There are a number of independent curators whom I have had a sustained dialogue with in the last decade or so. How and when we met is unclear; how we have maintained a dialogue is easier to say: the decade’s digital penpal frenzy has kept us together. But the pressing — albeit unvoiced — question of our epistolary exchanges is if we will continue relying on brief descriptions and low-res pics to share our curatorial projects. Implicit in this question is an interest in cultural developments happening beyond one’s local scene, and of the increasingly expanding global community bound by intellectual affinities. In addition, traveling to see every exhibition is impossible, and relying on published reviews in trade magazines and newspapers is an unsatisfactory convention. So, it’s a delight to know that independent curators who have documented their projects are sharing the materials online. Here are three cases:

Raimundas Malasauskas, a Lithuanian curator who now lives most of his time in Paris and whom I’ve collaborated with on several occasions, has posted online material relating to many of his unconventional and innovative exhibitions (leaving out most of the ones he realized at CAC in Vilnius, where he worked as curator during the 1990s, for that institutional website). Regine Basha, based in New York City, has recently launched her exhibition portfolio, also including a section of her published writing and links to her web-based projects including Tuningbaghdad.net. Pablo Leon de la Barra, originally from Mexico City but based in London for some time now, has a blog where he posts images of art he sees during his travels, as well as entries on his projects. (He founded the blog in 2000, but it’s significantly active since 2007.) Their sites tell of interesting projects taking place anywhere from a museum gallery to a white cube constructed in a far-off desert in Texas, from a basement at the Pompidou in Paris to a jungle in Colombia, even an exhibition inside a living brain.

Image: Rene Gabri for Ultimiere (2005) in www.rye.tw.

Let me say it upfront: I consider myself a curatorial junkie. Since the mid-1990s, I began consuming what became a sudden surge of conferences and publications on exhibition history that addressed the ways in which art interpretation owes much to its forms of display. Position papers and essays presented in those platforms also argued that innovative contemporary curatorial practices have shaped new exhibition formats, and that some of these have even impacted the way art institutions redefine their cultural tasks.

Many more of the thesis presented therein attempt to define what a curator is. On this subject alone, descriptions abound. Depending on their background and vision, their motivation and projects, their degree of openness or hermeticism, their context or audiences, a curator may be: a historical researcher; an arts producer; a cultural broker; a political activist; a philosopher, theorist or translator; an events organizer; some kind of social worker; and just about any combination of these except a taste-maker alone.

Not that the most common kind of curator has disappeared –that whose specialty most often lies in an art genre, artist or artistic movement of a given time period, geography or nationality, and whose role is generally to authenticate, select and care for its corresponding oeuvre. It’s just that the field has significantly changed. And it’s just that longstanding institutional spaces are not the only sites of encounter with art. An increasing number of temporary and independent projects have emerged in the last decades, all requiring artistic directions and engaging curators. To name a few, consider site-specific exhibitions, public art festivals, biennales and other event-based forums, even publication-based projects.

Again, most of these developments in curatorial practice have been written about and theorized in conferences and books, which tend to be anthologies gathering a combination of historic and commissioned texts. It is seldom through articles published in art magazines and essays in scholarly journals. This is why the recent launch of The Exhibitionist is so promising. Edited by Jens Hoffmann, this journal is devoted to exhibition making. It is openly made by curators, and for curators. With an intention to be published twice a year, the journal promises continuity, that is, to raise questions, share processes, and address issues pertaining to curatorial practice consistently. For this last reason alone, I am already a fan.

In the editorial for The Exhibitionist inaugural issue, released in January 2010, Hoffmann points as its primary inspiration the French journal Cahiers du cinéma (f. 1951). The editor, a long-time independent curator and most recently institutionally affiliated—Hoffmann is the director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco—intends to position the work of the contemporary curator along the lines of what Francois Truffaut called the auteur filmmaker in 1950s. Certainly, Hoffmann is not thinking any curator’s work could be that of an auteur. He believes, however, that the act of exhibition making, a critical and creative endeavor, does develop and puts out there a language of its own.

The Exhibitionist commissions personal essays about influential exhibitions to curators in the field; scholarly approaches to historic exhibitions; various assessments on a current major exhibition; a section called Typologies examines a specific exhibition format (the first issue focuses on solo shows); another tackles with exhibition making; one more features curators writing one of their own recent projects; and lastly, a brief text addresses contemporary curatorial practice—along the lines of the auteur figure that the journal editorial board intends to articulate. The first issue of the journal is great, and much expected is the next.

