Manifesta Journal 1

MJ - Manifesta Journal
journal of contemporary curatorship
N1, Spring / Summer 2003

The Revenge of the White Cube?
N2, Winter 2003 / Spring 2004

Biennials

Exhibition as a Dream
SilvanaEditoriale
MJ Manifesta Journal is the international journal of contemporary curatorship,
based on the ideas and aims developed over the course of the consecutive
Manifesta biennials and all related activities. The main scope of MJ focuses on
issues of curatorial work - its strategies, conditions, dilemmas, and contexts. MJ
aims for curatorial self-reflection and self-examination. From 2003 to 2005, MJ
was produced as a series of six issues, which were titled The Revenge of the White
Cube?; Biennials; Exhibition as a Dream; Teaching Curatorship; Artist & Curator
and Archive: Memory of the Show.
The former publishers of MJ Manifesta Journal, the International Foundation

Manifesta in Amsterdam and Moderna Galerija in Ljubljana, have agreed to allow
Silvana Editoriale to reprint the six issues of MJ in honour of the former editor, Igor
Zabel, who passed away in July, 2005.
The International Foundation Manifesta and Moderna Galerija would like to thank
the authors, designers and editors, who kindly and generously contributed to MJ
Manifesta Journal. We are also grateful to Silvana Editoriale, who has made it
possible to launch the reprint of MJ as two books on the occasion of Manifesta 7,
the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, which takes place in the North-Italian
region of Trentino Alto Adige from July 19 until November 2, 2008.
Hedwig Fijen
International Foundation Manifesta
Zdenka Badovinac
Moderna Galerija, Ljubjana
The Revenge of
the White Cube?
No. 1, Spring / Summer 2003

The almost-completely-
white cube
Roza El-Hassan
Exhibition at the Mala
Galerija, Ljubljana, 1997
The artist left the space
Contents
almost empty, apart
from her subtle drawings
on the walls in one corner
of the gallery and a space
drawing (a steel wire
coming out of the wall).
Viktor Misiano, Igor Zabel

no. 1 10 From the Editors: MJ Debuts
no. 1 14 Hedwig Fijen

Reinventing Manifesta
no. 1 18 Igor Zabel

The Return of the White Cube
Beti erovc
no. 1 28 Making Things Possible:
A conversation with Harald Szeemann
Boris Groys
no. 1 38 The Museum in the Age of Mass Media
Art & Language

no. 1 48 Roma Reason. Niklas Luhmanns Art as a Social System
Bart De Baere, Iara Boubnova,

Branislav Dimitrijevi, Charles Esche
no. 1 64 Whiteness and Cubicalism: Curatorial Opinions
Beti erovc
no. 1 70 You have to Think Big: A conversation with Damien Hirst
WHW
no. 1 80 The Possibilities of the White Cube
no. 1 82 Contributors
FROM THE EDITORS
MJ Debuts The title itself Manifesta Journal, or more simply, MJ points to the present
magazines essential connection with Manifesta, not only the actual European
This is why Manifesta has always been thought of as something mobile, in constant
transformation, internally diverse and heterogeneous, as something essentially open
Biennial of Contemporary Art, but also the various connections and collaborations and ready to integrate different initiatives and to make connections with them. While
that have been continually developing around the exhibition and that now, with the the biennial exhibitions remain the most visible part of Manifesta, the gradual
establishment of the Manifesta Network, are receiving a clearer form and structure. development of various connections, exchanges, and initiatives into a network is,
MJ is based on the ideas and aims that have emerged over the past few years in perhaps, a slower and less obvious process, but one that is no less important.
connection with Manifestas activities. The idea for a magazine arose among a
group of people variously connected with Manifesta during a discussion about what In this open and heterogeneous structure, in the complex entanglements of
Manifesta actually is and what it could or should be. In a way a continuation of this particular initiatives and network responses, in the structure that is the emerging
discussion, MJ is, in itself, also a partial answer to the question about what Manifesta Network it is here that MJ seeks its place, as part of the Network and
Manifesta is, even as it contributes to shaping its identity. as a collaborative project between the International Foundation Manifesta,
Amsterdam, and the Moderna Galerija (Museum of Modern Art), Ljubljana. While
Why do we find it important to place our efforts in such a context? Probably because maintaining editorial independence, it is tightly connected to the other activities of
the basic ideas of Manifesta are so important, the dilemmas it deals with are so the Foundation and the Network. It is open to ideas and suggestions from all
urgent, and the forms it develops are often so innovative and full of possibility. Network participants artists, curators, critics and anyone else who is or has been
involved with the activities of Manifesta. It welcomes their contributions, comments
Above all, the idea of Manifesta is based on a deep belief in the importance of and criticism. But of course, it does not limit itself to the Network. Instead, it strives
art. Art is not decoration; it is a crucial agent in contemporary culture and society, to expand the Network by seeking out not only new collaborators, but also new
with the potential for formulating essential insights into their structure and perspectives, ideas, and approaches. MJ seeks to collect and present materials and
mechanisms. At the same time, Manifesta demonstrates a belief in the particular information from various European and other sources, to encourage an exchange of
qualities and power of art. Manifesta seeks to open up a space devoted to opinion, and to initiate discussions about issues in contemporary art and culture
contemporary art, to explore new aspects of contemporary art practice, and to with art professionals from the various European regions, as well as with people
relate these to current issues of significance. It provides an opportunity for critical from other areas of the arts and social and cultural studies. In particular, it wants
reflection on the changing role of the artist in contemporary society, both in to present an opportunity for artists and writers from those countries that, for a
Europe and beyond. variety of reasons, have remained marginalized in the international art system.
10 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 11

Particular attention will be given to young writers, who are not yet established, and In the first issue, we pay particular attention to what has commonly been called the
to innovative, experimental, or unconventional approaches of all kinds. MJ will also white cube. The notion of the white cube, it seemed, had been surpassed.
publish English translations of important texts from languages that are not widely Curatorial strategies in the 1980s and 1990s were, for the most part, turned against
understood. the white cube in an effort to relate works, projects and exhibitions to actual time
and space and to the social and political realities. The white cube was considered
While there are numerous magazines, newspapers, and other publications to be removed from time and space, an ideal, sterile, utopian place for autonomous
dedicated to contemporary art, relatively few deal systematically with the issues of art that was no less sterile. But several exhibitions and other recent events,
curatorial work, its strategies, conditions, dilemmas, and contexts. This is the main including the latest Documenta, indicate a different understanding of the white cube
scope of MJ. We do not, however, view curatorship merely as a technique or skill. and the new importance of white-cube strategies for curatorial work today. This type
What we aim for is curatorial self-reflection. While everybody knows what a of space, it seems, can open up new possibilities, even a new sort of relationship
curator does, it is, perhaps, essential to admit that we do not actually know, in a with the social, political, and economic realities.
simple and definite way, what curatorship is. What is much more important, in our
view, is to begin a process of self-examination, an ongoing series of attempts at self- We wish to pose questions about the role and possibilities of the white cube today:
definition, and to research the context of our position and activities. How do curators understand this sort of space, how do they use it, and what are
their strategies toward it? This line of inquiry also raises questions about the
Each issue will concentrate on a particular theme and will be structured in several institutional system. The white cube is not just a physical space; it is the
sections in order to illuminate the theme from different angles. These sections materialization of a particular concept of art and the (conceptual and institutional)
(which may vary) will include theoretical discussions and essays, curatorial relations that form it. We also assume that the new importance of the white cube is
reflections (by contemporary curators and on specific approaches), artists connected to a new importance for the concept of modernity. Ought we to
reflections, reviews and analyses of exhibitions and other projects (discussing reevaluate this concept? And should we reexamine such issues as modernism and
curatorial approaches and strategies), and retrospective views (connecting the autonomy of art?
contemporary currents to the tradition of modern and contemporary art and culture).
Special collaborators will occasionally be invited to work on the thematic sections.

INTRODUCTION
Hedwig Fijen
Reinventing
Manifesta
The International
Foundation Manifesta
is the initiator of the
The history of Manifesta is known
Manifesta, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art was once the response to
Establishing Manifesta on a more permanent basis has meant that people have
begun to have much higher expectations of it. Is Manifesta willing to meet all these
Manifesta European the dramatic changes in Europes political and cultural landscape after the fall of expectations? Or, more appropriately, are we willing to re-address these
Biennial of
Contemporary Art and
the Berlin Wall. It did address at that time the inbalance in the representation of expectations by changing our strategy?
the New Network artistic and curatorial practices in Western, Southern, Central and Eastern
Programme. This European countries. Creating dialogues on different levels between East and Up to now, Manifesta and its curatorial teams have sought active involvement in the
Programme is supported
by the Culture 2000 West, North and South enabled Manifesta to present critical issues in a more contemporary art world, through creating opportunities for young artists, curators
Framework of the flexible and collective way, stimulating collaboration and research between and writers who are not yet fully established. Manifesta also pays attention to art
European Commission.
curators, artists and the audiences. This process slowly eroded borders which theory emanating from those areas of Europe, which have customary failed to attract
were formerly closed and gave space to new working methodologies within the the attention they deserve. Manifesta believes that art is of its time and that new
field of art. working practices and new forms of artistic responses will develop from an
engagement with the wider issues of the day. At the same time, though, we must
Manifesta consciously adopted a nomadic structure, by relocating itself in a different seek to ensure that Manifesta continues to inhabit a clearly defined in between
European Host city every two years (Rotterdam 1996, Luxembourg 1998, Ljubljana space, not only in the geographical sense, but also institutionally, politically,
2000, Frankfurt 2002, Donostia/San Sebastian 2004). It also established a firm artistically and commercially.
spirit of collaboration, in determining that the Manifesta curators should work
together as a team. Manifesta expects curators to work in complex internal and Thus we find ourselves here at this stage, at the start of the Manifesta 5 Biennium
external situations. Curators are requested to integrate artistic practices and to relate in quite an open and fluid situation, in which it seems only right that we should re-
them to an existing socio-political context. They are expected to commit themselves examine some of our basic assumptions and ask questions about Manifestas
wholeheartedly to the principles of collaboration and co-operation, without falling willingness to change its working strategies and create more crossovers between
into the trap of facile consensus. different fields and projects within and outside its immediate sphere, and about the
ability of Manifesta to relate toa wider social-cultural and public platform.

New strategies are needed to stimulate critical reflection and debate about the operation with others on many different levels and to develop solid relationships with
positioning of current art practices. At the same time the role of the curators within a broader audience. The manifesta@home archive in Amsterdam, The Netherlands
the structural model provided by Manifesta needs to reflect any changes in working could act as an important instrument of mediation, enabling us both to enlist the
practice that may be required. active participation of others and to play a part in determining the nature of that
participation.
Future curators of Manifesta should endeavour to create a radical distinction
between Manifesta and other biennials and similar events. Manifesta itself should One of the possible challenges that the International Foundation Manifesta faces is
offer new perspectives and models, which can mediate flexibly between different knowing how to convert our growing information resources into a site-related
levels of artistic communication and presentation. It should also work hard, at all platform for the biennial Manifesta Programme, which can serve, both as a
times, to develop close working relations with local partners. repository of knowledge and as a direct stimulus to the efforts of curators and a
wider group of professionals. In this way, the fully networked archive may serve, not
The International Foundation Manifestas Network Programme may offer an only to make information more widely available, but also to invite the active
alternative (or complementary) way forward, on a number of fronts. The launch of participation of curators/mediators and audiences alike. This approach will, in turn,
the Manifesta Journal (MJ) focussing on the issue of contemporary curatorial bring about a change in our working methods and contribute to keeping the biennial
practices, their conditions and contexts is an important auto-critical interface for alive in a more freely negotiated European space.
promoting our networked activity.
Over the next three years, through a series of programmes facilitated by the
Foundation and produced in conjunction with outside partners, we hope to be able
to redefine the context for Manifestas work, to create additional platforms for co-

INTRODUCTION
Igor Zabel
The Return of
the White Cube
1
Brian ODoherty,
Inside the White Cube.
The ideology of the
We often hear about a return of the white cube, and indeed, it seems there is a
new interest in this type of exhibition space. A number of recent exhibitions,
and its atmosphere seem so well-known and omnipresent that it is almost strange
to consider that the white exhibition space is a relatively recent innovation and that
2
Bart De Baere, Joining
the Present to Now,
in Kunst &
gallery space. including the most recent Documenta, have employed the neutral, white exhibition when it was introduced, it was experienced as something radically new and Museumjournaal, Vol. 6,
Expanded edition. double new year issue,
University of California
space. How can we understand this interest? Is it a sign of some new conservatism immensely challenging:
1994-1995,
Press, Berkeley, in art after the adventurous experimental work of the 1990s art that precisely (p.p. 59-20), p. 62.
Los Angeles and London, strove to break out of the white gallery space and enter, as directly as possible, a When Sandberg had the walls painted white, it was a deed of activism, in
1999, p. 15
wide diversity of situations and contexts? Or have artists and curators discovered collaboration with artists wanting renewal. Before he painted them white, they were
new and challenging possibilities in this sort of exhibition environment? colored, as they had been since the museum existed. Walls were simply not left
white; thus neither were the walls upon which paintings were hung. The color of
But can we really speak about the white cubes return? Has it ever actually gone walls in a museum formed an interesting tangential problem. It was a possibility to
away? I would say, instead, that the white cube has represented the norm, the most create a new, art-historical context for the work. When Sandberg painted the
common type of exhibition space over the past decades. Even site-specific projects museum walls white, he brought the museum from the past into his present.2
and other works beyond the white cube have implicitly or explicitly implied it as
a sort of a generally valid reference point. The white walls of the Stedelijk Museum in the late 1930s were thus experienced
not as the general norm, but as a particular aesthetic statement that brought a new
We think we know this sort of space and its characteristics completely: perspective to the artwork. The white walls could be understood as an active
curatorial strategy toward the exhibited art. A few years later, white walls in
A gallery is constructed along laws as rigorous as those for building a medieval exhibition spaces had become the generally accepted norm.
church. The outside world must not come in, so windows are usually sealed off.
Walls are painted white. The ceiling becomes the source of light. The wooden One result of this development was that there appeared to be a general agreement
floor is polished so that you can click along clinically, or carpeted so that you pad about what the white cube was. This idea, in turn, was subjected to criticism and
soundlessly, resting the feet while the eyes have at the wall. The art is free, as dissent, in artists strategies, in curatorial practice, as well as in museological theory
the saying used to go, to take on its own life. The discreet desk may be the only and architectural concepts. The main target of the criticism has been the artificial,
piece of furniture. In this context a standing ashtray becomes almost a sacred neutral, aseptic, and isolated nature of the white cube. Such a space is so neutral
object, just as the firehose in a modern museum looks not like a firehose but an it almost seems to disappear. Anything that might interfere with the works is
esthetic conundrum. Modernisms transposition of perception from life to formal excluded. In a space defined by white walls, neutral floor and lit ceiling, we are
values is complete. This, of course, is one of modernisms fatal diseases.1 unaware of the season of the year or the time of the day, of the spaces location and
its natural, cultural, social, and historical context. Such spaces are transformed into
This precise and vivid description is taken from the text that actually established the separate, perennial entities, and we, the visitors, are given a sort of pure eyes
notion of the white cube, Brian ODohertys essay Notes on the Gallery Space, later as if we left our social, cultural, gender and other particularities outside the gallery
reprinted in his book Inside the White Cube. As described by ODoherty, this space door. As ODoherty observed:

Blood on the white wall Brining junk
Installation view from into white cube
the exhibition Artist Exhibition of the
Body Public Body OHO Group
by Marina Abramovi Moderna Galerija
Moderna Galerija Ljubljana, 1969
Ljubljana, 1998

