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The reader presents a cross-section of the voices that populate the ongoing debate about, on the one hand, how and in what terms curating functions as a critical cultural practice, and on the other, what methodologies and histories exist with which we can critically analyse curatorial work today. This collection of essays was first published in 2007 by Revolver, in Frankfurt am Main and ICE, Institute for Curatorship and Education as the first ICE Reader.

 

5  FOREWORD MARIANNE EIGENHEER

7  CURATING CRITIQUE – AN INTRODUCTION DOROTHEE RICHTER AND BARNABY DRABBLE

11  MERZ-THINKING – SOUNDING THE DOCUMENTA PROCESS BETWEEN CRITIQUE AND SPECTACLE SARAT MAHARAJ

19  CURATORIAL CRITICALITY–ON THE ROLE OF FREELANCE CURATORS IN THE FIELD OF CONTEMPORARY ART BEATRICE VON BISMARCK

“Rather than adopting a ‘natural’ order, under which curators would have the status of ‘prophets’ or ‘priests’, the operations of assembling, ordering, presenting, and communicating could be freely distributed and interchanged among the parties engaged in an exhibition. Equally, the proximity and distance, the hierarchies and dependences in the relationship of curators to objects, to artists, to other communicating professionals in the field, and to the various communities and spheres of the public must always be renegotiated and fixed only temporarily.”

 

24  EXPERIMENTS ALONG THE WAY –I AM A CURATOR AND SUPPORT STRUCTURE PER HÜTTNER AND GAVIN WADE IN AN INTERVIEW WITH BARNABY DRABBLE

29  WORDS FROM AN EXHIBITION RUTH NOACK AND ROGER M. BUERGEL

32  FALSE ECONOMIES–TIME TO TAKE STOCK REBECCA GORDON NESBITT

39  GOING BEYOND DISPLAY – THE MUNICH KUNSTVEREIN YEARS MARIA LIND IN AN INTERVIEW WITH PAUL O’NEILL

“[Curatorial practice] is not following art and artists and this is a problem. I also think that the market has an astonishingly big influence on curatorial practice. This is something we don’t like to talk about but it is definitely there and it often has corrupting influence. If you look at the programme at the Kunstverein a majority of the artists we work with don’t show with galleries, they don’t sell at all and this is unusual for a contemporary art institution. Not that anybody is collaborating in the sense of sleeping with the enemy, but I think that we should often be a little bit more wary of these things than we are. Mainstream curating is mostly happening in the bigger institutions and it’s easy to do. It is a formula that you quickly discover and can imitate. Most of the time it works, but it’s not particularly interesting as it rarely develops new ideas and doesn’t push anything further. I think it would be great if people could take more risks.” (39)

 

43    THE CURATORIAL FUNCTION – ORGANIZING THE EX/POSITION OLIVER MARCHART

“For it is not accessibility alone that turns a space into a public sphere. It is not the fact that that one is admitted into a collection or an exhibition after paying a small fee, or even for free. A lot of people can stand around in a room and stare at the walls without a public sphere resulting from that alone. A public sphere results if and only if a debate breaks out among those standing around. A debate is not a discourse ‘free of domination’ and guided by reason that aims at an ultimate consensus, as Habermas describes it; rather, a debate takes place in the medium of conflict. Only at the moment when a conflict breaks out does the public sphere emerge, with the breakdown of the consensus that is otherwise always silently presumed.” (43)

 

47  EXHIBITIONS AS CULTURAL PRACTICES OF SHOWING: PEDAGOGICS DOROTHEE RICHTER

53  CURATING ART AFTER NEW MEDIA – ON TECHNOLOGY, TRANSPARENCY, PRESERVATION AND PLAY BERYL GRAHAM AND SARAH COOK IN AN INTERVIEW WITH BARNABY DRABBLE

59  PRODUCING PUBLICS – MAKING WORLDS! ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE ART PUBLIC AND THE COUNTERPUBLIC MARION VON OSTEN

“Exhibition projects in which I have been involved myself since the early nineties, or which I have organized […] went beyond linear communication structures, primarily in order to establish new forms of collaboration pointing beyond the actual site of the exhibition. […] From 1996 to 1998 I worked in a changing team […] as an exhibition curator at the Shedhalle in Zürich, a venue that can be considered a paradigmatic space for this type of practice. It was no coincidence that, during that period, we were involved in major conflicts with the institution and the sponsors. The constantly recurring arguments included the viewpoint that the exhibitions were not concerned with art, but with an alternative university or a socio-cultural meeting place, or that the visiting public did not correspond to the image of an art public. In other words, assumptions informed by precisely the ‘concept of public and art’ upheld by bourgeois institutions. The social conflicts to which groups are subjected who have no means of representation and no access to the established knowledge spaces were simply ignored. The empowering function, which can ensue within the context of joint work on an exhibition project and events in which new subject positions and practices can become established, was not recognized as a value.” (64)

 

68  ‘WE WERE NOBODY. WE WERE NOTHING’: SOUNDING MODERNITY & ‘MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT’ SARAT MAHARAJ AND GILANE TAWADROS

72  EASY LOOKING – CURATORIAL PRACTICE IN A NEO-LIBERAL SOCIETY UTE META BAUER IN AN INTERVIEW WITH MARIUS BABIAS

“But there have always been people, whether artists, curators or museum people, who have made subversive thinking an integral part of their work, and for whom that attitude was, or is, the very reason for their involvement in art and culture. And I hope this group of people will never die out. The capacity to think in ways that challenge the accepted norms, to reflect on what you do and what area you should devote your work and commitment to, and to see yourself as an autonomous subject of a critical civil society, is something that I feel is desirable for every individual, not just in the world of art. There’s undoubtedly less emphasis on developing critical (self-) awareness nowadays; fundraising skills are higher in demand.” (75)

“What in the music world is called ‘easy listening’, a type of music which I like very much, by the way, has now entered the art world as a sort of ‘easy looking’, where leisure time must be filled and all those supposed expectations: ‘everyone has to understand it’, ‘it has to interest young people’, ‘Museums have to reach out to more and more people from all social groups’ are totally at odds with the actual profile of their public, given that most museums are far too expensive for a ‘working-class’ or unemployed family. For certain social classes, a family visit to a museum has become quite unaffordable, so that museums can only reach out, a priori, to the better-off members of society. On the other hand, those ‘workers’ who do go to exhibitions know this perfectly well, and what they want is, as I’ve already said, to be challenged, not lulled to sleep.” (76)

 

78  THE WHITE WALL – ON THE PREHISTORY OF THE ‘WHITE CUBE’ WALTER GRASSKAMP