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Sunday, 12 August 2012
Monday, 16 July 2012
Reconsidering Participatory Art in the wake of New Media and Web 2.0
Contemporary
art practices and, in particular, practices relating to participatory, collaborative
or engaged art have shown that neither the work of art nor the role of the
spectator can be formally defined or fixed. One element of participatory art
that had always seemingly been determined was that of a basic interaction
between the work of the active artist and the spectator, whose agency was
always secondary to, and determined by, the artist’s dictation of the encounter. Their physical presence was always accounted
for somewhere within the actualisation or documentation of the work. In
contemporary society, the popularisation of mass media, and the powerful
socialising role it performs in our everyday experience, has changed the
dynamics of human communication. Machines have come to not only facilitate but
actually replace human interaction and social interchange through ‘carrying out
tasks which once represented so many opportunities for exchange’ (Bourriard,
2002, p.17) The popularity of new media and sites such as Facebook and YouTube,
which allow users to upload their own content freely to the web, is changing
socialisation, and consequently, the role of artist, the role of audience and
the nature of participation. The growth of this phenomenon suggests that users
are gratified by the ability to play an active role in generating content,
rather than just passively consuming that which is created for them by others.
I seek to interrogate the changing dynamics of
participation on a number of levels: firstly, with the easy availability of
media publishing platforms online, what does this free and infinite content
mean for culture, the museum, and professional art practices? Secondly,
interaction as related to actual bodily participation (for which modern art has
continually striven since the seventies) versus virtual participation, which is
particularly relevant to discussions of net art and other practices that try to
coax internet users into exhibition spaces, making the act of using computers a
public event rather than an act preformed by the user in the privacy of their
own home. Finally, I want to explore how some artists and projects (for example
the Learning to Love You More 2002-2008
online project by the artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher) have
responded to this new wave of interconnectedness without physical interaction
and whether this sounds the death knell in part for an art which acquires its
value through permanence, subjectivity and presence.
In order to understand the impact upon how we now create and consume culture, we must make distinctions between Web 2.0 and its predecessors. According to media theorist Lev Manovich, there are two significant features of Web 2.0. Firstly, the shift from content created by a small number of professional producers towards a growing number of content being accessed and created by non-professionals. Secondly, the evolution of the web from being a predominately publishing medium to a communication medium (Manovich, 2008, p.68).The emergence of Web 2.0 technologies has moved our social activities online, and revolutionised the way we meet people and how we communicate with each other on a day-to-day basis. Social networking has become part of our culture, and it is increasingly being incorporated into artworks, as a platform for collaboration; as a virtual space to develop online communities and encounter new art forms. What effect has this shift had for culture and the concept of the ‘real’ versus the ‘virtual’?
Manovich is sceptical regarding the praise placed in new media’s supposed democracy and ability to connect, produce and inform. He equates the conversion to new media with the move from an industrial to a post-industrial society. Technology is a product of culture and at the same time it forms culture. ‘New media objects are cultural objects; thus, any new media object … can be said to represent, as well as help construct, some outside referent: a physically existing object...a system of categories currently employed by culture as a whole or by particular social groups” (Manovich, 2001 p.15) He states that, as with all cultural representations, new media representations are biased, constructing features of physical reality at the expense of others. New media can be seen as consisting of two distinctive layers, the “cultural layer” and the “computer layer” and because new media is created on computers, the logic of a computer can be expected to significantly influence the traditional cultural logic of media, so both layers influence each other (Manovich, 2001, p.46). Thus the ways in which humans beings interpret the world is in some cases filtered through the model of how computers programme and archive information. For example, the proliferation of websites documenting illegal street art both eternalises an inherently transient art-form while simultaneously obstructing the direct encounter street art aspires to engender. Thus, the subversive disruption of an ordinary walk down a familiar street by one’s sudden encounter with a new work of art becomes neutralised and homogenised, kept safe within a digital carousel of similarly ‘subversive’ images from around the world, to be flippantly clicked upon, copied, pasted, and shared online at will. The direct phenomenological instance, whose framework had been determined by the artist, is supplanted by the spectator’s ability to regurgitate or reject the new online content.