The white space does not exist.
There are countless white spaces
with different behaviors.
Bart De Baere
3
ODoherty, p. 14. The ideal gallery subtracts from the artwork all cues that interfere with the fact that space had changed. (Such changes in understanding represent, of course, changes
4
Robert Smithson, it is art. The work is isolated from everything that would detract from its own in art and the fundamental ideas that determine works of art.) What was once
Cultural Confinement, evaluation of itself.3 considered the ideal space for observing, experiencing, and evaluating art the
in : Charles Harrison
and Paul Wood (Eds.),
only possible space in which works of art could disclose all their essential qualities
Art in Theory, It was, it seems, a frustrating sense of isolation from the world that made critical had now become an asylum and a prison.
1900-1990, Blackwell, strategies against the white cube so urgent. It was felt that, in order to enter the
Oxford (UK) and
Cambridge (USA), peaceful enclave of the white cube and to experience and appreciate the exhibited The most direct critical reaction to the isolated white exhibition space has, of course,
1992, p. 946-948, works, one had to pay an exorbitant price. This price, of course, was essentially to been to abandon it and search for a different space for presenting art, very often with
quotation p. 947.
The text was first forget the world outside the gallery walls; taken metaphorically, this meant to forget the idea that art should somehow become a much more immediate part of life. Art has
published in the the world outside the art system. It also meant that art was banished from the world moved into a great variety of contexts and appropriated them for its own purposes.
catalogue of
Documenta 5,
into the isolated realm of the art system. Robert Smithson, in Cultural There have also been modifications within the traditional exhibition space. (One such
Kassel, 1972. Confinement, his critical textual contribution to Documenta 5 (1972), sharply modification was Rudi Fuchss decision to paint the walls in the Stedelijk Museum
attacked the white cube space and the art system for being an isolating force that light gray, thus reviving in a way Sandbergs active relationship to works of art and
separated art from the world outside of cultural confinement. (Smithson giving the exhibited pieces a more active, and also more appropriate, context.) But
understood this world primarily as the dialectic of nature, but this dialectic there has also been a strong tendency within artistic and curatorial practice to develop
includes, of course, also the huge transforming impact of human society.) new critical strategies with the white cube space. One essential strategy could be
described as the (re)localization of such a space and thus its (re)contextualization.
Artists themselves are not confined, but their output is. Museums like asylums and There have been ongoing efforts over the past few decades to reconnect the exhibition
jails have wards and cells in other words, neutral rooms called galleries. A work space with its context environmentally, historically, culturally and politically.
of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or Furthermore, there has been a recurring effort to deconstruct the apparently neutral
surface disengaged from the outside world. A vacant white room with lights is still and generic nature of such a space and to disclose the ideological background on
submission to the neutral. Works of art seen in such spaces seem to be going which it is constituted, as well as the function and role of such a space (and related
through a kind of esthetic convalescence. They are looked upon as so many curatorial approaches) within the actual power relations in society.
inanimate invalids, waiting for critics to pronounce them curable or incurable. The
function of the warden-curator is to separate art from the rest of society. Next comes This approach may also be seen in the work of architects who have considered
integration. Once the work of art is totally neutralized, ineffective, abstracted, safe, changing the traditional white exhibition space by permitting more subtle
and politically lobotomized it is ready to be consumed by society. All is reduced to connections to its natural and social context. In some cases, they even tried to make
visual fodder and transportable merchandise. Innovations are allowed only if they visitors critically aware of the nature and function of the exhibition space. In some
support this kind of confinement.4 cases, the modification of such elements as lighting have essentially changed the
nature of the space, as Kenneth Frampton proposed in his vision of a critical
Smithsons statement demonstrates how deeply the understanding of the white cube regionalism in architecture.

White cube 1 Until recently, the received precepts of modern curatorial practice favored the characteristics of the white exhibition space is, implicitly or explicitly, a discussion White cube 2
Exhibition of the Union Stane Kregars works
of Slovene Artists exclusive use of artificial light in all art galleries. It has perhaps been insufficiently about modernist art, and perhaps about modernity itself. Criticism directed toward at the exhibition
Moderna Galerija recognized how this encapsulation tends to reduce the artwork to commodity, since the isolation and confinement of art in a neutral white space is actually aimed at the Riko Debenjak
Ljubljana, 1948 Stane Kregar
Official art in 1948.
such an environment must conspire to render the work placeless. This is because autonomous status of art and the fact that, as such, art has been considered only Moderna Galerija
the local spectrum is never permitted to play across the surface: here, then, we see in terms of its formal values and, thus, socially neutralized, pacified, and turned into Ljubljana, 1953
5
Kenneth Frampton, The first exhibition
how the loss of aura, attributed by Walter Benjamin to the processes of mechanical commodity. Attempts to break out of the white cube are, by the same token, of abstract art
Towards a Critical
Regionalism: Six Points reproduction, also arises from a relatively static application of universal technology. attempts to make art more relevant for society and an essential part of life. in Slovenia after 1945.
for an Architecture of The converse of this placeless practice would be to provide that art galleries would 7
Resistance, De Baere, p. 63.
in: Hal Foster (Ed.), be top-lit through carefully contrived monitors so that, while the injurious effects of Is it fair to assume that the new importance of the white cube space indicates a new
Postmodern Culture, direct sunlight are avoided, the ambient light of the exhibition volume changes importance for the notion of arts autonomy? In my view, the response to this
Bay Press, Port
Townsend, Wash.,
under the impact of time, season, humidity, etc. Such conditions guarantee the question cannot be a simple one. First, the white cube has gone through a process
1983, pp. 16-30, appearance of a place-conscious poetic a form of filtration compounded out of of transformation, critique, and deconstruction that is implicitly present in the way
quotation p. 27. an interaction between culture and nature, between art and light.5 we understand it today. Second, the idea of the autonomy of art seems much more
6
ODoherty, p. 14. complex than the simple opposition, autonomous vs. engaged art. This, indeed,
To paint the walls gray or change the character of the light might seem relatively was obvious at the last Documenta, which used the white cube space to present art
small modifications, but they indicate a transformation in our understanding of the that often dealt with direct social and political research and criticism. This in itself
white cube space that is quite far-reaching and deep. These are not so much indicates a change in the structure of the white cube. But does the white cube still
changes in the physical environment of the space, but rather in its conceptual have the power to change anything that enters it into art, and moreover, into
framework. The issue was never merely the form and nature of the exhibition space autonomous art?
but, rather, the concept of art, its nature, and its position in society, which become
self-evident in the character of the gallery. ODoherty and others have clearly pointed In the same article in which he discusses Sandbergs white walls, Bart De Baere
to this relationship: also writes, The white space does not exist. There are countless white spaces with
different behaviors.7 He is speaking from a position that, after the experiences of
The history of modernism is intimately framed by that space; or rather the history of the eighties and early nineties, no longer understands the white space as a general
modern art can be correlated with changes in that space and in the way we see it. condition for the presentation of art (in either a positive or a negative sense). There
An image comes to mind of a white, ideal space that, more than any single is a multitude of different exhibition spaces, and the white space is one of them.
picture, may be the archetypal image of twentieth century art; it clarifies itself Moreover, the white space has ceased to be uniform and timeless. The mutual
through a process of historical inevitability usually attached to the art it contains.6 relationship, valid for modernism, between the white cube and the nature of art has
disappeared. One perceives not the general idea of the white cube, but rather the
The isolation of a work of art in a white cube space is something more than the particular qualities and differences that determine the behavior of each space. The
works physical placement in a closed and supposedly neutral room. It corresponds white cube is also seen as something constantly developing, parallel to the
to the autonomous nature of the modernist work of art. A discussion about the development of art. And now that the heterogeneity and plurality of art have been

8
De Baere, p. 67. expressed in the plurality of the contexts and spaces in which art can be presented, The works were dislocated into the world of art and academic discourse, as
it seems that art has been liberated from the cultural confinement Smithson spoke represented by the white cube, but, by the same token, there was obviously a very
about: clear desire to establish a relationship with the contexts to which the works referred.
Like Smithsons Nonsites, the works were both inside and outside the gallery, both
Every context is a good context for art, an artistic context as well. The museum can autonomous and concrete, both maintaining a distance and establishing a strong
continue to claim that it is the place par excellence for art to be exhibited, but artists link, in a tension that was, at least for me, one of the most important achievements
have tended for some time already to believe that it is possibly one of the places par of the exhibition.
excellence to allow art to exist. The same goes for the gallery. Both infrastructure
models have a character of their own, with its own advantages. Like other places.8 The acknowledgement that there exists no white cube space as such (except as an
idea), and that white spaces are different from each other and also historically
The plurality and heterogeneity of the white cube points to the disappearance of the structured in different ways, would suggest something else, as well. Modernism,
rationale behind its uniformity the modernist concepts that established and too, is internally heterogeneous, plural and non-coherent, despite the idea of
shaped this type of space. Yet, despite such relativization, the white cube has kept modernism as such and the modern. There are, perhaps, even different modernisms
a particular status. To exhibit in it means, directly or indirectly, to allude to (which are, however, all still modernisms), and even different modernities (which
modernist concepts. Furthermore, despite the pluralism of art, we continue to refer are still modernities).
to the white cube, the white space. The white cube simply cannot be understood
as just one of many spaces for art. Even if there obviously is a great variety of There is no simple answer to the question about the new interest in the white cube.
spaces, the white cube still has a determining role. Sometimes it almost seems one It is true that it can be used from a conservative position and as part of the process
could reduce the entire rich diversity of art spaces to two types: white cube and of the commodification of art. But it can also have other uses. Today, the white cube
not white cube. (It might be possible to apply the Klein group to this opposition can no longer be taken for granted. It has been transformed and loaded with
and take it into the extended field, as Rosalind Krauss did with sculpture; still the numerous references and traditions, and thus cannot be used in a natural way. It
original opposition would remain essential.) demands an active strategy from artists and curators, a reflection of the possibilities,
limitations, and meanings it embodies, and of the importance of its fundamental
To what extent, then, does the new interest in the white cube indicate a new, or concepts for todays art. So it could, perhaps, regain the active role it had in the days
renewed, importance for modernist concepts? And what role do these concepts play when the walls were first painted white.
in contemporary art? The ambiguous role of the white space, which is both one
space among many and yet something more that, could suggest an answer.
Modernist concepts, especially the concept of the autonomy of art, cannot be the
final horizon of this art, but they remain essential within the heterogeneous complex
of conflicting aspects and contradictions that determine the position of
contemporary art. Documenta 11 has demonstrated this clearly. One could not
describe it as a show of autonomous art, but neither was it unequivocally political.

INTERVIEW
Beti erovc: a conversation with Harald Szeemann
Making
Things Possible
The role of a
contemporary art curator
The curator of contemporary art, as we Kunsthalle in a way became my beloved put his grease on the walls, Heizer made When Attitudes Become Form was of compromise between
the traditional system
as we know it today understand the role today, became mistress and the exhibition my own a hole in the public sidewalk, sponsored by Phillip Morris; some and contemporary art
become established with its demands? The
during the general social
established at the end of the sixties or medium of expression. I never felt like a Artschwager distributed his blps in the writers, such as Mary Ann Staniszewsky, scope of a contemporary
crisis of the late 1960s. the beginning of the seventies. Could we critical person; I only show what I love city, Barry put the building under have already pointed out the strange art curator's activities
The strong critical is essentially different
movements in the society see the curator as an agent of this doesnt mean that nothing else is radiation, Weiner removed a square meter connection between the first big from that of a museum
not only condemned curator's, his immediate
consumerism and called
compromise between, on the one hand, good, but, acting as I do, it meant that I of wall, Ruthenbeck ruined the wooden exhibitions of conceptual art and the predecessor. Though
for social change, critical art and active institutional refused to criticize. Lyotard said once: floor with his wet ashes, Serra threw beginning of big corporate sponsorship both share a common
but also radically task and medium
questioned art and art critique, which were very strong at the non-judgment as a way of being. melted lead against the wall, etc., etc. for contemporary art. So do you have any the presentation of art at
institutions, demanding time, and, on the other, the traditional Everything your question evokes was, for This was no longer perceived as an art idea why it happened that way? And institutional exhibitions
profound and visible a curator does more than
changes. However, art establishment, not only such me, not about analyzing but acting with exhibition but as anarchic provocation could we see this simply as a way of just discreetly and
when such changes precisely record a given
finally did occur, institutions as museums, but also huge and within a beautiful instrument: the not by the artists, but by the curator who calming things down in the late sixties in situation. In the new
this happened in the recurring exhibitions like Documenta? Kunsthalle Bern. And if you look at the list allowed this. the field of art, in the sense of opening context he has the
traditional institutional opportunity to be much
framework, with the Im an existentialist. You are thrown in the of my exhibitions between 1961 and It was this show, and my eight and a half the borders up a little bit, but of course more actively involved
acceptance of institutions in the production of
as well as artists and the universe from somewhere and are, once 1969, you can easily feel that what I years of activity in Bern, which convinced with the aim of keeping the broader such presentations,
critical public. A curator's here, responsible for your acts. But its wanted to do through all these the organizers in Kassel to nominate me. hierarchy stable. to be a creator or co-
role such as it creator of new trends
developed in this always a privilege to fall into a well-made exhibitions, activities, events, avant-garde Documenta 4 had to a large extent lacked Calming things down? Keeping the in art, to promote his
specific context ideas and choose works
was acceptable to both bed. In this case, the Kunsthalle Bern in films and music, collaboration with the this new spirit and the artists that hierarchy stable? Certainly not. Actually of art according to them,
sides. For the most part, 1961. I had the privilege of two fantastic Living Theater, with new writers and embodied it. For Documenta 5, they when you read my foreword, it deals more to launch new stars in art,
curators came from etc. Could we perhaps
critical groups; they predecessors, Arnold Rdlinger, who young fashion designers, etc., etc., was to wanted to be sure they didnt make the with introspection and attack: to try to say that it is the
were strong supporters erotization of his work,
of contemporary art,
showed us the history of painting from the set up the institution as a laboratory, as a same mistake again and neglect what break up the power triangle of studio due to his contacts with
were particularly sensitive Nabis to Pollock and Sam Francis, and living organism, at the risk of possibly was most current. But maybe you dont gallerymuseum, to free the creative living artists and
to the innovative his position of an author,
production of their time, Franz Meyer, who paid homage to losing one audience but in the hope of know: although I was the sole person in process to create an attitude. Art = life = that most obviously
and often acted as artists' Matisse, Ernst, Giacometti, Schwitters, creating a new one. There was no such charge for Documenta 5, I refused the art was always a very strong motivation for separate a contemporary
producers. On the other art curator from a
hand, they kept art Malevich, Tinguely, etc., in the fifties. So, compromise as you suggest; it was a title artistic director but instead called what I did and how I did it. museum curator?
contained within an Harald Szeemann
essentially traditional when I started, I could concentrate on the perpetual going forward without fear. This myself secretary general, like the head has been one of the
(albeit changed and present and the new sensibility. Before was the birth of the curator as we of the communist party or the United And to continue with previous question, key protagonists of
modernized) framework, these developments
maintaining also an directing the Kunsthalle, I was trying to do understand the role today. Nations. The new curator was nave, the new curator was just perfect for from the 1960s to
unchanged hierarchy this day. This is why
of the main protagonists my Gesamtkunstwerk as writer, painter, The historical moment, when the image provocative, and full of love, but not this, since everybody was dirty: the we approached him
and values. Could we, stage designer, musician, and actor in the of the creator/curator became conscious cynical or arrogant or domineering. critic, the dealer, the museum. So on to learn more about them.
therefore, assume that Unfortunatelly editing
curators were not only form of a one-man theater in 1956, and evident, happened in 1969, when I And what I was always looking for was to both sides, the institutional side and the of the (long) conversation
agents of change as they some interesting
are considered today, which to my surprise was very successful. organized When Attitudes Become Form get rid of style; thats why I invented artists side, to put it simply, the curator information and details
but at the same time But this also means that I have always and the artists arrived and installed their Individual Mythologies a human could be seen as part of the solution and had to be left out.
agents of neutralization, B. .
tried to personalize all my activities the works and TV reports publicized it. Beuys right. not as part of the problem.

