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Institution As Medium. Curating As Institutional Critique? / Part 1

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Issue # 08/11 Freely distributed, non - commercial, digital publication INSTITUTION AS MEDIUM. CURATING AS INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE? / PART 1 Christoph Büchel, Deutsche Grammatik, 2008. Installation view Kunsthalle Fridericianum (detail). Courtesy: Galerie Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, London. Photo: Stefan Altenburger CONTENTS 04 Walking as a Form of Critical Curating Irene Grillo and Maren Brauner 01 Institution as Medium. Curating as Institutional Critique? Dorothee Richter and Rein Wolfs 05 Who Needs Art, We Need Potatoes Stih&Schnock 02 Curating Theory (Away) the Case of the Last Three Documenta Shows 06 Contemporary Art and its Institutional Dilemmas Oliver Marchart Maria Lind 03 A Platform and Some Projects, Postgraduate Program 07 A Series of Acts and Spaces in Curating, Zurich Søren Grammel Dorothee Richter 08 Just What is it That Makes 'Curating' so Different, ** Carte Blanche so Appealing? San Keller Olga Fernández 02 Issue # 08/11 : INSTITUTION AS MEDIUM. CURATING AS INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE? 1 policymakers too quickly see Nora Sternfeld institutions and curators as (ed. Anton Vidokle), INSTITUTION AS taking a critical stance and Unglamorous Tasks: What Can Education try to curb such activity. Learn from Its Exhibition institutions Political Traditions?, in generally have to cope with MEDIUM. CURATING e-flux journal, insufficient financing and 14 March 2010. political demands to 'gen- 2 AS INSTITUTIONAL erate' high visitor numbers. Dorothee Richter, Pedagogy of In terms of education, this Exhibition Making, can reverse the aim of in Eigenheer, Drabble, Richter: CRITIQUE? educating and emancipating Curating Critique, visitors, conveying artistic Frankfurt/Main, 2008. and curatorial messages that Dorothee Richter and Rein Wolfs conform to the masses. The symposium Institution as Medium. Curating as Some of the postgraduate Institutional Critique?, organised by the Kunsthalle courses on curatorial Fridericianum and the Zurich Postgraduate Program in practice and theory whose Curating (Institute for Cultural Studies, Department students took part in the of Cultural Analysis, Zurich University of the Arts), symposium have integrated attracted an international audience to Kassel on 26 and the idea of educational 27 March 2010. The two-day discussion was opened with turn into their curating the provocative question in how far it is possible to curricula. According to Nora exercise institutional critique by curating exhibitions. Sternfeld, the so-called educational turn in curating 'Institutional critique' is a term designating artistic marks an important shift practices and positions such as those of Michael Asher, in the understanding of Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Andrea Fraser and Hans both curatorial practices: Haacke. The question is: how can a practice that intends "Curating is no longer under- to radically show the conditionality of art, its financial stood as the mere mounting entanglements, and its function as a means of distinction of exhibitions, education is be related to institutions and curators’ activities no longer understood as the therein? Is this not a contradiction in terms? The aim transmission of existing of the symposium was to explore these contradictions as values and acquirements."1 well as the possibilities and limitations of critical As Dorothee Richter noted at curatorial practice. another point, from the very outset curating is inter- Oliver Marchart’s introductory keynote talk addressed the twined with pedagogy, whose issue of the ideological engagement of exhibitions based effects (content) and in- on the example of theoretical positions of three documenta fluences (form) on subjects exhibitions. While documenta 10 transferred theoretical and group formation have to contributions in the 100 days 100 guests format to the be discussed in each case. exhibition space, thus contributing towards a paradigm shift As a spatial practice, in the fine arts, and Documenta 11 extrapolated on and exhibition making arranges decentralised the theoretical part through the concept of bodies in a space and as an international platforms and symposia, documenta 12 retracted event inscribes itself in some of these achievements. Hence hegemonic and counter- bodies via behavioural pat- hegemonic tendencies are in constant conflict in exhibition terns.2 Curating programmes making. Although institutional critique is articulated in provide students with both the exhibition situation and as criticism of specific a theoretical background representation formats, it emphasises social conditions. and innovative practical For if exhibition visitors find themselves in a one-Euro approaches. The courses shop after