Curating Degree Zero Archive: interview

‘Trailer’ – Zürich. Festival der Künste & Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich. Exhibition organised and staffed by students of the Postgraduate Program in Curating and displayed in the program’s mobile project space `Trailer’. Archive re-interpreted through interactive interventions by Kristin Bauer, Isabel Münster, Sabina Pfenninger & Karin Seinsoth.

www.curating.it and ACW interview Barnaby Drabble and Dorothee Richter:

[C.C] In a recent article published on n.paradoxa, Dorothee talks of “archives of shared interests”. This is a complex and fascinating term, and I wonder if it could work for CDZA.
[B.D & D.R]The term “archives of shared interests” was used by the artist group De Geuzen in an installation for the Manifesta in Ljubljana. Later I (Dorothee) worked with them at the Kuenstlerhaus in Bremen, and we decided to have another “archive of shared interests” alongside with a series of talks on feminist perspectives in visual art I organised with Sigrid Adorf and Kathrin Heinz. I hope that this term can also suit CDZA, because we’ve tried to outsource to our collaborators in the institutions or outside the power to include new positions and in this way we want to open up to new networks and friendships.

[D.B] The archive, which is on invitation basis, is focused on critical and experimental approaches in curating. Since 1998 you’ve collected material from international freelance curators, artists-curators, collectives, etc. Even if the aim of CDZA is not to suggest standards and canons, I would like to ask you what brings you to the decision of either including someone in the archive or not. And, also, how the criteria changed over the period of time of the project? How independent curating has evolved?
[B.D & D.R] The term “critical curating” is a very vague one, nevertheless we wanted to stay with it. It is discussed vividly at each new venue and this is a qualities in itself, that this term is quite questionable and initiates discussions. We agree, that the concept of critical curating inherently not a unified one. It is subject to constant historical change, just as the discursive formation of the visual arts is subject to constant transformation. In this context the making of exhibitions should be understood as a practice that produces, influences, and alters the object of which it speaks.

On the one hand, we take critical curatorial practice—as it relates to the Curating Degree Zero Archive—to mean an orientation around content that addresses political themes such as feminism, urbanism, postcolonialism, the critique of capitalism, and the mechanisms of social exclusion. On the other hand, we are interested in finding ways to go beyond the structure of the “white cube” and classical exhibition formats. This can take the form of interventionist practices, questioning the art world’s “operating system,” or new ways to impart knowledge processes.

[ACW] While you are making this archive who do you project will be using it, now and in the future?
[B.D & D.R] The Archive was shown in different venues, in art institutions and within the context of Art Schools, it was open to the public in Basel, Geneva, Linz, Bremen, Lueneburg, Bristol, Birmingham, Berlin, Edinburgh, London, Milano and Zurich. It is now on its way to Seoul. You can have a look at the tour www.curatingdegreezero.org . We like to go on with the tour and we hope to bring it to Rumania and Norway next year. It depends if an institution is willing to host us and invites the archive. Some day we will have it probably as a part of an Art School Library.
The public who is using the archive are mostly students and people working in the field of visual arts. For general public we developed a way to mediate it in Lunenburg: students with T-Shirts (" I can inform you" in all languages they are able to speak) helped visitors to use the link list on the website and explained different topics that can be found in the archive.

[B.L] Can you recognize any curatorial strategy as particularly incisive from your point of view?
[B.D & D.R] 'incisive' is an interesting term, literally meaning 'cutting', but often understood as meaning 'intelligent'. Maybe you could help us with the question and expand a bit on what you mean by incisive?

[ACW] sorry I've been a bit slow here. What I meant is nearly every archive will be addressed to 'the public' in a general way and art schools in a specfic way. Given that the project is open to the user and will be altered by how it is used, I'm wondering is it addressing an audience or viewer in a way that innnovates their role?
[B.D & D.R] I’m using incisive in both meanings you suggest me. I think a critical curatorial approach focuses on two main aspects: contents and the way to present them, as Dorothee already wrote (we take critical curatorial practice—as it relates to the Curating Degree Zero Archive—to mean an orientation around content that addresses political themes such as feminism, urbanism, postcolonialism, the critique of capitalism, and the mechanisms of social exclusion. On the other hand, we are interested in finding ways to go beyond the structure of the “white cube” and classical exhibition formats. This can take the form of interventionist practices, questioning the art world’s “operating system,” or new ways to impart knowledge processes).

