Understanding Recent Initiatives to “Institute” by Contemporary Art Spaces
Rebecca Boswell
MA Thesis, Semester 1, 2020-2021 Supervisor: Prof. Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes
Museum Studies, University of Amsterdam Student ID: 12791385
1 Abstract
This study examines recent examples of ‘instituting’ by contemporary art institutions within the Netherlands. The central questions which guide this research ask: How do today’s art institutional experiments address issues of social change?, and, in what ways and for whom are artists and art workers instituting differently? This study was inspired by the recent surge in instituting and instituent practices by artists and contemporary art institutions in countries such as the Netherlands. It is also a response to the current lack of analysis and critique on the part of writers and theorists about these recent developments in art. The two main cases of my analysis are Kunstinstituut Melly’s name change initiative (2017-2021), Rotterdam, and the artistic-collaboration ‘Sites for Unlearning (Art Organisation)’ (2013-2017/18) between Casco Art Institute and Annette Krauss, in Utrecht. These case studies are both multi-year initiatives within small to medium-scale art institutions involving institutional actors and artists, and engaging different constituency groups. I aim to report on the purpose, nature and approaches of these initiatives, and understand what outcomes they achieve for their constituencies and the institutions themselves. This study finds that current initiatives of instituting are informed by legacies of institutional critique and developments in the curatorial, such as new institutionalism, as well as understandings of the institution as socially constructed and performed. Through analysis of individual case studies, my research also elaborates on various performative approaches deployed for art institutional change, as methods which engage constituents over the cause and direction for change, and – to varying degrees – involve them in the process itself.
Keywords: Contemporary Art Institutions, Social Change, Instituting, Institutional Critique, Renaming, Decolonisation, New Institutionalism, Institutional Speech, Unlearning Institutional Habits
2 Table of Contents
Introduction 4
Case Studies 14
1: Kunstinstituut Melly, Name Change Initiative, 2017-2021, Rotterdam 18
Part I: The Role of Political Activism in Bringing About Institutional Change 18
Part II: The Renaming Process 24
2: Annette Krauss and Casco Art Institute, ‘Sites for Unlearning (Art Organisation)’, Utrecht, 2013-2017/18 37
Conclusion 52
Appendix 55
Bibliography 63
3 Introduction
In the context of social and political urgencies across the globe, artists and institutions are experimenting with ways that art can meet the social challenges of the present. Perspectives on how art institutions can best serve artists and the public represent an array of complex issues across representation and visibility, equal access and opportunity, labour conditions, decolonisation and climate action, to name only a few. Institutional reform and the trialling of new institutional models are important because they shape the context in which artists can continue to use the cultural sphere to challenge their social and political surroundings. Many share the belief that art plays an important role in society, yet national cultural policy influences what institutions can achieve.1 In countries like the United Kingdom for instance, public art institutions compete for limited funding, while at the same time working increasingly to fill gaps in social services to their local communities, as recent decades of austerity have led to cuts in public infrastructure, welfare and local governance.2
Political struggles have long held an arena in art. The dematerialisation of art which began in the 1960s with conceptualism led to developments in art which challenged its system, such as institutional critique. The emergence of collaborative, post-studio, social practices (Bishop 2021, 8) also engaged audiences in new ways, activating further the borders between art and social movements. Significantly, alongside continuous developments, the institutional hosts of this arena - such as the kunsthall or contemporary art space - have also contributed to the politicisation of art. Critical perspectives of the agency of institutions, including by the institutions themselves (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 7), have emerged with the evolution of exhibition formats, with widening parameters of artistic, curatorial and research activities
1 Jeroen Boomgard (2006) has for example argued for the radicalisation of art’s autonomy as a way to free it from measures and criteria placed on it by public and private sectors. 2 This is an observation shared by a number of arts directors in the UK who were recently interviewed by Frieze magazine about how regional arts venues will be affected by post-Brexit government agendas focused on devolution and ‘levelling up’ (Anderson, Hundal, McAleese and Thurlow, 2021).
4 within the institution. This coincides with general developments in art which broadened the definitions of the artist,3 curator,4 ‘the curatorial’,5 and problematized the role of spectators.6
What are today’s visions for the art institution that meet wider demands for social change? In what ways and for whom should artists and art workers institute differently? This study will examine recent examples of ‘instituting’ by contemporary art institutions within the Netherlands. The selected case studies are multi-year initiatives by small to mid-scale art institutions who engage notions of instituting in efforts to bring about organisational change; in dialogue with their constituencies and specific issues of their local contexts. I wish to understand what methods, formats and concepts are used, and also examine the dynamics of their exhibition – the ways by which the projects are made public. Then, I am interested in what social-political urgencies inform these initiatives. What outcomes do they achieve for their constituencies and for the institutions themselves? Finally, what can these projects communicate with regard to relationship between art and society today?
The definition of ‘instituting’ which I use for this study follows Simon Sheik and Athena Athanasiou’s use of the term, which sees the institution as something which is performed. Where ‘instituting’ describes an artistic project or institutional activity, the core intent is to bring about transformational change (Sheik 2017, 126). In the tradition of institutional critique and movements such as new institutionalism (outlined below), the activities of instituting or experimental institutional practice are performed by institutional subjects (whether directly belonging to, or in collaboration with the institution) in the field of contemporary art: such as curators, artists, researchers, educators and administrators. I also borrow from Andrea Fraser’s definition of institutional critique which describes self-questioning as a defining characteristic of the practice (2005, 105). Continuous self-examination and critique, as well as the close relationship between theory and practice are defining qualities of instituting.
3 Expanded notions of authorship in art were influenced by conceptual artists such as Joseph Beuys, who developed the concept of social sculpture in the 1970s, theorising that everything is art, that every aspect of life could be approached creatively and, as a result, everyone has the potential to be an artist. 4 Harald Szeemann’s 100 Days as an Event, Documenta 5 (1972) is often cited as a seminal exhibition where Szeemann introduced a non-static format of a busy programme of happenings and events organised around multiple centres, playing the role of exhibition-auteur. 5 Curator and researcher Caroline Rito defines the curatorial as an open-ended approach to programming and research. Distinct from curating, which she describes as a constitutive practice a part of the traditions of collecting and exhibiting in the museum, the curatorial is a disruptive mode of inquiry: allowing movements across disciplines, lateral connections, juxtaposition and unexpected arrangements of ideas, images, concepts and so on (2020, 26). 6 Art historian Claire Bishop (2012) has theorised the rise in collaborative practices in art in the 2000s coining the term ‘social practice’. She famously critiqued the political and emancipatory claims of ‘participatory art’ and problematized its politicisation of the role of the spectator.
5 Before introducing the case studies of my research I provide some background to institutional experiments in art. I will briefly elaborate on general political and economic challenges facing art institutions in Western Europe, before discussing institutional critique and new institutionalism as key developments behind today’s critically-engaged art institution. Then, turning to recent interest in the art world for ideas of “instituting differently”,7 I briefly explore the connection between the institution and the individual through Cornelius Castoriadis’ theories of instituting and the imagination.
This research was inspired by the recent surge in instituting and instituent practices by artists and contemporary art institutions in countries such as the Netherlands. The two cases I have chosen can be regarded as trailblazers in this field, yet currently there is a lack of research and analysis into these emergent forms, and what contributions they are making to developments in contemporary art.
Pressures on the Present-Day Art Institution
Experiments with the institution model and exhibition frameworks have been driven in part by political and economic pressures on art institutions. In recent decades, new definitions of culture have been promoted by the economic system of neoliberalism implemented by nation-states across the West. Under the ‘neoliberal business of spectacle culture’ institutions have been encouraged to become financially independent from the state by implementing business structures and models, shifting to private-public ownership and finding new revenue streams (European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies, 2004).8 With the reduction of government funding for non-profit arts and cultural organisations state funding bodies in the UK, in the EU, and elsewhere have also set new funding requirements, demanding that institutions use corporate metrics of targeted delivery and achievement (Rito 2020, 50). The intervention of revenue-driven business logics into museum and exhibition programming (colloquially referred to as the ‘bums on seats model’) manifests as popular content and spectacle; such as the blockbuster show and similar tactics to draw high audience numbers. This has frustrated many in artistic and curatorial spheres who are against the economisation of art and the public sphere.9 The strengthening of administrative, managerial, marketing and finance departments of museums, including with people without
7 A similar phrase, “instituting otherwise” is used by BAK, basis voor actuele kunst in Utrecht in their mission statement, to describe their testing of institutional models which aim to connect the politics and discourse of their public programming with the practice of the institution. See https://www.bakonline.org/over-ons/. 8 ‘New Public Management’ is a term introduced in countries like Australia and the UK in the 1980s to refer to the neoliberal turn to business-like models of management in the state-supported sector (Phillips 2020, 218). 9 Jan Verwoert (2007) has for instance argued against the idea that an artist or curator should know the public whom they address, that it is a logic that succumbs to the instrumentalising logic of strategic marketing, and interferes with the discourse on how culture is valued.
6 specialised training in art, and the general shrinking of curatorial and research departments, is also symptomatic of this corporatisation process (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 11).
In Europe, the gradual demise of social democracy has shifted the public’s relationship to the state, as well as notions of the public sphere. This has brought with it demands for new avenues to engage in politics, and alternative forms of politics beyond market and managerial structures (Aikens 2016, 329). This has had impact upon museums and institutions of art, who, in the face of the many crises for democracy, have begun to reassess the civic nature of the institution. From this context new models emerge which see the art institution move “beyond critique of the status quo” (Aikens 2016, 343) and towards becoming a space which is both used by and useful to emerging political subjects and issues.
Institutional Critique
Important precursors to recent initiatives to institute within contemporary art are found in both artistic and curatorial developments of the last 50 years. The auto-critical art institution – a forerunner to today’s practices of ‘instituting’ – can be understood in the context of institutional critique. The first phase of institutional critique in the 1960s and 1970s was led by artists who challenged the authority of the art institution and the legitimating powers of inclusion and exclusion it had over the construction of history (Steyerl 2006, par. 5). Artists challenged the neutrality of the museum’s display, ideologies of its programming and embeddedness in the market (Bryan-Wilson 2003, 97). The artist Hito Steyerl writes that at this time the authority and ideology of the museum derived, culturally, from its traditional function of the state, its collecting and exhibiting functions also survived as legacies of the colonial project (2006, par. 5).10 First wave institutional critique – whose feminist proponents are quickly summoned with Linda Nochlin’s famous words, “Why Have There Been No Great Woman Artists?” – was thus a challenge to the institution on the basis of its assumed authority as a democratic institution of the state that claimed to be representative of its public. Political activist groups in the U.S. also organised against the museum during the late 1960s around issues such as working conditions for art workers, the corporate nature of the museum system, as well as its economic ties to the military-industrial complex (Bryan- Wilson 2003, 101).
10 As Tony Bennett and others have theorised, the museum’s origins were colonial and its purpose was to serve the creation of a nation’s past, and its identity (through narrating history and a canon, creating patrimony, preserving its heritage, and so on).
7 During the so-called second wave, artists remained the proponents of institutional critique, yet this time, they challenged the institution on the basis of its role in the production of art (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 12-13). New definitions of art which emerged out of conceptualism released art from being object or image-related and constrained to the studio (Ibid.) and instead began to include the social structures which surrounded it. Subsequently, institutional critique looked to the institutional conditions of art, the “apparatus that distributes, presents, and collects art”, in its analysis (Fraser 2005, 103). Excluding instances where museums censored certain artists and artworks early on in the movement, what followed was the general acceptance of institutional critique as an established method and genre. Observing this, critics of institutional critique have complained of its co-option and ‘institutionalisation’ (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 13). Conversely, others see this as a positive legacy of institutional critique; in that it introduced analytical tools and methods by which the structures, hierarchies and social functions of art could be continually examined, including by institutional workers themselves (Sheik 2006, par. 6). In this view, institutional critique remains a generative and critical apparatus in art.
A broader notion of the institution can also be found in the history of institutional critique. In her seminal article, “From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique” Andrea Fraser claims institutional critique made visible the institution as a broad set of relations and effects which infiltrates art’s production at every turn. Fraser argues that a notion of the ‘institution’ as extending far beyond the specific form of museums and galleries was already evident in the work of the first wave artists of institutional critique such as Hans Haacke, Marcel Broodthaers and Michael Buren. Pointing to specific examples from the site-specific interventions of this group she observes an enlargement of the concept of the institution of art to “the entire field of art as a social universe” (Fraser 2005, 103). This social field includes sites of presentation beyond the traditional white cube, corporate offices, collectors’ homes, and public space where art is shown; sites where art is produced, such as the studio, and the office; sites of the production of art discourse: catalogues, art magazines, symposia lecture; even sites of education such as fine art and art history programmes (Ibid.).
From this perspective, the ‘institution’ is not a clearly delineated object of critique but more a concentrated zone where a number of social and economic relationships become visible (Fraser 2005, 103). It is ‘the institution of art’ and at the same time, the process of art’s institutionalisation. This is taken a step further in Fraser’s example of Installation Munster
8 (Caravan)11 by artist Michael Asher, first exhibited in 1977. According to Fraser, this work revealed that the institutionalisation of art depends not on its display inside the recognisable frame of the white cube, but in the conceptual and perceptual frame of the viewer (Ibid.). Art thus becomes art when it engages the discourses and practices that acknowledge, value, evaluate, and consume it as art. As soon as something is perceived or declared as art, it becomes institutionalised, which is because it relies on the social; the perception of members of the field of art to recognise it as such (Ibid.). While Modernism established self- reflexivity in art, it remained confined to the medium. Under the Conceptual movement, art became viewed as a system. Hence, ‘the institution of art’ was now no longer external to the work of art, but a crucial condition of its existence (Ibid.). Equally, the institution of art is internalised by all who participate in its structures – by way of the concepts and frameworks, and modes of perception that are used to interpret, understand, or perceive it as such (Ibid.). Fraser’s line of argument thus finds that the proponents of institutional critique understood they were not attacking the institution from the outside, but from within. The same can be applied for critical approaches to the institution which came after, that those who critiqued the institution also believed somehow in the agency of the institution itself.
In this way, Fraser’s analysis contributes to current notions of the institution which shift the emphasis away from the institution itself and towards acts of ‘instituting’. According to Fraser institutional critique proved that there is no longer an ‘outside’ from which to critique the institution, and this is not only a perceptual mechanism but a condition of the pervasive effects of the market on art (2003, 100). Therefore, it is not a question of inside or outside, but how we learn from the “self-questioning […] that defines institutional critique as practice” (Fraser 2003, 105). In her view, the ultimate aim should not to escape or destroy the institution, but to change it. “It’s not a question of being against the institution: We are the institution” she famously declares (Ibid.). The challenge which Fraser supplies is one which persists today, how do people perform the institution in order to change it, thinking through “what kind of institution we are, what kind of values we institutionalise, what forms of practice we reward, and what kind of rewards we aspire to” (Ibid.).
New Institutionalism
Against neoliberal developments, globalisation, and the demise of the social welfare state in Northern Europe, the 1990s and early 2000s saw a number of curators lean into questions
11 First shown in Skulptur Projekte Münster 1977, and scheduled by the same event every ten years since, the work consisted of a rented caravan which was parked in different parts of the city during the exhibition. As Fraser observes in her account, visitors could find out where the work would be located each week from the museum, but at the site itself there was no information provided connecting it to art or the exhibition (103).
