Displayer 04 Displayer 04 Jérôme Bel / 007 Mise en scène / 007 Stephanie Rosenthal / 023 and 133 Cheating Is Part of the Game / 023 Isaac Julien / 037 Moving Image / 037 Sandra Umathum / 049 Performance as Museum Piece / 049 Ana Torfs / 061 Dissection (Every Place Has Its Story) / 061 Joan Jonas / 113 Set as Sculpture / 113 Kuehn Malvezzi / 143 Choreographing You / 133 Patricia Finegan / 157 Exhibiting Beuys / 143 Unit Editions / 165 Transferring Ideas / 157 Heinrich Klotz Archiv / 233 Space and Structure (U:D/R 02) / 165 Exhibition Design and Curatorial Practice Post Perspective / 233 HfG Karlsruhe / 257 Display/Translate / 257 Alex Rich / 311 Gimme Hard Copy / 311 Boris Groys / 317 A Different Name For Communism / 317 Maria Lind / 317 Anton Vidokle / 317 12,00 EUR Exhibiting as a Reconfiguration Reconfiguration through the means of presentation—that is through a change of framing or an adaption to a specific situation—is the starting point for Displayer 04. Examining the exhibition as a reconfiguration and an update of a work or prior exhibiting situation, one comes to question the museum’s display strategies and curatorial practices. Considering exhibition making as a creation of situations where relations between ideas, objects, actions, and authors are not merely presented but produced, a display is not only to be understood as an act of disclosure, but also as an act of authoring, framing, and negotiating content. Presenting works in a new context, in a new configuration, in a space different than their original production or adjusted to a specific form of presentation, exhibition makers create a situation that not only allows one to examine a piece anew, but also requires considering the exhibit as part of a new configuration of elements. Hence, one could say that in contrast to conservation, exhibiting does not maintain something for availability but, through translation, produces anew. While exhibiting and publishing give access, both also reorganise the meaning of the material displayed. An extension of merely making available, displaying generates a moment of reconfiguration. Particularly with regard to the creation of installations, as well as the presentation of performances, the exhibiting situation occurs in the form of an event at which the space of presentation is also the scene of production. How can works be exhibited that come into being as an action, a happening, or a performance, and what are the conditions for the presentation of environments or other site-specific installations? How can spatial and time-based works, but also artistic actions that were once conceptualized as ephemeral events and considered anti-museal, become manifest in the exhibition space? The relation between a piece’s production, its presentation, and the event’s documentation used as a work’s agent, highlight the sensitive connection between the event and the museum. Besides recording and presentation through media, the means of performative continuation and reproduction make clear that reexhibiting creates an update. The question of reconfiguration, that applies to every retrospective or group exhibition, challenges the notion of display, inserting a performative impulse. The act of presentation through publishing and exhibiting—or more precisely through contextualizing, framing, displacing, and reorganizing—transforms the exhibited material. Reconfiguring a work’s presentation does not render prior presentations obsolete. It is rather to be understood as an offer for reexamination, an invitation to partake in reconsidering a work against the background of former spatial manifestations, medial representations, or other contextualisations. It can also stem from necessities of museal presentation and exhibition production. Yet the process of exhibiting has to be carefully examined: framing other authors’ works does not merely contextualise selected positions within a space of presentation, but also translates artistic practices within a curatorial mode of production. The auctorial gesture of framing can only exist as an engagement with content. The reconfiguration of Editorial / 001 exhibits through exhibiting, publishing, representing, documenting, or reperforming goes locations. Reflecting on the meaning of architectural surroundings, Julien examines the beyond the practice of faciliating or displaying something given. The creation of a framework, installation of Moving Image as a tool for immersion as well as distancing. or the implementation into such, can be seen as a form of translation and transformation, hence curatorial design and the work with other authors’ works should be negotiated The creation of performative situations, installative approaches in presentations, and process- as such. oriented artistic strategies, have been central practices since the 1960s. In the museum as a space of conservation of artifacts, it is increasingly no longer the artist who installs the works, While interweaving the authoring of an exhibition’s framing and implementing modifications to but the collection’s curator, who presents space and time-related pieces. While artists can the manifestation of works appears, in museum exhibitions, to be indispensible, artists and define and control a presentation by precise specification, an installation is often to be adapted curators have developed strategies that make the idea of a reconfiguration productive for their according to a space and performative situation is recreated within a specific framework. Does respective practices. A context of restaged performances and the problem of the medial exhibiting that conforms to previous presentations guarantee a work’s manifestation to be „true representation of ephemeral works, prompts one to reconsider the concept of conservation to the original“, or to what extent does the depature from an original situation have to be accepted as a process of ongoing translation. At the same time, one has to question to what extent and how can the difference be framed in order to be more productive for the current discourse? performative and process-oriented works can be preserved through medial reproduction or be Exploring exemplary artistic practices and their respective conditions of presentation, one has to produced and staged within a space of conservation. admit that artistic, curatorial, and exhibition design practices are still only at the starting point of discussions about the art exhibition as a framework for re-installing and reproducing With the transformation of ephemeral events into site-specific installations, Joan Jonas’s space-related and performative actions. ongoing translation of processes into various media and differing and specifically-developed versions of works helps to shift the focus on to the presentation’s context and its modes of Through establishing a distinctive relation between audience and performer, performance art presentation. In Set As Sculpture, she discusses works in museal collections that transform strongly relates to the space of presentation. Despite a conceptual affinity with works presented narratives and choreographic elements from her performances into autonomous manifestations, in exhibition spaces, Jérôme Bel’s pieces can be found on theatre stages and at dance interrelating materials used in different works, such as props and elements of stage design, festivals. Pursuing an analysis of what constitutes a performance, his works question the video, and documentary media. framework and conditions of a presentation, as well as the identity and the body of the performer. In each instance, parameters emerge and reality is displayed as a Mise en scène, turning the Displacement is rendered visible as an inherent practice when working with authored as well as site of representation into a place of production. unauthored material. Transformative processes of visualisation and translation, such as perception, interpretation, or projection are a central interest for Ana Torfs taking existing texts How does the singularity of the event relate to an ongoing museum presentation? To what like a play script or a film dialogue as a starting point for her installations, videos, or photographic extent is a work transformed when it is staged without the involvement of the original author? series. Accompanying the interview Dissection (Every Place Has Its Story), her photographic Performance as Museum Piece discusses the concept of reperformance against the documentation of two retrospective exhibitions tries to transmit the specific configuration of background of the museumization of ephemeral pieces. Sandra Umathum discusses installed works in two venues into the format of the print publication. reperformance practices as a change in the museum’s display strategies that turn the museum into a producer of actions conforming to contemporary theatrical performance practice. Choreographing You reflects on a sequence of three exhibitions that deal with the interrelation between art, dance, performance, and choreography, curated by Stephanie Rosenthal, for Essentially an art form that relies on participation, its public and site of presentation, Happenings three different venues, exhibiting specifically assembled positions from the 1960s to present. create situations that are neither forseeable nor repeatable. Similar to the interpretation of While unfolding a dialogue between different art forms within the same space, the exhibitions’ notation systems for music, Allan Kaprow produced his happenings and environments based on demanded