UPCOMING
ThreeWalls Blog
Reflections on Curating the Turn
posted February 16, 2011 in salons
--Ania Szremski, SALON curatorWhen my colleague, Rebecca Hernandez, and I were planning the “Curating the Turn” SALON (the first session in our @work SALON series), we started by talking about Anton Vidokle’s essay, “Art Without Artists.” The article rehashes a lot of the same arguments about the so-called creative curator that have been debated for a couple of decades now, but in the updated context of the “educational turn” (or, “the incorporation of pedagogy [things like research materials, symposia, lectures, and essays] into curatorial practice,” says the good folks at De Appel. For a paradigmatic example of what the educational turn can look like in an exhibition context, check out the Curating Degree Zero Archive.)
Vidokle’s essay incited many responses from prominent curators, as it highlighted curators’ increasing obsession with talking about talking (i.e., the discursive, self-justifying nature of curatorial practice). See the publication, in spring 2010, of “Curating and the Educational Turn” by the aforementioned De Appel Arts Center in Amsterdam, for instance, and a flurry of essays on the topic published in recent months in e-flux.
Of course, the idea of a curator whose role is increasingly hybridized with the figure of the artist and the educator, and for whom the role of language is increasingly important (whether through the scholarship that he or she produces in conjunction with the exhibition, or through roundtables or other such pedagogically-oriented events) hardly feels novel anymore. But, interestingly, during our SALON on February 8th, there appeared to be some resistance to that idea here in Chicago.
As independent curator Kelly Shindler pointed out during the Salon, Chicago is not exactly an “institutional” city. If debates about the relative power of the creative curator (or the ethics regarding his or her “co-authorship” of an exhibition) make sense in New York or in European cities, it’s because those cities have a very different artistic ecology, so to speak. As Eric May and Aay Preston-Myint attested to, Chicago is characterized by its plethora of small, independent artist-run spaces, where such concerns don’t really enter into the equation. Both Eric and Aay described their curatorial work as a relatively hands-off endeavor, through which they tried to help other artists show their work in the best manner possible, without imposing a curatorial vision. The concept of “ethics” or “responsibility” towards the artist was often mentioned in this regard; both artist-curators felt they had a responsibility towards other artists to allow them to represent their work as they saw fit, and in their own terms. This point of discussion brought forth a lot of comments from SALON attendees, and piqued my curiosity as to why this unspoken ethical code for artist-run spaces exists (you must not show your own work, you must show the work as the artist intended, etc.). It was often brought up in the discussion that Chicago is great for artists and curators alike because there are so many of these small spaces that are so easy to access; which makes me wonder, if there are so many “safe spaces” for experimentation, why be so cautious? Perhaps Chicagoans should not be so self-congratulatory in this regard. Why not think more self-reflexively about the possibilities for curating, and engaging more actively with the debates that occur elsewhere in the world - could the reticence to do so be indicative of a somewhat apathetic hermeticism?Anna Cerniglia, who was not able to join us on February 8th, will be posting her thoughts on her own curatorial practice and the discussion we had during the SALON to this blog. Feel free to email us with your own comments on this topic, and links or articles to share!