DEVIANT PRACTICE Research Programme 2016-17 CONTENTS page 6 page 176 Off-The-Way through the gate/ an(g)archivery Deviant Practice: An Introduction susan pui san lok Nick Aikens page 210 page 20 Notes on a Dictionary: Here or There: a polemic approach Locating the Karel I Archive Charl Landvreugd Michael Karabinos page 224 page 48 Separatist Tendencies Tisna Tells... Eimear Walshe Petra Ponte page 238 page 90 Constituencies-Art-Nexus: Ernest Mancoba The Bródno Sculpture Park Case Visible Man, Invisible Work? Sebastian Cichocki, Meagan Down, Winnie Sze Kuba Szreder page 120 page 256 NO OPENING NO CLOSING Authors’ Biographies The infinite archive of René Daniëls Sara Giannini page 260 Acknowledgments page 156 Ahy-kon-uh-klas-tik page 261 Brook Andrew Colophon 4 Deviant Practice Contents 5 Off-The-Way “A museum properly understood is not a dumping place. It is not a place where we recycle history’s waste. It is first and foremost an epistemic space.” Deviant Practice: Achille Mbembe An Introduction I have turned to this quote by political theorist Achille Mbembe a number of times recently.1 In his concise proclamation he asks that museums consider what constitutes the ‘waste’ of history – to stop reproducing what should have been called into question long ago. In a Western art museum like the Van Abbemuseum, formed within the matrix of modernism and colonial- Nick Aikens ism, understanding, naming and challenging ‘history’s waste’ is a necessary and ongoing task. Mbembe’s call is also an invitation to stop regurgitating patterns and processes under different guises. Within a cultural field that often feels hard-wired to duplicate and reconsti- tute, Mbembe is asking those museums to think reflex- ively about what they put into the world and how, and demands that we claim the museum as an ‘epistemic place’ – a place of knowledge and for knowledge. In her landmark essay “Who Claims Alterity”, post- colonial theorist Gayatri Spivak considers the political significance for reading and writing in the constructions of history. She asks, “How are historical narratives put together?” and continues with: 6 Deviant Practice Off-The-Way – Deviant Practice: An Introduction – Nick Aikens 7 In order to get to something like an answer to an epistemological space – a space that not only pro- that question, I will make use of the notions of duces knowledge but strives to think how knowledge writing and reading in the most general sense. is read and written. We produce historical narratives and historical explanations by transforming the socius, upon Those invested in processes of knowledge produc- which our production is written into more or tion within art institutions, whether museums or less continuous and controllable bits that educational institutes, have been wary of the creep- are readable. How these readings emerge ing push to both quantify and capitalise on what it and which ones get sanctioned have political produces. Tom Holert’s essay “Art in the Knowledge implications on every possible level. Based Polis” outlines these concerns succinctly, (Spivak 2012, p. 57) staking a convincing claim that the specific nature of the type of knowledge produced within the field of art Modes of reading and writing, Spivak argues, are inte- (Holert 2009) is recognised and that artistic research gral to the construction, ‘sanctioning’ and questioning is kept safe from the neoliberal urge to produce quan- of historical narratives. Within the Western museum, tifiable outputs. The initiative to instigate a research or what Spivak would call the ‘old institutions, the old programme is made in affinity with Holert and others’ politics’, it should be a constant undertaking to think position. It is interested in discovering the particulari- critically about how it reads and writes, what it sanc- ties of the types of knowledge that can are generated tions and the effects that has. in the field of art.2 It also welcomes the fact that the word ‘research’ means different things to different It is with Mbembe’s call for an ‘epistemic space’ and people. Conservationists, archivists, curators and Spivak’s notions of reading and writing in mind that artists will have very different ways of practicing their I am delighted to introduce this publication, which is research. the culmination of the Van Abbemuseum’s research programme titled ‘Deviant Practice’. Nine papers bring If museums, as civic institutes, are to make a serious together reflections and findings from a series of claim to be epistemic spaces their resources must projects carried out at the museum by artists, archi- be available to more than just their trusted gatekeep- vists, curators and art historians throughout 2016-17. ers. Their knowledge in the form of their collections, The impulse to initiate this research programme came archives and the people who work there is a public nearly three years ago. It was part of a long-term resource, even if this often feels out of reach to many. recognition of the need to reorient our work, away Likewise, if a fundamental understanding