Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Viktor Misiano
Contents
Frdric Maufras
no. 6 294 Introduction no. 6 374 Film on Art: A Potential Memory of Exhibitions,
to be Itself Preserved
Chiara Bertola
no. 6 296 Storytelling for Memory Anton Vidokle
no. 6 378 Notes on Exhibition Archives, Real Estate
Francesco Manacorda Shortage and Other Problems
no. 6 304 Archives: Monuments or Documents?
Marieke van Hal
Francesco Manacorda with Hans Ulrich Obrist no. 6 382 An Active Archive
no. 6 305 An Interview with Arlette Farge
Sandra Frimmel
Francesco Manacorda with Hans Ulrich Obrist no. 6 386 An Interview with Matthias Mller and Peter Piller
no. 6 322 Archiving Time
Roomers Sight
Francesco Manacorda with Bruce Altshuler no. 6 396 After the Game is Before the Game:
no. 6 328 The Missing History of Curating Theory and Practice of an Open Exhibition
Sandra Frimmel with Jrgen Harten Henry Meyric Hughes
no. 6 334 Archives as Clarification Plants for Contemporary no. 6 404 Drawing the Line Short: Exhibiting in a Contested Space
Culture: Unwanted Memories Versus the Urge for Archiving
Rafal B. Niemojewski APPENDIX: MANIFESTA ARCHIVE
no. 6 342 Where Do You Come From? And Where Are You Going?
On the Memory and Identity of Biennials Archive: Memory of the Show
no. 6 410 MJ discussion, 8 April 2005, Tallinn Art Hall, Estonia
Vadim Zakharov
no. 6 354 The Archive as an Alien Archive: Memory of the Show
no. 6 450 MJ discussion, 1 July 2005, National Centre
Yasmine Van Pee for Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg, Russia
no. 6 360 Fight on, Superfools! Archiving Underground New York
IN MEMORIAM: IGOR ZABEL (1958-2005)
Leif Magne Tangen
no. 6 368 The Dream of Being Able to Fly Igor Zabel
no. 6 468 Dialogue
FROM THE EDITORS
Viktor Misiano
Introduction
There is an internal drama in the curatorial oeuvre. It is ephemeral. A text This curatorial obsession with the retention of the vanishing nature of the show
fiction or non-fiction - could change the material media, could lose many of its is shared by the artists. Artists are creating works about shows, documenting
initial meanings, but it remains intact. A film has had a very dynamic becoming and commenting them, and proposing themselves as exhibitions guides, creating
determinate from the technological progress. But still a movie be it mute, black- sometimes fictive, but very often absolutely authentic exhibitions archives. And
and-white, color or Dolby-Surround - is practically equal to what it was at the they are writing about it, for MJ 6 for instance.
moment of its production. While an exhibition is in live only the period it is hosted
in situ, for one month, perhaps two or three months, but maximum five. And then Obviously, not only the obsessive will to keep memory of own achievements
it despairs acquiring a spectral essence it is kept in the memory of people, in make archives so attractive for artists practice as well as for curatorial studies.
the published reviews, in press-releases and in the invitation card, in the form of The archive is a fascinating phenomenon by itself. Provocatively ambiguous is its
photo- or video-documentation and in its catalogue. In other words, it survives in relation within reality, its pretention to be a bearer of objective truth, its internal
different types of archives. structure and dynamics. Evidently, archives are inseparable from the questions:
who is controlling archives, who is filling it and according to which criteria, who
This short life being a substantial premise of the show is interiorized in the curato- are keeping it, what is accessible and what is closed? In other words, the archive
rial practice. Working on the show a curator perfectly knows that his oeuvre will is always a political problem. This justifies the archive critic, the struggle to keep
be seen only by a ridiculous minority of potential public, and that this show will archives under the public control and also the creation of alternative sources of
be of display only for a ridiculously short time. As a result, he is implementing in information and archiving.
his product its post-mortem existence. He is producing a heavy catalogue, often
including the original views of the show (and, because of that, this catalogue is But still a dramatic difference between an authentic show and its simulacra re-
often published after the vernissage and sometimes even after the finissage); he mains. Perhaps this one is even a bigger difference then there is between a Glen
is taking personal care of the shows documentation and often gazing in the photo Goold piano exercise listened to in a concert hall, or on a CD at home, or between
or video objective himself; finally, creating a show for which the curator keeps a Giorgio Streller performance seen on the stage of the Piccolo di Milano, or of
in mind that it should be not only attractive for the public, but also photo- and the TV screen. Thus, an opposite reaction might also be proper, that is, not to
videogenic. obsessively keep what is inevitably destined to non-being, but to ignore it. To be
as maximum as possible in the present moment, avoiding documentation of your
The archive is a special preoccupation and field of activity in curatorship. Periodi- activity or choosing forms that could not be kept by any documentary medium.
cal exhibitions like Documenta, the Venice Biennale and others are installing their That is a strategy that as a shadow is always behind curators or artists archive
own archives and websites. And stable institutions museums and exhibition obsession.
centers do the same. With the intention to resurrect an exhibition corpus new
publications on the shows of the past are to be published, historical investigations
are to be initiated, international conferences about the exhibitions past and future
are to be organized, and finally reconstructions of the legendary shows or just new
exhibitions about the exhibitions of the past are to be curated.
Chiara Bertola
The latest generation of artists consider this a lost war lost and pay little attention to tions that follow each other incessantly, in the habit of not having a fixed abode,
it. They have undermined or definitively impeded their work from having a memory. in the speedy acquisition of information and facts that make it almost impossible
Their creativity is manifested through performed events that are often completed to localise them, follow them, and find out what has happened. In fact, often we
with the event itself, an art that as never before becomes the place for the meeting are not even sure that the event actually happened at all. What is important is that
and exchange of cultures and is ever more similar to life. Even when the artists it is recorded in the melting-pot of news that circulates inside and outside the net-
choose to express themselves through formal objects, sculptures or paintings, they work and the specialised magazines. What is important above all is to activate the
are dealing with forms almost always not destined to endure as a result of the fra- media machinery in order to make the fact seem truthful and to make it universally
gility of the materials employed: soap, paper, ice, embroidery, chocolate, recycled famous.
objects, scrap In short, artists seem to be extremely aware of the impossibility of
lasting, even of lasting until the present moment, and it becomes extremely difficult If it is true that there is underway a reorganisation of our relationship with time and
to imagine how they can be inscribed in the future time of memory. historical experience, I think it is only now that we are beginning to measure the
effects of a missed opportunity for remembering our creative work. The speed with
This crisis seems linked to the fact that we have left behind a time of certainty, which art events occur, evolve, change, and are immediately substituted by others:
orientated and progressive in which many of those of the preceding generations today all this happens too quickly. We are dealing with phenomena that cannot be
lived: today the present is no longer certain, the future even less so and suddenly captured unless within an abbreviated time, one, therefore, destined to be remem-
the link between past and present has become largely hypothetical. This temporary bered only briefly.
situation has in large part transformed the conditions of our experience of time:
there, where we were able to find reasons in history, we only find a refuge against On the other hand, as I said earlier, many artists have decided to oppose to the inde-
the dangers of the present and the uncertainties of the future; there where we structibility and eternity of classical art the fragility of ephemeral materials which are
found a sense of history, now we only find a basic discontinuity 2 easily destroyed in time. Think of that long strip of paper drawn on with a scalpel by
Elisabetta Di Maggio that covered the whole floor surface of an American museum.
It seems to be this very experience of fast, fragmented, non-distant time that deter- The fragility of that embroidery cut into tissue paper contained, however, the cour-
mines the work of many artists today. There comes to mind the relationship with age and force of such a powerful gesture as that of accepting its own destruction. It
time and space necessary to meet other people that is so basic to the work of Rirkrit was a work created to be destroyed from its very first showing (and in fact the public
Tiravanija. It is interesting in this regard to note what the artist said in an interview: walked over it, tore, and eventually destroyed it). And a work created not to resist
Everything has changed since 1989. The wall has been broken to pieces by a time, like a work in ice or the useless gesture of washing the traces of the past from
exultant crowd and there isnt any place for installing Check Point Charlie because a wall with soap, what memory might it want, or can it, leave of itself?
she put on the dress: Dress bought but never worn. What a pain!... The core jects which are evidence of history. Do you see a connection with the exhibition
of the show consists in the contribution made by photographs, installations, and youre working on?
pictures: Picassos LEtreinte, a work by Hopper, there are also some erotic little
sketches by Masson... and then photographs ranging from Valrie Jouve to Gior- AF: No, probably not. First of all because there are really not very many objects,
gia Fiori, by way of Jean-Luc Moulne and Louise Oligny, etc... and, next, it seems to me that all the works which will be shown have already
been properly thought about by the people who have made them. Let me give
HUO: Theres an aspect in the question Francesco has just asked that Id like to you an example: in the show, there is a section on prostitution: this is one of
delve deeper into, because I think its something that concerns us a great deal in the sections which gave us the most food for thought, because there are huge
contemporary art. Its the question about the difference between the document amounts of photographs about prostitution and very many different ways of posi-
and the artwork. Are we meant to present them in the same way? The other day tioning oneself in relation to the issue of prostitution, especially at this particular
I was talking at great length with the English artist Tacita Dean, and she told me time in the feminist debate which, in France, is deeply split between those who
that there is always a moment in her work when something that she had first of think that prostitution represents the freedom of the womans body, and those
all used as a document turned into a work, or part of a work. Do you subscribe to who think that prostitution is the sign of maximum oppression and disfiguration.
a difference of this type, and do you not hierarchise things yourself?
FM: You talk about data found in archives as managing to prompt the illusion
AF: For the time being were not involved in any hierarchic treatment, but we still of some kind of access to the real, and you emphasize the fact that they can
havent finished the exhibition design, it is just now starting to be worked on. What mislead you through such feeling, and for this reason they need to be constantly
we have done, and what I have just finished this summer, are the texts which go with questioned, and not simply accepted. I find that there is something similar as far
the show. This matter of interpretation and catalogue texts is very delicate, because as the work of art is concerned. Have you made use of this expertise to put on
you have to know if you want to guide the public towards a certain reading of the this exhibition or when you talk about photography?
works and documents on view, or on the contrary if you prefer to leave the public
free and to their own devices, leave people with their own questions. Should one lead AF: For me, talking about photography was a stroke of luck, because, a few years
and steer the public or should one let it acquiesce to the work, that is to say, be upset back, I published La Chambre deux lits et le cordonnier de Tel Aviv, making use
or disconcerted by it? I think that a work is like a book, everyone must appropriate it of photos from the late 19th century and from the 20th century, which strangely
for themselves. Having said that, there must be a thread, and one must comply with made me mindful of the 18th century. So I had already involved myself in this
the intention(s) of the curators, which is quite legitimate, but at the same time it is kind of odd and impossible exercise, which remains for me one of the keys to
important to leave the public relatively free. Theres a balance here. As far as objects everything that I do. I know that for me, to draw from a work of art is to proceed
are concerned, which I was just talking about, I dont think theyll become artworks. towards a future as well as not to retake as I do not like this term re-take,
But I dont really know what an artwork, or a work of art, is... They possibly give rise let us rather say to capture again. What is indeed involved here is making
to the idea that looking at an object somewhere can become an artistic act. something new, with something that was, and that was exhibited or presented as
an artwork. I have the same relation with archives, when Im reading or working
FM: In one of your books you talk about [Flauberts] Bouvard et Pcuchet, and on them, I have this slightly special relationship, which is not just empathy
you say that in their museum one sees history, because they gather all these ob- because that would be too simple but lets say a certain experience of disorien-
tation in familiarity. And in this disorientation, of the work and the archive, I try Now, to answer your question about the parallels it might be possible to draw up
to capture something that might let me conceive of the future. Pleasure first and with the 18th century, we are obviously obliged to shift everything, because it is
foremost, but then the future... never possible to make direct comparisons. And it would be a serious mistake to
do so. For the matter of archives, for example, the 18th century is precisely the
HUO: As were recording this interview with you in your home, Id be curious to moment when the practice of creating archives started, it was the moment when
know if you have personal archives that you keep here. How does the organiza- the supervisors, the lites, the kings advisors, started to develop a certain obses-
tion of knowledge work here? sion for archiving. The police also started to gather a few statistics. The 18th
century was the dawn of an era which would be an era of compulsing archiving.
AF: I dont actually work on a computer, I copy archives by hand and I keep But what I find most interesting, and this is a major difference, is the fact that oral-
them all. Theyre all in cupboards in the adjoining rooms. And they are starting to ity was primary and predominant. The archive and the written medium in general
become archives themselves, because they are getting older... (laughter). I keep could not involve many people, because there was a population which did not
everything and there are cupboards filled with bundles that are stored according to have total mastery of writing. So this orality is absolutely thrilling to examine, be-
theme. Everything that I have used to make a book is collected and kept together, cause it creates events, because it is a ceaseless sharing, and it represents a need
but I find my way about all my files very easily because they are indexed. for the other: people who do not know how to write need people who do know how
to write. But what excites me is the challenges of this orality in the 18th century
HUO: Behind this question there is also the issue of the relationship between in relation to the challenges of orality today, in a world in which archiving is king.
public and private. At this particular moment, in the art world and elsewhere, we This refers to institutions like the IMEC [Institut Mmoires de lEdition Contempo-
are living through a very strange period. We can observe an extraordinary fragility raine], which you probably know about at the abbey of Ardenne...
in public institutions, and a greater and greater presence of private organizations,
which are starting to call the shots. And I was wondering, since youve talked HUO: This also brings us to the matter of computer technology. I have just read
about this separation between public and private in the 18th century, whether your very interesting interview in Vacarme, and then the interview with the direc-
you think that its possible to find things there which might be useful to us today... tor of the IMEC. And in this interview you discuss Googles project to digitize the
Could the 18th century provide us with tools for answering this question? holdings of all the major Anglo-Saxon libraries. The project will only involve books
written in English, so, as Edouard Glissant says, we can read into this an additional
AF: I think youre right when you say that at this particular moment, where art symptom of this process of homogenizing knowledge and learning, versus the idea
is concerned, and archives, and with the increasing power of the private sector, of a globalization which would bring certain differences to the fore. So I would like
something very significant is going on. It is easy to see the arrival of a private you to tell me what you feel about this issue of digitizing archives.
