[curatorial.net] beginning on line discussion

[Judit Bodor]

Dear All,

Just two quick notes:

Magda, the correspondence I was referring to was Hutchinson, Mark ­ Beech,
Dave: ³Inconsequential Bayonets? A Correspondence on Curation, Independence
and Collaboration², pp. 53-62 in Paul O¹Neill (ed.) 2007 ŒCurating
Subjects¹, Open editions: London.

And to respond to Joasia¹s point, a small point but maybe important to say.
For me the difference is not necessarily the act of curating in or outside
of an institution.  The difference is between being Œa curator¹ as a
professional (as a job if you like) or Œcurating¹ as an activity (but of
course very often it is connected to the fact whether you are working within
an institution or not). I think what a Œcurator¹ supposed to do in an
institution is not necessarily the same of what someone does when Œcurating¹
something in diverse contexts. I think the noun, curator (in the same way as
artist does) emphasises specialisation, while Œcurating¹ as a verb is a
process/activity that involves creativity whoever does it and that might be
enough. I think we should be against specialisation but we should talk about
creative activities/processes instead.  I find describing myself as a
curator difficult, but I do describe my activities as curating, does this
make any sense to anyone?

I do not know if I added anything to the discussion...

Maybe even less clear than it was before?

Anyway, all the best,

Judit



On 24/10/07 11:31, "Joasia" <joasia at kurator.org> wrote:

> Dear All, 
> 
> It was only going to be a very short post to introduce Zhang Wei while at the
> same time continuing this discussion but I found myself writing this rather
> long response. Apologies for the length of this post that I realise is not
> exactly suitable for the medium...
> 
> Like many people who responded to Paul¹s first post I also see the use of
> certain terminology in the field of curating problematic.  And I cannot help
> but turn again to artistic field when historically we might have been dealing
> with a similar issue -  an endless attempts to replace the term Œartist¹ or
> Œartistic practice¹ with other terms like Œproducer¹, or much more recently
> Œco-pro-sumer¹, etc on one hand, and with an over use of these terms on the
> other hand.  Similarly with curating, there seems to be a certain reluctance
> to use the term (which is what I think Corolyn indicated in her posting) and
> simultaneously the tendency to apply the term to a range of practices that far
> exceed the orthodox use of the term.
> 
> However, my problem is not with the term curating per se but with the term
> Œproducer¹ as it was suggested on this List. Even if derived from benjaminian
> tradition it appears to be hugely limiting at this point in time for at least
> two reasons. Firstly, it seems to fail to account for a range of contemporary
> forms of curatorial practice that go beyond two-way only relationship
> (producer-consumer/user) and that are more distributed and participatory
> (rather that centralised or even decentralised to draw an analogy to Paul
> Baran¹s models of network of 1964) none the least because they involve
> technological networks. To me, the term seems to suggest a positioning of
> curating as extracted from the wider system within which it operates and is
> part of, or at best it suggests an understanding of the system as closed
> rather then open. This brings me to the second point on how the use of the
> term Œproducer¹ seems to firmly situates curating within an economic model (I
> think this is what Geoff might have pointed out in his post) that assumes
> instrumentalised view of cultural production/value.
> 
> As a side comment - I found etymological sense of the term curating helpful
> and I thank Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker for bringing this to my
> attention. To Œcurate¹ derives from the Latin Œcurare¹ ­ to care (for
> something or someone).  Similalry, curator derives from the Latin Œcuratus¹ (a
> curate) and in a literally refers to Œa person who is invested with the care,
> or cure (cura) of souls of a parish¹. In their essay ŒOn Misanthropy¹ (of
> 2006), Galloway and Thacker emphasise the etymological relationship in this
> way:
> ŒThe act of curating not only refers to the selection, exhibition, and storage
> of artifacts, but it also means doing so with care, with particular attention
> to their presentation in an exhibit or catalogue. Both ³curate² and ³curator²
> derive from the Latin curare (to care), a word, which is itself closely
> related to cura (cure). Curate, care, cure.¹ (2006: 160)
> 
> With the proliferation of curating (and curators) from the 1980s onwards and
> with the emergence of far more diverse descriptions of curating ­ it is simply
> that more Œcare¹ is needed in contemporary forms of curating and in the way
> the term itself is applied?
> 
> Interestingly, Judit suggested an opposition between Œinstitutional¹ and
> Œindependent¹ curating with the latter described as creative and critical
> practice that often takes collaborative and experimental forms. And yes, an
> immediate example that comes to mind is the term  Œtactical curating¹ used by
> the independent curator Roger McDonald (of Arts Initiative, Tokyo) to refer to
> the peculiar characteristics and advantages of operating independently (and
> making reference to Œtactical media¹). But  I am wondering whether such
> dichotomy is particularly productive. What of the entire spectrum of
> idiosyncratic methodologies for curating being developed regardless of whether
> an individual curator is or is not attached to an institution?
> 
> This question brings me to an example of Vitamin Creative Space (
> http://www.vitamincreativespace.com/) in  Guangzhou, China run by Zhang Wei
> who is currently undertaking a curatorial residency (as part of the Curatorial
> Network programme) hosted by Relational and Arnolfini in Bristol (UK). I have
> invited  Zhang Wei  to this List and one of the issues she highlights in
> relation to her own institution is (to paraphrase) how Vitamin Creative Space
> as an institution  can create an alternative model in the global context; and
> Œhow the commercial art gallery can be transformed into an art institution,
> which can make the institution more independent¹.
> 
> With this question I leave it to Zhang Wei to follow.
> 
> greetings
> joasia
> 
> 
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