9 about the role and function of the art institution (Lind 2013, 29). New institutionalism – a term introduced by Norwegian curator and critic Jonas Ekeberg12 – aimed to highlight a number of these practices of curators predominately in Northwest Europe, such as Maria Lind, Jonas Ekeberg, Charles Esche and Søren Grammel, who, according to Ekeberg, were attempting to radically reorganise the art institution into more socially-engaged spaces (Cunnane 2014, 25). Many of the models and frameworks from this curatorial trend are now mainstream (often superficially chosen as museum design formats) however new institutionalism is an important development behind newer institutional experiments, as it marked a new critical awareness and politicisation of the institution, by the institution itself. For curator Charles Esche, a preference for the term ‘experimental institutionalism’ at this time emphasised the curatorial experiment within the institution (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 8). Esche was interested in the institution as a tool to investigate the democratic potential of art through community engagement; the idea that an art institution could ‘create’ or call upon a public through its activities (Esche 2013, 24-25).
Under this period of curatorial experimentation, the exhibition was conceptualised as a social project, an “active space between community center, laboratory and academy” (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 6). The institutional agents of new institutionalism were not only curators, but educational and administrative staff (Ibid.). As a variety of activities could thus take place within or alongside a project, and such events could be engaged at any or all stages of the process of exhibition making (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 5) methodologies were flexibly oriented towards conceiving the exhibition as a process (Lind 2013, 31). “The art institution […] functioned as a place of production, site of research and space for debate” the viewer playing a more active role (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 6). The subsequent blurring of boundaries between the production, presentation, and the reception/criticism of an exhibition was then also accompanied by the mixing of traditional roles between artist, curator, and spectator (Ibid.). By facilitating these iterative, dynamic and process-based exhibition frameworks, curators were seen to taking a more involved, creative role in the production of art, a phenomenon Paul O’Neill regarded as part of the ‘curatorial turn’ (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 12; O’Neill 2007, 15).
12 The term is rejected by some of the practitioners of the curatorial experiments Ekeberg identified in his writing, and it has not been canonised within academic discourse (Kolb & Flückiger). As Kolb & Flückiger propose Ekeberg’s ‘new institutionalism’ remains useful to give visibility to a collection of experimental practices within art institutions whose models and frameworks have today become mainstream. Alternatives also circulate, such as ‘experimental institutionalism’ by Charles Esche, or descriptions such as ‘experiments in new institutionality’ by Jorge Ribalta (Kolb & Flückiger).
10 The trialling of flexible institutional structures and formats can also be connected with the emergence of artistic methods that were participatory, process-oriented, and dialogical (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 12). For instance, curator Maria Lind argued that the practices of these artists proved that there were ways of working which were not reliant on the traditional white cube exhibition space, but there were a number of alternative ways an institution could provide framing to such work (Lind 2001, 235-257). Smaller, curatorially-led spaces in the field13 which had begun to take a more situated approach, were having a broader influence on curatorial discourse, particularly through programmes which researched a local institution’s relationship to the city, in a general movement that questioned the nature of the globalised art world (Ekeberg 2013, 21). Another contributing factor was the type of curatorial approaches linked to the art biennale, with a host of independent curators bringing experimental modes of display into their new positions at traditional institutions (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 12).
These new experiments with the art institution were a part of a process of becoming more critical of the institution’s position in the cultural-political and social landscape (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 6). This ‘politicisation of the institution’ (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 9) is evident in the motivations of curators at the time in various ways, from new investigations into museums own institutional histories (Lind 2013, 30); the institution becoming a space for activism and showing solidarity to social struggles (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 9); to explorations in the democratic or emancipatory potential of art (Esche 2013, 24). Studies and scholarship on exhibition histories also became established at approximately the same time (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 11). The discourse on changing attitudes toward the institution was reflected in the range of exhibition and seminars on the topic of the institution as well (Ibid.). A new critical awareness – via self-examination and critique – was characteristic of this moment of institutional experimentation.
Some have described new institutionalism as the internalisation of institutional critique by the art institution (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 13). While curators and administrators may have learned institutional critique from artists, one might question whether this internalisation or ‘co-option’ by the institution undoes institutional critique’s power as a form of criticality or resistance (Sheik 2006, par. 3). The commodification of artistic practices such as Dada and Fluxus which similarly criticised art and its institutions shared this same trajectory. However, this assessment relies on a belief that the artists of institutional critique were ‘pure’ in their critique (Sheik 2006, par. 3), owing to their somehow untainted position ‘outside’ of the
13 Witte de With in Rotterdam was among the new contemporary art spaces to spearhead such an approach.
11 institution. Whereas as we have seen, artists who critiqued the institution were the first to announce themselves as implicated in art’s system; as having internalised institutional frameworks of art which assign value, legitimacy, currency, and so on in the production of the artwork.
If institutional critique by artists has long been an accepted part of art discourse, then why should we expect institutional subjects – educated in those same art histories and frameworks which treat the museum as a constructed and loaded space (Bryan-Wilson 2003, 103) – to not make their own contribution, given the freedom to do so? Indeed, there is much that the contemporary art institution must defend under continuing neoliberal pressures to economise. And, as some argue, the simple fact that the museum has played the generous host to institutional critique over the decades may be because it predominately sees itself as a progressive and open-minded institution, as progressive as the political values advocated by art (Ibid). With the gradual integration of institutional critique and experimental curatorial approaches into the spaces of contemporary art we arrive at the situation today where there are many types of critical practitioners within institutions who are eager to interrogate their programmes and infrastructures. The self-reflexive art institution has shown itself to be a flexible site for many forms of social, practice and research-led critical enquiry and experimentation. In continued experiments to see what is possible, the institution is now regarded as a test site, a micro-site of society, where practitioners can stage prefigurative models for social change.
Castoriadis’ Theory of Instituting and the Imagination
The notion of the institution as something which is performed and therefore self-consciously created is best understood through the philosophy of Cornelius Castoriadis, whose analysis of the social-historical world sees acts of self-instituting as an essential feature of any society. For Castoriadis, institutions are not merely the organised bodies within society – government, military, schools or museums – but the ways in which society itself is constituted through instituting and the imagination (Sheik 2017, 126). His broad definition includes all social norms, values, language and procedures by which people interpret, produce and reproduce their social-historical situation (Ibid.). For Castoriadis, the symbolic and constructed nature of society itself reveals its institutions as essentially imaginary, created through what he names ‘social imaginary significations’ and ‘instituted social imaginaries’ (Sheik 2017, 127). While institutions are imaginatively formed, there are very material effects for the type of social and political realities which they produce and reproduce (Ibid.) through what structures, rituals, beliefs are given the mandate to exert power over
12 people’s lives. Institutions are created through our social relations, and through the constant reproduction of their instituted social imaginaries, and these practices of instituting at the same time form our own subjectivity (Ibid.).
However, though individuals are themselves formed by the institutions of society (gender, race, class, and so on), Castoriadis locates the origins of possibility for change in ‘the radical imagination’.14 Through ‘the radical imagination’ a person has the capability to reach beyond their social-historical situation – and the socially instituted realities which shape it – and dare to imagine alternative ways of being (Sheik 2017, 128). Radical and revolutionary change is thus the will of the radical imagination, requiring a complete break from past ways of doing. Art – through its ability to create new ideas and forms – is seen as a special conduit of the radical imagination in Castoriadis’ work, alongside philosophy, science and politics (Ibid.). If, following Castoriadis’ claims, the institution of society – is never complete (Sheik 2017, 129), then one can see why art institutions would be well suited to explore the imaginative potential of instituting, which is for Castoriadis, what makes change possible.
As legacies of institutional critique and movements such as new- and experimental- institutionalism reveal, the institutions of art are now engines of self-examination, consciously participating in their own symbolic construction, and increasingly called to expand their civic and social responsibilities. They ‘institute’ in a Castoriadian-like manner in the sense that they perform with the knowledge institutions are not static or stable, but are continuously communicated through praxis (Sheik 2017, 128). In examples where concepts of instituting directly come into play, self-instituting is directed towards the constructive possibilities of Castoriadis’ theory, that through creative acts of the imagination, we can envision possible alternatives, and innovating new forms, and new articulations in language and representation (Sheik 2017, 128-129).
14 Castoriadis’ use of the term ‘radical imagination’ joins others who have long-debated the unique role of the imagination in social and political change. Scholars Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish say among post-war Marxist thinkers Herbert Marcuse, Theodore Adorno, and Ernst Bloch, the notion of the radical imagination meant the “ability to imagine the world, life and social institutions not as they are but as they might otherwise be” (Haiven and Khasnabish 2010, 4). What distinguished the imagination from conventional thinking was its ability to speculate about the future, inviting the possibility of a different futures from the present one (Ibid.). The radical imagination is able support our struggle in the present by holding up an open, future space, one which “comes back” to “shake up” our thinking and work in the present (Ibid.). From their study of genealogies of the term, Haiven and Khasnabish also say the radical imagination is what helps us forge solidarity in the present with the experiences of other people, beyond various boundaries and divides (2014, 3-4).
13 Case Studies
Chapter 1: Kunstinstituut Melly, Name Change Initiative, 2017-2020, Rotterdam
For my second case study I have selected the 2017-2020 Name Change Initiative of Kunstinstituut Melly (formerly Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art) in Rotterdam. The name change process that was begun in 2017 was a direct response to an Open Letter by local artists and activists criticising the institution for supporting large-scale artistic projects on decolonisation without addressing the colonial histories contained in their institutional namesake. The three-year process involved a number of activities: a large online survey, multiple public forums, an advisory committee and a website to document the process and make it publically available. The institute also foregrounded their intentions for the process to bring about deeper institutional change, introducing new methodologies named Collective Learning, and through new modes of public outreach (Hernández Chong Cuy 2018).
My analysis of this case study will be undertaken in two parts. In the first part which will look at the role of activism in bringing about institutional change, I analyse the decolonial critique of the Open Letter and the way ‘criticality’ – as a hallmark of the auto-critical art institution – is problematised. I consider how the activism performs criteria of ‘instituent practice’ as theorised by Gerald Raunig in his proposals for contemporary manifestations of institutional critique. I then reflect upon the activists’ ambivalence toward the art institution, using Athena Athanasiou’s proposition for being ‘with-within-against’ – a stance which carries the double- bind of needing to both defend and critique public institutions. In the second section of this chapter I discuss at length the subsequent name change initiative (2017-2021) of Kunstinstituut Melly. Drawing from Sara Ahmed’s study of the language of diversity in institutional environments, I trace the visible discourse of ‘inclusion’ along this process, and how this is privileged over naming decolonial approaches that are in any case evident. Finally, I consider how the evolving process for the institution’s name change self- consciously engages in the production of institutional speech.
Chapter 2: Casco Art Institute and Annette Krauss, ‘Sites for Unlearning (Art Organisation)’, Utrecht
The second case study I have chosen is the 2017 collaborative research project between Casco Art Institute15 and Annette Krauss, ‘Sites for Unlearning (Art Organisation)’ (SfU). This
15 Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons is art organisation based in Utrecht, NL known for its critical and experimental approaches to institution-building, often presenting itself as a case study.
14 initiative was an example of an artist-researcher working closely with the institution, engaging all members of staff in a process-led, open-ended, collaborative study. In this project, a series of ‘unlearning exercises’ with Casco team members were used to expose and challenge the normative structures and practices of the small art organisation – the process of which was documented and later distributed as a publication. In this chapter I unpack unlearning as a critical tool to apply in an institutional setting, and a number of themes such as productivity and labour relations which much of the unlearning exercises were organised around. My analysis of SfU is supported by various concepts proposed by Irit Rogoff’s in her perspectives on art as a site for performative knowledge construction. Finally, reflecting on the potential for institutional transformation cited in the original aims of the project, I consider what were some of the long-term effects or ‘afterlives’ of SfU for the institution and its members.
Some Notes on an Additional Example: Jeanne van Heeswijk’s Exhibition ‘Trainings for the Not-Yet’ at BAK, Utrecht
I wish to briefly offer some remarks on another example which could have been relevant to my study. Krauss and Casco Art Institute presented a collaborative case between an artist- researcher and a group of institutional workers. However, there are other artist-led examples which interrogate the institution via the temporary space of the exhibition. Jeanne van Heeswijk’s exhibition ‘Trainings for the Not-Yet’ at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht (14 September 2019 – 12 January 2020) is one such example. Organised with a large number of collaborators from a variety of disciplines and social movements, this exhibition was convened as a series of community-to-community public trainings. The trainings and exchanges which were modest in scale and took place weekly, tackled a multitude of topics under umbrella themes of civic engagement, collectivity, and empowerment. In addition to this core programme of workshops was a community kitchen and several large-scale public meetings. This project intersected with larger, long-term programmatic inquiries at BAK, which has since 2000 been supporting art and research and testing institutional models under a political vision for art as a public sphere (BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, n.d.)
‘Trainings for the Not-Yet’ thus demonstrated possible ways for repurposing the art institution in light of present-day social and political urgencies, and the civic responsibilities an art institution could take up to its diverse constituencies. This project engaged specific notions of the public sphere (as a place to self-educate, gather, organise and debate) in its aims. At this level, it seems Heeswijk’s project (supported by BAK’s politicised institutional goals) speaks to a shift in how art institutions might facilitate social change. Stephen
15 Wright’s ‘politics of usership’ for example, understands this to be a changing relationship between institutions and their publics through the emergence of a new political subjectivity – which he terms, the ‘user’ (Aitkins 2016, 332). Wright’s discussion of ‘1:1 scale practices’ (social art projects operating at life scale with the societal contexts they seek to intervene in) contributes to an argument that projects such as van Heeswijk’s are shaping the ideas around what it means to institute. The specific configuration of relationships between users/constituencies, artists, and the institution in ‘Trainings for the Not-Yet’ presents new challenges for the role, function, and civic nature of institutions. There are specific questions to be asked around the nature of this engagement due to its duration, with the majority of the activities happening within the space of the exhibition. However, perhaps van Heeswijk’s project can be provisionally interpreted here as prefiguratively staging a social and political reworking of how art institutions serve their artistic communities and their local constituencies, and in what ways they choose to intervene in urgencies of the present. From this brief summary, ‘Training for the Not-Yet’ is an example of what type of artistic-project might also be covered by this Netherlands-based study on emergent instituting practices within contemporary art spaces.
Structure
The two main case studies I have introduced will be analysed individually with the intention to show different perspectives from which institutional change or instituting initiatives can be led. Kunstinstituut Melly’s name change is originally, and importantly, instigated by BIPOC artists and allies ‘outside’ the institution. This large institution subsequently leads a substantive renaming initiative in consultation with its public and with input from new constituencies. Casco’s project is a long-term and close collaboration between the team of a small art institution and artist Annette Krauss. Though operating at different scales, both cases engage a long-term process involving a diverse group of institutional actors, and both initiatives suggest institutional ‘self-work’ that is potentially transformative for the institution and its constituencies.
Methodology
My methodology uses critical analysis of the selected projects through formal analysis, review of archival material, organisational reports, related online commentary and literature review. In my research of Kunstinstituut Melly’s name change I was able to rely on extensive documentation of the multi-year process published by the institution as well as ample debate and commentary in mainstream and art journalism surrounding the events. Archival material
16 pertaining to ‘Site for Unlearning’ included audios and transcriptions of a number of the SfU gatherings. I also carried out original research in the form of a survey questionnaire to ten of the project’s original participants. The purpose of this was to solicit feedback on what participants considered were the long-term effects on the project for the institution. Half of the people invited (5/10) partook in the questionnaire and their responses are included in the Appendix. These provide a range of retrospective perspectives from director, curator, production and communication roles, as well as from former employees of the institution. In addition, personal communications with curator Staci Bu Shea during my time as Curatorial Intern at Casco (April-August 2020) gave further insight on the project and its legacy. I have indicated in the text where snippets of these conversations have been helpful.
