The Contingency of Curation

Friday 21 May 2010, 10.00–18.00

Despite the diverse processes that make up the curatorial, its presence in artistic culture and its power to organise the reception and distribution of art, curation seems to struggle to transform the conditions within which it operates. At this symposium, which is led by MA Curating students from Chelsea College of Art, Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Essex, invited speakers from a range of disciplines address the contingency of curation and its consequences for culture and society.

Tate Britain Clore Auditorium
£20 (£10 concessions), booking recommended
Price includes drinks afterwards
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Timetable
10.00–10.30 Registration and Coffee
10.30–10.45 Welcome by Eleanor Clayton, Tate Britain
10.45–11.00 Introductions by students from the three colleges

11.00-12.45 Panel 1: The Autonomous Curator
JJ Charlesworth (Chair), Emma Dexter, Susan Hiller, Marie-Anne McQuay

12.45-13.45 Lunch

13.45-15.00 Panel 2: Mediation as Production
Sound Threshold (Daniella Cascella and Lucia Farinati), Simon Hollington and Kypros Kyrianou, Ron Wright, Neil Webb

15.00-15.30 Break

15.30–16.45 Panel 3: Curating Friction
Introduced by Billie Rae Vinson
Andrea Phillips (Mediator), Roman Vasseur, Munira Mirza

16.45–17.00 Screening of “Just a Minute”
17.00–18.00 Drinks reception in the foyer

Panel 1: The Autonomous Curator

The role of the curator as a singular author/auteur, working either inside or outside of institutions, is more dominant today than it has ever been. In recent years this has been especially compounded by the increasing growth and popularity of trans-national shows and Biennales that have further moved the contemporary curator away from the traditionally invisible mediating role into an increasingly internationally recognised autonomous figure.

This panel will principally ask what the character and scope of this prevalent autonomy is for ‘the Curator’ today, and how and if the influence of the autonomous curator on museums, galleries and artists differs from that of the institutional curator. For example, does the ‘hired-gun’ have more freedom to exercise greater creativity in the processes of making art visible?

Second, according to David Levi Strauss, in his 2006-7 article The Bias of the World: Curating after Szeemann and Hops, “without history, ‘the new’ becomes a trap: a sequential recapitulation of past approaches with no forward movement this is a major occupational hazard for curators.” Following this, we will ask if the independent curator can work both within and outside of specific institutions with an enhanced degree of autonomy today, does this autonomy then necessitate them becoming perpetually stuck in the present or can and should they retain a sense of history, and how might they do this?

The third element of this panel will probe the usefulness and productive imperative of the massive global visibility of curators of international blockbuster shows and biennales; asking if and how the appointment of an internationally recognised curator for a biennale or any such exhibition affects the content, meanings, or values produced by the exhibition.

The invited speakers for this panel work across various disciplines. These include curating, writing, lecturing and as practicing artists. Several of the speakers work or have worked for specific institutions, while at the same time working independently also. Such diverse curatorial experiences will generate debate and discussion on the role and the perception of the curator today and the level and necessity of their autonomy.

Panel 2: Mediation as Production
- Collaboration, Authorship and Contingency

In this panel we will explore how curators collaborate with artists and how artists increasingly take on the role of the curator. In light of this blurring of roles we will be asking how authorship can be shared, and if these ‘expanded practices’ challenge received notions of creative agency?
By taking up the notion of mediation as production we aim to investigate curation as part of an open, expanded practice. Curation is no longer a central column of power in the art world, and its relation to art production is (often) fluid. The ‘perpetual motion’ of curational practice will be presented to the conference as a series of collaborations and partnerships that form an overall collaborative production. Here we will put the concept of authorship into practice by creating a multi-authored curatorial event. We aim to open up the issue of authorship to our invited guest speakers, while simultaneously producing a collaborative event.

We are intending to use scene changes, lighting, music, and other forms of mediations to do this, with the transition between ours and the other two panels being demonstrative of our theme and position as ‘The Middleman’. We anticipate that by opening up these ideas and concerns, the audience will be encouraged to bring their own interpretations and perspectives to the unfixed and mediating relations between collaboration, authorship and contingency.

Panel 3: Curating Friction – Between Complicity and Contingency

The historical construction of the curatorial is one of the archivist or manager, working inside the institution and safeguarding its collections. Although in our more recent history, the work of curation has been seen and understood to be increasingly similar to that of the artist. This similarity also means that the curator has inherited the claims of artistic critique that have aspired both to produce critical knowledge and to work outside the system as a destabilising force.

However, it is much more common today for the curator to be working within and alongside these same systems of power, responding to the contingencies which impact the role. Cultural projects are playing an increasingly important role within urban regeneration programmes and the curator, bearing the cachet of producing a mix of cultural capital and creative critique, is a desirable agent for the proliferation of culture and economic wealth. Complicit within these systems can the curator still be radical? Can critical friction exist within these curatorial practices? Where is the curator positioned within this tension between complicity and contingency?

We will address, and distinguish between, the act of curation in the social realm or what is commonly termed ‘socially engaged practice’ and the curation of the social realm, a process which utilises a curatorial methodology and which is performed by the figures of the architect, the urban planner, the policy maker but also increasingly the artist and the curator. We take this latter definition up understanding that this curation of the social also includes a curation with the social, since its aim is now more often the task of working alongside interest groups, work with communities, and also involve themselves within the situations of the locality in which they work.

This discussion invites speakers to look to the future of curatorial practice in this context. Is there the potential for the curatorial to resist its apparent complicity with organisational power structures? How is it possible to understand curatorial practice as radical, and as capable of change in these circumstances?

Download the archive that has been collected in relation to this panel:
Curating Friction Archive