level but exhibition; the works focused also revealed political connections. 29 explicitly on institutional, political, and social con- 21 Entrance Hall, Architecture and Design Collection, texts, that is, the context MomA, New York, 1984 of discourses. Subsuming Art and exhibition institutions now became a subject very different artistic increasingly discussed in art journals and academic practices under a single publications. The dehistoricising effect of the neutral term is, however, in itself presentation of artifacts, as occasioned by an idealising, reductive, a programmatic ennobling exhibition practice was criticised, among monopolising of discourse others, by Douglas Crimp in On the Museum’s Ruins . Writing that some artists therefore about the exhibition of a combat helicopter at MoMA, which rejected. 31 Institutional celebrated it as a beautiful object, Crimp classifed this critique affiliated itself 036 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
Sturtevant, Warhol Flowers , 1965 , View of exhibition space, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, 25 September 2004 – 30 January 2005
with political concerns and sought new formats of self- arranged therein became 32 organisation. Once more, the power structures within the questionable; certainties Marion von OSTEN, "Producing institution of art were subject to negotiation. Under the dissolved. Appropriation Art Publics - Making Worlds! Zum artistic direction of Helmut Draxler, Andrea Fraser still deployed the subject Verhältnis von examined the Kunstverein München in 1993 as a Gesellschaft as the subject of central Kunstöf- des Geschmacks (A Society of Taste) fentlichkeit und . Free floating groups perspective; this subject Gegenöffent- of cultural producers committed to politics and feminism must exhibit restrained, lichkeit," in: Publicum , RAUNIG, protested the possibility of using art institutions as controlled behaviour and WUGGENIG, Vienna, sites for the articulation of agonistic interests. Besides become a pair of 'wandering 2006. the occasionally booming market for paintings, a 'counter- eyes.' Nevertheless, the 33 public' based on cooperative working methods has emerged status of the art object, Detailed, but problamatic in the in the niches of culture. (In the German-speaking world, space, spectator and artist tendency of this includes, among others, Büro Bert und Botschaft e.V. changes, for where am I if validation: KUBE VENTURA, Holger: in Berlin, Shedhalle in Zürich, Künstlerhaus in Stuttgart, art is no longer art but Politische Kunst Depot in Vienna, Künstlerhaus Bremen). Reflecting on this imitation? Begriffe, in den 1990 Jahren im development, Marion von Osten remarks: "Beyond the deutschsprachigen familiar artistic strategies, there also existed, from a Seldom disclosing her first Raum , Wien, 2001 historical perspective since the rise of the transmission name and only signing her complex of bourgeois art, a tactical usage of institu- works with her surname, tionalised spaces by groups of artists, left-wing, anti- Sturtevant thus also in- racist, and feminist collectives and of course consumers directly broaches the themselves. These tactics, including the use of the art subject of gender and the gallery for debates, meetings, workshops, film programmes, attributions of masculinity community projects, and so forth, became active in the and femininity bound up shadow of the official art market, its power of dis- therewith. What do we see – tribution and a bourgeois public sphere; in Michel de original or copy? Sturtevant Certeau’s terms, they can be considered an attempt to eventually claimed in the appropriate and reinterpret hegemonic structures – in the catalogue that one collector knowledge that they will not simply‚vanish." 32 Other forms passes off one of her works of knowledge production, oriented not towards display but as a genuine Warhol, since process, also mattered in these bureaus, clubs, action he is no longer able to match groups, artists’ houses and media initiatives. Integrating artists and works. Subtly, these groups and their working methods into the spaces of this failure also calls into representation ran the risk of keeling over into a question the art market. stylised, symbolic gesture. 33 We have now arrived in the 23 Sturtevant, Warhol Flowers, 1965 , View of exhibition present, where the advent of space, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, 2004/05 digital media often renders In Sturtevant’s work, the White Cube functioned as a impossible the distinction self-quote; the status of space, art and the bodies between copy and original; 037 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
in reality, pixeled printouts of a so-called 'original' 34 are indistinct therefrom. Manipulated images are also no Martin JAY, "Scopic Regimes of longer distinguishable from 'reproductions.' The truth Modernity," in: Hal Forster (ed.): claim of art and re-production is thus dissolved. The gaze Vision and regime of modernity is shifting towards a hallucinatory Visuality , Routledge 1988. visual, which Martin Jay has presented in detail as one of three overlapping scopic regimes of (post)modernity. 34 35 Beatrice von Notwithstanding the manifold artistic and theory-based BISMARCK, Making critique of exhibition situations, of the ensemble of "Exhibitions, Processing rule-governed procedures for the circulation, production Relations," in: and reception of art, of the disciplining of subjects, of PAKESCH, BUDAK: Protections, Das the practices deployed to contain discourses, the White ist keine Cube remains the preferred mode of presentation in Ausstellung, This is not an contemporary museums and galleries. Often, reference is Exhibition , Graz made to the sensuous, self-explanatory presence of the 2006, pp. 41-57. work, and the object is situated within the tradition of 36 idealistic aesthetics as an inexplicable, incircumventable Anna SCHOBER, Montierte thing-in-itself. Objects and subjects are arranged in a Geschichten, programmatisch relatively rigid hierarchical relationship. All types of inszenierte exhibition – whether art exhibitions or indeed video, historische Ausstellungen , design, history, or knowledge exhibitions – are meanwhile Vienna 1994. often subject to politics with regard to their commercial- isation, their connection with the tourist industry, and their representation function (that is, to represent the city, nation, professional group, industry sector), and less with regard to an expand educational remit. The key measure of things is the number of visitors. 35 Exhibition formats consequently become aligned – the staged media spectacle enters classical art and knowledge exhibition formats, and the ennobling gesture of the museum moves into product fairs. 36 Media-based modes of display do not alter the passive strolling through an exhibition as such, but they can also create an infantilisation of visitors towards the senses. Instead of this apparent compensation of the passivity of visitors in the mass-media-staged exhibition, a new diversification of exhibition formats would need to be claimed. One measure of quality is a fundamental involvement of the public in terms of participation, discussion, and self-empowerment. Available as a banner and sticker, Antoni Muntadas’s statement (which can also be read vice versa) points in this direction: "Warning: Perception requires Involvement."