17 1: Kunstinstituut Melly, Name Change Initiative, 2017-2021, Rotterdam
In December of 2020 the art institution formally known as Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art announced the results of their 3-year name change initiative. From January 27, 2021 they would be known as Kunstinstituut Melly. As it is widely known, the catalyst for this change was the ‘Open Letter to Witte de With’ published in June 2017 by a group of cultural workers, artists and activists, and signed by hundreds more. On its own website which documents the name change, the institution acknowledges the necessity of the critique delivered by the Open Letter and the key role it had in leading the institution to change (FKA WdW Name Change 2017). This chapter is dedicated to Kunstinstituut Melly’s renaming, and will be broken into two sections. In the first part which will look at the role of activism in bringing about institutional change, I analyse the political nature of the Open Letter and the way ‘critique’ – as a hallmark of the auto-critical art institution – is problematised. Following this, I discuss the activists’ critical ambivalence toward the institution, relating this to Athena Athanasiou’s theories of performing the institution in counter-institutional ways. In the second section of this chapter I discuss the subsequent name change initiative (2017-2021) of Kunstinstituut Melly. Drawing from Sara Ahmed’s study of the language of diversity in institutional environments, I examine the discourse of ‘inclusion’ and the production of institutional speech.
Part I: The Role of Political Activism in Bringing About Institutional Change
Critique as Instituent Practice: the Open Letter to Witte de With
The central critique of the Open Letter was that Witte de With16 could not claim to carry out critical work in its field while bearing the name of a Dutch coloniser (Martina et al. 2017). The institution’s name referred to its location on Witte de Withstraat (locally known as ‘whiter than white street’ in English) which was named after a 17th century Dutch naval officer of the VOC and WIC, Witte Corneliszoon de With (FKA WdW Name Change 2021). When the Letter was published the institution was about to launch a large project with decolonial and intersectional themes. Cinema Olanda: Platform – an extension of artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh’s and curator Lucy Cotter’s presentation at the 57th Venice Biennale – was promoted as a project aimed at giving visibility to underserved aspects of the Netherland’s
16 For the purposes of clarity when discussing the Open Letter I will use the former name of the institution in its shortened form Witte de With as that was the name the letter addressed, and what the institution was commonly called at the time.
18 post-colonial history (Ibid.). The Open Letter claimed that the institution’s so-called ‘criticality’ on issues such as decolonialism was severely contradicted by the colonial and racist origins of their name. It argued that by retaining the name Witte de With the institution was silencing the violent histories of slavery which this naval officer was a part. Furthermore, by failing to trouble the name, the authors argued, the institution continued to ascribe the name Witte de With with cultural capital, promoting the racial capitalist economy of Witte de Withstraat, developed as Rotterdam’s ‘hip’ art and cultural quarter. The problem of the name was first aired by participants and programmers involved in the planning for Cinema Olanda (FKA WdW Name Change 2021). This was, according to then-Director Defne Ayas, the first time the question the name had been raised (Martina et al. 2017). In the months following, project participants became frustrated by the lack of real engagement over the matter, and this led to the resignation of cultural critic Egbert Alejandro Martina from the project, and the co- writing of the Letter with other artists and activists (FKA WdW Name Change 2021).
By calling out Witte de With’s claims to criticality – which as we have discussed of the legacies of institutional critique, are now regarded as a mainstay of institutional practice – the Open Letter sharply questioned the role of critique in today’s art institution. If third wave institutional critique has been defined by its incorporation into the art institution, by curators and directors who deploy its methods of spatial and political criticism into their gallery architectures and programming (Sheik 2009, 30), the Open Letter expressed deep disillusionment with the matter-of-factness by which critique is practiced by the contemporary institution. The authors wrote that Witte de With – like many of its contemporaries – had embraced the artistic and intellectual work of people of colour in its programmes. The institution appeared to welcome institutional critique by new voices, yet it found it difficult to move beyond this performative embrace. “White art institutions […] are ‘excited’ to engage with feminist, queer, Black, intersectional and decolonial perspectives as long as these critical interventions are framed as discourses and stripped of their radical potential and praxes,” they argued (Martina et al. 2017, par. 8). What was the rationale for championing black perspectives publically, at the front end of the institution, the authors questioned, if none of it was able to influence its core? It seems, the institutional critique the institution was so accustomed to performing as its own, the natural authority by with it exercised the contemporary museum’s role of “critiquing the status quo” (Aikens 2016, 343) had resulted in the non-transformative and uncritical “co-option” (Martina et al. 2017, 13) of decoloniality as just another string to its bow.
In their view, the art institution’s “incorporation of Blackness” took place in the name of ‘criticality’ and ‘diversity’, yet such notions remained unchallenged as white liberal values
19 (Martina et al. 2017, 9). The authors claimed Witte de With’s approach to difference relied upon notions of inclusion, an idea which the Sara Ahmed has elsewhere described as a ‘technology of governance’ wherein those who are invited to be included also must be willing to consent to the terms of inclusion (2012, 163). Including the other as a guest within institutional frameworks, rather than allowing genuine exchange or transformation, produced a tokenistic, accumulative, consumptive relation to blackness, the activists argued (Martina et al. 2017, par. 9-10). It also demonstrated a failure to move beyond the white subject position (Ibid.). What this problematic relationship signified overall was a complex desire on behalf of white art institutions to be affirmed by black criticality (Martina et al. 2017, par. 9). Conversely, the effects of this power-relation undermined the objectives of decoloniality and the antiracist struggle with which the host institution sought to align. The authors described this dynamic as destructive to the cause: “cultural institutions are becoming increasingly adept at using the critical language and concepts developed by Black and non-Black people of colour to fortify and maintain their own position of power” (Martina et al. 2017, par. 13). In their concluding paragraphs the activists of the Open Letter assert that for institutional critique to become meaningful again it must be connected with radical political perspectives (Martina et al. 2017, 13). Not only this, but the art institution must relinquish their desire to manage and co-opt said critique. In their words, “It is not for Witte de With to establish when or under which terms its praxis and existence are questioned” (Martina et al. 2017, par. 12). Finally, for the institution’s claims to ‘diversity’ and ‘criticality’ to regain credibility the authors insist these be met with “decisive radical action”, beginning with the removal of its racist name (Martina et al. 2017, par. 11).
What of the institutional critique exhibited by the Open Letter itself? I would argue the Open Letter aligns with the more transformative potential of instituent practice, as theorised by German philosopher and art theorist Gerald Raunig (2006). Rejecting the philosophical view which positions art in an autonomous realm, Raunig claims that the best examples of contemporary institutional critique align with political practices and social movements (2006, par. 16). Rather than remain limited to boundaries and categories of the field of art, he argues that institutional critique should progress, along with art production, in a transversal manner; with changes in society, and by connecting with forms of social critique beyond the field (Raunig 2006, par. 1). Indeed, the impact of the Open Letter owed in part to its strong ties to the wider decolonial movement in the Netherlands and internationally. When it was first shared online the Letter gained hundreds of signatures, among them key figures of the art world and decolonial studies (FKA WdW Name Change 2017). The authors were careful to connect the problem of Witte de With’s name to the larger cultural issue, what they judged was the widespread failure of cultural institutions in the Netherlands to come to terms with
20 their racist heritage17 (Martina et al. 2017, par. 2). To this point they added that, despite claiming progressive positions within the culture sector, “Contemporary art institutions are no less entangled with the extractive colonial economy” than other institutions (for instance, the museum) to emerge from these foundations (Martina et al. 2017, par. 7).
Raunig’s theory of the potential for institutional critique to become instituent practice also invokes notions of exodus and flight. I would argue that the Open Letter drew influence and strength from staging an exit from what its authors deemed the performative critical space of the institution. In the sequence of events, it wasn’t until Martina’s departure from Cinema Olanda and the publicising of the issue with a wider political arena (which caught the attention of national and international media) that the institution was moved to respond in a fundamental way.18 Drawing on Foucault’s work on the arts of governing19 Raunig describes escaping the arts of governing as a positive form of exit which does not accept the conditions of governance in which the problem has arisen (Raunig 2006, par. 6). Rather than opting for one of the given alternatives within the confines of the Cinema Olanda project Martina and his group chose to push the question of the name, which the institution was slow to reckon with, out into public discourse where it could gain greater momentum. The important thing was to tie the issue to its wider political context. By doing so the activists refused the terms of dialogue which were initially offered to them, in the role of guest, and successfully reconfigured the context and the terms of engagement by which the issue could be worked out. This reinvention of the terms of engagement which redefines prescribed power relations is how Raunig interprets exodus as an instituent practice. Such a betrayal or act of flight has the potential to ‘transform the arts of governing’ and can therefore be linked to constituent power, re-organising, re-inventing and instituting (2006, par. 9-16). The success of the the Open Letter was revealed three months later, when the institution publicly
17 The cultural reluctance of mainstream society in the Netherlands to come to terms with the violence of its colonial history has been written about by Afro-Surinamese Dutch scholar Gloria Wekker. Her concept of ‘white innocence’ encompasses this social trait (among others) which contribute to what she sees as a central paradox within Dutch national culture: the passionate denial of racial discrimination and colonial violence which coexists with widespread racism and xenophobia (Wekker, 2016). 18 Ahmed has talked about the ‘stickiness’ of racism, about how within institutional life, those who identify racism are quickly viewed as the problem, rather than the racism itself (2012, 152-154): “To use the language of racism is to risk not being heard” she says (2012, 156). From this perspective then also it makes sense that it might have taken an exit from these direct conversations with the institution for the critique to be properly heard, forcing the institution to make a meaningful response. 19 The ‘arts of governing’ refers to the dual process of both governing and being governed (Raunig 2009). It builds upon Foucault’s well-known concept of ‘governmentality’ whereby power and governance are produced through the active consent and willingness of people participate in their own governance (Huff 2020). Foucault attributes the spread of this form of governance and control to Western Europe in the 16th century whence he claims governmentalisation expanded beyond the state to impact all areas of life, including the self (Raunig 2009). It is from these origins Foucault understands the practice of critique to have emerged, observable in an attitudinal shift from the desire ‘not to be governed’ to ‘not to be governed like that’ (Ibid.).
21 announced their plans for a large-scale name change initiative whose methods they said would be made transparent and accountable to the public (FKA WdW Name Change 2021).
If the Open Letter successfully mobilised institutional critique by connecting criticisms of Witte de With to the larger site of struggle, it also revealed another feature of instituent practice as theorised by Raunig – that is, that it did not assume a false distance from institutions in its critique (2006, par. 16). While the Open Letter aimed a number of powerful criticisms at the institution, it did not call for its dismantling. Rather, through their specific demands the authors made it clear that institutional change, rather than closure, was the outcome wished for. The position of the activists in their critique cannot therefore be negatively characterised as anti-institutional, in fact, it could be argued that the relevancy of their critique derived from its reverse – from their position of relative intimacy with the institution, as were the close-door planning discussions for Cinema Olanda.
Productive Ambivalence, or Refusing to Be at Home in Institutions
The relational position of the activists to the institution can be interpreted using Greek scholar Athena Athanasiou’s (2016) concept of ‘ambivalent positionality’. For Athanasiou, a deep ambivalence toward the institution and our subjectivisation by the institution in all its forms underlies contemporary forms of resistance (2016, 681). This ambivalence, she argues, is the result of a complex and contradictory relationship to institutions that the modern subject endures from birth. Drawing upon Butler’s recent work on the assembly, Athanasiou invokes Butler’s notion of bodily vulnerability: the reliance of bodies upon enduring social relations and institutions for their survival and flourishing (Athanasiou 2016, 680-681; Butler 2015, 148). In complicated ways the contemporary body is reliant on historically specific and enabling conditions which have become an irreplaceable part of its existence and flourishing (Athanasiou 2016, 680). The vulnerability of the body is a fact which implicates us all in institutionalised webs of unequal distribution of power, resources, affects and of institutional access and support (Athanasiou 2016, 681). There is, therefore, a double bind: although we depend on institutions for our survival, institutions are also what exposes us to structural violence, unequal treatment and unequal access to resources – and are processes negatively inflected by the perceptions of class, race, gender, citizenship, and so on (Ibid.). The body’s reliance upon institutions is reflected in the Open Letter’s discourse. It is not enough to simply replace the name, the institution must engage with the historical processes and conditions with which inequality is systemically reproduced, and work to recognise and undo these influences upon its existing institutional structures.
22 In reference to this reliance upon institutions, Athanasiou points to what Butler terms ‘infrastructural good’ or the ‘infrastructural condition(s) for politics’ (2016, 681-682; Butler 2015, 127). In an era of neoliberal management and entrepreneurial belief in the regulatory powers of the market, public institutions are increasingly viewed as unviable and unaffordable by dominant market standards (Athanasiou 2016, 682). Therefore, the need to defend public institutions from neoliberal reform means protecting the opportunity and conditions for future democratically-led transformation (Ibid.). “In losing a public institution, we also lose the possibility of collective mobilization in response to what interminably remains to be resisted, reinvented, reformed, and re-instituted,” Athanasiou claims (Ibid.). Activists who critique what they see as structural problems in public institutions in the manner of the Open Letter, but stop short of calling for closure, inherently understand this dilemma. They know that the relative autonomy of these surviving public institutions which remain to be defended are as Butler describes, the infrastructural condition(s) for politics (Athanasiou 2016, 684).
The inherent ambivalence of the activists in their calls for institutional reform provide an example of a ‘with-within-against’ stance toward the institution (Athanasiou 2016, 683). Athanasiou’s term for this performative position includes both proximity and distance: its task is to both defend and disrupt (2016, 683-684). She argues that whilst we must defend institutions from neoliberal closure, but we also must retain our right to critique them, resisting and delegitimising the ‘normalising violence’ with which institutions – or institutional affects – compromise and negate many forms of life (Ibid.). The performative politics of the with-within-against attitude requires creativity, Athanasiou suggests. This “uncanny occupation” of institutions, or “not being at home” within institutions as she articulates it undoes common binary notions of working inside or ‘outside’ of institutions (Athanasiou 2016, 682-684). Instead, with this type of defence we exercise the ability “to imagine and enact alternative institutions that do not reinstate the injustices and normativities of past and present” (Athanasiou 2016, 684). Athanasiou believes that an ambivalent mode of engaging with institutions – a refusing to be at home in institutions – can be enabling in the fight against neoliberal injustices. In her view, taking a ‘disrupt-defend’ approach means consciously recasting institutions as “infinite and indeterminate sites of conflict” (Ibid.). As we have seen, the Open Letter powerfully illustrates the institution as a site of struggle. Firstly, by exposing the contradictions in Witte de With’s comfortable claims to criticality, and the problematic instrumentalisation of Black perspectives in the institutionalised practice of critique within the art institution. And secondly, by situating the problem of the name within a larger site of conflict and injustice in the Netherlands. By redefining the institution as a site of struggle in this way, Athanasiou claims we can work to expose normative practices and
23 beliefs and decentre them, resisting their continued institutionalisation (2016, 684). Adopting a with-within-against position the authors of the Open Letter also make specific demands on the institution: “What will Witte de With do institutionalise the process of decolonisation after Cinema Olanda: Platform is over (…)”, and, “How will it take responsibility for its (non- )actions?” (Martina et al. 2017, par. 11). Beyond the fundamental necessity to acknowledge and address the name, the authors advise that the institution takes into view the larger political and economic value systems which assign value to Witte de With; works to ‘undo’ the institutional structures which have led to this situation; and is accountable and transparent towards audiences and participants for how it will be working to change its institutional structures (Martina et al. 2017, par. 12).