Dirty? I think you should be more careful $20,000 for the catalogue, $35,000 for no longer get served in restaurants; and a kind of permanent discussion, a
with this kind of judgment. There were the show, and they paid the trips for about some art friends expressed the desire to formation of new forces in culture. My
pure critics, pure gallerists, pure twenty artists. My first idea was to present dynamite me and my family. It was all task was to make an exhibition its my
museums both then and right up to today, artists working with light from California: quite entertaining. And poor Mr. Theubet! medium of expression and through it
so a distinction has to be made. In my Turrel, Wheeler, Irwin, Cooper, etc. But But a couple of years later his offer a new type of exhibition a
case, I had sixty thousand Swiss francs a my colleague from the Stedelijk Museum replacement tried to make a popular laboratory of attitudes, concepts,
year to pay collaborators, wages, our said, This is my project. I was touring exhibition about Wilhelm Tell a flop. information, processes, and works. It was
truck, the insurance. My salary was only the Netherlands with him, and thats how And after this, Mr. Theubet got his old job not about a difference in concepts; I had
fifty francs more than the housekeepers. I discovered Dibbets in the studio of back the one he had before Attitudes. no concept, I had only my intuition.
So there remained two thousand Swiss Reiner Lucassen. Dibbets worked as his But I never again got money from Phillip Actually, Piero wrote a long text in the
francs for ten exhibitions a year. One of assistant and just poured water on his Morris, although today they are proud of catalogue of the Stedelijk Museum; my
my methods was to create such an grasstable. And this gesture was the initial the show. They even paid for a reprint of concept was defined as romantic. But
interesting program that my shows were move toward Attitudes the rest can be the catalogue two years ago in honor of when I was visiting artists in Torino, he
taken over exported to get back part read in my very often published diary of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Phillip accompanied me on his motorbike at
of the costs. I stopped making expensive this period. It was an adventure. Actually, Morris Foundation in Germany. night to Mario and Marisa Merzs and we
catalogues and instead made for Phillip Morris the exhibition wasnt talked and drank all night.
newspapers, which ran ads that paid for good publicity. The PR man, a Mr. Im asking also because sometimes I find
the printing. And I stressed the Theubet, was demoted after show Piero Gilardi mentioned as a kind of But as far as I understand, from what I
importance of collaboration with other opened. author of the concept behind When have read about it, Gilardi wanted some
museums mainly Amsterdam, Attitudes Become Form, one which you active revolutionary participation in the
Stockholm, and Dsseldorf. So we split Was he really? later abandoned. In what way was his exhibition. Didnt he also write a petition
costs. Amsterdam had a sponsor for Yes, Attitudes was a scandal in 69. Only concept different from the one that was where he accused you of succumbing to
transatlantic transport, so I was able to eventually did it become the model for the realized? pressure from Phillip Morris and
show American art as well, since I paid exhibition reflecting the new spirit in art. I met Piero in Holland. Through Dibbets, American galleries and depoliticizing the
only for transportation from Amsterdam. It But in 69, the entire art world, as well as I met van Elk and Boezem in Arnhem and exhibition because they didnt want it to
was all tightrope walking. In 68, I invited the City of Bern, was divided into pro and Piero joined us. Of course, I knew him be some anarchic event?
Christo to wrap the Kunsthalle, and that con. The parliament got involved, with the from Paris, where he exhibited at You are reading, I was doing. I dont know
made international headlines, in the usual pressure about taking away Sonnabend and was very successful. about his accusations. Maybe he was
States and even in the Soviet Union, and subsidies, and the artists union was Moved by the 68 student revolt, he jealous because Attitudes was an
attracted a lot of attention, including from against me they are the owners of started to have like many artists an anarchic event supported with money
Phillip Morris. And so they approached Kunsthalle. I was attacked because my ethical crisis. He gave up production and from Phillip Morris. The question was
me and offered money for an exhibition. I name is not Swiss; people were shitting in dreamed of an Internationale of the new never about being against something but
could do what I wanted; the sums were front of the door of our apartment, I could spirit he called it micro-emotive as about being one hundred percent behind

what you show. To live it, even if only autonomy and neighborhood, and so on. and some exhibitions that you could say through the whole also for myself. I dont
during the time of preparation and for the But what other curators do is not my you found interesting? think its forbidden to have an ego and a
duration of the event. Im not so interested responsibility. Well, for example, when I saw Cities on self even if you are only a curator.
in academic differences. Im a nave guy the Move in Vienna, I was not so Canonization? I can only do my best for a
who wants to do the best for the people Of course not. enthusiastic about the way the things work in a temporary exhibition; Im not
he shows, to give things the breath they I do what I have to do. I see myself were represented, but I felt the new the Louvre, the National Gallery, the
need. And why is it, actually, that you are functioning much more as an artist, atmosphere. Through the way of mixing Metropolitan. But of course, when I show
still talking about Attitudes? Because it without being an artist one who has up different things, the atmosphere was an artist, its important for him and his
was intense, and only what is intense chosen the exhibition as his medium of tangible, and I liked it. It was fresh. prices. Im not denying that, but its no
remains in the memory. expression. Thats exactly the point. longer my business. I dont touch a
And Im romantic; I like the idea of But, if we go back to the question of percentage of this plus-value.
Do you ever have the feeling that your failure. Ive never wanted to make my power, you have explained in your The finances: in each new location there is
shoes, the ones tailored through your position into a power position. I always articles that your power lies in making a different financial structure; actually I do
work and example, are just too big for throw everything away before I start things possible for others. a lot of shows because I love to do them,
curators today? And on the other side of something new. I discuss everything, I said I would rather make things possible even if they do not even cover my
the coin, are you happy with the fact that even with artists Im not so interested than be rich. Thats slightly different. But expenses. That is also my decision. Usually
today curators use many of your past and in, in order to keep an open view. For its true Im better at making things I get only a fee and travel expenses, but the
present methods? For example, they me, its a completely different way of possible for others than for myself. finances are not given over to me to do as
come to Ljubljana just as you have come thinking; its really a medium of I wish. There is a certain mistrust on the
now: they stay here for two days and talk expression. I always say: things that are How does that go together with your part of the administration toward bearded
with dozens of artists, fifteen minutes at not really grounded become absurd. So advocating the idea that the curator is guys like me.
a time. you really have to do it as long as you responsible only to himself even if we Boards, etc.: I always refused to be on
To question a), I would say: everybody is live. You know, everybody asks me dont take into account that, at the same many boards, juries and the like. It
free to do great things. To question b): what other exhibitions I am interested time, the canonization of works of art takes too much time. I was twenty years
Everybody is free to use the information in. But when Im preparing something, takes place through him, that the on the board of the Stanley Thomas
strategies I initiated. But for c), talking to I dont see a lot of exhibitions. I think finances of the art world go through him? Johnson Foundation, but I was voting
artists is still best way to feel their about my next exhibition. And when I Hes the one who can make the artist also about medical, third-world projects,
intentions and intensity. But of course, go to see an exhibition, my criteria are: live, through scholarships and grants; he children and handicapped, and in
once you choose an artist, then fifteen Do I feel that it is made with intensity sits on the boards that are buying culture, about some art requests, but
minutes is not enough you have to give and love? And Im not so interested in artworks, etc. mainly I was supporting films of the East
all your time which works to choose, the rest. You are forgetting all the battles that take and South, music, dance and art
modes of presentation, the verbalization of place in everyday practice. Of course Im exhibitions, but never individual artists,
visual information, the balance between So are there some younger colleagues responsible, but for the whole, and and we never made purchases. I learnt

a lot about talking with medical doctors, or no. If he says yes, we discuss it, and it Something else interests me: a lot of major figure; my ambition was to have an
distinguishing basic research from real becomes a discussion between two curators start out as independent intense life.
help for human life. Thats what Im human beings. So for me the term use curators. But then, they all somehow end
interested in. sounds too colonial. up in institutions. Then how do you see this development?
Of course, there were some important They sure do. You need a lot of energy to Backwards or forwards. Backwards, I
people asking me to put a collection So, in a way you think that if you do a stay independent. If I think about when I started with theater; forwards, I will end
together. But I always made it a condition good work, you can somehow escape last took a Sunday stroll, that would be up doing more shows no more
that they accompany me in looking at the political and economic kinds of restraint? nineteen years ago. If youre independent, Documentas and Biennales, but precise
works and that we discuss them, and not Its sometimes a balancing act, but I all you do is work. You work double, you things like I did last year: Duchamp in
just send me a concept. So I was asking always countered such restraints with my pay the state double in taxes, social the Tinguely Museum in Basel, Money
that they invest the same time as I do. arguments: the more freedom you give to insurance & Value/The Last Tabou in Biel, Aubes
Then a dialogue evolves, and sometimes me, the more its in your own interest, too. Rveries au bord de Victor Hugo in
a friendship. But even in my country I But isnt it, then, in a way, the symbolic Paris, now Blood & Honey/Futures at
didnt belong to any group. Im actually You dont have the feeling that the touch capital you have as an important the Balkans, The Real Royal Trip at
the only one who was never asked to be of the institution or the art museum is independent curator that makes it P.S. 1, The Beauty of Failure in
part of the National Art Commission. But like a Midas touch? Everything loses its possible for you to live and work? Barcelona, a kind of a biennale in
I was glad I was never asked. Too many edge, becomes similar, and starts to Yes, symbolic capital I do have, and its Seville, Visionary Belgium in Brussels.
compromises. When I look at my perform for purposes that are different what gives me interesting work. The other Nothing main-stream, all exploration
correspondence, it seems that everyday I and contrary to those it had been made capital is less brilliant. Since I pre-finance and adventure.
decline to be part of some committee, for. almost everything, I still have debts of
jury, board, to talk at openings, to write Yeah, but this is exactly why I never chose almost half a million Swiss francs. But I Your exhibitions usually have very
forewords. Why? I want to be free for what to become a director. This was my choice. never took the secure way; otherwise, I meaningful, beautiful titles.
I love to do. I mean, if I see my sons would have accepted all the offers from You know I lived such a long time with all
museums, institutions, etc. But you know these works labeled Untitled that I
In your texts you talk a lot about your Your sons? Im rather unique. Mr. Messer of the thought at least exhibitions should have
own self-realization. In a way, it seems Rudi Fuchs, Jean-Christophe Ammann, Guggenheim always called me an titles again. I especially liked the one I
you really dont care when you are etc. They chose power positions. impostor. He said, You are a poet, not an found for 100 Years of Polish art at
accused of using an artist for the sake of art historian. Zacheta in Warsaw (2000): Be Careful
your own art. So you are in a way critical of this? Not to Leave Your Dreams, You Could
Well, artists like to be exhibited by me. Well, I see how it functions. I mean, I Could you have foreseen, in the late Find Yourself in the Dreams of Others. El
And I respect the rules: Im asked if I want never write articles against somebody, sixties, say, that the curator would viaje real was Columbuss last trip to
to do a show, and I can say yes or no. because otherwise I could become a become such a major figure? America, but he brought the Native
Then I ask the artist, and he can say yes fatalistic Islamic philosopher. No! My ambition was not to become a Americans syphilis and other Spanish

diseases. Now I come with art; thats why the lost dimension of freedom. When youre meeting all these artists, do Sometimes I have this feeling that curators
I call the exhibition The Real Royal Trip. I like full-blooded artists. you enjoy your power of consecration? really get more enjoyment from the
You can make art from no matter what. process of picking people, from their own
You have very often talked about your What makes an artist full-blooded? Well, Im conscious that Im not a power and importance, and so on, than
concept Besitz durch freie Aktionen zu This ideal mixture of action and thought guarantee; I can only try to give people an from the art itself. In contemporary social
ersetzen. I wonder if you could explain that I find in the work of Richard Serra. intense here and now. For me, you talk theory, many renowned scholars speak of
that. too much about our power pathological narcissism as the dominant
Well, it was a slogan from the 68 revolution What about such artists as Santiago consecration is a long historical process. form of subjectivity in recent decades.
and I adopted it when I called myself Sierra whom you also invited to the Thank you for the compliment that I can Since the role of the curator developed and
Agency for Spiritual Guestwork and Venice Biennial who are, in my make art from no matter what. My poetics flourished in the same period, couldnt it
of free association hopes for this, but like possibly be a profession specially tailored
decided to work no longer in institutions as opinion, highly problematic, especially
everybody else in the world, I depend on for such a human state?
a dependent worker. You see, with since they use other people in very
others, and if they think its art, thats OK Of course, its a big pleasure to discover
temporary exhibitions there is the possibility particular ways? For example, in the
with me, if they think its rubbish, thats artists, but its also a big pleasure to have
for you to use the presentation, the project Line of 160 cm with the tattoos
also OK with me. As I said before, my long-lasting relationships. Is evolving
nonverbal, spatial arrangements, to reveal on the backs of drug-addicted
interest is to create temporary worlds in together narcissistic? Some curators
the spiritual non-value of the work, the part prostitutes, whom Sierra hired at the the form of exhibitions. may be narcissists, others not. Some are
that can never be property. Im always sad price of a dose of heroin. taking curators, some are giving curators;
when I see works I once showed under Its interesting you mention him. He But still only temporary? most of them are both, a mixture. But to
such ideal conditions exhibited in a started as a sculptor and wanted to be as Well, when the exhibition is closed and take the curator as a specially tailored
museum like a document. When something tough as Serra. And then, living in Latin the spatial dimension lost forever, its image for the narcissistic human state
becomes property, there are other laws that America, he moved on to social problems, over, its finished. It might survive in the is, for me, a little bit short-circuited. But
take effect. Thats why I do not collect. which he attacked in the same tough memory of others. Thats why I say Im for again: everybody can think as he wants.
way. You find in his work protest against a society without classes: but I have to For a long time I protested against being
You were very critical about this, that art social discrimination, misery, misuse and admit at least two: the ones who saw my called an artist. Today I say I dont care. I
today is more something commented on exploitation by working with human shows, and the ones who didnt. And now extend this attitude to the charge of
and less an experience. beings as living sculptures. And paying there is a third class: the ones who didnt narcissism, as well. In my case it is the
Well, the date of my statement is them on a regular, pre-agreed basis see my shows but still talk about them. I work that attracts me and then I visit the
important. It was in the seventies. according to their needs: money or drugs. like this magnetic field of production and artist. And we spoke earlier about the
Conceptual art was a fantastic liberator: Its ambivalent: exploitation to make the consumption of negation and other things you evoke.
the work could be done or not. Not people aware of exploitation. I wouldnt recognition, which is never really tangible,
materialized, it became a real trip of the say that he is full-blooded in the sense I like the collective memory, a whole So in a way, there are also full-blooded
imagination. But then, the conceptual said it for Richard, but he is a very intense composed of capricious and serious curators?
also became academic. I was deploring artist. And I like intensity. individual memories. Well, in my case, I would say yes.