Can you give us some examples from the Archive that you estimate particularly effective from the point of view of the display and the way to approach an issue?

Artlab at Imperial College, London. Installation design and archive reinterpretation by Artlab, Jeanine Richards and Charlotte Cullinan.

[B.D & D.R]Alongside the tour of the Archive we started to think more and more about the pre-formulating parameters of institutions and the resulting "power of display" as a manifestation of producing significance. So we become interested in a kind of process orientated knowledge production that disturbs usual displays and functions more as project work with different partners. Now it is difficult to prefer one re-interpretation to another, but I (Dorothee) liked the Sparwasser presentation a lot, done by Lise Nellemann, because she asked friends and visitors of Berlin to present in a talk their favourits of the archive. There were about nine evenings with at least two guests. So the discussions became quite lively. But this is a interpretation that will function in a big city, like Berlin, where many artits, art historians, curators live or pass through. Other environments make other forms of connecting with a local public necessary.

I (Barnaby) agree with Dorothee when she points out the overbearing significance of the normalised terms of display we see in all but a few of the major art institutions today. Ideologically speaking, the 'white cube' and all the diverse associations that the term has come to conjure up, seems an even more powerful paradigm today than it did when Brian O'Doherty first commented on its problematic transformative power in the 1970's. Why more powerful?, well, because it is no longer art that this form of display seeks to seperate from life, but increasingly 'life' itself. Whether it is the Issey Miyake store, Wallpaper magazine's apartment of the year or Laboratoire Garnier the 'white-cube' has matured rather than been undermined and combining the associations of high-art, high-earnings and faux-science it is all the more scary for it.

I like Dorothee's turn of phrase when she speaks of production that 'disturbs usual displays and functions', and would add to this that here, I believe contemporary curating and indeed art-making does not seek solely to disturb in relation to the history of art and its exhibition, but in broader terms in resistance to the power of display as witnessed throughout visual culture, including in marketing, the entertainment industry and the media.

With that thought in mind, I would come to the question and quickly point out three of my 'favourites' in regard to 'incisive' display.

Firstly Ute Meta Bauer's exhibition "First Story. Women Building/New Narratives for the 21st Century", which is excellently documented at www.firststory.net, including pictures of the display system created by Nina Cohen and Itsuko Hasegawa.

Another favourite is curator Jacob Fabricius's project Sandwiched in New York in which he walked the streets wearing the 'exhibited' works, one day at a time, on a sandwich board. This uncomfortable form of human advertising is normally worn by poorly paid and frequently immigrant workers.

Finally Gavin Wade's (artist/curator) and Celine Condorelli's (architect) project support structure is interesting for its exploration of the interventive qualities of display structures and strategies www.supportstructure.org. To rather crudely quote what Gavin said in a recent interview on the topic:

"I would like to think that the concept of support structure is broader than what was physically there, and I think that people understood that when they came to use it. We wanted to make a structure that informed them and led them to do certain things, that provide a tool that was able to critique..."

[D.B] Thanks to our guests for the interesting contributions to the debate until now. I would like to ask to A Constructed World what for them is "incisive" curatorial stategy, as Benedetta said...
And wanted to ask Barnaby, who's now in Seoul, to tell us about the Archive showing there.