An alternative way to appreciate
Manovich’s argument is to think of the concepts of the active/passive spectator
as theorised in the writings of Guy Debord (Society
of the Spectacle), Jacques Ranciere (The
Emancipated Spectator) and further in the artistic inquiries of Allan
Kaprow (Happenings) and Nicholas
Bourriard (Relational Aesthetics). Historically, the viewer was mostly conceived of
as a passive recipient of aesthetic experiences. While writing about the
theatre, Ranciere, using Guy Debord’s concept of the ‘society of the spectacle’,
critiques the notions of spectatorship that propagate a discourse of inactivity
and a historical bias set against the viewer. The theory of the active/passive,
intellectual/ ignorant, he argues, must be rethought. The notion of
artist/spectator presupposes stable binaries such as master/student, the
intellectual/the ignorant, and reifies the distinction between those with
agency and those without. Ranciere, Kaprow and Bourriard, alongside writers
such as Artaud and Brecht, argued for a fundamental rethinking of the function
of the spectator, with Ranciere referring to the ‘emancipated spectator’, a
figure transcending the traditional frameworks and rituals of the aesthetic
encounter.
He argues that the divisions between
acting and looking, observation and action, have ossified into a fundamental
binary, one which presupposes the domination of the actor and the subjugation
of the spectator. This choice of words is not accidental, as they presuppose a
larger political implication than the simple relationship of artist-spectator.
Ranciere argues that a fundamental shift in perspective must take place, one in
which the performer and spectator must be considered mutually reinforcing and
mutually creative. The spectator serves to reify the performer’s existence much
in the same way as the performer serves to reify the spectator’s concepts of
reality (regardless of how challenging or comforting that reification may be).
Ultimately, we must dismiss “the opposition between looking and acting and
understand that the distribution of the visible itself is part of the
configuration of domination and subjection”.
(Ranciere 2007, p.275)
Unfortunately, this presupposes that viewers and artists
genuinely function and approach a work from the same place. All acts of
creation make certain teleological assumptions in order to communicate with the
audience – we cannot assume that an audience will be either willing or even
able to decipher the various teleological assumptions that underline a work.
It is often conceived that the
opportunities for communication afforded within interactivity and participation
through the internet will lead to a proliferation of democratic and social
opportunities which will, in theory, enable all users to contribute to and
mould social debates on a global scale. Departed is the era of the positioned
passive masses whose only connection to international relations was the one-way
media of television and radio. The Internet is broadly
assumed to be democratic and empowering, but there is a dangerous naivety in
the assumption that the Internet has somehow magically transcended and
disestablished the systems of power and hierarchy that govern the world.
Speaking at the Story Conference on February 18th, 2011, BBC
journalist Adam Curtis commented that
The
digital utopians took us up the wrong road in the 1990s, and still today, in
the way they led us to believe that the web is an innocent world. Innocent, in
the sense that it was removed from the old elite structures and the hierarchies
of power in the world. (...) That it was somehow a fresh world, where together
we are all connected like equal nodes in a network, and together we will create
a new kind of democracy.
He added, ‘The Internet
is plugged in – literally – to the architecture of power in this world, and
power is exercised in all sorts of ways, and new ways and old ways, through its
networks’. (YouTube, 2011)
This position is also argued by
Manovich. Having grown up under Brezhnev, Manovich writes with a profound
suspicion of the way the Internet brings to reality a new form of velvet-gloved
subjugation and totalitarianism. In On
Totalitarian Interactivity, he writes ‘I cannot but see Internet as a
communal apartment of the Stalin era: no privacy, everybody spies on everybody
else, a complete transparency [where] everybody can track everybody else’ (Manovich,
1996, 50 lines).