market, that is to say something contrary to the idea that we have about archives,
and a memory that is ours. In my opinion, there is a total contradiction, on the AF: I absolutely dont believe in exhaustivity. I think there is a very considerable
one hand, between this situation of permanent injunction to collectively recall a difference between the exhaustivity proposed by digitization, and the attitude de-
memory that we would not possess sufficiently or that we might have occulted, scribed just now which consists in copying archives by hand. Because, needless
and on the other hand concurrently, the desire to distribute this memory to large to say, I was making selections. I havent copied out all the archives of the 18th
numbers of private machines, managing it in a community-oriented way. century! You have to know how to make choices and work using those choices as
HUO: And how do you see the new deal associated with digitization? I tend to FM: I think that one of the most exciting features of your work is that you propose
think that digitization is going to offer a way of looking at our time, which will be a reading of archives other than the one performed by those for whom they have
completely different from the way we might look at the 18th century, the 19th been put together. This aims to locate in them individual events, here for example
century, and even the 20th century, if only in relation to the instability of the orality, and more generally to reinstate the life which lurks behind them. You
various media. dont use them as statistical sources but as points of departure for scenarios,
almost in the sense of film scenarios. What I mean is that you have a slightly
AF: I think that instability is in any event a permanent condition. This also goes oblique approach to archives and their use. And in this respect I should like to
for 18th century archives, which are unstable, and suffer a great deal of damage. know if you think that for you it is important not to have had any initial training in
But what is even more unstable today is the issue of knowing what we are going the field of history. Furthermore, as this absence of initial historical specialization
to do with all this, and who are we in the face of all these data? What time will makes you naturally more disposed to an interdisciplinary approach, I wanted to
they deliver to us? What does digitization make it possible to do? Is it possible to ask you the extent to which you bring interdisciplinarity into your work?
provide a definition of the value of what is kept, independently of knowing who
wants to keep what and for whom? Briefly, all this seems to me to stem from a AF: If there is any interdisciplinarity, it does not really involve what I managed to
terrible disarray. learn from my law studies. Actually, the most immediate share of interdisciplinarity
is certainly due to my encounter with disciplines such as anthropology and sociol- with him. First of all I felt like saying no, because there was an age difference
ogy. But I think above all that the interdisciplinary orientation has been associated and above all a difference in stature, needless to say. In the end I met him and
more with encounters with people than with encounters with actual disciplines. I I dont know quite how to put it... There are just people who have grace; and
am thinking of Foucault and Bourdieu, who were both people who given me many then I was passionately interested in all that anyway. So we worked together and
essential tools in this particular respect, what I mean is that there was something in things turned out to be as simple as you could wish. It may sound pretentious
them that was non-formatted, and non-framed, it spilled over in all directions, said like that, but its true. He was very fond of Philippe Aris, and I suppose
and it was this overspill that was the truly interesting thing for me. But there is that he thought that in my work there was something different from the historians
also something that I have learnt with my work on photography, and this is that academicism that he didnt like. I think there are certain things that mattered a
the real if it exists gives rise to a multiplicity of landscapes, a multiplicity of great deal in this encounter. He needed to work with a historian with whom he
faces, and that it has a particular way of being appropriated by everyone. The could have a real dialogue, even ifas Im only too awareit was not a balanced
dream would obviously be to measure all the instances of this, but this is a task dialogue, given what he was at that particular moment... Its a slightly sad story,
that I am not capable of undertaking. The archive was straightaway provocative too, because we were going to write something together again, but we didnt have
through its abundance and this certainty that the real was something that could not time to complete that project properly, because he died.
be summed upit was not fixed because it is not fixable. Archives showed that it
was always elusive, and that what I was doing was trying to follow it in its flights, HUO: What was that project?
which I had chosen because I had liked them... and my motives were always very
personal and very subjective. I have never been a theoretician, I am not Foucault AF: A project about secrecy.
or Bourdieu. I do not know how to construct systems. It may sound a bit obsessive
to say so, but the archives have taught me that the real is not an escape, but a kind FM: Did you want to write it like the other book, Le Dsordre des Familles, by
of inexhaustible source of arrangement between men and women, negotiations and showing the documents involved directly to the public?
interstices, and this is what I am keen to explore...
AF: We had had disagreements about that... Actually not even disagreements...
HUO: Youve just mentioned Foucault, and this, of course, is one of the things Lets say that we didnt have the same opinion. He came up with a lot of archives,
we talked about with Francesco on our way here. We are very curious to know a but if I had been on my ownthis wasnt possible because if Id been on my own
bit more about your encounter with Foucault and the way the book [Le dsordre I wouldnt have written that bookI would have come up with fewer archives.
des familles] you wrote together was written... But he had made that decision, and this probably links up with your questions,
about whether the archive could be in itself a work of art. For him there was an
AF: Its very simple. I had written my thesis, and then after that, a little bit later, aesthetics of the archive, and above all in relation to those requests for confine-
Vivre dans la rue, Paris au XVIII sicle. I wasnt going to Foucaults seminar, ments which he found absolutely overwhelming...
and I didnt know him. In fact, it was he who wrote to me. I had noted a refer-
ence to me in Surveiller et Punir, a reference to Vivre dans la rue..., but that was FM: He talks about a shudder, a frisson, doesnt he?
all, I didnt know him at all on a personal basis. He phoned me, and then wrote
to me to say that he was working on some dossiers and he would like me to work AF: He talks about vibration and it was strange and unbelievable for me, because
he was someone who reclaimed emotions, and I have to say that at the time, at to its own devices, attests to everything and doesnt attest to anything. I have a
the Ecole DEtudes Suprieurs, I was experiencing a great closure towards the specific example in mind. When the archives in Russia were opened, there were
question of emotion. Emotion had pejorative connotations, and Foucault freed lots of people who went to buy them by the kilo! Lots were divided up and sold.
me a great deal in that respect. Because to see the great Michel Foucault mak- For me its crazy to use archives like that. With Foucault, we reached an agree-
ing use of what he called physical vibration in order to work, obviously helped ment, so we negotiated. For his part, he told me that he thought I was right, and
to get rid of my inhibitions. Needless to say, he was talented enough to do it, but for my part, I found that idea of providing raw archives very beautiful in spite of
this legitimized the place of emotion in the historians work. At the same time, he everything. I found that the exercise was very beautiful but that if we were mak-
had the idea of an aesthetics of the text, because these letters start with the words ing an offering, we had to take things as far as possible. But I didnt think about
Your Majesty and some very protocol-rich formulae, and he was also intrigued them solely in aesthetic terms, whereas Foucault very definitely thought about
by that form of orality which showed through inside the letters, because they were them in terms of artworks, as, incidentally, he mentions in the introduction.
whispered to the public scribe.
HUO: In Le Dsordre des Familles, there is the idea of introducing archival data Part 3
without making too much comment about them, and this is also a challenge of Methodological Immersion
the exhibition
HUO: Another aspect I find very interesting about this question of archives is that
FM: Yes, your book reminded me a great deal of the structure of a catalogue, in you talk about an experience of total immersion. Let me quote you: This came
which there is an introductory essay, followed by the works. I think that we find about in this way without any preliminary strategy, by total immersion in the
this in Le Dsordre des Familles. There is an introduction, a conclusion, and, in documents, by being steeped in language and syntax, by the erupting entrance
the middle, there are these raw archival data... into a world which had never been taken seriously. Could you tell us a little bit
more about this idea of immersion in archives?
AF: Actually it was an intentional gesture. To start with, I dont think Foucault
wanted even a written introduction. He wanted to give it completely, and he AF: Immersion was crucial for my profession because, at the outset, it made up
thought of it in an odd, almost sacred way, because he said that he was present- for my lack of knowledge about that century. It goes without saying that I had
ing it like an offering. It was an offering to the public. It was the idea: you are read things, and I didnt come to this terrain absolutely virgin, but I possibly didnt
still that, you have been that, and I am offering it to you. have the familiarity with the subject that I would have acquired if I had studied
history in a traditional way. But I think that this also goes much further. At a
FM: Theres also an almost religious sacrificial dimension... certain moment, I realized that if I really wanted to work on the 18th century,
I couldnt just take notes and sum things up. I said to myself that if I made a
AF: Absolutely. But this is the first time that anyone has pointed out to me that it series of index cards the way historians do, I would never succeed. The material
bears a certain resemblance to the format of the exhibition catalogue. And I think that I was not acquainted with, and which I was trying to decode, seemed to me
thats quite accurate. But I am always bothered that a piece of evidence can be to be so rich that I forced myselfbut I didnt mind thatto copy things, to ven-
left as such. Even if it may have the value of an artwork, a piece of evidence, left ture into syntax and vocabulary, and I was quite convincedwhich you will find
thoroughly navethat even the movement of my body as I was in the process FM: But we also make use of it, dont we?
of writing could only give me ideas! My immersion was a lengthy process, but I
enjoyed it, I copied things out for hours and hours, and I felt that that particular AF: So this is where it becomes complicated. I think that we necessarily make
movement gave me some kind of inspirationrather than summing up sentences, use of it and that the fact that we have it is a stroke of luck. But it is nevertheless
and following arguments, punctuations and hesitations step by step. I imagined necessary to invent forms and step back from them. Moreover, I would all the
the voices and I heard sounds. My immersion was not anything imaginary; rather same admit that I sometimes believe that there is some real. You will probably
it was being with. tell me that this is precisely because I am a victim of illusion, but all the same...
When I worked for Le Bracelet de Parchemin, about the contents of peoples
HUO: Theres yet another aspect of archives which we havent talked about. This pockets, about the objects which they carried on them when they were dying of
is the notion of sensitive archives, which have to do with feelings. cold, there was the real nonetheless. Then I probably lent a very specific sense
to this real. But there was indeed that in their pockets.
AF: In conditions where documents are digitally copied, immersion is impossible.
Its physically impossible. And as far as sensitive archives are concerned, which As for my passion for films, I like movies and I like going to the cinema, its as
may offer information about emotions, I think there are heaps of sources for which simple as that. It has only been later on that Ive understood films impressive
these methods are very suitable. But I also think that there are documents for ability to manufacture stories which we believed to be true. I started thinking
which this makes no sense. Furthermore, why do we look so hard for originals? If about that and connecting it with the historians work. And then what has al-
it were solely information which had any value, why would we attach the slightest ways struck me, even if I was just now talking about sounds, is the visual side
importance to the preservation of originals? Because, as its name suggests, the of archives. For me, the archive is above all else visual, and films have really
original is the origin, and because we are keen to get back to the source. Origi- prompted me to see scenes that I was reading about. There were in fact bonds
nal is also being a bit crazy... The original is the thing that can constantly shift of kinship with the cinema, and then in the cinema there was that amazing way
in meaning and in the interpretation of that meaning. And if we no longer have of being forever obligedbecause of the dcor, the objectsto make history: we
originals, Im not saying things will be better or worse, but it will be another life. have a given time in which this particular history unfolds.
It really will be something else.
FM: To pursue this film metaphor, the cinema as a machine is an architectural
FM: And does your notion of immersion have something to do with the illusion space in which we immerse ourselves, and where we perceive what Christian
that induces us to think we are touching the real? This is something very similar Metz called the impression of reality. Because immersion in it is total, there is
to the work of art and to the aura of the work of art. You go to see the work of no other sound in the auditorium than that of the film, no other light than the
art, but you do not want to see a reproduction of it, no matter how perfect it may light of the screen, the whole sensory reality is absorbed by the film, and this is
be. Lastly, does this notion of immersion have any connection with your passion something similar to what you are doing...
for films?
AF: Yes, and then this also calls to mind a certain form of cinema which Im
AF: You are absolutely right when you stress that an illusion is involved here. We very fond of, and which is the transcription of the commonplace. It was Chris
have this illusion, and we must be aware of it, but it is undeniable that we feel it. Marker who said: I may have crisscrossed all the countries of the world, but the
HUO: In Quel Bruit Ferons-Nous? you say that every intellectual bases his or
her thinking on two or three powerful ideas, and with regard to one of them, you
mention the idea of utopia constantly activated to talk about the present while
writing history. Could you tell me something about this utopia?
AF: Its a sort of madness, its wanting to recount the present, which is not yet
over, because it is still unstable and therefore does not exist. It is a question of
talking about a present that never exists by recounting what has passed. For me
this has the scale of major madness, of major utopia, and it is the only one that
interests me...
Archiving Time FM: Contemporary art exhibitions seem to be akin to archives in reverse (as through, within zones for projections, light zones and dark zones. The space is
in Smithsons Passaic ruin in reverse) because, instead of being collections furthermore programmed in a different way every day.
of data from the past, curatorial projects are akin to science-fictional archival
narrative. Harald Szeemann hints to this concept in his definitions of shows as FM: You clearly have an interest in developing and questioning an archival impulse
archives in transformation. Do you think that archives in reverse is an produc- in your curatorial approach. Interarchive (Kunstraum der Universitt Lneburg,
tive way of describing curatorial practice? Do you feel like your professional 2002), a show you conceived with Hans Peter Feldman, for example showed
activity is similar to the building of provisional archives, which are not turned artworks alongside your personal research archive [a meta-archive]; Utopia Sta-
into statements by historians after their assemblage, but arise as statements tion seemed closer to the attempt to gather materials on the artists fascination
as they are built? I am adapting here Smithsons sentence from Passaic: The for utopia than to a merely thematic exhibition of artworks. What attracts you in
zero panorama seemed to contain ruins in reverse, that is all the new con- the notion of the archive? Is it completionism and the temptation to include ev-
struction that would eventually be built. This is the opposite of romantic ruin, erything that drives you, or is it rather the attempt to construct an unconventional
because the buildings do not fall into ruin after they are built, but rather rise discourse out of what are normally conceived closed categories?
into ruin before they are built.
