history in

the present
2 Contents

A PRIOR Magazine #20

Ruth Buchanan
Victor Burgin
Mekhitar Garabedian
IanKiaer
Vincent Meessen

Out: May 15th 2010

Made possible with the support of The Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Kask) of the University College Ghent and The Flemish Community
Editorial 3

History in Contemporary art deserves

its name if it manifests its

the Present
own contemporaneityand
not simply if it is currently
made or displayed. Thus, the
question What is contempo-
rary art? implicates the questions, What is the Contemporary? and
How can the Contemporary as such be shown? One could add to this
observation by Boris Groys that these questions themselves are dis-
tinctly contemporary! One would never question how contemporary
our contemporaneity is if ones picture of the world were stable and
well-defined. And, in fact, it is generally recognized that instability
and uncertainty are characteristic of our time.
At the origin of European civilization is Aristotles idea of time as
a sequence of singular present moments. This linear understanding of
temporality survived until the twentieth century. Contemporary art
according to modernitys picture of the world could be understood as
something that is immediately present, capturing and expressing the
presence of the present in a way that is radically uncorrupted by tra-
ditions or by strategies aimed at the future succes. This concept forms
the basis for such an institution as a traditional art museum.
The critique of modernity and its infrastructure, however, revised
this idea of linear time. One symptom of this reconsideration was the
appearance in the late 1960s early 1970s of a new institution: indepen-
dent curatorship. As Sven Spieker notes in this issue, Compared with
the pre-modern understanding of storytelling exemplified by Benja-
min, curators in the 1960s operated with a toolbox of terms and con-
cepts that seemed to focus not on continuity, history or memory but
rather on rupture and discontinuity. In her text, Marga van Mechelen
reminds us that the most ambitious exhibition projects of the found-
ing fathers of curatorship were programmatically a-historical. And
conversely, as Mihnea Mircan argues, when contemporary curators are
4 Editorial

motivated by the task of indexing the present, their curating turns

out to be a historiographic enterprise. In other words, the present
does not simply follow the past and precede the future, but finds it in
itself. The further we move into the beginning of the twenty-first cen-
tury, the more apparent it becomes that contemporaneity can take the
form of the revival of the past in the present, and moreover that the
past can be lived as the most urgent present.
This involvement of contemporary curators in the revision of tra-
ditional temporality obliges them to see their mission as a conserva-
tion of the future (in the words of Chiara Bertola), to suggest a perio
dization where after postmodernism comes modernism (A*DESK),
and to consider Michelangelo Buonarotti and Gerhard Richter, Giorgio
Vasari and Alfred Barr as contemporaries (Giovanni Iovane).
All that doesnt mean that the linear history has been totally re-
jected; rather, it has simply become one of the possible views and log-
ics with which to read reality. Nowadays our picture of the world is
complex and multilayered. Its real prototype could be identified in
Internet, where one has instant access to all kinds of data and where
the present and the past are at equal distance from us. We must agree
with Stefan Heidenreich when he writes since ample storage space
is available for data, the main problem for archives is not storing the
art, but keeping it accessible. Art history and criticism may still serve
that purpose, but they themselves are constantly re-invented upon the
dynamic repertoire of the contemporary, and deeply entangled in its
dynamization. Thus duration without time is not achieved by enter-
ing a weak historical scheme, but by maintaining and creating active
links that reach out to a future present. It is the density and richness
of links, be they internal, art-related or social, political or theoretical,
that may preserve the contemporary within a timeless temporality.
Positions Mihnea Mircan 5

Art History,
Interrupted

After what is now more than a quarter and the archive comes together, com-
of a century of disciplinary self-cri- plete. What follows speculates on this
tique, why is it that we have been peren- endgame, and questions what it might
nially unable to escape art historicism? mean for art to be understood and his-
Donald Preziosi, Hearing the Unsaid: toricized on its own terms, as opposed
Art, Museology and the Composition to submitting to the secular theologism
of the Self that art history preserves at its core
This text discusses a mode of artistic its Vasari-complex.
and curatorial action that explicitly According to the ways in which they
thematizes art history and its mecha- frame their object of historical desire,
nisms of validation, its organization there are three, theoretically coexten-
of disciplinary centers, frontiers and sive modes of enunciation that perform
wastelands, its institutional limbs and or contest art historys former authori
props. I propose to think of the exhibi- ty and disciplinary confidence. A de
tion as a locus where two distinct ways fault art history informs blockbuster
of imagining the future converge and exhibitions, is taught in some schools,
are tested against each other: arts abil- and is popularized in Great Masters
ity to figureor fabricatethe future, books and films. It concatenates artists,
and art historys capacity to do the styles and historiographic data in an
same. Seen from a conventional per- epistemological vacuum. It considers
spective, the new struggles for com- art to be a privileged manifestation of
mensurability with the old and the fu- history, and the shifts in art as an in-
ture occurs at the gates of the archive. dex of the temporality of history. It is
Traditionally, the only thought of the punctuated by metaphysical circulari-
future that art history could accom- ties and interjections of elucidation,
modate in its institutional identity was and it resembles an award ceremony
that of more, better art, barely ob- in more ways than one. Another mode
scuring the subsequent momentand of enunciation contends with both the
terminus pointwhen art ceases to be default of the discipline and the hy-
6 Positions Mihnea Mircan

pothesis, formulated from a variety of and to reconcile its complicated, mes-

ideological standpoints, of the end of sianic legacy with a partial evacuation
history (which art history as a whole of historicism. This engenders series
tends to engage, not within a culture of prologues, antecedent to several
of post-history that would threaten to histories that would (if they were writ-
delegitimize it, but as one of the para- ten) dispense with chronologic con-
bles it habitually deciphers), with the fabulation or mutations of style, non-
disintegration of the internal logic and histories saturated by methodological
self-sufficiency in the discipline. self-consciousness, aware ofand to
The different strands of the new art some extent, incapacitated bytheir
history, fueled by Marxist criticism, alternatives and their own inability
feminism, post-colonialism, visual to contain and reflect a multiplicity of
studies or semiotics, explore the con- subject-positions, to diffract across
structed symmetries and hegemonic plural and unregulated claims of in
exclusions in traditional art history, terpretive authority.
the interdependence of critical biases A third instance of art-historical
and ideological missions, and the ways discourse, or replica of the lost art-
in which the discipline has kept its own historical original, is mapped out in
relevance and foundational dilemmas contemporary arts inordinate relation
center stage. Looking at the pathos and to what it sometimes perceives as its
Freudian slips in older incarnations of own adolescence and, at other times, as
art-historical discourse is an occasion a background against which to project
for the new art history to acknowledge its own legitimacy or prodigal anxi-
and elaborate its own difficulties, try- eties. It reflects contemporary arts
Mladen Stilinovi, An
Attack against My Art Is ing to reestablish a sense of historical determination to have a history, even
an Attack against Socialism course or destination after the putative if premised dubious foundations and
and Progress, 1977 halt of historyDanto after Hegel perfect malleability. A chronic histo-
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 7

riographic compulsion is arguably the they intersect in the growing chasm

defining feature of todays art, with the between the contemporarywith its
inbuilt contradictions of a particular, fatigue, diversity and archeological
reductive understanding of modern- dispositionand an unfamiliar, if
ism as the prime object of scrutiny: in not impervious, past. Or perhaps in a
the past this art portrays reads like a former disciplinary topography, half-
series of quirks and blips of historio- excavated and turned into a museum
graphic time against a background for the fragments of a discursive ap-
of grand narratives that relentlessly paratus: instruments of connoisseur-
manifest themselves. In this case, art ship, iconography or social history,
history is both the site of unrealized absented categories and the totems of
futuresin the reinstatements of mar- the founding fathers, in a vacant site
ginalized figures and ruptured con- of declamation where the angel of art
nectionsand the lineage from which history hovers or zigzags. In order for
contemporary art would like to portray the present to have a history other than
itself as descending. The tweaked time- the progressive agglomeration of pres-
lines of postmodernism or the moral ent objects, it is necessary to ask if this
pleas against art history as an impe- decrepit but functional rhetorical ma-
rial practice engendered a poetics of chinery can be recalibrated, if what is
memory and oblivion rather than an left of art-historical canonsthe peri-
epistemological innovation, or at least ods and the misjudgments, the frescoes
an increased permeability, in the domi- and the cut-off ears, the fallacies and
nant discourses of art history. the brilliant intuitionscan be re-ar-
If these inconclusive threads and pos- ticulated in a discourse of the present,
Robert Morris, Document,
sibilities, blocked vistas and shifting a present that does not adhere to the 1963. The Museum of
foci that define art history today do past as an inexorable condition or to a Modern Art, New York/
connect at all, it could be argued that future as a necessity of confirmation. Scala, Florence 2010
8 Positions Mihnea Mircan

NOTES

1In Svetlana Alpers,

James Hyde, Barney Kulok
(eds.), Painting Then for
Now: Fragments of Tiepolo
at the Ca Dolfin (New York:
David Krut Projects, 2007),
23.

2If art history is to

be understood as an
occasion for the practice
of irreconcilable and
conflicting perspectives on
the nature of the relation-
ships between objects and
subjects, what then could
it mean to understand art
history as the fielding of an
impasse? Donald Preziosi,
Unmaking Art History,
in Elisabeth C. Mansfield
(ed.), Making Art History.
A Changing Discipline and
Its Institutions (New York/
London: Routledge, 2007),
118.

The relationship of contemporary art for this critical elaboration: there can
or exhibition-making to the history of be the fielding of an impasse called art
art needs to be understood differently history, an investigation of the condi-
from a melancholy disconnection or tions that complicate or burden the
Zeno-like paradox, so that they oper- transitions or exchanges between art
ate in tandem, or so that a reciprocal and history, a critique that proceeds
visibility is instated, one not premised from a complete set of contradictions
on a shared teleology but on a flux of rather than desists upon encountering
knowledge and common instruments them.2 If we are indeed today travers-
and critical goals. ing the corridors of a museum of art
Is art history? Svetlana Alpers asked history, where the formerness of the
of Tiepolo.1 Answering this question discipline is put on display, together
whether in the affirmative, negative or with the disciplines strategies for nat-
dubitativewould presuppose looking uralizing or making heterodoxmuch
at art history beyond the metaphors in the same way that the museum does
and adverbs of agony and ecstasy, in a standard institutional critique
Agnes Denes, Tree that seek to somehow abstract a self, a scenariohow can this institution be
Mountain: A Living Time
Capsule - 11,000 Trees -
Pygmalion-like interlocutor from the engaged? The examples that follow
11,000 People - 400 Years, multiplicity of art. Instead, it would en- are construed as cardinal points, ex-
1992-1996 tail interrogating the fraught relations tremities of conceptual trajectories
Above: view of original between works and their becoming- interspersed with those of institutional
design drawing from 1983 history, the particular and systematic critique, yet aimed at something mark-
Below: winter view
iterations of the vexed circumstance edly different from the exposure of
from 2001 of the actual
mountain/forest with linking art, ideology, forms of resis- white-cube ideologies. The institution
the mathematical pattern tance and deferral. Institutional cri- they refer to is more venerable than the
beginning to show tique provides a convenient analogy museum: it is the institution of art his-
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 9

tory, the sum of factors and variables by a notarized statement in which the 3For a discussion of
that determine the historical inscrip- artist withdraws all esthetic quality Marcel Duchamp and
art history, see Hans
tion of the work (or its historiographic and content from the work. Document,
Belting, Art History after
administration, to recuperate an im- also known as Statement of Aesthetic Modernism (Chicago: The
portant trope of the 1970s). Withdrawal, pits authority against au- University of Chicago
For Agnes Deness project Tree Moun- thorship, legally encoding authority Press, 2003).
tain (19921996), eleven thousand peo- to evacuate authorship from art his-
ple planted eleven thousand trees on a tory, into another historiographic ter-
hill in Yljrvi, Finland, according to ritory where their disjunction can be
a pattern derived from a mathemati- resolved. Authorship is accentuated as
cal formula. All the planters received a authority over the object, and proffered
certificate of ownership valid for four as the authority to remove the object
hundred years: they can leave their from the sphere of aesthetic beholding.
trees to their heirs, celebrate or mourn Morriss legalistic inversion echoes
by them, be buried under them, sell and revertsone of the fundamental
them, etc. While the forest is to remain gestures of modern art, the designation
intact, forms of ownership and use of a urinal as a Fountain by Marcel Du-
orchestrated around it can change or champ. It is probably not a coincidence
mutate at the same speed as the forces that the Litanies themselves reproduce
traversing social space and reshap- words from Duchamps comments on
ing its ideosphere or notions of value. the Large Glass, a work predated and
The forest is designed as a place to prefaced by its explanation, submerged
visualize the future, but also to with- in the artists commentaries on it, pre-
stand its possibly destructive impact: empting any subsequent interpretive
its purpose is to exhibit the future, as effort, as a commentary on the artists
well as to exhibit itself as the impreg- commentary.3
nable past of that future. Changes in Luc Deleus The Last Stone of Belgium
the articulation of ownership and in- (1979) is both a (counter-)manifesto
dividuality will refract upon contact etched in stone and a tombstone for
with Deness work, their momentum monumentality. Declaring the closure
decelerated by the contracts, which of commemorationor perhaps the
stipulate the integrity of each tree in inauguration of a post-metaphysical
the forest. The work juxtaposes sepa- commemorative practice and its non-
rate futures: it lays out its own future umental correlates, it not only chal-
as four hundred years of resisting ob- lenges the validity of subsequent mon-
solescence and ruin, in tandem with uments, but draws attention to what
(but firmly distinguished from) an- lies underneath the flurry of current
other future, that of the world around memorial culture: in this case, Bel-
the work, its ground. It introduces giums colonial history, divisions and
distance between these versions of the disparities, then and now. In relation
futurebetween their literalness and to these issues, and the monuments
the allegories, anticipated epiphanies, stones, vast amounts of bronze and
prolepses or dialectical reconciliations slabs of concrete describing political
we employ to underpin visions of our enmity, uncertain victories and a fab-
collective destination. It functions as a ricated sense of eternitydesigned to
stage for the interpretive negotiations silence them, Deleus work functions
binding them. as a permanent epilogue, one that can
A second example is Document (1963), adhere to and upend any constructed
Robert Morriss small sketch on lead timeline of commemoration.
of his sculpture Litanies (1963), de- Made under very different political
scribed as Exhibit A and accompanied conditions, Mladen Stilinovis banner
10 Positions Mihnea Mircan

4Julia Bryan-Wilson re- An Attack Against My Art Is an Attack and chooses to take charge of its own
cently asked, with regard Against Socialism and Progress (1977) administration, elliptically rephras-
to establishing a chronol- claims to ally itself with the repression ing the ways in which the art-historical
ogy and an epistemology
and censorship of Croatia in the 1970s. past proceeds into an immaterial pres-
for the emerging sub-
discipline of contemporary It seems to insulate itself against criti- ent and towards the future. Robert
art history: What kinds cism, even the criticism of said censor- Morriss exclusion of his own work
of interventions, art, and ship, in the way totalitarian regimes do, from the history of aesthetic contem-
information will persevere by continually unmasking the enemy plation is the discursive function of an
in the future beyond the and portraying its vile nature. It sar- absolute use of the instruments afford-
rapid cycles of boom and
bust? We admit we cannot
donically emulates the existential and ed by the inside, taking maximum
know what might happen interpretive conditions of its own age advantage of ones position as an artist.
in the next twelve months, and context and thus survives them as a The affinities between these works are
much less the next 10,000 document of their brutality. Stilinovis political, to the extent that they suggest
years. That not-knowing banner also operates as a sharp com- the contours of a quasi-institution, and
could be a strength. It
ment on the new regimes of Eastern Eu- temporal, in their capacity to look past
could produce an art
history that revels in the ropean art and East-West alienation, ar- the contemporary, transforming it into
warping of time by looking ticulated in exhibitions after and about an undifferentiated episode within
past the contemporary 1989, on the politics of after-the-Wall their own existence.4 In vastly differ-
that is, a method that still and after-the-mall entwined. ent ways, all four works script the con-
attends to its history, while If institutional critique was proper co- temporary in advance, preparing for
also trying (even if failing)
opted by the institutional, works and its passage and what might lie ahead of
to see beyond the present.
The model of forecasting practices like these channel its criti- it. The suspension of the art-historical
could be both a problem cal, transformative potential to other protocols that they formalize (which
and an opportunity for sites and modes of enunciation. From the discipline can interpret only by
contemporary art history, the tangles of synonymy in institu- a distanciation from itself) is simul-
for it permits and encour-
tional critique, where each element taneous with their promise of mean-
ages unpredictability, and
even disaster. Julia Bryan- manifests itself with all its political ing, and being, set in a future defined
Wilson, untitled response force or poetic dexterity to incarnate as the consummation of the dialogue
to Questionnaire on The the other, and where transgression is they initiate. The future available to
Contemporary, October forever matched by what was being art, they seem to indicate, is neither
130, 2009: 6. transgressed, they extract the terms the futurism of doom nor the futurol-
of another polemic. From institutional ogy of gridlock. Much recent art spe-
critiques attempts to locate and visual- cializes in allegories of technology or
ize power as a stable, definable inter- ecology, yet the future art can access,
locutor and to materialize a transfer the future it can breach or make, is the
between dismantled institution, radical future understanding of art and the
artist and critical spectatorship, they degree to which works or practices
recover the notion of an elsewhere, partake in their own interpretation.
of a constitutive space outside the in- Works of art can have different des-
stitution, which they modulate along tinies or trajectories, but they have a
a temporal axis, without diminishing future if they write or construct their
institutional critiques political effec interpretation, or inquire into a mul-
tiveness. They posit the elsewhere as tiplicity of interpretive possibilities:
a rupture in the conditions and media- if they are metonyms for the future,
tions that constitute and ensure both rather than its metaphors. The artwork
the visibility and the historical legibil- is both the site for the futures arrival
ity of a work. The temporality of Tree and interpellant of its unfolding. His-
Mountain, for instance, overflows the tory typically distinguishes between
capacity and relevance of institutional objects and proposals that stand the
confines: it amply exceeds the attention test of time, and art that does not ex-
span of contemporary art institutions tend beyond the present it inhabits, be-
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 11

ing captive to it and hence unworthy of

historiographic attention. But what if
art were itself the test of time? What
if the resilience or efficacy of works
were to be measured in the time they
create, against a future they envision
for themselves?
While Agnes Deness work postpones
its future, or complicates its emergence
by pairing it up with a manifestation of
the sublime, Robert Morris treats the
future of his work as having already
occurred, or assigns to it a condition
of permanent anteriority. One artist
asks us for infinite patience, the other
for infinite acumen. Mladen Stilinovi
and Luc Deleu establish reciprocities
between an art-historical investiga-
tion originating in the future and
works that appear, in hindsight, like
indispensable antecedents in political
and cultural genealogies. The produc- need to reformulate the asymmetry be-
tion of history is located in the works, tween, on one hand, the ungraspable,
which define themselves as historical defiant, absolute totality of manifesta-
objects, conceived so as to interlock tion and display across the surface of
with the configuration of imminent or the art world and, on the other, a sense
distant historical interrogation. They of those elements and trajectories that
operate via a permanent address to will constitute a history of the pres-
that history; they never stop meaning ent. The art-historical solution, teased
something to it, and never abandon the out via different strategies in each
claim to be recuperated by it. Finally, particular case, could be that of an in-
they re-conceptualize the positions verted repoussoir. The repoussoir is a
from which art-historical assertions compositional device that blocks the
about the continuities between objects edges of the frame, drawing attention
and subjects, worlds, institutions and into the perspective system, toward
selvesare made. the center of the work and the vanish-
These are models, or perhaps insti- ing point. As an art historical strategy,
gations, to think about curating as a a repoussoir figuratively creates the
historiographic enterprise, entrusted depth of historiographic immersion,
with the task of indexing the present. taking the art historian into an ante-
Exhibitions reflect on themselves, on riority of work and time itself, from
the history of exhibitions and the his- whence to recuperate the primal scene
tory of art interwoven with it; new of the encounter with the work. The
epistemologies are sketched, connec- temporal reversal of this artifice could
tions and incompatibilities are drawn push vision into the perspective before
between then and now, here and there, us, while apprehending in its depth a
things are provisionally placed out of future object, an object incompletely
interpretive reach. What is missing is commensurate with our current archi-
Luc Deleu, The last stone
an explicit conceptual articulation be- val models. of Belgium, 1979
tween our historiographic deficit and Photo Luc Deleu Picto
the omnipresence of history. Curators right Amsterdam 2010
12 Discourse Boris Groys

Comrades
of Time

1. that is well enough known. Rather, I

Contemporary art deserves its name if would like to take a step back and ask,
it manifests its own contemporaneity why are we interested in the present
and not simply if it is currently made in the here and now? Wittgenstein was
or displayed. Thus, the question What highly ironical about those of his phil-
is contemporary art? implicates the osophical colleagues who, from time to
questions, What is the Contemporary? time, would suddenly turn to the con-
and How can the Contemporary as templation of the present, instead of
such be shown? minding their own business and con-
Being contemporary can be understood tinuing on with their everyday life. For
as being immediately present, as be- Wittgenstein, the passive contempla-
ing in the here and now. In this sense, tion of the present, of the immediately
art seems to be truly contemporary given, is an unnatural occupation dic-
if it is authentic, i.e. if it captures and tated by the metaphysical tradition that
expresses the presence of the present ignores the flow of everyday lifethe
in a way that is radically uncorrupted flow that always overflows the pres-
by past traditions or strategies aiming ent without privileging it in any way.
at success in the future. However, we According to Wittgenstein, interest in
are well familiar with the critique of the present is simply a philosophical
the presence of the present, formulated (and maybe also artistic) dformation
especially by Jacques Derrida. He has professionelle, a metaphysical sickness
shownconvincingly enoughthat that should be cured by philosophical
the present is by nature corrupted by critique.
the past and the future, that there is That is why I find the following ques-
always absence at the heart of presence tion especially relevant for our pres-
and that history, including art history, ent discussion: How does the present
cannot be interpreted, to use Derridas manifest itself in our everyday expe-
expression, as a procession of presen riencebefore it begins to be a matter
ces. of metaphysical speculation or philo-
This is not the place to analyze the way sophical critique?
that Derridas deconstruction works; Now, it seems to me that the present is
 13

initially something that hinders the still continue ones project in this re-
realization of our everyday or non- duced form. This truth made the mod-
everyday projectssomething that ernist reductions also transculturally
prevents our smooth transition from efficient: crossing a cultural border
the past to the future, something that is in many ways like crossing over a
puts obstacles in our way forward, timeline of the present.
something that makes our hopes and Thus during the period of modernity,
plans become inopportune, not up-to- the power of the present could be de-
date or, simply, impossible to realize. tected only indirectly, through the
Time and again, we are obliged to say: traces of reduction that this power left
yes, it is a good project, but at the mo- on the body of art and, more generally,
ment we have no money (or no time, on the body of culture. The pres-
no energy, etc.) to realize it. Or: this ent as such was mostly seen in
tradition is a wonderful one, but at modernity as something nega-
the moment there is nobody tive, as something that should
who is interested in it be overcome in the name of the
and wants to continue future, something that slows
it. Or: this utopia is down the realization of our
beautiful, but unfortu- projects, something that
nately, today no one be- delays the coming of
lieves in utopias, etc. The the future. One of slo-
present is a moment in time gans of Soviet time was:
when we decide to lower our Time, forward! Ilf and
expectations of the future or Petrov (two 1920s Soviet
abandon some of the dear tra- novelists) aptly parodied
ditions of the past to be able to this modern feeling with
go through the narrow gate of the slogan: Comrades,
the here and now. sleep faster! Indeed, in
Ernst Jnger has famously said those times one might
that modernitythe time of actually have preferred
projects and plans par excellence to sleep through the pre
taught us to travel with lightweight sentto fall asleep in the
luggage (mit leichtem Gepck). To be past and wake up at the
able to move further along the nar- endpoint of progress, after
row path of the present, modernity got the coming of the radiant
rid of everything that seemed to be future.
too heavy, too loaded with meaning,
with mimesis, with the traditional cri- 2.
teria of mastery, with inherited ethical But the moment we begin to question
and aesthetic conventions. The modern our projects, begin to doubt or to refor-
reductionism is a strategy of survival mulate them, the present (the contem-
on the way through a difficult present. porary) begins to be important or cen-
Art, literature, music and philosophy tral for us. Because the contemporary
have survived the twentieth century is actually constituted by doubt, by
because they threw out all the unnec- hesitation, by uncertainty, by indeci-
essary baggage. At the same time, these sion, by the need for prolonged reflec-
reductions also reveal a kind of hidden tionby the need for a delay. We want
truth that transcends their immediate to postpone our decisions and acts, to
effectiveness. They show that one can have some additional time for analysis,
give up a lot of thingsa lot of tradi- for reflection and consideration. And
tions, hopes, skills and thoughtsand that is precisely the contemporarya
14 Discourse Boris Groys

prolonged, even potentially infinite not being captivated by this or that spe-
time of delay. Sren Kierkegaard fa- cific goal, as was the case in the context
mously asked: What does it mean to be of the modern projects.
a contemporary of Christ? His answer The hesitation in relation to the mod-
was: that means to hesitate to accept ern projects mainly has to do with the
Christ as a Savior. The acceptance of growing disbelief in the modern prom-
Christianity leaves Christ in the past. ises. Classical modernity still kept
Descartes, in fact, defines the pres- faith in the infinite futureeven after
ent as a time of doubta doubt that is the death of God, even after the loss of
supposed to open the future that will faith in the immortality of the soul. Al-
be full of clear and distinct, evident ready the notion of a permanent art
thoughts. collection says it all. The archive,
Now, one can argue that we library and museum promised
are precisely in such a situ- secular permanency, secular
ation at this historical mo- infinity that substituted for
ment because our time is a the religious promise of
time in which we are recon- resurrection and eternal
sidering and analyzingnot life. During the period of
abandoning or rejecting modernity, the body of
the modern projects. The work substituted for
immediate reason for the soul as a potentially
this reconsideration immortal part of the
is, of course, the Self. Foucault famously
abandonment of the called heterotopias the
communist project modern sites in which time
in Russia and Eastern was accumulated, instead
Europe. Politically and of simply being lost. Politi-
culturally, the communist cally, we can speak about
project dominated the twen the modern utopias as
tieth century. There was the Cold post-historical spaces of
War; there were communist parties accumulated time. The fi-
in the West, dissident movements in niteness of the present time
the East, progressive revolutions, was perceived as being po-
conservative revolutions, discus- tentially compensated for by
sions about pure and engaged art. the infinite time of the realized
All these projects, programs and project: an artwork, or a politi-
movements were interconnected cal utopia. Of course, the time
because they opposed each other. that was invested in the production of
But now they can and should be re- a certain product is obliterated, erased
considered in their entirety. Thus con- by this product. The product remains,
temporary art can be seen as art that but the time that was used for its pro-
is involved in the reconsideration of duction disappears. However, the loss
the modern projects. One can say that of time in and through the product
we are now living through a time of was compensated for in modernity by
indecision, of delaythrough a bor- a historical narrative that somehow
ing time. Martin Heidegger, however, restored the lost time. This narrative
has analyzed boredom precisely as a glorified the life of the artists, scien-
precondition for our ability to experi- tists or revolutionaries who worked for
ence the presence of the presentto the future.
experience the world as whole by being But today, this promise of infinite fu-
equally bored with all its aspects and ture for the results of our work has
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 15