Butler’s ‘infrastructural good’ and Athanasiou’s performative with-within-against stance are useful notions as they point towards the many ways institutions are a part of the distribution of resources and power. These concepts help one to reframe and nuance one’s understanding of the institution beyond being a dominant, hegemonic entity which must be resisted at all times. A more nuanced view of the struggle sees the institution as representative of a vast number of instituted practices, structures, forces, behaviours, norms and temporalities (Athanasiou 2016, 681), of which we collectively can influence towards instituting differently. These arguments for performative politics thus share the position of theories of self-instituting, such as Castoriadis’, which show that our actions are institutionally-inflected, including our emancipatory political methods and ways of acting collectively (Ibid.).
So how did Witte de With Art Institute respond to calls to change the name and institute differently? The second part of this chapter will look at what the new values the institution adopted in their subsequent name change initiative and what specific language and activities reflected this.
Part II: The Renaming Process
Institutional Language of Inclusivity
In official reports of the name change initiative, the term inclusion is frequently at the centre of descriptions of the “institutional transformation” (Kunstinstituut Melly 2020, Report #12) which the name change process is said to represent. Inclusivity as a guiding principle or set
24 of values is prioritised firstly in the criteria20 for the name change which seeks to redress the fact that, “the current name impinges upon the institution’s pursuit of inclusivity, which is vital to the relevance and contribution of cultural practice in general” (Hernández Chong Cuy 2018). Inclusivity also governs the public outreach activities and staff hires between 2017- 2019; is an obvious theme of the public consultation of 2020; it is also highlighted in institutional commitments surrounding the new name itself.
The terms ‘inclusion’ and ‘diversity’ are common to the public sector and have come to be thought of as progressive ideals of a contemporary multicultural society (Tiel 2020, 5). For instance, a brief look at the “Equality, Diversity and Inclusion” policy page (accessed 30 January 2021) on the website of the British Council and it is clear that the word inclusion is often used interchangeably with diversity and among other terms such as equal opportunities, equal access, and equity. In the Netherlands’ context, the stated goal of the 2019 Diversity & Inclusion Code (D&I Code) for the cultural sector is to achieve better representation across ‘all forms of identity categories, such as ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, level of education, age, and disability’ (Tiel 2020, 4). However, as even the D&I Code acknowledges, the terms are difficult to define, and as art historian Catherijne Tiel argues in an article for Platform BK, the definition for inclusion the Code nonetheless provides is vague: “[Inclusion] refers to how you deal with differences and similarities. […] the extent to which makers, producers, workers, and audience members of all identities – visible or not – can be themselves and feel safe and respected” (Ibid.).
In Sara Ahmed’s (2012) work on the language of diversity she studies the uses of such terms within institutional life. Ahmed reports on the way in which diversity has been taken up by managerial discourse and policy; it is seen as a human resource which adds value to an organisation, it is a value which is measured and is connected with performance culture, as well as the marketing of an organisation’s image or brand (2012, 53). The embrace of diversity as a managerial mode is certainly evident in the Netherlands culture sector as mentioned. The D&I Code describes a variety of business benefits for organisations who ‘do’ inclusivity: from attracting talent, to greater employee satisfaction, to access to new markets (Tiel 2020, 3). As an organisation who receives public funding, Kunstinstituut Melly, like most art institutions of a similar type, must comply with systems of measurement and policy such as the D&I Code in order to receive financial support. The institution’s embrace of inclusion can thus be seen at least in part as an act of compliance, by naming inclusivity as a function
20 The first criterion given for the name change was the premise that the old name expressed the institution’s location but not it’s vocation, and therefore the new name should include its function to present contemporary art and theory (Hernández Chong Cuy 2019).
25 of the name change it performs to categories and measures of the dominant economic model. However, at the same time, the slippery, open and vague definitions of diversity and inclusion within official discourse may allow institutions some creative agency and space space to incorporate more radical approaches. Sara Ahmed’s study of diversity work in institutional settings, for instance, reveals diversity to be a broad term open to different interpretations and applications. ‘Diversity’, Ahmed reports, is interpreted by its specific context, and can thereby function as an “empty container” that can mean anything (2012, 80). Flexibility she subsequently argues, can be an advantage, meaning diversity – like inclusion – can be usefully defined in ways in which practitioners wish to use it, positively enabling them to do important work (Ibid.).
Diversity and Inclusion as Official Discourse versus Decoloniality
What are the common pitfalls of diversity and inclusion as an institutional discourse? While Ahmed reminds us that we shouldn’t disregard the fact that historically, state and public policy on equity has had progressive ends for under-represented groups in the workforce, she warns of the negative ways in which diversity work is reproduced by organisations, arguing that the central problem is in its ability to leave systemic issues of inequality unaddressed (2012, 85). Ahmed quotes education researchers Rosemary Deem and Jenny Ozga: “The word ‘diversity’ invokes difference but does not necessarily evoke commitment to action or redistributive justice” (2012, 53). When it fails, the practice of diversity is about including ‘the diverse other’ or those that ‘look different’ and does nothing to redistribute power or decentre the naturalised privilege of whiteness (white people in director positions for instance) (Ahmed 2012, 65; Tiel 2020, 5). Rather, it does the opposite. By attaching ‘use’ to bodies identified as other, Ahmed says we attribute diversity to a body as if this body has particular visible qualities to contribute; gender and race as the most common examples (Ahmed 2012 84; Tiel 2020, 5). Applied in this way, diversity is an additive which is there to reinforce and strengthen the invisible norm of whiteness.
Decoloniality, on the other hand, is a perspective which drives to the heart of the inequality problem. In a report commissioned by the University of Amsterdam, Gloria Wekker and colleagues recommend incorporating decolonial frameworks into diversity practice. They claim that decolonial approaches enable understandings of how the dynamics of power relations, social exclusion and discrimination (along lines of race, gender, geographical and economic inequality) are tied to ongoing legacies of colonial histories (2016, 10). Decoloniality, Wekker et al. state, helps us to conceive of the role of institutions such as universities and museums as modern day colonial institutions; structures designed to
26 reinforce Western perspectives at the cost of the multiplicity of other knowledge (Ibid.). A decolonised institution has redistributed this power and knowledge and is open to intercultural and plural approaches to knowledge (Ibid.) Diversity and inclusion work, through its incorporation by neoliberal logics of ‘use’ and its application as a form of public relations (Ahmed, 2012, 142), often fails to directly address racism by ignoring underlying causes of inequality. However, decoloniality – as a set of perspectives which have emerged in a confrontation with the legacies of modernity/coloniality – builds our awareness of positionality, and the importance of decentring white privilege. Finally, rather than being treated as a discrete category of institutional work, as diversity and inclusion often are, decoloniality should be understood as a practice and ethics lived daily (Rolando Vázquez, interviewed in “Episode 2”, Melly TV, February 3, 2021).
What Impact does Decolonial Thinking have on this Institutional Embrace of Inclusivity?
With its emphases on positionality and reversing traditional hierarchies of knowledge, decolonial critique shapes how the institution responds with their name change initiative, particularly in its institutional interpretations of inclusivity. The inflection of decolonial thinking on inclusivity is evident for example in official communication which describes their work on inclusion as: “strengthening our work in issues of representation”, “advancing a more representative multi-vocal heritage in our work and activities”, “maintaining accountability, vulnerability, responsiveness” and “becoming a more welcoming cultural institution” (Kunstinstituut Melly 2020, Report #12, par. 1). Institutional commitments to these particular definitions of inclusion were supported by claims that work was being done to diversify the team; in public engagement and community outreach; and in research into local dissonant heritage (FKA WdW Name Change. n.d). Overall I’d argue that this suggests decoloniality as a kind of soft power behind more authorised claims to inclusivity. Decolonial influence could be seen to help the institution to become more relational with their public, also attending to questions of who that public was and what were their needs.
The way the decolonial approach intersects with the institution’s focus on inclusivity and public engagement is further illustrated by a number of key actions and initiatives21 undertaken between 2017-2019 prior to the naming decision process itself. At the beginning, weekly open lunch meetings for the public were held over 15-weeks, as part of the exhibition Rotterdam Cultural Histories #12: Witte de With; What’s in a Name?. These discussions
21 A full list of these can be found at: http://change.wdw.nl/reports-media/timeline1/.
27 were moderated by staff and board members and were centred on topics of the name change, institutional responsibility, and Dutch colonial histories (Hernández Chong Cuy, 2019). Notions of inclusivity through the lens of decoloniality were also evident in exhibition projects and research that looked at dissonant heritage. One research project looked at the history of Witte de With street, another researched oral histories of the institution’s neighbours past and present (FKA WdW Name Change 2021). During 2018-19 efforts were made to remedy the white majority on the staff role and on the Advisory Board. To this end six new staff and board recruitments applying the Code of Cultural Diversity22 were made (Hernández Chong Cuy 2019). Institutional commitments towards accountability – a decolonial demand of the Open Letter – were shown in efforts to be transparent to the public over the name change process itself. For instance, extensive publishing and communications activities were published on a dedicated website (change.wdw.nl) where information about the process was made readily available.
In addition to a number of progress reports (a format common to public consultation), a timeline was published in February 2018 as an evolving text that would track internal and external activities, as well as public debate in the media (Hernández Chong Cuy 2018).23 The timeline demonstrated both a commitment to the process itself as well as to situate the name change as an evolving issue within the context of public discourse where it could be held to account, as the Open Letter had first done. Director Chong Cuy claimed these extensive publishing and documentation activities were also about institutional learning. Inclusivity was thus engaged as not just a framework for representation and public engagement, but internal reflection, as a long-term learning process involving “experiencing various perspectives, different to one’s own” (Hernández Chong Cuy 2018). This period of institutional learning and self-examination it was argued, needed to happen first, in order for “meaningful change to happen” (Hernández Chong Cuy 2018). This was the institution’s defence when faced with renewed critique during the Black Lives Matter protests mid-2020 that Witte de With had not yet changed their name (Gario 2020). The institution also attempted to show solidarity with its critics allowing for instance the red paint and handprints smeared over its front exterior in June 2020 by activist group Helden van Nooit to remain in place until the name was removed (FKA WdW Name Change 2021).24
22 I would like to point out that the hire of a white Australian female to the highly visible position of Research and Programs Manager under the Code of Diversity is somewhat confusing in the context of the name change which declares itself in solidarity with the decolonial movement. Though I would add that I do not know for certain this person’s ethnic ancestry. At face value however it appears to reinforce the argument that inclusion rather than decolonialism is the focus of the institutional response, which I discuss in more detail later. 23 See http://change.wdw.nl/reports-media/timeline1/. 24 Instead of waiting until September 2020 to announce the name change Public Input Phase and enter into the “cessation period” using the temporary holding name FKA WDW (aka Formerly Known As Witte de With), I would argue the institution would have shown greater commitment to its promise and solidarity with its decolonial critics
28
Then, in May 2018, a new, “publically-focused and socially-oriented” space was opened on the ground floor dedicated to inclusivity and “change in the way in which the institution both engages communities and represents them” (Hernández Chong Cuy 2019). Functioning as a multi-use venue free-to-access, its public programming specifically targeted a new public: a young local audience which was more representative of the city’s ‘diverse’ demographics. The long-term goal was to make the institution more accessible to a public beyond the existing groups (educated, white, art-engaged groups) (Koeiman 2020). This community outreach initiative led by a newly appointed curator introduced an education methodology called Collective Learning – a blend of programming, education and public engagement. This included a six-month Work Learn fellowship programme for Rotterdam youth aged 17- 23.25 The aim of this new methodology was, according to the institution, to shift the emphasis from an institution teaching its audiences about art, to learning about cultural issues and art from its public (Koeiman 2020). Through a focus on youth engagement – as encapsulated in the event series ‘SESSIONS’ (2018-2019) that showcased performing arts such as dance, music, spoken word – the philosophy of ‘collective learning’ was also interpreted as the dissolving of hierarchies between art forms and enabling more ‘fluid’ exchange between practitioners and audiences, beyond the student-teacher dichotomy (Ibid.).
Among the key projects undertaken by participants of the associated Work Learn programme was the renaming of the space to ‘MELLY’ in April 2019 (inspired by the popular Ken Lum artwork ‘Melly Shum Hates Her Job’ installed on the exterior of the gallery since 1990). This renaming process was a collaboration between participants and key staff members, and it involved workshops led by different industry specialists. In the institution’s reporting, the renaming project is frequently cited as providing an institutional case study for the larger name change. Its focus on public engagement, communication and marketing, and “bottom-up decision-making” were designed as a test case scenario for the eventual public consultation process (Koeiman 2020; Hernández Chong Cuy 2019).
From the institution’s perspective these inclusive programmatic and education foci were aimed at “transforming and diversifying from within” (Koeiman 2020). The hope was they would begin a transformation process within the culture and ways of working for the rest of the institution, and, in terms of audience engagement, eventually see Kunstinstituut Melly
by removing the old name as soon it announced the name change initiative in 2017, and using FKA WDW while it underwent its period of institutional learning, research and outreach. 25 For more information on the Work Learn Programme see Koeiman (2020).
29 become a more welcoming and accessible place for local audiences. Whether these transformations can happen is a long-term question, however, the Work Learn Programme and Collective Learning education philosophy did successfully draw a new audience into the institution. Participants of the third-edition of the Work Learn Programme 2020-2021 will, at the time of writing, be involved in developing the new visual identity of Kunstinstituut Melly (FKA WdW Name Change 2021). This suggests that the institution continues to give this new diverse group of young people decision-making powers, showing a vested interest in their development. So for the most part, it seems that a meaningful shift, however small, in the institution’s relationship to their public has taken place.
Public Participates in the Production of Institutional Speech
This section looks at the choice of the name and the process of public consultation (September- October 2020) as a performative process in which institutional speech is produced by both the public and the institution.
In her work on the language of diversity Ahmed considers how language becomes performative in ‘institutional speech acts’. She defines institutional speech as typically given in the first-person plural; instances where someone speaks for or even as the institution, to make claims about an institution, or on behalf of an institution (Ahmed 2012, 55). Ahmed’s performative aspects of institutional speech can help us to understand the Public Input phase of open consultation in the final stages of the renaming decision. Turning to John Austin’s theory of speech acts, Ahmed connects institutional speech with his concept of performative utterances: speech acts which imply that the issuing of speech is the performing of an action (2012, 54). Different from constative or descriptive utterances, which in Austin’s theory can be verified as true or false, the reception of performative statements are either “happy or unhappy”, meaning they can be received positively or negatively depending on the circumstances in which they are made (Ibid). However in Ahmed’s analysis, even constative or descriptive utterances can be performative depending on the situation in which they are expressed (2012, 55-56). She describes how in different situations, the same words can have a different effect.
What we do with words therefore depends on the speech-situation; how words are ‘taken up’ by a particular audience is shaped by the context in which it is said (Ahmed 2012, 56). What therefore allows institutional speech to be ‘happy or unhappy’ is determined not only by whom it addresses; but by the institutional culture, on how those words then circulate, and, importantly for our context, whether an institution is subsequently altered by the circulation
30 or uptake of those words (Ahmed 2012, 56). I argue that both the self-critical art institution which chooses its language carefully, and the efficient neoliberal organisation with performance-based targets which measure consumer engagement – or a combination of the two, which the public art institution most surely is – actively manage the production of institutional speech. Therefore, it matters even more what words are chosen for institutional speech and how they are made meaningful in their own context.