MUSEUM
Boris Groys
The Museum in the Age of Mass Media

Its true: there is still a large audience that enjoys visiting museums these days. But from advertising, MTV, videos, video games and Hollywood blockbusters. Whether
in general, as an institution the museum is increasingly being viewed with this notion of art is good or bad is a mute question: it is what it is. All that matters
scepticism and mistrust by the selfsame audience. On all sides one repeatedly hears is that in the context of contemporary, media-generated tastes this call to abandon
that the institutional boundaries of the museum ought to be transgressed, and dismantle the museum as an institution has taken on an entirely different
deconstructed or simply removed to give contemporary art full freedom to assert meaning than when it was voiced during the avant-garde era. Nowadays this protest
itself in real life. At first glance these attacks on the museum in the name of some is no longer part of the struggle waged against prevailing normative tastes in the
or other contemporary, living art have a very familiar ring about them they sound name of innovation but is, inversely, aimed at stabilizing and entrenching currently
rather like a sequel to the demands voiced by the various avant-garde movements prevailing tastes. When people today speak of real life, what they generally mean
of the twentieth century that called for the art system and, in particular, the museum is the global media market. This is why art that enters life under such conditions
to be demolished, transcended and disbanded to make way for new art. Such can never really be new art, because the demands and criteria practised by the
appeals and demands have meanwhile become quite commonplace, even to the media market have always been broadly familiar. Anyone calling for the museum to
extent of now being regarded as a cardinal feature of contemporary art. But as we be transcended is no longer remonstrating against prevailing norms or the
all know, these avant-garde demands in fact led merely to the emergence of new dominance and censorship institutionally practised by the museum. Instead, such
art forms that in the course of time also found their rightful place in the museum. an outcry represents populist repudiation of a minority, of any deviation from the
So, as an institution the museum has adopted a relaxed, if not blatantly benevolent norm and of aesthetic positions that differ from those currently propagated by the
attitude towards these appeals and demands that once threatened its very existence media. In order to properly assess the predicament of the museum as an institution
in the expectant hope that new and interesting art might be directly fostered by one must first acknowledge the fact that, rather than representing the majority of
such attacks. Present-day calls for the abolition of the museum appear to take up those interested in art and culture as it did in the past, the museum now only
on these earlier avant-garde strategies and so continue, virtually unchallenged, to speaks for a minority.
be whole-heartedly embraced by the museum. But appearances are deceiving. The
context, meaning and function of the calls to abolish the museum system have Art institutions, however, are still typically displayed in the media as places of
undergone fundamental change since the days of the avant-garde, even if at first selection, where specialists, insiders and the initiated few pass preliminary
sight the style and diction of their formulation seems so familiar. judgement on what is permitted to rate as art in general, and what in particular as
good art. This selection process is based on criteria that to a wider audience seem
Prevailing tastes in the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth centuries were unfathomable, incomprehensible and, in the final count, also irrelevant.
defined and embodied by the museum. The criteria on which the museum based Accordingly, one wonders just why anyone at all is needed to decide what art is and
its choice of good art were generally accepted as the social norm. So in these what is not. Why cant we just choose for ourselves what we wish to acknowledge
circumstances any protest directed at the museum was simultaneously a protest or appreciate as art without recourse to an intermediary, without patronizing advice
against the prevailing norms of art-making and by the same token also the basis from curators and art critics? Why does art refuse to seek legitimation on the open
from which new, groundbreaking art could evolve. But in its present context the media market just like any other product? From a media perspective the traditional
museum has indisputably been stripped of its normative role. In our own era it is aspirations of the museum seem historically obsolete, out-of-touch, insincere and
the mass media that dictate aesthetic norms, having long since dethroned the even somewhat bizarre. And contemporary art itself time and again displays an
museum from its crucial social role. The general public now draws its notion of art eagerness to follow the enticements of the mass media age, voluntarily abandoning

the museum in the quest to be disseminated through media channels. Of course, darkness and transposing the viewer into a nervous trance. Here the museum is
this readiness on the part of art to become involved in the media, in broader public directly manifesting itself as what it has come to represent in the age of mass
communication and politics, in other words to engage in life beyond the boundaries media, as a tenebrous location of secrecy, conspiracy and half-visibility. Thus, in
of the museum, is quite understandable. This approach allows it address and its new role the museum has maintained its appeal for the media and the broad
seduce a much larger audience; it is a decent way of earning money which the public precisely as a site of strangeness, deviation and inexplicability as a
artist previously had to beg for from the state or private sponsors. It gives the artist kunstkammer of the contemporary world which has lost its licence to define
a new sense of power, social relevance and public presence within his or her own prevailing aesthetic norms.
time preferable to eking out a meagre existence as the poor relation of the media.
So the call to break loose from the museum also amounts de facto to a call to By the same token, however, there is also something about the museum that clearly
medialize and commercialize art by accommodating it to the aesthetic norms irritates the media, namely everything that has to do with theoretical discourse
generated by todays media. But given that the museum has been divested of its addressed at art in general or the museum in particular. Almost every time a
function as the arbiter of taste, one is nonetheless left wondering why it still museum exhibition is suspected of voicing a theoretical, critical claim the media
continues to hold such strong attraction for the general public, including the media. react with unveiled animosity. The sole excuse that can save an exhibition in such
circumstances is if in spite of its theoretical pretensions it can be said to be sensual
Firstly, seen from a media perspective, the criteria for the evaluation of art as and attractive and hence ultimately irrelevant. At first glance this reaction by the
practised in museums appear, as mentioned above, to be totally obscure, media might seem rather odd. After all, being theoretical surely means being open
incomprehensible and even somewhat mysterious. Curiously, though, this does to communication, and the media is in fact supposed to welcome all communicative
not mean that the media automatically denigrate museums since they are equally endeavours. But in reality, the only artistic and curatorial decisions truly celebrated
fascinated by all that is hidden, dark, obscure and marginal. The museum-trained by the media are those that appear to be purely subjective, ungrounded and
eye itself is fascinated by life outside the museum, by reality and the media. By intuitive. Nowadays the media have ceased to celebrate the individual artist as a
contrast, the media is intrigued by the idea of casting light on the hidden and genius. Instead, we now witness how the entire museum system per se is hailed as
closed-off recesses of the museum, of enlightening the public about its dark secrets a genius, as a place where arbitrary, incomprehensible decisions are made about
and rendering the museums isolated and private inner precincts accessible to what constitutes art and what does not, about what is rated good art and what is
media-based communication. On the whole, the strategies behind museum not. This is nothing less than a bizarre continuation of the cult of the genius in the
collections and exhibitions are treated in the media as the workings of a shadowy wake of the ready-made principle. Whereas on the one hand post-Duchamp art is
conspiracy, as an intrigue masterminded by insiders, as a display of the hidden criticized and ironized for its allegedly random display of artistic and curatorial
power of curators and museum directors far removed from any form of democratic power, on the other the media are mesmerized by this same power, ready to salute
legitimation in other words, as an impenetrable swindle. But at the same time anyone who seems capable of achieving success by pulling off such purportedly
this dark secret exerts a magnetic attraction on the media: they suspect it might arbitrary and gratuitous decisions. The ready-made procedure is now considered to
hold an interesting source of information in store. This aspect, incidentally, is be the last enigma of our age, a last possible act of pure subjective choice and
corroborated by the introduction of film and video installations into the museum, even more so if people are not ready to comply with the arbitrariness of this choice.
which is accompanied by the darkening of museum space. This development has In the media we are now witnessing a strange aestheticization of the museum as a
extinguished the museums traditional light, casting the museum space in place of enigma, mystery and quasi-religiosity.

Localizing Accordingly, every instance of theoretical or critical reasoning is treated like an
the white cube
Vadim Fishkin, objectionable act of secularization aimed at robbing the museum of its enigmatic
One-Man Show aura and thereby, so it would seem, definitively draining it of appeal. Most
Mala Galerija, Ljubljana,
1995
significantly, however, theoretical discourse calls into question the fundamental
The artist localized ideological premise underlying the way todays media operate. For, as those running
the gallery by the media ceaselessly claim, far from promoting their own norms or propagating
determining the exact
geographic coordinates tastes of their own making (let alone even having their own tastes), the media
of the middle point simply provide what their audience wants to see in the proverbial manner of:
of the space.
There Fishkin placed bait is meant to attract fish, not fishermen. It is precisely this notion that leads
a wooden construction people in the media to believe they have the upper hand, to feel they are historically
from which he projected
the entire body of his
more progressive than the classical museum they denounce as normative, didactic
work onto the white and authoritarian. Thus the key perceived difference between the traditional
walls of the darkened museum and contemporary media lies in the assumption that museums try to
space, thus taking the
phrase one-man show impose their aesthetic agenda on people, while the media merely wish to lend
literally. Inside the expression to existing mass-democratic tastes. But on closer inspection there is
construction was a tape
recorder with questions something highly problematic about the view the media have of themselves. Anyone
posed to the visitors familiar with the workings of the media today knows that they are constantly
by Viktor Misiano,
the exhibition curator.
promoting their latest array of products by claiming them to be different, new, up-
to-date or even pioneering. Novelty, or rather topicality, is presented in the media
as a value in its own right to which the consumer is expected to subordinate his
personal tastes. So on the one hand the media profess they are simply satisfying
existing tastes, while on the other they are directly and indirectly canvassing for
these tastes to be revised and adjusted to the zeitgeist. Consequently, it can hardly
be claimed that the media market provides the consumer only with what he really
wants to see and hear without any form of patronizing control. On the contrary,
at every turn he is being lectured and instructed about what supposedly constitutes
the current zeitgeist and what does not.
The question is, however, can one really learn from the media what is specifically
contemporary about the present? In my view the answer is no and for one simple
reason: the global media market lacks the historical memory which would enable it to
compare the past with the present and thereby determine what is really new and
genuinely contemporary about the present. The old product range in the media market

is constantly being replaced by new merchandise, barring any possibility of comparing cultural difference or cultural identity that persistently bombard us in the media. In
what is on offer today with what used to be available. As a result, media commentary order to critically challenge these claims we again require some form of comparative
has no choice but to turn to fashion. But fashionability itself is by no means self- framework. Where no such comparison is possible all claims of difference and
evident or indisputable. While it is perhaps easy for us to admit that in the age of mass identity remain unfounded and hollow. Indeed, every important art exhibition in a
media our lives are dictated predominantly by fashion, how confused we suddenly museum offers such a comparison, even if this is not explicitly enacted, for each
become when asked to say precisely what is en vogue just now. So who can actually museum exhibition inscribes itself into an entire history of exhibitions that is
say what is fashionable at any given moment? Passing any kind of judgement in this documented within the art system. Naturally, the strategies of comparison pursued
is highly problematic, particularly in these times of globalization. For instance, if by individual curators and critics can in turn also be criticized, but such a critique
something appears to have become fashionable in Berlin, one could quickly point out is possible only because these too can be measured against various other curatorial
that this trend has long since gone out of fashion measured against what is currently strategies in evidence within the art system. In other words, the very idea of
fashionable in, say, Tokyo or Los Angeles. Yet who can guarantee that the same Berlin abandoning or even abolishing the museum would remove the possibility of holding
fashion wont at some later date also hit the streets of Los Angeles or Tokyo? So, when a critical inquiry into the claims of innovation and difference with which we are
it comes to assessing the market, we are de facto at the blind mercy of advice constantly confronted in todays media. This also explains why the assessments and
dispensed by marketing and fashion gurus, the purported specialists of international selection criteria in museum art shows so frequently differ from those that prevail in
fashion. Yet such advice cannot be verified by the individual since, as everyone the mass media. The issue here is not that curators and art initiates have exclusive
knows, the global market is too vast for him alone to fathom. Hence, where the media and elitist tastes quite distinct from those of the broad public, but that the museum
market is concerned one has the simultaneous impression of being bombarded offers a means of comparing the present with the past that repeatedly arrives at
relentlessly with something new and also of permanently witnessing the return of the other conclusions than those implied by the media. An individual observer would
same over and over again. The familiar complaint that there is nothing new in art has not necessarily be in a position to undertake such a comparison if the media were
the same root as the opposite charge that art is constantly striving only to appear new. all he had to rely on. So it is hardly surprising that the media also end up adopting
As long as the observer has nothing but the media as a point of reference he simply the museums diagnosis of what exactly is contemporary about the present, simply
lacks any comparative context which would afford him means of effectively because they themselves are unable to perform a diagnosis of their own.
distinguishing between old and new, between what is the same and what is different.
It is primarily the museum of contemporary art that offers a framework for this
It is the museum that gives the observer this opportunity to differentiate between old diagnosis. Although the concept of the museum of contemporary art is now broadly
and new, and to critically challenge with his own eyes what the media insist is familiar, it nonetheless still represents a fundamentally new angle in our way of
novel, up-to-date and groundbreaking. For museums are repositories of historical seeing the museum as an institution. Traditionally, the museum used to function as
memory where everything is kept and shown that has gone out of fashion, that has a place where evidence of the past was stored and assembled into an overall picture
become old and out-dated. In this respect only the museums can serve as sites of that was then held to be a socially binding representation of history. From this
systematic historical comparison that enable us to ascertain what really is different, perspective, though, the museum of contemporary art would appear to be a
new and contemporary and to discover what is making false claims to be so, paradox. However close to the present moment new art is being collected, this
something that, although produced in the present, might in fact merely be repeating practice of collecting will always seem to arrive just a little too late and will
long-established patterns. The same, incidentally, applies to the assertions of inevitably remain at least one step behind the present. Accordingly, real

Filling the white cube contemporary developments in art seem never to be caught up by the collecting traditional artistic prototypes there are also examples of shifts, modifications and re-
with its own history
Rene Rusjan, process or by museographical re-presentation. It is often said that the museum inventions that do indeed have aesthetic appeal. Yet, here too, all such shifts and
Yesterday, for might perhaps be capable of collecting yesterday, but never today. This, by the way, deviations can only be recognized as such once they have been held up for
example
is precisely the point where media claims appear most plausible. For, as is comparison in the museum with their historical precursors. When shown in the
1997 frequently claimed, new art first has to establish itself in life in the global media media, these appropriations merely spawn a sense of malaise since there is no
The artist used elements market, to be precise before it can then be enshrined in the museum, in other aesthetic framework at hand to properly assess them by. But even when the media
from the two exhibitions
that immediately words, only once it has achieved success and endorsement in the market and with their plethora of reality shows endeavour to present unspectacular, everyday
preceded hers. Chairs therewith also social legitimacy. life, all they are doing is quoting the ready-made procedure that was embraced by
and projections
remained from Uri the museum long before, thereby revealing their debt to museum tradition.
Tzaigs exhibition, and Yet the historical relevance of any art is clearly not identical with its propagation in
the form and size of the
photographs on the wall
the media. As mentioned above, the now-ness of art only becomes apparent in In the age of mass media the museum seems likely to perform the following task.
followed the form and historical comparison, not by being circulated in the media. It is still pertinent to talk It has lost its traditional role of setting aesthetic norms and defining public taste, a
size of Michelangelo about the age of enlightenment or the era of the artistic avant-garde in spite of the function that is now been assumed by the media. But for their part, the media have
Pistolettos
photoceramics. The glaring fact that both the enlightenment or the artistic avant-garde were only of proved incapable of reflecting upon their own role. For a start, they lack any
photographs and video concern to imperceptibly marginal minorities and by no means reflected the historical memory that might enable them to lend precise definition to the current
projections presented
former exhibitions at the mentality of the absolute majority of the population at the time. This means that norm as such and, most importantly, the media are trapped in a state of
Mala galerija, which the todays museums are in fact machines designed not merely to collect, but also to permanent self-denial. They might prescribe aesthetic norms by invoking the
artist saw as her own.
generate the present through their comparison between old and new, between zeitgeist, but in the same breath they would rather not admit to this
Opposite side left: identical and different. There is no basis to the notion that the process of creating accomplishment being their own, pretending instead that they are merely following
Exhibition view of art occurs first in the media before it is subsequently represented in the museum. audience tastes. Hence, for all their loquaciousness the media in fact cultivate a
Michelangelo Pistoletto,
44 photoceramics Instead, we only recognize something as being up-to-date, truly contemporary and strange zone of muteness that manifests a deep-set incapacity to discuss their own
from Minus Objects thus real art once we realize that this art has yet to be collected by or represented role as active norm-setters let alone to critically examine these norms in the light
1965/66, Mala
Galerija, Ljubljana, in the museum. Rather than reality coming first, with its museum re-presentation of their own claims that they embody the zeitgeist. It would be a disastrous mistake
1996 following on in second place, it is the museum collection that tells us what in the if the museum were also to emulate this strategy of self-denial and likewise strive
Opposite side right:
here and now may be considered real. In other words, the museum of contemporary to fulfil the claim that it is only showing people what they want to see. For in stark
Exhibition view of art is ultimately a producer of contemporary art by the way it establishes what has contrast to the mass media, museums possess the means and possibilities to be
Uri Tzaig, Two Balls, not yet been collected and thus what, by implication, must be contemporary. By sites of critical discourse. Furthermore, given our current cultural climate the
1997 contrast, in the context of mass media art is condemned to constantly reiterating museum is practically the only place where we can actually step back from our own
certain external features in an attempt to make art publicly identifiable as art. Thus present and compare it with other eras. In these terms, the museum is irreplaceable
the media promote a kind of art that is often erroneously called museum art, in because it is particularly well suited to critically analyze and challenge the claims of
other words, the kind that strives to be demonstrably artistic, spectacular and the media-driven zeitgeist.
extraordinary which is why such art never manages to cut itself free from
traditional genres. Admittedly, among all the media-tailored appropriations of Translated by Matthew Partridge