While this opinion might be based on
personal suspicions and cultural differences, (those in the West who embraced
new technologies as liberating and those in communist states suspicious of how
those new technologies might be used to subjugate the masses,) it raises valid concerns
about the nature of openness and information sharing on the web. What has occurred
is a shifting of private thoughts and actions into the public sphere. As more
and more people upload their intimate photos and information to sites such as Facebook and MySpace, they rely on these outward storage systems to contain
their private memories. Subsequently, within contemporary mass society, there has
emerged a reliance upon and trust in external platforms owned by large
companies to archive personal information, thereby eradicating the need for a
space that is private to hold that which is private. ‘What was private became
public. What was unique became mass produced. What was hidden in an
individual’s mind became shared’ (Manovich, 2001, p.61)
What
of those who post creative content on the web? What role do they play in the
proliferation of information, private and creative? And what does this mean for
professional artists and traditional spaces (such as museums) in which to view
and engage with works of art? Web 2.0 saw the rebirth
of the user, from consumer of online products and information, produced by
professionals and companies, to producer of online products and information
themselves used by companies and other agencies. The sociability of such
exchanges means that users are central to the content and form of all resources
and materials generated on the web. The users of Web 2.0 engage in an economy
where they themselves are the products of exchange. The
proliferation of online do- it- yourself platforms has lead to multiple amateur
creative processes to the point where it is increasingly difficult to make
distinctions between mainstream and alternative, high and low culture. The
reality that seemingly anyone can be a producer and distributor of visual
materials of all types has led to an intense “amateurization” of creative
practices, the fruits of which represent a significant amount of the content
found online. Juan Martín Prada notes that this is in contrast to the
professionalism that distinguished the twentieth century on all levels, ‘In
today’s world, that former concept of a given individual as the exclusive
location of “artistic talent” and the accompanying suppression of that talent
among the “great masses” no longer has any meaning’ (Prada, 2007, p.9)
While
it might be difficult to maintain distinctions between high art and low art on
the Internet, one might ask if this is strictly a negative evolution. Most of the content uploaded to blogs and social
sites by users is
biographical, subjective, and placed in the everyday. Other content can be seen as modifying and hybridising existing
data, using collage and layering techniques. Appropriation has always been an
element of contemporary art from Pablo Picasso’s Guitar, Newspaper, Glass and Bottle (1913) to Pierre
Huyghe’s The Third Memory (1999). For an artist working today, original
creative concepts are still those that set them apart from other endless
permutations on the web. Harnessing the phenomenon whereby users enjoy
contributing content is something that some artists have incorporated within
their practice. The project Learning to
Love You More (LTLYM) is both a website and series of non-web presentations
comprised of work made by the general public in response to assignments given
by artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher. From 2002 until its end in 2009
over eight thousand people participated in the project. Participants accepted
an assignment, completed it by following the simple but specific instructions
and then sent the required report (photograph, text, video, etc) to the site
for approval. The result was the possible publication of their work on-line.
‘Like a recipe, meditation practice, or familiar song, the prescriptive nature
of these assignments was intended to guide people towards their own experience’
(Fletcher and July, 2008). One could critique online projects such as
these on questions of authorship and exchange. How can an artist claim creative
rights or responsibility for content created by others? Artists become
only ringmasters, or at best editors of other people’s creative output,
diminishing their own creative role.
The assumption here is one of an
outmoded idea of the artist as genius, whose function is to create and inspire,
to use their talent as a means of educating a viewer. But, as we have seen, the
role of the artist is evolving: the artist is now one who facilitates, who acts
as a catalyst for the creation of content. A project such as LTLYM resonates with
the idea found in the avant-garde and contemporary art, that of the end of the
division between art and life and the uncertainty in the privileging of the
artist as exclusive architect. Hence, the relationship between artist,
audience and new media must be understood as an advancement which is
continually altered and nourished by interactivity on the web. And the overwhelmingly positive response that the
project received directs more attention to the question as to whether relational
art really needs an audience physically present in order for the participation
to be deemed successful or satisfying, both for the contributor and artist.
