Some Independents
Saturday, February 12th, 2011
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.