NIKLAS LUHMANNS ART AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM
Art & Language
Roma Reason
Niklas Luhmann,
Art as a Social System,
trans. Eva M. Knodt,
Niklas Luhmann who died in 1998 is not widely discussed by social and cultural
theorists outside Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Scandinavia and Italy. Yet in
For ourselves, we can say that Luhmann writes from a world in which we do our
work or rather from within a world in which we can recognise ourselves as doing
Stanford University Germany at least his influence rivals and exceeds that of Habermas in certain our work. While his is a social theory, it will present difficulties to and bring
Press, Stanford, CA,
2000. All page
reaches of social theory extending also to philosophers and logicians. More disappointments to the confident professionals of the Social History of Art. It will be
references, unless surprisingly, perhaps, he is a pervasive presence in the writing and conversation of even more of an irritant to the academy of Cultural Studies. As we have suggested,
otherwise indicated, art theorists and artists. Surprisingly, because Luhmanns loci classici are to be Luhmanns sense of the social system - and certainly of art as a social system - is
refer to this book
found in cybernetics, communications theory and the calculus of the British explained at a high level of abstraction in sometimes relentlessly technical language.
mathematician George Spencer Brown. Luhmanns is a sociological systems theory. It uses very few of the building materials which are normally used to construct the
One might indeed think that he proposes a systems-theoretical approach to the themes and motifs of art and society, the social history of art and (a fortiori) the
entire range of geisteswissenschaftlichen products. And systems-theoretical app- art world. Art as he conceives it is an autopoietic system which knows a bit about
roaches have stirred up the humanities more or less since the former have borne the world which it must treat as its background. For him art is made of the
the name. Luhmanns argument, however, is that his critics are wrong: this theory communications within and presumably out of such a system. At the same time, art
is not another attempt at a nerdy Putsch by technocratic imperialists but an does not reduce to systems-theoretical formulae. Its the mystifying but
investigation of communication rather than agents and actions. And while he thinks unmystificatory remainder that interests him. Even if it (art) employs text as an
that communication (which he conceives operationally) is somewhat improbable, artistic medium its communications cannot be adequately rendered through words
he suggests that it is the very stuff that is transformed into social structures. (let alone concepts). The upshot of all this is that artistic practice can resist
meltdown into hopeless spectacle and manipulative barbarism insofar as it works
We have attended two conferences which share the title Art & Language and hard on its own indeterminacy, its endless project of self-description. This is art
Luhmann. The first was in Vienna in 1995 and was addressed by Luhmann without purification or police. It is art borne of the practice of bad citizenship in the
himself. The second was after his death and was held in Karlsruhe in 2000. These state controlled by the academy of cultural studies.
conferences were not organised by Art & Language. They were organised by
Christian Matthiessen of the Institt fur Soziale Gegenwartsfragen, and included Autopoietic systems
performances by its alter ego, The Jackson Pollock Bar. It all began as something Luhmann argues that systems of control and systems of power are intimately related
of a mystery to us, but Matthiessen wrote and explained that there were many and that cybernetics tells us that these can be deconstructed rather than merely
parallels between Luhmanns theory of autopoietic systems and the artistic practice opposed. The reasons of the parts of social systems are not the same as the reasons
(of reflection) of Art & Language. These were not conventionally academic of the whole. They therefore have to be explained differently, and, furthermore, the
conferences, in so far as they were both accompanied by exhibitions of Art & whole is much more stupid than the parts. He agrees with Vico, Marx and Gramsci
Language work. Indeed, the first conference took place in the same room as the that social practice has (or rather can find) no foundation outside itself.
exhibition. At the second, Luhmanns Zettelkasten was exhibited in juxtaposition to Communication in Luhmanns sense implies a great deal of modesty on the part of
Art & Languages Index 01 of 1972 file cabinets of Art & Language writings and enquirers after human causes and effects. He has an answer for his critics of the
fragments of writings indexed by a set of three relations. We left both occasions with left and elsewhere who argue (as C. Wright-Mills did of another of Luhmanns
a solid sense of working camaraderie, even though a good deal of the Luhmann influences Talcott Parsons) that all this Shannon and Weaver stuff is drunk on
talk was opaque to us. This is how we came to read some of his work. syntax and blind to semantics that it is a regime of technicalities which is of no

value with regard to the pragmatics and semantics of real communication. OK, he The text itself is non-linear the fruit of Luhmanns use for research and writing of a
argues, it may look like a lot of engineering and other fraudulently value-free stuff, Zettelkasten or card-file system. Things pop up in surprising or unpredictable places and
but, in defining a message as one selected from a set of possible messages in unusual proximities: the history of the relation between systems theory and the
Shannon and Weaver were in fact saying something both provocative and useful. humanities meets literary criticism and more. System (as distinct from systems theory)
Moreover, Spencer Brown, whose recasting of Boolean algebra as a calculus is a term borrowed by philosophers in the early years of the seventeenth century from
departed from a non-engineering observation that engineers need to leave theologians. It became a name for a synoptic and comprehensive treatment of a
possibilities open, makes a connection that Weaver leaves out. For Spencer Brown, philosophical discipline and eventually for such a treatment by any discipline whatsoever.
a distinction signifies or at least makes sense because it relates a marked But as early as 1749 Condillac pointed out in an early critique that systems cant be better
space a singling out and an unmarked space which is a set of possibilities. than the principles on which they are based. Philosophers can feign hypotheses. Scientists
Luhmanns theory of reference and his epistemology are thus constructivist in the sign up to the Newtonian declaration hypotheses non fingo. Theres the point of
sense that he regards reference as something made by differences here difference. So much the worse or better (Condillac thought worse) for philosophical
differences between marked spaces not by perceiving agents or by appeal to the systems and so much the worse or better (Condillac thought better) for scientific ones.
putative references themselves. His theory of meaning is implicitly hermeneutic and
sociological. What he calls the dialectics of meaning is, he argues, culturally Are Luhmanns hypotheses feigned? It is not entirely clear. He shifts. The framework
defined. remains. And however his hypotheses are got, they are usually penetrating, a bit
uncanny and mostly elegant. There are occasions when the various parameters of
Luhmann uses the term observer in an odd and sometimes counter-intuitive way. systematicity simplicity, uniformity, comprehensiveness, etc., get tangled and
This is connected to his interest in systems, and systems are what he wants to tense. The Zettelkasten-led apostrophes are perhaps how Luhmann owns up to and
observe. They are for him sets of possibilities which an actor puts herself in embraces that. At the same time, this possibility of tension within and between these
whenever she, or her actions, are about something. Systems are no more than the various desiderata of systematicity is what shows that the concept is itself a systems
relation between an actor (agent) and something which is as it is and, furthermore, directed one. If you dont buy the desiderata you dont buy the system and vice versa.
is what it is as a result of that relation. Luhmanns notion of autopoiesis originates The business (!) of constructing systems since Kants Critique of Pure Reason is
in the work of Humberto Maturana, who uses the term to describe the recursive architectonic. For Hegel and (many) neo-Hegelians, system was not just an important
operations of self-referential systems. What distinguishes such organic systems from aspect but the essential characterising feature of Wissen. Luhmann may be no
the classical mechanical ones is the recursivity of their operations. Everything that systematizer in this sense. At the same time he can work at a level of abstraction such
is the system is produced by the system. Autopoietic systems are, however, that the system Spencer-Brown-plus-Shannon-and-Weaver-et-alii seems to go to all
operationally closed and blind to their environment. They cannot create a world situations without the clear discrimination and the concreteness that, in the end, a
except insofar as world-making is a necessary correlate of the systems own good systems theory will be able to provide. Often these contraptions work best small.
operations. Luhmann argues that the question, How can operationally closed How do you design a good shoe, car, house, etc? And even in these small cases
systems create openness? replaces the classical distinction between closed and conflicts arise. Luhmanns system fits the world where it touches. Is this a failing? It
open systems. does touch art and it leaves a mark.

The autopoietic is thus
something that recognises
an outside, an environment,
in which time goes as time
goes and fruit flies do as fruit
flies do...
Luhmann reformulates the social as consisting of communications. In this sense is referred to and everything else and, on the other, what is within the operation of
there are no agents and interests, only communications. His is a challenge to the the system of distinguishing and what is outside it. Consider for example the
determinants of modernitys self-descriptions. In drawing a number of decentering (Brothers) Marx epigram Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. We can
and deconstructive conclusions he draws many Quinean or Derridean distinguish Time goes or proceeds quickly as an arrow (the correct reading) from
consequences. The unified autonomous subject goes out, along with the idea of the A certain species of flies, time flies, enjoy a banana (the incorrect reading), and
social as a product of intersubjectivity, and the idea of language as the A certain species of flies, fruit flies, enjoy a banana (the correct reading) from Fruit
representation of the content of consciousness - with a given communication as the goes or proceeds quickly as an arrow does (the incorrect reading). This
transmission of these contents. As with Derrida, these clearings-out begin with distinction/indication is not the same as indicating that time does indeed fly like an
phenomenology. Meaning for Luhmann however is an effect of differences that, arrow or that fruit flies really do enjoy a banana. In a system, according to
pace Bateson, make a difference. Luhmann uses systems theory to rethink Luhmann, the two distinctions occur at the same time, and they develop together
consciousness as a facing up to the implications of autopoietic closure. In even though they are distinct. The autopoietic is thus something that recognises an
Luhmanns unfamiliar usage, communication can observe consciousness but only outside, an environment, in which time goes as time goes and fruit flies do as fruit
from outside and from within the boundaries of what is marked by the observation. flies do, and is self-referential in distinguishing various possible readings of the two
The communication system and consciousness can operate simultaneously without sentences and resolving the ambiguities involved. Neither of these operations is the
necessarily interfering with each other, since they both function autopoietically. Of same as getting the joke, which is brought on by another distinction. It would be
course they can intersect and may indeed have developed in concert. hard to say if getting the joke would be a matter of external reference or self-
reference. Relations of this kind are, nevertheless, what form implies for Luhmann.
In trying to help British Railways with a timetable machine (a truth-table maker) It should be clear by now that Art as a Social System is not a book which charts the
George Spencer-Brown developed a calculus of indications. This is the lynchpin of transmission of soul contents as mediated by works of art. Here are some more
Luhmanns system. Here is, we are told, a calculus that welcomes and deals with things it is not: it is not a book of aesthetics seen or operated sociologically; it is not
opacity and ambiguity. The calculus involves an injunction: draw a distinction. a study of the stratified society in which art has its being. Luhmanns is a sociology
The agument is that we cant make or do anything without drawing a distinction which lays claim to being its own (anti) epistemology. He speaks of an ecology of
and indeed, we do this endlessly. A distinction according to Spencer-Brown is not knowledge, an ecology that, he argues, we have to learn to work if we are to deal
the same as the indication (pointing/marking/selecting) it makes, but it contains it. adequately with the growing complexities of social differentiation. He gets rid of the
It also contains all the rest of the world that is not indicated. Indeed, the distinction model of society based on stratification, not because he thinks there are no
is itself contained in this unmarked space. Luhmann argues that this calculus is disfigurements, but because he thinks that such models lead to disenfranchising
operational. It is supposed to refer to the concrete operations of real (opacity- or at least to confusing and misrepresenting reifications and purifications which
recognizing self-referential) systems. If we indicate, we indicate something, but the simply hide the colossal indeterminacies which all social thinkers confront.
operation is not terminated by what the indicated something is. Each operation of Causality, in social terms at least, is downgraded as a mediately operational
indication results in some sort of referring, but there is a difference generated distinction in a world that is massively underdetermined as well as overdetermined.
between that operation and what it marks, points to, selects or refers to. There is no In an article The Paradox of Form Luhmann offers an illustration: in Paradise Lost,
necessary correspondence between, on the one hand, the difference between what the angel Raphael explains history to Adam (i.e., the reader) as history goes on

around them (Raphael performs his message, reminds Adam of his state and of his controversies. Understandings have one big advantage over the claims of authority:
enemy; relates at Adams request who that enemy is and how he came to be so they cannot be discredited but must be constantly negotiated. While this passage
beginning from the first revolt in Heaven and the occasion thereof (see Paradise begins to account for Luhmanns sense of history within history and for his
Lost, book V). History can only be understood within history. There are no willingness to countenance paradox as useful, it also describes what its like to read
Archimedean vantage points, as we all know. The problem, according to Luhmann, his text. The system always reveals something frustratingly contingent, such that
is finding a present so that operations are not mixed up with their past(s) or their you are reminded of things you almost thought about, or may have thought you
future(s). Spencer-Browns distinction between, on the one hand, the observable thought about or some further sense of modality. This is a strange and powerful
and the unobservable flies as referring to a particular sort of action, versus, on the effect. But take care. Its also a condition of a subjunctive conditionality: If I had
other, flies as verb or noun, presupposes an observer who deals with the thought that I would a sort of self-deception.
difference and is compelled by it to refer back to herself.
Luhmann is quite capable of laconic robustness and he provides many illuminated
Luhmann thus attempts to dissolve the distinction between naturalism and anti- readings of works of art in context and this without browbeating the reader with
naturalism. As Roy Bhaskars reluctant anti-naturalism avers, the best social science his (extraordinary) Bildung. On the other hand, his more theoretical arguments are
can do is emulate natural (i.e. experimental) science methodologically. Nature conducted so relentlessly at such a high level of abstraction (this he admits) as to
doesnt lie, and in the social sciences we shouldnt cheat. While Luhmanns writing be entirely persuasive regarding the question of their adequatio intellectu. It is the
has strangeness, it would be absurd to suggest that his is the sociological equivalent ad rem bit that one occasionally struggles to recover (or is it vice versa?). Unlike
of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. (There is essentially the those (Postmodernist, etc.) theorists who exemplify their Spenglerian sense of epoch
question of the influence on the very conditions that define the possible types of in a collapse into aporias, inversions, transgressions and provocations, Luhmann
prediction regarding the future behaviour of the system Niels Bohr.) Luhmann does not leave us entirely without bearings in a sea of endless pluralities. The
would admit from the outset that some of his hypotheses may be feigned. His is no system lets you peek at the map. It is sometimes hard, sometimes easy to see art
more (which is in fact a lot) than an attempt to find a way for the social sciences to of various forms, all manners of producing them, all interpretations and all
live with a great deal of indeterminacy. There is, however, no danger to the judgements about them assimilable to moments in a highly ramified but abstract
sociological equivalent of Schrdingers cat well, of course, no equivalent could system. It is, for example, sometimes hard to live both with Luhmann and with the
be imagined. materially founded sense of depression and loss which attends the barbarisms big
and small of the art dealer and art dealers world and of the artistic products it
Arts modernity engenders. Luhmann nevertheless asks us to orient ourselves in a historical,
In one of Luhmanns previous books, Observations on Modernity, he writes of the sociological, artistic and moral space. This is hard work. It requires us to
loss of that authority which he defines as the ability to represent the world and to discriminate in circumstances where discrimination is often improbable. Reading
convince others of the same representation. This has been lost, he argues to Luhmann is operational reading. It constantly requires the discrimination of a
something called the politics of understanding, where the latter are negotiated system (peeking at the map which may be unreliable) from that systems
provisos that can be relied upon for a given time which do not represent reasonable environment. This distinction has to be new, or has to be found operationally. There
nor even correct solutions to problems but simply fix reference points for further are things which we know we are attending to, but even as we do this there are