lost any plausibility. The museums timea suspended time or stehende

became the sites of temporary exhibi- Zeit, to use a Heideggerian notion
tions instead of spaces for permanent again.
collections. The future is constantly Contemporary time-based art thema-
re-envisioned; the permanent change tizes this suspended time because it
of cultural trends and fashions makes captures and demonstrates activities
any promise of a stable future for an that take place in time but do not lead
artwork or a political project impro to the creation of any definite product.
bable. The past is also constantly re- And, even if these activities do lead to
written; names and events appear, dis- such a product, they are shown as be-
appear, reappear and disappear again. ing separate from their result, as be-
The present has ceased to be a point of ing not completely invested in
transition from the past to the fu- the product and absorbed by
ture. Instead, it has become a site the product. These artworks
of permanent rewriting of can be seen as the exemplifi-
the past and future, of cations of excessive time that
permanent rewriting are not completely absorbed
of history, of constant by the historical process.
proliferations of his- Let us consider as an ex-
torical narratives beyond ample the animation by
any individual grasp and Francis Als, Song for
control. The only thing Lupita (1998). Here we
we know about our present can watch an activity that
is that these historical narra- has no beginning and no
tives will proliferate tomor- endand does not lead to
row as they are proliferating any definite result, to any
nowand that we will react to definite product. We are
them with the same feeling of confronted here with a
disbelief. Today, we remain ritual of pure and repeti-
stuck in the present; it repro- tive time-wasting, with a
duces itself without leading to secular ritual beyond any
any future. We simply lose our time, claim of magical power,
without any way to invest it securely, beyond any religious tradi-
to accumulate it, whether utopically or tion, beyond any cultural
heterotopically. The loss of the infinite convention.
historical perspective generates the One is reminded here of
phenomenon of unproductive, wast- Camus Sysiphus as a proto-
ed time. However, one can also perceive contemporary artistand
this wasted time positively, as excessive his aimless, senseless activity as a pro-
timeas a time that demonstrates our totype of contemporary time-based
life as pure being in time beyond its art. This non-productive practice, this
utilization in the framework of modern excess of time that is caught in the non-
economy and politics. historical pattern of eternal repetition,
constitutes for Camus the true image
3. of what we call a lifetimelifetime
Now, it seems to me that, if we look at being irreducible to any meaning
the current art scene, a certain kind of of life, any life achievement, any
so-called time-based art reflects this historical relevance. The notion of
contemporary condition. It does so repetition is the central one here. The
because it thematizes the non-produc- inherent repetitiveness of contem-
tive, wasted, non-historical, excessive porary time-based art distinguishes
16 Discourse Boris Groys

it sharply from the happenings and In another work, Als demonstrates

performances of the 1960s. The docu- the activities of a shoe cleaner as an ex-
mented activity here is not a unique, ample of a work process that does not
isolated performance, an individual, produce any value in the Marxist sense
authentic, original event taking place of the term, because the time of shoe
here and now. This activity is inher- cleaning cannot be accumulated into a
ently repetitiveeven before it was product and thus integrated into Marxs
documented by, say, a video running theory of value.
in a loop. The repetitive gesture de- But precisely because such a wasted,
signed by Als functions as a program- suspended, non-historical time cannot
matically impersonal gesturethis be accumulated and absorbed by
animation can be repeated by its product, it can be repeated
anyone, then videographed, impersonally and, potentially,
then repeated again. Here the infinitely. Nietzsche stated that
living human being loses its the only way to conceive of
difference from its media infinity after the death of
image. In Song for Lupita, the God, after the end of trans
opposition between living or- cendence, is the eternal
ganism and dead mechanism return of the same.
is of no point any more be- And Georges Bataille
cause of the mechanical, thematized the repeti-
repetitive and non- tive excess of time, the
purposeful character unproductive waste of
of the documented time, as the only possibil-
gesture. ity to escape the modern
Als also speaks about ideology of progress.
the time of rehearsal as a Certainly, both Nietzsche
wasted, non-teleological time and Bataille perceived
that does not lead to any result, repetition as something
to any endpoint, to any climax. naturally given. But in
His example, in his video Politics his book Difference and
of Rehearsal (2007), is a rehearsal Repetition (1968), Gilles
of a stripteasea rehearsal of a re- Deleuze speaks of literal
hearsal, in some sense, because the repetition as being radi-
sexual desire that is provoked by the cally artificial and, in this
striptease remains in any case un- sense, as being in conflict
fulfilled. In the video, the rehearsal with everything natural,
of the striptease is accompanied living, changing, develop-
by the commentary of the artist, who ing, including natural law and moral
interprets this rehearsal as the model law. Hence practicing literal repetition
of modernity, which always remains an by means of art can be seen as initiat-
unfulfilled promise. For Als, the time ing a rupture in the continuity of life
of modernity is the time of permanent and creating a non-historical excess of
modernization; modernity never really time. And here is the point at which art
achieves its goals and never satisfies the can become truly contemporary.
desire of becoming truly modern that I would like to mobilize here a different
it has provoked. In this sense, the pro- meaning of the word contemporary.
cess of modernization begins to seem To be contemporary does not necessar-
like wasted, excessive time that can ily mean to be present, to be here and
and should be documented precisely now; it means to be with time rather
because it never lead to any real result. than in time. In German, contem-
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 17

porary is zeitgenssisch. Genosse presence. When we go to an art exhibi-

means comrade. So being con-tempo- tion, we generally assume that what-
raryzeitgenssischcan be under- ever is there on displaypaintings,
stood as being a comrade of time, as sculptures, drawings, photographs,
collaborating with time, helping time videos, ready-mades or installations
when it has problems, when it has dif- must be art. The individual artworks
ficulties. And under the conditions of can, of course, in one way or another
our contemporary product-oriented make references to things that they
civilization, time has problems when it are not, maybe to real-world objects
is perceived as unproductive, wasted, or to certain political issues, but they
meaningless time. Such unproductive do not refer to art itself, because they
time becomes excluded from histori- themselves are art. However, this
cal narrativesand is endangered traditional assumption defin-
by complete erasure. That is pre- ing visits to exhibitions and
cisely the moment when museums has proved increas-
time-based art begins ingly misleading. Besides
to help time, to col- works of art, in present-day
laborate with time, to art spaces we are also con-
become a comrade of fronted with the docu-
time. Because time-based mentation of art. In
art is, in fact, art-based documentation, too, we
time. Traditional artworks see pictures, drawings,
(paintings, statues, etc.) are, photographs, videos,
in fact, time-based because they texts and installations
are made with the expectation in other words, the same
that they will have timeeven a forms and media in which
lot of time in the event that they art is commonly present-
are included in museums or ed. But when it comes to
important private collections. art documentation, art
But time-based art is not based is no longer presented
on time as a solid foundation, as through these media but
a guaranteed perspective. Rather, it simply documented. For
documents time that is in danger of art documentation is by
being lost because of its unproductive definition not art. Precisely
charactera character of pure life, by merely referring to art,
or as Giorgio Agamben would put it, art documentation makes it
bare life. But this change of the quite clear that art itself is
relationship between art and time also no longer at hand and instantly visible
changes the temporality of art itself. but, instead, absent and hidden. Thus
Art ceases to be present, to create the it is interesting to compare traditional
effect of presence and also to be in the film with contemporary time-based
present, understood as the uniqueness artwhich has its roots in filmto
of the here and now. Instead, art begins better understand what has happened
to document a repetitive, indefinite, to our life.
maybe even infinite presenta pres- From the beginning, film pretended to
ent that was always already there and be able to document and represent life
can be prolonged indefinitely into the in a way that was inaccessible to the
future. traditional arts. Indeed, as a medium
A work of art is traditionally under- of motion, film has frequently dis-
stood as something that wholly embo played its superiority over other me-
dies art, lending it immediately visible dia, whose greatest accomplishments
18 Positions Boris Groys

are preserved in the form of immobile goer in fact resembles a grandiose

cultural treasures and monuments, by parody of the very vita contemplativa
staging and celebrating the destruction that film itself denounces, because the
of these monuments. This tendency cinema system embodies precisely
also demonstrates films adherence to that vita contemplativa as it surely ap-
the typically modern faith in the supe- pears from the perspective of its most
riority of vita activa over vita contem- radical critican uncompromising
plativa. In this respect, film manifests Nietzschean, perhapsnamely as the
its complicity with the philosophies of product of a frustrated desire, lack of
praxis, of Lebensdrang, of the lan vital personal initiative, as a token of com-
and of desire; it demonstrates its collu- pensatory consolation and a sign of
sion with ideas that, in the footsteps an individuals inadequacy in real
of Marx and Nietzsche, mesmer- life. This is the starting point of
ized the imagination of Europe- many modern critiques of film.
an humanity at the end of Sergei Eisenstein, for instance,
the nineteenth and was exemplary in the way he
the beginning of combined aesthetic shock with
the twentieth centu- political propaganda in an
riesin other words, attempt to mobilize viewers
during the very period and liberate them from
that gave birth to film their passive, contem-
as a medium. This was plative condition.
the era when the hitherto The ideology of moderni-
prevailing attitude of passive tyin all of its formswas
contemplation was discred- directed against contempla-
ited and displaced by celebra- tion, against spectatorship,
tion of the potent movements against the passivity of the
of material forces. Vita con- masses paralyzed by the
templativa was perceived spectacle of modern life.
for a very long time as an Throughout the whole
ideal form of human existence. modernity, we can iden-
Through the period of modernity, tify this opposition between
it began to be despised and rejected passive consumption of the
as a manifestation of weakness, of mass culture and an activ-
lack of energy. In this new worship ist opposition to itpolitical,
of vita activa, film plays a central aesthetic or both. Progres-
role. From its very inception, film sive modern art has consti-
has celebrated everything that moves tuted itself during the period
at high speedtrains, cars, airplanes of modernity in opposition to passive
but also everything that goes beneath consumption, be it of political propa-
the surfaceblades, bombs, bullets. ganda or commercial kitsch. We know
While film as such is a celebration of these activist reactionsfrom the
movement, however, it paradoxically various avant-gardes of the early twen-
drives the audience to new extremes tieth century to Clement Greenberg
of immobility compared to traditional (and his celebrated/well-known/etc.
art forms. So while it is possible to 1939 essay Avant-Garde and Kitsch),
move around with relative freedom Adorno (the culture industry) or
while one is reading or viewing an Guy Debords 1967 The Society of the
exhibition, in the movie theater, the Spectacle, a book whose themes and
viewer is put in darkness and glued rhetorical figures continue to resound
to a seat. The situation of the movie- throughout the current debate on our
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 19

culture. For Debord, the entire world would single out this particular artist
had become a movie theater in which from the mass of other artists. But it is
people are completely isolated from obvious that such a spectator does not
one another and from real life, and exist; it could be God, but weve already
consequently condemned to an exis- been informed of the fact that God is
tence of utter passivity. dead. If contemporary society is still
However, at the end of twentieth and a society of spectacle, it seems to be a
beginning of the twenty-first centuries spectacle without spectators.
art, entered a new eraan era not only On the other hand, spectatorship
of mass art consumption but of mass todayvita contemplativehas also
artistic production. To make a video become quite different from what it
and put it on display through once was. Here, again, the subject
the Internet became an easy of contemplation can no longer
operation accessible to al- rely on the expectation of infinite
most everyone. The practice time resources, on infinite time
of self-documentation be- perspectivesthe expecta-
came todays mass practice tion that was constitutive for
and even mass obsession. Platonic, Christian and Bud-
Contemporary means of dhist traditions of contem-
communication and net- plation. Contemporary
works like Facebook, spectators are spectators
MySpace, YouTube, on the move; primarily,
Second Life and they are travelers. Contem-
Twitter give global porary vita contemplativa
populations the pos- coincides with permanent
sibility to display their active circulation. The act of
photos, videos and texts in contemplation itself func-
a way that cannot be distin- tions today as a repetitive
guished from any other post- gesture that cannot and
conceptualist artwork, including does not lead to any result,
time-based artworks. And that that is, to any conclusive and
means that contemporary art today well-founded aesthetic judg-
has become a mass cultural prac- ment.
tice. So the question arises: How can Traditionally, we had in our
a contemporary artist survive this culture two fundamentally
popular success of contemporary different modes of contem-
art? Or, how can the artist sur- plation at our disposal that
vive in a world in which everybody has gave us control over the time we spent
become an artist, after all? looking at images: the immobilization
One may furthermore speak about our of the image in the exhibition space
contemporary society as a society of or the immobilization of the viewer
spectacle. Today, however, we are liv- in the movie theater. Yet both modes
ing, not among the masses of passive collapse when moving images are
spectators described by Guy Debord, transferred into a museum or an art
but among the masses of artists. To exhibition space. The images will con-
be able to ascertain himself or herself tinue to move, but the viewer will, too.
in this contemporary context of mass As a rule, it is impossible to follow a
production, the artist needs a spectator video or film from the beginning to the
who could overlook all this immeasur- end under the conditions of a regular
able mass of artistic production and exhibition visit if the film or video is
formulate an aesthetic judgment that particularly longespecially if there
20 Discourse Boris Groys

are many such time-based artworks in By contrast, the exhibition space that
the same exhibition space. And, in fact, includes time-based art is cool because
such an endeavor would be misplaced. it makes focusing on individual exhib-
To see a film or a video in its entirety, its unnecessary or even impossible.
one has to go to a movie theater or re- This is why such a space is capable of
main in front of ones own personal also including all sorts of hot media
computer. The whole point of visiting text, music, individual imagesso as to
an exhibition of time-based art is to make them cool off. Cool contemplation
take a look at it and then another look is the one that does not aim to produce
and another lookbut not to see it in an aesthetic judgment or choice. Cool
its entirety. One can say that the act of contemplation is just the permanent
contemplation itself is put here repetition of the gesture of look-
in a loop. ing atin awareness of the lack
Time-based art, as it is shown of time that would be necessary
in exhibition spaces, is a cool to achieve comprehensive con-
medium, to use the notion in- templation and informed
troduced by Marshall McLu- judgment. Time-based art
han. According to McLuhan, demonstrates here the bad
hot media lead to social frag- infinity of the wasted,
mentation: when reading a excessive time that can-
book, you are alone and not be absorbed by the
in a focused state of spectator. At the same
mind. And equally time, however, it removes
focused, you wander from vita contemplativa the
alone from one object to modern stigma of passiv-
the next in a conventional ity. In this sense, one can
exhibitionseparated from say that the documenta-
the outside reality, in inner iso- tion of time-based art
lation. McLuhan thought that only erases the difference
electronic media such as TV are between vita activa and
able to overcome the isolation of the vita contemplativa. Here,
individual spectator. But this analysis again, time-based art turns
of McLuhans cannot be applied on the scarcity of time into excess
most important electronic medium of of timeand shows itself to
today: the Internet. At first sight, the be collaborator, a comrade
Internet seems to be as cool, if not of time, its true contempo-
cooler, than TV because it activates rary.
users, seducing, or even forcing, them
into active participation in the medium.
Sitting in front of the computer and
using the Internet, however, you are
aloneand extremely focused. If the
Internet is participative, it is so in the
same sense that the literary space is.
While anything that enters these spaces
is noticed by other participantspro-
voking reactions from them, which in
turn provoke further reactions, and
Images:
Stills from the animation so onthese active participations take
video Song for Lupita by place solely in the users imagination,
Francis Als, 1998 leaving his or her body unmoved.
Studies Petja Grafenauer 21

NOTES

1See Igor Zabel,

Sodobna umetnost in

Discourse of
Igor panol and Igor Zabel
(eds.), Teritoriji, identitete,
mree. Slovenska umetnost
19952005 (Ljubljana:
Moderna Galerija, 2005),

Eastern European
619.

Art in Slovenia
For the arts, Slovenias independence the links that were formed between the
from the former Yugoslavia, its transi- art worlds of Yugoslav republics were
tion into a capitalist social order and its forgotten, severed and even denied.
joining of the European Union meant At the same time, Slovenia experienced
that the discourse which emphasized a transformation in art, a change in
the links between Slovenian and West- the art discourse and the leading cad-
ern art ever since 1948 (when Yugosla- res in institutions. Institutions started
via turned away from the Soviet bloc supporting art that spoke a different
and started seeking support in the aesthetic language from the one that
West) became dominant. It seemed as had been privileged until then, and
if Slovenias art scene returned to the this accelerated the transformation
so-called natural Western frame. The from modernism to contemporary
links with the West were strengthened art. New art projects started emerg-
by the financial and infrastructural ing; they were flowing into the social
support offered to the art world in the space, changing themselves from the
newly formed state, the interest of the art object to the context. These projects
West in the fresh and exotic art that researched images and media (which
it included into its paradigm and at the were becoming increasingly visible
same time into its art market, and, of in the capitalist system that replaced
course, the desire of Slovene artists the former socialist one), searched
to operate and establish themselves for new relations with the public and
in territories that offered them better held a critical, rebellious and political
economic and infrastructural possi- stance.1 In Slovenia, art that we today
bilities. A short post-war period, dur- call contemporary has been develo
ing which the state tried to introduce ping sporadically alongside the domi-
socialist realism, the efforts of the nant modernism since the conceptual
International Biennial of Graphic Arts practices of the 1960s and 1980s started
(established in 1955) to communicate to establish themselves within their
with and show art from the nonaligned own institutions. Together with the
states together with art from the East- new protagonists who emerged in the
ern and Western Bloc, and especially second half of the 1990s, the newly
22 Studies Petja Grafenauer

that accompanied the 1996 Interpol

exhibition in Stockholm. At this group
exhibition featuring Eastern and
Western artists, conceived by Viktor
Misiano and Jan Aman, conflicts be-
tween the artists and curators started
prior to the exhibition opening. They
culminated in the Open Letter to the Art
World, which was written and distribu
ted after the exhibition by the partici-
pating Western artists.2 In the letter,
they described their understanding
of the performances of Aleksander
Brenner, who destroyed a work by
the artist Wenda Gu, and Oleg Kulik,
who attacked a few people during his
performance. The letter shows quite
clearly the attitude between East and
West and even the Western hegemonic
position: it states, [Brenner and Ku-
liks] attitude denies every possibility
2Olivier Zahm et al., established field of contemporary art of dialogue between the (former) East
An Open letter to the plays a dominant role in Slovenias art and the West. It is a speculative and
Artworld in Laura discourse and its important art institu- populist attitude that cannot be accept-
Hoptman, Tom Pospiszyl
(eds.), Primary Documents:
tions, foremost the Moderna Galerija in ed as a basis for dialogue.3 The artists
A Sourcebook for Eastern Ljubljana. from the West understood the actions
and Central European Art not as art but as something threatening
Since the 1950s (New York/ As the central art institution of Slo- to legitimize a new form of totalitar-
Cambridge MA: Museum venia, the Moderna Galerija plays an ian ideology.4 They felt threatened by
of Modern Art/MIT Press,
important role in the transformation what they described as following the
2002), 345347.
of art discourse from modernism to classical model of imperialist behav-
3Clay Tarica, Case contemporary art, which is why during ior and hooliganism and skinhead
Study: East Against West the past decade it was often reproached ideology and were also the ones who
in Primary Documents, for neglecting the local (predominant- had the power to say that the dialogue
344. ly modernist) tradition. In the 1990s, between them and the Eastern artists
the Moderna Galerija also started es- is impossible if it is not performed on
4Zahm et al., 345.
tablishing new links internationally, the terms of what they considered to be
5Ibid., 345-346. especially with Western art spaces. As the freedom of expression and democ-
it operated in significantly different racy.5 The idea of further collaboration
6Eda ufer, The historical, economic and social condi- seemed impossible. To talk as equal
Symptom of the Vehicle
tions than its Western counterparts, it partners the Eastern artists had to act
in Inke Arns (ed.), IRWIN:
Retroprincip 1983-2003 was forced to communicate with the equal, i.e. civilized and democratic, and
(Frankfurt/Main: West as a subordinate, which soon re- to present a theory and a history that
Revolver, 2003), 191. sulted in its desire to construct its own would be comprehensible to the West-
art discourse. As a result, the Moderna ern art worlds narrative.
7Irwin and NSK Galerija started strategically support- To a certain extent, the concept of
members invited artists
ing and developing the discourse on Eastern European Art can be histori-
and theoreticians from
former Yugoslavia Eastern European art. cally based. From the end of the Sec-
(amongst them Goran One way to understand how and why ond World War to the fall of the Berlin
orevi, Mladen such a concept developed can be de- Wall, Eastern European spaces were
Stilinovi, Milivoj Bjeli, scribed with the help of the incident joined by comparable social and politi-
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 23

cal circumstances, due to which the concept and theme of an informal or Rastko Monik, Marina
art worlds of former communist and semi-formal communication with vari- Grini et al.) and the
Moscow conceptual, media
socialist countries show certain simi- ous participants of the American art
and philosophical scene.
larities. The Moderna Galerija (a very system in order to share and distribute
important institutional factor in the data, concepts, emotions, views, infor- 8Ibid.
Slovenian national art scene) started mation and experiences that were for
supporting the discourse on Eastern the most part connected with the rela-
European art by organizing a series of tionship between East and West. Viktor
exhibitions and building a new collec- Misiano calls this bonding period be-
tion in the late 1990s, but the concept of tween the Moscow and Slovene artists
Eastern European art was introduced the period of a confidential commu-
to Slovenias art world before that, es- nity. He also states that this was a pe-
Images page 7071:
pecially through the efforts of the art- riod during which IRWIN understood IRWIN, NSK Embassy
ist group IRWIN. the strategic need to clarify Slovenias Moscow, 1992
Eastern identity as a natural way for Photos Joe Suhadolnik
Until 1989, IRWINs interest in the
art coming from the countries of the
Eastern Bloc was not yet strategic. The
connection with art of Eastern Europe
was seen only on an intrinsic level as it
was partially based on appropriations
and manipulations of artworks com-
ing from the historical avant-gardes.6
But during the years of the greatest
political and social upheavals in Slove-
nia in the early 1990s, IRWIN started
to create links with contemporary
Moscow artists in order to establish
an international network in which it
could operate. In 1992, the group real-
ized the project NSK Embassy Moscow.
This was a live-installation in a private
apartment in Moscow where the artist
group Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK)
and other invited artists from former
Yugoslavia presented their projects
and where NSK also prepared a week
long program of public lectures and
discussions by Slovene, Croatian, Ser
bian and Moscow artists, theoreti-
cians and curators. During this period,
new strategic friendships and plans
for cooperation emerged amongst the
project participants.7 The key event
that strengthened the bonds even fur-
ther was the East-West dispute at the
Interpol exhibition, which led to the
Transnacionala project initiated by
IRWIN. This was a project in which a
group of artists and theoreticians trav-
elled across the USA with the central
24 Studies Petja Grafenauer

9This work included the Slovenia to enter the European and art from 1975 to 2005, which helped es-
exhibitions OHO (1994), global identity market.8 tablish the new historical narrative. He
TANK! Slovenska zgodovin-
It was within the frame of the Moderna was also closely involved in the Arteast
ska avantgarda (TANK!
Slovene history of the
Galerija and especially with the work exhibitions and the collection of East-
avant-garde, 1998-1999), a of director Zdenka Badovinac and ern European art, which were all pro-
series of three retrospec- chief curator Igor Zabel that the new duced in the Moderna Galerija.
tive exhibitions of the his- history of Slovene artestablished by IRWIN and the Moderna Galerija were
tory of Slovene art between the institution through exhibitions joined in the knowledge that Slovenia
1975 and 2005 (20032005),
emerged simultaneously with the (as well as the former East at large)
new settings of the perma-
nent exhibitions of Slovene establishment of contemporary art.9 was dealing with a deficient discourse
art and the U3 Triennial of Within the frame of Eastern European on contemporary art and its history,
Contemporary Slovene Arts art, this history of contemporary art an underdeveloped art market with
(since 1994). attached itself to the story of institu- a weak, locally oriented system of
tionally non-established Eastern Euro- private galleries and collectors and
10Igor Zabel and Marina
Grini, Slovenia in
pean art from the avant-gardes to the non-existent international museum
IRWIN (eds.), East Art Map, retro-garde in which an important po- collections of contemporary art.12 The
Contemporary Art and sition was held by NSK and IRWIN. collaboration of the artist group and
Eastern Europe (London/ In 2006, IRWIN took the initiative the museum resulted in the ensemble
Cambridge MA: Afterall/ to produce the book East Art Map, a of works entitled 2000+ Arteast Collec-
MIT Press, 2006), 318-332.
construction of Eastern European art tion, which became a new section of the
11This is the starting history written by numerous theoreti- Moderna Galerija collection. The col-
point for NSK and Irwin, cians, curators and art historians for lection was presented to the public for
the art tandem Aina all the individual countries. This East- the first time in 2000, when the third
Schmidt, Marina Grini ern European art history coincided Manifesta (under the coordination of
and others. with the construction of a new Slove- Zabel) was hosted in Ljubljana. IRWINs
12Borut Vogelnik,
nian national art history which is today Borut Vogelnik introduced 2000+
Instrumental Policy, in based on the practices of the historical Arteast Collection as the only collec-
IRWIN: Retroprincip, 200. avant-gardes, neo-avant-gardes and tion for which (predominantly) con-
retro-garde movements, which were ceptual art from Eastern Europe is sys-
13Ibid. In the late 1980s, largely excluded from the canon in the tematically collected. IRWIN was also
Zavrl was one of the main
previous decades. In East Art Map, the the subject that helped to establish the
protagonists in the JBTZ
affair. He later became history of art in Slovenia is divided in- possibilities for the realization of the
an important Slovene to two parts.10 The first represents the collection. Its help, as Borut Vogelnik
entrepreneur and founder history of Slovenian art as the continu- explains, was limited to the circle of
of the advertising and ation of the historical avant-garde, the collectors with whom we participate at
counselling company 1980s Ljubljana alternative scene, Me- the Moderna Galerija. The collectors,
Pristop from Ljubljana.
telkova, the Belgrade Malevich, Recon- especially Franci Zavrl, enabled the
14When visitors from structed Fiction, the projects by Marina 2000+ Arteast Collection by organising
the international art scene Grini and Eclipse.11 This view was a pool of donators and through their
visited the new premises constructed by the theoretician Marina active participation at the organisation
at Metelkova, they were Grini, who also took part in NSK Em- and promotion.13
not confronted with any
bassy Moscow. The description of the
of the works by Slovene
artists, as they were not
other, more traditional modernist Eighty-six works were exhibited at the
included in this 2000+ line, which also ends with the so-called first public presentation of the 2000+.
Arteast Collection, but contemporary artists IRWIN, Marjetica Arteast Collection: The Art of Eastern
mostly saw works by Potr and Marko Peljhan, was con- Europe in Dialogue with the West: Exhi-
Marina Abramovi, Miro- structed by Zabel, who participated in bition of Works for an Emerging Collec-
slaw Balka, Joseph Beuys,
the construction of both Eastern Euro- tion, which took place on the premises
Ilya Kabakov and other
established artists from the pean and Slovenian contemporary art of the future museum of contemporary
East, alongside artists like discourses. Zabel was the author of a art. These premises are located in the
Jean-Marc Bustamante and series of three exhibitions on Slovene decaying former military barracks at
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 25

Metelkova, intended to become a new showed an important overview of art- Jenny Holzer. The situation
location for the expansion of the Mod- ists from the East of Europe.14 changed in 2001 when the
erna Galerija. The first presentation of In addition to the temporary presenta- collection was shown in
the Orangerie Congress
the collection did not include the works tions of the 2000+ Arteast Collection,
in Innsbruck. Here works
of any Slovene artists, which was the Moderna Galerija continued to de- by selected Slovene artists
harshly criticized by Marina Grini: velop the discourse on Eastern Europe- (including Joe Bari,
This was, as my analysis in the year an art through a series of international Vuk osi, Nua & Sreo
2000 already pointed out, paradoxical exhibitions that it merged under the Dragan, Vadim Fikin, Lai-
bach, Novi Kolektivizem,
enough, since the 2000+ Arteast Col- title Arteast Exhibitions in 2003.15 This
OHO, Marko Peljhan, Tadej
lection was not produced as a national series of exhibitions was preceded by Pogaar & P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E.
display, but prepared precisely for the the international exhibition Body and Museum, Marjetica Potr,
international audience. The exhibition the East: From the 1960s to the Present Gledalie Scipion Nasice,
2000+ Arteast Collection was presented (curated by Zdenka Badovinac in 1999) Apolonija uteri) were
parallel to Manifesta 3 in Ljubljana and with eighty participating artists. Simi- included in the 2000+
Arteast Collection and
therefore they both shared the same larly to Arteast Exhibitions, this ex-
remained its part from
large public of internationally invited hibition dealt with art practices com- that time onwards. Ma-
specialists for Manifesta 3. Therefore, ing from Eastern Europe and placed rina Grini, The State of
what happened was that the 2000+ Slovene authors in this international Things, Reartikulacija, no.
Arteast Collection disavowed the Slove- context. 5. 28-01-2010 <http://www.
reartikulacija.org/RE5/
nian part entirely, de facto eliminating In 2003, one of the neglected Yugoslav
ENG/hardcore5_ENG_grz.
all art production from the 1960s on armys former military barracks on html>.
from Slovenia. On the other hand, and Metelkova hosted the exhibition Form-
at the same time, those running the Specific (curated by Zdenka Badovinac), 15The 2000+ Arteast
Moderna Galerija could empower and which was followed in 2004 by Seven Collection is currently not
victoriously situate themselves in the Sins: Ljubljana Moscow (curated by
international context, as the exhibition Zdenka Badovinac, Viktor Misiano, Ig- IRWIN, East Art Map, 2002
26

accessible to the public as

the exhibition spaces for
it will be located in the
museum of contemporary
art, which has still yet to
be built.