It is not surprising that Nicholas Bourriard’s
Relational Aesthetics was published
at a time when Internet activity and developments in communicative technology
and new media were on the increase during the nineties. A comparison of
Bourriard’s text and the emergence of web 2.0 is reasonable when its main concern was ‘a set of artistic practices which take as their
theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and
their social context, rather than an independent and private space’ (Bourriard,
2002, pg.113). . It was felt that there was a desire on
the part of artists to engage with and subvert the traditional role of the
spectator, but to do so through the physical plane, as suggested by the work of
numerous artists such as Liam Gillick and Rirkrit Tiravanija. Could
the movement of relational art be perceived as an example of the artist trying
to regain control of the creative process while still retaining the desired
participation of the audience?
In conclusion, it is
obvious that accounting for the changing role of participatory art as a result
of new media, is one that has been unprecedented, complex, and dynamic. Critics
remain divided as to whether the speedy evolution of publishing and receiving
content online is beneficial for art practices. On one side there are the
cautious and well founded words of Manovich and Curtis regarding the dangers of
naive usage of such technology. There are those from an artistic standpoint who
believe the integrity of the artwork and connection between artist and viewer
has been jeopardised. Shawn Wilbur (2000 p.50) comments that the virtual is not
real, and that ‘[t]he
authentic cannot be engendered through technological means’. But then there are
those who believe the Internet can revitalise the public sphere and community
through its democratisation of information and creative opportunities. The liberation
has occurred of the user, from a condition of passive spectator and consumer of
cultural objects to that of an engaged and informed contributor of culture. An authentic
fear exists for the death of the artist/author, the demise of a physical
interaction and a cult of the amateur as a result of new media and Web 2.0. There
is one element that throughout this debate remains consistent, that of a desire
of artists and non-artists, both collectively and individually to communicate,
to form communities, to engage and participate in creative projects together. This
is now possible on a global level with the erasure of geographical and temporal
barriers afforded by new media. David Rokeby summarises this idea in a paper which
suggests that our relationship with technology is a sophisticated articulation
of our need for a self image, a sense of self, and a connection to the ‘experienced
world’,
A technology is
interactive to the degree that it reflects the consequences of our actions or
decisions back to us. The Internet is a medium through which we communicate
with ourselves, a mirror... The
medium not only reflects back, but also refracts what it is given; what is returned
is ourselves, transformed and processed... [Technology]
mirrors our desires; interactive technologies, in particular, reflect our
desire to feel engaged. (Rokeby,
1995, p.223)
Bibliography
·
Bishop, C. ed., (2006) Participation,
London: Whitechapel
·
Bourriard,
N., (2002) Relational Aesthetics, Dijon:
Les Presses du Reel.
·
Fletcher, H., and July. M., (2009), Learning to Love you More, [online]
Available at: http://www.learningtoloveyoumore.com/
[accessed 10 April 2012]
·
HannibaltheHerbivore, (2011), Adam Curtis speaking at the Story Conference - February
18, 2011, Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU8tWdaL6nc
[accessed 7 June 2012]
·
Kaprow, A., (1966), ‘Notes on the
Elimination of the Audience’. In: Bishop, C. ed., (2006), Participation, London: Whitechapel
·
Manovich, L., (1996) On Totalitarian Interactivity, [pdf] Available
at http://manovich.net/TEXT/totalitarian.html
·
Manovich, L., (2001) The Language of New Media, Massachusetts:
MIT Press
·
Manovich, L. (2008) ‘Art after Web 2.0’.
In: Frieling, R. Ed., The Art of
Participation 1950 to now, London: Thames and Hudson, pp.67-80,
·
Prada,
J., (2007) “web 2.0” as a new context for artistic practices’. In: Prada, J. ed., (2007) Inclusa-net, 2007:
Madrid City Council
·
Ranciere, J. ,(2006) ‘The
Emancipated Spectator’ In: Art Forum, vol. 45(7), pp. 270-281, 341,
March
·
Rokeby, D., (1995) ‘Transforming
Mirrors: Subjectivity and Control in Interactive Media’. In: Shanken, E. Ed.,
(2009), Art and Electronic Media, London:
Phaidon Press Ltd.
