Curating.info

Despite the fact that new media art might be still treated as a new and recent phenomenon of art practice, the story of new media can be traced back as early as the sixties. Artists such as John Cage, Allan Kaprow, Roy Ascott, E.A.T. have been preoccupied with themes including interaction, multimedia, electronics, kineticism, cybernetics and technology, and so have curators and theorists such as Marshall McLuhan, Jasia Reichardt, Lucy Lippard and Jack Burnham, among others. The context for artists, theorists and curators alike has been changing since that time, when this type of work formed a new territory for exploration in the arts. There was not only a change in creative language, but also a change in aesthetics and attitudes that would effect the ways we perceive artworks, exhibitions and cultural production in general.

One of the landmark exhibitions was “Les Immatériaux” curated by Jean-Francois Lyotard at the Centre Pompidou, Paris in 1985. Lyotard had already written his seminal book The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979) in which he examined the changes in human condition effected by technological developments in communications, mass media and computer science. The exhibition sought to present the repercussions of such a restructure of society and culture and also to construct an emergent space filled with emergent concepts. Nathalie Heinich explains “Paintings and sculptures were still present, of course, but became part of a much larger set of information made up of signs, words, sounds and technical artefacts” in a labyrinth-like exhibition space. Additionally, the notion of “immateriality” was introduced at a point when computers and interfaces were not user-friendly, a fact that also highlighted the latent problematic aspects of technology in art making and curating.∗ Curating here may have functioned as a philosophical quest authored by Lyotard, which in spite of its drawbacks has opened the door to a new era of exhibition making.

Moving forward to the mid-nineties, we can see the next wave of artists and curators engaging with new media under a new set of conditions again. Since the term “new media” is a very loose one, I would like at this point to refer to Olia Lialina’s description of new media: “a field of study that has developed around cultural practices with the computer playing a central role as the medium for production, storage and distribution”. However, it still seems that new media art cannot be contextualized under a certain canon because of its hybrid forms, and there is still a need for new media art practitioners - be they artists, curators, theorists- to provide a contextual umbrella for new media practices to be discussed.

From a curatorial perspective, new media art has brought new challenges to contemporary curating with its immaterial nature, its interactive qualities, its computer-based character and its constant developments. Anyone working with or keeping track of the shifts in new media will have noticed that new media art can be “web-based projects, sound events, virtual reality installations, mobile cellular, or PDA projects, and practices- conceptual art practices, networked-based practices, software coding or sampling” as Sarah Cook has outlined.∗∗ It is hard to permit the flexible and dynamic character of new media art to fully articulate in an exhibition space since most new media artworks tend to defy physicality. The need for new curatorial expressions to embrace the concepts of new media is becoming more and more apparent in the variety of exhibition formats.

Curating in online contexts has been a prevalent mode for web-based art projects. A rewind through the recent history of new media art will remind us that the dawn of the World Wide Web proved beneficial to web artists not only because of the new possibilities of the medium, but also because it allowed a certain degree of autonomy from institutions and curators altogether. An early example of such an exhibition was the project Desktop Is (1997) initiated by artist Alexei Shulgin for which he gathered desktop screenshots from 67 artists and hosted them online for public viewing. The developments the World Wide Web brought about at that time were equally important for curators. The novel notion of distribution and communication meant that not only artworks could be distributed but also curatorial practice. The “instantaneity in contemporary culture” (Charlie Gere, 2008)∗∗∗ was and still is evident and emergent in many distributed artworks and exhibitions on the web. For example, the exhibition Beyond Interface (1998) curated by Steve Dietz at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. On the archival website of the exhibition, one can find Steve Dietz’s quote, which reads: “This online exhibition presents a simple proposition. There is art that is created to "be" on the Net. After that, it gets more complex very quickly. Beyond Interface explores some of the complicating issues but does not attempt a comprehensive investigation… the main goals of Beyond Interface are to present outstanding examples of net-based artistic activity, and to try and begin to better understand and appreciate this art and its context.” Steve Dietz is very conscious about his early venture by pointing out the uncertainties of curating web-specific exhibitions. Nevertheless, that is mostly the case when something new is coming out. By laying emphasis on the art and its context, Dietz attempts to highlight the dynamic of web-based artworks, being fluid and hybrid and also the Web as a space for art production, curating and cultural interaction. However, while distributed curatorial practice on the web might fulfill the democratic and decentralised expectations of its medium, it also could ensure the work is easily confined to a specialist audience online.