16Janez Drnovek, Ope

ning speech in Seven Sins:
Ljubljana-Moscow, exh.
cat., (Ljubljana: Moderna
Galerija, 2004), 3.

or Zabel), an exhibition that presented

the works by the 134 artists in the Mod-
erna Galerija. The Slovene president
from the central-left Liberal Democ-
racy of Slovenia opened the exhibition
with a statement that supported the
Moderna Galerijas strategy:
I would also like to take this opportu-
nity to recall the common Slavic roots
of the Slovene and Russian nations and
of the other Slavic peoples. This link
is of particular importance at a time
when an important transformation has
occurred in Europe. I am referring to
the recent entry of Slovenia and other
Slavic countries to the European Union,
where in time they will be joined by yet
more countries. This historic step also
creates a need for greater cooperation
between Slavic countries in affirming
their cultural identity within the Euro-
pean family of nations.16
The Liberal Democracys political aims
were similar to those of the Moderna
Galerija, but when the right wing gov-
ernment came into power in the same
year (between 2004 and 2008), the po-
litical support to the institution ceased.
The Moderna Galerija, which was at
that time successful in internationally
establishing the collection and the dis-
course on Eastern European art, had to
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 27

fight battles on numerous local fronts the city had been offered for its opera- 17The collection toured
in order to ensure the collection and its tion. Therefore the Moderna Galerija to venues including the
Orangerie Congress,
exhibitions.17 Criticism did not come was silenced and could not conceive
Innsbruck, 2001 and ZKM,
merely from that part of the local world exhibitions for a period of two years. Karlsruhe, 2002.
of contemporary art that felt excluded As exhibition activities, especially con-
from the Moderna Galerijas activities, tinuous exhibitions from the Arteast
but also from the remaining proponents series are of vital importance for medi-
of the modernist discourse who had a ating the idea of Eastern European art
strong desire to prove the connections to the general public, the discourse on
between Slovene and Western art. They Eastern European art has become less
were the ones who joined forces with present in Slovenia. Images page 2627:
Exhibition views of
the conservative, nationalistic govern- At the time when the Moderna Galerija
2000+ Arteast Collection,
ment that leaned upon the discourse of was already dealing with the issues of Moderna Galerija,
the European Union. its premises, it staged an Arteast ex- Ljubljana, 2000
hibition entitled Interrupted Histories Photo Matija Pavlovec
On April 7, 2006, the Minister of Cul-
ture from the largest right wing party
called for a meeting, during which
he questioned the construction of a
new museum of contemporary art in
Ljubljana. The Moderna Galerija pre-
pared the programme for this museum
for which it also foresaw the exhibi-
tion 2000+ Arteast Collection. The right
wing policies understood all links with
the East as a step away from the better
future in the West, a step towards the
iron, past times, and did not find
establishing the discourse on Eastern
European art to be a step that the
Moderna Galerija should pursue. The
governments proposal was a multi-
purpose venue without a consistent
program, where different institutions
would participate. By establishing such
a venue, the government would silence
the increasing need of national art in-
stitutions for new infrastructure, as
everybody could participate in the
program. This policy would also make
sure that the 2000+ Arteast Collection
would not be permanently exhibited in
the museum. This plan did not go into
action because with elections in 2008,
the left came into power again.
But even with the left party in power
the Moderna Galerija has found itself
without contact with its public, as its
central building and future exhibition
premises at Metelkova were closed for
renovation and no temporary space in
28 Studies Petja Grafenauer

which the Moderna Galerija prepared

together with Maska, a Slovene maga-
zine for the performing arts. The exhi-
bition was curated by the directors of
the two institutions, and the exhibition
(together with the collection) repre-
sented ideas for projects that could be
included into the 2000+ Arteast Collec-
tion by the year 2023.
The exhibitions Body and The East,
Form Specific, Seven Sins: Ljubljana
Moscow, Interrupted Histories and
2000+ 23. Arteast Exhibition: Arteast
Collection resulted in a thesis that there
are certain comparable characteristics
to be found in the art that was created
in countries of Eastern Europe dur-
(2006). This exhibition (once again cu- ing the previous decades. This art field
rated by Zdenka Badovinac) presented is constructed as a unified entity and
thirty-three artists. The same year researched through various thematic
also saw the opening of the 2000+ 23. exhibitions and thus defined from vari-
Arteast Exhibition. Arteast Collection ous angles.
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 29

The first exhibition dealt with the is- premises, will result in the revival,
sue of the body in the works by artists re-articulation or decline of the dis-
from this political frame. The second course on Eastern European art. The
deconstructed the issue of the seem- part of the institutionthe museum
ingly apolitical modernist form that of contemporary artthat is intended
some artworks used differently than to host the 2000+ Arteast Collection is
the Western high-modernist paradigm. still not open. It is even less clear what
The Seven Sins exhibition established a this will mean for the establishment of
special Eastern European identity in the local art world on the international
Images page 2829:
opposition to the Western one, marked (still mainly Western European) scene.
Exhibition views of 7
by characteristics that are considered Nonetheless, the Moderna Galerija Sins, Moderna Galerija,
to be sinful in the West. The exhibition managed to show art by Slovenian and Ljubljana, 2004
Interrupted Histories was based on the other Eastern European artists in ex- Photo Dejan Habicht
research of the specific characteristics
of historicizing a given geographical
and politically marked world of art of
Eastern Europe.

Thinking about the influence of these

exhibitions on the local art discourse,
we can say that the selection of Slo-
vene artist for these exhibitions and
the collection supported the rewrit-
ing of national art history. The same
names from the national scene kept
re-emerging in these exhibitions
amongst them, IRWIN and other mem-
bers of the NSK collective, OHO, the
protagonists from the 1980s Ljubljana
subculture and alternative scene,
Marko Peljhan, Vadim Fikin, Tadej
Pogaar, Joe Bari, and others. The
exhibition memory of the local audi-
ence was thus filled with contemporary
artworks that could count as their fore-
runners. This corresponded to the con-
struction of a new history of Slovene
art in which historical avant-gardes
were followed with neo-avant-gardes
and retro-gardes, ending in contem-
porary art. This was a history that re-
placed the former canon of modernist
painting and sculpture, which for the
largest part excluded avant-garde and
neo-avant-garde practices.

It is still unclear whether the return of

the institution into the public sphere,
which took place a few months ago
when the Moderna Galerija started
operating again in the renovated
30 Studies Petja Grafenauer

18Zdenka Badovinac, hibition spaces in Western Europe and the book The Total Art of Stalinism by
Prekinjene zgodovine the USA. Although it is art historically Boris Groys:
in Prekinjene zgodovine problematic to characterize the art of
(Interrupted histories)
Eastern Europe as a unified field, the Writing history is not a neutral or
(Ljubljana: Moderna
Galerija, 2006), n.p. same can also be argued for the dis- objective activity. We could say that
course of Western European Art. The it is a construction of an image of
19Igor Zabel, Strategija context of the works that Eastern Eu- a certain historic period or devel-
zgodovinopisja, Celostna ropean art provided was constructed opment. This construction pushes
umetnina Stalin (Strategies in the spaces of Eastern Europe itself. some things to the side and empha-
of Writing Histories,
The Total Art of Stalin)
By establishing its own discourse, the sizes others as well as creates links
(Ljubljana: Zalo_ba /*cf., Moderna Galerija and the Slovene art and lines between them. [] Such
1999), 147. world in general are becoming a more construction is of course not hap-
equal partner when communicating hazard, for it is a gamemore or
with the dominant Western art dis- less obviouswith a specific role
course and art history. within the symbolic and ideological
The existence of an Eastern European systems, i.e. in systems with which
art discourse should ensure that the the various power systems prove
West cannot just add selected works of themselves on the level of social
art to its own history but rather must consciousness.19
admit to an existence of an art with
a history that was happening paral- Strategies for establishing discourses
lel to its own. With this the established and their histories are always power
(Western) art and its history will have games, be it within a national or an in-
to rethink themselves and not simply ternational court.
appropriate selected artworks to its
existing discourse. What Badovinac
wrote in the introduction to the exhibi-
tion Interrupted Histories holds true:
The established historical system does
not change drastically, it only expands,
the spaces of the other are slowly inte-
grated into the Western system through
the modernisation processes, however
this is performed more with individual
representatives than with a collective
experience.18 The 2000+ Arteast Col-
lection exhibitions are strategically
planned to ensure the inclusion of just
such a collective narrative.
Within Slovenia, several art discourses
are excluded from the Eastern Euro-
pean art narrative by virtue of having
fewer presentation and production
possibilities. This means that these
parallel discourses resist the discourse
on Eastern European art on the local
and if possible also the international
Exhibition view of
level. However every construction of
2000+ Arteast Collection,
Moderna Galerija, a historical narrative is a practice of
Ljubljana, 2000 selection, as Zabel writes in the intro-
Photo Matija Pavlovec duction to the Slovene translation of
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 31
32 Studies Sven Spieker

NOTES

Bureaucratic
1Andrs Sznt, Editing
as Metaphor in Steven
Rand, Heather Kouris
(eds.), Cautionary Tales:

Poems: Curating and

Critical Curating (New
York: Apexart, 2007), 73.

Storytelling in the
Late 1960s
I have no intentions of ever writing. While storytelling in my understand-
I just will do an exhibition, and it wont ing involves the (oral) transmission of
have any writing in it. And you just have a tale whose authority is derived from
to deal with what you see there. the person who tells it, modern curating
Seth Siegelaub, 1969 derives its authority from a configura-
tion that resembles the medium of writ-
Curating, whose modern history is ing much more than (oral) telling. At its
closely linked to the emergence of con- inception in the 1960s and early 1970s,
ceptual tendencies in postwar art, has modern curating (understood here as an
often been compared to the ability to active form of creation rather than an
tell a story. As Andrs Sznt writes, instance of mere custodianship) func-
A good curator, like a good editor, tioned as a form of remediation: from
knows that such problems are due in the story-based, institutional discourse
part to how the material is presented to of traditional art institutions (listening
the audience. Storytelling is the shared to a story vs. visual contemplation) to an
art of the curator and the editor.1 understanding of visuality and display
as open forms of written communica-
In the context of the 1960smarked not tion (reading vs. reduced visuality).
only by the rise of conceptual art, the
waning of minimalism, and the wide- According to Walter Benjamin, sto-
spread obsession with (sign) systems, rytellingwhich declined in modern
information flow and structural an- times as a result of the decline of the
thropologyany association of curat- currency of lived experience, the ap-
ing with something as old-fashioned as pearance of the printing press, and the
storytelling may seem perplexing. And rise of fast-lived information in printed
while to link curating to storytelling is mediapresupposes the tellers living
to highlight the crucial element of lan- immediacy, his or her presence at the
guage that is their most important com- scene of the narration. One of the most
mon denominator, what gets lost in this important elements of storytellinga
equation is the medium in which lan- pre-modern way of storing knowledge
guage enunciates itself in either case. by disseminating itwas memory. As
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 33
34 Studies Sven Spieker

2Walter Benjamin, The a recounting of personal experiences cisive wedge between storytelling and
Storyteller: Reflections from memory and without additional modern curatorship. For his epochal
on the Works of Nikolai
explanations, stories were easy to as- show The Xerox Book (1968), Seth
Leskov in Michael W
Jennings, Howard Eiland,
similate and pass on. They relied for Siegelaub invited artists to contribute
and Gary Smith (eds.), their efficacy on an uninterrupted oral a twenty-five page piece on standard
Walter Benjamin: Selected tradition and on a habitual willingness, 8 x 11 inch paper which would then be
Writings, vol. 3, 19351938 on the listeners part, to accept unverifi- reproduced seriographically. This kind
(Cambridge MA: The able information as true simply by dint of standardizationwhich at other
Belknapp Press of Harvard
of the tellers presence. Stories were times included the publication of infor-
University Press, 2003),
149. persuasive because the person who told mation on standardized magazine pag-
them had lived through what they con- esaims at the conditions under which
3A case in point is tained and had committed it to memory. the show is visually experienced: By
Harald Szeemanns As Benjamin writes, Storytelling is keeping the exhibition situation as
1963 show Bildnerei der
always the art of repeating stories, and uniform as possible for each and all
Geisteskranken Art
Brut Insania Pingens
this art is lost when the stories are no of the artists in the exhibition and not
at the Kunsthalle Bern longer retained.2 relying on outside verbal information
(reconstructed in 2005), like catalogue introductions, thematic
which featured works Compared with the pre-modern under- titles, etc., Ive tried to avoid prejudic-
from the Prinzhorn standing of storytelling exemplified by ing the viewing situation.4 The term
collection of art by the
Benjamin, curators in the 1960s operat- standardization must here be under-
mentally ill. While in
one sense, Szeemanns ed with a toolbox of terms and concepts stood as shorthand for reproduction, or
exhibition refers us to that seemed to focus not on continuity, reproducibility. At first glance, the em-
Prinzhorns book Bildnerei history or memory but rather on rup- phasis on the exhibitions (the books)
der Geisteskranken, his ture and discontinuity. This meant that reproducibility that is at the core of
exhibition was anything they were more concerned with the The Xerox Book references a crucial el-
but a historicizing
illustration of mental
conditions under which stories were ement in Benjamins account of story-
illness or of Prinzhorns told than with the stories themselves.3 telling, namely repetition (storytelling
volume. Szeemann acted is always the art of repeating stories).
not as a psychiatrist who However, it was the rise of conceptual Yet at the same time, the standard-
evaluates the art produced art in the late 1960s that drove the de- ized technical conditions under which
by his patients, but rather
as their medium or friend,
a character for whom the
continuities of scientific
or aesthetic discourse, and
their pretense of healing
a disease, are all but an
illusion.

4Seth Siegelaub, On
Exhibitions and the World
at Large in Gregory
Battcock (ed.), Idea Art: A
Critical Anthology (New
York: Dutton, 1973), 166;
170.

5Interview with Seth

Siegelaub, in Hans-Ulrich
Obrist (ed.), A Brief History
of Curating, (Zrich:
JRP/Ringier, 2008), 122.
With his interest in the
presentation of art as a
series of differentials,
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 35

Siegelaubs exhibition was repeated

(seriographed) and the fact that the art-
ists projects had to conform ab origine
to the technical conditions of their fu-
ture reproduction (standardized paper
size, etc.) ensured that The Xerox Book
did not so much copy the storytelling
situationwith its equation of repeti-
tion with memory (Benjamin)as it ac-
tually reversed it. As an exhibition, The
Xerox Book owed less to (oral) storytell-
ing with its insistence on memory as a
function of the tellers presence than to
the fundamental characteristics of the
written (printed) word and the individ-
ual letters of which it is composed: se-
riality, reproduction (rather than mem-
ory) and the discreteness of the code.
Curating, in Siegelaubs understand-
ing, represented an instance of writing
rather than (story)-telling. The differ-
ence between the two is simple: stories
are memorized, while written texts are
reproduced according to more or less
standardized technical conditions. In-
stead of listening to a story told from
memory, in exhibitions of idea art,
visitors were confronted with nothing
but the medium of that ideas (possible)
reproduction.

The standardization of the exhibi-

tion situation in The Xerox Book and
other curatorial projects at the time
famously evacuated any emphasis on
visual display. Instead the idea was that
the art was to be found in the differ-
ence that separated the standardized
exhibition conditions from the works
produced within them: I proposed a
series of requirements for the project,
concerning the use of a standard size that it emphasizes the way in which Siegelaubconsciously or
paper and the amount of pages, the both are based on language. From a notreacted to the avant-
garde exhibition designs
container within which the artist was functional point of view, the modern
by El Lissitzy from the late
asked to work [] with the idea that curator acts like the speaker (or writer) 1920s. It was El Lissitzky
the resulting differences in each art- of a sentence. On the one hand, his or who in his so-called
ists project or work would be precisely her task is to preserve and care (curo) Demonstration Room was
what the artists work was about.5 for what has made it across the bound- the first to standardize the
ary that separates art from the unor- conditions under which art
was viewed.
As I mentioned, to equate curating with dered realm of non-art. Reframing this
storytelling has the great advantage fact in terms borrowedappropriately,
36 Studies Sven Spieker

6Siegelaub famously from the point of view of the late or storyinvolves the more or less suc-
distinguished between 1960sfrom structural linguistics, we cessful combination of elements from
primary and
might say that curating operates on two the paradigmatic level to form a coher-
secondary information,
identifying the first with
separate levels, one syntagmatic and the ent sentence. The addressee of such
the idea or concept, and the other paradigmatic. The paradigmatic an utterancethe visitor of an exhibi-
second with information level comprises the collection of objects tionneeds to establish a relationship
about it. To the extent classified as art. On this level, there is between the two levels in order to fully
that an art idea nothing but discrete objects that exist understand the utterance. To give an
eschews objecthood, any
independently of any relationships or example, in the sentence When placed
information related to it in
an exhibition is primary. connections between them, and inde- in a museum, this sofa represents art,
However, to the extent pendently of any story they might tell the writer (or speaker) selects sofa
that any idea or concept, once they have been strung together from the paradigm furniture, muse-
in order to exist, has to be to form an exhibition. By contrast, the um from a paradigm that encompasses
documented or enunciated different types of art institutions (gal-
contextual or syntagmatic axisthe
in some way, the opposite
exhibition thought of as an utterance leries, studios, Kunsthallen, etc.), and
art from the paradigm culture (as
opposed to nature). In order to under-
stand the sentence we need to be mind-
ful of what has not been included in it,
such as (for example) table (instead of
sofa), gallery (instead of museum), or
kitsch (instead of art). As for the verb
in this sentence, placed could not
easily be substituted by related verbs
such as, say, hidden because on the
syntagmatic level to place represents
an instance of something being shown
(rather than hidden).

The textual exhibition practice of the

late 1960spractices based on writ-
ing rather than tellingmapped
the paradigmatic level of language
onto the syntagmatic one, a procedure
reminiscent of the way in which the
linguist Roman Jakobson defined po-
etry (the projection of the principle of
equivalence from the axis of selection
to the axis of combination). The trick
was to allow a potentially infinite num-
ber of pieces of information (shown in
what Siegelaub called the exhibition
situation) reference an art idea with
which they never fully coincided at the
same time.6 Thenormally hidden
paradigmatic axis (the infinite pool
of similarities and differences from
which a curator chooses his/her ob-
jects) not only affected the place from
which it was normally banned (the
syntagmatic plane of the exhibition),
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 37

it actually became that place. The art gallery or the avoidance of a reified art might just as well be
idea was a potentially endless amount object but also (and especially) the ef- argued: in relation to the
of individual pieces of information, fect of radical linguistic dispersion on (primary) idea or concept,
any information about it
and these could enter into a potentially which both of these moves are based. is of necessity secondary.
endless number of relationships with The effect of this dispersion is not un- Siegelaubs distinction is
each other. As Joseph Kosuth formu- like the symptoms of a speech disorder notoriously unstable.
lated in the catalogue of Harald Szee- Jakobson called contiguity disorder.8
manns epochal show When Attitudes Patients with such a disorder can pro- 7Joseph Kosuth in When
Attitudes Become Form,
Become Form (1969): The new work is duce endless substitutes for individual
exh.cat., (Bern: Kunsthalle
not connected with a precious object words, but any coherent context in the Bern, 1969).
its accessible to as many people as are present (such as a finished sentence)
interested; its nondecorativehaving remains elusive for them. Conceptual 8In his 1956 paper Two
nothing to do with architecture; it can art and the exhibitions that promoted it Aspects of Language and
be brought into the home or museum, were, in this sense, extended instances Two Types of Aphasic
Disturbances, Jakobson
but wasnt made with either in mind; it of a specific form of aphasia. Here, as

can be dealt with by being torn out of elsewhere in conceptual art, the im- argued that patients
its publication and inserted into a note- petus was given by Duchamp whose suffering from aphasia had
book or stapled to the wallor not torn interest in aphasic forms of speech is a deficiency that affected
either the syntagmatic
out at allbut any such decision is un- well documented (in fact, his ready-
(contiguity disorder)
related to the art.7 What is important mades could themselves be viewed as or the paradigmatic axis
here is not only the abandonment of the instances of aphasic speech). of language (similarity
institutional context of the museum or disorder).
38 Studies Sven Spieker

9Jack Burnham, The

Structure of Art (New York:
George Braziller, 1971), 19.

10Roland Barthes,
Writing Degree Zero
in Susan Sonntag (ed.),
Barthes: Selected Writings
(London: Fontana
Press, 1983), 58. This
distinguishes modern
poetry from what Barthes
calls classical speech.
In classical speech, he
writes, connections lead
the word on, and at once
carry it toward a meaning
which is an ever deferred
project. (55).

11Ibid., 5559.

Curatorial practices in the late 1960s tions, the poetic word exists outside of
echoes de Saussures ideas about lan- any stable syntagmatic context. Instead
guage, ideas that theorists like Roland it is affected by the pool of differ-
Barthes had long since appropriated ences and similarities that define the
for a new, semiological approach to paradigmatic side of language: The
literature. In The Structure of Art Word, here, is encyclopedic, it contains
(1971), Jack Burnham referred to Bar- simultaneously all the acceptations
thes Writing Degree Zero (1953) as a from which a relational discourse
surprisingly early definition of the might have required it to choose. It
entire trajectory of what is known as therefore achieves a state which is
Modern Art.9 In the way it confronts possible only in the dictionary or in
the story of literature with its oppo- poetry [] and is reduced to a sort of
site (the paradigmatic pool from which zero degree, pregnant with all past and
any story is composed by means of se- future specifications.11 It would not be
lection), Writing Degree Zero may also an exaggeration to say that late-1960s
be viewed as a manual for a form of cu- curatorial practice with its frequent
Images page 3338:
Exhibition views of When rating based on writing. dispersion of the art idea across an en-
Attitudes Become Form, cyclopedic field of information was
Kunsthalle Bern, 1969 It is modern poetry that Barthes poetic in the very same sense described
equates with what he calls writing here by Barthes. And once again, it
Images page 39 and 40: degree zero. Here words function not was Duchamp whose own elevation of
Xerox002Xerox019
Carl Andre, page from the
in real syntagmatic connections with dictionaries to the status of art served
so-called Xeroxbook other words; instead they radiate to- as inspiration. Here, as elsewhere in
(actual title Carl Andre, ward innumerable uncertain and pos- conceptual exhibition practice (say, in
Robert Barry, Douglas sible connections, as fixed connec- the case of Art & Languages Index),
Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, tions are being abolished [ ... and] the administration is less an aesthetic than
Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris,
poetic word is [ ] an act without im- an active form of poeisis.
Lawrence Weiner.) edited
by Seth Siegelaub (New mediate past, without environment.10
York: Siegelaub / Wendler, Much like the information about an
1968) art idea Siegelaub places in his exhibi-
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 39

CARL ANDRE
ROBERT BARRY
DOUGLAS KUEBLER
JOSEPH KOSUTH
SOLLEWm
ROBERT MORRIS
LAWRENCE WEINER .... _

- --
()0 ()0 ooo
0 0

----------~ ~~~--------~ ----------~

ooo ()00 ()00
0 0 0
0 0
0 0 0

~--------~ ~~--------~ ~~'--------~

40 Studies Sven Spieker

-
Dialogues Nathalie Zonnenberg 41
interviews Seth Siegelaub

The Context of Art

(Continued)

When historicizing exhibitions, or exa for conceptual art; the primary in-
mining exhibitions within a historical formation in which conceptual works
framework, one is confronted with consisted could be directly presented
the legacy of a momentary situation. in a book, as opposed to the second-
While the work of art usually remains, ary information of artworks (i.e.
the exhibition is by definition ephem- documentation) normally re-presented
eral. In the case of the exhibition of in a book. The so-called Xerox Book,
conceptual art, the work of art is so which came out in December 1968, is
intertwined with its presentation in Siegelaubs most famous exhibition of
time and space that one could question this kind. Throughout his career as an
whether it exists at all outside its par- independent curator, from which he
ticular context. Seth Siegelaub (b. 1941, decisively withdrew in 1972, Siegelaub
Bronx, New York) was the first curator has always been highly concerned
to develop new formats of exhibition- with the political aspects of art or,
making linked to this specific type of more generally, the politicization of
art in the late 1960s. After working at the art world. He participated in anti-
the Sculpture Center in New York in war activities in the art community in
the early 1960s, Siegelaub opened his the late 1960s, and conceived, together
own gallery in 1964. Two years later, with the lawyer Robert Projansky, The
he closed the gallery to start working Artists Reserved Rights Transfer and
in a more direct relation with the art- Sale Agreement, which defined and at-
ists Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Douglas tempted to protect the rights and inter-
Huebler, Joseph Kosuth and Lawrence ests of artists as their work circulated
Weiner. The ephemeral nature of the within the art world. In this interview,
works of these artists motivated them I discuss with Siegelaub his view on the
to exhibit outside the usual art spaces current state of art, the history of the
such as museums and galleries, and exhibition and the system of art and
turn to more public spaces such as exhibitions at large.
streets, office buildings and, ultimate-
ly, publications. Siegelaub defined the NZ: Let me start with a question
publication as a new exhibition space taken from our editorial statement
42 Dialogues Nathalie Zonnenberg
interviews Seth Siegelaub

for MJ #9: Is it true that the life of isolate it or, as Marx would say, alien-
art is phenomenologically autono- ate it from its living reality. Even an
mous from its contextual represen- autonomous and intelligent artist like
tation in an exhibition? Duchamp was connected to a number
of art movements. He had to situate his
work somewhere in order to under-
stand what he was doing. And this is
true of all artists to varying degrees,
including so-called conceptual or
minimal artists.

