[curatorial.net] beginning on line discussion

Wed Oct 24 21:09:59 BST 2007

Judit  thanks for clarifying this.
I see I understood it differently so apologies if my point wasn¹t relevant.
jk

on 24/10/07 15:26, Judit Bodor at j.bodor at dartington.ac.uk wrote:

> 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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