Curating new media art in “offline” contexts is another main method of presenting such work. From the eighties onwards, many different spaces and structures have flourished to support new media art activities. New media centres such as ZKM in Germany, The Banff Centre in Canada and FACT in England; festivals, like Ars Electronica and Transmediale; galleries such as the Furtherfield Gallery in London; and labs such as the V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media in the Netherlands, among others. Contemporary art museums have been quite wary of new media art, with some exceptions such as SFMOMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Baltic. Simply stated, the visibility of new media art exhibitions in museums is low compared to mainstream contemporary art shows. The exhibition Database Imaginary (The Banff Center, Alberta, Canada, 2004) curated by Sarah Cook, Steve Dietz and Anthony Kiendl included works from 1971 to 2004. The exhibition sought to explore the idea of the database as an evolving phenomenon in human culture, featuring works such as Hans Haacke’s “Visitors’ Profile” (1971), a questionnaire about contemporary events that was distributed to museum visitors to a group exhibition in Milwaukee and Graham/Mongrel’s “Lungs-London.pl” (2004), a Perl software-code poem based on the 1792 poem London by William Blake. Database Imaginary attempts to establish connections between old and new art forms that share a common ground. Such exhibitions provide a space, firstly, to reflect on the continuum of ideas taking “shape” through a range of mediums and secondly, to discover the correlations that new media art shares with its precursors. The idea of creating narratives that are not fragmentary and follow the trail of art development also shows the dynamic of curatorial practice itself. If museums refrain from showing new media art by being skeptical about the qualities of such art in the course of art history, then exhibitions, such as Database Imaginary, provide for the art references that institutions may lack.

There is no doubt that there is not a singular practice or canon of curating new media art and that is primarily triggered by the hybridism of the art itself. Christiane Paul (2008) has argued that ‘Because new media art is more process-oriented than object-oriented, it is important to convey the underlying concept of this process to the audience’.∗∗∗∗ New media art curators need to be constantly resourceful in order to create evocative spaces and experiences. As new media art gradually enters the museum doors, curatorial strategies need not only communicate the art but also the fact that the exhibition itself is a process.





∗ See Nathalie Heinich (2009) “Les Immatériaux Revisited: Innovation in Innovations” and Sarah Cook (2008) “Immateriality and its discontents. An overview of main models and Issues for Curating New Media” in Christiane Paul (ed.), New Media in the White Cube and Beyond. Curatorial Models for Digital Art. University of California Press, pp 26 - 49

∗∗ Sarah Cook (2008), “Immateriality and Its Discontents. An Overview of Main Models and Issues for Curating New Media”, in Christiane Paul (ed.), New Media in the White Cube and Beyond. Curatorial Models for Digital Art. University of California Press, p. 27

∗∗∗ Charlie Gere (2008). “New media Art and the Gallery in the Digital Age” in Christiane Paul (ed.), New Media in the White Cube and Beyond. Curatorial Models for Digital Art. University of California Press, p. 23

∗∗∗∗ Christiane Paul (2008), “Challenges for a Ubiquitous Museum. From the White Cube to the Black Box and Beyond”, in Christiane Paul (ed.), New Media in the White Cube and Beyond. Curatorial Models for Digital Art. University of California Press, p. 65

The professional aspect of being a curator has been a popular discussion topic of late. As an emerging independent curator and a recent graduate myself, I find the discussion to be a crucial one, and the professional and developmental challenges faced by newcomers to the field are constant questions posed by myself and my peers. In discussion with my colleagues regarding the challenges faced by emerging curators, several themes appeared. At the forefront, unsurprisingly, were concerns regarding the lack of funding available. Meager funding and the limited budgets provided for exhibitions present challenges including the inability to access artists who can request higher artists’ fees; difficulties providing adequate fees for those artists willing to participate; and the problem of finding funding that doesn’t conflict with funding provided to artists. Often, the funding that is available is entirely out of reach for emerging curators at the beginning of their career. For example, the Canada Council for the Arts offers project grants and professional assistance to curators, though applicants must have already produced an independent body of work, have had at least three public presentations of work in a professional context over a three year period, have maintained an independent professional practice for at least three years, and have produced at least three exhibitions or publications. These stipulations are usually prohibitive and discouraging for curators fresh to the field without bankable experience – a situation emerging artists applying for grants will be familiar with.