People can see
what they see
but they cannot see
that they did not see
what they did not see.
Dirk Baecker
other things to which we might, ought or should be attending. Form shows us that There are agents in the book, authors and so forth, but what they do qua social
what we imagine as a clear cultural identity must face up to contingencies which beings is not what agents do, but communications. These agents are the names
infringe, overlap and deny that identity. attached to Luhmanns copious and wide ranging references, but otherwise all the
real action is with observations, operations, events, structural couplings and so
A useful figure to keep in mind is one employed by Dirk Baecker in commenting on forth. While Art as a Social System may be about what the title suggests, Luhmann
the influence of Husserl on Luhmann. The latter abhorred Husserls idea of a spirit operates an astonishing range of reconstructive and interpretative observations.
of Europe (which admittedly he may have been speaking of in post-Freiburgian Some of them, given his refreshing and exemplary distance from the art-worldy, art-
desperation in Vienna in 1935). The spirit consists of rationality, worship of reason, historical (etc.) academy, are established critical insights made strange and thus
enlightenment and the socially responsive human being. This spirit excludes the interesting. Here, for instance is Luhmann on the problem of Realism though it
Roma. But according to Luhmann, the Roma people are the most sophisticated in takes a while to figure out that thats what his nice recasting is addressed to.
accounting for boundaries. They cross them, they de-construct them. Watching the
Roma will tell the observer more about the actual state of Europe than any digging Ascertaining a reality is based on an experience of a resistance in the system
for its spirit ever could. This support for Roma reason is presumably part of the against itself for example in perception against perception, or in language against
German experience but, according to Baecker, Luhmann (alluding to Schiller) language and not on a comprehensive impression of the world. The being-in-the-
thought that those who preferred reason to the multiplicity and individuality of world of the communication system emerges from a continual coupling of self-
appearances were barbarians. He preferred ironical reason. (See Dirk Baecker reference and hetero-reference. (pp.10-11)
Gypsy Reason: Niklas Luhmanns Sociological Enlightenment in Cybernetics and
Human Knowing 6, no. 3, 1999, page 5.) And Luhmann is far from regarding art as some sort of sociological adjunct. He is
aware of developments and complexities in modern art conceived as relatively
Art as a Social System sits alongside other books in Luhmanns series: The Economy autonomous, and he produces an informative reconstruction of the various
as a Social System, Science as a Social System, Law as a Social System. The conditions which made this autonomy both possible and necessary. He is never
sociological enlightenment of N. Luhmann is not the discovery or the establishment guilty of the typical philosophers error of treating works of art as merely
of a unified meaning of society. It is rather a kind of recursive systems theory the underdetermined cases, illustrations or exemplifications of ontological or
doubling of the world into the visible and the invisible. Again, according to Dirk hermeneutical puzzles. He, unlike one of his notable followers, does not simply rely
Baecker people can see what they see but they cannot see that they did not see on dear old Ren Magritte, the philosophers friend, to make the exemplary case
what they did not see. Luhmanns writing seeks to emancipate contingencies and with a game of unreflective but paradoxical pictoriality. While the genetic character
to emancipate with contingencies. This is something art can do. He is quite clear of Luhmanns systems-theoretical approach may replay the warning bells rung by
however that this will not continue to any purpose unless there is (soon) some sort Habermas or C. Wright-Mills, we have to remember that Barry Barnes (for example)
of development in artistic culture such that artworks achieve some sort of internal is not so prejudiced as to be unwilling to use Talcott Parsons for what he is good
complexity. He doesnt really say why. Heres why: if they dont achieve this, then for. Similarly, this social systems theorist makes sense of Conceptual Art not as a
all works of art will become no more than the instrumental adjuncts of Murdoch- historically purblind scandal of pickled sharks and unmade beds, nor as an
like curators. Art will simply be unable to put up a fight. occasion for post-modernists opportunism and spectacle, nor yet as the freeing of

tendency from a formalist straightjacket, but as a quasi-fatal necessity driven by the Hetero-referential autonomy
historical and philosophical or theoretical breakdown of previously sustainable (even The Zettelkasten continually shows in the text, which has occasionally the eerie
self-sustaining) aesthetic systems. He understands what Conceptual Art thought it aspect of snatches of uncompleted or uncompletable conversations. Do you read
had to do: Under the conditions of autonomy, this means that art must surpass or browse? Luhmann neither hectors nor admonishes. His book makes no attempt
itself and eventually reflect upon its own surpassing of itself. There are few other aggressively to defend itself against derogations it clearly anticipates. As a
remarks that capture the improbable requirements on a Conceptual Art of around consequence, it is remarkably resistant to the readers critical or censorious efforts.
1968-70. Most observers bring either a disappointed sense of taste or a We found ourselves thinking from time to time that we had unmasked a hidden
disappointed sense of meaning to it. Luhmann reminds us that there was a social apologetics a certain bourgeois Dasein. Such a possibility haunts ones reading
and sociological dimension at work in Conceptual Art, rather than, as is usually of the text. Luhmann doesnt hide from this and suggests how it might be recognised
assumed, just a philosophical one. as the product of prejudice, or made into useful paradox. The strength of the book
lies in the fact that Luhmann is no mourner for the loss of Bildung. He lets us
But suppose we venture from a phenomenon-centred to an operative doctrine of rummage about in the garbage which may well be all we have nach Auschwitz.
perception, and from a representational to a constructive epistemology the
scientific system seems to force such a move. Would not the theory of art have to The rummaging around is orchestrated around Spencer-Browns notion of form
follow this paradigm shift and be based on radically different foundations? If two sides of a distinction which must be taken together along with the (unreliable)
perception and, even more so, conceptual thought are already constructed by the dividing line between them which has to be negotiated and re-negotiated. This
brain, then shouldnt art fulfil entirely different functions in shaping and utilizing the means that the relationship between a system and its environment is an operational
realm of free play generated in the process? The functional concepts of imitation and one, not an authoritative description of reality except when it is. This also means
representation, now obsolete, would have to be rejected a second time not that art as a functional system is autonomous only if it admits everything that it
because they unduly restrict the freedom of art, but because they indulge in, rather excludes. Cultural theory is still trying to keep things clean in this regard. As
than unmask, the illusionism of the world ( p.7) Luhmann says, Those who advocated the primacy of self-reference could stick to
aestheticizing artistic styles, which emphasises formal decisions.Those who
The idealism of this remark does not bother Luhmann unduly. It is not a programme preferred hetero-reference whether in an affirmative or critical sense could
which prevents him from recognising that reality is often the rock against which count on realism. This is all undermined when the system begins to challenge its
experience is dashed. We might say that Russells no-doubt-apocryphal own boundaries - which has been the case in art for the last 100 years. You can
correspondent holds no horrors for Luhmann or for his system. Luhmann woudnt look at what art includes and you can look at what it leaves out and why. Thats the
laugh very loudly at those who assert we are solipsists and cant understand why way things are. Once the professionalisation of art becomes the self-critical subject-
everyone else isnt. He would suggest that they cope with the inconsistency and try matter of art, art paradoxically becomes about what it leaves out. This is the
to make good use of the irritability which the apparent paradox generates. dialogic aura of art. Luhmann asks, How does reality appear when there is art?
This is a question of art, and above all of representation. The more art is self-
critically aware of its own constituting professionalism, the more apparent are its
own bandit contingencies. This is Clement Greenberg turned upside down.

"Once the professionalisation
of art becomes the self-critical
subject-matter of art,
art paradoxically becomes
about what it leaves out.
This is the dialogic aura of art."
Once art becomes autonomous the emphasis shifts from self-reference to hetero- is called intertextuality which is another way of saying the system must have a
reference which is not the same as self-isolationbut there is no such thing as memory. But does the citing, renewing, ironising etc. refer to productive
self-reference without hetero-reference. (p.149) requirements or to the indices of mere consumption? Art as celebrity motif, as the
ornament of management and distribution, is at no risk from its own redescription,
When Luhmann claims that paintings acquire representative functions that are not since this will be either trivial or external. Picasso, according to Luhmann, is
confused with ordinary social reality, even though they refer to reality in a manner considered the representative painter of this century and for good reason; the unity
that implies both proximity and distance it is as if he is referring reflexively to his of his work can no longer be comprehended in terms of form or style, but only in
own writing methods. The reader struggles to tell whether he is talking about the art terms of an irony which he probes in all conceivable forms and styles. Theres
system or his own system. In giving up the struggle and somehow conflating nothing new in saying that Picasso was the strenuously productive self of classical
resources with subject-matter we become enmeshed in the implications of proximity modernity. Today we confront the democracy of Fine Art Lite, and this is not simply
and distance on the boundaries of his or our own self-critical system. a dumbing-down reduction but a real condition replete with indeterminacies.
According to Luhmann, When a work of art is determined to call art as such into
According to Luhmann, When Hegel speaks of the end of art he can mean only question, when, inspired by Gdel, it tries to appear as a work of art outside of the
one thing: art has lost its immediate relation to society and worldly affairs and must system of art, or when it seeks to accomplish a re-entry of non art into art in the
henceforth acknowledge its own differentiation. He goes on to say that the sense of Spencer-Brown and, in so doing, generates an endless oscillation between
differentiation of the art systemallows the relation between system and inside and outside in an imaginary realm outside the calculus of forms when all
environment to be reintroduced into the system in the form of a relationship this makes up the intended meaning of the work and can be observed accordingly
between self-reference and hetero-reference. He summarizes the implications of then the art system has definitely arrived at a new level of self-description. (p.
this as follows: How can the self be indicated if it excludes nothing? Thats the 293)
point of our practice of describing and re-describing i.e. of attempting to generate
hetero-reference or, under another description, dialogic aura. Thats the way it Luhmann goes on to say that this is an attempt to press the system to the limit so
works. This is a way that art can be integrated into the everyday: by accepting, as to include the excluded. Moreover, how is this possible socially, if not on the
describing and re-describing its own differentiation as form. Attempts to deny this basis of autonomy even when autonomy is practised as the renunciation of
differentiation collapse art into the media space of journalism and render it the autonomy? Art of this kind no longer offers representations of oppositional utopias.
passive client to the barbarism of publicity. Art that has been asked no internal Instead, it offers novelty as a provocation of society, and it is required to come up
technical questions, that possesses no internal complexity, has no reflexive entity with ever newer provocations, until society becomes used to the tactic and fails to
and thus nothing to differentiate. As a result, it can be put to any use or none. This respond. This kind of art, Luhmann notes is no longer possible. Thats very like
almost always means that it is co-opted to the ideological interests which capitals what Greenberg and Fried thought in the 1960s. And they would all be right if it
various academies represent. were not for the invention of a new kind of creature - a new kind of
communication: the curator for whom representation holds no interest.
The character of modern art, according to Luhmann, require[s] that works of art Representation has been supplanted by the presentation of distributed spectacle.
converse with one another, that art cite, copy, reject, renew, ironise, arttoday this This is official culture under the hegemony of the law of novelty.

The landscape of desire
Ivan Koari,
Popotnik Putnik
Voyager
1996
The drawing changed
the solid white wall into
a far-away landscape,
the landscape of desire.
But if this isnt possible, what is possible? Luhmann sort-of knows. What counts is
a performative contradiction, a deconstruction that turns back upon itself.
(Memories of Paul de Man?) The self-negation of art is realised at the level of
autopoetic operations in the form of art, so that art can continue.The self-
description of a system is a paradoxical undertaking from its very beginning,
because such a descriptions operation includes both self-reference and hetero-
reference. In the end, the artist has to reflect these problems in objects that are
constructed made. In this connection, Luhmann reanimates (even though he
doesnt quote) Barnett Newmans smart-assed observation, Aesthetics is for artists
as ornithology is for birds. And the artist still has to face this possibility: If anything
is possible, then the criteria for selecting what is admissable must be tightened.
Luhmann says that Operative closure, the emancipation of contingency, self-
organisation, poly-contextuality, the hyper-complexity of self-descriptions or, simpler
and less accurately formulated, pluralism, relativism and historicism all of these
trends offer no more than different cross sections of the structural fate of modernity.
By suffering its own condition, art shows just how it is. The question still is, how
might the tightening be done?
Luhmann commends Art & Language a bit as redescribers. He ends his book with
the tag from Virgil: Hoc opus hic labor est. (Arts hard work) We conjoin our own,
also from Virgil: Quaeque ipse miserrima vidi. Et quorum pars magna fui. (and
the most miserable things which I myself saw and of which I was a major part.
Aeneid bk. 2, 1.5.)
The reasons we have for continuing are much the same as the reasons wed have
for giving up.

CURATORIAL OPINIONS
The luxurious status of the

whiteness and cubicalism
Whiteness is more important than the

space itself, it is a symbol
of the status of art.
& Cubicalism Iara Boubnova actually were. Sometimes I have the

feeling that the white cube is supposed
Pravdoliub Ivanov
Confusion, 2002
Installation view from
to provoke me to produce a Double Bind, ATA
Center, Sofia, curated by
What could be, in your opinion, the masterpiece, and that intimidates me. Iara Boubnova and
potential of the white cube exhibition From the point of view of representative Georg Schllhammer
The autonomy should space today?