This was originally published in the magazine Celeste (Mexico, summer 2010).

In the following interview, the emerging curator Emilie Villez discusses the formation and recent work of the Parisian curatorial collective, Le Bureau/, and about the burgeoning French Association for Curators that she was instrumental in forming with other colleagues in the field. Aside from being active in those two organizations, Emilie writes, curates independently, and works at Kadist Art Foundation in Paris.

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I went to kiss Jiří Kovanda at Bétonsalon—a re-enactment for him, first time for me. The kissing was one of the performances in Playtime, an exhibition curated by Bétonsalon’s director, Mélanie Bouteloup, and her colleague Grégory Castéra. In different ways, the curators played with the notion of performative display, redefining the use of the gallery, shaping roles for its staff, and orchestrating audience participation. In seeming complicity with the artists, the curators chose to leave the gallery pretty much empty, and instead exhibited, performed, or activated the artworks in different modalities and times. Some artworks were installed in closets and office areas. Others comprised audio works that played in portable CD players with headphones or were scheduled activities. Some others were listed in a checklist and shown upon request. I enjoyed this last modality the most, and here I briefly recount it.

Following the scholastic model of “show and tell,” in which a personal object is the starting point of a demonstrative conversation, a gallery attendant at Bétonsalon escorted me and a couple of others to a table with seating, where he calmly presented a series of images, books, and objects that he had drawn from a closet. He began his “show and tell” by talking about his outfit. A slim young man, he was wearing a sparkling white Adidas jump suit that accentuated his cool and relaxed demeanor. “It’s an artwork by Ryan Gander,” he explained, while pointing out an embroidered red stain the size of a bullet-hole located on his jacket roughly near his belly. Wearing matching gloves, our artwork-dressed interlocutor presented each artwork with calm self-assurance. This is this, and this is that, he said. He spent about five to ten minutes talking about each thing, concluding each factual presentation with a personal viewpoint or interpretation.

When the time came for what looked like a standard manila envelope but which was, in fact, a carefully designed and crafted package, the attendant removed his gloves to handle the piece. It was an artwork by Patrick Killoran, one in a series titled “Hand to Hand,” that like its title suggested a mail artwork that circumvents postal service. Betting on suggestion and affiliation rather than on addresses or the other usual postal types of information, each package was prepared in two sets and sent out into the world simultaneously. Before it reached its addressee, in time for the exhibition, the first envelope had only passed through the hands of a couple of people. The second one, however, which I confess passed through my hands, here in Paris, but was a day later held by someone else in London—had yet to arrive to its intended recipient at Bétonsalon. (Signatures and locations of couriers were chronologically listed in a form on the back of the envelope.) This time, our interlocutor saved his opinion and took it upon himself to be the messenger of the travel anecdote of its deliverer. It was a meta-conversation about delivery, if you will. And just when he was about to put the envelope aside to pick up the next work, a woman next to me interrupted him with: “So, what’s inside?” Our attendant, responding playfully with an “I don’t know,” opened the envelope to start another round of “show and tell.”

Organized by Creative Time, Democracy in America is a national-based project investigating democratic tradition in the United States. This year-long umbrella project, curated by Nato Thompson, has several components, among them, a series of national art commissions, some of which were co-coordinated with host institutions, and a New York City convergence center and exhibition. At the invitation of Nato, I curated an international chapter for “Convergence Center” (September 21-27), the project’s umbrella exhibition, which takes place The Park Avenue Armory in New York.

This so-called chapter, Foreign Correspondents, approaches the notion of democracy in America from abroad. It includes artworks by four artists: Erick Beltran (Mexico City/Barcelona), Chu Yun (Beijing), Luca Frei (Malmo), and Magdalena Jitrik (Buenos Aires). The artists contribute works about positions associated to democratic ideals, struggles or sensibilities that have been ultimately put into question. With an emphasis on succinct text-based works, and how these work as image or create an environment, the selected artworks also bring into consideration the relationship between art and propaganda.

Using the space of a banner and leaflet associated to protest as well as promotion, artists Beltran and Jitrik use these forms to re-inscribe a haunting sense of history and present. Beltran prints a blue leaflet in a run of more than 100,000 copies that read “Fear,” which will be dispersed throughout the entire exhibition, carpeting the floors of the venue. More than a word a feeling that is tactically generated to the current state of exception in the US, which not coincidently begins again taking force after the events of September 11, 2001. Jitrik paints a monumental banner featuring a group portrait of the nineteenth century Native American leader Red Cloud with his peers. I posted an image of the work-in-progress, and briefly wrote about it here some days ago.

