[curatorial.net] beginning on line discussion

Mon Oct 29 12:43:51 GMT 2007

Dear all,

Thanks to all of you who have maintained the discussion whilst I have 
been away. As a follow up about the distinction between 'being a 
curator' and the activity of 'curating'. I think there is a need to 
distinguish between different methods of curating, which may provide a 
greater differentiation of individual curatorial practice(s). One can 
be a curator without having developed a practice over time, as is the 
case with many a curatorial graduate, but maintaining and developing 
what constitutes an approach to curating takes more time. As someone 
who arrived at curating from having a studio based artistic practice,  
curating became a way of working with other artists, curators, writers 
and cultural producers.  I often describe what I do as an artist 
working curatorially. For me the exhibition (in whatever form it takes) 
moment of public dispaly provides a framework for working with others 
for a period of time in the hope that these working relations can 
develop across my practice over a longer timeframe. Perhaps, this has 
been a way of distancing myself from the institutional position. 
Although I believe that the 'curer' aspect of the role of the curator 
who looks after and hosts is certainly an essential of what we do, 
curating is a durational process of working directly with artists as 
active collaborators within projects, and rather than selecting 
pre-existing works, the curatorial descibes an engagement with what we 
are doing together rather than what they are doing as being something 
distinct from what I am doing as part of the curatorial framework.

In my view, one of the byproducts of the ubiquity of the curator within 
the ever-expanding cultural entertainment industry is that 
‘Professionalisation and differentiation within the art world have 
turned “curating” into a hierarchically structured job description 
covering a wide range of activities.’ This has not only led to a 
celebrity status for certain curators during the 1990s whose practice 
was premised on a signature-style, but as Beatrice Von Bismarck has 
claimed the advent of so-called independent curating is the structural 
consequence of an expanding art market, in which ‘internationally 
networked service providers’ offer their skills to a diverse exhibition 
market, often ending up presenting their curatorial concept as artistic 
product. Curating is now primarily understood as a presentation medium, 
as an activity that is distinct from a limited job title:

Of the tasks originally associated with the fixed institutional post, 
curating takes only that of presentation. With the aim of creating an 
audience for artistic and cultural materials and techniques, of making 
them visible, the exhibition becomes the key presentation medium. In 
contrast to the curator’s other duties, curating itself frees the 
curator from the invisibility of the job, giving him/her an otherwise 
uncommon degree of freedom within the museum institution and a prestige 
not unlike that enjoyed by artists.

This can also be seen in the changing role of the contemporary art 
museum, which now tends to place its emphasis on the research and 
mediation of temporary exhibitions rather than focusing on its 
collection. This privileging of one-off, short-term exhibitions within 
museums indicates a growing specialisation – through surveys, 
historical overviews, geographically- or nationally-specific and 
thematic exhibitions – articulated from the perspective of the 
curator(s). Within such a subject-centred exhibition programme, the 
exhibition curator’s function authorizes a measure of fame which eludes 
other colleagues to the extent that an exhibition assumes the guise of 
cultural event whose positions and merits are publicly discussed by a 
cultivated audience. Within this framework, the curator is recognised 
as the agent responsible for the exhibition as an object of study, and 
no longer perceived as merely part of a chain of administrative 
co-operation within a public institution. Curators are not only 
involved in the selection, consigning and installation of artworks, but 
also in the expanded administrative role of determining a conceptual 
framework, working with collaborators from other specialist fields and 
assuming a formal position in terms of a curatorial presentation linked 
to authorship, where ‘the press deals with the exhibition not so much 
as a transparent medium produced by an institution but as the work of 
an individual [curator].'

Best
Paul

Paul O'Neill
GWR Research Fellow, Situations Office, Bristol School of Art, Media & 
Design, University of the West of England, 4th Floor, Bush House, 72 
Prince Street, Bristol BS1 4HN, UK. +44 (0)7855384710

-----Original Message-----
From: Judit Bodor <j.bodor at dartington.ac.uk>
Bcc: pauloneillp at aol.com
Sent: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 3:26 pm
Subject: Re: [curatorial.net] beginning on line discussion

Dear All,

Just two quick notes:

Magda, the correspondence I was referring to was Hutchinson, Mark – 
Beech, Dave: “Inconsequential Bayonets? A Correspondence on Curation, 
Independence and Collaboration”, pp. 53-62 in Paul O’Neill (ed.) 2007 
‘Curating Subjects’, Open editions: London.

And to respond to Joasia’s 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 ‘a curator’ 
as a professional (as a job if you like) or ‘curating’ 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 ‘curator’ 
supposed to do in an institution is not necessarily the same of what 
someone does when ‘curating’ something in diverse contexts. I think the 
noun, curator (in the same way as artist does) emphasises 
specialisation, while ‘curating’ 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 Paul’s 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 ‘artist’ or ‘artistic practice’ with other terms like 
‘producer’, or much more recently ‘co-pro-sumer’, 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 ‘producer’ 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 Baran’s 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 
‘producer’ 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 ‘curate’ derives from the Latin ‘curare’ – to 
care (for something or someone).  Similalry, curator derives from the 
Latin ‘curatus’ (a curate) and in a literally refers to ‘a person who 
is invested with the care, or cure (cura) of souls of a parish’. In 
their essay ‘On Misanthropy’ (of 2006), Galloway and Thacker emphasise 
the etymological relationship in this way:

‘The 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 “curate” and “curator” derive from the Latin curare (to care), a 
word, which is itself closely related to cura (cure). Curate, care, 
cure.’ (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 ‘care’ is needed in contemporary 
forms of curating and in the way the term itself is applied?

Interestingly, Judit suggested an opposition between ‘institutional’ 
and ‘independent’ 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 
 ‘tactical curating’ 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 
‘tactical media’). 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 ‘how the commercial art 
gallery can be transformed into an art institution, which can make the 
institution more independent’.

With this question I leave it to Zhang Wei to follow.

greetings

joasia

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