HUO: For Interarchive, it started with bringing within the exhibition my archive,
HUO: When Hou Hanru and I curated Cities on the Move in 1997-98 we thought which did not have a location. It was an archive on the move to Lueneburgs
that it could be interesting to develop a traveling show that would constantly University; such a situation prompted us to ask ourselves how to deal with the
change, in order to research for the exhibition throughout the traveling of the ex- archive in an active way. It is not an archive-collection but rather a working
hibition itself. The result was a permanently changing show, starting off in Vienna archive, with documents often related to the preparation and research of and
with Yung Ho Changs display feature consisting of a scaffolding structure. There for exhibitions. The idea was to make the material accessible. With Beatrice von
has been an ongoing dialogue lasting many years as the side-effect of the travel- Bismarck, Diethelm Stoller and Ulf Wuggenig we decided to invite artist Hans-
ing show. On the one hand it was very fast, on the other hand there was a very Peter Feldmann to undermine all certainties that go alongside the static idea of
slow process of emerging dialogues, of emerging collaborations, of feedback loops the archive. The project is structured so that, after almost 10 years in Lueneburg,
and notions of circularity (I had long conversations with Heinz von Foerster at the the archive will continue its journey and that a new project can happen with it in
time), also of simultaneous mise en abme and recycling of previous exhibition another city. The archive is not conceived as a continent (rock solid and impos-
design. As Liam Gillick said: We can see in the past traces of the future. ing), but as an archipelago (welcoming and sheltering). In douard Glissants
words, the idea of a non-linear time implicit in this idea, or in this concept, the
In a different way, this continued with Utopia Station with Molly Nesbit and coexistence of several time zones will of course allow for a great variety of different
Rirkrit Tiravanija; the project has evolved into a kind of a learning system. After contact zones as well. The title Interarchive has a double meaning: it is
having been very horizontal in Venice, it evolved into occupying a receptive an archive between cities, on the move, not belonging to a geography, and at the
zone which can at any moment be animated. In this perspective, we decided for same time it alludes to the inbetween-ness of archives, the zone between other
the restaging of Utopia Station at Haus der Kunst in Munich to develop a more archives, a network of archives, to connect Lueneburgs archive to many others
organic programme. One of the centre pieces is actually a vertical tower, recycling all over the world: an archive always hides another archive... which leads us to
material from Venice. In fact it is not a building, but a passage that one can walk Utopia Station, the project triggering many different archives, all the conversa-
tions, the posters, which are on the e-flux website and can be downloaded, the exhibition catalogue and of the notion of exhibition as a discourse of potential
sonic and film archives and remixes, the display feature archive... The project was statements delivered to the visitor. In Le dsordre the unconventional reading
and is not thematic. Utopia is a trigger, a catalyst. of the data is the key for the production of interesting statement. Do you see a
similarity with curatorial practice as one that, through constant reinvention, has
FM: The archival impulse also seems to be behind the interview project that you to serve as a tool generating discourse? Would you think of exhibitions as tools
have been carrying out for some time now. Do you conceive it as a necessity to enabling a dynamic memory?
gather relevant materials for future generations, or are interviews generated as
the starting point of your curatorial research interests? Would you ever conceive HUO: Yes, definitely exhibitions are about dynamic memory, like the brain. As
converting it into an exhibition and show several interviews? Israel Rosenfield told me, memory is dynamic. It depends on context and it is
in motion. When we are watching a film, we are watching a series of still im-
HUO: The interview project had no master plan. It almost started by accident ages. We dont see these still images, we see motion. The brain is integrating
originating from the fact that I did not follow the usual kind of academic trajec- two events - two stills - and it is creating from these two events something else,
tory but came from economy and sociology and crossed disciplines; something which is motion. Memory is an integration of temporary events and in this sense
mobile or light could be installed in myself, a bit like Arlette Farge described it it works over time. It is relating events taking place in one moment to the next, or
for her practice. The beginnings of the interview project are around 1993. I did to two previous moments, etc. Indeed, this is what the brain is constantly doing.
some interviews with Vito Acconci and Felix Gonzalez -Torres the for Museum I would say that memory is based on relationships. It consists, on the one hand,
in Progress, and these were recorded in a film studio. Soon afterwards I started in temporary relationships, and on the other hand in spatial relationships. We are
traveling with small video cameras and the interviews could happen anywhere. I relating fragments from different spaces, from different temporal frames. Memory
started to record weekly interviews with artists, architects, scientists, which were is these relationships. It is not a particular space, a particular time, but rather a
very often related to my exhibition projects and research. In terms of its archive, particular set of temporary and spatial relationships that are dynamic.
there was no plan, it just happened; there are now 1400 hours, towards an infi-
nite conversation. Since 2002, the dialogues have often become trialogues, I go FM: You often mention the missing history of exhibition design and curatorial
to see someone with someone else and the second volume of the interview series practice and the subsequent amnesia of key historical precedents. Why do you
will be conceived as a polyphonic novel. All the cassettes are digital so it is more think there is a reluctance to write that history? Do you think the archival material
about time than about space. The whole archive fits into a suitcase. Concerning is insufficient due to the ephemeral nature of art exhibition, or do you feel that it
your question about the video documents, all the interviews are transcribed and would be a very controversial meta-discourse? Would you ever write that book?
so far only the text versions were used, to use the video documents will be the
next step. Joseph Grigely is working on an exhibition of the archive, of all the HUO: Many books are missing. There is a whole missing exhibition literature
books, texts and interviews. first of all. The key texts by curatorial pioneers such as Alexander Dorner or W.
Sandberg (his famous radio broadcasts) or Pontus Hulten are mostly out of print
FM: One of the interesting features of the book Le dsordre des Familles by and often not accessible in English. Then there is amnesia about very important
Arlette Farge and Michel Foucault consists of presenting archival data with very other curatorial pioneers. This is also true for radical experiments in exhibition
little commentary in order to make them speak. This model reminded me of an design, projects that are often not included in architectural monographs and are
somehow marginal as temporary constellations, but where very often the main accessible, or a big part is hidden in storage: The division inevitably corresponds
inventions are made. to editing: in or out? The essential museum experience is based on selection
(by unseen hands, for unarticulated criteria, from unknowable quantities). The
FM: We once discussed about the possibility for exhibitions to be collected by museum is the only institution that systematically freezes its assets away. Within
museums, thereby entering tout court the archives as autonomous objects rather the extension, the notion of storage, visible storage and robotic retrieval eliminate
than special (archival) gathering of distinct artistic practices. Would you not think arguments of difficult access, unwieldy logistics and impossibility. Combined with
that such a gesture would freeze the artworks included in a single possible dis- the appeal for a more customized, individual museum experience, the rethinking
cursive category? Would this be disrespectful of the artworks as discrete cultural of storage initiates a new way of conceptualizing the collection. Will the viewer,
unities? liberated from curatorial editing have opportunities to make his/her own choices,
to reshuffle works now chained together in prescribed narrative sequences and
HUO: Exhibitions usually are temporary constellations, but there are excep- significant interpretations?
tions where whole exhibitions enter the collection of a museum. The idea of the
collecting of exhibitions was mentioned in a discussion with Daniel Buren who
told me that he convinced the Belgian collector Herman Daled to buy only his
works for one entire year. When the collector was finally freed from this one year
contract beginning January of the subsequent year he took the first plane to Berlin
and bought a whole exhibition of Lawrence Weiner... There are also precedents of
whole group shows having been sold to a museum. A recent example is the Ann
Lee project by Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno, where the whole exhibition,
the whole project is both in the Museum in Eindhoven, as well in the De la Cruz
collection in Miami.
FM: If you were the director of the imaginary museum of curating, which exhibi-
tions would you collect and why?
HUO: Ever since I moved to Paris generations of artists and architects have told
me about Les Immateriaux, which happened some years before I moved to Paris,
and it is a show I regret for me not having seen it, but, as many group shows,
it would probably have been impossible to collect this complex impermanent
constellation. As Rem Koolhaas showed in his extraordinary though unfortunately
unrealised project for MoMA in New York, the memory of previous exhibitions
could be digitally present in the museum at any time. Koolhaas also shows that a
museum is an ambiguous treasure of collections, as some works are on view and
BA: I am not sure that I would characterize curatorial practice as archives in re- FM: Your exhibition history stops with When Attitudes Become Form, the key
verse, but it is interesting to compare exhibitions to Smithsons Passaic, New Jer- exhibition for the development of curating as cultural practice. Would you ever
sey buildings that rise into ruin. For me your point seems closer to viewing exhi- continue your historical narrative from that point? Do you think it will be an im-
bitions in terms of what Philip Fisher calls the futures past, as entities created possible task? Do you think that curatorial practice has expanded to an excessive
with an eye to how they will fit into a future narrative of their cultural moment. degree in respect to the avant-garde drive that you trace in your book?
But is this anything more than saying that curators in their exhibitions attempt to
assemble a revealing or accurate picture of something a new artistic direction BA: I ended The Avant-Garde in Exhibition in 1969 with When Attitude Be-
or concern, a cultural phenomenon, etc.? Given this intention a curator naturally comes Form, because it seemed a significant point of closure both the end
would believe that his or her exhibition will be seen in the future as depicting of the Sixties, and, as an exhibition of anti-institutional art that was funded
or indicating what the past was like, and if it was not that would be due to the by a large international corporation, a symbolic event pointing to what the art
poor judgment or lack of information of those looking back on the exhibition and world would become, especially during the late Eighties when I began work-
its historical setting. (Here I am reminded of the American philosopher Charles ing on the book. As you mention, it also marked in the activity of Harald
Peirces notion of truth as the ideal end of inquiry, with beliefs always fallible, but Szeemann the developing discipline, or career, of curatorial practice, thus
tending toward a single conclusion.) So I agree that curatorial practice aims indicating another (a perhaps related) cultural break. The book was not a
at least in part, since it might have other purposes, such as providing pleasure to single narrative containing anything like a tight argument, though there was
viewers to generate material worthy of an archive, but this seems to me the aim the subtext of avant-garde artists increasingly losing control of the presenta-
of most intellectual activity that issues in a substantial object. tion of their work. Other exhibitions could have been chosen, and the material
could have been configured differently (and more theoretically), but the point
FM: Archives often imply collection whose sense has still to be made through the was to look at the way in which exhibitions, and the presentation of art to the
questions we ask to it, although in the case of exhibitions, they had been previ- public, are critical to art (and cultural) history. One could readily write about
ously very similar attempt to make a discourse from a series of discrete elements. later exhibitions in fact I am currently working on a book that assembles
Does this imply a double work, a sort of meta-discourse for the exhibition histo- exhibition documentation through the millennium and develop additional
rian? Did you have to first construct a lost discourse from the archival materials themes, such as the increasing institutionalization of advanced art practice.
you used, and then extract your personal narrative of it on top of that? And such practice of course has come to include curatorial practice, which I
think can be designated avant-garde to the same degree that contemporary
BA: I tend to think of the research process as a dynamic one, in which you si- art can. People disagree about whether anything can be avant-garde in our
multaneously generate a narrative (or multiple narratives) in terms of which you time, but I think that art and curatorial practice fall on the same side of the
search for (and interpret) documentation, and the documentation leads in new fence whatever one decides.
directions that can reconstruct the explanatory framework that led to it. As percep-
tion is not possible without conceptualization, so nothing is evidence without a FM: Some artist-curated shows, in particular some of the historical avant-garde
theory that recognizes it as such. But the initial narrative/interpretation is contin- such as the surrealist ones, have influenced generations of artists and still today
uously restructured (revised, redirected, expanded, etc.) in light of the documents are crucial to curatorial practice and installation. Do you think that exhibitions
to which it has directed us. of that kind should be collected by museums? Would this mean granting group
show the value of discrete art objects? In case it would, do you think of it as
problematic?
Archives as Clarification
Plants for Contemporary
Culture: Unwanted
Memories Versus the Urge
for Archiving
Sandra Frimmel (1977) SF: I would like to talk to you about memories of exhibitions and the possibility JH: This is a very new possibility that we seldom use, because of shortages in 1977 to 1998, he served
is an art historian and art as the director of the
critic based in Berlin. She of ensuring that they are archived properly. How do exhibitions continue to work funding. In the best case, all that remains are a few photos or even a CD with Kunsthalle Dsseldorf.
is also a Ph.D candidate after their relatively short duration? How do they inscribe themselves into collec- images. For Berlin-Moscow, for example, we published a press review prefaced He has curated
at the Department of Art numerous exhibitions,
History at the Humboldt-
tive memory? How do curators handle the fact that their work into which they by an extensive sequence of images that present each of the exhibitions rooms, such as the legendary
Universitt in Berlin. In have invested several months or even years of preparation disappears again providing a good impression of the situation in the exhibition venue. Of course, Marcel Broodthaers,
2003 she received the after only a few weeks? What does the afterlife of an exhibition look like, after their the reconstruction of the atmosphere is also a question of interpretation, which Muse dArt Moderne,
prize of the Corporation Dpartement des Aigles,
General Satellite for time on display is finally over? can, for example, be supported by the reports on the exhibition in the press. What Section des Figures
contemporary art in the did these reports cite? What were the reactions like? How polemic were these (1972), Museum of
category Scholarship Money (1978), Georg
for the preparation of a JH: When we talk about the afterlife of exhibitions, we need to make a differ- reactions? This can help to reconstruct the atmosphere to a degree, though, of Baselitz Gerhard
scientific study in the ence between those who remember exhibitions out of professional interest and course, this reconstruction will still be incomplete. Richter (1981), The
area of contemporary Axe has Blossomed,
art for her study titled
the memory of the public, which is actually what constitutes collective memory. Soviet Art Around 1990
The Russian Pavilion The latter can be fixed through the exhibitions resonance in the media. Collective I started in Dsseldorf in 1969, when the institutions, the entire art industry and (1991), Siqueiros/Pollock
at the Venice Biennale memory only contains that which is present in the media. Very little is actually the very nature of its mediation were being called into doubt. This doubt also Pollock/Siqueiros
from 1990 to 2003 (1995), The Fifth
Between Self- perceived in a collective sense beyond this sphere. Of course, this doesnt mean concerned the function of the curator. At the time, there werent actually any cura- Element Money or Art
representation and that individuals dont have intensive memories that they can draw upon at any tors in todays sense of the word, curators who produce certain thematic designs (2000), Berlin/Moscow
Self-definition. Recent Moscow/Berlin 1950-
exhibition projects given moment. Not so long ago, an official from the Cultural Ministry in Rome or concepts. It was at this time that we brought the famous series Between to 2000 (2003).
include Reflection at came up to me and said, Oh, so youre the person who made the exhibition The life. Most obviously, the name Between meant between the institutions and the
the National Center
for Contemporary Arts,
Axe has Blossomed on the 1930s! The catalogue is fantastic! The exhibition took public, but it also meant that we were striking a kind of provisional pose: we only
Moscow (2005) and place in 1987 and people still remember it now, 18 years later. But this isnt col- sent out little notes as invitations; there were no completed installations, no open-
FUTURE7 Eurovision lective memory, but professional memory. ing ceremonies, and no speeches. This ritual which is part of the art industry
at the Center for
Contemporary Culture, was suspended. We made this decision quite consciously, because we felt that
Ekaterinburg, Russia SF: Exhibitions are usually reconstructed according to documents that have en- one can only experience what happens here if one is actually present. It can only
(2004). She contributes
regularly to Moscow Art tered the archive, such as catalogues as in your example but also invitation be experienced in the moment it happens, and then, its over. This was a con-
Magazine, Artchronika, cards, press-releases, photos, etc. But in the end, these documents only recon- sequence of what was forming under the terms of performance and action at the
taz die tageszeitung
and Plato Review.
struct reactions to the exhibition and not the exhibition itself. Documents can be time. The notion of the artwork in the conventional sense had become obsolete.
archived, but not the atmosphere of an event or the interrelation of different piec- There were no documentations, no catalogues, nothing. By now, many of these
Jrgen Harten es. This is something no catalogue can ever achieve, no matter how good it is. actions are being reconstructed, by interviewing eye-witnesses, for example. But
(Hamburg, 1933) is
a freelance curator, if one subscribes to a more radical view, artistic experience only takes place in the
based in Berlin. He JH: Sad but true. Still, one could use up-to-date technologies to document at least encounters with the artists on location, and no-where else.
studied anthropology,
psychology and art the spatial situation, even if the exhibitions atmosphere is beyond reconstruction.
history in Hamburg and SF: Such eye-witness interviews document things that were supposed to be re-
Munich. In 1968, he
was secretary-general of
SF: But this new possibility has not been around for very long membered by individuals many years later. In doing so, they lead the original
Documenta 4, and from intentions behind events ad absurdum.
1
Aby Warburgs famous JH: Quite so. In this case, memory is something unwanted, because it fixes JH: In this specific case, this really is a flaw. One methodological approach cre-
Mnenosyne Atlas is
eventually reconstructed something that can be neither repeated nor reconstructed in its immediacy. But ated two exhibitions, neither of which can be reconstructed. However, there is a
and published as Der this immediacy is actually based on a deeper form of refusal, on a rejection of the press review and a CD for the Berlin exhibition, and the Moscow exhibition was
Bilderatlas Mnemosyne,
ed. Martin Warnke and
archive in principle. One wants to rely upon the events immediacy in conveying also documented through a CD, so that these materials can indeed be used to
Claudia Brink, Akademie a message in the sense of an emotional movement. Everything else is second- remember or to reconstruct both exhibitions, at least to a certain degree.