In different ways, artists Frei and Chu make use of source text now turned historical reference. Frei cites a line drawn from the published letters of the anarchist Nicola Sacco to his son, “In the play of happiness, don’t you use it all for yourself only” (pictured above). Sacco, an Italian who immigrated to the US as a teenager, was tried and executed in Massachusetts in the 1920s. Chu recites a mandatory speech in school about the life story of a heroic Chinese soldier. The recording is originally from 1984, when the artist was a child, and is appropriated by the artist as if were a readymade. Named after the year of its original recording, Chu calls attention to George Orwell’s novel of the same title about an imaginary totalitarian regime.

I will be posting images of these artworks and installation views of the exhibition. If you are in New York during that week, please visit the exhibition. Your comments, much appreciated.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been in residency at Kadist Art Foundation in Paris, France. This is a private foundation initiated in 2001, which has been forming a collection of contemporary art, and organizing exhibitions and residencies. I am curating their upcoming exhibition, Archaeology of Longing (Archéologie de la Chine), which takes place at Kadist’s gallery from September 19-November 9, 2008.

With a title drawn from a short story by Susan Sontag, Archaeology of Longing is an exhibition bringing together a number of artworks, artifacts, and common objects. It begins as an investigation into disenchantment, soon digressing through the historical flatlands of interpretation and substitution. Far from melancholic, and closer to what can be described as politically intimate, the exhibition is an inventory of that journey.

Archaeology of Longing includes artwork by Alejandro Cesarco, Luca Frei, Emma Hedditch, Bethan Huws, Fabio Kacero, Rober Racine, Kay Rosen, Kateřina Šedá, Joe Scanlan and Lisa Tan; artifacts and objects on loan by several contributors, including Tania Bruguera and Archives Erik Satie; and exhibition furniture designed by Tomás Alonso. A series of events will take place as part of the exhibition. On the evening of September 18th at the garden of the Musée de Montmartre in Paris, Emma Hedditch performs a new work and Luca Frei makes a reading of his artist’s book, The So-called Utopia of the Centre Beaubourg – an Interpretation. On the night of November 1st, Lars Svendsen gives a lecture on his Philosophy of Boredom at Kadist Art Foundation.

A collection of findings uncovered during this archaeology of longing is also available as a publication titled 84 handkerchiefs, an umbrella and some books.

Image: Lisa Tan, Hotel Principal Towels, 2008, C-print, 76.2 x 101.6 cm. Courtesy the artist and D’Amelio Terras, New York.

The sketch above is an artwork in progress by Argentine visual artist Magdalena Jitrik, who is known for her mostly-abstract paintings on canvas and her collective work as part of the Taller Popular de Serigrafía (a.k.a. TPS). This new work combines Magdalena’s interest in social and political history, explored through her paintings, and in the medium of propaganda that was actively taken up by TPS—which, in turn, is part of a longer history intertwining political activism and graphic arts in Latin America (TPS’s name is taken from the early twentieth century Taller de Gráfica Popular in Mexico).

To make this new work, Magdalena used as source image a group portrait of Native American Indians headed by Red Cloud. It was a photograph taken around 1860-1880. Red Cloud was a leader of the Oglala Sioux in Lakota (including then regions of Wyoming, Nebraska and the Dakotas in the USA), and known to be a major warrior, negotiator and peace-keeper. He was also a critical voice against the expansion of “white man” in North America. In his famous last speech, Red Cloud says, “Before the white man came to our country, the Lakotas were a free people. They made their own laws and governed themselves as it seemed good to them. The priests and ministers tell us that we lived wickedly when we lived before the white man came among us. Whose fault was this? We lived right as we were taught it was right. Shall we be punished for this? I am not sure that what these people tell me is true.”

Magdalena is one of four artists that I’ve selected for “Convergence Center,” an event-based, week-long exhibition that is part of the larger project Democracy in America: The National Campaign organized by Creative Time in New York. Her new work about Red Cloud, sketched above, will be a painting on canvas (118 x 117 inches), which will be hung as a banner between the entrance columns of the Armory Regiment Building in New York. This is where “Convergence Center” will take place from September 21-27, 2008. Aside from Magdalena, the three other artists in Foreign Correspondents, the international component of “Convergence Center,” are Erick Beltran (Mexico City/Barcelona), Luca Frei (Malmo) and Chu Yun (Beijing). I will also introduce their work here shortly.