The public consultation phase was a process by which Kunstinstituut Melly engaged in the performative mechanics of creating institutional speech. It used the process to create ‘buy in’ or engagement from its constituencies around what words and phrases it deemed defining characteristics of the institution, what attributes should it strive for in an institutional transformation, and what the new name should represent.26 Ahmed explains how performative descriptions or ideas of the institution gain strength through repetition, until for instance, an institution with those attributes (e.g. an ‘inclusive institution’) becomes a shared object. Ahmed proposes that this can be otherwise thought of as generation of a public; citing Michael Warner, that “a public exists by virtue of being addressed” (quoted in Ahmed 2012, 56). If addressing a public means producing a public which can be addressed, Ahmed’s view is that performative words or values can even “become a public by virtue of being given as an address” (Ibid.).
The public input phase of the name change initiative in September 2020 engaged these circular dynamics of addressing a public towards the production of institutional speech. Its own goal was to bring people on board with the name change, whilst also generating valuable audience feedback to inform the name decision and future policy development. This phase consisted of an open online survey and a series of public forums, drawing in over 280 participants locally and internationally (Kunstinstituut Melly 2020, Report #7). Both activities sought feedback on questions concerning what characteristics of the institution should be held onto or let go, how the institution can transform, and how this transformation can connect with broader social change (Ibid.). In the three public forums, with focus areas of ‘legacies and futures’, ‘naming and communication’, and ‘engaging and changing’, participant feedback circled around a number of themes, returning to some with frequency. From the report summaries I found these as mostly future-focused and group them into two categories. Firstly, areas for improvement were identified by participants as: accountability,
26 Broadly speaking the type of audience research the institution employed in its public consultation process was not unique, and similar examples can be found in current renaming projects such as Bristol Beacon in the UK, which Kunstinstituut Melly cites as a case study in researching their own approach. More information on the Bristol Beacon name change can be found here: http://bristolbeacon.org/new-name/journey/.
31 accessibility, inclusivity, responsiveness, sensitivity, better communication, engagement with and cultural awareness of diverse demographics in Rotterdam, new definitions of art, as well as institutional vulnerability, positionality, historical awareness, and the closely linked issue of educational reform (to which the institution, through art, was asked to contribute) (Ibid.). Secondly, perceived strengths of the institution included the themes: international, bold, radical, dialogue, forerunner, community and boundary defining (Ibid.). In later official announcements of the new name we then observe that the publically-generated values of “accountability, vulnerability, responsiveness” and being “more welcoming” (Kunstinstituut Melly 2020, Report #12) resurface as the endorsed terms for the new institutional identity. The name change process thus deploys the ‘the circular logic of address’ (Ahmed 2012, 56) - these terms first having been elected by audiences as desirable values (or judged as necessary values because of a perceived lack) to lead the institution’s transformation. Those words begin to circulate and gain legitimacy, and are then affirmed and repeated by institutional speech. The hope is, along the way the words have acquired currency, particularly among these groups who now associate these descriptions with the new identity for the institution.
In September 2020 a shortlist of names (‘KAT’, ‘KIN’, ‘Haven’) were submitted to an external Advisory Committee who debated their meaning and application against the institution’s criteria for the new name as well as issues raised during the public input phase. The Advisory Committee made the recommendation of ‘KAT’, with a second endorsement of an alternative: the name ‘Melly’ which was given the majority of members’ support (Kunstinstituut Melly 2020, Report #9). Following a Public Review on 26 September, on 30 September the final decision of the Directory and Supervisory Board was made to select the new name ‘Kunstinstituut Melly’ for the institution, to take effect from 27 January 2021.
Ahmed explicitly cites the example of naming an institution as an institutional speech act: “In being given a name, it is also given attributes, qualities, and even character” (Ahmed 2012, 56). This is reflected in institutional reports of the new name selection, that Melly has come to signal “an institutional willingness and accountability to transform” (Kunstinstituut Melly 2020, Report #11). Thus one could briefly conceptualise the entire name change as an instance of institutional speech, with the eventual choice of the name Melly – as an inclusive figure signifying qualities and attributes which the institution desires – as a particularly vivid example of this. As the figure of Melly Shum in the 1990 Ken Lum artwork, she is accessible and public-facing due to her popularity with the city’s neighbourhood as a public billboard. Melly’s character might also signify difference as she is not white-male and Dutch, but female, Asian, a kind of “working-class anti-hero” working the job she hates as an underpaid
32 creative. In her more recent iterations, Melly has also come to connote community, as the name collectively chosen for the brand identity of the new ground-floor venue by the young Rotterdam art professionals on the Work Learn programme. As the face of this more community-led initiative at the institution Melly has, at least for the staff at the institution, become a symbol of the organisational transformation itself, representing “a new relationship between the institution, the street, the city and its community” (Kunstinstituut Melly 2020, Report #10). In the process of ascribing such attributes to a name, the institution makes a claim as to its own character in the future (Ahmed 2012, 55). In this way, Melly is a form of institutional speech which commits the institution to a course of action based on her descriptors (Ahmed 2012, 55). As Yahaira Morfe, a participant of the Work Learn Programme describes it, “Choosing Melly, that has a long history locally, promises that the institution wants to be connected and have a dialogue with the city” (Kunstinstituut Melly 2020, Report #12). However, it was not the consulted public who in the end chose Melly and the question remains as to whether this new name represents more than this institutional story and has resonance across a larger cross-section of its constituency groups. The name is a marker of the transformation journey of the name change at the institution rather than a name which matches the endorsed values that emerged in dialogue with its public.
As Ahmed teaches us, the ongoing work of putting these words ‘into circulation’ (Ahmed 2012, 57) as closely associated values of the new name will form a key part of instilling new ethos, concepts and practices into institutional culture and work. Because, as Ahmed also warns, even if a term acquires currency it can become a convention or routine way of describing an institution, and this form of speech, while still performative, can become simply lip service, an empty container for anything which can be argued as relevant, or can simply lose its meaning (2012, 58). Therefore, going forward, it matters what words are used with and around it, how the institution engages people about these terms, and finally how the institution puts them into practice (Ahmed 2012, 80-81).
Again, What Happened to Decoloniality in All of This?
At the conclusion of the name change process and as we witness efforts to bring the new character of the institution to life, the question of decolonisation – the crux of the initial critique – returns. While decolonisation is frequently referred to in background statements and acknowledgements of the impetus for change delivered by the Open Letter, it is notably not a feature of official remarks on the new name, brand and institutional values (although we await to see whether changes will be made to the official mission statement of the institution). Decolonialism and decoloniality in the Netherlands has however, been a large
33 part of the discussion since the official launch on 27 January 2021, on episodes of the ‘community TV channel’ Melly TV. This was the format the institute chose to ‘energise’ the new name with episodes on the institutional transformation using themes ‘vulnerability’, ‘collective learning’, and ‘joy’.27 Episodes, which air on Open Rotterdam and the institution’s website, adopt a talk show format with a range of guest speakers (public figures, external members of the Advisory Committee, youth fellows of the Work Learn programme) and appear to target a broad audience.
Within these carefully choreographed interviews, definitions of decoloniality have been interwoven within broader discussions on topics such as historical awareness, identity, institutional responsibility, improving the education system in the Netherlands, the long-term nature of social justice movements, and expectations for contemporary art to made more accessible. Attention has also been directed at who has been in front of the camera and a part of talk show interviews, and a range of perspectives along the axes of race, age, gender and class have been presented. Accountability as a decolonial practice has again been inferred in commitments to new institutional responsibilities attached to the name change; to unsilencing histories, to retain a historical memory of the name change process, to remain accountable to constituencies (Kunstinstituut Melly 2021, “Episode 2”, Melly TV).
Vulnerability, as an unusual institutional value which goes against the patriarchal authoritative archetype of the cultural institution has also been named a new objective (Ibid.). Institutional vulnerability has so far been associated with “meaningful engagement”, “deep listening” (Kunstinstituut Melly 2020, Report #12), institutional awareness, committing to a collective approach (“Episode 2”, Melly TV), and an institutional willingness to transform (Kunstinstituut Melly 2020, Report #11). In terms of future planning, it appears that decolonial thinking will be integrated into the collective learning philosophies which the institution seeks to implement further in areas of programming and education (Vázquez, interviewed in “Episode 2”, Melly TV). In this vein we have learned that new programme and education initiatives are planned, as well as a new diversity and inclusion policy, which is being co-written (like the Name Change Working Group) by a group of individuals representative of many different voices within the organisation, including young professionals from the Work Learn Programme.
In general, decoloniality was an active and conscious part of the name change and commitments have been made for it to remain a focus of continued efforts. However, given
27 For all three episodes see: http://change.wdw.nl/mellytv/.
34 that decolonial critique formed both the catalyst and the basis for this institutional change, the language of decoloniality is markedly not the most visible language of this institutional transformation. This echoes what can be interpreted within official statements the new name, that the new institutional values of ‘accountability’ and ‘vulnerability’ are the terms with ‘happy’ associations as institutional speech acts, over the more overtly political language of decoloniality. However, I am curious for whom these words are happiest; as they seem to reflect the self-learning of an institutional journey and narrative, rather than a co-constituent led transformation. Therefore, I question whether these values will resonate among new constituency groups for whom the institution desires to change.
Conclusion
A close look at the role of activism in bringing Kunstinstituut Melly to change reveals the continued effectiveness of institutional critique, highlighting its potential to become the more future-orientated instituent practice. The Open Letter was successful on two accounts: it troubled the status-quo criticality of the contemporary art institution, questioning the validity of this internalised critique (which we now understand to be a product of the legacies of both institutional critique and the widespread adoption of curatorial developments called experimental institutionalism). Secondly, it exposed the failure of this contemporary art institution to meet the widely-supported demands for cultural institutions in the Netherlands to come to terms with their colonial heritage, and decolonise themselves. The actions of artists and activists who had courage to call out the institution in this way, can be interpreted as working from a position of disrupt-defend: with the foresight to see that public art institutions require constant critique as much as they do protecting, contributing to a kind of political infrastructure that can still – despite the erosion of the public sphere – serve the public in important ways.
The action and response surrounding the Open Letter made it a seminal act of decolonial critique of an art institution in the Netherlands. For the section part of my analysis, I was therefore inspired to approach my analysis of the subsequent three-year name change initiative of Kunstinstituut Melly by looking closely at the language and discourse used. Drawing on Ahmed’s writing on institutional diversity and institutional speech I have tracked the production of language – in its multiple functions to document, communicate and shape – the process of the name change. My findings concluded that the language Kunstinstituut Melly chose was more conservatively institutional than radical, for instance the term ‘inclusivity’ traversed much of its activities. At the same time, these large terms were not empty gestures and proved useful, recognisable descriptors under which the institution could
35 build more imaginative and politically-charged initiatives. For example, name change initiatives could be seen to draw from decolonial frameworks, which, following Ahmed and Wekker, is found to be better equipped to address structural racism than institutional diversity work.
Kunstinstituut Melly engaged its public in multiple ways during the name change process, and it was interesting to consider whether public input phase – which engaged constituents in the production of institutional speech – successfully brought on board constituents with their new name and identity. Questions remain for this author about the ultimate choice of the name Melly and its pronounced connection to “a work culture that fosters public engagement, deep listening, and collective learning” (Kunstinstituut Melly 2020, Report #12). As yet, these values belong to an institutional narrative (which is simultaneously the writing of an institutional history) and will require much work to institute and make them resonate across old and new constituency groups.
36 2: Annette Krauss and Casco Art Institute, ‘Sites for Unlearning (Art Organisation)’, Utrecht, 2013-2017/18
Introduction
‘Sites for Unlearning (Art Organisation)’ (SfU) (2013-2017/18) was a long-term artistic- collaborative project between the artist, educator and writer Annette Krauss with the team of Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The project combined a study of unlearning with experimental gatherings to explore the potential for organisational transformation. Taking place over a period of four years, a core group of 6-7 staff at Casco met with the artist in a series of bi-weekly or monthly meetings to study and work through the notion of unlearning in the context of an art organisation (Krauss 2019, 486). SfU joined a continuing thread in Krauss’ conceptual-based practice in which she co- initiates long-term collaborative projects with groups in various sites such as secondary schools and art institutions.28 These projects share an interest in the potential of participatory practices; reflecting upon the institutionalised processes that shape perception, behaviour and knowledge, and how to disrupt taken for granted “truths” in theory and practice. At Casco, SfU led to the creation of a number of exercises aimed at putting the study of unlearning into organisational practice (Krauss 2019, 485). Unlearning was approached from the perspective of how it could be used to challenge institutional habits and structures which impeded the aesthetic and political aims of the institution to situate art within the production of the commons.29
Political Aims of the Project
At at broad level, Casco’s political aims set the direction of the collaborative study: to bring attention to competitive organisational structures and working relationships and in the best possible scenario, undo them (Choi et al. 2018, 10).30 The goal was to unlearn the oppressive structures and practices that belonged to productivist logics of capital which opposed the production of the commons. Drawing on interpretations of unlearning within
28 For more information about the artist’s artistic-collaborations see: http://siteforunlearning.tumblr.com, http://hiddencurriculum.info, http://read-in.info. 29 Since 2013 Casco Art Institute have positioned themselves as an art institution led by commons-based frameworks. ‘The commons’ is an economic and political concept which refers to the collective management of resources. It is an alternative notion to private property, and the entwined relationship between the state and capitalism, where the value of all things is based on their perceived economic value (Federici 2016, 379). It focuses on the cooperative, self-organised or collectively organised parts of society and its shared resources (Ibid.). The specific question for Casco is what role art and the art institution can have in a world reorganized according to commons-based principles. 30 For background on key projects and exhibitions at Casco which explored the potential for collective and artistic enquiry into the commons prior to the SfU collaborative endeavour, see Choi et al. 2018, 165-182.
37 alternative education, feminist and decolonial fields, SfU developed a working-definition of unlearning as the “active critical investigation of normative structures and practices in order to become aware and get rid of taken-for-granted ‘truths’ of theory and practice in order to work and think through inequalities in everyday life” (Krauss 2019, 485-487). Beneath these large targets, a specific question focused the activities of SfU: “What is the relationship between the back and the front of an institution?” (Krauss 2019, 488). If Casco’s programmes maintained a focus on practices and debates of the commons, how should the back-end of the institution – the administrative, managerial, production and maintenance side – be brought into alignment? What institutional habits resisted this unification? It was a rationale captured in their phrase, “Institute as you (re)present!” (Krauss 2019, 491).
The Unlearning Exercises
The collaborative project of SfU had different phases, processes and working groups over the three-years of gathering and experimentation (Choi et al. 2018, 209). One of the concrete outcomes to emerge from this was the development of 14 unlearning exercises. These were shared with the public in several exhibitions at Casco, taking the form of installations31, and later as the basis for a publication (‘Unlearning Exercises: Art Organisations as Sites for Unlearning’ published by Casco Art Institute and Valiz, Amsterdam, 2018). The unlearning exercises functioned like a series of proposals, suggesting a number of ways to intervene in organisational habits and potentially transform them (Krauss 2019, 492). As chapter entries in the publication, the unlearning exercises name both objective and method: what institutional habit to unlearn, and what practical activity will bring awareness to it, or intervene with it. These are accompanied by transcription excerpts (collectively edited) from the SfU gatherings which contextualise the exercises within the original situated discussions at Casco.