Verlag, Berlin, 2000. It hand.
consisted of 79 sturdy
wooden panels - lost by No matter which exhibition I was making, it has always been my goal to connect
now - to which images SF: Where are the origins this refusal of the archive? There are two types of archi- the classical exhibition catalogue (i.e. the book) to the exhibition as closely as
from Warburgs collection
of photographs and val construction. One of them is based upon the assumption that everything that possible. In some cases, my catalogues even contain floor-plans of the exhibi-
reproductions were to enters the archive will be stored there in temporary deactivation. The other, which tions spatial organization, so that one could use the catalogue as a navigation
be pinned, creating an
image of art history in
is based on a notion of Aby Warburgs, is a dynamized type, an active archive.1 aid through the exhibition, and then later, to reconstruct it. However, this is not
motion. In the dynamic archive, things only take shape because they are viewed again always possible. In other cases, we have published two volumes: the first was
and again. Is the refusal of the archive actually based on the idea of not allowing printed on occasion of the exhibitions opening, while the second documented the
2
The exhibition Berlin
Moscow / Moscow artworks to lay dormant? Or is it based on the desire to avoid reinterpretation or exhibitions presentation. But today, one can hardly do this for financial reasons.
Berlin 1950-2000 was transformation through the active archive? This was only possible for as long as one could work within the framework of a
held as a part of the
German-Russian Cultural flexible administration in order to mediate between the desired success of the
Encounters 2003/2004. JH: The first question that comes to mind is: what does one actually hope to gain exhibition and the boundaries that public interest has in reality.
Its German version was
presented in Berlins
by archiving exhibitions? Which degree of necessity does this have for charting
Martin-Gropius-Bau ones own position in the present? In many cases, archives save things from being SF: In other words, you already attempted to plan for a documentation that would
from September 2003 forgotten, and this is also true of exhibitions. Another fundamental question would be as adequate as possible during the exhibitions conceptional phase in order to
to January 2004, while
its Russian version was be how important the reception and documentation of exhibitions is in compari- make sure that the reconstruction and the memory of the exhibition would be as
shown in Moscows State son to the actual creative process of the curators work. Which concrete gains close as possible to the original exhibition. Is there perhaps an impulse today to
Historical Museum from
April to June 2004. Both does one hope to make in saving the remainders of exhibitions, those fragments shift the exhibition into its supplementary publication, away from its momentary
exhibitions presented that the media convey, in order to be able to activate them again? effect to its documentation, so that archiving of the exhibition might mean that
extensive comparative
overviews of Western
more of it remains than during its actual duration, that it might even grow in terms
and Russian art from SF: So what does one hope to gain by archiving as a curator? If one looks at of content and value?
the second half of the Berlin-Moscow,2 for example, the relationship between the exhibition and the
20th century. Jrgen
Harten was one of the six vehicles for its memory is rather difficult. There were two variants of the exhibi- JH: If you think of the RAF-exhibition in Berlins Kunstwerke, you can see this
curators of this bilateral tions, each of which had its own catalogue. However, the overarching themes in effort quite clearly. The question is in how far something like this is intentional,
project.
the catalogues did not exactly correspond to the thematic organization of either why it could be intended, and whether it is actually possible. As far as I am con-
exhibition, which means that it is hardly possible to draw any conclusions as to cerned, my colleagues and I have always wanted to be up-to-date, to find points
the goals of the exhibition by using the catalogue alone. of connection with what was already in the air. This wish had to do with wanting
to attract attention, helping the artists, and furthering their reputations. Accom-
panying the catalogue with an exhibition was a part of this process. Often, the JH: There is actually very little you can do about this. After a guided tour through
argument was something like: the exhibition will go, but the catalogue will stay. the Moscow-Berlin exhibition, the curator of the last biennale in Istanbul came
But one could also ask in how far the exhibition represents an effort deserving of up to me and told what an impressive and stimulating experience this kind of
appreciation? In how far is the exhibitions curator interesting as an interpreter? exhibition-dramaturgy was for her, that she had never seen anything quite like
For me, a substantial question was always: which impulse should be delivered it. For me, it is incredibly attractive to set exhibits in relation to one another. In
to posterity? After all, it isnt about the curators self-representation, but about Berlin-Moscow, this was an interesting aspect, but it was impossible to carry
the matter at hand, because an exhibition is a kind of celebration or feast. In the through consistently. For me, artworks on display are marked through their pres-
time of the mass-media, an exhibition-opening is a big event that people want ence. They are present, they have an effect, and they want to be seen. On the
to participate in. This is something that isnt so easy to pour into the archive. A whole, an exhibition has more of a chance of being successful when it irritates
good exhibition is a larger whole that slowly takes form in the course of many its visitors, making them feel curious or affected by the presence of what can be
months, and when it is done, one celebrates. After this celebration, the curator seen there. This is very important to me. I understand the work of the curator as
of the exhibition is usually exhausted and doesnt want to know anything more of a way of helping people to discover things that are not perceived when one uses
his exhibition as an event. conventional categories of classifying art. In short, a good curator is usually able
to reveal something new.
SF: In this moment, his job is over; he is no longer responsible for the exhibitions
life during the duration of its showing. Do you see this fleeting, ephemeral aspect SF: Something like this only works in the moment in which the spectator is stand-
of exhibitions as something positive because the experiences of its visitors con- ing directly in front of the artwork, but eludes archiving. In fact, the archive fails in
centrate on the moment, a moment that is actually very intense? this moment. In the end, one has nothing to fall back upon other than memory.
Do you, as a curator, see the transitory nature of your work and its short-term
JH: Certainly. This is just like at a celebration or a party. After all, a party is also existence as a positive quality? Perhaps the archive does nothing but damage to
the high point of the everyday since it concentrates the intensity of life. As a cura- this positive quality? Could it be that personal memories of the exhibition allow
tor, one actually works toward this goal and this is a fascinating experience. Then it to be relived far longer and remain in memory far more intensively that all me-
again, there are exhibitions that are only put together to sell a book, for example. dia-reports, newspaper articles or catalogues, because one recalls the exhibition
But these can hardly be considered as real exhibitions. In this case, the exhibi- again and again, keeping it alive by combining it with new experiences?
tion becomes no more than a means to fulfill an end, and this has little to do with
curatorial activity. JH: Yes, I think this is true. The eye-witness testimony of people that have seen
a certain exhibition cannot be replaced by anything else, providing that they have
SF: One of my initial questions was how curatorial praxis overcomes or arranges really grappled with what was on display. On the other hand, I think one can con-
itself with the moment of transitoriness. It seems to me that this question does vey at least a small part of an exhibitions atmosphere if one offers possibilities for
not exist on the level of a problem for you personally, that it does not give you comparison despite all of the catalogues limitations as a medium, if one reflects
any reason for concern, but is actually inscribed into the exhibition sui generis, upon the exhibitions basic idea in this publication. Of course, this already points
as a character trait. beyond the exhibition itself, but then again, the exhibitions occasion for celebra-
tion can become the point of departure for further reflection. These possibilities
for comparison can also become relevant in terms of methodology. For example, their concepts are purified when they are processed by the archive after they are
in 1981, I curated an exhibition of the two painters that I thought were the best over? Or, to put in even more pathetic terms, does the archive distill that which
German painters, namely Georg Baselitz and Gerhard Richter. This exhibition was has value for eternity?
an attempt to create a constellation of two completely different worlds that would
not destroy one another. It was not so much about drawing comparisons in terms JH: I understand this formulation somewhat differently. The notion of the purifi-
of form but in terms of emotion. I repeated this method in an encounter between cation plant is a perfect fit to exhibitions like The Fifth Element, which I curated
Pollock and Siqueiros. The catalogues of these exhibitions may not convey the in Dsseldorf in 2000. Exhibitions like these come from an extremely large ar-
atmosphere, but they do reflect the basic idea very nicely, in my opinion. chive of cultural history, so that the exhibition itself becomes a purification plant,
which purifies everything it contains. In this specific case, the goal was to clarify
SF: Do you think that the idea of emotional comparison that lies at the base of the relationship between the financial and spiritual valorization of art. But I am
these exhibitions flowed in their catalogues in an adequate form? not so sure whether it is the specific goal of an archive to purify such concepts
post facto. First and foremost, the archive is a collection point. Making use of the
JH: Of course, it would have been nice if we would have the possibility of docu- archive through research and reconstruction can help to clarify or purify murky re-
menting the exhibitions space with modern media at the time, in order to walk lationships in the exhibition. Lets return to the example of Berlin-Moscow. In this
through them again in a virtual form. Sadly, we simply did not have this pos- case, I imagine that if we used the archive in order to scan what remains of the
sibility. However, there are a few nice pictures of the exhibition space. When I controversies we experienced in making the exhibition, we might be able to find a
imagine how young curators work in their future profession, I sometimes wish I far more critical approach to the issues at hand, even clarifying them completely.
had the opportunity to document their process of working. This is hardest of all in Of course, this was not possible while we were putting the exhibition together.
thematic exhibitions. Take Harald Szeemanns exhibitions Der Hang zum Gesa-
mtkunstwerk (Tendencies toward the Total Work of Art), The Bachelor Machine, SF: Do some exhibitions depending on their conception become archives
or my exhibition Museum des Geldes (The Museum of Money) in the 1980s, of themselves?
which there are some very impressive pictures. In this case, it was very impor-
tant to me that one would be able to gain a spatial impression of the show in JH: I would say that they become pseudo-archives. An exhibition is a transitory
retrospect. In working on such a comprehensive theme, one can only proceed event. It cannot be an archive, simply because it does not remain. An exhibition
punctually and associatively; this is the only way that the concept will gain the like Berlin-Moscow could function as an archive under certain circumstances, but
necessary density. In this case, the curator also fulfills an artistic achievement, only if I were to lock its exhibits into the building, making sure that everything
which he would like see documented in the catalogue, at least by presenting the were to remain as it was. But this is impossible.
sequence of images with their commentaries in the way they were realized in the
exhibition. In the final analysis, however, any exhibition is more persuasive than Berlin, 14 April 2005
any documentation one might make, no matter how good it is.
SF: At a recent talk in Berlins Kulturforum, Paolo Bianchi spoke of archives as the
purification plants of contemporary culture. Could one say that the exhibitions or
Rafal B. Niemojewski
From the point of view of display strategies, the white cube is still a dominant It was never an objective of biennials to look into the past. Already with the birth
model, while the dirty, post-industrial cube has become a new favorite of biennial of the first such large-scale exhibition, the Venice Biennial, the aim was to show
curators. Recently, with increasing pressure to make large-scale exhibitions more the most noble activities of the modern spirit2 and to survey the art of our time.
site-specific, curators look for more adventurous venues, with subway stations Similar aspirations were evoked when, more than half a century later, the So Paulo
currently in the lead (Moscow, Istanbul, Berlin). Over the course of a history Biennial was established, based on the Venetian model of an exhibition compris-
marked by several groundbreaking shows, biennials began to be perceived as ing national representations. In this respect, the early biennials can be seen as the
playgrounds or, if you prefer, laboratories for new models and trends in curating direct descendants of the nineteenth-century salon now institutionalized, with
and especially given the usually enormous scale of such shows in different its own venue (the Palazzo del Arte in Venice, Niemayer Hall in So Paulo), ex-
forms of co-curating or team-curating. panded many times over in size, and updated with a new spirit of internationalism.
In 1955, the first Documenta introduced a different model of a single international
When opening the international symposium in Sharjah in April, Tirdad Zolghadr, exhibition. This initially encompassed a broader spectrum of the Kunst des XX.
its host, mentioned meta-narratives as a common feature of biennials. Indeed, Jahrhunderts, but after its second edition Documenta evolved toward a survey of
it does seem that biennials are beginning to enjoy talking about themselves. It current art production. In 1980, the soggy foundations of the Venice Biennial shook
should be noted that a growing number of conferences on biennials are organized when Harald Szeemann and Achille Bonito Oliva introduced Aperto, a new section
by biennials themselves and often take place as part of their opening. Further that questioned the anachronism of a structure based on national pavilions. But the
evidence of this phenomenon is the increasing number of public-relations events most defining event for the biennial tradition as we know it today came four years
on behalf of one biennial organized during other biennials. The presentation of later, with the birth of the first large-scale exhibition in the Third World.
the Moscow Biennial was initially due to take place during Manifesta 5, for in-
stance, or, more recently, the launch event for the new Singapore Biennial was La Bienal de Habana was groundbreaking in all sorts of ways. For one thing,
scheduled during the opening of the Venice Biennial. Such a surprising level for the first time, the focus was clearly directed toward art coming from Latin
The first edition of the Havana Biennial, and the emergence of the Istanbul Bien- Right after the second edition of Documenta in 1959, its initiator, Arnold Bode,
nial in 1987, mark a turn in biennial history: the birth of a new breed of globalized established the Center for Research on International Modern Art in Kassel; this
biennials and the start of their spectacular proliferation. The climax of this trend eventually became not only one of the leading libraries specializing in twentieth-
came in the mid-1990s, when every year at least one new biennial exhibition was century art, but also a unique collection of material concerning the eleven Docu-
introduced. Today, we count over fifty exhibitions of this type worldwide, mostly menta shows so far. It wasnt until very recently, however, that serious research
located in territories that until recently were considered peripheral Central and on this material was launched, starting with the titanic project of reconstructing
Eastern Europe, Asia, and South America. the fifth Documenta, curated by Harald Szeemann in 1972, which, from an art-
historical point of view, was certainly the most groundbreaking.