Often working outside the framework and support of an institutional budget, emerging curators are faced with the difficulties of reconciling their curatorial direction with the realities imposed by insufficient funding. A lack of salaried work and over-dependence on project-by-project funding often forces emerging curators to take on ‘day jobs’, and the challenges of balancing a curatorial practice with other work are not inconsiderable. Of course, insufficient funding is not a problem faced only by curators (emerging or not) and obviously extends to the arts in general, which is a much larger issue that requires addressing.

Beyond funding, another problem is posed by the dearth of professional resources for young curators. Unfortunately, few resources exist for emerging curators, who are often caught in limbo between education and career, without institutional resources. Some excellent resources do exist: this site and IKT (though with IKT members must apply and have their applications supported by two existing members) are among the few highly accessible international resources for curators online. Another excellent resource is the Curatorial Toolkit for emerging curators assembled by Karen Love and 2010 Legacies Now in British Columbia, which provides an in-depth practical guide to curatorial practices, with topics including the role of the curator, researching a concept, securing a venue and funding, budgeting and fundraising, exhibition programming, media relations and audience development. Additionally, a number of publications in print address curatorial practice, though the majority focus on broader curatorial theory rather than specific, practical professional issues.

Despite these resources, gaps obviously exist in professional support available to emerging curators. In Canada, for example, the Canadian Artists Representation/le Front des Artistes Canadiens (CARFAC) provides legal assistance, health and safety advice and other professional development resources to professional artists, however an equivalent umbrella organization for curators still does not exist. Some advocacy and legal frameworks do exist: the LaSalle River Accord (1999-2000) and the Toronto Independent Curators Network Proposed Fee Schedule (1999) set recommended fee schedules for independent curators including writing fees. However, as Love notes, curatorial fees in Canada still amount to annual incomes that are well below the rates recommended by the Canadian Museums Association and salaries provided to curators by most institutions.

Of course, any discussion of the challenges faced by emerging curators must address the recent proliferation of curatorial programs at the university level. In an increasingly corporate world that prioritizes concrete skills and quantifiable qualifications, and where higher education supposedly provides some assurance of gainful employment, emerging curators are increasingly seeking validation through (often pricey) curatorial degrees. As a result, university programs in curatorial studies are flourishing internationally. A primary concern expressed by my peers is that university programs often do not offer the hands-on experience and direct involvement with artists that a self-directed curatorial education in the field may. While many students take it upon themselves to put forth their own projects and proposals outside of their curriculum, those who do not are often unprepared for the practical realities of a curatorial practice upon graduation. Many programs seem to be attempting to bridge this gap with mandatory internships and student placements in galleries or museums, however there are still the realities of proposing and mounting exhibitions on one’s own that must be learned. In the end the onus is on the student to fully participate in the curatorial field outside the classroom. Additionally, since university curatorial programs are relatively new and many established curators don’t necessarily have the same degrees, there sometimes exists a professional divide between the old guard and the new, and occasionally some doubt regarding the taught skills of new graduates (perhaps justifiably, given the aforementioned lack of practical experience in graduates). A new difficulty now perhaps lies in presenting a university degree from a curatorial program as an asset and not a liability.

Establishing oneself in any career certainly has its challenges, and as training programs blossom and numbers swell, curators, face some unique obstacles. However, the ways in which emerging curators are navigating these obstacles and presenting new alternatives is heartening. Hopefully, we will see a continued push for the development of new, accessible resources and a reassessment of the funding available for curators, to further the development of this profession and provide opportunities to present new and critical material. And hopefully, we will see a continuation of this discussion as new ideas are presented. We need better curatorial programs, more strategic funding opportunities earlier on in emerging curators’ careers, and more professional associations to guide us. Let’s work towards this together and make it a reality.