The Unlearning Process
The 14 proposals or exercises show different elements and aspects to the unlearning process. Krauss later wrote of the project that unlearning institutional habits entailed a “double trajectory: it involves ongoing discursive and critical unlearning exercises that are coupled with bodily interventions, structural literacy and imaginative jumps” (Krauss 2019, 492). This two-part explanation is aligned with my reading of the process, which sees a key
31 The unlearning exercises of SfU were exhibited in the New Habits exhibition at Casco Art Institute 2014, and later as a collaboratively developed art installation ‘Unlearning Exercises—Site for Unlearning (Art Organization)’ included in ‘We Are the Time Machines: Time and Tools for Commoning’ programme at Casco in 2015-2016.
38 aspect of the learning process to be based in observation, identifying, acknowledging and developing awareness. Then a second central aspect is the active interaction with habitual processes, such as through simple practices of intervention, bodily exercises, or testing alternative practices. This entails imagination and guesswork to generate ideas for what could uproot received habits.
Unlearning Institutional Habits
The dual modes of the unlearning process are linked to shared understanding of what constitutes institutional habits. Krauss gives a general definition of habits as the practices by which the body engages with its everyday environs (2019, 491). These learned gestures, rhythms or postures are deeply connected to the worldviews that we hold and perform (Ibid.). However, even though habits form and express the political identity of our bodies, in our bodily repetition of them the premises of a habit remain unexamined (Spivak 2012, 6-8). The way habits escape our rational analysis also is why they endure (Krauss 2019, 491). To relate this to an institutional setting, Krauss draws on Sara Ahmed’s observations which find ‘unconscious routines’ typical of institutionalised processes (2019, 492). Institutional habits can be thus interpreted as containing both the structural perspectives of institutions and the embodied practices of the individual, the latter of which enables institutions to continue to institute (Krauss 2019, 492).
In her theories of why we should value an aesthetic education under globalisation, critical theorist Gayatri Spivak (named a key influence by the artist in taking up unlearning as an artistic approach) underlines the importance of practice in efforts to unlearn. Spivak argues that to unlearn habits, we must do more than re-examining or deconstructing its premises, which is a classic mode of critical analysis (or critique, as mentioned earlier in this text) (Krauss 2019, 492). Instead, she claims, unlearning necessitates both theoretical study (to build understanding and a case for something) in addition to engaging the imagination to look for alternatives – through play for example, and trial and error (Spivak 2012, 6; Krauss 2019, 492). Unlearning is linked here to Spivak’s wider proposal for the “training of the imagination” which teaches that play can help an individual learn to manage the ‘double- binds’ of contemporary life (Azzarello 2012, par. 5). ‘Double-bind’ is the term she uses for the contradictory instructions an individual is faced with daily in a world shaped by the opposing forces of democracy and capitalism (Azzarello 2012, par. 5). Spivak proposes ‘aesthetic short-circuits’ as techniques which to disrupt these “habits of not examining” (Krauss 2019, 492). This playful technique is said to combine theoretical understanding, practical bodily intervention, and imaginative leaps (Spivak 2012, 6; Krauss 2019, 492).
39 ‘Aesthetic short-circuits’ thus became a useful referent for SfU to conceptualise how the unlearning exercises could interact with institutional habits.
Unlearning as Collaborative Study
Over the course of two years, the regular SfU gatherings investigated hierarchical and unequal structures of daily life of this small art institution, also unpacking different ways of working and affective relations. Based on my archival research, these study meetings were discussion-based and consensus-led where meaning was a process negotiated collectively. The group gradually worked through the dominant ideas and structures that negatively informed or “uncommoned” their institutional work using “the embodied experiences as the subject of each other’s learning” (Choi et al. 2018, 9). The impression gained from listening to recorded audios of a number of these sessions shows this to be lively but slow work, with frequent times where discussions slow to wrestle with what seem like ordinary definitions of things. Allowing for different perspectives, contestation, tension, and emotion, this suggests, are some of the conditions for collaborative study in an institutional setting. What the recorded discussions reveal is that processes of sharing are integral to generate common understandings of concepts as they relate to individual and collective experience. While participants own interpretations – owing to their position in the team and different political identities – could differ, establishing shared understandings was shown to be a necessary step in the process of unlearning. Dedicating time for the process to shape itself was important, as one participant remarked, “Consensus is a process […] listening to someone’s point and finding a way, even if you are completely opposed to eachother, to find a direction in common” (Ying Que quoted in Casco Art Institute 2014, What’s at Stake, 14). For participants, collaborative study created opportunities for “deep time” and “deep understanding”; strengthening the relationship between theory and practice (Choi et al. 2018, 14-15). However, a shared observation was that emphases on productivity prevented time for deep engagement through study in the workplace. At the same time, the group questioned their desires to prioritise study, seeing that the privileging of intellectual work undermined the value of reproductive labour in organisations (Ibid.)
Unlearning Busyness
A number of unlearning exercises tackled the concept and practice of ‘busyness’. Right from the beginning, the state and problem of “always being busy” frequently came up as a shared concern among participants (Choi et al. 2018, 148). The unhelpful mode of ‘busyness’ was defined as being both a psychological and bodily state or habit that was produced by the
40 constant need to perform within wider demands of productivity (Choi et al. 2018, 18). The stress and anxiety of habitually being busy was shown to be connected with specific manifestations of neoliberal schemes of productivity within the art institution, namely, the obligation to continually present, to “make things visible” in competitive cycles of exhibition making (Ibid.). But what were experiences of busyness – captured in the phrase ‘business as usual’ – which were a direct affect of structuring logics of efficiency and productivity? (Krauss 2019, 492) Was there a way to intervene in modes of planning and managing time which were governed by these logics thereby lessening their unwanted effects? (Choi et al. 2018, 51)
Participants expressed the desire unlearn forms of busyness in order to become more mindful and intentional in their work (Casco Art Institute 2014, Business/Busyness, 9). Several exercises in the study were thus developed to observing participants’ different work rhythms, and what obstacles got in the way of the different passions of the team members in an average cycle of work. ‘Time Diary’ for instance, was developed out of attempts to map the working processes of a typical working day (Krauss et al. 2014). As this tracking form could be compared to a managerial tools for time management, the group found it had to be clear about its purpose: to find out unlearn busyness by looking for other modalities of time beyond logics of efficiency and productivity, which undervalue reproductive time (Choi and Krauss 2017, 74; Choi et al. 2018, 51). Team members documented all of their work-related activities over two weeks, and through this, found both an appreciation for others’ working rhythms, and how much reproductive labour and so-called “unproductive moments” were a part of the process of production, and yet, were not accounted for in current forms of planning (Krauss et al. 2015). Cleaning, cooking, hosting, and organisational tasks were found to be “domestic” work that was crucial to the daily reproduction of the institution (Krauss 2015, “News”).
Unlearning Hierarchies of Labour
Another key focus of SfU was unlearning divisions between productive and reproductive labour, with special consideration to what constituted the latter, and how forms of reproductive labour could be revalued in their work. Feminist Marxist theories of reproductive labour informed their thinking, in particular, Silvia Federici’s arguments that the capitalist structures designed to serve the waged workforce are responsible for making reproductive domestic labour undervalued, invisible, and underpaid in society (Krauss 2019, 494; Choi et al. 2018, 194). This is despite the fact that reproductive labour provides an array of essential services within the capitalist economy (Krauss 2019, 494). With ‘Rewriting Maintenance
41 Manifesto’ the group collectively studied the 1969 ‘Manifesto for Maintenance Art’ by feminist performance artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, expanding the list to include any repetitive, repair, fixing, or care work which supported their contemporary work processes (Choi et al. 2018, 34; Choi and Krauss 2017, 72).
Once participants unpacked what constitutes reproductive labour within institutional life, hierarchies between different forms of labour were most successfully approached with exercises that used an interventionist approach. Within the team environment at Casco, a particular frustration was around cleaning; who cleans, in what circumstances, and what were the wider social politics at stake? (Ibid.). Through months of trial and error, the team established a practice of cleaning together each week after the team meeting. This galvanising activity eventually became routine, becoming the most established institutional habit to emerge from the SfU project (Krauss 2017, 494; Choi et al. 2018, 148). Participants found that by formalising the practice – dedicating regular time to it within the schedule – they were able to generate a sense of collective responsibility for this task, which in turn brought greater value to it in the organisation. As perhaps the simplest but for many the most unpleasant job in this small workplace, it made logical sense to common it. By collectivising the labour they made it a less burdensome task (in terms of time, effort, as well as psychological stress). As one of those rare tasks that could involve the whole team, collective cleaning helped to unlearn the institutional (and capitalistic) habit of undervaluing it as a form of domestic labour. Even if cleaning at work was already valued by some team members,32 commoning this institutional work activity meant attending to/unlearning the underlying premise which nevertheless made cleaning a last priority within the institution, and a ‘duty’ which did not provide any satisfaction (Choi et al. 2018, 29-30).
At opposite ends of the labour hierarchy, the exercise ‘Reading Together’ also shared this focus on intervening in divisions of labour within the organisation. This too, was an activity done collectively and in a fairly regular manner. The exercise essentially took the format of a reading group that was given dedicated time within the work schedule. At these sessions the whole team gathered to read texts they considered relevant to the discursive and political underpinnings of the SfU project and Casco’s politics of the commons. Team members read sections of the text aloud until it was finished, and followed with a discussion and analysis of the content (Choi et al. 2018, 36-37). Though discursive programming is often a visible part of the ‘presentation’ work of contemporary art institutions, only certain positions within these
32 SfU participants further challenged their own concepts of cleaning as invisible reproductive labour with the exercise ‘Digital Cleaning’ which extended to the maintenance of digital archive and work space (Choi et al. 2018, 31).
42 organisations are given the privileged tasks of reading and research associated with this side of production. Consequently, the act of commoning this practice made quite a meaningful intervention into ordinary divisions between intellectual and non-intellectual labour in the institution (Krauss 2019, 494). In addition, the practice of reading aloud also facilitated differences in learning widening possibilities for shared understandings of relevant political concepts (Choi et al. 2018, 37).
While they worked on ways to intervene in institutional habits, the SfU participants deliberated over questions of how things become valued in institutional work. For instance, they asked, what is lost when something is formalised or institutionalised? And what is better left in its informal, convivial or spontaneous state? (Krauss et al. 2014) Discussions of how to value care in the workplace came up against these exact questions. As a vital form of reproductive labour care encompasses many different interactions and relations (Choi et al. 2018, 184). However care work is societally undervalued and invisibilised, a situation which is linked to the fact that care work is primarily carried out by women and marginalised groups (Ibid.) ‘Care Network’ exercise was thus designed to map the care relations and interdependencies in the workplace, a process which generated greater awareness and appreciation within the organisation. Questions for how to best to institute care as a valued part of working relations however were not resolved within the space of the study gatherings.
Art as a Site for Performing Alternative Practices of Knowing
In her writings on different approaches to situating knowledge, the curator, writer, theorist and educator, Irit Rogoff proposes the notion of ‘embodied criticality’ in art as a productive development from the long-practiced modes of criticism and critique. ‘Criticality’ is Rogoff’s term for placing emphasis on the present, of ‘living out a situation’, of inhabiting a problem rather than analysing it, understanding that meaning takes place as events unfold (Rogoff 2003, par. 16; Gregorič and Milevska 2015, 22). The term differs from modes of criticism and critique which she describes as forms of finding fault and placing judgement (Rogoff 2006, par. 6). Such traditional forms of analysis associated with Western Enlightenment work with notions of meaning as immanent, meaning which pre-exists before its discovery or exposure (Ibid.). Rather than assuming distance with its subject in order to analyse it, criticality “operates from an uncertain ground of actual embeddedness” (2006, par. 6). It accepts that meaning is not immanent, or produced in isolation, but emerges through complex webs of connectedness (Gregorič and Milevska 2015, 22). While modes of critique remain useful tools to uncover and interpret the underlying structures behind cultural effects, Rogoff says we must acknowledge the performative nature of culture and our part in it (Rogoff 2003, 3;
43 Gregorič and Milevska 2015, 22). Therefore ‘criticality’ for Rogoff is the mode by which theorists and artistic practitioners can actively ‘live out’ the very conditions they critically examine (Rogoff 2003, 3).
Rogoff’s writings on the term ‘criticality’ or ‘embodied criticality’ were part of broader theoretical reflections upon the role of education where she designates art as a special or distinct site of alternative knowledge production. For Rogoff, the field of art allows its practitioners a different ‘set of permissions’ (Rogoff 2011, 1) with regards to knowledge than in other spheres such as academia. She notes that definitions of knowledge in art have shifted, namely, that knowledge has practice-led, performative faculties, found in and through ‘doing’, rather that simply existing to be acquired or discovered (Rogoff 2011, 1). Indeed, contemporary definitions of art include the ways in which meaning is produced by participants – not merely with how subjectivity inflects the reading of an artwork, but how meaning is produced through relations with other participants, with the environment, and in the temporality of an event or situation (2006, par. 5). In her writing on SfU Krauss has emphasised the role of site and situation on the unlearning process, connecting notions of performance in art with approaches in organisational learning literature (2019, 488). From these joint perspectives knowledge is a kind of “contextual glue” that “emerges from interactions between members and the environment, and this enables common interactions, shared mental models, and often tacit knowledge structures” (Krauss 2019, 488). The ‘site’ of knowledge construction in art can therefore be understood as including both ‘situation’ and ‘being situated’, and goes beyond merely spatial definitions (Krauss 2019, 490). An art historical predecessor to SfU might be found for example in the “constructed situations” of Situationist Internationale which were collective experiments in urban settings which sought to destabilise normalised ways of thinking and doing in daily life (Ibid.).
The sites where contemporary art becomes a place for alternative activities of learning and knowledge production Rogoff terms ‘spaces of interlocution’ (Rogoff 2011, 8). Interlocution is a form of dialogic questioning based in the Socratic method. Its style of ‘questioning the question’ activates the boundaries of arguments or paradigms, and is able to generate external points of view (Rogoff 2011, 9). This ancient form of debate also “invests its operations with acknowledged stakes and interests, rather than being a set of formal proceedings” (Ibid.). For Rogoff, it is this recognition of stakes and interests, “the position from which one speaks, where they are speaking from, from where they know what they know,” which makes positionality a central concern within the spaces and sites of art, different from conventions of authorship and citation in academia (Ibid.). This means, in the presentation of an idea, in art, one can be partial in one’s claims. A curator or artist can
44 introduce an idea by starting “in the middle” as Rogoff phrases it, rather than having to recite an argument from start to finish, as in other traditional sites of knowledge (Ibid.). Though inevitably limited by its own set of criteria, these different “permissions” towards knowledge production in art are for Rogoff what allows it to be situated or contextualised differently. Not subject to the same rules which govern provable knowledge, it is possible to build urgency around a topic because one is able to freely draw upon heterogeneous collection of material and processes to support one’s enquiry, and embed the issue within a variety of contexts (Rogoff 2011, 8-9).
“What’s at Stake?”33 Unlearning as a Process of Staying with the Questions
Rogoff’s proposals for art as a space to inhabit critical questions; to generate new knowledge by working through something in the present, and acknowledging the bearing of site and embodiment on any enquiry, finds a vivid example in SfU. To this I would add the relational dimension – the collaborative and collective conditions of this study, where the artist and team at Casco together determined the content and course of the unlearning experiment. Much was made of the commitment to this, starting with decisions about what to unlearn, and then moving onto questions of how to unlearn (Krauss 2019, 496).