With this new generation of biennials, the scope of their historical perspective
grew even shorter and, in addition to considering the present, biennials increas- The Venetian counterpart of the Documenta Archiv is the Historic Archives of Con-
ingly started to reflect on the future. The historically oriented exhibition became temporary Art (ASAC). While preserving the Venice Biennials documented history
a rarity and, if included at all in a program, were presented more as a subsidiary and, in earlier times, actively participating in its events, this archive is currently
event (examples include From Rauschenberg to Murakami 1964-2003 in Venice entirely unusable due to the on-going restoration of its headquarters in Venice.
and Accomplices in Moscow). Several efforts to include traditional art forms in
a biennial exhibition yielded truly disastrous outcomes, the most prominent ex- Both exhibitions are the subjects of a small but solid literature: Lawrence Allo-
ample being the Beijing Biennials attempt to display international contemporary ways history of the Venice Biennial, and two separate books, as well as a special
art with an eye on traditional Chinese easel painting. issue of Kunstforum, devoted to the history of Documenta.3 The same has been
true also of some of the more established biennials of the younger generation: the
Vadim Zakharov
Archiving Underground
New York
Yasmine Van Pee is an Boredom is always counterrevolutionary. art history: history tends to favor institutional affiliations over scattered ephemera. 3
Sometimes also referred
emerging curator and to as New Wave, and
critic from Belgium, who
Situationist slogan, Paris, May 1968 The Pictures group, especially, tapped into or, more precisely, was created out of in a later incarnation
is based in New York the concerns of critical postmodernism. Leaving aside for now its obvious merits, No Wave the
and Montreal. She holds history of the terms is
Of Reaganites and Bad Painting: Picturing 1980s New York we can note that the particularities of critical postmodernism effectively led to the too complex to dive
an M.A. in curatorial
studies from the Center exclusion of a wide range of practices deemed unfit, including such practices as into here. Discussions
for Curatorial Studies at The eighties in the United States are often characterized as an apolitical era of high are now being documented by the CCS archives. of the history of punk,/
Bard College, where she New Wave, No Wave
is currently employed as consumerism, superficiality, and right-wing politics. A decade of glut and garishly and their relationship
an assistant archivist and bad taste. As far as art goes, well, most of it has been relegated to historys back- Archiving the Underground to the New York art
research scholar. She is a scene may be found
founding member of the
yard, a hangover-inducing memory in Day-Glo featuring barrel-chested neo-expres- in Bernard Gendron,
Fortune Cookie Art Group sionists and the slick glitz of neoconceptualism. Lost between the cracks is an It is probably a good idea to remind ourselves of the original messy multitude of Between Montmartre
in Ghent and 1099 and the Mudd Club:
entire substrate of underground art practice, a strain of art production that was si- practices in the period. The project underway at the Center for Curatorial Studies Popular Music and the
Productions in Montreal.
multaneously radically anti-institutional, populist, and utopian in a hand-me-down, to research and document alternative exhibition practice in late 1970s to mid Avant-Garde (Chicago
mottled kind of way. The forms it took varied widely, from art events in makeshift 1980s New York aims to create a centralized archive of the period, which and London: University
1
This slogan appeared of Chicago Press, 2002);
on a poster for The venues and punk nightclubs like Mudd Club and Club 57, to artist-produced cable will be available to interested researchers. Very concretely, we pursue four main Steven Hager, Art After
Batman Show, one of the TV shows, indie zine-styled art magazines, poster art in various incarnations, and activities: first, collecting visual documentation, printed material, and ephemera, Midnight: The East
earliest thematic loft- Village Scene (New
shows by the New York
the founding of such guerrilla artist-run spaces as Fashion Moda and ABC No Rio. such as posters and flyers, from artists and curators; second, interviewing key York: St. Martins Press,
artist collective Colab. It About a year ago, the archives of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in figures; third, surveying existing archives, both public and private, so as to com- 1986); and Yasmine Van
was organized by Diego Pee, Boredom Is Always
upstate New York, a cluster of archives focused on post-1960s curatorial practice, pile a record of available sources; and fourth, surveying mainstream art journals
Cortez in January 1979. Counterrevolutionary: Art
embarked on a project to document this underground.2 and newspapers, as well as underground zines and publications with limited in Downtown New York
2
The project is funded distribution, in order to create a library of articles from the period that will provide Nightclubs, 1978-1985
by a grant from the Keith (masters thesis, Center
Haring Foundation. To judge from recent exhibitions, the eighties art scene of downtown New York is a context for the purely documentary materials. Geographically, the scope of the for Curatorial Studies at
fast becoming canonized. As overview-shows like the recent East Village USA at archive is confined to downtown New York, in particular the East Village (also Bard College, 2004).
the New Museum of Contemporary Art and the upcoming The Downtown Show: called the Lower East Side). When you walk through that part of New York today,
The New York Scene, 19741984, organized by New York Universitys Grey it is hard to imagine the kind of place it was twenty-five years ago. Today tourists
Art Gallery, usher the decade into mainstream art history, it becomes further stroll through streets lined with pretty little boutiques and bistros, but back then,
removed from experience as it is reduced to words and a selective list of names the Lower East Side was a wasteland of decrepit tenements, drug addicts shoot-
and images. The energy and exuberance of the period somehow seems to have ing galleries, boarded-up buildings, and burnt-out lots. Its low rents and its loca-
gotten lost. Parallel to this is the growing canonization of the period within aca- tion on the periphery of the SoHo district were the main attractions for a younger
demia. The study of 1980s art seems to have crystallized around discussions of generation of artists who were gradually being pushed out of SoHo by rising rents
institutional critique and appropriation (in the latter case often referencing artists and spreading gentrification. But there was also, of course, the music.
associated with the Pictures group), with most of the rest of the decades artistic
production dismissed as retrograde and, frankly, too ugly to discuss. It is, indeed, It is hard to overestimate the impact of punk on artistic practice in New York.3
not wholly surprising that these two strains of art practice have usurped 1980s In the mid-1970s, the punk scene crystallized around the infamous CBGBs, a
7
The term constructed through the exclusion of inconveniently deviant practices. The re- nature, this model is seldom discussed, though the importance of analyzing the 8
In particular writers
exhibitionality is introduction of art historys discarded methodologies may form just one way to communion of art and mass spectacle hardly needs stressing. associated with the
borrowed from Martha journal October.
Ward, Impressionist move beyond this gridlock.
Installations and Private Another notion that surfaces in the archive of New York underground curating in
Exhibitions, The Art
The creation of an archive that documents exhibition practices ignored by main- the late 1970s and early 1980s is that of critical praxis. Against the grain of the
Bulletin 73 (December
1991): 599-622. stream scholarship and academic criticism has a broader implication as well, reigning sentiments in academic criticism about the 1980s, Id like to suggest
namely, in the opportunities it offers for enriching our understanding of exhibi- that when a practice situates itself as an alternative to the established system
tion history by emphasizing the temporal fluidity and fundamental diversity of of art production, display, and distribution, that gesture has inherent critical po-
exhibition modes. I believe that it is in the concept of exhibitionality which tential, regardless of whether the works that circulate within that practice exhibit
underscores the play between the art object and its site of display and exchange overtly critical or political content or present radically new formal investigations.
that exhibition history finds its raison dtre.7 The study of how the display of It is certainly true that a large portion of works exhibited through underground
art corresponds to and affects art production and the understanding of art opens curating and publishing in 1980s New York did not engage in explicitly critical
a window into both the development of contemporary art and the social and aes- discourse, nor did they have an obvious political leaning or engage particular
thetic framework that structures its reception. It is in this light that the acid-free social issues. Often, works were intended solely as an expression of the individual
boxes and binders of the archive present their most disruptive potential. They feelings of the artist, which they communicated through quite traditional formal
contain trails that run counter to entrenched narratives regarding the dynamic be- means. Not surprisingly, such works were written off as retrograde by most critics,
tween modern art and the spaces in which it was shown: the saga of modernisms both then and now. What is more important, however, is that the circuits in which
dance with the walls of the white cube a fairly linear tale of reduction, flat- these works circulated were also dismissed. Critical postmodernism, especially,
tening, and ever greater confusion between the object and its context of display. had a particular and rather peculiar blind spot for critical forms of distribution and
The archives boxes do not accentuate any uniform tale of exhibitionality, but display.8 Looking back at the polemics of the eighties, it is striking how such al-
rather encompass the diverse routes taken by the interaction between art objects ternative practices have been marginalized in favor of overtly critical art that never
and their sites of display and exchange. Our boxes, then, contain the potential had a problem functioning within the confines of the established art system.
to effectively mess up the received history and distill from it a new and richer
understanding of the social and aesthetic forces at the interface of art and soci- Yet there is a case to be made for the importance of alternative forms of practice.
ety. For instance, one important alternative model of exhibition practice especially In The Author as Producer, Walter Benjamin argues that the criterion of a works
obvious in the Center archive is the funhouse. This represents a pervasive strain political potential is its position within the system of production, not its subject
in exhibition history, as even a makeshift list will demonstrate: think of the caf matter. A political tendency, he says, has a counterrevolutionary function as
The exhibition was sent at 22.40 PM, relatively late in the evening, but received Identification
good press coverage. It was however not well received by the TV channel that
paid for the production costs, which were actually larger than some museums Very late in relation to Schums own utopian plan of continuation, the second exhibi-
would have invested in such an exhibition at the time. Gerry Schum had some- tion was sent at 22.40 PM on 30.11.1970 with contributions from Joseph Beuys,
what of a political agenda about giving the artists the same rights as other allo- Reiner Ruthenbeck, Klaus Rinke, Ulrich Rckriem, Daniel Buren, Hamish Fulton,
graphic creators like writers, composers and musicians. The ideological thought Gilbert & George, Stanley Brown, Ger van Eik, Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti,
behind a TV gallery was to make art more accessible for a larger mass of onlook- Pierpaolo Calzolari, Gino de Domeninicis, Mario Merz, Gilberto Zorio, Gary Kuehn,
ers. The time was almost mature enough for such a revolution and television and Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Franz Erhard Walther and Lawrence Weiner. The large
video were considered the correct mediums for this kind of expansion, and for amount of artist and the more opened up title makes the exhibition more varying
the democratisation of art. But as Daniel Buren points out in an interview in the than in Land Art. The body is in focus, often its rashes or limitations. The two grand
extensive exhibition catalogue Ready to Shoot, the exhibition of Schums galleries exclusions are Gilbert & Georges Ohne Titel, where the artists sit quite relaxed in a
in Kunsthalle Dsseldorf in 2004: Unfortunately the idea of confronting quite British garden landscape for 1:25 minutes, and not the least Daniel Buren, who dis-
normal consumers with art through the medium of television, was a dream. It was played the TV stations board of warning of technical problems for almost a minute.
a very successful dream, but it never became reality. What Buren means is that The artists with the probable largest impact because of its sense of humour were Ger
television already by then was reserved for one type of information that art was van Eik, who showed the piece in which you can see a close up of a cactus that gets
unable to overtake, and that you could not democratise art through television a shave by a razor, and Gino de Dominicis, who showed the work where he tries to
or more precise, that you could not democratise art at all. fly with help of his own powers. Maybe because I cannot swim, I decided to try to
learn how to fly, says De Dominicis in the voiceover of the piece.
Schum is described by Christiane Fricke in the book Dies alles Herzchen wird
einmal Dir Gehren as both a product and a brilliant catalyst of the art of his age,
but he was in the same degree a prototype of how the curator helps the artists to
realize pieces of art that would never be possible otherwise. This means that the
word catalyst could be transmitted to how Schum acted with the exhibitions that
he produced. It is rarely more correct to say that these pieces of art would never
have been produced without a certain person. Besides the more regular responsi-
bilities, Schum combined technical knowledge about film and video as a medium
with a propelling force for the democratisation of contemporary art and the goal
to make it more easy for artists to make a living out of their creations. For most
of the artists it was the first time to work with the medium of television, or, in the
worst case, a monitor. Contemporary art also became a very demanding medium,
because for broadcasting requires much more organizing work is required than
Frdric Maufras
Film on Art:
A Potential Memory
of Exhibitions, to be
Itself Preserved
Frdric Maufras is One of the major points of interest in the recent travelling exhibition of Gerry Pierre Coulibeuf,
a freelance critic and Klossowski, Peintre-
curator, who contributes
Schums work is that it helps to offer a new visibility for an approach that is Exorciste (1987-88,
to many magazines encountered less and less in art institutions and TV channels: the approach of 25 min, 35 mm, color)
around the world, Regards Productions
the auteur-cum-director of films on art. The visual arts do indeed crop up in the
such as the Canadian
magazine Parachute, and worlds film pantheon, to wit, the numerous museum scenes in Alfred Hitchcocks
teaches communications Vertigo and the great classics structured around pictorial representation, such as
and visual semiology
in Paris. After running Michelangelo Antonionis Blow Up and Andrei Tarkovskys Andrei Roublev, but
a radio programme few dedicated film auteurs have made films, whose central object is artworks
devoted to contemporary
art, he also studied
themselves - two who have being Alain Resnais and Chris Marker.
film making, which in
turn prompted him to
The so-called film on art category undeniably stems from the catch-all, describ-
write and direct several
documentary films on art ing works (be they undertaken on film or using video), whose way of looking at
and literature. things overlaps with the way artworks, artists and even exhibitions look at things.
And yet there is not much in common between a documentary approach like that
of Henri Storck, one of the pioneers in the genre with his film about Paul Delvaux,
made in 1944, and the more recent approach adopted by Pierre Coulibeuf, who
himself produces an artwork by incorporating Michelangelo Pistoletto in a fiction
film titled LHomme noir (The Black Man).
The fact is that we have above all made this type of film distinct from the tradition-
al cinema, to the point of institutionalizing it somewhere between the 1970s and
1980s. This period saw the creation, among other things, of a specialized col- of the Earth) made by Gianfranco Barberi and Marco di Castri in 1989, dealing
lection at the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the International Festival with Jean-Hubert Martins curatorial project - are focused on an exhibition, thus
of Film on Art and Pedagogics [FIFAP] in 1976, and the Montreal International proposing a consequent visual memory. And fifteen years later there is little risk
Festival of Films on Art in 1981. Over and above their own cinematographic chal- of encountering this type of work, when museums have considerably reduced
lenges, audiovisual works were actually seen in those days through the memory- their production budgets and general television channels, and often even cultural
based challenge, which they could bring to the public as well as to specialists in channels, too, grumble and make a fuss about investing in such films, if they do
the visual arts. not also entail social and historical challenges. To such a degree that it is nowa-
days quite hard to come across a global project, such as Gerry Schums study,
Some people, on the fringe of written art criticism, have specialized in this adven- which has been broadcast on one such channel.
ture, two such being Gerry Schum and Heinz Peter Schwerfel, but this is because
this type of work was also designed to be transmitted by television stations. For Television worldwide has actually changed considerably since the heyday of film
all this, few films one being the outstanding Magiciens de la terre (Magicians on art, between the 1960s and the 1980s, and the ambitious films then made by
Solutions still exist. If institutions were to earmark part of their budgets for the es-
tablishment of favorable conditions for creating a film archive of their exhibitions,
the backing of international organizations like UNESCO (which has incidentally
accommodated the FIFAP in its premises since 1985) could also be applied for
with regard to conserving an area of human memory.
Anton Vidokle
Notes on Exhibition
Archives, Real Estate
Shortage and Other
Problems
Anton Vidokle is a A few years ago I was invited to contribute to a publication called Interarchive forced to move. Of course moving the enormous paper cocoon he had been oc- Firstenberg and based
Moscow-born, New York- on the photo archive of
based artist. His work
- a rather large book that dealt with all sort of archival practices from artists cupying and finding a new place for it would be extremely difficult. No doubt, David Alfaro Siqueiros.
has been exhibited in works to personal collections. For my contribution I photographed the archive with real estate prices increasing astronomically in New York City over the years, Along with Florian
such international shows Waldvogel and Mai
of Jean Noel Herlin, who lived in the same New York housing complex as me, any new place he could afford would be even smaller than this current apart- Abu Eldahab, Vidokle
as the Venice Biennial,
the Dakar Biennial, on the 14th floor. Jean Noel has been collecting various exhibition ephemera: ment. He was very alarmed and I felt sad for him. I was relieved when I ran is one of the curators of
and the d Biennial, invitation cards, posters, press releases and small catalogues from New York into Jean Noel again a few weeks later: he found a studio apartment uptown Manifesta 6, scheduled
as well as at Tate to take place in Nicosia,
Modern, the Moderna galleries since the early 1970s, and has amassed close to a million documents and was moving in the next few days - while the archive would finally be go- Cyprus, in 2006.
