Maria Lind, "The Curatorial" - doublesession

THE CURATORIAL
Selected by Liam Gillick
THE CURATORIAL was commissioned by Artforum as the inaugural
column in a series on curating, published in October 2009. This is the
original version of that text.
57. THECURATORIAL

58. SELECTED MARIA LIND WRITING
LAMYA HUSSAIN
GARGASH, FROM
FAMILIAL SERIES, 2OO9
C-print on aluminum,
12O x 12O cm.
United Arab Emirates Pav¡l¡on at
the Venice Biennale. 2009-
HANNAH HURTZIG,
KIOSK FOR USEFUL
KNOWLEDGE_SPACE
CONTROL 11: NATION
BUILDERS,2OO9
lnstallation view.
United Arab EmiÉtæ Pav¡l¡on at
the Venice B¡ennale, 2009.
Exhibition view of models
of existing museums in the
United Arab Emirates and
architectural projects in
the making.
United Arab Em¡rates Pavil¡on at
the Ven¡ce Biennale. 2009.
JACKSON POLLOCK BAR
A reenactment in the
space of the UAE
Pavilion of the first press
conference given in Miami
by the Pavilion's curator
and commissioner in
December 2008.
Un¡ted Arab Em¡rates Pavìlion at
the Venice B¡enn¡al, 2009.
59. THECURATORIAL

Exhibition view of the 2008
São Paulo Biennial, with
floor by Dora Longo Bahia.
ANGELA FERREIRA, FOR
MOZAMBTQUE (MODEL
#3 FOR PROPAGANDA
STAND, SCREEN
AND LOUDSPEAKER
PLATFORM
CELEBRATING A
POST-INDEPENDENCE
uToPtA),2008.
Exhibition view, 2008
São Paulo Biennial.
LEYA MIRA BRANDER,
UNTITLED, 2OO8
Prints: dry point, etching,
and aquatint. Variable
dimensions. Vitrines
designed by Gabriel
Sierra. Exhibition vieW
2008 São Paulo Biennial.
View of the nearly empty
second floor of Oscar
Niemeyer's building for the
2008 São Paulo Biennial.
60. SELECTED MARIA LIND WBITING 61. THECURATORIAL

THE CURATORIAL
ls there something we can call "the curatorial"? Something that
manifests itself in the activities of a curator, whether employed
or independent, trained as an aftist or as an art historian? lt
is clear that curating is much more than making exhibitions: it
involves commissioning new work and working beyond the walls
of an institution, as well as beyond what are traditionally called
programming and education. But can we speak of "the curatorial"
beyond "curating in the expanded field": as a multidimensional role
that includes critique, editing, education, and fundraising?
Following this year's Venice Biennale, I am pondering how "the
curatorial" can contain all these varied dimensions as a loose
methodology applied by different people in various capacities. Today
I imagine curating as a way of thinking in terms of interconnections:
linking objects, images, processes, people, locations, histories, and
discourses in physical space like an active catalyst, generating twists,
turns, and tensions. This is a curatorial approach that owes much to
site-specific practices, and even more to context-sensitive work and
various traditions of institutional critique-each encouraging you to
think from the artwork, with it, but also away from it and against it. ln
this sense, "the curatorial" resembles what an editor should do, only
with a broader set of materials and relationships.
The United Arab Emirates pavilion in Venice comes to mind as an
example. The first showing of the UAE offered photographic work
by Lamya Gargash, videotaped dialogues with state officials and
academics by Hannah Hurtzig, architectural models of museums by
star architects planned for the country, performative interpretations of
some of the usual public-relations procedures by the Jackson Pollock
Bar, and an online archive documenting works by UAE artists. With
this pavilion, curator Tirdad Zolghadr assembled one of the Biennale's
highlights. The wittiest, and yet most thoughtful audio guide I have
ever come across introduced visitors to this unusually complex
political, economic, social, and artistic situation in which the curator
worked through both affirmation and critique. Here, "the curatorial"
emerges in the multiplicity of connections and layers, in how they are
orchestrated to challenge the status quo, with the works themselves
placed at the center of the project.
63 THECURATORIAL

