SFAQ_issue_sixteen

Trevor Paglen. Aerial photograph of the National Security Agency .Commissioned by Creative Time Reports, 2013. Courtesy of the artist.
I will just say in general, there are two approaches, which make it at times challenging to
work as a curator of media arts in an institution. One is that either for political reasons
or other reasons, some artists refrain and stay away from an active engagement with
the media and take great pains to not be associated with the discourse around media,
but rather only with the discourse around art. That’s been an ongoing problem for media
artists ever since that field emerged. The second thing is that being in San Francisco
we are much identified with our proximity to Silicon Valley, and to the innovation of
future technologies, and it is expected from us that we find artists that showcase these
new developments. That very often tends to be an affirmative position and to highlight
the new software as a new creative tool without allowing for a more critical, nuanced
and deeper engagement with histories and narratives. So if you think about, as just one
example, Creators Project featuring interactive and fun installations that are software
driven within an event context, it doesn’t really do more than what we already know
about interaction and participation, which is that you can have fun with that.
This typically doesn’t address the specific limitations and conditions of participation,
and I mention that because I curated a show in 2008 called The Art of Participation, and
that was one of the criticisms that we received, that we weren’t participatory enough.
My counter-argument was always that that was fine, that it was actually not our job
to turn the museum into a fun-house and to enhance creativity around participation,
but rather to find and identify different ways of understanding the opportunities but
also limits of participation. So from non-participation to excessive over-the-top participation,
there’s a whole range of different approaches, and on that note I would also
say that the topic of surveillance should produce art or artworks that actually have a
longer shelf-life than the current technology of the day.
If you fast-forward ten years from now and look back at something that might seem
very pertinent and urgent today, just imagine how that is still something that goes
beyond the use of a particular technology. It addresses more fundamental concerns.
So that’s something we’re trying to do, and I very often find myself in that position
that I need to make a decision on how to stay contemporary in what we collect, how
to identify works that really keep us engaged in a much longer conversation than just
addressing the NSA and the Snowden dynamics today.
Do you have anything else that you would like to add or talk about?
You brought up an interesting project in your email which is a much more recent
example of censorship and institutional policy around legal practice, which was the
project PRISM: The Beacon Frame by Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev. I was not there
in Berlin at the festival, so I didn’t experience it, I’ve just been reading about it. First
of all, it’s a fascinating project, I’m not sure that it will remain an interesting project in
the long run, but it certainly seems very contemporary and very urgent right now. The
way that it unfolded at Transmediale, which as a full disclaimer I helped found in the
late 1980s, was that someone felt responsible and acted out a kind of policing of that
work in response to some criticism that was voiced on the opening night. The festival
took the very legal position saying here’s something going on that might be considered
a breach of privacy laws. Now Transmediale is funded by government agencies, so they
felt they can’t be complicit with that. I respect that, I understand the position, but I also
think at the same time it’s the wrong attitude and the wrong approach.
Let me backtrack a little bit and point to an older practice in which artists, through
video recording technology, have recorded and appropriated films. Christian Marclay
being the most widely recognized example, but the practice is much older. It’s been an
issue for some museums to then say to the artist, “Can you guarantee that you cleared
all copyrights for that?” Obviously, an appropriated collage of Hollywood movies can
never, ever be in clearance of copyright laws, because artists wouldn’t have the financial
means to do that. Yet at the same time this appropriation is an important cultural reflection
of our times, and I think that’s a key to our mission, that we reflect what artists
do and how they specifically react to our culture. Today, museums don’t necessarily
request any more that all the copyrights have been cleared, but they act on the trust
that—if it ever becomes an issue—this will be discussed as a part of what museums do
and what artists do and that this will be discussed as part of a fair use policy. One way
of embracing that is to say, “well, we’ll see if this becomes a problem.” If it becomes a
problem we’ll then address it. So what the festival in Berlin did was a kind of self-censorship
and to shut down the project - as opposed to an approach where one keeps
it running to have these conversations, legally, politically, artistically, that it might trigger.
What’s more, it felt like that was the desire of the work, and presumably
of exhibiting it, to have that conversation.
Yes. You cannot embrace conflict and foster debate around an ongoing practice only
from a legal point of view. Alternatively, where would you have that sort of experience
and discussion if not within the arts? So I think we have a special obligation to address
these issues.
Julia Scher, Predictive Engineering 2, 1998
(1998 SFMOMA installation view);
multi-channel video installation with
sound; dimensions variable; Collection
SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund
purchase; photo courtesy SFMOMA; ©
Julia Scher
Oliver Lutz, The Lynching of Leo Frank, 2009
(2010 SFMOMA installation view); Acrylic
on canvas, CCTV system; painting: 60 x 87
in. (152.4 x 221 cm) overall dimensions variable;
Courtesy the artist; photo: Ian Reeves,
courtesy SFMOMA; © Oliver Lutz