Galerija Ljubljana, the of this nature in his small one bedroom apartment. The apartment was so filled ing to a separate storage space! Perhaps Jean Noel will now find a girlfriend...
Muse dArt Moderne
de la Ville de Paris,
with cardboard boxes, files and folders, that all that remained for a living space
the Museo Carrillo Gil was a narrow path leading from the bedroom to the kitchen, a tiny area with I am really happy that e-flux is an electronic and not a physical flux. If not, I
(Mexico City), the UCLA
two small chairs and a coffee table and one half of the bed. He slept sideways would probably be stuck with an incredible amount of clutter. It is very much a
Hammer Museum (Los
Angeles), the Institute because the rest of the bed housed yet more files and boxes. This small space growing archive of exhibitions where, should you want, you can easily access
of Contemporary Art occupied by an enormous archive was truly a spectacle - both appealing in its thousands of press texts, artists statements and images from, what is in our
(Boston), Haus der
Kunst (Munich), and aesthetic of yellowing papers accumulating dust, and absolutely repulsive be- opinion, some of the most interesting or important international public art institu-
PS1 (New York), among cause of the kind of lifestyle it imposed on its inhabitant: it was not a place tions and initiatives in the past four or five years. Rather than being all-inclusive,
others. Together with
Julieta Aranda, Vidokle
suited for having a partner or a lover, but more of something like a hermits cell. it is instead an extremely selective bank of information. The archive at e-flux is
put together e-flux video growing rapidly at a pace of about 60 or 70 new items each month and is ac-
rental, which started
Jean Noel and I spoke at length about his collection. His archive is non-hier- cessible from anywhere on the planet with Internet access 24 hours 7 days a
in New York and is
traveling to Kunst-Werke archical and includes material from some important exhibitions at well-known week. So in this sense it can be a useful tool and is completely free for anyone
(Berlin), International institutions and galleries, as well as numerous articles from completely marginal interested in such research. In fact it seems that many people are interested, as
Foundation Manifesta
(Amsterdam), the Moore places that probably do not have historical value. This lack of selectivity was an we keep basic statistics of visitors to our site and find that every month more
Space (Miami), and important point that, for Jean Noel, implied a political value. He told me that he than ten thousand readers appear to search for information. The only disconcert-
other venues. As the
founding director of
sees the archive as an artwork related to certain theoretical concepts that had ing aspect of all this is its instability. The Internet is still very young and not
e-flux, Anton Vidokle been popular during his studies in France in the late 1960s. He also said that very permanent; you pull a plug and the whole thing can vanish without a trace.
produced and published
he had tried to end this work many times -only to find himself compelled to con-
online projects and print
publications such as tinue. Jean Noel then asked me if I would like him to look up information he has I think this instability is one of the reasons why recently we decided to also
The Next Documenta on my work and exhibitions. I promptly declined. For some reason I found the engage in more object-based enterprises such as book publishing or physical
Should Be Curated by
an Artist, Do it, Utopia idea of seeing a direct connection to myself within this situation rather disturbing. projects. Our first project not based online is e-flux video rental (EVR), a free
Station Poster Project, video rental shop, a screening room and a video archive. Launched at our store-
and others, including the
upcoming project and
Recently I ran into Jean Noel in the neighborhood caf. He was very upset. Ap- front on the Lower East Side of New York in September 2004, EVR comprises
exhibition entitled An parently for the past 25 or so years he has been living in this apartment covertly, more than 500 individual works by something like 260 artists and operates
Image Bank for Everyday
sub-letting it from a friend (which is not allowed in our housing complex). Now three international branches in Berlin, Amsterdam and Miami. To put together
Revolutionary Life,
co-curated with Lauri that the building was purchased by a new owner he was found out and is now this project, Julieta Aranda and I contacted nearly 50 curators/selectors, who
In the current issue of Frieze (90), Jrg Heiser writes: Over recent decades
artists seem to have become increasingly aware of the issue of circulation not
only as a practical, social and economic one, external to their actual work, but
an aesthetic one, at the core of it. And it is precisely in such a way that EVR
is best approached. Why do issues of circulation seem so important? To answer
this question it is interesting to think back to the beginning of modern art and to
recall many Bauhaus artists and artists of the Russian avant-garde who were all
interested in working with books, posters, industrially mass produced objects,
films, etc., and then again, after the Second World War why so much of the
artists we now consider as originators of the phenomenon of contemporary art
like the conceptual artists, the Situationists, etc., similarly embraced ephem-
eral modes of production. Among other reasons, for me this always pointed to
a certain desire implicit for significant artists of the past 100 years to make art
An Active Archive
Marieke van Hal is Archives usually have the appearance of something closed, dead, and dusty. But Roy Cerpac, The
general coordinator of the Diamond of Manifesta,
International Foundation
what are the task and the meaning of an archive? What possible function might it drawings at Manifesta
Manifesta in Amsterdam serve? What is its use? Can archives be something active and alive? at Home, Amsterdam,
and managing editor of 2003.
MJ Manifesta Journal.
An art historian, she The meaning of an archive (literally: a place or collection containing records, docu- Manifesta 4 decided
previously worked as ments, or other materials of historical interest) is referring to the past and is basi- to show as part of the
curator at Montevideo/ Biennial program the
TBA, the Netherlands cally determining to look back. Generally we regard an archive to stand still; it complete curatorial
Media Art Institute. is a depository for stored memories or information. With regard to professional research, presenting all
the artists documentation
I would like to refer to
archives, we envision the archive being used regularly by study or research for a the curators researched
the book Interarchive specific purpose or need. An archive comes alive when one uses it as a tool to cre- in a public installation
edited by Beatrice von conceived by the French
ate new insights or generate new knowledge; an archive = information = the past artist Mathieu Mercier.
Bismarck, Hans-Peter
Feldmann and Hans = knowledge = knowledge for the future. In the field of contemporary art we are
Ulrich Obrist, published mostly acquainted with archives in relation to artists, artists archives, and the con-
by the Kunstraum der
Universitt Lneburg servation of art works (museum depots). Museums continuously show the most
(2002) in which the important part of their archive, the permanent collection, or regularly use their
meaning of archives in
contemporary art are
depots for putting up new exhibitions based on a specific selection of art works of
being researched. The the collection, added with works from other museums or private collections. This is
Interarchive project was
always based on research and studies for a new angle of incidence or theme.
based on the donation
of the personal archive
of curator Hans Ulrich How do we keep memory of exhibitions, taking place outside the museum circuit,
Obrist to the University of the public, contains documents relating to the production of the exhibitions and
Lneburg. when we regard an exhibition as a collective giving a specific reflection of an theoretical discourses, as well as books, press clippings, video documents, floor
artistic time? What happens with the documentation of independent art projects plans and digital images from all the Manifesta Biennials. It also includes flyers,
by significant curators? Are biennial and curatorial archives worth keeping for posters, invitation cards, buttons, catalogues, art books and magazines, biogra-
memory? From the beginning, Manifesta, as a nomadic biennial of contemporary phies, bibliographies, and portfolios for the 214 artists and the 17 curators who
art, envisioned a flexible structure for the organisation, one that would enable it have participated in Manifesta so far, as well as the complete curatorial artists
to change and experiment and thus avoid the pitfalls of institutionalism. Although archive of Manifesta 4 and Manifesta 5 presenting the complete artists docu-
there were, after the early editions of Manifesta, piles of artist portfolios, cata- mentation the curators researched, containing more than a thousand portfolios of
logues, and other publications holed away in storage rooms, garages, and private those who were not presented in Manifesta.
homes, it was not until 2002, at the time of the fourth edition in Frankfurt, that
Manifesta started establishing a framework for preserving its memory. All cities What has always intrigued me is that in between all the materials, one can find
were visited and all documents from the first Manifesta exhibitions were collected documents, i.e. letters, reports, notes, email correspondences, photos, film re-
at Manifesta at Home, the base of the Foundation in Amsterdam. This archive, cordings of numerous historic meetings, interviews, talks and events that took
which is now covering five Manifesta editions and which is made accessible for place behind the screens. Maybe more than any artist portfolio or catalogue text
Sandra Frimmel
An Interview with
Matthias Mller
and Peter Piller
Sandra Frimmel (1977) SF: How would you describe your archive? What are the criteria according times, about 20,000 prints, and the fifth or sixth time around it finally started Footage Film Festival
is an art historian and art (1996 and 99), the
critic based in Berlin. She to which you collect and archive, and how do you make use of the archive to get interesting. This kind of process has to be repeated several times. first German festival of
is also a Ph.D candidate afterwards? There is a particular focus in a glance that is concentrated on something for autobiographical films,
at the Department of Art Ich etc. (1998), and
a very long time, and this takes time. When you discover something you first various touring programs.
History at the Humboldt-
Universitt in Berlin. In PP: I began collecting about eight years ago. At that time I went for walks have to tire of what you have discovered before youre open in order to see For more than fifteen
2003 she received the around the Ruhr and took a lot of photographs. My intention was to photograph something new. years he has taken part
prize of the Corporation with his films and videos
General Satellite for in a way that did not reveal what the object being photographed actually was. in major film festivals
contemporary art in the My purpose was to capture interspaces. But this was a kind of photographic MM: Like any other artistic practice the work with the material found goes worldwide, including
category Scholarship the festivals at Cannes,
for the preparation of a question I was not able to solve myself. By chance I happened to find the an- through various phases some that are determined rather by spontaneity and Venice, Berlin and
scientific study in the swer in a local newspaper where I discovered the kind of photographs that I intuition and others that are influenced though reflection and taking distance Rotterdam. His work
area of contemporary has also been featured
wanted to take: a site intended for future construction. I had been searching for from ones own fascination for particular artefacts. The fact that I pile up a lot in several group and
art for her study titled
The Russian Pavilion this kind of photographic perspective for a long time and consequently started of material around me doesnt mean that I have to work with all of this acquired solo exhibitions, for
at the Venice Biennale collecting photos of that type. I was able to do this at the time because I was wealth. Very often its just a case of generating a creative work situation. Both example at Documenta
from 1990 to 2003 X, Manifesta 3, and in
Between Self- working in a media agency. My daily, quite mindless job consisted of leafing targeted and random collecting always involve conscious sorting otherwise the Whitney Museum
representation and through newspapers and tearing out advertisements. At the time I found myself I would end up a messie. Its the hierarchy of an ordered system that turns of American Art and the
Self-definition. Recent Muse du Louvre. Since
exhibition projects in a unique position because I had daily access to a vast array of newspapers the jumble into a collection. 2003 he is Professor
include Reflection at that I would never have been able to afford myself. I did this for several years for Experimental Film at
the National Center the Academy of Media
as a research job. Finding hundreds of photo negatives in a rubbish container was a coincidence
for Contemporary Arts, Arts (KHM), Cologne,
Moscow (2005) and that happened to me at the roadside on the way from my flat to the studio; Germany.
FUTURE7 Eurovision On the question of how I collect: Its significant that I didnt approach this with this was a case of snapping a chance because the material would have been
at the Center for Peter Piller (Fritzlar,
Contemporary Culture, the intention of identifying anything in particular. I became aware of something disposed of at any moment. Viewing and sorting the pictures then took several Germany, 1968) studied
Ekaterinburg, Russia and was usually not even sure myself what of, so first I just filed it in a tempo- weeks. Only when I am familiar with the material can I develop criteria, name German Language and
(2004). She contributes Literature and trained
regularly to Moscow Art rary folder. In the course of a few years this collection with various collection themes and devise techniques that enable further processing to follow a spe- as a visual artist. His
Magazine, Artchronika, areas grew to around 6,000 photos. I cut all of them out and filed each picture cific path. archives to date have
taz die tageszeitung been published in eight
and Plato Review.
according to subject topics. Obviously, now my collection isnt growing at the volumes by Revolver
same rate as in the beginning since there is a maximum amount of pictures In my archives I collect what counts as mass-media canon, globally circulated, Verlag (Frankfurt am
Matthias Mller per category. I dont need any more than 100 photos per category since I cant industrially produced films in the hope of finding something unseen in what Main), which also
(Bielefeld, Germany, published the series of
1961) studied Art and process more than 100 in one book or show them in an exhibition. has occurred thousands of times as well as material intended for disposal, aerial photos Von Erde
German Literature. He rejected material or that certified as substandard. One of my most important schoener. Piller was
works in film, video and awarded the Ars Viva
photography, and has Two years ago I was offered what was left from an aerial photograph company finds is the only film in the Sao Paulo film museum that was not considered Prize 2004 and received
organised numerous boxes full of prints. This situation was similar to the newspaper pictures. For worthy of being included on the archives official inventory list. We pass just as the Rubens Prize from
avant-garde film events, the City of Siegen. He
six months I sat looking at them, baffled; it was only then that the first picture clear a comment on ourselves through the material we dispose of as through
such as the Found exhibited widely at
groups started to take shape. In the end I looked through the material several what we consider to be fit for archiving. In this respect my collector activity is museums and galleries
PP: Yes, certainly. The pictures have been released from their context. The shift- The transfer of the work into alternating contexts is exciting as exciting as my
ing of context in the exhibition rooms benefits me greatly since it provides me with artistic discourse with decontextualised pictures and tones and ones that have
the opportunity to present my own beliefs as generally binding. The wonderful been implanted into new contexts. At best this enables the content of an oeuvre
thing about exhibiting is that it constantly leads to misunderstandings. to appear that would have been overlooked within other contexts.
Many situations in the newspaper photos have no meaning without the pho- SF: You said that after the exhibition the works survive only in the memories
tography; they are scenes from a moment in which the photographer took the of the visitors. They are, as it were, deactivated in their materiality between
picture. Without the photographer the situation would not come about. Many presentations. Do you consider the immaterial afterlife of your works in the
people from the countryside come to the city in order to experience culture. memory of the visitor as an integral component of the works? How significant
They know all of these pictures from the past. When they see the same pic- is this form of afterlife in your works for you?
tures put into order all of their memories return causing the emergence of a
SF: To a large extent the construction of meaning takes place within the ob-
servers memory, in the intermediary work between the observers own wealth
of experience and the works presented in your exhibitions that mobilise memo-
ries that he/she believed to have forgotten. Is this about administrating memo-
ries or about producing them?
Roomers Sight
9
Charalambidis, Emin
landscape has been transformed. Charalambidiss dictum: Good Walls Make
in a Social Gym Workout Before this could be developed any further, we heard, to our delight, that the Good Neighbors, has taken on a different meaning, and it would seem that the
Meeting. Minister of Education and Culture (an architect of distinction, who had trained in time has finally arrived for the strenuous gymnastics that might be capable of re-
London) was willing to give his formal consent to my proposals for the Cypriot pa- energizing the sclerotic zones of this contested territory. In September 2006, the
vilion as a whole, including the room dedicated to Emin; the only conditions were sixth edition of Manifesta, the European Contemporary Art Biennial, will be held
that politics should not be uppermost and that Emin should be included explicitly in Nicosia, and it is billed as a bicommunal event. We may hope that it will have
as a guest of the Cypriot government. The way was thus open for me to approach the power to mobilize the energies of participants from the widest possible social
Emin through Jay Jopling, her dealer at White Cube; Emin herself was at the time and geographical constituencies.
spending some months in Australia. Initially, both Emin and Jopling responded
to the proposal with spontaneous enthusiasm, but later, in the cold light of day,
they began to have second thoughts. Emin was recovering from a period of stress The author would like to thank Nikos Charalambidis for his assistance with the
caused by overwork and decided to stay longer in Australia; understandably, per- preparation of this memoir.
haps, she also entertained ambitions of her own for making her dbut in Venice
in propria persona, rather than in effigy, astride a donkey or preparing a magic
potion. Her final answer was a gracious, but firm refusal.