What Makes A Great Exhibition?

Edited by Paula Marincola, Director of the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative (PEI).

Essays by Glenn Adamson, Paola Antonelli, Carlos Basualdo, Iwona Blazwick, Lynne Cooke, Thelma Golden, Mary Jane Jacob, Jeffrey Kipnis, Paula Marincola, Detlef Mertins, Mark Nash, Ralph Rugoff, Ingrid Schaffner and Robert Storr.


Supposedly we don’t judge a book by its cover, and with this publication we should give its title the same respect. The Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative has continually challenged arts professionals to devise exhibitions of high artistic merit by posing them with this deceptively simple sounding question: What makes a great exhibition?

The dialogue surrounding exhibitions is invariably based on theme and content. Having recently evaluated MA curating courses, I was surprised to find that syllabi too usually focus on the conceptual development of exhibitions rather than the practical tools of creating them.

Seeking to provoke this reflection beyond their direct constituency, Marincola poses this question of ‘what makes a great exhibition’ to fourteen highly distinguished curators and leading professionals in the field in an attempt to uncover the instinctive considerations and processes that they have developed through experience. Marincola also seeks to illustrate how curatorial objectives collide with the reality of practicalities in exhibition making. Refreshingly, the editor realizes that as contemporary art exhibitions attract larger and more diverse audiences this is a debate that should be readily accessible. The book therefore allows a rare behind the scenes look at exhibition making for a readership that reaches beyond curating professionals.

Each contributor responds to the question from different perspectives and experiences. Ranging from past Documenta curators and Venice Biennale commissioners, to directors of some of the world’s most prestigious museums and influential galleries, the contributors have been responsible for an impressive canon of important exhibitions. Each of these exhibitions has been individually evaluated through official texts, publications, and events, as well as through the press and media. In this anthology however, Marincola asks the contributors to think about common denominators shared in the successes - or indeed failures - of these projects, how they are produced, and their concepts formed.

Marincola has outlined the expanded complexities of the publication title question in a series of leading sub questions. These relate to all elements of exhibition development and realisation, such as marrying exhibition concept with artist's intentions; placing of works in relation to each other as well as the architectural framework; formal presentation and supporting text; catalogue and legacy; and the varying roles of and relationships between curator, institution and artist within these processes of decision making.

Outlined on the cover, Marincola reveals an expanded list of questions that she had posed to the contributors. Printed also on an inserted bookmark, the reader is prompted to continually refer back to these points of interest. Despite the authority of the essays, this transparency in the guiding questions of the publication allows the reader to participate in the dialogue and encourages us to create our own responses.

The breadth of the subject matter creates a dilemma for those attempting responses; the contributors’ styles vary considerably. Some answer in theory only, without relating to examples. This could run the risk of vague statements, sounding more like an instruction manual, the ‘how-to’ of curating. However, for example, Robert Storr's thoroughness hits the nail on the head with each of his poignant statements, referring to issues that those working in the industry are all too familiar with. He highlights the curator's pivotal role in balancing the pressures from artists, institutions, gallerists, and so on, as well as practical limitations of budget, space and those things outside of our control, whilst staying true to the original curatorial concept of the exhibition.

Others use media-specific examples to illustrate their answers. Mark Nash's exploration of the difficulties of curating film and video (as opposed to programming), is in balanced contrast to Glenn Adamson’s discussion on craft, and Ingrid Schaffner composes an inspiringly in-depth investigation into the experiential impact of wall text and labeling.

Architectural space is an underlying issue throughout the anthology of essays. This is extended to place and locality as Iwona Blazwick reflects on a century of exhibitions at Whitechapel Gallery in London.

Balancing the influences of conflicting interests is another issue that surfaces throughout. Ralph Rugoff’s debate on group shows is particularly thought-provoking; posing the question of whether a group show of bad art can only be a bad show and whether it is possible to make a great show with only great art works. Carlos Basualdo’s criticism of the lack of critical context to influential biennials and megashows holds an interesting dialogue with Thelma Golden’s essay on the politics of ethnically specific exhibitions.