entering a museum, as was the case in Christoph and thus the participants Büchel’s large solo exhibition Deutsche Grammatik mounted are at the interface of a at the Fridericianum in 2008, the clear message is that contradictory mission. On capital is the absolute benchmark in our form of society. the one hand, courses In spite of the seemingly spectacular incorporation of formalise and standardise a discount supermarket in the exhibition concept, this curatorial methods. On the message is not lost, for the visitor’s unclear position other, they strive to not is revealed. Visitors are addressed as consumers (which only emancipate participants is what they actually are) at a place where they had hoped but also to make them players to find 'purer' pleasures. When visitors are thrust into in the field of art who are an event in this way, the art institution becomes visible capable of critical thought as a societal agent that produces exclusion as well as and action. Therefore it recognition. As places of representation, however, art is no coincidence that the institutions are also contested territory themselves. Who issues addressed at the is allowed to convey what messages at art institutions? symposium stemmed from an advanced art institution and Other symposium contributions dealt with the direct a programme for postgraduate influence of politics on curatorial activities. Often studies in curating. 03 Issue # 08/11 : INSTITUTION AS MEDIUM. CURATING AS INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE? 3 The third aspect 'Critical' curating engages with very similar issues by be published in two issues. Cf. Mouffe, was a destroyed striving to overcome ingrained structures and renew the San Keller’s intervention Chantal; Laclau, and plundered Ernesto: Hegemony museum with a institutions museum, gallery and art world. The aim is to is a peculiarity in this and Socialist fully furnished Strategy: towards caretaker’s flat, develop socio-politically relevant exhibition formats, to web journal. a radical demo- whose rooms were question cultural-historical facts and myths, politicising cratic politics, divided into two London 1985. parts by a grey the narration of the shown content concerning gender issues, Keller documents his 'inter-German' migration, economy, urbanism and globalisation, to name but a performative contribution 4 wall, as well as a Freely adapted break room for few. This is connected with the desire to have 'radically for the symposium and puts from the concept the caretaker and democratic' (Mouffe / Laclau)3 and emancipatory effects, it into the larger framework of Irene the technical Grillo, Jennifer staff, which sym- which can be created through a link to political-activist of his project for Johns, Damian bolised the lost groups, through radical curatorial decisions, and through Kunsthalle Fridericianum: Jurt, Andrea museum function. Linnenkohl, Siri During the opening 4 curatorial 'complicity' with subversive artistic practices. Pre-, Pre-, Pre-, Pre-, Peyer, Dorothee weekend, a real Preview. Richter, functioning trade Rein Wolfs. fair for political So if we view exhibitions and art projects as an parties in the institutional apparatus making it possible to convey 5 Federal Republic See above. of Germany called certain meanings and new perspectives to a larger public 'politica' in- sphere, then what is important is how new publics are 6 cluding an event With his large- room and a café addressed, how knowledge circulates, and which social scale exhibition was held. It became spaces and therefore institutions can be created and Deutsche Grammatik a large-scale Christoph Büchel installation after addressed. Thus criticism may have only just begun through made use of the trade event all of the rooms and embodied the the medium of the institution art, which is why we have to of the Kunsthalle fourth aspect, a take the issue of the messages of exhibitions seriously. Fridericianum political one. as well as a The political large part of aspect was also So what are the opportunities, possibilities, and Friedrichsplatz in present outside front of the the building, as impossibilities of critical curating? How and for whom are museum building. Friedrichsplatz programmes designed? What kinds of deviations from formats At the content – formerly 'parade grounds' – was 5 level, Büchel change content? investigated four converted into aspects of German ploughed farmland. reality in grand On the field there Dorothee Richter, the head of the Postgraduate Program style, under the was a silo, which in Curating in Zurich, described the course of study as fictional pre- covered the statue requisite that the of Landgrave a platform focusing on collaborative project work and new museum building Frederick, as well kinds of curatorial practice and art education, and the was being used as a dud stick- temporarily for ing halfway out of MAS Curating graduates
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