Charalambidiss union with his enemy was not to be, and this political-meta-
physical relationship was never consummated. Instead, by an ironic twist of the
artists imagination, the visitor to the exhibition was introduced to an intimate
space, which might have been Emins, through a mirror set in the bottom of an
upended sofa. This was yet another throwback to the artists childhood and to
his recollection of paying a school visit to a secret hideout used by Colonel (later,
General) Grivass National Organization of Cypriot Fighters (EOKA), in the struggle
for independence from the British during the 1950s. So a certain consistency of
approach was preserved, by virtually smuggling the visitor into the broad utopian
space of the Casa curva.
On 23 April (St. Georges Day), six weeks before the opening of the exhibition
in Venice, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus took the wholly unexpected
decision to open two of the four crossing points in the Green Line, or Wall, that
Part 1: Presentations
Archive:
MARIEKE VAN HAL:
Welcome everybody at the MJ discussion in the Tallinn Art Hall. My name is
Marieke van Hal, and I am coordinator of the International Foundation Manifesta
MJ Discussion, 8 April 2005, Tallinn Art Hall, Estonia The International Foundation Manifesta, based in Amsterdam, is the head or-
ganisation of the Manifesta Biennial, which is moving every two years to another
European city. Manifesta 5 took place in 2004 in San Sebastian, in the Basque
country of Spain, and Manifesta 6 will be held in Cyprus next year, in the capital
Nicosia.
Sirje Helme is an art historian and curator from Tallinn. She is currently the direc- What does Manifesta mean by active archiving? What is the idea behind it?
tor of the Centre for Contemporary Arts here in Tallinn and she has recently been When Manifesta was incepted in the 1990s, we began with the idea that
appointed director of the new art museum, which is under construction. Manifesta should be different in terms of creating a changing, flexible and ex-
perimenting structure that would not suffer from too much institutionalism. Al-
Beside this simple story of an archive I want to go back to the background of that Of course the paper archives have changed a lot in the past 2,000 years, even
the archive was invented by rulers and governers of countries and societies. The if the main changing only happened in the last forty years. At the moment weve
4% of people who were able to read and write of course never connected with the got bigger and better computers to digitalize all the writings on paper, which have
culture and the education compared to all the illiterate people. People who were been stored on paper before. It is again a big new tool for us, this digitalization of
educated and introduced to all kind of knowledge usually came from the circle of words and pictures. But it raises again the question of what will be the bad side.
leaders of religion and of course leaders of people, of communities. I did not under- Because like I said before, all big things have two sides.
stand in the beginning what it means that it was a government who invented the
paper archive and what the connection was, but if you think of Russia, maybe the Photography was already kind of an extension of the old archives, pictures on
KGB without their archive, then you understand what it means to have an archive. paper. But today you find that even photography is being digitalized, so the little
Or the German Gestapo, or the German Stasi this would have been completely step of a hundred years, when photos were only on paper, is already past.
impossible without an archive. These police organisations were only one tool of the
government, so government is using the archive as a tool to install governments. No The negative side of the archive and digitalization could maybe be Bill Gates, the
archive means no government. At least in the negative case the governments can- owner of Microsoft. He is really one of the richest persons in the world; he can use
not survive without big archives. The totalitarian systems would not survive with- his money to start a big new business. In the last few years he has been buying all
out their archives, because normal opposition would have thrown them over very kinds of photographic archives around the world. At the moment, he has got the big-
quickly. The archive is a tool for governments, an instrument to rule a country. gest archive of photography around. The archive is called Corbis and anybody can
buy pictures from it. Gates buys the rights from other archives and sells them again.
The archives in general are a kind of a benediction for our culture. We can go He is still buying an archive once a month from somewhere around the world, so one
back to our past times to find out what people did then and where they reached day he will have a monopoly of pictures. This might be if it is misused the bad
in their struggle to survive and to build up culture. We can learn from archives. side. At the moment it is only used to make money, but maybe one day it will also
But it seems to be a natural law that all the good things in the world always have be used for other things, you never know. And he stores the paper pictures he buys
a bad side. For example, look at the nuclear power it can be very good if used in a mountain somewhere in the States; to be sure they do not get destroyed. The
as an energy source, but it can be the very opposite, if used as weapon. You can data that is digitalized in his computers is changed all the time and stored in different
find two sides to every important thing in our life. places, so he can be sure it will not get destroyed.
We often tend to see archives as somewhat neutral constellations or positive The first is maybe just a paradox, but in my practice I have seen that the more
constellations, as was mentioned here. The archives represent power, the power technology and the more information we have around us, the purer our archives
of knowledge, curating is an exercise of that knowledge. are, the less we have of real information. What does that mean? It means we
have reached information society, computer-centred society. We are in a virtual
I would like to withdraw an example from my own practices. In the years 1998- world where the information is flowing around. We dont have letters as from the
2000 I put together the archive of Estonian video and performance art up to then. 19th and 20th century, we dont have lovely greeting cards anymore, which point
Well, this was just me as a very pragmatic person, trying to create some archive of Sirje, as far as I know, for contemporary art centres as Soros, it was presumed
our contemporary art life. I think that all institutions that deal with contemporary everywhere, in every centre, to collect information. It was one of the programmes
art exhibitions have the same problems. We are all wondering, how people can of the centres.
understand our art and life after fifty years, maybe after a hundred years, because
they will have only our archives. I really wanted to stress once more the issue of Sirje Helme:Yes, you are right. Of the three programmes that we had, it was the
personal memory in archives. But it is already a longer topic and maybe one for main one. We started to collect also information from previous years. From this
the panel. idea it was also picked up our priority to be an information centre after the Soros
period.
Viktor Misiano: I have to say that when these things were happening, when the
Moscow Soros Centre was opened, and when it was in fact announced that one
of the programmes of the centre will be to film with a camera most of the open-
ings, most of the events, I did not appreciate the idea, not at the time. Can you
imagine: early 1990s, Moscow. Everything was so dynamic, every day, every
second so dense. So just to imagine that at such a moment you should have to
have an entire programme focused on just simple documentation... It seemed
totally out of the radical atmosphere of the time, it seemed to be really boring
institutional routine.
There is another interesting aspect. You mentioned relational projects, how the But, what is very interesting is how an archive and personal memory are related.
archive is crucial for relational projects, curatorial or artistic. I have here a book I can tell you of one extremely strange phenomenon. Being in that laboratory
which I produced in Moscow and which documents my own curatorial experi- space, we used to meet sometimes from four oclock until the last subway train,
ence and work, it is named Masterskaja Vizualnii Antropologij Workshop for until the deep night. I remember perfectly one very dramatic moment, when the
Visual Anthropology. It was a one-year project with a group of Moscow artists in philosopher was putting emphasis on work, creativity, and he said in a very dra-
the middle of the 1990s, from 1993 to 1994. In fact the most important artists matic voice: We should work to the last force, until complete exhaustion. Other-
of that time were involved in this project Alexander Brener, Osmolovsky, Kupri- wise there is no sense to pretend that what we are doing is creativity. Creativity
yanov, Gutov, Leiderman and the whole idea was that we used to meet often is suffering. It was said in such a pathetic, sincere strong way that I remember it
and to have discussions with the major Russian philosopher Valery Podoroga. So word for word. But it was not on the tape. I reviewed everything, but it was not on
it was an intellectual laboratory, the philosopher was establishing his own ideas the tape. Then I took the cassettes and I spent two days re-listening to it. It was
and in dialogue with the artists he would then suggest to the artist some topics, not there, it was not documented. But I perfectly remember it.
problems. The artists would then reply to his discursive provocation by art works.
Sometimes it would be sketches, sometimes real works, photos. Sometimes they 1993-1994: that was the most dramatic and hard moment of our social and
would bring something from their own studio, sometimes there were performanc- economical life. It was really very dramatic moment of our existential experience. I
es. Sometimes it would be simple stories, for example once Yuri Leiderman con- was directing the Centre for Contemporary Art, which was poor, I mean, you cant
tributed his dream, he just told us about his dream. Which he got by the way in imagine how poor it was. Nobody can imagine how hard it was to continue. So
Sonsbeek 93, in Arnhem, the Netherlands. When he used to work in Sonsbeek, in that precise moment that sentence of Valery Podoroga gave me... I remember
one night he got a dream and he presented it as a work. it so perfectly, because it gave me the justification of why am I doing this? But
Basically they could change that system, they could sell half of it. Who needs the At the same time, some things maybe we will sell - in some ways I agree with you,
artworks that step forward as sort of vampires, whom we cant keep alive, who are Anders, about the museum issue, but maybe after sixty years the same pictures
dead. We could sell them. Maybe somebody has better use for them, to hang them will be very valuable for the next generation. Because if we are looking back at
at their homes? And I think that to view to the archives from the present point of the 1950s this is more for the local audience Greenbergs paintings were
view is quite relevant here, because the museums as sort of total archives should burned in this very same Art Hall and just a few paintings were saved by some
looked at, as there will be some knowledge which hasnt been used for a 100 years, artists. These are very valuable now. So, unfortunately, memory is very much tied
but it still is there, it could somehow be pushed to some other trajectory. to political issues, dictatorships, subjective decision, etc. Its like euthanasia
who will be the person to unplug the wires from human body? This is a very cru-
Hanno Soans: I cant subscribe to that idea as a long time museum worker, but cial question. I am definitely not the person to decide that some kinds of archives
my idea was more to try to work with archives, which from the point of view of are to be lost automatically. I think the question Marko asked will stay forever, as
their establishing would take on temporality, as one of the grounding principle. long as there is human kind.
I think that would change the notion of archive quite a lot, because now we are
archiving in a very vague sense, thinking very vaguely that - whatever that means Hedwig Fijen: Maybe a small note towards you question nobody knows the an-
- that its for eternity, it is either then family archive, its for the next generation, swer, but in the Netherlands this question is extremely actual. The temporality of
or the generation after. So its always very vague - and there are lots of interest- the collection is under discussion, because two museums already proposed to the
ing insecurities because of that of course - but there would be the possibility to, state to sell part of their collection. And of course this is the most difficult ques-
especially with digital archiving, for automatic erasure after fifty years... tion, what is the decision-making process? Who is deciding, in which time-frame,
what is valuable in a collection, what is not valuable? They tried to solve the
Marko Laimre: My name is Marko Laimre. I have a question whats the main discussion in a very pragmatic way, by indexing all the objects in the museum in
difference between collections and archives? A-, B- and C-series and they tried to force the state, who is the owner of some of
the museum collection, to allow the museum directors in certain areas to at least,
Sirje Helme: This is actually a question about memory, keeping your memory, according to their judgement, sell pieces from the C-collection. So you see its
some common memory. Im sure nobody of us can say that they are the right not about an ethical discussion at large, it is more trying to move away from this
person to decide what we are keeping and what we dont keep, because we are discussion and finalize it by a very economical and practical solution. When Chris
all just human. Dercon proposed a couple of years ago to sell one painting from the Boijmans Van
Archive:
Petr Bystrov Petr Bystrov (Moscow,
1980) is an artist,
The Dangerous
athlete, and musician,
who graduated from the
Archive
State University for
Humanities. Currently he
is the editor-in-chief of
2. The archive is connected to the redistribution of the past, and any retrospective
is always biased
The archive assumes a view of the past, a view of history. However, any historiog-
raphy (and an archive is a certain local historiography) represents a product of the
dominance of certain interests. Memory is always someones it always belongs
to someone concrete which means that any retrospective is always biased. The
reconstruction of the past (on any scale, ranging from the creation of a catalogue
of exhibition-participants all the way to the writing of a schoolbook on a nations
history) assumes the possibility for manipulating the elements of the past. Thus, Depending on the degree to which political regimes change, the access to the
every time it is compiled, the archive forms a new conception of the past (no mat- past, the access to history as to a living process become more and more trouble-
ter how distant, even through the centuries). Isnt this surprising? some over years: every schoolbook, brochure, or reference to history contains a
new conception of the past that is only profitable at the given moment.
The thing is that the dominant point of view requires its own historiography. In
the process of creating an archive, it (either consciously or spontaneously) imple- This is why it is not definitive whether an archive is active or interactive, whether
ments a redistribution, a re-premeditation of the past. All too often, the relation- it is closed or open to the public, whether it is dusty or whether it has been
ship to the past is rather liberal and operative. cleaned. All of these games with the jargon of technological progress only lead us
way from the conversations more dangerous aspects, so that all of this is inessen-
3. The archive is a product of conventions tial. What is important is who this or that archive belongs to. What is important
is who promotes and produces it. Which goals does this archive have? What are
Conventions have nothing in common with the opinions of anyone and everyone. its possible consequences?
The vox populi, the opinion of the majority, the memory of a generation,
systems of voting, election, or opinion polls are all mechanisms summoned to Personal appendix
legitimate and objectify the status of the archive, As an artist, my own experience tells me that any media-representation or inclu-
a) by equating it to the rhetorical positive notion of memory, and sion in an archive always entails a strong transformation of the phenomenon as
b) by providing it with a rational foundation (i.e. presenting arguments that prove such. The mass-media never afford an authentic or adequate representation of
that it is the given version of the archive that is optimal). what takes place in experimental spaces, all the more if they belong to the op-
In this way, we can reveal a manipulatory chain that leads from the appeal to positional milieu (dissent, political activism etc.). The right to undertake medial
rationality to collective memory to the reinforce of the order of things that is prof- fixations belongs to the dominant ideology (in a broader sense). Any marker that
itable to the powers that be (state apparatus; scholarly community; curatorial is laid over events is always a ready-made which exclusively retransmits the sys-
collective etc.). tem of conventional meanings and which is not objective in any case.
4. Information is like a product that one can salt, warm up, stir-fry, and serve July 2005
In speaking of the archive, we need to address the issue of the media, that is,
of the business of information, a business connected to the trade and spread of
information. No information is ever transmitted freely or objectively. The right
to interpret facts and to discuss events on a public level (accessible to the mass-
es) belongs to political regimes / groups of scholars / curatorial or art historical
collectives / etc. The same (artificial) organization of memory falls under their
jurisdiction. The power at hand immediately retransmits itself (its presence) in
informational space.