“Cultural diplomacy–for some, a curatorial task” is the title of the third in a series of interviews with foreign curators working inside and outside of institutions in China and Hong Kong. Each interview has a distinct relationship to China’s contemporary art scene—as well as to ideas of local community building and international cultural exchange. The first interview, “What does it mean to be International Today?” was with Kate Fowle, international curator at the Ullens Center for Contemporary At in Beijing; the second, “A Contemporary Approach to Tradition,” was with Zoe Butt, director of international programs at Beijing’s Long March Project.

This third interview is with curator Defne Ayas, who is based in Shanghai since 2005, where she works as curatorial consultant to ArtHub, a foundation serving China and the rest of Asia, and as an art instructor at New York University in Shanghai. Defne is also curator of PERFORMA, the biennale of visual art performance with base in New York City, where she spends part of the year. These multi-institutional roles, in addition to other cultural projects she organizes along the way, have been shaping her curatorial practice. Born in Germany but raised in Istanbul, educated in America, and now living in Shanghai, Defne has a natural sense for cultural diplomacy—much needed to make projects happen in Asia and the Middle East, two regions she is actively exploring and interested in working with.

I interviewed Defne on June 23, 2008 to talk about her work and interests for setting-up international exchanges within Asia and abroad. The interview took place a couple of days after an extensive trip Defne made in Xinjiang—a historically contested land characteristic for its ethnic diversity. (Click below to read the interview.)

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Image: Picture taken by Defne Ayas while traveling on The Silk Road in and around Xinjiang.

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“We live in a culture so saturated with tests—administered by schools, corporations, the military and hospitals, amongst others—that we have come to believe that we can only know ourselves through the mechanics of examination.” This is the start of the introductory wall text of The Museum of Projective Personality Testing. Created by Cabinet magazine editors Sina Najafi and Christopher Turner, this museum includes a collection of early “projective” personality tests. Some are rare, and most extinct. Goethe-inspired color tests, Rorschach diagrams, and cartoon-illustrated image plates, were among the devises used in these kind of psychological exams, which were (still are) thought to project the unconscious. This miniature museum looks at how psychoanalysis and, eventually, objective rather than projective testing replaced these earlier attempts in the study of human behavior.

The Museum of Projective Personality Testing was one of five mini-museums that were part of the exhibition The Soul curated by Anselm Franke and Hila Peleg. The Soul, in turn, is one of the four exhibitions that makes-up the current edition of Manifesta 7. The current edition of this itinerant biennial is hosted in Italy. Invited by the exhibition curators to sketch an imaginary museum of sorts, Sina and Christopher’s mini-museum responds to a curatorial premise that inspired by a historical event of a religious order, literally. Anselm and Hila looked into the sixteenth century, when Trent was host to a religious council who determined that, in the Roman Catholic Church, imaginings, wishes and desires were subject to confession as if these were performed actions themselves (The Council of Trent, The Bull of Indiction, Chapter V). Read The Soul curators talk on this subject, and about their curatorial process in general, here.

Image: The materials displayed at this and every other miniature museum in The Souls were in glass-covered pedestals and vitrines, except in one case, The Museum of European Normality. Above, at the The Museum of Projective Personality Testing, some books appeared to be testing exhibition scrutiny.

“A Contemporary Approach to Tradition” is the title of the second in a series of interviews with foreign curators working inside and outside of institutions in China and Hong Kong. Each curator interviewed has a distinct relationship to China’s contemporary art scene—as well as to ideas of local community building and international cultural exchange. The first interview in the series, “What does it mean to be International Today?” was with Kate Fowle, International Curator at the Ullens Center for Contemporary At in Beijing, China.

This interview is with Zoe Butt, Director of International Programs at Long March Project in Beijing, China, a dynamic and multi-layered arts organization founded in 1999/2002 by the artist, curator and writer Lu Jie. Zoe, a Chinese-Australian curator, previously worked at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia. Since 2007, she lives in Beijing, and travels regularly within Asia.

I interviewed Zoe on May 26, 2008, to talk about her research and travels in Asia, her current work at Long March Project, and particularly how the contemporary art exhibitions and projects she works on relate to tradition and historical legacy. (Click below to read the interview.)

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