For me, the white cube has two
power, it is much more fun to deal with
any found place than with a white
unavoidably be expressed meanings now. On the one hand, the cube.
white cube space serves as a venue for
through relations, and rupture is the most radical technological The idea of the white cube is strongly
not a privileged relation in this experiments. On the other, it is definitely
a venue for commercial presentations, a
connected to the idea of the autonomy of
art. Do you see any relevance in this idea
sense. space for trade. In the first case, the today? If so, can you briefly explain
white cube could even be a white where and how?
garden, or a white oval; the form of the I never had the illusion that art is
space is important only as a neutral and autonomous, even when I studied the
non-intervening surface, a tabula rasa. history of its most rebellious periods. Art
The multi-colored cube The idea of the white cube is strongly
Nika pan,
Sold Works
Bart De Baere connected to the idea of the autonomy of
In the second case, the luxurious status
of whiteness and cubicalism is more
depends on ideologies, on money, on
fashion, on strong individuals, on
Mala Galerija, art. Do you see any relevance in this idea important than the space itself; it is a information and communication
Ljubljana, 1999
The artist, who made What could be, in your opinion, the today? If so, can you briefly explain symbol of the status of art. Both could technologies, and on our idealism to
her living at the time potential of the white cube exhibition where and how? be interesting and inspiring to visit. deal with it as if with an autonomous
as an interior decorator, The autonomy should unavoidably be
covered the gallery walls
space today? entity. Of course, it is easier to keep up
with the paints she An exhibition mode with a strong expressed through relations, and rupture What are your recent experiences and the illusion of its autonomy in the white
used for the spaces she tradition. is not a privileged relation in this sense. cube, with a lot of money and with a
had decorated. The
strategies with such spaces?
spaces themselves In my practice, the critical lack of the totally passive attitude to the context.
could be seen in the What are your recent experiences and white cube type of space is more
photographs on the
walls. strategies with such spaces? common and familiar. Up to now, none
Art remains of prime importance. of the spaces for my projects have been
a white cube. Some of them tried to look
like one, and some of them I tried to
make more like white cubes than they

The strategy is to go
both beyond the myth and
ideology of white cube
but as well beyond the myth
and ideology of denigrating
the white cube.
What are your recent experiences and International Exhibition

Branislav Dimitrijevi strategies with such spaces?
of Modern Art featuring
Alfred Barrs Museum of
I am currently co-curating the exhibition Modern Art, 2013
Installation,
What could be, in your opinion, the for the Yugoslavia pavilion at Fiftieth
dimensions variable
potential of the white cube exhibition Venice Biennial. The space is a white Pavilion Yugoslavia,
cube with natural light coming through The idea of the white cube is strongly differences, and art museums may soon Biennale di Venezia,
space today?
connected to the idea of the autonomy of be simply replaced by ethnographic 2003
The white cube is as relevant as a white the skylight. Our strategy is to respond
to the autonomy and self-referentiality of art. Do you see any relevance in this idea museums. But there is still, I guess, a
sheet of paper. It has the same
modernist art with a project that today? If so, can you briefly explain place for those who think that
potential: you could use colored paper,
approaches this legacy in a constative where and how? differences are uncomplicated, self-
you could write on textile, on plastic,
and affirmative fashion because the very The white cube represents the evident, and therefore ideological par
you could write on the margins of an
discourse of an exhibition is constative universalist potential of art and its excellence. The question remains, is it
illustrated childrens book. But if you
and affirmative. The project to be autonomy, which has reached an still possible to speak from these
want people to believe you are saying
shown, International Exhibition of impasse. It has supposedly been differences to common goals, merits,
something official, something
Modern Art, affirms the legacy of surpassed by an ideology of and attitudes? Also, art is still
essential, then it is still the case that
Modern Art and the white cube in particularities in which the universalist conditioned by the possibility that one
marks made on a white surface matter.
general and from this affirmative potential of art is declared to be thing might just be more important then
The white cube is an easy way of
position intrudes into the myths of this impossible, white-colonialist, erasing other things. Otherwise, we are dealing
administrating art, but its neutrality
legacy, which is subservient to the differences and being totally incorrect with a uniformity of difference, which
cannot be easily dismissed.
already severely criticized narrative of art politically. Allegedly, there should be no exclaims, like a high-school girl in a
history and it does so in a manner more hierarchies but only differences, cartoon: Daddy, I want to be different
alien to that narrative. The white cube which means that works of art (as just like everybody else!
can no longer be used for critical art, but autonomous) are turned into artifacts,
it is the notion of critical art that is in man-made objects charged with
crisis, not the white cube. Therefore the cultural meaning and offering
strategy is to go not only beyond the indications on a larger cultural
myth and ideology of the white cube but situation. The non-white cube strategy
also beyond the myth and ideology of of display is therefore a way of situating
the denigration of the white cube. and emphasizing cultural situations and

The potential of the white
cube is now in the tension
implied by a space outside
society that can be subverted
or misused by artists wanting
to engage in the world.
Changing the angle This meant that one group designed a system with what it wants. Nor is it
of the view
Exhibition IRWIN LIVE
Charles Esche record market, another a bar and seeking a purely retinal effect, though
Moderna Galerija information zone, another a mushroom the best work should do that too. The
Ljubljana, 2000
What could be, in your opinion, the tea production unit, etc. Yet all sought to significance lies in that it tries to discuss
potential of the white cube exhibition retain a strongly visual aspect in which its own compromised condition. It could
space today? the audience could choose to get not be described as autonomous from
Im not sure its potential is greater or involved or simply to look. Finally, we its surrounding physical, economic or
less than in the past. The white cube will turn the main gallery space into a political conditions, but nevertheless it is
was developed after the Second World film studio in May 2003, in which Mark able to pass comment and perhaps even
society that can be subverted or change them in some way, through the
War as an ideal location outside the Lewis will make a new work but also
misused by artists wanting to engage in constructed and limited autonomy that it
social in which the possibility of open the process of set-building, filming
the world. To break the white cube claims. Examples would include Dan
contemplation and reflection were and editing to an audience. None of
while staying in it, or to use its Peterman, Esra Ersen, Liam Gillick,
enhanced (see Brian ODoherty). It still these projects, necessarily, directly
retains that quality, and this remains its distinctive authority to talk about things Jens Haaning, Michael Blum, Surasi
contradict the white cubes potential for
potential. The question arises as to outside of itself, seems to offer it an Kusolwong, among others.
quiet contemplation, but they do extend
whether we want to see art as interesting future.
it into other areas of potential audience
essentially residing outside the social. involvement.
Clearly, for some contemporary artists What are your recent experiences and
that is something negative, but I sense strategies with such spaces? The idea of the white cube is strongly
that the interest in relational aesthetics The Rooseum in Malm is essentially a connected to the idea of the autonomy of
is on the wane and traditional white- white cube space but one to which we art. Do you see any relevance in this idea
cube displays are back in fashion. have tried to apply just this kind of today? If so, can you briefly explain
However, Im still most drawn to the operation. When working with where and how?
photographs of some of the early Superflex, we discussed among In other texts I have referred to the idea
modernist exhibitions in Europe ourselves how to make their relatively of engaged autonomy, a term I would
intense, crowded hangs, works placed non-visual practice function as an see as suitably contradictory. This term
high up in corners, or the awkward exhibition, and so we created a black, is intended to describe an artistic
edges of a room. They seem to have an orange and white cube. With a collective practice that works within the system of
energy and commitment that the white- show like Baltic Babel we brought the gallery space, free market
cube approach neutralizes. So maybe together groups from different Baltic capitalism, and democracy, but makes
the potential of the white cube is now in cities and asked them to present critical demands on it. Such work is not
the tension implied by a space outside themselves in the white cube gallery. affirmative or seeking to provide the

INTERVIEW
Beti erovc: a conversation with Damien Hirst
You Have
to Think Big The curator today is very often compared that, which a curator doesnt do. I think Damien Hirst
photo: Bojan Velikonja
to the artist. You have been successful in curating is more like a collage, because
both fields, so you probably dont have with painting you can change the
any bias or grudge against either. I would painting, but a curator cant change the
like to know how you see the main paintings. The curator is given
difference between the two? something that exists, which is the
I think that a good curator is the same artwork he is curating. So, there it
as a good artist. exists, you cant change it, whereas, as
a painter, you can change anything;
You do? theres no gravity to deal with.
Well, I think it depends on what you
mean by an artist, because I always But in the sense of self-realization or
think of myself as more a kind of creativity a lot of curators try to
sculptor than a painter. I think Meyer persuade us how creative they are do
Vaisman said, The greatest idea of the you feel its the same?
twentieth century is collage. I think that Ive seen a lot of curators who are
everything is collage and I think thats a artists, really. And a lot of curators who
good way of looking at it. So, if you think kind of say they are curators and get
of yourself as an artist, like, Im an artist nothing out of it. And they dont do the
by kind of collaging things together I job very well. A great curator is
take this from there and that from there somebody like Nick Serota at the Tate,
and put it together to make one thing who was doing some really good things,
then I think thats also what curating is. like the re-hang. I think that sometimes
Its that you take an artists work, you when you put art together in a way that
put it next to another artists work; you it looks new and fresh and exciting, then
make connections. Its like arranging I think thats a good curator. Its just a
already existing objects. So I think in way of rearranging things to make you
that sense theres not a lot of difference see them again new.
between an artist and a curator, but I
think theres a big difference between a But when you curated your shows, did
painter and a curator. you have any role models, like a certain
dealer or curator, or maybe an exhibition
Why between a painter and a curator? you liked?
Because a painter doesnt do that. A No. I had worked with Anthony dOffay,
painter just creates with paint, images so Id kind of seen all that and got a lot
and illusions in space, and things like of influence from that.

you gained some knowledge from this paintings, Angela Bullochs pieces, etc. had to do an exhibition and then the really do that. But I think that seventeen
gallery? They all looked good already. So I think whole college came along and would people, seventeen of us, we were all
Yes and no. I had a tutor at Goldsmiths that the first thing to do as a curator is say, What are you trying to do? Why are making art and everybody was going,
who curated an exhibition in London; it to make sure the works good that youre you doing that? You have to defend hey, thats great! I like that! Yours is
was called Falls the Shadow. I had seen curating. But once thats finished, you yourself and fight and argue about it. So good. We were all egging each other on
the new art shown at the Tate. Ive get the joy of arranging it. we were really making art for the real like that.
always loved the shows that Norman world when we were still students. And
Rosenthal did with Christos Joachimides, Could we say that with Freeze, you it was very strong because, once we put Freeze is now in all the histories of
Metropolis, etc. They were big shows, developed a clever strategy in the sense it in the real world, everybody said, yes, important exhibitions and curating, but I
and we tried to do that. that you were really working on a its great, and some people bought it. couldnt find any revolutionary concept
breakthrough for your own generation in it that would explain why this should
So, you liked those shows? and now they owe you? They owe you in So, you think that helped you in a way, be so. You know, usually, the way
Yes. I like the idea of being able to get a way; they have to keep you by their that no matter how young you were, you exhibitions enter the history books is that
all that great art there and to play with side, maintain a common history with trusted yourself so much that... they have some very special concept, a
it. You know, put this with that and that you, everywhere. Yeah, I think that was childish, and I very special theoretical touch, or political
would look good with this you know, I think that is the fact. The fact is that think because we were so young, you touch, or something. But here there are
arrange it. we were already there, we were there. didnt get the fear you would get when just your schoolmates and you.
youre a bit older. You didnt think. I think that a surprising thing, really,
And you like that? But did you think about that? When I look back now, I think, That about it was the fact that you got a
Yeah, I like the challenge of playing with Not really. I mean, I looked around, and could have gone so wrong! But at the group of artists who were all making
this arranging of things and sticking I thought the work in my school is better time I wasnt thinking about it. I was incredibly different things and kind of
things on. To be able to do that with art, than the work in the art galleries. I was just thinking, This is great! Come on, put them together. It was almost like
Ive always thought it a fantastic job to just looking at it and I was thinking, this lets do it! But when I think about it that kind of curating. So, its not in
do that. cant be right. This is fucking great stuff. now, I think I was insane. If they didnt changing style. I mean at the same time
So that was the beginning. I thought we like it, we would have been screwed. If we looked at the American stuff, the
The people in your first exhibitions were should definitely put it into a gallery, I had a doubt at any point or halfway New York stuff, Jeff Koons, Art Now at
mostly your colleagues from the school because it was good. And when we did, through or something, and pulled back, the Saatchi Gallery, and I think wed got
I dont think I would have done it if they people came and said it was good. It it would have been horrible. Children a similar sort of thing. I think it attempts
werent there; also, I think the work was was great. You know, a lot of people are like that. I mean, they have no fear. to get your attention like advertising; it
really good. So when I looked around at were in the same place making some seemed like each painting was an
my friends making art, I thought, this is really good work. Its probably because So, you think one of the crucial things in advert for an artist and you totally
better than what Ive seen in the of the way they taught us, you know. At these exhibitions was exactly the reinvent yourself every time with each
galleries and Ive been working at Goldsmiths they taught us to be artists enthusiasm of somebody whos young new artwork. I think that was a fairly
Anthony dOffay. There were some really like at no other college. They treated you Yeah, plus, when you get a lot of people interesting thing. There was an essay
great things and they were really tight like an artist. We had an exhibition together as well, people push each other about it called Platonic Tropics, which
finished, you know, like Gary Humes space in the college where everybody along. If youre on your own, you cant was about the strangeness of these

people, being together with such widely remember Sarah Lucas, who did huge But thats what people were interested like, This isnt art, its rubbish, its shit.
differing sets of ideas well, on the brick walls, which just went on the wall, in, so I think we fought a lot to get to the So you just come and pick anyone. So I
surface anyway. Its like you got and then Gary Hume, who did paintings general public. I mean, we were on TV, think thats why the public got interested
somebody doing spot painting and that were just hospital doors. They and not on art programs; we were in in arts in England. They were thinking,
somebody doing screen images and wouldnt allow you in. Quite mean, magazines, but not in art magazines you know, The Tate Gallery paid this
somebody doing traditional painting, really. So, I think we suddenly just so that people doing that were not the much money for just bricks; its insane.
somebody doing light sculpture. It threw out many older ideas, so you had same. How much did you sell that for? And we came in just after that, doing a
seems like they have nothing to do with a hard job finding any meaning, its like became the focus. But I think that was kind of visual art that grabs your
each other, and theyre all together. the meaning was always hidden, you kind of like the new thing. Art got into attention but gives you very little after
know that in that sense. It came quite the press. Art became popular to wider the initial impact. So everyone was like:
Yes, like in a perfectly normal school. I boldly, became a kind of in-your-face audiences. Nothing was happening God, these artists, theyre crazy! What
mean, I didnt go to Freeze; Ive just seen commodity, so you just wanted one, anyway. Yeah, but art changed itself, are they doing?
the photos. I read about who was there because of the look, not the meaning. the David Mach sculpture, The
and it looks like it was just an exhibition The art hooked into your desire. Submarine, the guy who killed himself Could this, perhaps, be typical of Britain?
of people in an art academy, not really do you remember that? David Machs But thats why you get all the press
something extraordinary. So, the work was so different from sculpture? It was made from tires saying all these things. Thats what
I mean, it wasnt, really; we were all before, and that was the special reason outside the Hayward Gallery; it was all theyre interested in. People said to me,
students at the time. why Freeze was so successful? made of old tires. A guy went to set fire How much is a cow, and how much
I think that people wanted it, and I think to it, because he hated it, and he died did you sell it for? Thats all they
Was the extraordinary thing just that you weve come from that. To begin with, burning at the burning set. So that was connect with. They dont say, How
were so obviously ambitious, trying to get we were making it a very desirable all in the newspapers. It was like Art much is the glass? Because they dont
attention? object as well and did it quite from an Causes Death Shock Horror the man realize how much more expensive the
I think its quite difficult to remember up-straight way. You make people want on the street tried to destroy art and it glass is over the steel. All they think is,
now, because now everybody does to buy it, make it look good on the wall, destroyed him. And then also you had A cow costs forty pounds and you sell
warehouse exhibitions. I think it was but they kind of dont give you anything; Carl Andre with bricks in the gallery. for a million. And they just think,
quite ambitious. We got a very big so people were, like: but you cant do And this was like, its disgusting buying Thats ridiculous. They believe the
space, and then, you know, did it very that! Youre supposed to be making art, art for sixty thousand pounds. newspapers. They dont do the math.
professionally with wine and private and then people would buy it; you cant
views, cards, invited people. When I want to buy it first. OK, but Carl Andre was something very In a way with this stardom youre
think about it now, it didnt seem like a different; his art was a very hermetic, different from the rest of the European
lot to do. You know, its very easy to do It was extraordinary for me that a lot of academic type of art, which provoked artists with whom you probably work
that. Its not a lot of money or anything the texts dealing with Freeze were not publicity for completely different reasons. together in some exhibitions. How do
to put up an exhibition. And I think a really dealing with art. They were about The reasons were irrelevant in England; you get along?
lot of the things were designed to defy how many shows you got afterwards, in all the press there were cartoons Its not like just because youre an artist,
meaning in it, as well, and that was how many dealers you got afterwards, about it. It was like, the Tate Gallery is it doesnt mean youre going to get
quite strange with a lot of works. I how many paying money for house bricks. It was along. Its like a lot of hairdressers