You have to go to great efforts to un-

derstand the mindset or the context in
which people were living in order to try
to reveal why certain decisions were
possibly made, for example, during the
German occupation, or any other his-
torical period. Antonio Gramsci insisted
on this point: the need to study history,
to try to understand the background
conditions leading to a given decision.1
Its easy enough to forget about this
complex background context and just
deal with the isolated actsomething
which gets even easier as we get further
away from the action. It is more difficult
NOTES SS: Never would I have thought that to locate it in its moment and under-
to be the case. I have come to believe stand why it came into being at a spe-
1Antonio Gramsci that artworks in themselves can only cific time, and not at another time.
(18911937) was an Italian
be understood if you understand the
philosopher, writer,
politician and political environment, and I think all of this is NZ: In the case of conceptual art, as you
theorist. A founding very consciously lost in the art history- just mentioned, it is getting more and
member and first leader making process. To be able to create more complicated to understand the
of the Communist masterpieces or great artists, its specific meaning because works or exhi-
Party of Italy (Partito
precisely the context that must be bitions were made outside of the context
Comunista Italiano,
PCI), he was imprisoned stripped away. This is why I believe of the museum. Not only were the exhi-
by Mussolinis Fascist that one cannot really understand bitions temporary, but also the works
regime. His writings are what, for example, a Madonna and presented in them and the specific con-
deeply concerned with the child is about without the church con- text around them were ephemeral. How
analysis of culture and text, where the references, symbols, should we deal with the fact that there is
political leadership, and
people and so forth are relatively clear not much left of this art?
he is notable as a highly
original thinker within the to anybodyeducated or uneducated.
Marxist tradition. But the same goes for understanding SS: Conceptual art is a special case.
any artwork in the twentieth century. You can say certain works no longer
For an artist, its almost impossible to exist physically, however the works
really develop without being in contact still persist in peoples memory, and
with other artiststalking with them, particularly in how these activities
working together, exchanging ideas. since the 1960s are documented. It is
An important unspoken purpose of through the documentation, either in
art history is to eliminate these rela- photographs, written documents or
tionships, networks and contexts, to from first-hand witnesses, that you are
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 43

able to establish that something actual- gives them superpowers; as with su-
ly happened. Its a very good argument, perheroes or mega pop stars, it cre-
as in quantum theory, to say that if no ates a persona, somebody who is beyond
one saw it, it never happened. Art his- time, timelesslike Elvis Presley or
tory is built on these moments, on the Michael Jackson or the like.
existence of an object traversing many
years or centuries. As for ideas: In the
case of works that are more ephemeral
or conceptual, you are very much talk-
ing about peoples memories of certain
actions before photography actually
became a means of establishing their
existence. Many experiences, both
within and outside the art world, are
not necessarily captured in some form
of documentation; many of these ex-
periences only exist in peoples minds
and experiences. But obviously, when
people get older or die or become se-
nile, these images change, become less
clear or distorted.

In the early 1990s, I did a project called

The Context of Art in which I asked art-
ists who lived through the 1960s and
into the 1990s to describe how they felt
about this period. The most important
element in the whole project was bring-
ing together the thoughts of these one-
hundredtwenty artists in order to get a
sense of the complexity and diversity
of the period, before there was the hard
category of conceptual art or mini-
mal art or whatever. Part of the process
of art history is to extract originality
and uniqueness out of this diversity
by stripping away all human intercon-
nections and focusing solely on the
aesthetic ones. In the 1960s, all sorts of
artists were working together and bor-
rowing from each other. It is typical of
art history to eliminate all these social
connections to work towards the unique
super artist who towers over every-
one, as opposed to a more realistic view NZ: Lets speak about this legacy
of the history of art or artistic practice. or memory of historical periods. I
This is the same kind of history-making believe the legacy is most important
Images page 4243:
that surrounds, say, presidents or so- in practices that are not object-
Exhibition views of Seth
called important people, who are based. Is this something we could Siegelaub Contemporary
always portrayed as actors and not as actually use in exhibition-making? Art Gallery, New York,
re-actors. This kind of history-making Should exhibition-making become 1966
44 Dialogues Nathalie Zonnenberg
interviews Seth Siegelaub

more discursive? Or has it already ceived a catalogue from Christies, but

become more discursive? when you look at it, you think that it is
directed to kids, not grown-up col-
SS: What you describe is a more theo- lectors. It is clear that they are talk-
retical, clearly delineated approach to ing to a public who has never bought
an exhibition. A lot of exhibitions can things at auction before, that is, to
be called didactic in that sense. Usual- newcomers. It represents a whole new
ly, these shows become very simplistic series of auction sale tactics, with dif-
because, through their discourse, they ferent images and low prices, as op-
have pre-determined their intended posed to a more standard, traditional
audience. For example, I recently re- auction catalogue with just images,
provenances, dates, etc. Its clear that
they are trying to reach a new type of
clientbasically, middle-class rich
people who havent bought art before
and are scared by auctions. This also
holds true for any other discourse.
Its often very clear to whom you are
talking. A lot of the articles that I
come acrosstheoretical articles on
artare clearly talking to a group of
people I am not part of, or with whom
I dont share the jargon and frame of
referencesprobably young art crit-
ics or historians. This is also the case at
mass magazines like Newsweek: there
are allusions in their presentation that
assume a certain shared level of educa-
tion and socio-cultural background,
which would allow readers to appreci-
ate the references. But by discursive,
do you mean something more verbal
and intellectual as opposed to just pre-
senting an object?

NZ: I mean posing questions in a

direct dialogue with your audience.
Maybe it can also be didactic

SS: Our generation was thinking about

that changing relationship, at least in
the beginning. I dont know whether
we fully realized it at the time, but
there was an attempt to create a certain
level of equality between the person
making art and the person who is not
necessarily making art, but was in-
volved in whatever he or she was do-
ing. People with similar educations and
interests could converse around a work
of art, or could function around a work
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 45

of art, as equals, outside of the para- talking about people with money to
digm of the master and the fan. All spend, successful artists and art mas- Images page 4445:
Exhibition views of Carl
of this, of course, changes dramatically terpieces.
Andre, Robert Barry,
with the commodification of art: then This commodification can be expres Lawrence Weiner at
you are not talking about the possibil- sed in another way. Whenever you Bradford Junior College,
ity of equality at all; then you are just have visitors in your house, such as an 1968.
46 Dialogues Nathalie Zonnenberg
interviews Seth Siegelaub

aunt or uncle, who have no real inter- SS: I can be pretty negative about mu-
est in art, if you want them to respect seums and how they determine value,
or not damage a work of art, you just since they function as prestigious in-
tell them, Have Johnny stay away stitutions whose approval increases the
from that thing over there because value of an artists work and the regard
if it breaks, its gonna cost you about others have for it. Artists referred to
$20,000. This makes people very the museum as a kind of graveyard.
careful and suddenly they take art very There is also the problem of the collu-
seriously. You dont have to explain sion between the museum and its pa-
whats important about it or why it has trons and trustees in the collecting of
that value, whatever value it hasall art. But I think that museums do have an
you have to do is say this. important role to play in the conserva-
Images page 4647: tion of art and in making it accessible to
Exhibition views of NZ: Do you think there is a differ- people, whether in a formal exhibition
January 5-31, 1969 at a
ence in this relationship to mon- space or even in a public open ware-
temporary space in the
McLendon Building at etary value between art in private house environment, like the MAK/Mu-
44 East 52nd Street, collections and art in the collec- seum fr angewandte Kunst (Museum
New York, 1969 tions of museums? of Applied Arts) in Vienna has done.
Also, some types of artworks can be
maintained and made available through
documentation and catalogues as well as
on the web. But the function of making
art available is now focused on exhib-
iting young art, and this is very much
linked to establishing or maintaining
value. Museums have evolved to become
prestige venues for looking at art.

NZ: Why do you think this is

the case?

SS: Capitalist society has evolved to

give this role to them as a central space
for social education. Of course, muse-
ums increase their social role by build-
ing bigger buildings and involving
well-known architects, designers and
companies who all can use this unique
kind of space in society to their per-
sonal advantage. Museums, particu-
larly over the last twenty years, have
multiplied like mushrooms and much
of their programming involves con-
temporary artan endless stream of
exhibition material, often inexpensive,
with or without the involvement of
independent curators. This is particu-
larly true for young artists and their
dealers who need this kind of exposure
and do not have the demands of estab-
lished artists.
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 47

NZ: Maybe this making available

is an important task that lately
is being taken less and less seri-
ously. Perhaps the museum is not
the proper place for that anymore.
Making available can be done in
many different ways. Discourse
can do that, too. Getting back to the
practices from the 1960s: the demo-
cratic idea of art, the processes of
working together, seem to be be-
coming increasingly important

SS: There is a practical need for many

curators to work together on a large
project, beyond merely a democratic
idea of working together. For instance,
it is almost impossible to put together
large biennials by yourself (even Har-
ry Szeemann couldnt do that)one
needs sub-curators. The multiplica-
tion of these large-scale exhibitions
has a lot to do with creating a certain
kind of collectivity, or even with forc-
ing the need for collective activity. It
is also true that for many years, the
big museums, such as the Stedelijk in
Amsterdam or the MoMA in New York,
have already had a collective of people
working more or less together, but out
of necessity.

NZ: Of course, in that sense, curat-

ing has always been about collec-
tivity. What is more interesting is
that it seems you created a certain
genealogy in the 1960s that has
now, in a way, been rediscovered:
people are interested in it and are
starting from these same princi-
ples. At the same time, it no longer
seems possible to work like that.

SS: Its possible to look back at the

1960s as a sort of pre-history and give
it a very romanticized reading, a kind
of nostalgia for the good old days,
like photographs of the 1930s in Paris.
But people are often tempted to look
back to the past in that way. However, I
have always insisted that it was a very,
48 Dialogues Nathalie Zonnenberg
interviews Seth Siegelaub

me very often when talking to younger

artists or curators is how the future
seems blocked: things dont seem pos-
sible anymore. How can you make an
exhibition with $200? they ask. You
just did it. But people dont think in
those terms. The art world has become
richer and bigger in every sense of the
word. In the 1960s, there were no foun-
dations or grants you could apply to for
projects; there was no funding. Now,
talking to young curators at the more
progressive young art spaces, one of
the first things they do is make an ap-
plication for funding. These things
didnt exist back then.

The dynamics of doing an exhibition

were totally different. But I would also
say, in my personal case, I approached
exhibition-making in an entirely new
very different worldboth in terms way. That this became a clich is an-
of material wealth and in terms of in- other story. There werent many inde-
terest from the general public, as the pendent shows going on at that time;
art community was very small. The there werent so many people that were
relatively low level of commodifica- independently doing exhibitions. Lucy
tion of art was due to the low level of Lippard did several, probably other
interest, which was limited to a very people too, but basically it was centered
small, privileged art collecting com- around galleries. But even when one
munity. Thats the way the art world did an exhibition independently, these
was: there was very little money. And often took place in very standard ven-
this fact of life influenced how works uesgalleries or, very occasionally,
of art were made. One possibility led museums. We (myself with the artists
to conceptual art, but also to the use Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph
of materials that were inexpensive and Kosuth and Lawrence Weiner), because
thus could have democratizing pos- of the nature of the artworks, were a
sibilities. Part of the rejection of the little more imaginative and tried to
traditional painting and sculpture had open up different types of physical and
to do with liberating the potential that mental spaces. We tried to do things in
everybody could at least try to work a variety of environments, both physi-
with these new forms of art. One didnt cal and temporal, as our projects were
have to go to art school to learn how about the artwork in relation to the ex-
to draw an anatomically-correct body hibition process. We were just avoiding
part. You could make art, or at least try. the use of a permanent specific space
This underlies the feeling that any- as part of an exhibition project. Of
Images page 4849: thing was possible. Even though there course, to be honest, if someone would
Exhibition views of Carl were important struggles at the time have asked me, Would you do an exhi-
Andre, Robert Barry,
the Vietnam War, May 68, as well as bition in my gallery? I probably would
Lawrence Weiner at
Windham College, many other social movementsall have jumped at the opportunity. But
Putney, Vermont, pointed in the direction of anything we were doing exhibitions in differ-
30 April 31 May 1968 was possible. One thing that strikes ent environments, contexts that were
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 49

completely new because we were very

much aware of how important this was
to the looking process. Seeing contem-
porary art framed by a gallery or by a
museum are two different things. We
tried to get away from that division
and do exhibitions in places that were
not the usual art spaces. The whole
process of going to an unknown place
is like going on a trip: find a hotel, look
at the room, decide where to eat, etc.
Much of the experience of going to art
exhibitions is knowing that when you
go there, you feel secure. You probably
will see other people you know, go out
for a drink, pick up a girl- or a boy-
friendthat cozy art-related kind of
thing.We tried to open up a different
type of art exhibition experienceus-
ing spaces that were not normally used
for art, or used only for short periods,
or not used at all.

NZ: What kind of spaces?

SS: Any kind of spacesoffice spaces,

street spaces, and so forth, which even-
tually led to the book as space, that
is, the catalogue. These possibilities
clearly were organically linked to the
specific nature of conceptual art.

NZ: What is interesting about the

todays heritage of art in the 1960s,
specifically the discourse of con-
ceptual art, is that it is recorded as
being largely about bringing art in-
to the world, opening up structures,
breaking down the walls of the actually started happening on a
museum But if you look at the ac- broader scale.
tual practices, it is true that not so
many people actually did it. Many SS: But there were at that time artists
of these people were art dealers; co-ops or as we say now, artists col-
maybe they didnt start as dealers, lectives, where groups of artists each
but this was like the second step. paid $10 or $15 a month and shared
For instance, Paul Maenz started gallery duties, and then could put on
exhibiting work in non-standard a show once a year or so. This was
spaces, but soon after started his very different from the practice of the
gallery. It was only in the 1990s that galleries on 10th street in New York.
these practices outside the museum Many artists started to show in these
50 Dialogues Nathalie Zonnenberg
interviews Seth Siegelaub

co-ops. That kind of history is sort of NZ: Arent galleries also improv-
evacuatedor romanticizedwith the ing their positions because they are
commodification and reification of the developing programs like lectures
artwork. The importance and prestige and events?
of the museums over the past thirty
years has clearly been taken over by SS: Yes, but also, more importantly,
the galleries. The galleries are where for thirty or forty years they have of-
the money is, and their role in the past ten been paying indirectly or directly
has made them the natural depository for many museum shows. Very few
of money and power. Thats what they museums could afford to do a show of
do, and it is only natural they would a major painter without some gallery
be the ones to control or at least be in paying for at least part of it. This rela-
a position to develop and manipulate tionship has become a usual practice
the business of art. The museum has between these two institutions.
become less important in this respect.
Forty years ago, if youd asked art- NZ: Do you see any of the ideas that
ists whether they would you prefer to you developed in the 1960s reflected
show in an important museum or in in todays formats or structures of
an important gallery, they would have exhibition-making?
replied the museum; but now, it is more
likely they would say the important SS: Certain things happen when ex-
gallery. The relation with the museum hibitions become too big. They have
is more a passing relationship where certain practical and organizational
you can meet friends, curators and col- issues that go far beyond the aesthetics
lectors, but the people putting up the of art presentation. Presenting many
hard money every month are the gal- artworks in a contained environment
leries. allows one to superficially show many
works, but it comes at a price. I really
NZ: But isnt what you said before dont think its possible, say, to have a
about the prestige of the museums small family restaurant, serving ten or
nonetheless highly appreciated by fifteen tables, to grow to serve onehun
artists? dredfifty tables; the whole thing has
to change into another idea because of
SS: Yes, the prestige of museums is an the change of scale. I think this holds
important factor, but with the prolif- true for anything. Maybe you need
eration of museums, their quality has economies of scale to produce eco-
become very uneven. You are not just nomically, i.e. cheaply, but this is not
talking about top level museums but possible for everything, including art.
about hundreds, or even thousands, Certain kinds of artistic activities, like
of museums, and many of them are no biennials, seem totally out of control;
Above: better than a bad gallery. The prestige they have become an incredible mass
Exhibition view of of museums is definitely deteriorating of information whose purpose I never
Catalogue for the
Exhibition at Centre for
as they have become more and more quite understood. For me, making an
Communication and linked to local or national tourist poli- exhibition is something you can do
the Arts, Simon Fraser cies, which need to have a museum as among friends and artists you respect.
University, Burnaby, part of a cultural policy or image. I def- But most people probably wouldnt
British Columbia, 1969 initely get the impression that artists take this kind of project as seriously as
today would prefer the dealer and the a larger, more grandiose exhibition
Below:
Exhibition view of continuing support dealers offer. except, of course, if it took place forty
Daniel Buren, Affichages years ago.
sauvages, Paris, 1969
 Manifesta Journal 9 2010 51

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T[ARY ATK INSON DOUGLAS HUEBlEA

MICHAEl BALOWI.N STEPHEN KALtENBACH
"OOERT BARRY JOSEPti KOSUTH
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MAY 19.JUN 19, 1m

52 Studies Dessislava Dimova

NOTES

Mexican, French and

1Yanko Yanev, East or
West, Zlatorog XIII, 4
(1933): 174-180.

Locally Interested:
2See Ekaterina Dyogot,
How to Qualify for
Postcolonial Discourse,
ArtMargins, 2001: http://
www.artmargins.com/

Three Historical
index.php/featured-
articles/325-how-to-
qualify-for-postcolonial-
discourse, and Ruen
Ruenov, Identification

Exhibitions in Bulgaria.
Models and Possible
Identities in Bulgarian Art
of the 1990s, Bulgarian
Art in the 90s: Between
Tradition and Innovation
(Sofia: LIK, 2003).

3Iara Boubnova, Maria

Vassileva, A conversation
Time Out of Joint ing element of most efforts for artistic
with Christopher Phillips, What our political and spiritual life emancipation since the foundation of
in Ars-ex-natio. Made in lacks most is historical thinking. [] the Bulgarian modern state in 1878.
BG (Plovdiv: Soros CCA, Perhaps we are the most a-historical
1997), 84. people alive today, [] mainly because A lack of proper historical identity has
everything in our country happens continued to be deplored in recent times
4See for instance
Luchezar Boyadjiev, without a common historical goal. [] when, after communisms temporary
The Lack of Identity as In a word, due to the fatal lack of histo- resolution of the problem, it resurfaced
A Post-Post-Communist ricity and planning in our development again in the early 1990s. But the lack
Originality, New after the Liberation, today we have come of programmatic history was con-
Observations 91
to feel useless in the processes of con- ceptualized and addressed differently
(September/October 1992):
1821.
temporary life in the rest of the world.1 this time around. There was no unique
historical identity to be excavated any-
5Luchezar Boyadzhiev, Bulgarian philosopher Yanko Yanevs more. At least, not one that seemed to
The Balkanization of call for national consolidation through click with the necessities of the pres-
Alpa Eropaea in Laura taking charge of ones historical des- ent. It wouldnt be an exaggeration
Hoptman, Tomas Pospiszyl
tiny reflects Bulgarias search for iden- to say that in the 1990s, Bulgaria was
(eds.), Primary Documents:
A Sourcebook for Eastern tity in the 1930sdefined by the desire confronted with an artistic present (a
and Central European Art to integrate Bulgarian culture in the local one) that needed no (or at least, no
Since the 1950s (Cambridge contemporary artistic processes in local) history. Eastern European critics,
MA: MIT Press, 2002), Europe, while also demonstrating its on one hand, blamed the West for de-
304306; Luchezar specifically Bulgarian character. The manding a historical identity that was
Boyadzhiev, The Balkans:
A Door and/or a Corner
understanding of national culture as no longer considered relevant, and on
in http://www.kultura. a reconciliation of a universal modern the other, accused their home-grown
bg/media/my_html/ contemporaneity with a specifically lo- avant-gardes for lacking a program.2
biblioteka/bgvntgrd/e_ cal historical tradition was implement-
lb.htm ed as official cultural politics for the With the post-colonial discourses that
first time in the 1930s, but this notion were brought in to approach the post-
6Alexander Kiossev,
Notes on Self-Colonising was hardly new for Bulgarian art. The communist situations, the questions of
Cultures, in David Elliot, constant tension between the local program and history in Bulgaria be-
Bojana Peji (eds.), After and the foreign has been the defin- came even more geopolitically deter-
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 53

mined than before. In 1997, when asked after all is an identity as well? One way the Wall: Art and Culture in
about how he saw the current iden- could be to identify the highs and lows Post-Communist Europe,
tity of Bulgarian art, American critic of its other-centricity.7 (Stockholm: Moderna
Museet, 1999), 114118.
Christopher Phillips cited the report-
ages of Leon Trotsky, who had spent Benjamin Buchloh once looked at the 7Iara Boubnova,
a long time in Sofia during the war: relationship between historicity and Other-Centricity,
Because of Bulgarias long domination formalism in the reception of the Eu- Bulgariaavantgarde (Sofia/
by foreign powersByzantium and ropean neo-avant-garde in the United Cologne: Salon Verlag,
1998). http://www.kultura.
the Ottoman Empirethe country has States. For him, American postwar art
bg/media/my_html/
historically been obliged to assimilate offered a model of a post-traditional biblioteka/bgvntgrd/e_
the existing cultural products of oth- identityone that is not based on a ib.htm.
ers, instead of freely and continuously national principle and does not follow
developing its own forms.3 a local historical logic. Instead, the dif- 8Benjamin Buchloh,
ferent generations of American artists Formalism and Historicity:
Essays on American and
In the 1990s, Western critics were of- assimilated different historical aspects
European Art Since 1945
ten disappointed with the lack of easily of the art of the twentieth century by (Cambridge MA: MIT
identifiable post-communist identity. ignoring the immediate historical con- Press, 1999).
But at the same time, Phillips did point text surrounding these models, taking
out a way out of the identity deadlock only the formal elements that fit their 9Boris Groys, Beyond
Diversity: Cultural Studies
which has been haunting Bulgarian and search and amplifying or altering their
and Its Post-Communist
other Eastern European scenes over the meaning.8 Other, in Art Power
last twenty years. His insight was that (Cambridge MA: MIT
the lack of what we usually understand Ironically, we could find here certain Press, 2008), 154155.
as historical identity is an identity in similarities with the post-communist
itself. It is a non-identity, a deeply felt art scenes, in the way they had lost
and embraced (although not without their traditional European historical
drama) incapacity to define oneself identities. Boris Groyss claim that the
in any positive terms.4 Luchezar Boy- Russians had to return to historical
adzhiev saw this identity through the time after living in the future of the
metaphors of door and cornerthe communist end of history is only par-
Balkans were a door between cultures tially true for most other ex-communist
but also a dead-end of cultural flows.5 countries, but gives us a hint here.9
Alexander Kiossev problematized it as a Post-communist art scenes needed to
self-colonizing culture, defined by the look quite far back in order to find an
constant internalization and imposing exportable historical identity to offer.
on itself of foreign values and models of Thats how, for instance, the Balkans
civilization.6 came back to the scene as an identity
formation, and not only due to the ac-
But the a-historical non-identity is tual political conflicts that consolidated
inevitably grounded historically. With- them again geopolitically in the eyes
in a historical logic based on a lack of of the West. But these historical identi-
roots, the communist break with tra- ties were more of a Potemkin village
dition and national identity begins to produced for and by a Western gaze.
look like a natural piece of the puzzle. The real question that this masquerade
The anti-identity thus persists beyond hides, however, is what kind of disturb-
its specific historical premises and is ing image will the naked mirror of the
not only the victim but also the augur Eastern European lack of identity re-
of historical circumstances. turn back to the West?

But how does one trace the outlines of Going back to Buchloh could offer a
such a radically empty identity, which different reading of the Western cri-
54 Studies Dessislava Dimova

10See David Elliot,

Looking Things in the
Face, in David Elliot,
Bojana Peji, 2933.

tique that Eastern European art has eign art in Bulgaria in the recent past.
only assimilated Western models on Three of them are particularly impor-
a formal or material level. The ready- tant, as they have come to represent
made, the installation, the use of ev- different aspects of the encounter
eryday objects and materials and the between the local and the foreign: the
language of conceptual art rapidly be- exhibition of Mexican art in 1955, the
came the preferred means and method exhibition of French art in 1993 and the
of post-communist art. However none exhibition of internationally renowned
of the original intentions of those artists, Locally Interested, in 1999.
forms, rooted in the Western history of
art, seemed to have survived.10 The Mexican exhibition was a travel-
ing exhibition that opened in the Sofia
I am not going to perform an interpre- State University in May 1955. Stalin had
tation of individual works, nor search died a couple of years earlier, but the
for the specific formal elements of political processes of warming up
these assimilations. Instead of taking and the denunciation of the cult of Sta-
a formalist approach to trace the his- lins personality would officially begin
torical circumstances surrounding the only in 1956. Nobody at that time could
works, I propose to search for elements have predicted the artistic and political
of the historical context that produced reverberations of the show. There was
the new meanings with which Eastern no evident political contraindication to
European artists filled in the (Western) showing Mexican arta revolutionary
historical art forms. This might also art, dedicated to the socialist idea.
allow us to identify some of the cor-
ners and the self-colonizing ways of The exhibition consisted of paintings,
the a-historical and vacuous identity of reproductions of murals and a large
Bulgarian art. section of graphic arts. Some of the
artists names, such as those of Jos
Socialist Realism Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and
vS. Social Realism David Alfaro Siqueiros, were familiar
There have been a limited number to the local public. Others, like Jos
of exhibitions of contemporary for- Chavez Morado or Juan OGorman
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 55

were virtually unknown. Despite the al traditions in the previous decades.

variety of personal styles, the focus of Some of them suffered to twist their
the show was the common identity of individual artistic inclinations. For
Mexican art. The selection was strong- others, socialist realism was a minor
ly centered on the social and political and easy adjustment. But almost all of
engagement of the works, and formally them internalized the new set of rules.
on their monumentality and metaphor-
ical language. But there were also the We can imagine the shock and revela-
elements of native Mexican and Chris- tion the Mexican works provoked in
tian art that informed the flatness, the this context. The political engagement
narrative approach, the use of symbols of the Mexican art gave back a lost
and metaphors, the hypertrophy and sense of social significance to an ideo-
stylization that were the makings of a logical discourse that had been by then
specific national style. completely emptied out. Slogans like
revolution, oppression and fight
Meanwhile Bulgarian art was at the had not only true social meaning but
height of socialist realism with its also an adequate formal artistic ex-
imperative for didactic scenes of pression in the Mexican context.
happy labor and party celebrations
depicted with the means of a hasty The young Bulgarian artists of the time
and dry academic realism. We have to would later describe the Mexican show
acknowledge that Bulgarian modern as the turning point in their under-
art had never strayed from realism. It standing of art. The reaction of some
was only very sporadically influenced culture administrators and the more
by the experiments of the European established artists was, in contrast,
avant-gardes. But it has also been often violent and nearly broke the diplomatic Images page 5455:
overlooked that the majority of the art- codes of such an exchange. Some of the Speech of the general
ists active in the 1950s and producing attacks stated that most of the Mexican secretary of the Union of
Bulgarian Artists Nikola
the international impersonal style of paintings could not even be considered
Mirchev and visitors at the
socialist realism were the same artists art. Even those who defended the ex- opening of the Mexican
who were trying to find that evasive hibition had to avow that Mexican art art exhibition, Sofia State
mixture of European spirit and nation- was indeed very permeable to foreign University, 1955
56 Studies Dessislava Dimova

11For the facts

about the Mexican art
exhibition, I have followed
mainly the account
of Dimitar Avramov,
The Inspirations and
Lessons of the Mexican
Exhibition, in Chronicle
of a Dramatic Decade.
Bulgarian Art between
19551965 (Sofia: Nauka i
Izkustvo, 1994).