Rogoff’s point about “stakes and interests” being central to how knowledge is performed and constructed in frameworks of art leads me to consider some of the contradictions that institutional experiments such as SfU work with. The nature of this participatory unlearning project was deeply dependent on sustained commitment and investment by Casco members to the collective enquiry. Yet what if this was undermined by the very structural conditions that SfU was set up to try and change? For instance, the capitalist experience of workers being alienated from their labour raises certain questions within the context of SfU, as a core requirement of the unlearning approach is participants’ willingness to engage in the process (Krauss 2019, 488). One participant remarked, “What I would be […] skeptical of is the fact that the project, and how it integrated in Casco, necessitates participants to identify strongly with what is at that moment in time their work and their role in the organisation” (Appendix, 57). This question of self-identification with work was briefly touched upon in SfU via exercises such as ‘Work and Wellbeing’ and ‘Passion and Obstacle’34 but it is also
33 This is taken from a title of one of the Unlearning Exercises’ transcription booklets titled “What’s at Stake in Our Collaboration?”. The booklets were part of an installation in the ‘New Habits’ exhibition at Casco Art Institute, 2014. 34 ‘Work and Wellbeing’ was an exercise in which participants studied their work within the wage structure, grading their ecological footprints against J.K Gibson-Graham’s five categories for wellbeing: material, occupational, social, community, and physical) (Choi et al. 2018, 45-47). In ‘Passion and Obstacle’ group members listed the passions for the work they carry out in the workplace, and the obstacles which hinder them, then drawing links as a group between different passions and obstacles. The task was designed to unlearn
45 symptomatic of the wider “stakes” at play. Art workers are typically underpaid and compete for a slim number of paid or waged opportunities which in themselves lack the job security available in other sectors.35 Some participants of SfU shared the view that cultural workers jobs and lives are commonly entangled, so even successful careers in the arts involve a lot of self-exploitation (Choi et al. 2018, 47). There is conflict then between on the one hand, the trialling of self-organising modes of the collective or the community – shared by both SfU and Casco’s approaches toward ‘the institution’ and practices of instituting – and, on the other, the competitive frameworks of waged labour Casco employees are inevitably embedded within the neoliberal cultural sector.
Artist Annette Krauss and Casco Director Binna Choi reported difficulties of sustaining the process of unlearning: “Again and again, the lack of imagination, lack of time, and the pressure to produce as an institution and as an artist deferred or even obstructed our meetings for unlearning” (2017, 74). So what was it then that allowed SfU participants to persevere with the “gruelling and imaginative” task of unlearning (Choi et al. 2018, 9) despite the aforementioned internal contradictions between its political aims and its setting? The sustained engagement of Casco to the three-year journey of SfU seems to testify to the political optimism of the project. Analysing this project now, from the perspective of asking what recent initiatives of “instituting” in contemporary art seek to do, is to recognise how hugely generative SfU was despite the impossibilities of the project’s aims. Participants of SfU themselves acknowledged the unrealisable goals of unlearning institutional habits without a structural shift in the neoliberal forms of governance that deeply inform the labour relations and working conditions of this small art institution (Choi et al. 2018, 177). However, these contradictions in the project remained workable; even productive. This returns us to the double-bind that Spivak’s “training of the imagination” works with, and why unlearning as a method engages the imagination and forms of play to manage contradictory instructions, which within institutional life constantly pull in opposite directions. There is link to be made here with Foucault’s writings on critique, where the question of “how not to be governed” is reflected in SfU’s efforts to understand the more attainable question: “how not to be governed at such costs” [emphasis added] (Foucault 1997; Krauss 2014, “Introductory Notes”, 4).
working only out of “duty” and working without a sense of purpose, as well as the opposition between passions and obstacles (Choi et al. 2018, 54). 35 About precarity and labour in the art field see Gill and Pratt (2013: 26-40).
46 Instead of Outcomes, the Project’s “Afterlives”36
The duration of the SfU gatherings spanned three years (four if you include publishing of the book) – which in the cyclic nature of a small art institution, can be regarded a ‘long-term’ project. This leads me to reflect upon what were the ‘afterlives’ or longer-term effects of SfU from the perspective of institutional change? When I approached SfU participants with a questionnaire about their lasting reflections on the project (see Appendix) most were reluctant to comment upon what might be considered some of the project’s long-term effects. I understood the hesitancy or perhaps scepticism to such questions given the project’s situated, relational, open-ended and intentionally deinstitutionalised nature – it is tricky to evaluate. The very notion of ‘outcomes’ in institutional settings derives from a performance-based, economic mindset whose influences SfU was itself set up to disrupt. On the other hand, institutional change was explicitly named as a potential within the project’s aims and descriptions, and so the question of what were its effects still adheres. Perhaps it is less about asking ‘What was unlearned?’ but rather, ‘What has shifted?’. Were SfU participants able to loosen the grip of structuring logics of productivity/busyness on the institution, or lessen the hierarchies in divisions of labour? It was these two areas which SfU organised much of its study and experimentation around.
Some of the exercises remained more or less a one-off trial and experience (Choi and Krauss 2017, 71). As the project went on, the team experienced the continued pressure of busyness resulting from the aforementioned lack of time and the constant pressure to produce as an art institution (Choi and Krauss 2017, 74). These factors interfered at times – with no fixed methods or solutions to rely upon team members sometimes found it difficult to stay with the questions and experiment with solutions (Choi et al. 2018, 176). Frequently, SfU participants were vexed by the failure to schedule well, allowing time for reproductive tasks, and keeping sight of reproductive labour as part of the production process (Choi and Krauss 2017, 75). Cleaning collectively, at a set time in the week, remained a routine practice however. Four years on this is still a regular activity at Casco (Appendix, 59), and though at times it is not always laboured evenly amongst team members (Ibid.), you could say the collective habit has been instituted.
At least in the short-term, SfU was reported as having an impact on the work culture at Casco. More time was given to team meetings and talking in person, and there continued to be a sense of value in sharing knowledge (Choi and Krauss 2017, 75). The exercise
36 Word used by Director Binna Choi in an email to the author (Tuesday 19 January, 2021) inviting participants to partake in research for this project.
47 ‘Collective Reading’ had been successful in instilling regular practices of sharing relevant reading material (Choi et al. 2018, 177). Additionally, participation in SfU had the effect of “growing co-leadership” in the institution, “meaning more leadership from each actively participating person” away from the centring of curator and artist in their initiator and facilitator roles (Appendix , 56). These are positive behaviours that helped to work against divisions of labour as well as entrenched ideas of professional individualism, independence and autonomy (Choi et al. 2018, 38) which SfU had examined as linked to the competitive and hierarchical nature of the knowledge economy. Another dimension of this I observed while Curatorial Intern at Casco (April-July 2020) where I learned inclusive practices of attribution which were being practiced across digital publishing channels. These practices were first introduced in SfU exercise ‘(Collective) Authorship’ which resulted in the extensive and multi-layered Bibliography in the later publication, ‘Unlearning Exercises’. At the level of the colophon, the reproductive process was being valued and hierarchies of authorship counteracted in detailed acknowledgements beyond the traditional artist, curator, and editor categories.37
In the medium term, the SfU project can be understood as one of the contributing processes to Casco’s institutional reframing. In 2018 the institution was renamed “Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons” a formal gesture signifying its intent to situate and mediate art in relation to the commons, committing to this activist vision of building the commons through art (Choi and Krauss 2017, 75). From SfU onwards, Casco continued investigations of what and who constitutes ‘the institution’ (broadly referred to as “the Casco ecosystem”), and how it is practiced, beyond the waged structures of professionals within the core team. These issues were brought to conversations across art institutions with ‘Elephants in the Room’, the inaugural Assembly led by Casco with Krauss and Arts Collaboratory in November 2018. This two-day forum extended the theme of unlearning institutional habits and commoning with a wider network of like-minded art professionals and institutions.
SfU’s introductory explorations into labour relations, wage and wellbeing, prefigured the development of tactics to compensate and support artists and art workers using commons- based approaches, beyond capitalist, production-oriented models set by European cultural funds. Cultivating a commons-network beyond waged structures continues to be a strategy
37 It was during this time I also learned that the figure of Nina bell. F – first conceived during SfU exercises in collective authorship – remained active. Her/their collective persona (a fictive combination of Nina Simone, bell hooks, and Silvia Federici) challenged SfU to imagine beyond the institutional frameworks of Casco and artist Annette Krauss (Choi et al. 2018, 50). Though the propositional figure of Nina bell. F seemingly survives only through privileged forms of curatorial labour, her/their artistic, black, feminist politics are more radical, as observed in her manifestations in the 2019-2020 COOP Study Group: ‘All About My Mother’ at DAI Institute. For more information see: https://dutchartinstitute.eu/page/14059/nina-bell-f.
48 of Casco. An example of this would be in how it engages its constituencies beyond regular exhibition programmes. Programme initiatives School in Common and Study Lines have built upon collective experiments of practice-led study initiated by SfU by nominating a number of themes which regularly inform the programming. These 7-9 thematic tracks of the Study Lines were originally developed by long-term collaborators (such as Krauss) and members/former members of the Casco team. These ‘long-term collaborators’ are seen as co-initiators of these areas of study, or programmatic threads, which draw in communities to gather around different topics (Bu Shea, video call with the author, 6 May 2020). In this way, the Study Lines are one of the tactics at Casco to “bring in other constituents” and “build co- ownership” over its programme (Ibid.). Casco’s work towards creating commons-networks also extends internationally, as a member of the Arts Collaboratory (AC) – a network of 25 arts organisations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East funded by the Dutch DOEN Foundation (that redistributes lottery money to cultural initiatives). Since 2013, AC has been working towards creating an alternative model for arts funding structures based in interdependent, trans-local and cooperative forms of solidarity (Choi et al. 2018, 150). Member organisations of AC share an interest in collective forms of governance, social change and sustainable practices, and several of SfU’s unlearning exercises have informed the collective working practices in the annual gatherings of the network (Choi et al. 2018, 147; 169).
Questions Beyond the Project, by Way of a Conclusion
Participants of SfU were sometimes questioned from people outside the project, whether their participation in the unlearning process was art, as in, was it ‘serious’ institutional work, or were they helping to make an artwork (Choi and Krauss 2017, 75). Choi and Krauss write about the definition of art which underlies such questions, a view which they claim separates art as an autonomous category from the labour of its production (including reproductive labour) (2017, 75). It seems likely that the methodologies and the scope of artistic research38 today are in any case beyond such outdated perspectives of art, however, the understanding among participants that they were mutually engaged in both the activities of art making and institutional work speaks to the potential of allowing art projects to interact with the ‘insides’ or ‘back-ends’ of institutions. As Casco’s former curator Jason Waite commented, it shows the potential in and “value of an artist-directed project within the workings/relations of an organisation” (Appendix, 53). In this way SfU was able to carve out a more radical social space within the institution using a performative and practice-driven approach. It provided a
38 For a discussion of the many heterogeneous forms of artistic research see Busch (2009).
49 framework within which Casco’s staff could engage in a form of institutional critique, including of its ‘back-end’ working processes, beyond the purely discursive and presentation modes which institutions typically engage in self-reflexive critique (e.g. new institutionalism) (Choi et al. 2018, 167). Within an artistic frame, the artist and institution were able to trial a process-led, open-ended and deinstitutionalised approach, holistically connecting ‘front’ and ‘back’ in its critique of the workings of an art institution.
Be that as it may, for an initiative of this radical nature to take place within an art institution, SfU’s framing as an artistic project might, in the current conditions, be the only way. The budget and resourcing allocated to artistic output must reflect quotas of presentation and performance demanded by funding structures, with art institutions able to decide how they curate their programmes. From a pragmatic perspective then, what the project-nature of SfU highlights is again the larger obstacle that politicised institutions such as Casco confront. Choi refers to this as the challenge of undoing the binary logics of “show and process” (Appendix, 56). Public funding structures judge the viability of an art institution based on the performance of their front-facing presentation side, measuring visibility and audience numbers. However, artists and institutional workers are increasingly finding problematic the disconnect between the critical perspectives presented at the front of institutions, and the way organisations are managed, which inevitably fail to embody the ethics of the art they present (Choi and Krauss 66; Choi et al. 2018, 150). This implies that what is needed is not just different forms of instituting by art spaces to address these issues, but support from funding and policy to do so. That would require a major shift in how the work of art institutions is measured by governing bodies of the spectacle-oriented culture sector. If institutions such as Casco are to work at redefining how art is situated in the everyday in the context of the commons – which is their radical vision (Bu Shea, 6 May 2020) – then the ways in which their work is governed must also be redefined.
This question of the values of art institutions is what marks Casco as exemplary in terms of recent trends by contemporary art spaces to “institute differently”. It is not often art institutions are seen to practice what their art advocates, and even less frequent, do art spaces take on such a strong political vision, such as Casco’s commitment to the commons. The collective and practice-led approach to knowledge which was embodied by SfU, I argue, suggests this kind of ideal to which Casco as an institution works towards and can be judged to perform well, to the benefit of members of its ecosystem. In my brief observations, this is not limited to the situation of an artistic-collaborative project, but reflected in a general atmosphere of collaboration: where all members of the team have influence over what gets instituted, rather than the other way around. As SfU demonstrated, this entails an inclusive
50 attitude towards knowledge – an attitude which requires constant work. A recent comment by a current staff member captures this well, “My biggest takeaway [from SfU] is that these processes are ongoing and evolving and each composition of the people you work with is different over time […] Knowledge can't be taken for granted” (Appendix, 59).
51 Conclusion
This research was inspired by the recent surge in instituting and instituent practices by artists and contemporary art institutions. It is also a response to the current lack of analysis and critique on the part of writers and theorists about these recent developments in art. I have selected two recent long-term initiatives to institute differently undertaken by contemporary art spaces in the Netherlands. In my analysis I consider the aims of each initiative and the socio-political contexts they respond to, and how together these inform the chosen formats and approaches. I also studied how these projects interacted with their constituents, and what were some of the outcomes for those groups.
The success of the Open Letter in moving the art institution Kunstinstituut Melly to launch their three-year name change initiative highlights the continued importance of institutional critique today. This critique revealed a major blind spot in the institution’s self-image as a critical and self-reflexive contemporary art institution. It’s ignorance over the colonial heritage of its name implied that its engagement with decolonisation through its programmes was discursive and performative only. The decolonial critique of this Rotterdam art space suggests the auto-critical art institution has become the status quo, and stagnates in its institutionalisation. Initiatives to institute anew must therefore enable art institutions to become more agile and (sustainably) responsive if they are going to meaningfully connect with artists and their constituents.
My review of the following name change initiative, which was multi-phased and multi- layered, found the institution heavily invested in the production of language – to document, communicate, commit itself to action, to be transparent and accountable to its constituents – during this change. Generic, institutional terms such as ‘inclusivity’ were promoted as new values for the institution, however, these were also umbrella terms beneath which more imaginative and responsive solutions were made, such as in community outreach, education and fellowships which reached out to different local constituencies and where backed by decolonial principles. The production of language in the renaming initiative was also a process to create dialogue with the art institution’s publics. Through its public consultation process Kunstinstituut Melly engaged its constituents (and possible future constituents) in the research towards a new name, creating forums for people to debate the future character and values of the institution. This co-production of institutional speech generated new values such as ‘accountability’, ‘vulnerability’ and ‘responsiveness’ and being ‘more welcoming’ out of this feedback process. On the other hand, the final executive decision taken by the Supervisory Board to take the name ‘Melly’ seems to connect more narrowly with those
52 directly involved with the name change initiatives. In this way the new name Kunstinstituut Melly predominately reflects and represents an institutional story rather than a shared vision. As a result, it will depend upon the continued work of instituting the new values, policy, culture, and community engagement before this art institution can convince more of its constituents the values it wants the name Kunstinstituut Melly to communicate.