For me, the key highlights were the moments when the authors directly encapsulate their answer to the question - for example, Mark Nash's poetic summary that 'the notion of a series of emotional and intellectual encounters that are montaged to form an organised, thematic sequence is at the heart of every great exhibition and every great experience of an exhibition'.

The breadth of the publication title allows for practical as well as emotive and personal responses. The contributors’ texts are interesting insights into how they individually view their role in the creation of an exhibition, and act as introductions to much larger discussions. The further debate that it promises to lead to is enticing; no doubt Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative will continue to thrash out these questions that underpin exhibition-making in future publications and events. I look forward to following their developments.

Increasingly open ways of participating in the selection and display of content are blossoming. Harnessing the ubiquity of internet access, the Brooklyn Museum are able to produce Click!, a "crowd-curated" photography exhibition. Weblogs, like FFFFOUND!, allow invited internet users to select pictures worthy of scrutiny from the tonnage of imagery available on the web. Taking the semi-randomness of allowing web users to filter content as a model, the Kemper Museum in Kansas City recently permitted museum visitors to choose items from the collection to be displayed in an exhibition entitled "Putting the U in Curator".

In each of these situations, the word curating is used to describe actions taken by members of the public who would not normally self-define as curators. This situation is similar to the one described by Clay Shirky in his recent book, Here Comes Everybody, about the definition of a journalist: "So long as publishing was expensive, journalists were rare." (p. 71) So long as there were relatively few museums and galleries, art curators were rare. On the surface, it appears that this rarity is eroding, not because of an explosion in curatorial jobs and projects, but because there is an explosion in the way the term is being used. "Curating" is increasingly being used to describe an expanding body of activity in terms of new platforms and materials, but remains focused on the act of the curator as editor or selector. This movement towards the application of the term curator to bloggers choosing images for their blogs, and to museum visitors who are invited to move a painting from the vault to the gallery wall, and to the person who votes on images in a web browser, expands the notion of a curator at the same time that it contracts it.

There are two distinct types of activity happening in this expanded area of definition. One is a singular act of temporary deputisation as a curator. This type of singular activity fits with the example of the Kemper Museum show, where one random museum visitor was selected to choose one piece from the collection, and then this same activity was repeated with a different museum visitor, until the walls were full. The other type of activity is a crowd-generated model, wherein group choices are tallied and a final result evolves from popularity of particular items, as in the Brooklyn Museum example. Both of these cases highlight the selection and editing processes that are part of a curatorial role.

Language is living and the meaning of words and expressions evolve over time and with use. There is no doubt that there is value to opening up and demystifying the editing and selection processes most typically known to be domain of the art curator. If this strategy is properly applied, it is possible to encourage anyone who is interested to develop a deeper aesthetic sense, to feel more closely linked to culture and heritage institutions, and to develop stronger ideas of what culture means to them. But if this is how the common use of the word curator is evolving, what is lost?

To speak very broadly, when looking at any collection of items, one can ask: "For what and for whom?" Why select, edit, and group things together? Collections and curated exhibitions are about creating links, developing narratives, and composing responses to perennial questions and ideas. These collections and groupings are then presented in ways so that they will effectively reach audiences. Often erroneously perceived as the skulduggery of the marketer, it is the work of curators and all cultural workers to perform extensive research on who is or could be the audience for a particular exhibit or collection, and what would constitute an effective display for this audience. Just as a priest isn't simply someone who says Mass and a doctor isn't simply someone who taps your knee with a hammer, a curator isn't just someone who selects images. The larger role of the curator encompasses the creation of links to other creative dialogues, writing and contextualising work, developing the physical (or virtual) exhibition sequencing and flow, and perhaps most important of all, nurturing a relationship with the practitioners who make the work and understanding the narrative inherent in their career trajectory. (Or, in the case of those who work with historical collections, having a scholarly background on the movements/time periods/artists represented in these collections). What can and will be lost in the reduction of the term curator to mean one who clicks on a thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon is that sense of for what and for whom.