038 Issue # 06/10 : 1,2,3, --- Thinking about exhibitions
Media Art at University of Arts Berlin and has recently ON participated in Documenta 12, Shanghai Biennial, and Rot- CURATING.org terdam Film Festival. She is now a professor at UDK Berlin.
Florian Waldvogel is director of the Kunstverein in On-Curating.org is an independent international Hamburg. From 2001 to 2003 he worked as artistic director web-journal focusing on questions around curatorial of the Kokerei Zollverein, Contemporary Art and Criticism practise and theory. in Essen. From 2006 to 2008 he was curator at Witte de With in Rotterdam. Florian Waldvogel writes regularly on Publisher: contemporary art. Dorothee Richter Sabine Gebhardt Fink holds a post-doc position at the Web and Graphic Design Concept: Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts, ICS, since 2004; Michel Fernández since August 2008 "associate professor" and 2008-2010 locum tenens assistant to the Head of Department in Cultural Graphic Design Sixth Issue: Studies in the Arts in the Department of Cultural Analysis Megan Hall and Art Education at the Zürich University of the Arts (ZHdK), Switzerland; guest lecturer in art history at the Sixth Issue: Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany. Curator of Performance 1,2,3,---Thinking about exhibitions and Contemporary Art.
Editor: Florian Zeyfang is an artist and lives in Berlin. He works Dorothee Richter with multiple media, including photography, video, and installation. His interest in experimental film resulted in Translation: exhibitions like Slow Narration Moving Still (Umeå 2009), Mark Kyburz, Talking Back and Queer Reading – An Essay 1,2,3 ... Avant-Gardes (Warsaw / Stuttgart / Bilbao 2007/8) on Performance Theory and its Possible Impacts on and Poor Man’s Expression (Vienna 2004, Berlin 2006). He has Dissemination of Art / A Brief History of Exhibition Making been active in collaborations and curatorial initiatives since his activeties in the group Botschaft (Berlin 1990-95), Proof Reading: recent projects related to Cuban film and architecture ( 4D – Siri Peyer 4Dimensions, 4Decades , Havana 2003). He is Professor for Moving Image at the Academy of Fine Arts in Umeå, Sweden. Supported by: Publications: 1,2,3… Avant-Gardes (eds. Ronduda / Zeyfang, Postgraduate Program in Curating, Institute for Warsaw/Berlin 2007); Pabellón Cuba (eds. Schmidt-Colinet / Cultural Studies in the Arts (ICS), Zurich University Schmoeger / Valdes Figueroa / Zeyfang, Berlin 2008), and of the Arts (ZHdK) upcoming: Poor Man's Expression (eds. Ebner / Zeyfang, Berlin 2010), Slow Narration Moving Still (Berlin, 2011).
Martin Ebner is an artist living in Berlin. He is the publisher of Starship Magazine together with Hans-Christian BIOGRAPHIES Dany and Ariane Müller.
Zoë Gray is an assistant curator at Witte de With, Centre for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam.
Annette Hans is curator the Kunstverein in Hamburg.
Paul O'Neil is a curator, artist and writer based in Bristol. He is a Great Western Research Alliance (GWR) Research Fellow in Commissioning Contemporary Art with Situations at the University of the West of England in Bristol.
Dorothee Richter: She is director of the Postgraduate Program in Curating at the University of the Arts Zurich. Before she was teaching at Bermen University, Lueneburg Universtiy, Ecole des Beaux Art, Geneva, Merz Akademie Stuttgart and was artistic director at Künstlerhaus Bremen. Co-Founder of Curating Degree Zero Archive.
Nicolaus Schaffhausen: since 2006 is the director of Rotterdam's Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art. In June 2005 he was appointed founding director of the European Kunsthalle in Cologne for a period of two years. He has been commissioned to curate the German pavilion for the 52nd and 53d Biennial in Venice in 2007 and 2009.
Hito Steyerl is a filmmaker and writer. She teaches New