·
Wilbur, S., ‘An Archaeology of
Cyberspaces, Vitality, Community, Identity’. In: ‘The Cyber cultures Reader: A Users
Guide, Bell, D and Kennedy, B. eds., London: Routledge
Friday, 11 May 2012
Critically comparing the curatorial approaches of ‘the Auteur’ and ‘the Editor’
I
don’t want to see any topics on curating more openly discussed. I don’t see the
point in talking about curating as curating. Because curating should be
discussing art not itself, curating. Not curating curating.
This is a quote by
Adrian Notz taken from the first issue of a digital publication called On-Curating.org. (2008) I
mention this in the opening of my discussion to highlight one of the many
significant aspects of the discourse in the field of curating today. Whatever
opinion you have upon the relevance of discussing topics within curating and
then that relationship to art, such outcomes inevitably affect the production
and consumption of exhibitions, biennials, art fairs, and the work of artists. Recent
discourse in the art world has focused on the evident shift in the growing significance
of the role that curators play. There has been a momentous increase in the
number of university programmes offered in curatorial studies while some have
highlighted the lack of research and writing on curation as a concern that
needs to be rectified. Artists have also positioned themselves in curatorial
roles, leading to the blurring of distinctions between the two fields. Interaction
between artists and curators has evolved to the point where the two (at one
time separate disciplines) are merging resulting in collaboration and new
methodologies. There was once upon a time only one definition of the curator as
the historical keeper and recorder of things, the person who set the context
and provided the space in which art could be viewed and engaged with. But today
the simple initiate of display and engage has been affected by alternative concepts
about the nature of exhibition making itself.
‘Curating
is normally associated with the task of giving form to exhibitions containing
artworks. But today we see an expansion of the curatorial field, as the term
now also seems to apply to processual and discursive projects, containing no
objects at all.’ (Richter, p.1,
2008)
Other
factors to bear in mind are globalising market forces, the politics of institutional
critique, and viewing art in alternative ways (through the internet and art
fairs to name a few). These emerging influences have demanded an alternative
response to the task of arranging and inventing artworks for public engagement.
The success of a show seems as much to lie in the hands of a curator as much as
in the work of an artist. As Andreas Huyssen has signified, there is even
acceleration within the curator’s job on a grammatical level, ‘to curate is now
a verb and it is precisely not limited to the traditional functions of the
“keeper of collections”, to curate these days means to mobilise collections, to
set them in motion within the walls of the museum as well as in the heads of
spectators.’ (Huyssen, 1995, p.21) These are a few issues to bear in mind while
I access the contrary methods that some curators have adopted as a necessary
response to evolving developments within exhibition-making. I will limit my
discussion to the diverse curatorial styles of Jens Hoffman and Matthew Higgs,
highlighting their conflicted strategies to exhibition making. Hoffman, styled
with a preformative approach to exhibition making is ‘much more interested in
the idea of staging exhibitions as an overall creative and artistic environment
that the audience can immerse themselves in on a number of levels.’ (Hoffman,
2008, pp32-33) Higgs on the other hand is interested in ‘quite conventional
approaches to exhibition making of interesting [consisting of] art displayed in
a fairly traditional, straight-forward manner. Ultimately [his] interest is in
the art, not in the structure or framework of the exhibition.’ (Higgs 2006) While
both curators first and foremost are occupied with presenting art in an
appealing fashion, challenges present themselves with respect to the way in
which these approaches affect both artist and audience. It raises questions as
to which is more important; the way in which a work of art is presented and
contextualised or what the artwork itself is trying to convey?