Understood in this way, "the curatorial" operates in parallel with
Chantal Mouffe's notion of "the political." ln her quest for a better
model of democracy than the representative forms we think we know,
she sketches one in which opposition is lauded and consensus, with
its predilection for closure, becomes highly problematic. Leaning
on Carl Schmitt, Mouffe argues for "the political" as an ever-present
potential that cannot be precisely located, yet grows out of the
antagonistic bond between friend and enemy. "The political" is an
aspect of life that cannot be distinguished from divergence and
dissent-the antithesis of consensus. For Mouffe, "politics" is the
formal side of practices that reproduce certain orders. Seen this way,
"curating" would be the technical modality-which we know from ad
institutions and independent projects-and "the curatorial" a more
viral presence consisting of signification processes and relationships
between objects, people, places, ideas, and so forth, a presence that
strives to create friction and push new ideas.
The recent São Paulo Biennial, co-curated by lvo Mesquita and Ana
Paula Cohen in fall 2008, is another more extensive case where "the
curatorial" came to the fore. Among the two hundred or so biennials
in the world, São Paulo is one of the oldest. Since its inception
in 195'1 , it has created and renewed connections and stimulated
debates as one of Latin America's most imporlant platforms for both
international and local modern and contemporary arf. Today, with a
different art topography that includes a number of local and regional
art institutions and organizations, the São Paulo Biennial's original
role as popular educator is less relevant. Mesquita and Cohen took
this change of landscape as a starting point: lf it no longer needs to
educate audiences, could its role not be to reflect upon the very role
of the biennial itself, and upon the kind of art that does not receive
space and attention from other mainstream venues; namely, processoriented
art of which collections and archival practices lie at the core?
Hugely controversial, but to my mind thought-provoking and
refreshing, the 2008 São Paulo Biennial invited you to study Leya
Mira Brander's many detailed and deeply personal copper prints in
low vitrines. lt allowed you to read about Jean-Luc Godard's work
with state television in Mozambique in a sculpture by Angela Ferrara.
And you could print your own booklet of photographs from Armin
Linke's own archive, with motifs from literally the whole world. The
previous "department store" exhibition model with ar1 in every square
centimeter of the space was replaced by a spaciously installed
64 SELECTED MAFìIA LIND WRITING
thematic group exhibition with an almost completely empty floor, a
"town square" for film, music, and dance performances on the ground
floor, plus a well-selected archive of video art at the bottom. All of
which angered those who expected business as usual, aft en masse
with plenty of well-known artists.
Having around forty artists in the exhibition left time to engage with
each individual work, many of which demanded focused attention.
ln addition, the architecture of Oscar Niemeyeç with a Le Corbusierinspired
open plan on three floors, participated for the first time
alongside the artworks. This biennial had a sense of relief from the
impossible burden of representing the vast category of contemporary
art with each edition, filling the space to the brim with artworks. Yet
the curators of the 2008 edition reintroduced the biennial with a new
approach to it in terms of what I am calling "the curatorial." Here, "the
curatorial" lies in the careful consideration of the biennial's history,
the current institutional situation in São Paulo and in Brazil, and in the
combination of artists and types of artworks, as well as in the spatial
organization.
Figures from lrit Rogoff to Liam Gillick have identified curating as a
locus within contemporary art from which significant new ideas have
emerged since the mid-1990s-at least in Europe, Latin America,
and the Middle East-rather than from other times and places
when art criticism or aft history had the privilege of formulating
the agenda. I am tempted to read "the curatorial" in these artists'
argument: rather than being the product of curators per se, curating
is the result of a network of agents' labor. The outcome should have
the disturbing quality of smooth surfaces being stirred-a specific,
multilayered means of answering back in a given context. Rather
than representing, "the curatorial" involves presenting-it pedorms
something in the here and now instead of merely mapping it from
there and then. ln this sense, "the curatorial" is a qualitative term just
like "the political" is for Mouffe.
Although it may sound self-satisfied, I think there is some truth to
Rogoff's and Gillick's argument. But an unavoidable question arises:
Has "the curatorial" produced more than merely an irritation? More
than a temporary frisson? Has it had any more profound effect on how
we approach and deal with art and the rest of the world? l'm not sure
yet-more time must pass before we can tell. But I do know that the
business of traditional curating, like the car industry, needs to rethink

its modes of production. lf "the curatorial"-in a less qualitative and
a more deadpan use of the term-can be present in the work of
practically anybody active within the field of contemporary aft, it could
also be used as an escape route for someone who, like myself, is
responsible for graduating fifteen curatorial students per year. Where
will they find work? Given the proliferation of curatorial programs
across the globe, some creative thinking has to be done to determine
which jobs they should look for. The existing curatorial positions
simply won't suffice.
ô6. SE|+CTED MAFTA UND WRtTlNc