Collecting Disobedience
An archive of art
and political action
Marco Scotini is an art The stakes in terms of current artistic practices are being wagered on the streets Viven Genocidas map, and the escraches by Grupo de Arte Callejero (GAC) in
critic and independent
curator. He is director of
at all latitudes and on a global scale. Public space (including that of the World Buenos Aires on March 24, 2001, or with the irruption by the Yes Men as phoney
the Visual Arts School Wide Web) is being utilized today as a political tool. Post-Seattle political mobili- representatives of the WTO at the Conference on International Services held in
and director of MA in
zation, migrants social movements and recent examples of art intervention have Salzburg from 26 to 29 of October, 2000. Similarly, the parallel urban planning
Visual Arts and Curatorial
Studies at Nuova all found that public space offers a common platform for action and the diffusion process inaugurated in 1994 by Park Fiction to oppose a large, corporate housing
Accademia di Belle Arti of projects, symbols, narratives and ideas. It is not a question of choosing to use project to be built at Hamburg port has many points in common with Ultra-Reds
(NABA) in Milan. He
regurarly collaborates non-gallery spaces as locations for art shows or of creating exhibitions in a real forms of resistance against the project by Los Angeles Housing Authority to de-
with Flash Art and other life context; rather, by their very nature, these projects are forced to locate them- molish the Pico Aliso settlement.
journals in the field and
he is also the editor of
selves outside an institutional, technical and organizational framework, adopting
No Order Magazine an attitude that in part, but only in part, recalls the history of the alternative arts Bruno Latour recently declared: At one time the laboratory was a restricted area
Art in a post fordist
movement. Todays strategies of occupying public space and forming collectives, where only those wearing a white coat could enter. Nowadays the laboratory has
society. His writings and
interviews have appeared tactics used to produce mechanisms for participatory systems, linguistic sabotage expanded to such an extent that it would not be absurd to claim we all live inside
in Springerin, Domus, and media activism, are as far from the classical models of politicisation as they it. The same could be said in relation to exhibition space, which is inconceivable
Moscow Art Magazine,
Espacio and many are from those of the 1970s institutional criticism of museums. It is as if these today in terms of the temporal, spatial and narrative unit that the museum or art
exhibition catalogues. artistic practices preferred to abandon specific roles and constraints rather than show formerly guaranteed. Recognition of these signs of a new artistic culture
clash openly with them or simply confront them. demand ever more types of presentation strategies that differ from those offered
by the art show format, no matter how up-to-date.
The impossibility of occupying any kind of lasting framework is therefore creat-
ing an exponential increase in the adhesion to a here and now that is subject to In this context, the archive - also drawing on information networks - seems the
chance and without an aura, whereby the arbitrary, the reversible and the unex- model most able to accommodate an interwoven and widespread multiplicity
pected are put to work as possibilities for action by the multitude. A rhizome-like, that has open links of variable, time-based duration. The archive model as such
non-centralized open space, and at the same time a series of performance-based is always an a posteriori construction determined by pre-existing formations and
events, hence unpredictable (which Paolo Virno calls virtuosity) characterize groupings that become connected by means of a configuration, a style or a selec-
the terrain for the contemporary artistic and activist scene: a terrain that appears tion and establish themselves in the memory. As we have seen from the above
less and less tied to the notion of local and more and more to the situational. information, each of these artistic interventions is like a document, the proof or a
In other words, it is not a socio-economic moment mechanically determined by certificate of an event.
various contextual factors, but a link-up of temporal elements in which an out-
burst of social subjectivity opens a new area of experience and creates the actual For some years now the debate on art repeatedly intersects this configuration.
conditions for direct intervention. After Hans-Ulrich Obrists comments on the amnesia of the art world, generic
website or data-based archives in the field of curating, chronologies of exhibitions
The first action organized by the Non-Governmental Control Commission on Bol- as curatorial incidents etc. began to appear, although without too much distinc-
shaya Nikitskaya Street in Moscow on May 23, 1998, or the one that took place tion being made between inventory, catalogue, atlas or collection, which are tools
on Lenins Mausoleum in 1999, share the same common ground as the Aqui with very different organizational criteria and aims.
Conceived as a diverse and constantly changing archive, the project represents Disobedience was designed as a long-term work-in-progress and as such can
a guide to the different strata of civil disobedience, from the social struggles in only be presented as a non-comprehensive and provisional archive, intended to
Italy in 1977 to the recent anti-globalization protests before and after Seattle. grow and expand gradually over time and space, along a route that leads from
The project is also a collection of the plurality of resistance tactics, such as direct Berlin to Prague, from Mexico City to Barcelona, from Bucharest to Milan, involv-
action, counter-information and biological disobedience whose order and whose ing new, local situations and from time to time requiring new, heterogeneous
organization is flexible. forms of display. Finally Disobedience is an active tool to be used, to be criti-
cized, perfectioned and that can be used anywhere and by anyone who believes
Disobedience wants to be an operative archive, a tool box (not just a simple that not only this world is possible.
open source or a mind store), a video station that doesnt want to be simply looked
at, but wants to be used. It is a collection made by many, collectively and ongoing
and without any pretence of being complete. By setting in motion different signals
and situations, Disobedience is presented as a network of open topics, brought
together by artists, activists, filmmakers, philosophers and political groups, each
of whom were invited to create a separate section by involving other artists, docu-
ments, political magazines, cheap offset printing, ephemera, etc.
This is actually what gives rise to a series of questions, questions which the participants
that had gathered for the workshop discussed with a great deal of enthusiasm: should the
artist even think about which archive his work will enter while he is making it? Should
he even think about this kind of entrance in general teleologically at all? If todays
mass-medial culture establishes its control over cultural values in the process of its quasi-
hierarchization of cultural values, then which position can the artist occupy in relation to
the process of mass-medialization itself? How can the artists personal collection of an
archive hope to resist the mass-medial deletion of memory? How does the artistic archive
differ from the private, political, or institutional archive? Should the artist play the role of a
symbolic agent (in the Lacanian sense of the word) in the current situation of mass-medial
narcissism? Which archive does the photograph this is me with a famous monument
in the background so typical for a narcissistic community - belong to? Can a work of
visual art realize any historization against this narcissist background at all?
Workgroup
What is to be done?
The Notion of the
Mobilizational Archive
Dmitry Vilensky (1964) Theses for a talk at The Active Archive workshop, taking place on 1 July 2005 this notion of political subjectivity, political action begins with the reconstitution of Chto delat? / What is
is an artist and cultural to be done?, Angry
activist, based in St. in St. Petersburg public spaces. The active archive is one of these spaces. Sandwich-People, or The
Petersburg. In 2003, he Praise of Dialectics,
initiated the workgroup text by Bertold Brecht.
Chto delat? / What is to
Archives are spaces for the common, spaces in which knowledge, information, We can only save this space for the common from being privatized if we recon- Digital photos transferred
be done?. He is editor and experience are gathered for common use. In this sense, the archive is quite sider its mobilizational potential. The active archive needs to become a mobiliza- onto DVD with sound,
of the newspaper What different from the collection: while collections are largely based on the economic tional archive. 8:40 min., 2005.
is to be done?, the
platform for engaged logic of the accumulation and accretion of value, the archive can, instead, be
creativity (see also: www. counted among the institutions of knowledge-production. What exactly does this mean in the sphere of contemporary art?
chtodelat.org). Vilensky
works mostly with
video, photography and However, since the archive was traditionally understood as a disciplinary space The Archive in Contemporary Art
installation, and focuses
on interdisciplinary
constructed according to the objective methodologies of its archivists, its knowl-
examination of urban edge has always confirmed the established modes of political dominance over the It goes without saying that the notion of the cultural archive at large is far broader
space. common. This regulation of common knowledge has also always highlighted its than the concept of the artistic archive. However, in the field of the arts, these
David Riff (1975) is an political potential as something that can mobilize subjectivity against power. As notions have become blurred, simply because much of the 20th centurys art
art-critic, translator, and strange as it may sound, this is what happened in the Soviet Union, where a huge employed archival strategies. However, such strategies activate the archive as
member of the workgroup
Chto delat / What is to amount of documents that may have seemed innocent at first glance were re- a space for artistic projection, focusing on how the personalized common
be done?. He lives in moved from open storage in libraries and transferred to Special Storage sections, translated from public to private produces and then deconstructs subjectivity
Moscow and Berlin.
hidden from the public eye. This did not only concern anti-Soviet literature, but itself. For an example, the majority of Kabakovs projects are constructed around
1
Cf. Alain Badiou, was also extended to a multitude of authentic leftist-revolutionary texts, ranging this kind of game with the activated archive. His inventories of late Soviet realia
Tainaya katastrofa. from Trotsky to the Situationists. In this paradoxical way, the state recognized the are a classical examples of how the contemplation of a common past can be
Konets gosudarstvenoi
istinny (The Secret production and storage of knowledge as a means of political mobilization. privatized and then converted to cultural capital. One could also remember the
Catastrophe. The End projects of the Lebanese Atlas group.
of the States Truth),
published in Russian on Yet today, it seems obvious that the political meaning of the archive is chang-
the site http://sociologos. ing. This transformation is connected to the new role of knowledge production in Such ways of activating the dormant archive stand in stark contrast to the archive
narod.ru/.
post-industrial capitalism, in which intellectual labor is gradually achieving he- as a common space for mobilization.
gemony. Under these conditions, the archive opens up, becoming active, serving
as a toolkit for contemporary production, which also means that it is in danger of The Archive, Tactical Media, and Open Source
becoming privatized, in danger of losing its political potential. In this situation, it
becomes all the more important to realize that knowledge like labor is not One of the first groups to understand the archive from the activistic perspective of
politically neutral, but that it can mobilize political subjectivity in the philosophi- mobilization was Next 5 Minutes from Amsterdam, who developed the concep-
cal sense. This runs contrary to the wide-spread image of politics as the ideologi- tion of tactical media. Their project was extremely symptomatic for the mid-to-late
cal justification of administrative power. For an example, Alain Badiou speaks of 1990s, because it is from this point onward that we can speak of the accumula-
the essence of politics as the question of collective emancipation1. If one follows tion of generally accessible multimedia archives, initiated by artists and activists
08. The formal-aesthetic practices of the mobilization archive create a new tem-
poral mode of existence through the dialogue with the spectator-participant. As an
immediate embodiment of public space, it uses the creation of social architecture
to erode the boundary between knowledge and life. It employs the aesthetics of
cinema but is based upon participation (as opposed to interactivity), and exists
on foreign territory as a sit-in.
It goes without saying that these points for discussion have a certain ideal quality,
but their postulates are little more than an extrapolation of the possibilities that
existing practices already provide. It is our hope that the ideas formulated here
will help to initiate further discussion on how knowledge-production could be
mobilized in order to fulfill the many pressing goals at hand.
July 2005
at the Moderna Galerija a totally different picture: a nice home and kind and intelligent parents. But there
is another thing that is essential, the friends family is strong enough that it is not
(Museum of Modern Art), in danger because of the boys outbursts. The same is true of the Western culture,
says Kabakov, and continues:
Ljubljana, Slovenia,
and editor of MJ Western culture is so vital, so stable, its roots are so deep and so alive, it is
so productive that it, speaking in the language of the parable above, absorbs,
Manifesta Journal. recasts and dissolves in itself all destructive actions by its own children, and
as many believe, it sees in these actions its very own development what is
elegantly referred to here as permanent criticism. But I would like to add a
footnote here: this criticism, like the destruction itself, is permitted, if it can
be so expressed, only from its own children. That same mom described above
would have behaved quite differently if I had started to act up at the table the
same way as her son. Most likely she would have called the police.1
It did not take too long, less than a year and a half, that the event Kabakov was
somehow predicting really happened. It took place during the opening of an exhi-
bition called Interpol in the Frgfabriken Contemporary Art Center in Stockholm;
an exhibition trying to establish a global network between Stockholm and Mos-
cow. One of the participants, the Russian performance artist Alexander Brener,
destroyed a work of another participant, the ChineseAmerican artist Wenda Gu;
and another Russian artist, Oleg Kulik, who appeared on the show as a dangerous
dog on a chain and actually bite some people, was attacked by the audience and
was later taken away by the police.
I believe that this change demonstrates an important modification in the field The paradox [...] is that Kulik was invited as a particularity as a Russian
of EastWest relationship, a shift which is connected to the dtente process dog. I am certain that if an American artist were to play a dog, he would be of
and the eventual collapse of the socialist regimes. During the time of the Cold much less interest for the international art scene than the Russian artist is. We
War, in a situation where the political and ideological confrontations ensured all know that the majority of people in todays Russia live a dog-like life. And
a firm, bi-polar structure and therefore balance and control, Western modern the first association a Westerner makes in regard to Kuliks performance is that
art easily claimed to be universal. The post-Cold-War era does not supply such he is representing this reality of contemporary Russia. Kulik-dog is therefore
controlling mechanisms any more. The necessary result is that the situation of of interest for the Western art world because of the fact that he is the Russian
art (as well as other related fields) has to be redefined. The freedom of traveling, dog. [...] And, in regard to Kuliks performance it can be said that the West
for example, could be a universal value and a proclaimed right only as long as finds an aesthetic pleasure in observing the Russian dog, but only on condi-
the bi-polar system made it impossible for a large majority of (Eastern) people tion that he does not behave in a truly dog-like manner. When Kulik ceased
13
It would be, perhaps, In short, the idea of the WestEast dialogue could be understood as a way of
more accurate to say that reorganizing these relationships after the end of the Cold War era, i.e., as a
this new strategy is still
often combined with the way how to deal with the other. If earlier, the dominant position was achieved
idea of universalism. through the universal value of Western modern art, it is now achieved through
14
Wenda Gu, The Cul- the definition of the other and, at the same time, through the definition of the
tural War, p. 103. basis of communication.13 As Wenda Gu reports, Misiano said that this incident
creates an essential stage for a dialogue between Eastern and Western Europe.14
But, it seems clear that this stage includes a reorganization of the very field of
dialogue and thus opens the question who is to be master. Unavoidably, the
Western pole of the global network could only see mere aggression, imperialism
and destruction in this attempt.
This article first appeared in Art Press, Paris, No. 226, Dec. 1997, pp. 37-42,
under the title East is East?
Published by:
Moderna galerija (Musem of Modern Art) Ljubljana
Ljubljana, Slovenia
and
International Foundation Manifesta The International Foundation Manifesta (IFM), with
Amsterdam, The Netherlands offices in Amsterdam, the Netherlands organizes
and co-ordinates the New Network Program, which
Editors: is a multi-faceted resource and research program,
Viktor Misiano encompassing the Manifesta Biennial, the
Igor Zabel Manifesta Archives and a program of publications,
discussions and related activities, focusing on
Associate editor: contemporary art and its role in society.
Natasa Petresin
MJ Manifesta Journal is part of the Manifesta
Managing editor: Network Program and is co-funded by the Culture
Marieke van Hal 2000 Framework of the European Commission.
Silvana Editoriale Spa This project has been funded with support from the
via Margherita De Vizzi, 86 European Commission. This publication reflects
20092 Cinisello Balsamo, Milano - Italy the views only of the author, and the Commission
tel. +39 02 61 83 63 37 cannot be held responsible for any use which may
fax +39 02 61 72 464 be made of the information contained therein.
www.silvanaeditoriale.it
A Note on the Reprint:
Editors: For this reprint, the texts, images and design have
Viktor Misiano, Igor Zabel been kept the same. International Foundation
Manifesta has strived to secure permission for
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Saskia van der Kroef copyright claims still, please contact International
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