Is it possible to build a notion of for what and for whom into the singular model and the crowd model, and is that an appropriate aim? Or do these models serve the very specific purpose of magnifying the intricacies of these selection processes? I would argue that building larger cultural narratives, and developing clear intentions towards an audience are functions too important to ignore. Behind each of these very important additional tasks of the curator is an understanding of intentions and a burden of responsibility towards the public, artists, and colleagues.

Perhaps the intentions of those working with either old models or new are too divergent to reconcile. In interviews about the Brooklyn Museum crowd-curated exhibition Click! on artinfo.com, a photoblogger describes traditional modes of curating as about "judgment and exclusion" and that it allows "only a certain group of people to have their work seen", whilst a professional curator working in an institution characterises the crowd mode of curating as allowing people to act "less as curators and more as participants" and another curator described how the the exhibition might undermine the educational aspect of a museum's mandate.

In a very direct statement on the matter, blogger Jason Kottke says of his FFFFOUND! project: "I would argue that these sites showcase a new form of art curating. The pace is faster, you don't need a physical gallery or museum, and you don't need to worry about crossing arbitrary boundaries of style or media. Nor do you need to concern yourself with questions like "is this person an artist or an outsider artist?" If a particular piece is good or compelling or noteworthy, in it goes." Were these thoughts to be developed a little further, Kottke might have found that the terms "good", "compelling", and "noteworthy" are problematic, and the use of those terms in a cavalier way indicates a lack of consideration for who both the audience and the users are, or could be. In "Here Comes Everybody" Shirky also notes that: "As with the printing press, the loss of professional control will be bad for many of society's core institutions, but it's happening anyway. The comparison with the printing press doesn't suggest we are entering a bright new future - for a hundred years after it started, the printing press broke more things than it fixed, plunging Europe into a period of intellectual and political chaos that ended only in the 1600s." (p. 73). Will the notion of flexibility espoused by evangelists such as Kottke break more things than it fixes? It will certainly stretch, if not completely break, the definitions of noteworthy, good, and compelling, as well as curating.

In these open forums for participation, the very arbitrariness and randomness that is held up a virtue also ensures that there will never be a common vision or consensus on direction and intention. While this doesn't undermine the value of online or offline filtering by the public as an educational or research vehicle, it is erroneous to imagine it could take the place of a specialist waking up every day and asking "for what and for whom?" (before putting the "u" in curator). Rather than muddying our terms, the way forward is to identify and clarify what the purpose of singular or collaborative methods of filtering are, and refine how to make these methods more useful and meaningful to the participants.
--
Reference links:
(1) Brooklyn Museum, Click! http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/click (Further information: http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/28147/power-to-the-people)
(2) FFFFOUND! Commentary:
http://www.kottke.org/07/10/ffffound-art-curating-for-the-masses
http://www.artfagcity.com/2007/10/29/art-curating-on-the-internet-meets-mediocrity/
(3) Kemper exhibition, Putting the U in Curator: http://www.kemperart.org/exhibits/UinCurator.asp
(4) Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody: http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody
--
This essay was included in the latest issue of Vague Terrain, guest edited by the fine folks at CONT3XT.NET.

I've noted of late that the term "open source" gets bandied about quite a bit, not just in technology-related industries, but also increasingly in the art world. To be sure, some systems in the art world, including curatorial processes, are very open and transparent. Is it stretching it a bit, however, to relate this transparency and receptivity in the art world to the "open source" movement, a crusade mostly associated with software that you can download for free and possibly manipulate before sharing your evolution of the product with others?

Open source (appropriately, as defined by Wikipedia) "...is a set of principles and practices that promote access to the design and production of goods and knowledge. The term is most commonly applied to the source code of software that is available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent intellectual property restrictions. This allows users to create software content through incremental individual effort or through collaboration."

OK, so that's our basic definition. The Wikipedia article goes on to state: "The open source model of operation can be extended to open source culture in decision making, which allows concurrent input of different agendas, approaches and priorities, in contrast with more centralized models of development [...] ." If we agree with this, that does seem to answer our question about the use of the term - it can be applied as a model to nearly anything. What, then, have been the interesting examples of late that cause me to go trawling on Wikipedia for definitions of open source? Let's look at them one by one:

Continue reading "Open Source Curating"