12Dimitar Grozdanov,
The Art of the Nineties,
Art in Bulgaria, 96-100
(2002): 18.

13Bernard Jordan,
Boris Danailov (eds.),
Contemporary Art in
France: Views 19801993,
exh. cat., (Sofia: no
publisher, 1994), 1113.

temptations, implying the usual sus- as the defining contradiction of Bulgar-

pect: modern bourgeois art. In general, ian art in the 1990s.12 It describes quite
the official reaction was rather cold. aptly the tensions of the decade, be-
Critics ignored the show, and the fact tween the efforts of a local avant-garde
that it was nevertheless labeled as com- and its temporal and geographic dislo-
munist art tamed the discussions. 11 cation within a globalizing art world.
Forty years after the Mexican exhibi-
But the influences of the exhibition tion, the exhibition Contemporary Art
would be felt years later, when after in France: Views 1980-1993 confronted
the new turn in the communist regime the developments of Bulgarian art
post-Stalin, the arts were given a new again. In 1993, the local art scene was
relative freedom. Thus in the early in a process of full transformation.
1960s, when a search for both a greater The Bulgarian curator Boris Danailov
intimacy and inspiration from the local saw the exhibition as an encounter be-
tradition outlined the new directions of tween the center and periphery that
art in Bulgaria, the examples adopted ran the danger of erupting in a full-
from the Mexicans would provide some blown confrontation between the two
of the pictorial language of their ex- locations.13 Is it possible that the ex-
pression. The local tradition was about hibition could close horizons instead of
to become a new ideological imperative opening them? Was it going to provoke
to replace internationalism. a resistance that would leave no hope
for permeability between two differ-
Avant-garde Periphery ent art systems? Danailovs fears were
This seemingly mismatched couple of provoked both by previous experiences
temporal and geographical terms was like the Mexican show and the con-
proposed by critic Dimitar Grozdanov temporary reality where the official
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 57

14Yoan Leviev, And

cultural institutions were profoundly What is this Lesson?, Art
conservative in their attitude toward in Bulgaria, 6 (1993): 20.
contemporary art. The exhibition
was not only an effort to bring more 15Ibid., see also Andrei
examples of contemporary art to the Daniel, Artworks as
Mushrooms; Stanislav
local public. It managed to show how
Pamukchiev, Here is the
contemporary art could be embedded Frog! (2022).
within and supported by the official
state institutions. In the exhibition 16Ibid., The idea of the
catalogue, besides the texts discussing crisis and fatigue of
Western art was taken
the recent tendencies in French art,
further in reviews about
there were texts precisely describing exhibitons abroad in the
the structure of the French art scene, following years.
the role of the state funds and that of
the private galleries. 17See Svilen Stefanov,
The 1990s in Bulgarian
Art: Between Innovation
For the more traditional artists, the
and Institution, in
idea of French art until then evoked the Avantgarde and Norm
Salons and the School of Paris. Those (Sofia: Agata-A, 2003),
among them who were open to contem- 67103.
porary art judged the French artworks
as formalist. 14 A lot of the critiques
were based on the notions of techni-
cal mastery and materials rather than
form, meaning, message, or even less,
historical development. It reflected French art seemed preoccupied with
the common approach of the critique the history of art itself, with the lost
of contemporary art in Bulgaria at the possibilities of the neo-avant-gardes
time. Paul Armand Gette, Vladimir and a general feeling of a post-modern
Skoda, Franois Morellet and Bertrand crisis.16
Lavier were some of the artists rep-
resented in the exhibition, but most In contrast, some of the Bulgarian art
Bulgarian artists who critized the show produced in the early 1990s seemed
were more able to relate to the work of more contemporary as the periphery
Soulages and Erro.15 was reacting faster to the processes
of globalization, which for the first
There was also a significant number time were allowing it to take part in
of artists who were already part of the the world synchronically. The insti-
developing global art world, which was tutionalization of contemporary art
rapidly accommodating artists from in France was also a significant point
distant locations and different post- of difference as the contemporary art
(e.g. post-colonial, post-communist) produced in Bulgaria at the time was
identities. For them, the problems perceived as a belated but plenipoten-
raised by most of the exhibited French tiary avant-garde that was against the
art seemed outmoded in their failure existing institutions.17
to acknowledge the outside world,
other than in the use of materials that The Interests
Images page 5657:
belonged to daily life. This art was not of the Local
Exhibition views of
questioning identity, difference, or the The exhibition Locally Interested, Contemporary Art in
pressing historical circumstances of curated by Nedko Solakov and Iara France: Views 1980-1993,
different geographies. On the contrary, Boubnova in 1999, had a different set of Sofia 1993
58 Studies Dessislava Dimova

bottle, for example, could have never

been a banal object to be used in a pop-
art manner in Bulgaria. In Bulgaria, it
was a rare artifact that had no refer-
ence to local mass production.18 In
this sense, it was essential to make the
abstract space of the global art world
physically present in Sofia, in order to
synchronize the two realities.

The organizers of Locally Interested

were very clear and unapologetic about
their motivation.19 The exhibition was
simply bringing famous international
artists in order to materialize the
phantasmagoric objects of desire that
their works and they themselves rep-
resented for the local public. As part
of the invited artists, Douglas Gordon,
18Irina Guenova, Tempus goals. The globalized international art Peter Kogler, Pipilotti Rist, Oleg Kulik
fugit/Time is Flying: On world with its growing market, mega lived and worked in Sofia for about a
Contemporary Art and the exhibitions and star curators and art-
Visual Image (Sofia: Altera,
ists was the social and artistic reality
2007), 6870.
against which contemporary Bulgar-
19Iara Boubnova, ian artists were measuring their work.
Process vs. Project, in Very little had changed in terms of
Locally Interested, exh. cat. institutional support in Bulgaria. The
(Sofia: ICA, 2000), 523.
organizer of the show was ICA Sofia
20Nedko Solakov and a small institution created by artists
Iara Boubnova, Nedko and curators. Most of the Bulgarian
Solakov and Iara Boubnova artists that were internationally-
are trying to find out what known and active at the time were part
they have done and why, of or related to the ICA: Nedko Sola-
in Locally Interested, 50.
kov, Luchezar Boyadzhiev, Pravdoljub
Ivanov, Lubomir Kostov and Dr. Gatev.
21On internationalism They were the ones feeling most acute- week, delivered lectures and for the
see Robert Fleck, Art ly the difficulty of living in a place first time the Bulgarian public had a
After Communism? in where there was still very little support continuous two-way exchange with
The Manifesta Decade,
and understanding for contemporary artists from abroad.
(Cambridge MA: MIT
Press, 2005), 259263
art, while working within an interna-
and Benjamin Buchloh, tional context whose discourses were The desire to be international and de-
Introduction, in Neo- produced elsewhere and whose rules localized was manifested both in the
Avantgarde and Culture corresponded to other (art) historical selection of works and in their instal-
Industry: Essays on situations. lation. The exhibition took place in the
European and American
only space in Sofia specifically built as
Art from 1955 to 1975
(Cambridge MA: MIT Critic Irina Guenova points out that a museumthe National Gallery for
Press, 2000), xx-xxi. On we often undermine the importance Foreign Art. The contextual flaws of
the problem of difference of the physical, material world around the space were neutralized as much as
and diversity, see Peter us when discussing the differences be- possible: some works of the permanent
Osborne, The Politics
tween the art production of peripher- collection that couldnt be removed and
of Time: Modernity and
al and central contexts. A Coca-Cola even the modest museum shop were
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 59

Avant-Garde (London:
Verso, 1996), 18; and Boris
Groys, Beyond Diversity,
in Art Power (Cambridge
MA: MIT Press, 2008).

22In the 1930s,

Bulgarian writer Spridon
Kazandjiev published the
essay Historical Time:
The Crisis in the Material
and Spiritual Life and
Our Tasks. He saw the
dramatic transformations
in Bulgarian society of his
time as being only part of
the processes affecting
the whole civilized world.
The consciousness of
these changes made time
historical and, in turn,
made historical time
universal. The constant
feeling of transition,
of uncertain identity
and crisis in Bulgarian
art then could be seen
converted into contemporary artworks style was a decoy homogenizationa as guaranteeing its
by Nedko Solakov. While Solakovs in- shield against the growing hegemony integration both into
the universal (global)
terventions were excellent examples of diversity.
and into history. See
of his ability to use context and space, Olga Gronovska, Crisis,
the artist admits that it was his embar- Locally Interested was the result of the East and West as Terms
rassment with these local curiosities utopian dream to synchronize a spe- Implying the Bulgarian
that motivated him to perform the cific historical present with all other Cultural Dilemmas in
the Light of Literary and
masking.20 Solakov was also the only presentsa temporal location where
Critical Texts from the
Bulgarian participant, probably be- both difference and universality could 1930s, 23. http://www.
cause he was the only local artist able somehow co-exist. 22 The radical mi- ilit.bas.bg/bi/include.
to fit seamlessly in this perfectly global mesis of the Western contemporary art php?file=Gronowska.
picture. world such exhibitions performed only
seemed to misunderstand the entangle-
Locally Interested was one of the first ment between the spatial universalism
synchronic gestures of the Bulgarian of globalization and its demand for the
art scene and its zealous international- historical difference of each locality.
ism was symptomatic. Bulgarian art Instead of offering any local historical
in its global manifestations embodied particularity, these exhibitions were
the contradictions of the criticized adding to their already universal for-
empty style of the new internation- mat another universalan ahistorical,
alism and the danger of an equally unified present. Breaking the confines
homogenizing difference.21 But the of its own historical context, which
emptiness of the style was illusory incessantly condemns the periphery Images page 5859:
rather, the style was full of imported to un-simultaneity with the center, the Exhibition views of
Locally Interested, National
histories and adopted identities that utopian present of Locally Interested
Gallery for Foreign Art,
distorted its neat faade, not with projected itself as part of the fictitious 1999
something different but with more of whole of a global contemporaneity. Photo Angel Tsvetanov/
the same. At its best, the international ICA Sofia
60 Documents Marga van Mechelen

Exhibition views of
Glances Back and Forth,
Gemeentemuseum
Arnhem, 19891990.
Documents Marga van Mechelen 61

NOTES

Astray
iErwin Panofsky, Der
Begriff des Kunstwollens
(1920) in Hariolf Oberer
and Egon Verheyen (eds.),

from History:
Aufstze zu Grundfragen
der Kunstwissenschaft,
(Berlin: B. Hessling, 1974),
2943.

Three Exploratory
iiFrans Boenders, Kunst
zonder kader. Museum
zonder hoed (Art without a
frame. Museum without a
hat). (Leuven: Kritak, 1991)

Exhibitions
The three exhibitions from the late exhibitions by guest curators, which
1980s, which I discussed in Kunst & in those days was not such a common
Museumjournaal in 1991, were present- occurrence. The two other ahistorical
ed as the first cracks in the paradigm exhibition concepts I discuss are less
of unity in diversity, a structured well-known, but no less interesting,
way of presenting art guided by a particularly due to the co-curatorship
conception of art history. The ques- of a number of artists.
tion is whether these cracks have wid- In those days, curators who were as-
ened following the exhibitions, which sociated with this type of exhibition
were characterized as ahistorical, or could not always count on a warm
whether they have closed. It is notable reception. Jan Hoet, for example, was
that the renowned art-historian Erwin depicted as a guru and arbiter of
Panofsky, whom I quote at the start public taste.ii About the same char-
of my article, considered it a blessing acterization befell Rudi Fuchs. In
when works of art are not presented his Documenta 7, Fuchs used a fairly
as historical objects.i These three ex- similar method of working to that of
hibitions met that criterion, although Szeemann in his free combination of
I offer no opinion as to whether this works, without an immediately appar-
occurred as he had envisaged. In any ent historical, geopolitical or stylistic
case, the curators provided ample link. The concept of the ahistorical
space for the complex methods of exhibition has remained with us and,
viewing and changing perspectives contrary to the curators initial inten-
that Panofsky desired, which not only tions, is actually linked with a new de-
allowed space for the observer, but velopment in exhibition-making prac-
which may also have proved challeng- tice, characterized by a focus on the
ing for the art scholar. The best known position, vision and intentions of the
of the three exhibitions was the one curator. Since then, one might say that
by Harald Szeemann, A-historische the curator has become a brand.
klanken (A-Historical Soundings, 1988), I am inclined to suppose that the cracks
made for Museum Boijmans Van Be- in the paradigm of unity in diversity
uningen. It was part of a series of have closed in recent decades, because
62 Documents Marga van Mechelen

1Debora J. Meijers, in todays exhibition practice, the unity on evolutionary historical notions. Not
Kunst als natuur, academic is emphasized again, namely in the only have visible histories of art be-
thesis, University of
grand theme of the curator, alongside come commonplace since then, viewers
Amsterdam, 1990;
commercial edition
the diversity, which is mainly a result have grown accustomed to organized
published by Sua: of the chosen themes, the outcome of presentations that allow them to com-
Amsterdam, Spring 1991. globalization and the lack of borders in pare the comparable. Unity in diver-
the current art world. So the concept sity is still the prevailing precept,
2An example here is the of an ahistorical exhibition, as it is ex- though the first cracks are beginning
new arrangement of Haags
plained in my article, is not the origin to appear.2
Gemeentemuseum.
of this development. This, however, Speaking of the banes and blessings
does not automatically mean that we of art studies in his essay Der Begriff
are back to square one. Although the des Kunstwollens (The notion of ar-
history of art is written increasingly tistic intention), Panofsky disputes the
by group exhibitions, which appear general validity of art scholarship that
to have become the dominant model, relates one work of art to another. An
interest in older history and how it is artwork can be placed in a thematic
structured seems limited. Who today is context or stylistically compared with
still interested in how it (once) was? others, but in both cases this means
The ahistorical exhibitions have placed different phenomena are used to ex-
the center of gravity on the momentary plain it.
experience, if not already as a goal in Panofsky believes that an artwork
itself, then as a point of departure in ultimately defies comparison in this
order to make connections. This is the manner and certainly eludes a purely
very thin line that links these exhibi- (natural) historical review. The viewer
tions to current developments. Due to is constantly reminded that it is a work
the coordinating themes, however, that of art and not simply a historical ob-
experience is now far more thoroughly ject. Panofsky felt it was particularly
prepared and thus guided, often in a a blessing that an artwork can hold its
direction that is linked to a broader po- viewer in constant suspense, thanks to
litical or cultural reality. Todays grand its complex character, and continually
themes focus attention on the topical spur art scholars on to fresh method-
and allow the works of art to play a role ological consideration.
therein. Which role? Hopefully more But the challenge posed by a work
than that of illustration or exemplifica- of art also has its drawbacks for the
tion. To receive Panofskys blessing, scholar. Fascination irrevocably gives
there must at least be sufficient space way to unrest, uncertainty and frag-
for the complexity of the artwork and mentation of research. Thus it is not
the multiplicity of the approach. surprising that many academics still
opt for a purely historical approach, or
It is both a bane and a blessing that ultimately favor it. To opt for the alter-
works of art can be considered and native is to venture onto thin ice, which
understood other than as histori- has been the downfall of many in the
cal objects. Possibly it was more of a past. Speculative constructions, con-
blessing when Christian von Mechel fusing concepts, impressionistic criti-
re-organized the Habsburg Gallery, ar- cism, empty aesthetic assertionsthey
ranging the paintings for the first time are all too familiar.
chronologically according to school.1 Nevertheless, the challenge has re-
While the system at the Viennese gal- cently been taken up by a number of
lery has the logic of the natural order, exhibitions, providing an alternative to
later arrangements in schools by mu- the organized historical presentations
seums and galleries were sooner based seen hitherto.
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 63

I 1}. 111
l
~-
mr~ X vh

Exhibition views of
A-historische klanken
(A-Historical Soundings),
Museum Boijmans Van
Beuningen, Rotterdam,
1988
64

HISTORIOUe lt

Cll ,.- ~

8 ,_
:-_
-
.........
I

Exhibition views of From

Utrecht with Love, Centraal
Museum Utrecht, 1989
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 65

Three museum presentations will be of art, the quest for the quintessence 3The three presentations
reviewed hereRotterdams Museum of the work. I want to juxtapose and were temporary in
contrast with the semi-
Boymans-van Beuningens idiosyn- display the works in such a way that in
permanent character of the
cratic and undogmatic A-Historical between, and within each individual new arrangement at the
Soundings, 1988; Centraal Museum work, there will be a free zone express- Haags Gemeentemuseum.
Utrechts 1989 museum explorations ing the utopia of an ideal society in the Although parallels can
under the heading From Utrecht with form of an Accademia uniting what is certainly be drawn, the
Love; and Gemeentemuseum Arnhems not homogenous.4 museum is not considered
in the present review.
structural attempts to explore a new Not only is this comment particularly
exhibition concept in Glances Back and revealing about Szeemanns motives, 4Harald Szeemann,
Forth in 1989 and 1990. 3 but it also shows where these concur A-historische klanken,
What are these new, ostensibly ahis- with the intents of Centraal Museums (Rotterdam: Museum
torical, explorations? It is not diffi- director, Sjarel Ex, responsible for the Boymans-van Beuningen,
1989),10.
cult to see what these three examples From Utrecht with Love exhibition, and
have in common. In all three cases Anneke Oele, then curator for con- 5Sjarel Ex,
experts were called in from outside. temporary art at Arnhems Gemeente- Introduction to
In Rotterdam, the guest curator was museum, who realized the exhibition Groeten uit Utrecht, exh.
Harald Szeemann. In Utrecht and Arn- series Glances Back and Forth. cat. (Utrecht: Centraal
hem, artists were invited to experi- Museum, 1989).
ment with the collection. Szeemanns Sjarel Ex wanted to present the Utrecht
point of departure was three modern museum through the eyes of sixteen
sculpturesGrond (198081) by Joseph artists. In Arnhem, an invitation was
Beuys, Studio Piece (1979) by Bruce extended to five artists for the project,
Nauman and Buffet (198485) by Imi who were given a free hand and the
Knoebel. The final selection from the key to the collections. In none of the
collections of older and modern art, ap- three experiments were the exhibition-
plied and industrial art, was based on makers restricted in any way, being
three parables, Confusion of minds, free to use old, modern and autono-
A passionate appeal to human creativ- mous works and applied and industrial
ity and Death and suffering. The objects as they wanted.
oldest works date from the end of the Ex was looking for a new structure that
fifteenth century, the most recent was was personal rather than logical, one
the object by Imi Knoebel. In the ac- that could come about associatively
companying exhibition publication, with the help of coincidence.5 Though
Knoebels work appears side by side the statement is contradictory, we can
with a sixteenth-century Venetian see his point. Most artists decided to
plate; a portable cabinet from Ceylon incorporate a piece from the collection
from the late seventeenth century is or use a location in the museum in their
placed opposite Beuyss Grond, and The work. Where a piece from the collec-
Kneeling Youth by Minne faces The Glo- tion was used, its autonomy was tempo-
rification of the Virgin by Geertgen tot rarily suspended.
Sint Jans. For Glances Back and Forth, artists pro-
Szeemann: I was led by two conside duced new works inspired by pieces
rations when I made my selection from they selected from the collection. Bob
the collection: first I simply wanted to Negrijn chose paintings from vari-
pick out all the prize pieces, but with- ous periods, responding to them in his
out resorting to the traditional high three-dimensional still lifes. Mathilde
points, the 100 masterpieces; second, Cuypers focused on a number of old
on top of the sheer visual pleasure, I paintings and furniture, whereas Joke
wanted there to be a sense of content, Robaard decided to work with the mu-
timelessnessthe intangible utopia seums glass and china collection. Jac-
66 Documents Marga van Mechelen

6Andreas Huyssen, queline Overberg sought her confron- which Szeemann himself is not the last
The Search for tation in the Magic Realists and finally, to ask: Will the ahistorical soundings
Tradition: Avantgarde for his photographs, Ton Zwerver reveal themselves, to me at least? As
and Postmodernism in
arranged forgotten objects and ma- the champion of the Gesamtkunstwerk,
the 1970s, New German
Critique, Winter, 1981: 34. terials in a space normally concealed no one will be surprised to hear Szee-
from the public under the museums mann speak in synesthetic, Kandin-
rooms. Once again, this exhibition se- skian terms.
ries brought together non-homogenous
components. These three museum experiments also
These museum experiments in Rot- raise the question of the role of the
terdam, Utrecht and Arnhem share exhibition-maker. The question is cer-
a predilection for the ahistorical ap- tainly not novel but one broadly and
proach, the principle of simultaneity lengthily debated in connection with
and individual confrontations with other types of projects, in particular
unlike objects. In addition, the Arnhem the mammoth exhibitions of the last
exhibition addressed the essentially decade. Szeemanns obsession for re-
historical issue of whether contempo- constructing what never was is one of
rary and older art should be housed the exhibition-makers most speech-
within the walls of one museum. While making displays of creativity. Ex can
the question was never formally raised also be ranked among the most remark-
by the other two presentations, it was able exhibition-makers following his
in fact inescapable. Century 87 for which artists were invit-
ed to produce new work inspired by the
However marginal such exploratory qualities of an Amsterdam location of
museum activities may still be, they their own choosing. Do art works still
are nevertheless interesting. The state- challenge us to methodological consid-
ments they make call for a response eration as Panofsky claimed, or is there
or at least our comment, to begin with a vacuum which the exhibition-maker
their ahistorical approach. On closer is supposed to fill? Something to this
inspection, the approach is not as ahis- effect can be inferred from what An-
torical as the exhibition-makers claim. dreas Huyssen wrote in 1981: [...] if
By displaying familiar art works in an the contemporary art scene does not
unfamiliar context, Szeemann hoped generate enough movements, figures
to give the works a contemporary feel. and trends to sustain the ethos of
Though the word feel has an ahistor- avantgardisms, museum directors have
ical ring, its qualifier contemporary to turn to the past to satisfy the demand
surely implies that the works have for cultural events.6
been lifted out of their historical con- Can this statement, which holds mu-
text and given a present-day function. seum managements responsible, be
They are not the uniform beads of a ro- extended to the present phenomenon
sary we can finger unconsciously, nor and does it help explain it? To a certain
are they, to my mind, prize-pieces. extent it does, for it seems to be par-
They are simply objects singled out for ticularly true of exhibitions towards
actualization. This vision of Szeemann the end of the seventies and the early
can be recognized in Glances Back and eighties, Westkunst, for instance. And
Forth, though its role is less obvious in there are certainly parallels when we
the presentation at Centraal Museum. consider the tendency to look to the
Naturally the question remains as to past and sustain the ethos of avant-
what extent the presentation actually gardes and older art in general. In
succeeded in giving the selected art Szeemanns case, you could even say
works a contemporary feel, a question that he is unblushingy cashing the
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 67

values that art embodied at the start of unity in diversity, but this time on a 7The quotation is
the twentieth century. The exhibition- scale more megalomaniacal and (given originally from M. van
Dijck and D. van der
maker is more market-oriented than the audacious, somewhat over-confi-
Brempt, Monologen
ever, which does not make it any easier dent turn of phrase) a claim still vir- met Jan Hoet (Leuven:
to treat these ahistorical exhibitions as tually undemonstrable. Anneke Oele Uitgeverij Kritak, 1989).
a serious phenomenon. endorsed the expression, yet what evi-
Sceptics will say that it was simply dence is there of it in her concept and 8Szeemanns obsession
time for something new and that the the actual exhibition series? is still a visible history of
Einfhlung, or empathy.
novelties will be discussed at great The Arnhem exhibition project did not
A critical appraisal of the
length in all the art magazines, wheth- demand a credo, nor was it based exclu- empathy principle and the
er they be the ideas of Harald Szee- sively on empathy.8 Here the art works current significance of this
mann, Wim Beeren, Rudi Fuchs or Jan serve as the artists raw material, ma- psychological capacity are
Hoet, or some more obscure curator, terial not randomly chosen, but prese- the subject of my article
De Strohalm van de
collector or artist. lected by the artist for its affinitive or
Einfhlung in Te Elfder
It is true that a new concept has been alien qualities. Sometimes the corre- Ure 40, special edition on
Iaunched, but why this particular con- spondences were superficial, limited Julia Kristeva. vol. 29, no.
cept? It is not a phenomenon that can to form or material; one contribution 2, December 1986: 231254.
be passed over as eternally recurrent. questioned the expressivity of older art
The only apt retort is that with which compared with that of contemporary
Wlfflin responded to critics who re- art, but in all cases the corresponden-
proached him for his ahistorical atti- ces were demonstrable.
tude towards art history: Not all things Taken literally, Jan Hoets statement is
are possible at all times. In this context nonsense. Certainly there are similari-
his words are particularly appropriate. ties, as the Arnhem exhibition showed,
Finally let us look at the ideas on the but there is no doubt that the diffe-
relationship between older and modern rences prevail. Why then is there so
art, which, as stated, affected all three much stress on similarity? They have
projects even though it was only expli one important thing in common which
citly acknowledged in GIances Back explains the rest. There is a tendency
and Forth. In the catalogue, Anneke to approach old and new art alike as
Oele calls on the support of Jan Hoet, museum art. In other words, we have
the maker of Chambres dAmis. Both become used to museum presentations
Chambres dAmis and Century 87 blazed which disregard the question of the
new trails, which in a sense have been genesis, function and signifying pro-
followed up by these three explorative cess of the artwork. These questions
exhibitions. Century 87 expressed a are better left to scholars or to the few
preference for historical locations. larger museums with an extensive
This time it is historical works that scientific staff. It is more in the line of
the makers are anxious not to ignore, most museum staff to free the works
to spotlight, even. But the passage in from the shackles of psychological,
which Anneke Oele quotes Jan Hoet sociological and iconographical inter-
in fact denies that there is anything pretations and style classifications. In
special about older art: The hundred this task they can count on unexpected
thousands of different kinds of art support from the philosophy of art and
have much more in common than that semiotics. We now know what an art-
they differ.7 work is not: it is not a representation of
But how can this idea be reconciled some reality or other, not a revelation
with Wlfflins all things are not pos- of values, not the materialization of
sible at all times, especially when we beauty, not a visualized narrative, and
realize the context in which he made not merely a historical object. This do-
this statement? Here the issue is still es not imply free play, but it does allow
68 Documents Marga van Mechelen

greater freedom of action. The hazards History is no longer pre-history, and

of this particular path have already be- the time that History narrowly escaped
en pointed out. the clutches of Oedipus now lies well
and truly behind us. History, without
The fact that we have become so used its capital, is historical material. For
to the way art is presented in museums artists, the traditional distinctions
is one of the reasons that the pheno- between historical material have little
menon of these explorative exhibitions significance. Also the material itself
has hardly raised an eyebrow. A second makes few demands and if it does, they
explanation is the persistent press co- are simply ignored. What the artist
verage of the unrest in museum circles. chooses to do with the material he has
This has more to do with the treatment selected is his affair. Can the artist
of the permanent collections than with count on a position of prominence af-
exhibition experiments. Old art collec ter all? Rephrasing the same idea, had
tions are no longer allowed to rest on the artists not taken this attitude, the
their laurels or grow old gracefully. original concepts and the exhibitions
If they cannot be actualized or if they they ultimately produced would not
form an obstacle to matters of greater have caught on as they did.
topicality, they might well find their
existence jeopardized.
For the time being, however, the thre-
atened exchange of old quality for new
quantity is still capable of provoking
considerable indignation. At greater
risk is the fate of the wallflowers of
the collections and the legacies that
history has left to the museums, which
have yet to be seen in a new light.
The question of whether or not the
heterogeneous collections should be
maintainedwhich is precipitated in
most cases solely by the lack of depot
spaceis not so much a moral as a hi-
storical issue.
The select group of artists who we-
re given carte blanche in Utrecht and
Arnhem turned out to be less choosy
than museum staff, who often feel
ambivalent towards their museum col-
lections. On the one hand, the old cate-
gories are said to no longer exist while,
on the other, the usual hierarchies are
perpetuated in part by quality judge-
ment.