 |
| Matthew Higgs |
 |
| Jens Hoffmann |
Hans
Ulrich Obrist and Jens Hoffman are examples of the type of curators who look
beyond the exhibition model, often involving elements of institutional critique
within their practice. This process is one that reflects on the nature of
curating. They recognize their approach as influenced by the work of the late
Harald Szeemann, who is accredited as inventing the grand exhibition where the
work is tied to a central theme and arranged in unusual relationships with one
another. Hoffman often
works in collaboration with artists in developing new systems of display, new
artworks, and exhibitions which evolve over time. His preoccupation with the
format of the exhibition reflects a new awareness emerging in contemporary art
in the process of how artworks and exhibitions are produced. Maria Lind (2002)
states that art practices are often ‘more concerned with the
activity of production and manufacturing than with the autonomous artefact.’
The process involved in the research and development of an artwork becomes much
more appealing. Hoffman’s inventiveness is reflected by challenging the way art
is displayed, accounting for the innovation which art- making has adopted over
the past twenty years. Despite these developments, the same (modernist white
cube) systems of display are used. This curatorial decision actively contributes to the generation and
production of creative ideas and projects through collaborations with artists.
The outcome of such actions can be seen in the successful collaborative effort
that produced the publication The Next
Documenta Should Be Curated By an Artist. Within this publication Hoffman
openly acknowledges the shift in the focus of some curators towards producing
themselves and asked various artists to offer their suggestions and opinions on
the curatorial process if a Documenta was to be organized by an artist instead
of a curator.
Those that have taken issue
with Hoffman’s style believe that he takes a very authorial and creative
position in the creation of exhibitions and in this process the work by the artists
he includes takes a back seat in the appropriation of his vision. Hoffman
denies such accusations stating that
[None
of us] has ever done anything to a work of art that was not appropriate or
forced artists into a context they did not want to participate in. Criticism
usually comes from the outside—never from the artists we collaborate with... (Hoffmann, 2008 pp.32-33)
While the artists involved might not object to Hoffman’s style
there is the matter of exactly who Hoffman is creating and aiming his shows
for. If he is seeking the engagement of audiences on all levels, the example of
his joint project with Maurizio Cattelan of the 6th Caribbean
Biennial in 1999 might prove somewhat contrary to this assertion. While the ‘biennial’
was seemingly a critique on how biennials are more about the personalities
involved and less about the works of art, it was a very expensive point to make.
Further, it completely ostracised audiences outside of art networks who were
not in on the joke. And as Jenny Liu (2000) points out it was quite a cynical
gesture. The locale were excluded,
there were no Caribbean artists approached, no art, and no attempt was made to
engage with the local community, ‘it was a portable piece of art that could
have as easily been performed in Liverpool, Sydney or Kwangju, its critiques
and failings intact.’
On
the other side of the practice are those curators who feel that it is the
artists who should be given the complete freedom to make their vision known and
to perform critiques. Figures such as Matthew Higgs and Kasper Konig prefer a
simpler approach to staging exhibitions. They fall into the realm of those who
believe that if you do your work well as a curator you will disappear behind
the work. Fred Wilson’s 1992 Mining the Museum show at the Maryland Historical Society is a
great example of curator as editor.
As a result of a simple reshuffling and placement of objects alongside others
that produced a paradoxal narrative, visitors were lead to regard the omission of certain unsavoury histories from
the local community. Higgs disinterest in the way Hoffman organises
exhibitions is because such projects are simply ‘too self-referential, too
self-reflexive, too tautological, too academic, and perhaps are ultimately
somewhat alienating: a kind of endgame, with increasingly diminishing
returns.’(Higgs 2006) Not only is there a danger of the curator’s vision
overshadowing the work but Higgs suggest that their innovative approaches are
nothing more than the adopting of strategies invented by artists themselves. (Higgs
2006) This is supported by the artist and e-flux
editor Anton Vidokle (2010) when he says that the inevitability of going beyond
exhibition making ‘should not become a justification for the work of curators
to supersede the work of artists.’ The role of the curator could not exist
without the production of artists. Perhaps institutional critique should be
left in the hands of artists like Hans Haacke or Joseph Kosuth who engage
audiences directly when challenging the paradigms of artistic displays and do
not need curators as a go-between.