[ACW] This is an important project in terms of creating a shared history. And it is evident that as the archive travels it grows, picking up contributions and networks in new places. It is a very useful educational archive that brings aspects of this world together so it can be seen as a history. Writing history is also about exclusion, certain accounts being left out, some for obvious reasons, some for political reasons, and so on. As the curators of this archive you have set up areas of interest; critique of capitalism, feminism, beyond the museum, and more. Even within these guidelines for selecting content have you had to exclude or reject material and for what reasons?
[B.D & D.R]Thanks a lot for your positive response the the Archive. The idea of re-writing history we well keep in mind. We actually did reject some positions, some did look too partriarchal, some nice, but not political and so on. Sometimes we would like to include everybody, but in the end, one of us persuades the others to be strict, because this makes the archive much more interesting. There are international associations for curators, where you can find all positions anyway and we try to focuss on something else, something specific. One of the most interesting things is to question the means of including or excluding every time we put in new positions. -- It is quite possible that we will change the criteria in future, because we think about including/ excluding projects, not persons, but this is still open to discussion.

[B.D & D.R] I (Barnaby) have recently returned from Korea where the archive is on show at the Insa Art Space in Seoul. During my week or so in the city I worked with their team to integrate new material into the archive, I met and discussed the project with Meena Park and Sasa (44) the two artists who have reinterpreted the archive in Seoul [see image] and I gave a talk at the opening, which was simultaneously translated by Heejin Kim, curator of international projects at the space.

Dorothee and I were very pleased to get the invitation to present the archive in Seoul, but we were also aware of what challenges showing the archive outside Europe for the first time would entail. We have always openly acknowledged the archive's general eurocentricity, a result of the archive reflecting our own networks, and although we hope that the examples to be found in the archive have some universally interesting aspects, many are necessarily quite specific to their geographic context. So, there was always a question as to what extent the archive would be useful for the visitors in Seoul and how the very real differences between the cultural histories of Europe and East Asia would affect the reception of this material.

We were encouraged by an email exchange with Heejin, who seemed quite clear about the value of the project and about its applicability to the debate about curating in Korea. The website of Insa art space (http://insaartspace.or.kr) also helped us to see how the archive would fit in with the program there and perhaps more importantly how the space is actively questioning issues concerned with mediation, seeing itself not only as a site of display, but also as a site for archiving, work-shopping and theorizing about art production. When I arrived at the space a workshop was going on bringing people together to discuss the cultural life of the local area, and there was a constructive, informal atmosphere with staff and visitors dropping in and out of the open plan office, to pick up press material, charge their mobile phones or grab a cup of tea. This easy-going, but hard-working attitude at Insa provided a great environment for the archive and both the talk and opening were well attended, mostly by students and young artists, who seemed interested and engaged.

The question remains as to how best to extend the archive in relation to curatorial practice in East Asia. Heejin was quick to note that ‘independent’ or ‘freelance’ curating barely exists in Seoul, where the vast majority of curators are employed by one of the state-run (like Insa), company-run (like the Hyundai gallery) or ‘independent’ spaces (like Ssamzie space or Pool). Some curators have moved around between these sectors, but there are few resources for extra-institutional practice, either in the form of state funds or money from foundations. As a result the relationship between critical and experimental practice and ideas of independence in Korea must be understood as fundamentally different to the situation in Europe. As a result of these conversations and observations, I began to question whether the archive’s focus on freelance practice does not privilege those parts of the world where such practice is possible. The question of how the archive responds to this and which East Asian positions we will invite into the archive remains open at this stage.

[D.B] I wonder if the situation in Italy (or in some other European countries) is so different from the one outlined by Barnaby in Korea. Does the independent curator exist in Italy? Yet one of the reasons leading us to the creation of this site was to develop a discourse and a confrontation about this practice. Following the discussion, I still have to understand what exactly ‘independent curating’ is. If it’s about developing a critical approach (the ‘critical curating’ mentioned above in the discussion) I think that being independent it’s not enough to do it. There are ways to keep this approach from within an institution. Several institutions host projects and develop discourse in that sense. If it’s about staying away from institutions, it’s not to be taken for granted that you will avoid the same mechanisms you’re trying to escape from. On which basis then and how an independent practice it's developed? Is it something perhaps to be evaluated more from the projects than from a profile, as Dorothee was saying ? What type of ‘dependence’ is established between projects and funds?