One last and not unimportant reason

why such museum experiments fail to
cause surprise is the changing attitude
of art and the artist towards history.
For many years now, little tribute has
been paid to Art History.
Discourse Stefan Heidenreich 69

NOTES

1Tino Sehgals

Make Time:
performance This Is so
Contemporary at the
Venice Biennale in 2005
addressed this obsession.

Temporalities and
Contemporary Art

Modern Times different types of time in the past, and,

Do Not End in fact, other temporalities have in-
Without the linear conception of time, creasingly come into use over the last
modernism and its idea of progress few years.
would not have been possible. About
two hundred years ago, the idea of Contemporary-ism
historical time conquered the fields of The art and culture of our time seem
culture and science. But for some time to be obsessed with the idea of being
now, it has seemed like this idea would contemporary.1 But contemporaneity
come to an end, as the prefix post- comes with a paradox. In a situation
declared prematurely some decades of continuous change, the contempo-
ago. There is a simple reason, however, rary can only persist for a brief span
for why modernity cannot end. of time. Artworks that appear contem-
In order to exist, time needs to be pro- porary now are threatened by the loss
duced. Different cultures operate on of that attribute at any time. In fact,
different formats of time, such as cycli- many collections of contemporary art
cal or linear time, just to name the two are doomed to represent a collection of
most common notions. Temporalities, mere outdated trends.
as we may call these types of time, are In fact, the obsession with contem-
shaped by institutions and conventions. poraneity can be taken as sign of a
But the abstract and countable form of transition that moves away from our
time to which we are accustomed is on- traditional concept of time. The con-
ly one of many possible ways of orga- temporary operates on the assumption
nizing communication and life. Time that it might remain contemporary for-
is not necessary. Even archives can be ever, implicitly assuming a temporality
organized without giving the category of eternal time instead of the modern
of time much importance. Thus the lin- history of continuous progress.
ear temporality prevalent in Western Seen from this perspective, a museum
countries may not persist. There were of contemporary art appears as a con-
70 Discourse Stefan Heidenreich

2See also for the term tradiction in itself, at least as long as one museum. To claim further progress
Neuzeit in the historical of the tasks of the museum is to store its became much more successful than
sciences: Reinhart collection. Here the paradox leads a step representing the visual world, a task
Koselleck, Neuzeit:
further, because the museum does not better served by photography. Painters
Zur Semantik moderner
Bewegungsbegriffe in establish a merely passive relationship exploited the surface of their canvases
Vergangene ZukunftZur to time. Since its very foundation as a for creating historical distinctions
Semantik geschichtlicher storage and site of display for the arts, in style, leaving aside what Baude-
Zeiten (Frankfurt/Main: the museum operated as an institution laire would have called modernity. Of
Suhrkamp Verlag, 1979),
that actively helped to create and main- course, without a newly developed art
300-348.
tain a certain temporality. market run by galleries, this setting
3Charles Baudelaire, The would not have achieved its full im-
Painter of Modern Life and Modernity pact: modernism was where the con-
Other Essays (Cambridge/ This is not the first time that the para- sumerist cycle of fashions and styles
MA: DaCapo, 1986 [1863]), dox of contemporaneity has occurred.2 was elevated to a higher realm by a lin-
12.
When Baudelaire in 1863 tried to apply ear and historical temporality.
4See Michel Foucault, the term modernity to the arts, he
The Order of Things (New was aware of its paradoxical implica- The Museum as
York: Pantheon, 1971), tions. Baudelaire proposed a way to Time Machine
217-220. escape the paradox of eternal contem- The temporality that facilitated the dy-
poraneity. Arguing against the canon- namization of developments in the arts
5See Heinrich Dilly,
Kunstgeschichte als
ized genres of his time, he suggested around 1860 was itself established in
Institution (Frankfurt/ that artists should extract from fash- the late eighteenth century by virtue
Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, ion whatever element it may contain of three parallel developments. First
1979), 140. of poetry within history, to distill the was the scientific conceptualization of
eternal from the transitory.3 linear time, which replaced traditional
6See Walter Grasskamp,
In todays terms, one could translate taxonomies.4 Then the epoch witnessed
Museumsgnder und
Museumsstrmer. Zur Baudelaires modernit as contempo- the rise of the nation state, which made
Sozialgeschichte des raneity. Modernism, however, took a use of historical time in order to estab-
Kunstmuseums (Munich: very different turn, bypassing Baude- lish itself. Combining both, new cul-
Beck, 1981), 20. laires ideas. In fact, what happened tural institutions arose in the service
during the course of modernism was of the newly established states and the
almost the opposite from what Baude- historization of knowledge.
laire initially proposed. Something The museum functioned as one of the
else turned out to be much more suc- most important institutions in estab-
cessful than extracting eternity from lishing the new type of historical time.
present life. Painters gave up on de- After the art historian Johann Winck-
piction as such and initiated a move- elmann proposed style as a basic term
ment that reached its peak only with of distinction and historical time as the
complete abstraction. It comes as no primary parameter, museums started
surprise that Baudelaires example of a to display and catalogue their items
modern artist, the painter Constantin along these categories, first in Dssel-
Guys, was soon forgotten. In the quest dorf and Vienna around 1760.5
for modernity, the following genera A crucial moment arrived when the
tions of artists found out that any new form of display was adopted in
stylistic distinction that could be iden- 1794 by Dominique Vivant Denon for
tified as progress in a truly modern the Louvre, in which items were chro
sense would serve their purpose best. nologically catalogued and ordered.
What is usually celebrated as the pro The rational order of the artworks
gress of modern art can also be de- allowed the new citizens to appropriate
scribed as a process of adapting to the the former feudal treasures as part of
fundamental temporal setting of the their own cultural history.6
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 71

7Foucault, The
Archaeology of Knowledge
(London: Routledge, 1989),
145.

By establishing linear time as its main tion. It only accepts what fits its format
ordering principle, the museum cre- and procedures. And it only releases
ated a space of linear temporality. Its what is addressed in a proper way and
historicization laid the foundation accessed according to the given means
for a distinction in time, a distinction and rules. Foucault writes, The archive
that would later be exploited by the is first and foremost the law of what
modernist avant-gardes. can be said, the system that governs
the appearance of statements as unique
Active Archives and events.7 That gives it a fundamental but
Their Ontologies almost invisible power, operating be-
The power exerted by archives often fore anything is stated.
goes unnoticed because it operates But of course, the laws of the archives
within fundamental settings that pre- do not prevail eternally. Despite their
figure and format statements and ob- ability to create temporality, the ar-
jects when they leave and enter the ar- chives themselves do not reside outside
chive. One tends to take the procedures of times reach. The rules concern-
of an archive as given and objective, as ing how to store and retrieve data may
if these procedures did not affect the change. New archives might appear,
data, however this is not the case. while old archives might vanish. In fact,
An archive allows one to collect, store, one of the most tremendous changes in
display and retrieve items. It seems to the structure of archives is happening
treat its contents passively; the archives right now in front of our eyes.
duty, in fact, is to leave its contents un-
changed. But nothing would be more Within the procedures of an archive,
misleading than to take the archive as a temporality seems to be the most self-
mere passive storage. The activity of the evident requirement. Isnt time a pri-
Hanne Darboven,
archive takes place on a meta-level. The mary issue of storage? Isnt time the Mitarbeiter und Freunde,
archive imposes precise regulations very dimension in which the archive 1988
on inbound and outbound communica- operates? Photo Philippe De Gobert
72 Discourse Stefan Heidenreich

8See Harold A. The answer to both questions is a jects cannot be excluded; rather, they
Innis, Empire and straight No!, as odd as it may sound become mandatory or essential, whilst
Communication (Toronto: at first glance. Of course the archive all other attributes of the object may
Press Porcpic, 1986), 5.
stores things, but the category of time or may not appear. This ontology re-
9Peter Galison, Einsteins always remains something to be added sembles an Aristotelian classification,
Clocks, Poincares Maps artificially, if at all. The mere func- with the difference that the relevance
(New York: Norton, 2003), tion of storage can be easily performed of the archives properties depends
4147. without regard to time. When arche- solely on their function. Therefore
ologists unearth items, the objects do less important or even random formal
10Koselleck, Geschichte,
Geschichten und formale
not come with a time-tag and a date of attributes may be necessary, as for ex-
Zeitstrukturen in production. In fact, it takes a lot of ef- ample the initial letters of a word in a
Vergangene Zukunft, fort to find out and add the historical lexical order.
130-143. dates. The storage itself operated well Of course, the ontology given by an ar-
without it, and it is only the historical chive depends largely on which prop-
dispositif of archeology that demands erty is taken as primary and which
that a timeline be appended. others are subjected to it. When time
On the other hand, if we take a look at was promoted from a secondary to a
contemporary databases, the category primary parameter around 1800, the
of time is just one of many. Archives transition produced two main effects.
may operate exclusively in terms of First, the archive had to be restruc-
names and locations, ignoring time tured and the display of things had to
alltogether. Again, the category of time be re-ordered in an appropriate man-
remains something external. Time ner. The second effect, if less visible,
itself becomes just another number had deeper consequences. From that
among many others, as Hanne Dar- point on, the value of an object would
boven showed in her work, which con- be judged on its ability to claim a posi-
sequently transformed temporal se- tion within a timeline. And that was
quences into graphic display, flattening what modern art was about.
the passage of time.
Institutions and time
Even in the case of the museum, time is Inevitably the question arises, how
just one of many possible ways to sort, does the archive acquire its rules and
index and retrieve objects. Any type who is in charge of them? Foucault
of ordering could serve the same tasks showed in detail how historical tem-
provided it allows for the basic func- porality became dominant through-
tions to be performed. And during the out the sciences around 1800. History
course of history there were many dif- started to guide the knowledge of na-
ferent types of order applied to works ture, of language, of economy and of
of art. In the feudal treasure-houses, the arts. The transition from the clas-
items were stored according to their sification systems of the late Baroque to
content, their provenance or their ma- a linear configuration along the vector
terial value. Often neither the time of of historical time took about half a cen-
production nor the time of acquisition tury, and it looks as if it had occurred
were properly accounted for. without external reason.
Above: Hanne Darboven, By setting its criteria for inclusion, ev- But a striking parallel might serve to
Das Jahr, 1993 ery archive imposes an ontology on its explain the rise of the historical dis-
Middle: Hanne Darboven, objects (and, implicitly, on all objects), positif. There has always been an intri-
Diary, 1987
dividing them into things that can en- cate relationship between institutions,
Below: Hanne Darboven,
Hommage an meine Mutter, ter the archive and things that must their archives and their temporality.
1989 be excluded from it. The properties Every institution faces the indispens-
Photo Philippe De Gobert necessary to store, sort and address ob- able task of maintaining its exis-
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 73

tence over a duration longer than the

lifespan of a human being. The ability
to stretch communication over space
and time marks a necessary condition
of the institutions existence.8 Thus
institutions have always been engaged
in creating and maintaining their tem-
poralitybe they churches with the
calendar and later the clock mounted
in their towers, or railroad companies
and colonial states striving to create
the global synchronized time-sphere.9
Institutional transitions and shifts of
power often coincide with changes in
temporality. The theory of time de-
veloped by Augustine in the fourth
century gives a prominent example.
Augustine formulated the idea of two
empires, the Roman Empire and the
Christian empire of God, each of
which had its proper temporality.10
The Roman Empire, which was in the
first stages of its decline in Augustines
time, relied on the historical tempo-
rality of a past, present and future.
Augustine opposed this temporality
with the time-frame of eternity in
the empire of God. Indeed, the Chris-
tians succeeded in taking over many
of the institutions of the Roman Em-
pire, which down to the present day
form the core of the Catholic Church.
Augustine himself had to remain with-
in the historic time of the Roman Em-
pire: he died with its decline when the
Vandals besieged his hometown Hippo
in 430 AD. But his writings made it to
the eternal temporality claimed by re-
ligion.
Around 1800, when the nation state in
the modern sense appeared, histori-
cal temporality replaced the eternal
time-frame of the feudal states and the
church. It served the task of empower-
ing the citizens, who since Kant bore
the name of subjects, enabling them to
recognize themselves as the sovereign
actors in the course of time. As Dipesh
Chakrabarty writes in his essay Pro-
vincializing Europe, History as a
knowledge system is firmly embedded
74 Discourse Stefan Heidenreich

11Dipesh Chakrabarty, in institutional practices that invoke Beyond Temporality

Provincializing Europe: the nation-state at every stepwitness A market-driven cultural industry
Postcolonial Thought
the organization and politics of teach- promotes a temporal setting very dif-
and Historical Difference
(Princeton: Princeton
ing, recruitment, promotions, and pub- ferent from the one activated by an
University Press, 2007), 47. lication in history departments, poli- institution-backed national culture.
tics that survive the occasional brave The process of identification through
and heroic attempts by individual distinction and consumption operates
historians to liberate history from the smoothly within a temporality defined
metanarrative of the nation state.11 by cycles of fashions and short-term
Museums are closely connected to the trends, which ensure a constant flux
nation state and its temporality. Along- of distinctions. When sales numbers
side with the other major cultural insti- figure as the ultimate sign of value, no
tutions of the nineteenth century, such institutional authority needs to provide
as theaters, philharmonic orchestras, for long-term memory or canonization.
opera houses and universities, the mu- Consequently, the cultural industry
seum formed a new national culture thrives on the constant recycling of old
with the purpose of imaging a national forms and aesthetics without the need
identity and educating its state servants. of a concept of linear time.
In the twenty-first century, however,
In the twentieth century, the institu this state of affairs is facing funda-
tional setting of nation-states under mental changes. Traditional commer-
went fundamental changes, both cial culture is threatened to its core
through the rise of a capitalist market- since digital media allow for the open
driven consumer culture and the failed circulation of information and create
excesses of nationalism. Capitalist na- abundance, dispensing with the erst-
tions left the construction of their sub- while exploited scarcity.
jects identities to the cultural industry. The economy of reproduced cultural
The state started to serve as a mere ad- goods, which started in the second half
ministrative agency, whose task it was of the nineteenth century, has come to
to ensure an environment favorable to an end. This does not necessarily lead
economic growth. Consequently, the back to a pre-industrial temporality.
cultural industry claimed the markets On the contrary, new technologies lead
of subjectivization with the help of new again to new types of temporality.
media, such as cinema and the gramo- Two different reasons inhibit a simple
phone. return to the historical mode of time.
Soon each generation grew up learn- Digital technologies of archiving
ing that identity equals distinction, and communication directly impose
and distinction can be best expressed a temporality on their own contents,
through taste and ownership of cultural one that is shaped by the architecture
products and knowledge. Technologies of databases, procedures of search-
of reproduction formed the basic con- engines and the logic of the networks.
dition for the commercial exploitation The relational database introduces an
of new modes of subjectivization. This important change compared to earlier,
might also be the reason for the minor hierarchical archive structures. It al-
role art playedduring that period and lows for recording multiple properties
up until todayin the subjectivization of equal value, and for sorting the re-
of the consumer, as artists stuck to the sults according these properties. To-
pre-industrial mode of production and day, it does not take years to rearrange
remained hostile to any attempt of tech- the archive, but only seconds. In this
nological reproduction. new architecture of information, the
parameter of time is downgraded to
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 75

one of many possible attributes. posed to the dominant Western linear 12For an overview
No surprise, then, that the factor of history. However the historian Rein- on how this extension
changes art history, see
time is almost entirely eliminated hart Koselleck criticized this opposi-
Kitty Zijlmans, Wilfried
when search-engine algorithms look tion as a bogus-alternative (Schei- van Damme, World
for relevant results. First, it would nalternative). Koselleck proposes to Art Studies: Exploring
have been almost impossible to keep step beyond this bogus-alternative Concepts and Approaches
track of the changes within all the with the concept of time layers. He (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2008).
data in a network. And second, it soon names three layers: the singularity, the Interestingly, James Elkins
observes the Western-
became apparent that the degree of repetition, and a transcendent form of
ness of many notions in
interlinkedness can be taken as a duration, which comes close to eterni- his paper, but neglects
reliable indicator of relevance. In this ty.13 In fact, these terms operate on the the term history itself.
sense, Google works as a machine of brink of temporality itself, as they do See James Elkins, Can
time destruction. Only one type of not rely on the parameter of time, but We Invent a World Art
Studies? in World Art
time appears by default in its search rather build a foundation for the intro-
Studies, 114116.
results, a number put in brackets giv- duction of temporality. As Deleuze re-
ing the duration of the search process, marks, historical repetition is neither 13Reinhart Koselleck,
usually a fraction of a second. This a matter of analogy nor a concept pro- Zeitschichten in
number states very precisely the fact duced by the reflection of historians, Zeitschichten (Frankfurt/
that Google needs no time. It operates but above all a condition of historical Main: Suhrkamp Verlag,
2003), 1926.
in mere presence and its database ef- action itself.14
ficiently excludes any reference to a Here we arrive at the point where three
historical timeline. issues intersect, namely the ontology
Here we encounter the basic opposition of the archive, the construction of tem-
of structure and event. Both perspec- porality and the question of power.15
tives seem to exclude each other. One
can almost speak of an uncertainty Make Time
principle, like the one in physics. One Even if temporality is produced, it is
can either detect the position of a parti- not something we can simply choose.
cle or its momentum, however it is im- We live within a given temporality al-
possible to know both at the same time. most as we talk within a language. The
In the same sense, one may either track powers that create and enforce tempo-
the position of a piece of information ralities are the institutions governing
in a network, or focus on the time of its the organization of life and production.
appearance, as stated in Heisenbergs The temporality they promote serves
uncertainty principle. So far, the Inter- first of all for their self-preservation.
net has gone by and large for the posi- Religions, churches and Gods postulate
tional option. a temporal structure of eternity and
The other aspect inhibiting a return immortality. States and democracies
to a historical temporality originates rely on a linear historical temporality,
from an indirect effect of the new allowing for progress and individual
global communication-sphere. The action. Companies and capitalist mar-
degree of global exchange finally put kets promote competitive distinction in
the Western cultural hegemony into a cyclical fashion.
question. Different cultures all around The changes in temporality usually go
the world brought to the fore different unnoticed because they infer the very
approaches to cultural heritage. It soon apparatus of analysis and rearrange
turned out that Western temporality observations and phenomena accord-
lacks the universality it used to claim ing to their rules. There is no Archime-
almost by default.12 dean point outside the time frame in
Often one refers in this regard to the which it is observed. If one temporal-
concept of cyclical temporality as op- ity replaces another, it rearranges the
76
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 77

presence and the archive smoothly, and Temporality and Arts 14Gilles Deleuze,
after a while it will appear as if there The relation of art to temporality has Difference and Repetition
had never been something different, always been connected to the promise (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1994), 91.
or as if the replaced order was simply of eternity. That is one of the reasons
awkward and inappropriate. why biographies of artists, when they 15To cut it even shorter,
In order to find out which kind of started to be written down, were full one could paraphrase the
temporality we are heading towards, of anecdotes of their inborn gifts and three issues as truth, the
it would be misleading to look for an innate talents. The description of an subject and the event.
end of the old one or the future after it, educational process would have con-
simply because both conceptions, end tradicted their eternal aspirations.
and future, are firmly included within Even in the context of modernism,
the frame of our existing temporality. when a linear history propelled a nar-
Thus the temporality of modernism ration of progress, each avant-garde
will neither come to an end, nor will had to preserve the promise of eternal
there be a future following it. If we duration with the revolutionary claim
want to detect the upcoming temporal- to change art history. And indeed,
ity, there can only be one place to look without the claim of eternity, the other-
for it, and that is in our present. Here wise dysfunctional objects of art would
we may find the other temporality al- lose much of their value.
ready at work, perhaps without us hav- Now that this situation of parallel tem-
ing noticed it yet. poralities in modernism has receded, a
We need to take a closer look at the net- timeless temporality might step in, or
works that are increasingly becoming to be more precise, has stepped in with-
the mode of organizing life and com- out being fully comprehended. Within
munication. The Internet is rapidly this temporality, modernism does not
moving away from its initial phase as look like something old or overcome,
written hypertext and toward a dyna but rather like a known and valid con-
mic world of sounds and images. The vention, but one of lesser importance,
only trace that will remain of its initial downgraded from primary to second-
phase will most likely be the link. ary level. Instead, we encounter another
The link is the decisive element deter- type of duration, according to the logic
mining the access to the archive and of the link and its relevance.
potentially shaping a different tempo- The single artwork finds itself exposed
rality. Most likely this will be a tem- to the task of incorporating the histori-
porality without time as we know it. It cal frame and the logic of the link. One
would convey knowledge as something would call the linking principle rela-
constantly changing, therefore always tional, if the word had not been used
contemporary and always claiming in a more restricted sense, referring
truth (e.g. Wikipedia). It would mark mainly to social relations.16 Neverthe-
repetition immediately as such by in- less, the widespread reception of that
stant comparison. And it would detect term hints at the crucial importance of
the successful distinction as a differ- the linked relation.
ence that makes a difference, but only These days, artworks position them-
when linked. selves in a fourfold referential space.
In that way, the networkand its us Their relations to art history in gen-
erscreate a space where a collective eral and to the personal biography
appearance distributes relevance and and development of the artist belong
attention basically independent of to the frame of historical temporal-
time. Among this type of knowledge, ity. In contrast, the logic of the link
the modern temporality will only be reigns, where the artwork either refers Candida Hfer, Biblioteca
embedded as one of many options. to other contemporary artworks, or Riccardiana Firenze I, 2008
78