While
this point is valuable, Higgs’ editorial/traditional approach to curation has
been criticised in the past. His show Protest
and Survive at The Whitechapel Gallery took a collection of works from the
nineteen-sixties onwards to explore ‘the
possibility of identifying a radical community of artists, in searching for the
political voice that is forever glossed over.’ The exhibition was seen by one critic as ‘dated’
and ‘backward looking.’ (Sladen 2001) The curatorial choice to include some
artists were deemed questionable and an attempt to contemporise the political
messages of the numerous works was reduced to an over arching nostalgia for an
activism long past. So perhaps a traditional straight forward way of display is
not always productive in trying to convey meaning and context behind the work. Protest and Survive was criticized
because it was too fragmented and incoherent, displaying too many differing
types of protest ranging from feminist critiques of pharmaceutical companies to
Marxism. Frequently, it is not enough to present the work in simple conditions.
The context is always different when viewing an artwork in isolation so a
curator’s main responsibility to the artwork and the audience is to provide the
context within which to interpret the significance of the work. As previously mentioned
the practice of making art has radically changed over the past twenty years, practices have expanded beyond the boundaries of the
production of objects incorporating new media which requires innovative
methods of articulation. The curator needs to focus upon how best to engage and
make deeper an audiences experience of art, and it is through the process of
display that this happens thus,
[The exhibition
should be] understood not merely in
terms of its ‘surface’ or design but as part of a complex of media in which all
elements contribute consciously or unconsciously to the production of meaning (Richter 2008)
In assessing the characteristics of the
auteur (Hoffman) versus editor, (Higgs) it is difficult to determine which
approach is the most positive and supportive to the art and its audience. Hoffman’s
approach can be interpreted as leaning towards a sort of curator-centrism, a
manipulation of the meaning of works of art which could suggest that there is
little faith displayed in the ability of the work to critique/teach and the
artist’s vision. If enacted unaccordingly, in the end the
auteur approach will limit the interpretations of the work and will alienate
audiences, cutting away at a commonly held belief that art is for everybody. There
is always room for experimentation and it is indeed necessary to engage with
and understand contemporary art which is being produced today. But there needs
to be a balance maintained where the overarching narrative or aims of the
curator do not eclipse the work involved. In defence of the auteur, it is not
enough to just arrange works of art loosely connected to an overarching concept
and hope for the public to garner their understanding from this alone. While
some spectators are more than capable of doing this, the curator should act as
wingman to the artist in helping communicate meaning. Ultimately the goal of
curation should be for the reinvention of our ways of seeing, to create
exhibitions that enable people to be surprised and concerned with what they are
viewing. The aim is to start dialogues and what Ralph Rugoff deems the most
important component of the game, exhibitions that
enable people to be
[Caught]
off guard by what they’re seeing... [To] re-imagining the conceptual context in
which art is encountered by viewers. [To invoke] strategies that create a
psychological space for the critical first phase of our encounter with art
works, which occurs on an emotional and experiential level. (Rugoff, 1999)
Bibliography
·
Higgs,
M.,(2006) ‘In Conversation with Paul
O’Neill’, in NDP no.3 Available at <www.northdrivepress.com/interviews/
[accessed on 11 January 2012]
·
Hoffman,
J. and Aranda, J (2008) ‘Art as Curating, Curating as Art’ in ART LIES issue 59 Fall http://www.artlies.org/index.php?issue=59&s=0 [accessed 12
January 2012
·
Hoffman, J. (ed) (2004) The Next Documenta Should Be Curated By an Artist. Frankfurt:: Revolver, Archiv für aktuelle Kunst ;New York :E-flux
·
Huyssen, A.
(1995) Twilight Memories: Marking Time in
a Culture of Amnesia. London: Routledge
·
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