together in a room; it would be a what are you working on? There was strange if you see it. Because I think make something political. Or there
horrible idea. Some you like, some you none of that. It was kind of quite underlying it, we all studied art history, needs to be some kind of change.
dont like. I think art today, when you go aggressive, punk. we know who everybody is, we know
in Europe, its all a lot more the same. I about art; so I think that was just And in this situation, you dont get the
met Kippenberger a few times and I But its not just that, being polite or something to do with the press, really. impulse to do something?
think there are similarities in what we something; it also seems like you are not Childish, as well. No, it has to get worse, for me,
were doing. Baselitz just bought some of very interested in the theory of art, in any personally. You know, in order for me to
my paintings. Some spin paintings. kind of social project, etc. But still, you dont really seem interested make something, some people have to
I think its probably the surface that was in being somebody critical, acting in die and things have to get really out of
Really? built up to deal with the press aspects, social processes, social change hand, like, come on! You need some
Yeah. Thats weird. Hes the generation to do that with that attitude, but I think for me, its much deeper. I can political conflict, I think, dont you?
before. I didnt think Id get along with underneath that, theres the background kind of speak for myself. Its like:
those guys, but I got along with Georg of art. We all know about art, were all Picasso painted Guernica, and I think in You just had a conflict; your country was
Herold and all that generation, briefly, interested in art. Germany, you get that. When I look at at war with Iraq.
people like Kippenberger. I lived in Berlin, theres a massive change going Yeah, I mean, we all disagree with it,
Germany for a year; thats why Im I dont understand. This is just the on, you know; youre in a position, but not strongly enough. To me, I dont
talking about Germany. surface? maybe in a lot of Europe, where there is think its stoppable. I cant see a
I think underneath it, its just the same a chance to change things. Its like solution that my work would create. I
I remember some symposium where you thing. If you look at it on the surface, to theyre still rebuilding a city, like Berlin was taught, you dont criticize unless
had mostly European artists, and there deal with the background you get in after the war; still youve got the poor, you can offer some alternative. You
was also Tracy Emin. The way she was England with the press, you cant easily youve got the rich, youve got know, unless you can come up with an
talking about her work was extremely defend yourself as an artist. In England anarchists, and businessmen, and they answer. The injustice is riddled
different, and she just didnt fit into this they ridicule art. were all finding ways to build the future throughout everything.
usual socially conscious, politically together whereas in England its not
correct speech. It was as if she were an Do they? like that. Its just the way it is, its been So, you dont feel art could be something
intruder. Yeah, they ridicule it. Its like a lot of the like that for years, and theres not really in the sense of making world a better
A lot of what happened with those kinds time a lot of the artists have gone on TV, a lot you can do about it. Whoever gets place?
of British artists in the beginning was and they just laugh at them, try to make to power, theyre not really good, theyre Yeah, I think it does. I think it does in its
just an attitude, Fuck off. This is what them look stupid. They go, You did that all the same. small way. But in a bigger way, I mean,
we think. People were saying, this is for how much? So as a reaction to that, I dont know I think changing things
the way we do it. This is what I do and everybody kind of got up there like Art shouldnt be involved in this? politically doesnt change anything at
if you dont like it you can fuck off. Tracy, who went on the program and I think you need to have a really bad the moment. Ill tell you what. Sylvia
When people like you go, what? they got really drunk, and said fuck off you situation, or you need to have some sort Plath did a poem, which was called
expected us to say hi, be polite and soft guys. It meant art became much more of situation, before art gets involved. Context; its like an essay. There she
spoken about the world, and ask, Oh, confrontational; I think that was a good Like when Picasso did Guernica I said that she was thinking about the
and what are you doing at the moment, thing, really, for Britain, but quite think it got really bad for the artist to images of the atomic bomb and the

power it has to destroy our world. And art, something which all artists attempt Isnt Jeffrey Deitch more a dealer? Yeah, I mean, I like the dealers, I like From the Cradle
she says that she finds herself, when to do. Yeah, but he did those great shows or at the idea of involving money. I find to the Grave:
Selected Drawings
she looks at these images and she least tried to. And I think most curators museums quite frightening; theyre like by Damien Hirst
knows this power that they have, she You have to think big? are dealers. dead for artists. The drawing show in Installation view, MGLC
finds herself more interested in the Yeah, thats what you strive for. Arts Ljubljana is the first show that Ive done (International Center
of Graphic Art),
thoughts of the tired night-surgeon or a like a big line from the beginning of Well, in continental Europe mostly, if you where Ive looked back really; a Ljubljana 2003
baby forming itself finger by finger in the time, from cave men up to now, and have a curator with a strong position, retrospective. I used to really enjoy
dark than she is in atom bombs. And I you kind of want to be part of that line, maybe he can be a dealer, but he cant doing commercial shows because being photo: Bojan Salaj
think Ive always felt like that. So, its so you look at what they did. In a way really say it. Most of the curators, also involved with the selling of art makes it
like, to hell with the big political atomic its like you would hope to be one of the famous ones, like Hans Ulrich Obrist more alive. I always thought
bomb explosions; its much more them. When you look back, you look at or Francesco Bonami they work retrospectives are for dead artists. I
complicated on the lower level, with the artists whove survived. Thats what mostly with public funds, with public mean, the worst nightmare would be a
people and feelings and emotions and I was taught. You look at the books, and institutions big retrospective all my work in one
love and hate, and on lower levels you then the things you look at, and then You know, curators would say to me: room. I think, oh my God thatd be
get the kind of answers youre looking thats what you try to follow. Can I borrow a piece for the horrible.
for. And for me to step from that realm exhibition? And then they would call
into the realm of politics like Picasso did Do you regularly work with some and say: Do you have anything to sell?
with Guernica, its got to get really, really curators? From my experience thats what they all
bad for me as an artist to feel like I No, not really, except Hugh Allan. I do.
should do something about this, dont really get into it like that.
because theres death and murder every Francesco Bonami is a friend. From your experience, thats what they
day and you cant really do anything all do?
about it overnight. Or could you say that some curator really Yeah, exactly like Charles Saatchi. He
affected your career? thinks hes a curator. He thinks he can
Ive read many interviews with you and No, probably Jon Thompson, who affect art by buying things with money.
youre always, if you talk about an artist taught me when I was at college, but
or if youre comparing yourself with not really, I dont know. Some people So you dont see any strong line between
somebody, picking only really great are good for a while and then they seem those two?
names like Picasso or Bacon to stop. Like Nicholas Serota, who did Ive never really seen it.
Thats probably the drugs or the drink. some great shows and then they kind of
went cold and they didnt move me. So Older artists usually consider dealers
Well, I doubt it. its like Ive never really seen a curator very important for their careers. And
I think you have to do that if youre an whod follow his career. Oh, great, and younger artists, they would talk about
artist. You have to think big, otherwise theyre gone. I mean, can you think of a curators as the most important people,
theres no point. The great names are really great curator over and again? not dealers. For you, it obviously works
great names because they make great What about Jeffrey Deitch? in the old way; the dealer is important.

CURATORIAL OPINIONS
WHW
The Possibilities
of the White Cube
The place in which art is presented, or in some other way happens, can never be The convention of the white cube may also be viewed from the perspective of the
completely neutral. It is impossible to view the white cube of the gallery the attempt to merge art practice and everyday life; the urban setting also plays an
archetypal place of modern art solely as a timeless, neutral frame intended for important role. The artwork almost obsessively competes with spectacle, by either
the production of autonomous art objects, a space unburdened by any invisible simulating it, appropriating its signs, or intervening in it. In addition, the innovative
external signifiers that might point toward the institutional and ideological character use of the white cube continually raises questions about mechanisms of
of the representational conception. Today, one can hardly be surprised that the art representation and the institutional framework as contextual background. In this
shown in a museum appears increasingly inconsequential, as an indifferent matter sense, the white cube is ambivalent: it may be understood as a synecdoche of social
of taste with nothing to contribute to notions of the desirable or the true, i.e., the institutions and contracts whose precisely established rules and restrictions present
norms on which institutions are founded, says Brian Holmes, who concludes that a field on which one may question and unmask the functioning of cultural
the ideal of individual judgment favored equally by the voting booth and its institutions and their broader conditions.
aesthetic variant, the white museum cube has become completely illusory.
The gallery space can serve as a temporary host for an array of different social
Why, then, given the continual affirmation of a variety of alternative exhibition spaces interactions and pseudo-institutions. No longer does the white cube merely offer
and numerous social, urban, and public art projects and phenomena such as net.art, masterpieces in quarantine; today, we are hardly surprised when the gallery
does contemporary art production still cling to the classical exhibition space? The takes on such functions as shop, office, beauty parlor, palm-readers salon, hotel,
answer lies not only in arts dependence on the representational mechanisms of the etc. Exhibitions, it seems, are bringing the life of the street into the gallery while
art system, but also in the notion that an exhibition can and should offer various at the same time establishing a context of engaged autonomy one that relies
kinds of temporary modulation in the social framework and its creative redefinition. on a certain distance, a necessary boundary, across which existential relations may
be viewed with sober eyes. The redefined space of the white cube may provide an
Generally speaking, and in contrast to previous attempts to eliminate the physical interstice that allows for direct participation and presence but also creates a
dimension, it is possible to detect recent shifts in the use of the white cube as a certain shift through which everyday and apparently well-known things reveal their
predestined, homogeneous space; namely, a reaffirmation of the white cube is flip side. But no matter how drastic such shifts may be, our perception of the space
taking place through different forms of eventness and other interactive processes cannot escape the white cubes original social function, which in a certain way
situated precisely within the gallery space. Such approaches are hardly rare, and by guarantees its symbolic authority. Just as money is paper, so the gallery is a
moving away from the presentation of the artwork as a finalized, unquestioned act room, the artist Mladen Stilinovi_observes, underscoring the paradox we
and toward various forms of temporary occupation, appropriation, and encounter whenever we try to reduce sublime social locations to their material
privatization of the space, artists and curators are attempting to redefine and level.
challenge the notion of the museum environment as a homogeneous, neutral
structure. What is more, this neutral structure is itself being used as a referential Ultimately, the question of whether we can fundamentally change the basic
framework that opens up perspectives in which new questions may be asked and conditions of art reception relates directly to arts political potential and its ability not
which reflect the social, historical, economic, and cultural relations within which the only to locate and articulate delicate social themes within a broader context but also
artwork is being created and interpreted. to indicate and offer new forms of resistance and collectivity.

Contributors
Art & Language
Since 1977, Art & Language
Charles Esche
is a curator and critic. He is
WHW
is a Zagreb-based independent
has been identified with director of the Rooseum Center curatorial team. Its members
the collaborative work for Contemporary Art in Malm, are Ivet urlin, Ana Devi,
of Michael Baldwin and Sweden, and editor of Afterall Nataa Ili and Sabina
Mel Ramsden and with Journal, London and Los Sabolovi.
their theoretical and critical Angeles.
collaboration with Charles Beti erovc
Harrison. Hedwig Fijen is a researcher in the art history
is director of the International department of the University of
Bart De Baere Foundation Manifesta. Ljubljana.
is a curator and critic.
He is director of Museum of Boris Groys
Contemporary Art (MuHKA) is professor of philosophy The Editors
in Antwerp. and media theory at the
Academy for Design Viktor Misiano
Iara Boubnova (Hochschule fr Gestaltung) is a curator, critic, and the chief
is a curator and critic. in Karlsruhe, Germany. editor of Moscow Art Magazine.
She is founding director of
the Institute of Contemporary Art Damien Hirst Igor Zabel
in Sofia. She was a co-curator is a London-based artist. is a curator and critic. He is a
of Manifesta 4 in Frankfurt am One of the shows he curated curator at the Moderna Galerija
Main, 2002. was Freeze, an exhibition (Museum of Modern Art) in
of young British artists Ljubljana.
Branislav Dimitrijevi in 1988.
is a writer, curator and lecturer
in the history and theory of art. Harald Szeemann
He heads the Center for Visual has curated numerous shows,
Culture at the Museum of including When Attitudes
Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Become Form (1969),
and is a lecturer at the School Documenta 5 (1972),
for Art and Design (VLPUb) Aperto 80, the Venice Biennale
in Belgrade. (1999, 2001), and many
others.
82 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1

MJ - Manifesta Journal 1
No. 1 Spring / Summer 2003

Published by:
Moderna galerija (Museum of Modern Art) Ljubljana
Ljubljana, Slovenia
and
International Foundation Manifesta
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Editors:
Viktor Misiano
Igor Zabel
Managing editor:
Marieke van Hal
English language editor:

Rawley Grau The International Foundation Manifesta (IFM), with
offices in Amsterdam, The Netherlands organizes and
Design: co-ordinates the New Network Program, which is a
Arnold+Vuga design studio; Nataa Vuga multi-faceted resource and research program,
encompassing the Manifesta Biennial, the Manifesta
Printed by: Archives and a program of publications, discussions
Bonar & Partner and related activities, focusing on contemporary art
and its role in society. The public accessible archives
of Manifesta are located at the Manifesta at Home
space in Amsterdam.
A Note on the Images
The images in this issue (apart from those that relate MJ - Manifesta Journal is part of the Manifesta
directly to the articles) present different uses of the Network Programme and is co-funded by the Culture
white cube and the various artistic and curatorial 2000 Framework of the European Commission.
strategies that inhabit and employ it. These examples
are taken from the program of the Moderna Galerija
Ljubljana, as well as its smaller exhibition space, the
Mala Galerija (the Little Gallery), over the past half-
century.
MJ - Manifesta Journal Reproductions, printing and binding:

journal of contemporary curatorship Arti Grafiche Amilcare Pizzi Spa
Cinisello Balsamo, Milano
REPRINT
Printed July 2008 in an edition of 1500
Publishers:
International Foundation Manifesta the authors, International Foundation Manifesta
Prinsengracht 175 hs and Silvana Editoriale Spa
NL - 1015 DS Amsterdam
The Netherlands Special thanks to Hedwig Fijen, Zdenka Badovinac,
tel. +31 20 6721435 Mateja Kos, Nataa Vuga, Viktor Misiano and all
fax +31 20 4700073 authors
www.manifesta.org
A Note on the Reprint:
Silvana Editoriale Spa For this reprint, the texts, images and design have
via Margherita De Vizzi, 86 been kept the same. International Foundation
20092 Cinisello Balsamo, Milano Manifesta has strived to secure permission for
tel. + 39 02 61 83 63 37 reprint from all copyright holders. Should there be
fax +39 02 61 72 464 copyright claims still, please contact International
www.silvanaeditoriale.it Foundation Manifesta.
Editors:
Coordinator:
Saskia van der Kroef
Design:
Arnold + Vuga design studio; Nataa Vuga SilvanaEditoriale

Manifesta Journal 1

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Manifesta Journal 1

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

MJ - Manifesta Journal

N1, Spring / Summer 2003

N2, Winter 2003 / Spring 2004

N3, Spring / Summer 2004

The former publishers of MJ Manifesta Journal, the International Foundation

No. 1, Spring / Summer 2003

Viktor Misiano, Igor Zabel

no. 1 14 Hedwig Fijen

no. 1 18 Igor Zabel

Art & Language

Bart De Baere, Iara Boubnova,

Viktor Misiano, Igor Zabel

10 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 11

12 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 13

14 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 15

16 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 17

18 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 19

20 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 21

22 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 23

24 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 25

26 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 27

Beti erovc: a conversation with Harald Szeemann

28 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 29

30 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 31

32 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 33

34 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 35

36 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 37

The Museum in the Age of Mass Media

38 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 39

40 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 41

42 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 43

44 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 45

46 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 47

Art & Language

48 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 49

50 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 51

52 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 53

54 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 55

56 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 57

58 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 59

60 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 61

62 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 63

The luxurious status of the

Whiteness is more important than the

& Cubicalism Iara Boubnova actually were. Sometimes I have the

The autonomy should space today?

64 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 65

What are your recent experiences and International Exhibition

66 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 67

68 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 69

Beti erovc: a conversation with Damien Hirst

70 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 71

72 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 73

74 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 75

76 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 77

78 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 79

80 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1 81

82 MJ - Manifesta Journal no. 1

No. 1 Spring / Summer 2003

English language editor:

MJ - Manifesta Journal Reproductions, printing and binding:

Potrebbero piacerti anche