~--.

~~~--~~-._.
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 79

establishes references outside the art- mer, more stable values. Instead, it only 16Nicolas Bourriaud,
world, be they social, political, cultural seems like a symptom of the inevitable Relational Aesthetics
or theoretical. Lately one can observe adaptation to a temporality in which (Paris: Les presses du
rel, 2002), 16. This also
a certain weakness in the historical, links and relationships replace history
provides an example of
time-based relations, which is compen- and its linear conception of time. how present relevance
sated for by a mix of relations outside One urgent question remains to be replaces history, as
of the art-world, as Nicolas Bourriaud tackled. If the value of an artwork Bourriaud completely
advocates under the terms relational consists neither in its function nor in ignored the former use
and post-production. a socio-cultural distinction, and if this of the term by Donald
Judd, see: Bruce Glaser,
Another indicator of the dissolving value cannot be safeguarded by specu- Questions to Stella
modernist time-frame can be found lative collectors, then it depends exclu- and Judd, ArtNews 65,
in the continued dependency on time sively on the promise of duration. How no.5 (Sept. 1966): 5561,
of the art system and its major institu- does one preserve a (con)-temporary reprinted in Kristin Stiles
tions.17 The recent importance of bien- artwork in an environment of tempo- and Peter Selz (eds.),
Contemporary Art: A
nials shows a growing bias towards rality without time?
Sourcebook of Artists
temporary events. This bias is accom- Again, the answer is already given. Writings (Berkeley:
panied by the rise of the curator, the Since ample storage space is available University of California
main agent of the contemporary. for data, the main problem for archives Press, 1996), 117124, on
At the same time, the unique boom in is not storing the art, but keeping it relational, see 119.
museum buildings seems to hint at accessible. Art history and criticism
17In 1962, Kubler
the opposite, that is, in a return to the may still serve that purpose, but they dated what he called the
historical temporality. But the new themselves are constantly re-invented exhaustion of modernity
buildings do not host museums in the upon the dynamic repertoire of the back to 1950. George
old sense. They often function as mere contemporary, and deeply entangled in Kubler, The Shape of
spectacular signposts in a competitive its dynamization. Time (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1962), 44.
environment, where towns and r egions Thus duration without time is not
fight for attention in a globalized eco achieved by entering a weak histori-
nomy. Instead of strengthening the cal scheme, but by maintaining and
historical temporality linked to a sover- creating active links that reach out to
eign state, the new museums illustrate a future present. It is the density and
exactly the oppositethe subjugation of richness of links, be they internal, art-
the state under the rules of the floating related or social, political or theoreti-
financial capital. The museum buildings cal, that may preserve the contempo-
remain empty iconic monuments, de- rary within a timeless temporality.
prived of the budget needed to preserve
a steady collection. Instead they engage
in the game of contemporary art. The
curator serves as the main protagonist
in this game, the one whose job it is to
take care (Latin: curare) not, in fact, of
the collection and its display, but rather
of the constant struggle for the contem-
porary. From the passive caretaker, the
curator has been transformed into the
constantly active organizer of the (con)
temporary event. Forced to travel con- Above:
stantly, he has fallen victim to the myri- Candida Hfer, Uffizi
Firenze I, 2008
ad links he must maintain and create in
order to attract attention for his activi- Below:
ties. It makes little sense to criticize this Candida Hfer, Muse du
development or ask for a return to for- Louvre Paris IX, 2005
80 Practice Chiara Bertola

Conserving the Future

Manifesta Journal 9 2010 81

Premise visual perspectives and shaking up

The majority of us are convinced that a the general perception of things. In
cultural institution should be a dynam- other words, a museumif it is truly
ic place, capable of responding to the to be contemporaryshould be able to
ideas and needs of the present. How- present itself differently from what we
ever, I also believe that a cultural insti- have come to expect of it.
tution should have a proactive function Perhaps the fundamental questions
in suggesting new paths to counter concerning that process of change are
the monotony of the a-critical thought the following: in this day and age, is it
currently besieging us, proposing new still possible to reunite art with social

Exhibiton view of Interior

Landscape, Mona Hatoum,
Fondazione Querini
Stampalia, Venice, 2009
82 Practice Chiara Bertola

and cultural history? Are those of us and images that locate the presents au-
who work in museums able to repre- thenticity in its past.
sent creative conceptual processes as The projects Ive initiated in recent
well as the objects produced by them? years with artists at the Querini thus
Can we identify themes and trends that sprang from the awareness that the
go beyond the subdivision of move- problem of relating to the past, and
ments and periods? Answering these therefore to tradition, could not be re-
questions could lead to developing a solved by the mere creation of the pres-
museum capable of facing new chal- ent according to models of the past.
lenges, refining its strategies of hang- The present had to regain a sense of
ing and exhibiting to make work come originality by emerging unexpectedly
to life, and ultimately offering its spac- from the program.
es as a site of cultural debate where di- The work at the Querini took shape
verse discourses, both local and global, over a period of time and was perfor
can find their voice. med with the conviction that the per-
spective of the most interesting and
Planning to Conserve sensitive artists could help us not only
the Future to understand the period in which we
It was with these questions in mind live, but also to look at our past dif-
that I started the contemporary art ferently. Therefore, this condition of
program at the Fondazione Querini relativity and comparison, which oth-
Stampalia in Venice. From the very erwise we risked losing, was always
beginning, I had to deal with a founda- woven into the work they were asked
tion whose mission was conservation to do.
and whose collections ensured a strong Every time I invited an artist to step
relationship with the past. The Querini over that threshold and establish a con-
was primarily a library and a house nection with a new project inside the
museum containing family heirlooms. museum space, something extremely
Therefore, when I started planning vital and interesting emerged. For ev-
I had to take into consideration this eryone, stepping over that threshold
strong relationship with the memory meant the possibility of glimpsing a
of the place and with the art of the past. broader horizon. The idea of unfreez-
The first thing to do was overturn the ing works from the past and allowing
common logic that saw the relation- them to come into contact with the
ship with the past as exclusively con- present, without the fear of shatter-
servational and static, as dead matter ing something in this embrace, opened
that could not be modified. This con- up relational and creative possibili-
sisted of extracting the works from ties of incredible depth and gave space
the immobility of a consolidated and to further readings of contemporary
complete heritage. In other words, it time. Things continue to have a voice
meant trying to get away from a way if we know how to question them and
of thinking that was immutable and they do not only talk about the past or
oversaturated with memory. It meant memory, but also speak to the present
believing instead in the vitality of the and the future.
interval that separates the past from The Querini house museum possessed
the present. a latent inclination toward the contem-
This does not mean being besotted by porary, which had been frozen since
a monotonous present, but rather hav- its construction, which had taken the
ing something to offer and to highlight route of mere cataloguing and exhibit-
in the work of the museum: attentions, ing, thus potentially consigning its ele-
views, fragments, thoughts, visions ments to oblivion.
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 83

Cultural Inheritance shatter into a thousand shards and in a NOTES

as a Living Heritage thousand directions.
I have always been convinced that the Simone Weil stated that the comings 1Federico Ferrari, Lo
spazio critico, (Rome: Luca
contemporary in itself does not exist, and goings of thought in the past are
Sossella, 2004), 35.
but rather that every place, every ges- like waves that reach the shore without
ture and every thing become custodi- ever being lost; and that the sea, be- 2Simon Weil,
ans of a cultural heritage which is con- ing benign, perpetually adds material, LEnracinement: Prlude
stantly being renewed and reactivated. building culture as a concretion which une dclaration des
devoirsenvers ltre
Lets take as a whole the works of every resists time.2 Artists know that the
humain, (Paris: Gallimard,
museum. It is clear that these works objects and images kept in museums 1949). Transl. Chiara
comprise their inherited baggage. are a mocking reminder of their much Bertola.
However, this baggage remains almost greater longevity. The work is the sus-
permanently confined to a logic that pended mirror of art that cannot cre- 3Giulio Paolini, in
follows the rules of culture (culture as ate new stories, but can only repeat conversation with Chiara
Bertola, 2004.
heritage to preserve or squander) and itself, thanks to a circular destiny in
is not considered as living heritage. which images, figures, models, Muses 4Alessandro Dal
The difference between heritage and and Gods return, as if following an un- Lago, Larcaico e il suo
inheritance is obvious: the first is a sum derground river which every now and doppio. Aby Warburg e
of goods, the second the acceptance of a then comes to the surface. Giulio Paoli- lantropologia, in Aut-
Aut, 199200, January
memory and its extension into the pres- ni described it to me thusly: More than
April 1984: 9091. On the
ent. As Federico Ferrari writes, ever, art is a whole host of memories of theme of the pearl fisher,
itself; it is the predestination of a fu- see Hannah Arendt,
The first is the total of goods, fixed ture which is more consistent than the Walter Benjamin: lomino
in the interpretive cages of the wills future of things. But if we go on to the gobbo e il pescatore di
executors [] the second wants to moment in which art is in front of us, perle, in Il futuro alle
spalle (Bologna: Il Mulino,
show that the inheritance is not in- then there is no longer time because art
1981), 105170.
dissoluble but established. Heritage is that imponderable, absolute instant
is what is passed down only to legiti- which is consumed in its presence. It is
mate successors; inheritance is cho- that threshold.3
sen and is not given by any investi- If art has neither future nor past, then
ture, it requires a decision, a critical in the present it has nothing other than
position-taking which obliges the the illusion of these two expressions.
inhabitants of the present to take From such a perspective, the work is
on the excess of a meaning which is precisely the impossibility of defining
never given once and for all, in that itself on this threshold between past
it is eternally transitory.1 and future, in which it is continually
reborn and defined in the eye of the
As was mentioned earlier, this is about beholder.
overturning the common logic that As Alessandro Dal Lago affirms, Eter-
sees the past as exclusively conserva- nity attacks the present from all sides.
tive and static because it considered it Museums, archives or libraries turn
a dead and unchangeable matter. It is to dustbut the pearls held in their
about considering the inheritance of underground storerooms, like on the
dozens of fragments of senses, which ocean bed, continue to shine.4 In the
can be recomposed in myriad possible infinite universe of art, new roads are
constellations. An atlas of memory always opening up to change the image
takes shape from the sum of the frag- of the world consigned to usthat im-
ments, a Warburgian atlas, of which age which, in the fatigue of repetitive-
the museum is an experimental work- ness and in the changing of systems
shop, where each single point in space and life models, has lost the strength of
is so pregnant with time that it can the necessity that generated it.
84 Practices Chiara Bertola
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 85

But the roads that open up and are con- Conservare il futuro (Conserving
sidered to be the newest or the most the future). An interesting oxymoron,
revolutionary still follow in the tracks intended to point out what an institu-
of the long-forgotten ancient routes. tion should do. Conserving means rec-
We need to discover the old in order to ognizing a value in things, respecting
understand that sometimes it is diffi- a point of view of that which has been
cult to recognize it, to make it emerge, passed down to us. The future is the
and that the old is action, transforma- contemporary moment that provides
tion, material and not immobility. us with new references for what has
In his project lOra X (2004), Giulio passed. Therefore the work of the in-
Paolini proposed a re-evaluation that stitution should not consist in anything
was not nostalgic but critical of the old other than establishing connections,
as the historical present, eliminating like a place outside of history and thus,
the capital letter of Muse and Museum paradoxically, in the middle of history
to turn them into contemporary phe- and of time.
nomena (memory and room). By carry-
ing out this work live in the space of a Where is Our Place?
historical museum such as that of the Where is our place? This was the ques-
Fondazione Querini, his act became tion around which Ilya and Emilia
even more tangible, provoking and en- Kabakov constructed their enormous
lightening. installation exhibited at the Querini
Not throwing away the things we find Stampalia in 2003. The two artists
(signs of a story or a past that one does made the public confront their rela-
not know exactly how to use or where tionship with their own past, in an age
to place) is also a form of economy. On- in which the past is usually used as
ly if we consider fragments critically the backdrop against which cursory
as openings onto a possible future, thoughts and fragments of the contem-
does each fragment become a snippet porary age are projected.
of the future, where the work of the Their installation created the space of
artist occasionally becomes merely the a fictional museum within a real mu-
imperceptible memory of an encoun- seum, and it became an opportunity
ter. In this way, the museum is trans- for commentary, provoking questions
formed into an enormous laboratory, and new answers. Immediately one was
attempting to trace some symbols of made aware that two exhibitions had
the present and new cognitive models. been created which counteracted each
After talking about numerous projects otherone at the end of the nineteenth
with artists in the Fondazione, I under century and the other at the beginning
stood that when artists come across of the twenty-firststimulating an en-
something that initially appears to be counter between old and contemporary
a heap of museum junk or rubble or spectators, and between past and pres-
rubbish (as Ilya Kabakov would say), ent time.
something new always resurfaces and Everything is relative, Kabakov s eemed
emerges. Even from the past. Their to be telling us, just as our position in
reconsideration is like a plough that the worldand above all, our concep-
furrows the land again, bringing back tion of the contemporaryis rela-
to light things that had previously been tive. The artist wrote about this subject:
buried, dormant over time, and provid- In the past there existed an art which Exhibiton views of Where
is our Place?, Ilya and
ing new interpretations and new inter- had the pretext of being an immutable
Emilia Kabakov, Fondazi-
pretive categories. model, eternal, but which now unex- one Querini Stampalia,
The entire contemporary art proj- pectedly our contemporary time has Venice, 2003
ect at the Querini Stampalia is called rejected However, the old has not dis- Photo Francesco Allegretto
86 Practice Chiara Bertola

5Ilya Kabakov quoted appeared and survives in a long-lasting comparison with the past would mean
in Chiara Bertola, Where way, calling into question that which recapturing those possibilities that the
Heaven and Earth
the new generations are achieving.5 past has not completely attained, but
Entwine, in Where Is Our
Place?, exh. cat (Kyoto:
But is this relationship with the past which it had in some way discerned
Tankosha Publishing, still possible? Are artists and critics and begun to plan. In other words, a
2004). taking it into consideration once more? continuous, inexorable confrontation
And if they are, in what way? And in animated by a residual faith in the cog-
6Hans Ulrich Obrist in what forms? nitive and expressive capacity of lan-
Quattendez-vous dune
Ilya Kabakov had already anticipated guage and history.
institution artistique du 21e
sicle? (Paris: Editions du the predicamentif not the actual I thought it was important to be able to
Palais de Tokyo, 2001), 134. impossibilityof this relationship propose a work that led, at least, to an
with long-lasting art in his installa- awareness of this question, reconsider-
tion The Fallen Sky, exhibited in the ing the past and the present in a new
garden of the United Nations in Geneva and relational perspective, because I
(1996). Here, the artist told the story of believe that the task of an institution
a Soviet pilot who lived in Prague. On is that of helping the public to change
the ceiling in his house, the pilot had their perception of time.
painted an enormous sky as a tribute To bear out this way of working with
to his profession. A violent storm had the contemporary, I would like to go
dislodged a piece of panel with the sky back to the talk given by Hans Ulrich
painted on it and, according to Kaba- Obrist about considering a museum as
kov, had dropped it into the United Na- something mobile, based on a dynamic
tions garden. Now, what I would like conception of art history, in which it
to emphasize here is that the painted is possible to imagine other and new
sky that fell to the ground is a painting. museums.6 In one museum, innumer-
The theme is not just that of the fallen able other museums are concealed, if
sky, but also of the fallen painting, of only we knew how to see them, and
the destroyed work of art, whatever the artists help us to do this with their
that might be. We could push this even work. Looking back on the exhibitions
further and think that essentially the by Kiki Smith, Giulio Paolini, Mona
real theme of this installation is the Hatoum, Stefano Arienti, Giuseppe
ruin of what we once considered artis- Caccavale, Georges Adagbo and many
tic and eternal, of a reality that should others, each of them has given a unique
have existed forever. In The Fallen Sky, and different perspective to the origi-
art could not get back up and its rela- nal questions, but always through the
tionship with its past was irredeem- same museum.
ably broken. In Where Is Our Place?,
the artist returned to this theme to ask The Relationship with
both art people and a wider audience the Territory
whether it is possible to put the fallen If all that has been said thus far is true,
sky back over our heads and thus once then the knowledge of and the relation-
again give us back depth and happiness ship with the territory become indis-
through art. pensable. I use territory here in its
So what would be arts answer today? broadest sense, meaning that intimate
It certainly cannot continue in the connection between the (extremely) par-
impossible, incessant assertion of its ticularthe city, the neighborhood, the
own newness, but neither can it think palace, along with their histories, rites,
of wrapping itself up in tradition and representations and communication
in the mere teaching of the classics systemsand the (absolutely) universal
or the mere citation of images from sense of networks into which those de-
the history of art. Perhaps making a tails are constantly introduced.
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 87

A local language has to be tried out

within a universal language. One has to
work hard to identify a thread rooted in
ones own past within the universal lan-
guage (but also recognize in the univer-
sal dimension of ones own language).
The relationship with the territory can
also be sought in a relationship with
ones own history. Is the past perhaps
nothing other than a specific terri-
tory capable of resonating in universal
terms?
This outlook could be viewed as con
servative in an age in which the work
of the artists of the latest generation is
increasingly cut loose from all ties of
identity with a territory. Yet it is pre-
cisely in this act of becoming mobile,
light, fast and omnivorous that con-
temporary art needs to redefine and
place itself within a fragment of time
and space to give voice to a reality that
is nearby, local and detailed.
Everywhere has its history and pace,
which is always interesting to use as a
reference. Thus the institution should
be a receptive and active place within
a context that is both local and global.
I think that the duty of an institution
should be that of contributing to the
development of art by creating a neces-
sity for art in the heart of its own com-
munity.
It is important that the museum be-
comes an educational place in which
we find many keys that enable us to
read our present. In the end, this is
about the quality of the program and
its capacity to introduce universal, in-
teresting relationships to its territory.
In this sense, African artist Georges
Adagbos exhibition was eye opening.
Since the very beginning of his career,
Adagbo has travelled all over the world he sees and thinks during his trips with
with his site-specific installations, visit- the litmus paper of his culture, to filter
ing institutions and museums, tramping what he has collected and selected. By
though cities and sacking the local mar- doing this, the problem of territory and
Exhibition view of
kets, collecting images and taking notes identity in Adagbos work is opened
Disegni dismessi (Deused
of the stories stimulated by all of these and enriched through dialogue. In the Drawings), Stefano Arienti,
things. Then he always returns to his Querini museum, Adagbo dissemi- Fondazione Querini
homeland, as though he has to test what nated objects found in the markets of Stampalia, Venice, 2008
88 Practice Chiara Bertola

Venice and Berlin (where he lived while His work was an invitation to r eassess
working on the project) together with our assumptions about the way in
African workswooden sculptures and which events are interconnected, to
small paintings on panel, modeled after open our minds in order to perceive
works in the Querini collectioncom- and create scenarios offering an alter-
missioned especially for the occasion native to the usual ones.
by local artists, which he placed in each What is amazing is the freedom with
room, making them converse with and which Adagbo looks at our culture.
react to the works already there. The He does it with a naturalness we no
stolen and unfrozen tales of the his- longer have, managing to break free
tories of culture and Western religious of established canons and interpreta-
iconography became, for Adagbo, ex- tions. In his work, it is Africa which is
traordinary material to be rewoven and reflected in Western culture, and Afri-
retold from a perspective that belongs can art, with its compositional means
to another part of the world. Adagbo of assemblage, its use of discarded
illustrated the connections between this material, its inventions and attention
vast range of objects with written com- to geometry and color, which looks at
ments, the only elements in the exhibi- itself, creating a mirror that is at once
tion produced by himself. ironic and serious, desecrating and
When I asked him to write an idea for sacred, in which to regard the images
the exhibition project after our first fixed by our cultural tradition. What
meeting in Venice in 2005, Adagbo Adagbo does is undoubtedly a process
sent me some of his writing in which of hybridization, having mixed and lit-
he talks about people who live separate erally crossbred different cultures; but
lives and who are looking for a contact: his work is hybrid in a more subversive
...neighbors, separated by a high wall, way, updated in relation to postcolonial
Exhibiton view of hear the noises made by each other, cultural themes because it challenges
La rencontre..! Venise-
but they only have a vague idea of how the pureness of the tradition, which
Florence..!, George
Adagbo, Fondazione the others live. In the end, one of them becomes a poetics of rewriting. In oth
Querini Stampalia, Venice, builds a ladder and climbs up to see er words, hybridization is the process
2008 who the others are and how they live. through which Western authority is
made to face itself and reflect some-
thing else, after having failed in the
attempt to translate the identity of the
other into a single category. Between
the two cultures there emerges a third
space in which interpretative forms
and categories are brought into being,
which go beyond the classical binary
oppositions of the dominated and dom-
inators, or Africa and Europe. Inside
this space it is possible to listen to our
stories, the stories of our tradition, told
by someone who has different tradi-
tions and sensibilities.
On the other hand, it is precisely the
culture of this artist which reminds us
that, as the African adages go, a story
is never finished as long as someone
tells it, just as a man is never dead un-
til someone stops saying his name.
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 89

Negotiating a New Space

Inside an Old One
We know that it is difficult to insert
something new into the institutional
space of the museum. Yet this space
needs to be negotiated, pushed in this
direction, ensuring that the site of
the institution also becomes a place
of exchange and appraisal where art
stimulates, reorganizes and refreshes
ones own ideas. What is necessary is
to bring the institution as much as pos-
sible towards a poetics of life.
This does not exclude that it can and
must conserve. After all, the idea of the
museum is a social construction and it
does not necessarily mean that it can-
not, for example, choose what to con-
serve and what to bring to light.
Thus, the aim is to review the concept
of conservation so that it coincides
with its opposite, the furthest possible
from the idea of closure, of immobility,
whilst nevertheless remaining within
the museum. Conserving a work can
mean exhibiting it in the best way pos-
sible to offer to the public a real experi-
ence rather than protecting it until the
work becomes, in a sense, invisible.
It is a question of abandoning the idea
of experiencing the institution-muse-
um as an untouchable and unliveable
place. Negotiating this cohabitation
between the old and the contemporary
does not mean carving a new space
inside the museum. The objective is to
create a new space starting out with
the old, transforming and translating
the rules that regulate a museum into
something more human and true.
Artists have always known how to do
this.
We have seen how important the con-
cept of negotiation is and how many
negotiations we continuously have to
activate: with the space, with others,
with time and with everyday life. I and entering our awareness. Making a
Exhibition view of
think that, primarily, a sort of negotia- space inside our heads and renewing
Lora X, Giulio Paolini,
tion with ourselves is necessary. We old thoughts, like refurbishing a room, Fondazione Querini
must first shift our thoughts so that means working in the gray zone sur- Stampalia, Venice, 2004
we do not stop things from circulating rounding our certainties. Photo Luca Saggioro
90 Variations Giovanni Iovane

NOTES

1See Friedrich Nietzsche,

(Trans. R. J. Hollingdale)
On the uses and disad-
vantages of history for

Present-Tense
life in Daniel Breazeale
(ed.) Untimely Meditations
(Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997),
94. See also Unfashionable

Dates
Observations (Stanford:
Stanford University Press,
1995). (Trans. Richard T.
Gray) Nietzsche writes of
the greatest power of the
present and retroactive
forces. Since he referred
not to documents but to
forces, Nietzsche thus
considered his meditations
untimely or unfashio-
nable.

2Foucault created the

Premise: The Retroactive thing that endured was a substantial
figure of the archeologist Power of the Present quantity of texts, reports and archival
genealogist who had a The retroactive power of the present documents reporting on the events of
special use for archival is a beautiful image offered to us by the funeral.
documentation and Friedrich Nietzsche, one that seems to A transformation of this centuries-
other mnemonic tools:
endow the present time with forces to long exhibition model was in more
The purpose of history,
guided by genealogy, discover the nature of the past.1 Michel recent times offered by Gerhard Rich-
is not to discover the Foucault referenced this image to elab- ters work in progress Atlas. In Rich-
roots of our identity orate a genealogy of history.2 ters case, the atlas exists and subsists
but to commit itself to We ought to reflect on the retroactive without any textual reference, render-
its dissipation. Michel
power of the archive, as a construction ing even more fascinatingand per-
Foucault, Nietzsche,
Genealogy, History in
that frames the greatest power of the haps even more criminalthe image
Language, Counter Memory present, or indeed on any attempt to elaborated by Nietzsche on the retroac-
(Ithaca: Cornell University historicize the present (understood as tive power of the present.
Press, 1977), 162. In other a corpus delicti, as concrete evidence),
words, the genealogist through a consideration of ceremonial Present-Tense Dates I
must always speak in the
images and procedures, since many Michelangelo dies in his house in Rome
present tense.
important exhibitions had their origin at 5 pm on the 18th of F
ebruary 1564.
in ceremonial acts. In this text, I will
analyze a specific ceremony: Michelan- His nephew Leonardo arrives in Rome
gelos funeral. three days later, when the body of the
In the history of modern Western art, divine artist had already been buried
exhibitionsand more precisely, exhi- in the cloister of the Holy Apostles of
bitions of works of artare marked by the Confraternit di San Giovanni De-
Michelangelos sumptuous Florentine collato. Instigated by Giorgio Vasari,
funeral, with all its symbolic and al- Leonardo purloins the body of Michel-
legoric apparatus. Nothing remains, angelo, hides it in a bale of cloth and
however, of the works and installa- takes it to Florence on the back of a
tions of that great, inaugural exhibi- mule. The corpse arrives in Florence
tion of Occidental art: they were quick- on March 11. Although almost a month
ly destroyed by negligence. The only has passed (and the chronicles of that
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 91

period narrate that it was a particularly angelo take place on July 14, 1564. 3For the funeral rites of
hot year), the body of the dead artist is To summarize: almost a month was Michelangelo, Cf. Andrea
Gareffi, La scrittura e la
still uncorrupted, maintaining a smell needed for the corpse of Michelangelo
festa (Bologna: Il Mulino,
of sanity, following the logic that states to be taken from Rome to Florence, and 1991); and Rudolf and
that the corpses of the saints, even long almost four months passed until the Margot Wittkower, The
after their deaths, dont stink. Committee of the Grand Rites, after Divine Michelangelo
On March 12, the body of Michelangelo fights, compromises, and the natural (London: Phaidon, 1964).

is deposed, during the evening, by the time taken by planning, managed to

artists of the Academy, observed by define a location for the funeral cere
torchlight by an immense mob at the mony to take place.
church of Santa Croce. Vasari then The main figures in this festivity
writes to Leonardo, advising that the were four big artists: Giorgio Vasari,
funeral rites take place the Sunday af- Agnolo Bronzino, Bartolomeo Am-
ter Easter. He explains, I think it will mannati and Benvenuto Cellini. The
be something that neither popes, em- last, however, refused the task, claim-
perors nor kings have ever had.3 ing to be ill when he discovered that, in Gerhard Richter,
Instead, the solemn rites of Michel the preparation of the celebrative ap- Atlas Sheet: 5, 1962
92 Variations Giovanni Iovane

4Benedetto Varchi, paratus, painting would be privileged the young artists would know Eternal
Orazione funebre, in over sculpture. He was replaced by the Life through bronze.
the appendix to Jacopo
modest Florentine sculptor Zanobi Las- Yet despite this promise, and follow-
Recupero, Michelangelo,
(Rome: De Luca Editore, tricati. ing that same admonition that time
1964), 297. Michelangelos rites generated letters, neither produces nor generates, all the
oratory studies, contro-prayers and ephemeral work created for the funeral
the erection of a giganticand man- rotted in a storage space. The fast cor-
neristfuneral apparatus. In fact, be- ruption of those pieces erased all the
tween the plinth, catafalque, footing traces of the great apparatus made for
and pedestal, all crowned by a Fame, the funeral of the divine Michelangelo.
the celebrative machine measured The only thing that remained was what
more than sixteen meters high. we nowadays call the documentation
The famous artists were not involved materials: texts, letters, poems, prayers,
in the production of the installation, chronicles, through which we apply our
which was done by their young assis- interpretative exercise around the work
tants, with the exception of the depic- and the exhibition space. This, accord-
tions of the deceased, painted by Vasari ing to Walter Benjamin in The Origin
and Allori. of German Tragic Drama, was a normal
On July 14, this quite unstable sculp- exercise carried out since the Baroque
ture was put in the center of the main (but, as we saw, in Florence they were
wing of the Basilica of San Lorenzo. quite precocious) until the early decades
More than a century before, Filippo of the twentieth century, through that
Brunelleschi worked in San Lorenzo, steady process of the allegory.
giving the church his famous math-
ematic module. This wonderful archi- Present-Tense Dates II
tectonic effect created by Brunelleschi Gerhard Richters Atlas starts in 1962.
creates the impression of a scanned In 1972, when it already featured 315
space, made out of a series of regular elements, it was exhibited for the first
cubes in space. Linearity, order, repeti- time at the Museum voor Hedendaagse
tion, tranquillity and white cubes. Kunst, Utrecht, under the title Atlas
For the funerary party, the church was van de fotos en schetsen. The catalogue
decorated (we could say that the ex- that was produced became the first
hibition space was transformed) with book of the Atlas.
black garlands that adorned the lateral The Atlas is composed of some 4,000
chapels; the heraldic symbol of Michel- photographs and reproductions paral-
angelo with its three crowns, and, most leling the subjects of Richters paint-
importantly, with the big apparatus in ings. Since the beginning, Richter
which the allegorical representations displayed his photographs on white
of Death and Eternity chased each matting with a standard measure
other. (50x65 cm, 50x70 cm or 50x35cm) so
There is no doubt that this allegory was that he could always maintain their or-
a temporary one, in the sense of a pre- der. The orthogonal display of the pho-