The artistic-collaborative study ‘Sites for Unlearning (Art Organisation)’ between Casco Art Institute members and artist Annette Krauss was a project of a much more intimate scale and setting. Through the performative framework of unlearning it revealed the art institution to be both a site of normative structure and practices, and a site of group cooperation with self-organising potential. My research of this project focused on how SfU activated the art institution as a site for knowledge production, where the bodies of its workers and the structures of the institution, became the material for collective learning. Though unable to escape the general pressures upon the art institution to perform to cycles of productivity demanded by the neoliberalised cultural sector, SfU participants generated a host of creative solutions and techniques to work against binding logics of productivity and competitive working relations. Through an artistic-collaborative framework SfU provided an effective testing ground for Casco to investigate ways to align the back-end organisational side of the institution, with their commons-led programme and vision. My research found that SfU had a positive influence on the team culture at Casco in the direction of cooperation and non- hierarchical ways of working. Furthermore, the lessons of SfU extended beyond the situation of the project; it was a site where future initiatives were seeded, such as strategies to create co-ownership in the programme; and practices and tactics developed in SfU were picked up among larger-scale initiatives towards building a commons-network.
While a strength of contemporary art spaces is building and trialling innovative practices, formats and models, there has long been a contradiction inherent to the contemporary art institution in that they regularly do not “practice what they preach”39 (Choi and Krauss 2017, 66). This motivation behind SfU also resonates in the Kunstinstituut Melly case: there is growing expectation and desire among artists and art workers that art institutions work to close this gap. Closing of the gap means the new forms and formats of instituting integrate institutional processes and structures beyond the presentational and discursive, and that they are underpinned or driven by values which correspond with the social, political and ethical demands of their constituencies. This leads me to questions regarding governance
39 Contemporary art’s regular hosting of social critique, resistance, progressive politics and ideas within exhibition and discursive frameworks but not in its infrastructure has been described as “contemporary art’s dialectic of institutionalised anti-institutionalism” (O’Neill, Steeds & Wilson, 2017, 20).
53 and infrastructure which are beyond the scope of this study. What more could art institutions achieve, as a bridge and conduit between artistic approaches with social issues, if the criteria and measures of funding and policy bodies were to change? What would instituting look like then? What work is being done currently among art institutions and sector networks to establish cooperative alternatives to funder-fundee relationships? What kind of new forms would emerge if art institutions were measured less by their visibility and audience numbers, and more in terms of how they contributed to their communities? Recent initiatives to institute also probe at the borders of the institution, where practices are, as has been discussed, ultimately shaped (and limited) by wider societal institutional processes, procedures, values and norms.
Returning to the two cases of my study, a common link connects these: institutional critique. For Kunstinstituut Melly, critique was the catalyst and driving force in the change initiative; for Casco and Annette Krauss, critique – the job of understanding the premise for institutional habits – was one half of the unlearning process. What I conclude from this observation is that new forms of instituting in contemporary art would do well to hold on to the well-honed practices of critique in this field. However, the purpose of critique in these recent examples of instituting shows it geared toward future change; and it is method that must be used in tandem with practice and experimentation. Transformative instituting in contemporary art thus entails criticality, resilience, responsiveness, the creative ability to work with contradictions, and imagination. The latter of which allows artists and institutions to sustain their radical visions for non-oppressive institutions of the future.
54 Appendix
Survey Questionnaire for Participants of 'Sites for Unlearning (Art Organisation)'
This questionnaire is a part of Rebecca Boswell’s MA Thesis research at the University of Amsterdam which seeks to understand recent forms of “instituting” in contemporary art. With this questionnaire I hope to capture some reflections from the original participants of 'Sites for Unlearning (Art Organisation)' (SfU), a collaboration between the team at Casco Art Institute and Annette Krauss 2013-2017/18. This artistic research initiative was exciting for the way it experimented with processes of unlearning to challenge institutional habits in an art organisational setting. Though the nature of the original project was particular to its setting (situated, relational and open-ended) the potentiality of this project to intervene in institutionalised habits and structures, and test the notion of unlearning as a continuous process, leads me to investigate possible long-term effects on both the organisation and the individual.
Response 1: Jason Waite (submitted 1/20/21, 6:45 PM)
Briefly state your name and role when you participated in SfU and what you do now.
Jason Waite, Curator
What was most impactful for you about the process of participating in SfU and why?
A chance to take time collectively during work, to reflect on our work, and in what ways that happens. With a particular attention to the affective relation and also at times its toll. Annette's artistic energy opened up a space of reflection and collective possibility and experimentation.
What specific issues or exercises in SfU did you find the most valuable to engage with, and why?
Collectively discussing and managing our cleaning labor together, centered the role of physical maintenance in an institution and made time to acknowledge it, and address it together.
What would you describe as the main obstacles or difficulties of the project?
The balance between the discussing the work, and the great amount of work a small organization requires.
What would you describe were the key takeaways of the collective unlearning experience for Casco as a team or organisation?
55
The value of an artist-directed project within the workings/relations of an organization.
Reflecting on your practice or professional life now, is there anything from SfU which continues to inform the way you work? Please describe.
Much
Reflecting on Casco as an organisation now (with a particular vision, goals, ways of working etc) how would you describe the significance of the project long-term? In your opinion is there anything from SfU which continues to inform its work? (Feel free to leave this question out if you feel it is not relevant to you.)
I am not sure how SfU contributed to the present state of Casco.
How would you describe your connection to the concept and practice of unlearning now?
Ongoing
Any final reflections? Please share.
Thank you for undertaking this research.
Response 2: Liz Allan (submitted 1/22/21, 12:56 PM)
Briefly state your name and role when you participated in SfU and what you do now.
Liz Allan: Artist, Editor, Writer
What was most impactful for you about the process of participating in SfU and why?
Realising the intensity of the workload of bringing a book to publication readyness with a team of highly esteemed editors, including Casco's Director and Publications Manager and the Author, not to mention the many contributors to the collection.
What specific issues or exercises in SfU did you find the most valuable to engage with, and why? The pedagogical history. As a graduate of Fine Art Bachelor and Master's programmes both in The Netherlands and New Zealand and as a Visiting Tutor the questions of what is learning and when does learning become habit were a new way of taking a critical stance on the purpose of education in contemporary society.
What would you describe as the main obstacles or difficulties of the project?
56
Reading and comprehending the thesis' of the academic writers, and understanding the underlying meanings and significances of the less formal interviews and reading group discussions.
What would you describe were the key takeaways of the collective unlearning experience for Casco as a team or organisation?
Casco as a team or organisation is an indefinable entity, as is the collective unlearning experience. The takeaways are the book, as a printed publication.
Reflecting on your practice or professional life now, is there anything from SfU which continues to inform the way you work? Please describe.
(unanswered)
Reflecting on Casco as an organisation now (with a particular vision, goals, ways of working etc) how would you describe the significance of the project long-term? In your opinion is there anything from SfU which continues to inform its work? (Feel free to leave this question out if you feel it is not relevant to you.)
During the time that I was working for Casco Art Institute it became Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons.
How would you describe your connection to the concept and practice of unlearning now?
As a method for identifying the habits that art institutions are deciphering (identifying and being aware of) within and through a given vocabulary of education.
Any final reflections? Please share.
The publication has amassed a great quantity of insights into the subject of unlearning. The concept of unlearning as a term has been used in academic writing since Unlearning Exercises: Sites for Unlearning was published and launched. The impact of this thesis for art organisations was felt at the launch and the implications of this theory are being taken up by people such as yourself, with an interest in the thinking around what Unlearning Exercises might be.
Response 3: Binna Choi (submitted 1/27/21, 8:49 AM)
Briefly state your name and role when you participated in SfU and what you do now.
Binna Choi, director at Casco/ curator/co-initiator
57
What was most impactful for you about the process of participating in SfU and why? recognizing the common desire and value of "learning", understanding, deeper relations which we got to understand better with the notion of study: that also worked for undoing the existing mode of team relationship more meaningfully - politically and self and collective transformation - towards commoning.
What specific issues or exercises in SfU did you find the most valuable to engage with, and why?
I cannot single out one exercise as the most valuable: there are all complimentary, borne out through the paths of trying, practicing, reflecting...: physical, cerebral: spiritual and material: economic and playful; daily and one time, and so on...
What would you describe as the main obstacles or difficulties of the project? the neo-liberal show-business, tokenistic, and art as autonomy focused paternalistic cultural policy
What would you describe were the key takeaways of the collective unlearning experience for Casco as a team or organisation? growing co-leadership, meaning more leadership from each actively participating person, leaving away from the center of curator/initiator and artist-initiator: then the maintenance of practice beyond the project.
Reflecting on your practice or professional life now, is there anything from SfU which continues to inform the way you work? Please describe. seeking the possibility of an non-oppressive organization; in that regards, realizing there's essentially no difference between collective, community, and institution, if they are organized and organizing well.
Reflecting on Casco as an organisation now (with a particular vision, goals, ways of working etc) how would you describe the significance of the project long-term? In your opinion is there anything from SfU which continues to inform its work? (Feel free to leave this question out if you feel it is not relevant to you.)
Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons is born out of this process and other related process (Arts Collaboratory, a larger collective unlearning and (self) organizing process): It's a big deal to talk about what has been changing....
58 How would you describe your connection to the concept and practice of unlearning now?
It is to understand everything is a matter of (self)organization and consciously forming collective habits - hence culture-, meaning it's collective endeavour, one should get out of the binary logic of show and process, likewise, concept and practice, event and practice, mind and body.. Of course this understanding - learning- does not come only from the inside team work but the experience outside, as allowed/enabled by the team work influenced by unlearning/commoning.
Any final reflections? Please share.
Thank you, Rebecca for this research, inserting this time for reflection. Look forwards to following up!!
Response 4: Anonymous (submitted 1/27/21, 10:12 AM)
Briefly state your name and role when you participated in SfU and what you do now.
Then, at Casco: Media & Research Coordinator - Now: Academic/Writer
What was most impactful for you about the process of participating in SfU and why?
The aftereffects, some years after I had left Casco and could look back on the project differently due to my having had some other working experiences in other institutions and organizations.
What specific issues or exercises in SfU did you find the most valuable to engage with, and why?
I did not partake in that many of them; the weekly collective cleaning was what was done most consistently, I think.
What would you describe as the main obstacles or difficulties of the project?
I think the project wavers between, on the one hand, trying to acknowledge and address hierarchies (in the art world and in the organization; eg. think of pay) and, on the other, prefiguring a situation where such hierarchies are no longer quite so overbearing. But I think this is a structuring contradiction for the project; it is an obstacle or a difficulty, but it is also what makes it worthwhile. What I would be more skeptical of is the fact that the project, and how it integrated in Casco, necessitates participants to identify strongly with what is at that moment in time their work and their role in the organisation. While I do think it is true that working there is more than ‘just a job’ for many (including myself), not everyone may be willing or able to be quite so personally invested at all times. I think the
59 implicit, and sometimes explicit, expectation for people to identify so strongly with their work is easier for those of us who (despite having political views opposed to neoliberalism) function as exemplary neoliberal subjects.
What would you describe were the key takeaways of the collective unlearning experience for Casco as a team or organisation?
Not sure if I can speak for Casco as a team or organisation, but I guess that trying to more or less consistently interrogate what forms of labour do or do not get valorized would be one key takeaway.
Reflecting on your practice or professional life now, is there anything from SfU which continues to inform the way you work? Please describe.
While participating in SfU has certainly affected my attitude toward work and professional life, I think one of the strengths of the projects was that it was taylored to the specific context/case of Casco - which means that none of its lessons are in any straightforward or seamless way transferable to other contexts and other types of work. But indirectly I do think it has had a positive impact on how I teach, for instance.
Reflecting on Casco as an organisation now (with a particular vision, goals, ways of working etc) how would you describe the significance of the project long-term? In your opinion is there anything from SfU which continues to inform its work? (Feel free to leave this question out if you feel it is not relevant to you.)
Don't think I can speak to this.
How would you describe your connection to the concept and practice of unlearning now?
While I think the experience of the project has been formative, I have to say that I spend very little time (consciously) reflecting on the concept of unlearning, and my working practices and everyday habits are not directly informed by it either.
Any final reflections? Please share.
/
Response 5: Staci Bu Shea (submitted 2/1/21, 8:35 AM)
Briefly state your name and role when you participated in SfU and what you do now.
I'm Staci Bu Shea :) During my MA at CCS Bard I did my mentorship with Casco in 2015, right in the middle of SfU. Now, I am part of the Casco team ;) My direct involvement for
60 SfU was transcribing and editing one of the Toilet (t)issue conversations, and I was part of some exercises.
What was most impactful for you about the process of participating in SfU and why?
At the time, I hadn't experienced such frank and deliberate discussions on the behind-the- scenes inter-workings of an art institution. This in itself was incredibly impactful to me (now it's quite normalized, ha) because I wasn't having these kinds of discussions at the time. I was drenched in theory and writing in a theoretical way from my studies, it was refreshing and meaningful for me to have specific conversations around passions and obstacles and their connects to labor and property relations.
What specific issues or exercises in SfU did you find the most valuable to engage with, and why?
The most longstanding exercise of unlearning within the team (no matter who was part of it) was the rotating of who cooks lunch and collectively cleaning the office each week. Even though habits still form here (usually the same folks cooking and/or doing a specific cleaning task) it is one of the practical exercises that we could most materially and cyclically deal with together.
What would you describe as the main obstacles or difficulties of the project?
Hm, finding it hard to say from my partial participation. But what I find difficult now is the upkeep and retaining of the exercises into the current team configuration and I guess in this sense the knowledge transfer. In order to really understand the exercises you need to do them collectively with your team. I remember that the colophon was very tricky to compile as there were many people involved in this project with different degrees of involvement. The first annual assembly at Casco, Elephants in the Room, was also the book launch for Unlearning Exercises - I think the quality of the social relations is very interesting – collective, colleagues/employment, family – I think in that respect there will always remain elephants unaddressed because the affective resonances and dissonances are not explicit or shared.
What would you describe were the key takeaways of the collective unlearning experience for Casco as a team or organisation?
(unanswered)
Reflecting on your practice or professional life now, is there anything from SfU which continues to inform the way you work? Please describe.
You can study and read all day long but the magic is in the practice. I think my biggest takeaway is that these processes are ongoing and evolving and each composition of the
61 people you work with is different over time, requiring different needs and often you've got to start from scratch even though you've got a wealth of experience. Knowledge can't be taken for granted and wisdom is knowing that likely it will be and you have to stay humble and patient. In general, the principles of SfU stay with me and evolve. I'm even more involved in care work directly now and SfU reminds me that it is noble to want to be a laborer in what I value and find I am good at, and in this case should be enacted with dignity even if people see that job as "below me." More to say here but maybe if you want to speak about it directly?
Reflecting on Casco as an organisation now (with a particular vision, goals, ways of working etc) how would you describe the significance of the project long-term? In your opinion is there anything from SfU which continues to inform its work? (Feel free to leave this question out if you feel it is not relevant to you.)
(unanswered)
How would you describe your connection to the concept and practice of unlearning now?
(unanswered)
Any final reflections? Please share.
(unanswered)
62 Bibliography
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