SECTION 1

EXPANDED FIELDS
SELECTED NODES IN A NETWORK OF
THOUGHTS ON CURATING
Selected by Liam Gillick
SELECTED NODES IN A NETWORK OF THOUGHTS ON CURATING
first appeared in Words of Wisdom: A Curator's Vade Mecum
on Contemporary Aft, edited by Carin Kuoni and published by
lndependent Curators lnternational in 2001 .
27. SELECTED NODES IN A NETWORK OF THOUGHTS ON CURATING
SELECTED NODES IN A NETWORK OF THOUGHTS ON CURATING
While driving my car today I was reminded of how much snow can
transform one's experience of the landscape. What was totally
black suddenly and literally becomes light, and the mystical sounds
of the forest are replaced by silence-like having a fur cap drawn
over one's ears and tied tightly under the chin. The familiar road
becomes strange, slippery as glass, taking on new contours. I make
a great effort to avoid the huge snowdrifts and stay on the road.
Our electric company is taken by surprise when a power outage
deprives thousands of households of electricity in the winter cold and
darkness. Truck drivers, however, resolutely attach ploughs to their
vehicles and clear even small roads more quickly and thoroughly than
I remember from before.
For me, art continues to be, in competition with other phenomena
and means of understanding, the most complex and challenging
form for processing the experience of being human in all its facets.
Art is very suitable for testing ideas and thoughts, for questioning
and challenging the condition of things, but also for galvanizing
words, for moving to act. Art can be a testing ground, a platform for
investigations in which the concrete and the abstract, the specific and
the general, can share the same space at the same time. At worst,
art carries an apparatus as large and clumsy as that of a feature film
or amusement park; at best, it travels with the light luggage of an
ornithologist or a hitchhiker.
How can one combine skepticism with enthusiasm? Multiplicity with
precision? Affirmation with criticism? How does one focus on-and
respect-a pad and the whole at the same time? These are questions
that often crop up in my work as curator. The lust to discover, to
explore and question, is paramount, as is seeing each project as a
discursive situation. Much of my inspiration and energy comes directly
from the artwork and the artists with whom I spend a lot of time. I am
keen to be an enabler, to create the best possible circumstances for
the aftists (in this context, artists' fees are something of a question
of honor). I prefer to take the art itself as my point of departure for
speculation and reasoning, rather than start at the other end with
theory or politics, or with an academic approach that seeks the
smallest common denominator. ln other words, I prefer going from the
29. SELECTED NODES IN A NETWORK OF THOUGHTS ON CURATING
inside out than from the outside in; projecting to reducing; digesting to
illustrating; osmosis to being a parasite.
For me, the cardinal professional tool is precision. Just as the person
who curates an exhibition of classical painting must be attentive to
the nuances in the colors of the walls, the lighting, the exact distance
between the works, so must I be vigilant about the place, time, length,
and form when working with each individual project, large or small.
Each situation must be carefully analyzed and evaluated. Does it call
for a traditional exhibition or some other form of presentation? This
also involves giving a thought or idea, a piece of work or an artist,
time-time to allow something to mature, to resist a raw,
,,disposable,'
consumer mentality. Art can exist in many different ways, but the
habitual, familiar, and routine is often stronger than new ideas per se. I
want to be sensitive to an artwork's own logic: if it doesn't fit the white
cube or an institutional frame, it should not be forced to. When art
ventures out to explore the surrounding realities, we who work with it
must follow. Both art and its curator would benefit if the latter would
follow the artist's lead a little more often.
To work with different kinds of art projects is to create contexts in
relation to and in combination with other existing contexts. ln order
to avoid placing too much emphasis on a physical location and a
certain intellectual discourse, I try to be more context-sensitive than
site-specific. This is less about an anxious adaptation of postmodern
architecture to its surroundings, and more about a sensitivity to
situations and a challenge to the status quo-being context-sensitive
with a twist. This can mean initiating a retrospective exhibition of a
neglected middle-aged artist; a soft thematic suruey of Nordic art
in the 1990s with a historical reference to its predecessors in the
1960s and 70s and commissioned by a foreign museum; a series of
commissions for which the museum that employs me functions as a
production site, distribution channel, and discussion forum; or it can
mean taking the temperature of contemporary aft by investigating,
in collaboration with the artists, its relationship to architecture and
design. This can also entail developing other forms for discussions,
such as think tanks; or it can involve establishing other forms for the
mediation of aft altogethe such as a whole new structure with which
to link together-perhaps even on a small scale-an art, a culture, and
a public that seldom encounter each other.
I tend to think of my approach to curating along similar lines to those
of the artists I am interested in, many of whom work with models
and projects, parallel situations and scenarios. lt is not a question of
showing what has already been stated, either on the level of content
or form, but about testing something that is at least partly new, about
working towards outcomes that are not clear before they are realized.
A lot of the art that interests me possesses a high density- it can
appear simple, even banal at first glance, but it grows exponentially
when one devotes time and attention to it. lt is slow burning and
incandescent rather than explosive, and it often grows on you. Both
for the aft I work with and for me personally, it is key to relate to
everyday experience and to utilize art's ability to communicate and
create discursive situations. Critique here is like salt, dissolving into
whatever it is applied to, also giving a distinct taste. Don't
just
choose
randomly from the readymade dishes on offer-recipes must be
reformulated for every occasion.
The state and municipal art institutions are public spaces whose
impodance is not diminishing. ln a not so distant future, when
television and the lnternet are no longer able to attract people in
the same way as today, art institutions will be among the few public
places with something to offer-entertainment and diversion, of
course, but also reflection and questioning. At the same time, many
of these institutions have arrived at an impasse, where they face
an identity crisis. To get out of this situation, I agree with the social
theorist, activist, and Harvard law professor Roberto Mangabeira
Unger, who proposes a kind of practical testing-an institutional
experimentalism in which using one's imagination is central. This also
means holding one's own against corporate involvement and, not
least, finding other ways of communicating about art.
30. SELECTED MAFIA LIND WRITING
31. SELECTED NODES IN A NETWORK OF THOUGHTS ON CURATING