set tense, or, as the humanist Benedetto tographs on the mats corresponds to
Varchi (Florence, 15031563), speak- the display of the sheets in the exhibi-
ing high above from Donatellos pulpit, tion space; therefore, the desired vision
once said, Time produces and gener- is that of an ordered sequence. In 1973,
ates nothing, therefore it does not con- Atlas was exhibited at the Kunstver-
sume nor does it corrupt anything.4 ein of Bremerhaven. New sheets were
The Gran Duke Cosimo I (de Medici) incorporated, both for the 1974 exhibi-
promised that the plasters and the tion at the Heiner Friedrich Gallery in
sculptures made out of waste paper by Munich, and in 1976 for the Museum
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 93

Haus Lange show in Krefeld. For these In 1996, the Lenbachhaus bought At- 5Cf. Helmut Friedel,
exhibitions, the sheets were framed in las. In 1997, Oktagon Verlag published Gerhard Richter, Atlas,
a uniform way within a small wooden an edition of Atlas curated by Helmut Photographs, Collages
and Sketches, 19622006
frame, and displayed as to create walls Friedel and Ulrich Wilmes, a beauti-
in Gerhard Richter, Atlas
of images.5 ful book, measuring 33x23 cm, with a (Cologne: Verlag der
Atlas already had 472 sheets when it green cover and with the title printed Buchhandlung Walter
was presented in 1989 at the Stdtische in silver, containing exact references Knig, 2006).

Galerie of the Lenbachhaus in Munich to the anterior publications and to the

and at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne history of the exhibitions. In 1997, Atlas
in 1990. The first partial exhibitions was presented at Documenta X, Kassel,
of Atlas were held in 1993 at the Muse curated by Catherine David, with all its
dArt Moderne de la Ville de Paris and 633 sheets. In 1998, for occasion of the
then at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn. presentation in Munich at the Lenbach- Installation view of Atlas,
1962-2006, by Gerhard
For these exhibitions, Richter displayed haus, Richter revised the order and the
Richter at Stdtische
the sheets in a chronological order. In blocs of the Atlas (the sheets were not Galerie in Lenbachhaus
19951996, 583 sheets were exhibited at always exhibited according to a linear und Kunstbau Mnchen,
the Dia Center for the Arts, New York. and progressive selection). The exhibi- Munich, 2006
94 Variations Giovanni Iovane

6Cf. Riccardo Venturi, tions of the following years followed In the Basilica of San Lorenzo bears no
Black paintings, Eclissi this definitive order, as seen in the dis- trace of the grand exhibition of 1564
sul modernismo (Milan:
plays of the exhibitions of 2005, at the held for the eternal memory of Miche-
Mondadori Electa, 2008).
Kunstsammlung NRW in Dsseldorf langelo (even his tomb, made in 1570
and at the Lenbachhaus in Munich, in by Giorgio Vasari, is located elsewhere,
which Atlas was presented with the last in the Basilica of Santa Croce)except
additions, War Cut, for a total of 733 for those huge and anguishing black
sheets. draperies used in that occasion and in
Atlas is a huge archive and a wide the subsequent funerals and celebra-
story of exhibitions. In contrast to tions. One thinks of Alfred Barr, the
the canonical allegoric processes that famous first director of the New York
marked exhibitions until modernism, MoMA and champion of the white cu-
Atlas displays only denotative pro- be, who in the last years of his life had
cesses. The sheets of Atlas, with their such tired eyes that he painted the wal-
photographs, sketches and collages, ls of his bedroom black.6
compose a wide corpus of documents Black draperies on black walls (or, in
that create space without occupying it a dandy version, dark glasses) seem to
(differently from Warburgs allegori- compose a black stripe that surrounds
cal Atlas and his London library). Since the white space, the quiet, serene,
the beginning, in fact, Richter thought mathematical and neutral white cube
of arranging a temporary wall of im- that therefore has a sign of mourning
ages rather than occupying or pos- around it.
sessing a given space. Probably, the primal and primordial
Each place in which Atlas is presented destiny of any meeting in a white cube
seems to be completely superfluous. is that of leaving no traces, of vani-
Moreover, the act of exhibiting, wheth- shing or acquiring meaning only in the
er entirely or partially, seems to be retelling or the in memoriam.
arbitrary, given that the specific exhi- The Renaissance writer Benedetto
bition space appears to be inessential to Varchi was right when he claimed that
the project. The character of meeting eternity neutralizes time and writing.
becomes in this case essential but also It was also Varchi who concluded his
radically different from the notion of famous funeral oration with the evoca-
the event. tion of silence.
Much more useful and manageable Alfred Barr once privately wrote to Ad
favoring touch over sightare the Reinhardt about his Black Paintings,
artists books (such as the last Atlas, The silence of your paintings seems to
published in 2006) and website (www. be more effective amongst chaos than
gerhard-richter.com), in which the if the canvas had been hung in a speci-
sheets of Atlas are perfectly reprodu fic room. In order to avoid this sense
ced alongside the works by the artist of chaos, not to mention of mourning,
that were inspired by this archive of maybe it is necessary that Atlas is exhi-
images. bitedfrom time to time, and in suc-
The book and the website are reasoned, cessive editionsonly inside a book.
ordered according to mathematical All the better if that book is an atlas.
models. With a little imagination, we
can see in three dimensions the exact
plan of the blocks of the 733 sheets of
Atlas extending through a gallery con-
structed out of perfect cubes.
A bizarre story (or if you like, a subtle
allegory) concerns these white cubes.
Reflections 95

After Postmodernism
modernism was not a false move. If the trailer
of Mad Men (the television series that depicts the

Comes Modernism
world of publicity in the 1950s) shows us a man
in free fall, the MACBA tries to find in artists
works options to attenuate the fall.
Modernologies: Contemporary Artists
Researching Modernity and Modernism Seeking possibilities of survival that allow for
Curated by Sabine Breitwieser a new relation with the local, the global and the
Museu dArt Contemporani de Barcelona cultural context and, at the same time, recon-
MACBA sidering the meaning of the modern movement,
23 September 2009 17 January 2010 the exhibition presented what remains of this
movement. It interrogated the role of aesthetics
By A*DESK in the definition of content and how changing

MACBA researches the heritage of modernity. times permit us to review the modern move-
In front of the vortex of economic globalization ment today. Under its former director Manuel
(forget about culture; its within economy where Borja-Villel, the MACBA began pursuing a
it seems difficult to find alternatives to super- project of re-writing history through its exhibi-
capitalism right now), the lack of new utopias tions. Modernologies continues this pursuit, but
and the transference of the existing ones to small gets closer to a certain emotionality. The role of
eutopias, the exhibition Modernologies, curated the institution in the fixation of contents within
by Sabine Breitwieser, questioned whether post- a historical position and the closure of utopist
96 Reflections

II

~ I

~ ~I
lh

III
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 97

programs is well-known. If we add to that the

creation of the exhibition as academic research,
we find that the level of emotionality offered to
the visitor suffers from a context (the exhibition
format within an institution) that, by definition,
often denies the possibility of intimate contact.
Modernologies was something different from
the archive-exhibitions presented before at
MACBA, with less black-and-white documenta-
tion and more artworks than information about
artworks.

Many forums and conferences on philosophy

and contemporary art have advised that we
IV
need to revise modernity. Their consensus is
that modernity has not ended, and thus we need
to consider that it was defined upon an unfinis Monument (1960) becomes a key work to under-
hed project. In the meantime, artists have kept standing that the point of the exhibition is not
their shoulders to the wheel, spurred on by the to recover a nave approach to reality. Matta-
need to arrive at a new big issue, the next big Clarks analysis of the breaks of architecture and
hit, the next fancy idea for contemporary art urbanism are a solid base to speculate upon the
practitionersthe new hit in a context (that moral and ethical limits of the construction of
of art) that is always finding new spaces for dis- the modern project. The definition of space and
cussion, especially when the new themes are architecture, and the critical view of the display,
ratified by some philosophical armor. occupied a good part of the exhibition.

The adaptation of the issuein this case, mod- The display became one axis of the exhibition.
ernism todayto the exhibition format posed In fact, it was in this same museum that Munta-
an important challenge. The attempt to define das presented his big work about the power of
the indefinable, to present all the options is, in a display, emptying different objects of commu-
certain way, a modern way of working that con- nication of their content. The last decades have
fronts, not postmodernity, but rather globaliza- given us several discussions about display (and
tion, hyper-communication and speed. Trying its power), observable in both publications and
to give all the answers and balance everything exhibitions. However artists like Liam Gillick,
in this exhibition makes one feel inadequate. Gerard Byrne or Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster,
The same prevailing speed implied that visitors who could be perfectly read in modernist terms,
would inevitably miss a large part of the con- were not among those selected by Breitwieser.
tents of the more than one hundred works by Instead, Modernologies presented works by
over thirty artists; there was simply no time to artists including Marion von Osten, Armando
see the exhibition in a proper way. The title of Andrade Tudela, Falke Pisano and Domnec, to
the exhibition already implies an extensive col- name just a few.
lection of works. However the predominance of
a European perspective in the exhibition made Marion von Osten, for example, focuses her
such an exercise of worldwide proportions seem work In the Desert of Modernity, Colonial Plan-
impossible or messianic. ning and After (2009) on the crisis of moder-
nity in the period of decolonization with a case
Modernologies does not go back to the h istorical study: the appearance and subsequent failure
avant-gardes, but references some historical of French rationalist architectonic models in
gazes that were already critical in their own mo- North African countries during the 1950s.
ment, like in the figures of Gustav Metzger and These models failed because, despite their in-
Gordon Matta-Clark. Metzgers Auto-Destructive tent of improving living conditions, those who
98 Reflections

designed them failed to take into account the other works in the exhibition, in which all the
lifestyles, uses and habits of the people who snippets and notes surrounding them only dis-
would inhabit them. oriented the viewer.

Other artists, like Runa Islam, questioned mo- The exhibition Modernologies presents itself
dernity not from an academic knowledge of it as research, a discussion and a debate around
but from a chance discovery. When invited to a specific theme. Instead, it leads us to a prob-
do an exhibition at the Austrian Pavilion of the lem that goes beyond the specific case of Mod-
Universal Exhibition of Brussels in 2008, she ernologies: the gap between the complexity of
decided to literally write the sentence Empty an exhibition thesis and the well-articulated
the pond to get the fish through the motions of script, wisely organized sections and coherent
her camera; the phrase then became the title of selection of works in the exhibition configura-
the work. Much more self-conscious is Andrea tion itself. In the moment when the exhibition
Frasers approximation of Eisensteins failed materializes in the museum space, this gap be-
film in Mexico, Viva la Revolucin, from which tween what to say and how to say it, these well-
he was fired by his American producer, who ordered, coherent elements seem to deactivate
produced his own edit of Eisensteins footage. In and obscure the perception of the works.
Soldadera (19982001), Fraser remakes the end
of Eisensteins film, incarnating a revolutionary Perhaps one of the most confusing aspects of
countrywoman who failed in her attempt. She Modernologies is the intention that all the artists
also impersonates a spectator who dislikes the and works exhibited set out from the idea of an-
film, and who obviously is Frances Flynn Paine, alyzing what happened with modernity, using
the art critic who stated that organizing an ex- a vocabulary that belonged to that same moder-
hibition of Diego Rivera at the MoMA was the nity, without opening the selection to other pos-
best way to assure that he, together with other sibilities and readings, to other points of view.
revolutionary artists, would start worrying Either way, the exhibition offered an impor-
about the price of their works, thus definitively tant incentive to the local passer-by: to discover
forgetting their ideals and plans to change the modernityneither its revision nor its crisis,
world. In the work, Fraser includes a copy of but rather its qualities and characteristics. After
a 1931 letter from Frances Paine to Mrs. Rock- all, Spain is a country that had no modernity or,
efeller saying, Im sure that most Mexican art- more precisely, it is a country in which its mod-
ists would cease to be Reds if we could get them ern project was brutally suspended for forty
artistic recognition. years. A country in which the flea markets are
empty of wasted functionalist furniture but
Mathias Poledna presents a new piece with the crammed with sturdy Spanish fittings. How do
records of the Folkway Label (a kind of mod- you challenge something you ignore? How can
ernist/totalitarian sound library culled from you discover the keys to an exhibition that ques-
cultures from all over the world), demonstrat- tions and revises what you did not have?
ing an archival impulse with colonial echoes.
Polednas work became another key element to
analyze the role of culture and the desire of the ILLUSTRATIONS
modern project to produce a universal basis for I Gordon Matta-Clark, Window Blow-Out, 1976,
Generali Foundation Collection, Vienna The
culture (a basis, of course, that is white, male
Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark
and eurocentric). It also became one of the best IV Henrik Olesen, from series How do I make myself
elements to define the tone of the exhibition: a body?, 2008
Polednas work is about taking notes, position-
ing a critique that does not need to be fully evi- Exhibition views of Modernologies with works by
II Katja Eydel
dent, creating an axis of interpretation that goes
III Paulina Olowska, IRWIN
beyond what is exhibited. Although these tech- V Armando Audrale Tudele/Alice Ceischer/
niques are very effective in Polednas work, we Andreas Sietman
were surprised by the difficulty of approaching VI ?
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 99

VI
100 Reflections

Starring Abramovi,
Playing Herself
Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present
Organized by Klaus Biesenbach
Museum of Modern Art, New York
March 14 May 31, 2010

By Elena Sorokina

Reading the press releases of exhibitions today,

one is struck by a certain shift of language: the
PR jargon seems to be quite contaminated by
theatrical vocabulary. Instead of investigating
or reflecting on something, exhibitions today
stage or orchestrate several acts while be-
I
ing installed in sets or mise-en-scnes, where
curtains replace partition walls.The exhibitions
employing this vogue terminology sometimes
do try to enact issues in a more or less theatrical
fashion, but very often this vocabulary doesnt
translate into any kind of theatricality in the
presentation of works.Todays proliferation of
live art in exhibitions has been duly acknow
ledged in regard to production, but what hap-
pens to the expositional logic when live art is
integrated into the exhibition spaces?

The logic of display and the terms and conditions

of including live art in exhibitions are shifting,
and the diverse ways of intertwining the spatial
and the temporal are being tested. Sometimes the
live-art additions simply take on a festival model,
with a schedule of events taking place consecu-
tively. Other models combine some installation
work on displaywhich may or may not stand
for art, contain art or be artand live events.
But the main field of experimentation is the hy-
brid model, meaning the intertwining of live
elements and components with the exhibitions
II
own temporality and experience of time. In such
hybrid cases, the objects in space either stand for
themselves, sometimes referring to some spirit of archival texts, live performances by herself and
performance, or need to be activated by perfor- re-performances, as Abramovi calls them, by
mances. In this context, Marina Abramovis ret- the young interpreters she trained, all co-exist-
rospective at the MoMA in New York, The Artist ing in the space of the museum exhibition.
Is Present, practically catalogued the possibilities
for performances display and enactment, with Life was included, or displayed, on the MoMAs
photo and video documentation, installations, 6th floor through the motionless bodies of per-
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 101

III

the MoMAs atriumbut who is exhibited? And

what kind of presence does the entire show
generate? In the first place, it insists on a per-
manent presence. In addition to the performers,
who made five live works available for contem-
plation non-stop during the museums opening
hours, Abramovi performed her piece The Art-
ist Is Present (2010)every day, during museum
hours, for the run of her showher longest per-
formance to date. The spectators were invited to
sit across from the artist and look into her eyes,
thus acknowledging her and their own pres-
IV
ence. Some stayed just for a couple of minutes;
others remained for long hours.
formers placed alongside videos and objects.
The five live works, ephemeral and temporary by The permanent presence of the human body
initial conception, occupied the space in a per- in the exhibition space has a number of histo
manent manner, installation-like. The fact that rical precedents, one of them performed by
other people were re-performing Abramovis Abramovi herself. InThe House with the Ocean
work makes the discussions turn around the View (20022003), she lived in the Sean Kelley
degree of authenticity of these performances Gallery for twelve days on permanent display.
and their art-historical correctness. Moreover, This piece is included in the MoMA retrospec-
however, we could also ask what model of an tive, but only as an installation, while Abramovi
exhibition is created by this specific display. Of herself is permanently present in her new
course, the artist is presentMarina Abramovi piece. Among younger artists, the most obvious
herself sat through an epic endurance piece in example of permanent presence would be Tino
102 Reflections

Sehgal, whose pieces roll continuously during immobility of the performer. Of all perfor-
the opening times of his shows. Different in mances made by Abramovi during the years
nature and structure from Abramovis work, of her career, only those entailing immobility
Sehgals pieces guarantee the permanent pres- were re-performed at the MoMA. They were all
ence without any pain, or extreme endurance, in- staticquite literally motionless and speech-
volved: his interpreters work in shifts and there less. This was an obvious choice the museum
is no specific content related to pain or endur- and the artist made to facilitate the permanence
anceat least not yet articulated by Sehgal. We and simultaneity of several re-performances in
could say that the retrospective of Abramovi at the show: the immobility of interpreters makes
the MoMA used the idea of permanent presence the space between the re-performing bodies and
la Sehgal, with performers working in shifts the public clearly defined, excluding any pos-
to guarantee the continuous run of the live piec- sibilities of accidental interactions. In addition,
es.The specific subjective temporality related to all re-performances happenedor were put on
enduranceone of the constitutive elements of displayin a specific exhibition architecture: a
the five live pieces re-performed in the show cabin or display case, a structure on the wall or
evidently got lost, replaced by endurance on a wall shelf, on which the bodies of interpreters
schedule and generating a potentially endless were posed. Imponderabilia (19772010)two
loop of performances. nude performers facing each other in a door-
way, obliging viewers to squeeze between them
The main principle of the organization of this to pass throughunderwent perhaps the most
permanent presence was, notably, the complete notable modifications caused by display. The
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 103

interpreters was one of a performing subject or

an animated object. A certain playful confusion
was (perhaps purposefully) created between
what was live and what was not: walking out of
the relatively dark space where Nude with Skel-
eton was displayed, one was immediately struck
by Luminosity (19972010) in bright lighta
nude young woman, her arms outstretched, sit-
ting on a bicycle seat mounted high on the wall.
Casting deep shadows on the wall in front of
which the performer appeared to be floating,
the illusion of a suspended sculpture was very
strong, even if it lasted for just a second.
But what did this rather lifeless presence of
life add to the MoMA retrospective? Strangely
enough, this specific mise-en-scne of life in
a museum didnt bring together multiple tem-
poralities; rather, it firmly inscribed life into
a traditional regime of contemplation (with two
participatory exceptions: Imponderabilia (1977
2010) and The Artist Is Present (2010)). In spatial
terms, the retrospective pursued a classical for-
mula: an immobile art and a moving spectator,
which could be seen as reproducing the situation
of a video installation. The multiple Abramovi
interpreters present for the entire duration of
the exhibition were working in shifts, as if on
a loop.As a result, spectators faced the same
choice as if they were watching videos: to go af-
ter a glimpse or to continue watching. For some
bodies were safely inscribed into the exhibition viewers not familiar with Abramovis perfor-
architecture between two partition walls in the mances, it was not clear what was going to hap-
back of the first space,building a passage be- pen next and whether the living sculptures
tween two different spaces of the show. Unlike in would suddenly start moving or doing some-
the original performance, in which the fleshy thing. A certain hesitation occurred: is the show
doorway blocked the museums main entrance, some kind of display for a possible action of the
MoMAs Imponderabilia presented just an addi- bodies, or are these bodies part of a tableau vi-
tional alternative passage. The spectators choice vant? Trying to negotiate between performance
was therefore not the original who to face when in its various manifestations and the models of
passing but actually to pass or not to pass. its display, the retrospective inevitably ends up
in a certain regime of theatricality, creating a
All of the re-performed pieces were lit like ex- mise-en-scne in which the bodiesof perform-
hibition objects and the light was adapted to the ers seriously contributed to the dramatization
surrounding space: spotlights on the bodies in a of display. Space as praxis for performance
dim video-saturated environment, such as Nude artas defined in the seminal text by RoseLee
with Skeleton (20022010), or high-contrast Goldbergbecomes here the spatial mise-en-
light inside the cabin-like structure for Relation scne of performing bodies, deliberately staged.
in Time (19772010) and Point of Contact (1980).
This display inside of the cabin-like structures Lately, since her Seven Easy Pieces at the
objectified the performances on view, and we Guggenheim in 2005, it has been clear that
can rightfully doubt whether the actual role of Abramovioutspokenly anti-theatrical at the
104 Reflections

beginning of her careertheatricalizes perfor- epic endurance piece The Artist Is Present was
mances new embodiments, but to what degree? played in MoMAs atrium, where Abramovi,
When Chris Burden refused to let Abramovi the only art in the cathedral-like verticality of
re-perform his piece as part of Seven Easy Piec- the huge space, sat surrounded by an elaborate
es, in which Abramovi reenacted five perfor- light-rig and encircled by a line of spectators
mances by her peers dating from the 1960s and (among which Sharon Stone and Isabelle Huppert
1970s, he made circulate the following statement made appearance), waiting for their moment of
written by Tom Marioni: The performance art presence. Wearing diva gowns, simultaneously
of the early 1970s was concrete. We made one- reminiscent of clerical garb, Abramovis perfor-
time sculpture actions. If Mr. Burdens work mance evoked in the critics and commentators
were recreated by another artist, it would be of her show the metaphors of self-enshrinement,
turned into theater, one artist playing the role alluding to a saint and a star at once. It was
of another. Although degrees of theatricality
could be detected in re-performances at the Mo- VI
MA, we cant say that the youth, who werees-
pecially trained by the artist to re-perform her
works, played Abramovi. Rather, lacking
Abramovis experience and personal history,
which provided a psychological and historical
sense to her pieces, what these young people
performed was a repertoire of endurance-me-
diation-concentration for the sake of being on
view, exposed and immobile. The spontaneity,
immediacy and interaction, a specific and fleet-
ing moment in time, a certain non-repeatable
urgency and sense of primary experienceall
that was gone, but what remained?
Trying to negotiate multiple temporalities, the
retrospective gaze of the MoMA exhibition
created a present through re-performing the
pastan epic, meticulously constructed pres-
ent. Under Abramovis attentive eye, the show
kept this present in full control: no improvisa-
tion or uncertainty was allowed and the specific
temporality of performance was given a solid,
museum-likepermanence. If we assume that the
present moment stands for the immediacy of
the performance, the retrospective present of
the show, which insisted so much on the idea of
permanence, dramatized rather than simply con-
served history. Solidifying the ephemeraland
theatricalizing the modes of display, the show
resurrected the performances into a second life
in art history. According to Abramovis own
statements, the re-performances were made for
the sake of saving them for history, and the show
clearly demonstrated that theatricalized display
has become her strategy for the historicization
of performance. Theatricality of display in the
exhibition had yet another aspect: the artists
own presence as a splendid mise-en-scne. Her
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 105

Abramovis theatrical and spectacular official III Marina Abramovi and Ulay, Relation in Time.
entrance into history and, quite literally, her Originally performed at 1977 for 17 hours at
Studio G7, Bologna
model of the historicization of the present.
IV Marina Abramovi and Ulay, Breathing in/
Breathing out. First performed in 1977 for 19
minutes at the Student Cultural Center, Belgrade
V Marina Abramovi, The House with the Ocean
ILLUSTRATIONS View. Performed in 2002 for 12 days at Sean Kelly
I Marina Abramovi and Ulay, Point of Contact. Gallery, New York. Photo Attilio Maranzano
Originally performed in 1980 for one hour at De VI Installation view of Marina Abramovis
Appel, Amsterdam performance The Artist Is Present at The Museum
II Marina Abramovi and Ulay, Rest Energy. of Modern Art, 2010. Photo Scott Rudd
Performed in August 1980 for four minutes at
ROSC80, National Gallery of Ireland
106 Reflections

Re-Imagining October
Re-Imagining October
Curated by Mark Nash and Isaac Julien
Calvert22, London
October 1 December 13, 2009

By Zeigam Azizov

With the proliferation of cinematic means in

the arts, the articulation of the meaning of art-
works has also received a new form. Because
these cinematic means create, as Deleuze writes,
the plane of the past-present-future instead
of the division between the past, present and fu- document the vital questions of our time. What
ture, the concept of history is back on the scene happened to the former Soviet Union after the
again after its long exclusion by modernism.1 perestroika is seen through the work of artists
The Deleuzian plane of immanence is helpful influenced by Sergei Eisensteins famous film
for some artists and curators to conceptualize Imagining October. Alongside the films and vid-
history as relevant to contemporary art produc- eos projected on the walls of Calvert22, Nash
tion, thus making this notion crucial for twenty- and Julien printed texts describing the past,
first-century art. The exhibition Re-Imagining present and future of the subject of the exhibi-
October reflects this phenomenon. In this short tion: the former Soviet Union. According to the
text, I will consider this exhibition from my own press release, the exhibition originates from
perspective as one of its participating artists. two very distinct starting points: firstly, Derek
Jarmans film, Imagining October, a work that
Curated by Mark Nash and Isaac Julien, the ex- both evokes the homophobic world of the Soviet
hibition asked how looking back to history can military while alluding to the homosexuality
help one understand the present and find pos- of the groundbreaking Russian filmmaker Ser-
sibilities for understanding future. The cura- gei Eisenstein, after whose seminal 1927 work
tors also see this as a way to consider the posi- October Jarmans film is named; and secondly
tion of an artist as a moderator of history. The Abderrahmane Sissakos 1993 Octobre, a film
catalogue essay written by Mark Nash refers to that explores the social context surrounding an
Progressive Nostalgia, an exhibition curated by inter-racial relationship between and African
Viktor Misiano in 2008, which set the task of student and his Russian girlfriend. The film em-
questioning the position of art workers through phasizes how the characters have become alien-
the reading of recent history. Progressive Nos- ated in and by their environment. These two
talgia stressed that this position is a reflection films served as a point of departure to reflect on
of the present as a remnant of the past; it is not work that explores social, political and creative
nostalgia for the past that was, but the one aspects of the legacy of the Soviet Union.
what could have beenin other words nostalgia
for the future.2 Likewise, the curators of Re- This topic embraced a huge spectrum of possi-
Imagining October state that they are looking bilities, visible in the diverse uses of the moving
forward to the developing market of the pres- image in this exhibition. This variety included
ent while looking backward to explore the uto- performance documentation (Christina Nor-
pian socialist ideologies of the past.3 man), the use of the traditional narrative (Al-
magul Menlibaeva) and ideological reflections
In order to problematize these questions, the (Dimitriy Gutov), among others. I contributed to
curators invited a number of artists who use the show with the video installation Back in the
moving images in their practice in order to USSR, which narrates the current refugee crisis
Manifesta Journal 9 2010 107

and the state of abandoned Soviet oil fields in Of course, the use of video and film challenges
Baku. Events taking place since the mid-1980s modernisms escape from history by bringing
such as perestroika, social upheavals with re- experience back to the Deleuzian plane of im-
lation to sex, gender and race, and migrations manence mentioned in the introduction to this
from the East to the West, alongside with the textan experience of time in which the past,
revival of past cultures of the Soviet Union, are present and future coexist. In a similar way,
brought into question in this exhibition. This Re-Imagining October provides the possibility
project both documents and creates a prospect for negotiating different fragments of history,
for understanding events through the prism of not only in terms of what happened, but also
the problematic space opened up almost a cen- what might have happened but never did. It ac-
tury ago by Sergei Eisenstein. complishes this because the language of moving
images makes events and people present in the
The exhibition is the curators effort to show here and now. This language and by extension,
the experience of the events of the past, pres- the exhibition that uses it, empower time to tell
ent and future by re-imagining history through the truth of history by documenting and ar-
cinematic means. Although the use of film and chiving the present and making subjects live
text for the exhibition formally reflects the me- not for history but in history.
dium of archiving, which is usually associated
with the past, the exhibition posed this urgent
question: How does the present manifest itself
in historical experience? Or how is historical
experience made visible in the present?

These themes, related to the concrete historical

and geographical area of the former Soviet re-
publics as part and parcel of heterogeneous glob-
al culture, challenge determinations and create
great confusion. Imagination is a tool for articu-
lating the form of political and cultural shifts, NOTES
I
and therefore for defining what is possible in the
1Gilles Deleuze initially wrote about this in relation
realm of image production. Adopted from Derek
to Bergson, but later applied this understanding of
Jarmans film Imagining October, the title of the time and cinema to his Cinema books. See: Gilles
exhibition Re-Imagining October manifests the Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (Minneapolis:
principle that, once documented in the cinematic University of Minnesota Press, 1992) and Cinema 2: The
form, events and stories can be re-imagined in Time-Image (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1995).
different times depending on the context. In fact,
the reading of Eisensteins film by Derek Jarman 2Viktor Misiano, Nostalgia for the Future in
literally makes present what has gone missing Progressive Nostalgia: Contemporary Art of the Former
from the experience of filmmaking in the early USSR (Moscow: World Art Magazine, 2008), 13.
twentieth century. In the same way, Re-Imagining
October is a fabulation, to borrow the words of 3Mark Nash, Re-Imagining October in Re-Imagining
October, exh. cat. (London: Calvert22, 2009), 17.
Deleuze again, bringing the missing dimension
of history into the experience of the present.4 It 4Gilles Deleuze, (transl. Daniel W. Smith and Michel
is an example of curatorial work that does not A.Greco) Essays Critical and Clinical, (London: Verso,
consider art and history as separate entities, but 1997), 125.
rather presents history as it is registered by an
artist. From this perspective, art is not a practice
ILLUSTRATION
of illustrating already formulated accounts of
the historical moment. History and practice are Exhibition view of Re-Imagining October
inscribed and embedded in each other as a part Natalia Nosova, Baku, 2004
of the same process. Photo Stephen White
Save
108 Reflections

the new
date Press and Professional Preview
Murcia and Cartagena
78 October, 2010
Official, Public Opening
9 October, 2010

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The European Biennial of Contemporary Art

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