of research from the endless cycle of exhibitions, events and pro- means bringing new knowledge into an area of study grammes that we are often quick to criticise but to then it seems incumbent on museums to be open which many, including myself, continue to conform. to people who can read it in ways that people who Secondly it was driven by a wish to understand how a work there can’t. As the Van Abbemuseum’s Director museum produces knowledge, by whom and on what Charles Esche said in his opening remarks at the terms. In this sense, we could say we wanted to under- Deviant Practice Symposium, producing new knowl- stand the museum both as an epistemic, as well as edge surely means being able to constantly recognise 8 Deviant Practice Off-The-Way – Deviant Practice: An Introduction – Nick Aikens 9 one’s blind spots and try to find new perspectives from move off this path, one option might be to consider the which to see and understand what is around us. It also notion of ‘deviance’. means creating the conditions to make that possible: an epistemic space needs to be open and hospitable. The Van Abbemuseum has been exploring the terms deviant and deviance for some time. Esche’s paper “The Deviant Art Institution” introduced the terms ask- DEVIANT PRACTICE ing: “the most pertinent question for a European art institution today is not ‘what art to show’ but ‘what kind The question arises then regarding what types of of politics to stand behind’” (Esche 2011). Etymologi- knowledge and practices a Western art museum in cally deviance, means moving off – ‘de’ – the worn path the twenty-first century wants to produce? If it is not or way – ‘via’. Deviating implies straying from the road, going to recycle, how is to understand its epistemic detouring from a set route, deciding that the straight possibilities and responsibilities? The first task would line that takes you from A to B might force you to be to acknowledge the path on which the museum overlook that which falls outside your immediate field as institution has navigated its journey. The road on of vision. It implies a willful resistance to being told which the genealogy of the modern art museum can how to get somewhere, what to see on the way, how to be traced back emerges from Europe’s – and the record it and how quickly to get there. Deviance means West’s – understanding of itself and by inference its going to look for something without knowing what you relationship to others. As I have written elsewhere, might find. It means taking the time to look further. this derives from “a self-understanding that was born Within the epistemic space of the modern museum, by the white Enlightenment male and a relationship to the wish to deviate should be seen as a reflexive and others that was defined through power (either military political move to unravel entrenched cultural and polit- or economic)” (Aikens 2017). As we know, its modern- ical formations. Furthermore to embed deviance within ist history is deeply intertwined with that of colonialism a practice – a way of working and thinking for the and the formation of the nation state which would have museum and those it works with – is both a proposition profound ramifications for the type of art that was col- for, and a challenge to, the institution itself. It insists on lected, the manner in which it was categorised and the different temporalities that deliberately obfuscate the histories that were told. goal and project-oriented approach. It asks it to con- sider and question the choices it makes: the way, as Similarly, the path that has defined the modern art Spivak tells us, it reads and writes. museum leads us back to outdated notions of artistic autonomy – the separation of art from the political, In the open call for this research programme, we elab- economic, cultural context out of which it arose. It orated on the notion of deviant practice as follows: “An speaks to the entrenched protocols of expert cul- understanding of deviant practice necessarily involves ture within the museum and its methods of acquiring undoing long-held institutional, racial, geo and biopo- objects and narrating history, processes that are often litical formations. In this sense we might understand exclusionary and opaque. If, as the Van Abbemuseum the prefix ‘de’ (‘off’) in deviance in relation to notions has attempted over a number of years, we would like to such as demodernising, decolonising, decentralizing, 10 Deviant Practice Off-The-Way – Deviant Practice: An Introduction – Nick Aikens 11 deprivileging or deneoliberalising, key threads which THE PRACTICE have emerged when conceptualizing and realizing the research programme”.3 Whilst there is not the The following papers are the outcome of researchers space here to unpick what each of those terms might mobilising, in different ways, the archives and constit- mean, their implicit and explicit ramifications are felt uencies of the museum and in so doing navigating the within these projects in which the foundations of the contours of what a deviant practice might entail.