[ACW] Perhaps we can come back to the question of who this archive is for and what it represents to whom. In terms of representing independent curating in Europe there are a number of holes and over representations of a couple of countries. This is natural when you are drawing on your acquaintances and friends (as we do in the independent world) to get projects started. So how important is it to acknowledge the subjectivity of a project like this? Is it something that we understand to be inherently there and it’s not of much consequence to discuss or are the limits acknowledged somehow?

If the Korean model must be understood as fundamentally different to the European model then so might the Australia (which sounds rather like the Korean model even though it is totally UK and USA focused) but also Italy, as Daniele suggests, is not representative of this European model.
[B.D & D.R] Well, after a short break from the discussion, I (Barnaby) return for a final post on this thread to offer some thoughts on the interesting questions set by Daniele and by ACW. I would begin by noting that these issues of 'independence' and 'representation' have both been the focus of heated discussion during the archive’s travels.

We would agree with Daniele that the independent of which we speak does not necessarily denote independence from an institutional framework. Indeed, we have often had to correct the assumption that the archive is 'anti-institutional’ by pointing out that the majority of the critical and experimental projects documented therein were developed together with institutions, albeit most frequently by curators who were not permanent members of staff. Similarly the majority of projects were made possible through the support of arts councils, foundations or sponsors, and the idea of a curator being financially 'independent' is a curious one, suggesting perhaps 'philanthropy' on the one hand or 'no-budget' curating on the other (both topics worthy of further discussion). But maybe there is a danger of seeking to qualify independence in overly practical terms. In her article 'a short essay on the phantasm of the independent curator and other far-fetched speculations' Dorothee introduced the idea that critical practice is possible despite the 'unsettling idea of being a non-autonomous, dependent subject to the core, inextricably bound up in the complex systems of culture.' Favouring not to support a return to avant-gardist separatism on the one hand, or an acceptance of structuralist views on autonomous objecthood on the other, she chooses to consider herself as a 'dependent curator'. So, perhaps the independence of which we speak is that which we find in the English term 'independent-minded', which is used to describe someone in charge of a reflective subjectivity who seeks to react to his or her constraints. Here we can extend this synonym and imagine that such independent-mindedness might be applied by curators to the very terms of their 'dependence'; a term which after all might be also understood as 'inter-connectedness.' What we propose is that a critical practice might be described by the terms in which such connections are negotiated – a sort of 'independent-minded dependence' if you like. Bearing in mind my experiences in Korea, Daniele’s in Italy and ACW’s in Australia, we can also ruminate that there is no universal definition of independence and that the critical potential of different relations to dependence and independent mindedness must again be understood in relation to their context.

To the topic of representation, as I think I have mentioned, it has never been our intention to 'represent' independent curating in Europe, and this is something we have repeatedly restated in person, on the website and in publicity and press material. However, despite our disclaimers, we are frequently criticised on this issue, either for trying to do so, or for not doing it well enough. For us then acknowledging the subjectivity of the archive is very important, because it is only once this is understood that the public can truly understand the open nature of the project, and the role they can play in it. This is absolutely not about validating particular practices over others, about proposing an elite, or marketing a ‘new generation’ of cultural players, but in an art-world where the most popular examples of selection (the museum, the biennale, the art fair) have no problems with being described in precisely these terms, it is very hard to stop people jumping to such conclusions. This material is gathered and displayed to provoke discussion, and we believe that such discussions promote the kind of critical ‘connectedness’ mentioned above.

As an afterword, it is not by chance that one of both Dorothee and my favourite ‘reinterpretations’ of the archive was the one Dorothee mentioned earlier, where Lise Nellemann decided to regularly invite people to select their favourite projects and publicly talk about their choice. In doing so, Lise thematised the archive’s subjectivity, pointed to its incomplete and partial nature and clearly licensed people to disagree with each other and with our selection – for us, she really hit the nail on the head.
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