[curatorial.net] beginning on line discussion

[pauloneillp at aol.com]

Dear Geoff,

Thanks for your message. I am particularly drawn to a couple of your 
commments, 1. 'Clearly in 1987 (the date your research takes as a  
point of departure), the term was used differently than it is now  
where almost all arts practice or cultural production (even everyday  
activities) can be loosely described as involving curatorial  
concerns,' and 2.  'Post-duchamp, the distinction between artist and 
curator makes little  sense either. If the term curator is substituted 
for commissioner or  producer then a set of other issues are 
foregrounded that highlight  the political economy but also the 
symbolic capital invested in the  role.'

1. Firstly, by way of agreement, although the notion of what 
constitutes curatorial practice went through a radical shift in the 
late 1980s, with post-grad courses and the emergence of a more 
internationalised curatorial figure with the first global exhibtions 
such as 'Les Magiciens', one can see that the term curator as 'a form 
of creative production' began to be applied to a few independent 
practitioners in the 1960s working beyond institutional posts. This 
also marked a moment when the curator-as-artist phemomenon began to 
gather pace. What differentiates discussions around exhibition-making 
after the 1960s from those preceding them is that they move beyond 
self-criticism by artists to include the praxis of exhibition 
organisers, gallerists, critics and curators, who not only generated 
alternative, innovative and critical forms of exhibition, but also 
questioned the traditional understanding of what constituted the 
boundaries of art’s production. Through various adaptations of the 
exhibition form, the curator began to take on the artist’s creative 
mantle, whereby the traditional roles of artist, curator and critic 
were collapsed and conflated. What Peter Bürger called the ‘abolition 
of autonomous art’ in 1974 and its integration into the ‘praxis of 
life’ began to occur at the level of art’s social subsystem i.e. an art 
world that included critics, curators, gallerists and art dealers. By 
1969, the conflation of art and curatorial praxis was already causing 
confusion as to what actually constituted the medium of the artist, the 
curator and the critic. For example, Peter Plagen’s review of 
‘557,087’, the massive 1969 exhibition curated by Lucy Lippard in 
Seattle, suggested that ‘There [was] a total style to the show, a style 
so pervasive as to suggest that Lucy Lippard is in fact the artist and 
that her medium is other artists.’ Lippard later replied, ‘Of course a 
critic’s medium is always artists; critics are the original 
appropriators.’ In this moment, it seems that the  artist, as an idea 
which was thoroughly invested in and also consitutes a long-standing 
cultural institution in and of itself, was perceived of as the primary 
figure of symbolic capital within the cultural sphere.

On a sociological level, this move towards an understanding of the 
implicit role of contemporary curating as an active mode of cultural 
production was also also foretold when Pierre Bourdieu described how 
many different agencies were at work in the production of the meanings 
and values of art and the artist, when he articulated 'the subject of  
the production of the art-work – of its value but also of its meaning – 
is not the producer who actually creates the object in its materiality, 
but rather the entire set of agents engaged in the field. Among these 
are the producers of works, classified as artists (great or minor, 
famous or unknown), critics of all persuasions (who are themselves 
established in the field), collectors, middlemen, curators, etc., in 
short, all those who have ties with art, who live for art and, to 
varying degrees, from it, and who confront each other in struggles 
where the imposition of not only a world view but also a vision of the 
art world is at stake, and who through these struggles, participate in 
the production of the value of the artist and of art.'

2. Secondly, one could add to your identification of the cultural 
capital attached to the curator, when in the late 1980s,  and 
especially the 1990s when artists began to utilise the functionary 
aspects of and symbolic value attached to curating as a move in the 
other direction. We could say that the curator-as-artist configuration 
actually went in the opposite direction in the 1990s. From curatorial 
practice as a ‘confiscation of significance’ of artistic behaviour from 
Harald Szeemann onwards, to a situation when artists working 
curatorially also attempted a leap to this meta-level of the curator, 
using curatorial selection and gallery arrangements to produce their 
unmistakable, artistic, and societal style on this meta-level, I am 
thinking of artist-curators such as Fareed Armaly, Tilo Schulz, Marina 
Grzinic, Alexander Koch, Christoph Keller, Jutta Koether, Liam Gillick, 
Philippe Parreno, Gavin Wade, and Apolonija Sustersic and so on. The 
artistic desire to employ certain curatorial mechanisms not only arises 
because curating was by now seen as the highest and newest form of art, 
but also because curating provided a means of analysing and contesting 
what constitutes artistic production, through the confiscation, or 
appropriation, of the position of power that is identified with the 
historical figure of the curator. The same could be now said of other 
forms of practice as you have identified - with these 'relational' 
artists producing spatial installations in their own distinct styles 
which provided the environmental setting for the staging of 
discussions, events and visitor participation and taking on the 
educative requirements historically attached, if not always carried 
out,  to the museum curator.

Best
Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: geoff cox <gcox at plymouth.ac.uk>
To: curatorial at curatorial.net
Sent: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 1:42 pm
Subject: Re: [curatorial.net] beginning on line discussion






Dear Paul et al
I thought I would try to respond to some of the issues briefly. I too
am concerned that the terms are a little ill-defined.
One could begin to define what curating refers to descriptively and
etymologically - taking care of objects and souls for instance - but
also how the term has begun to be used quite differently
historically. Clearly in 1987 (the date your research takes as a
point of departure), the term was used differently than it is now
where almost all arts practice or cultural production (even everyday
activities) can be loosely described as involving curatorial
concerns. So on the one hand, blogging or tagging can be seen as
curatorial endeavour (where everyone is a curator of sorts - the cult
of the amateur, if you like) and on the other, curating has become
deeply institutionalised and professionalised - perhaps as a
defensive reaction against its popularisation. The power relations
around participation and expertise seem to play off eachother here -
along vertical and horizontal axes - and with respect to
individualised and collective production.
Post-duchamp, the distinction between artist and curator makes little
sense either. If the term curator is substituted for commissioner or
producer then a set of other issues are foregrounded that highlight
the political economy but also the symbolic capital invested in the
role.
I am left wondering whether the term itself makes much sense these
days. Perhaps its use can only ever be tactical, and needs to respond
to historical conditions.
This is a bit rambling but I though I'd send it anyway.
Geoff


>
> [curatorial.net] - mailing list of the Curatorial Network
> curatorial at curatorial.net
> http://www.curatorial.net/mailman/listinfo/curatorial
>
> List Archive
> http://www.curatorial.net/pipermail/curatorial/
>
> Curatorial Network website
> http://www.curatorial.net

--
geoff cox
gcox at plymouth.ac.uk



[curatorial.net] - mailing list of the Curatorial Network
curatorial at curatorial.net
http://www.curatorial.net/mailman/listinfo/curatorial

List Archive
http://www.curatorial.net/pipermail/curatorial/

Curatorial Network website
http://www.curatorial.net





________________________________________________________________________
Email and AIM finally together. You've gotta check out free AOL Mail! - 
http://mail.aol.com