Beti ®erovc
A conversation with Charles Esche*
The notion of a curator is something that is relatively new, twenty, maybe thirty years old. To whom do you feel closer: to the traditional curator in a museum, to the private dealer or a critic? In my opinion the curator somehow developed or took something from all of these positions.
Yeah, I think so.
There is also the historical meaning of curator, which is related not
only to art. For instance, in Scottish law, a curator is actually a person
who looks after a child when his parents are no longer alive. They have
responsibility for the care of a child, which could be quite interesting
in relation to the artist-curator exchange. Curator in its real meaning
is also somebody who cares for a collection. So, curators have existed
since the eighteenth century, probably since the beginning of the cabinet
of curiosities. There's a long history of that kind of curator and then
there's the new meaning of curator as exhibition maker, Ausstellungsmacher
or whatever, which comes in around twenty years ago. The latter is really
a completely different concept to which the same word has been attached;
there is very little relationship between this notion of caring for a
collection or a child or whatever and the contemporary meaning of curator.
So you could say we should actually find another word, because I am not
sure that that historical connection is very useful.
What I can say is that I became involved in curating because I got interested
in art but was not trained and do not think of myself as an artist. I
fell into curating because that was what you could do in order to be involved
with art and not be an artist. So in some ways, I don't think very much
about what the word means and I often don't use it about myself because
I could also be called a writer and officially I'm an editor, director
and research fellow to my various employers. I actually rarely have the
title curator, but of course I'm always called it. In terms of my actual
work: sometimes I'm more a facilitator of an artist's project; sometimes
I feel I'm working in parallel with an artist, where we are discussing
the project from the start and I can see a real exchange of ideas; sometimes
I make exhibitions and recently I've been most concerned with developing
the idea of the art institution itself - rather than just its exhibition
programme.
Often, as a curator you feel like you have to back away from any kind
of creative involvement, but I think we should admit to a real creativity
implicit in this new term of curator. Probably the reason we back away
from it is because of the legacy of the historical use of curator that
pre-existed our activities. Now we're actually involved in production
and the creation of contexts and opportunities, all of which have a creative
element. And speaking personally, I'm most interested in art in the sense
of a tool - a tool to imagine the world otherwise. I'm not so interested
in aesthetic values for themselves, and I'm certainly not interested in
art for art's sake. It's more how art engages and changes conditions around
itself, how it operates on the imagination. So the limitations of my understanding
of the possibilities of the curator are dictated by that personal and
political agenda.
You were talking about the beginnings of your curatorial work as if you emerged from some point of nothing; that you just liked art and so on. But are there any people that you could call forerunners or special events, which inspired you?
Yes, there are such people, but they're mostly artists. Well, I mean the reason I got into art was an artist called Stephen Willats who was working on what we could now call social projects from the 1960's onwards. In terms of forerunners, I think I have to be quite personal and say the reason I got interested in art is through my disillusionment with politics. In my twenties, early twenties at least, I was a member of the British Labour Party and very active on what was then called the left. And gradually, particularly with the experience of the big miners' strike in '84-'85, I became extremely disillusioned with the possibilities of politics - its possibility to affect people's imagination, to affect changes in thinking and acting, to rethink globalisation, injustice, emancipation, almost anything beyond the hope for the revolution or everyday management. It seemed to me that the options were being closed down (particularly in Britain because at that time my thoughts were still based very much on some kind of national understanding). I saw in art, through somebody like Stephen Willats, a way of dealing with some of the questions I felt I wanted to ask in the political sphere, but couldn't. And so my journey was from trying to change the world through politics to becoming interested in art.
But why couldn't you pose those questions in the political sphere?
Because things on
the left seemed already set in an ideological stone and nobody was even
considering ideology's relation to observable realities. Nobody was prepared
for instance to question whether Marxism was correct, whether Trotsky
was correct or not, you either accepted it or you were out. Nobody was
prepared to use politics, and that is still absolutely true now, in an
imaginative or speculative way. I'll tell you an example: in 1980-81 we
were very involved in trying to support Solidarnosc in some way, though
many were troubled to be opposing a 'socialist' government. Then in '84
when the miners' strike was on, we went down to the docks in Hull, which
is a port in eastern England, and tried to stop the ships that were bringing
the Polish coal dug up by the same miners who three years before had been
occupying the mines to defend Solidarnosc. Yet, no one would seriously
discuss the irony of our protest or the relationship between what we were
doing in 1981 and 1984. In the end, it seemed we were fighting anybody
who opposed our British working class self-interest, and I couldn't see
a future in that position at all, because the idea of the self-interest
of a nation and class just didn't mean anything anymore. Nobody would
discuss the possibility of a thoughtful response to globalisation, to
the complexity of community and what it might mean, even to re-imagine
a new International, nothing. It seemed everything global, economic or
even aesthetically challenging was evil, it was that simplistic and defeatist.
The left was freaked out by the end of a coherent class structure and
was clinging to its wreckage. Everybody around was just stuck in defensive
mode, trying to protect the rights that have been won in 1950's or 1960's
but that no longer meant so much. There was no mechanism to imagine how
global relationships could be renegotiated, or how Reaganism-Thatcherism
could be turned against itself by changing out vision of the world. No,
the future was fixed, we were in eternal opposition until the 'revolution'
and we were almost happy in our defeatism and lack of responsibility to
effect any real change.
So, there was (and is) no imaginative speculation available in politics.
And that's the only salvation that we have, actually to think the world
differently. We have to start from the ground and try to build up some
different ideas of how we might want to organize ourselves as a society.
Otherwise we only have the one free market, democratic capitalist model.
And for me it seems art could be the terrain where that can happen today.
Since the 1980's I am even more sure it's not going to happen in traditional
party politics and other areas - philosophy, science, economics - are
often so carefully specialised they stop themselves from making effective
statements. But this is another story.
Please, continue with it.
For me, art has possibility. Possibility is a very important word for me, because I think that's what we have to grasp, to create possibility. Ernst Bloch said there are interests in the world that try to deny possibility - so, possibility is a very political term. Possibility to change, possibility to imagine, possibility to speculate, possibility to think things otherwise, these are very important. Now, if we see art as a generalism, a field which can draw in various specialisms, bring them together, perhaps misunderstand or misuse them, but create something else out of the combination that speaks to a common interest, then I think the position of art is unique in its possible effect on questions of commonality or community and a real tool to be used to think in that way. And that's what excites me about it. Of course there are other aspects in this terrain of art that I have little interest in, which have to do with commercialism or to do with the gallery structure or to do with the way that art affirms the status quo or relates to fashion. That's fine, I don't like them and I don't dislike them, they don't interest me. The real possibility for art is to be a speculative terrain, to imagine the world differently and to draw on other disciplines, whether it's philosophy, physics or football, to talk about our conditions and how they could be revised.
So, taking all this into account, what exactly would be the task of the curator?
The task of the curator is to cultivate that terrain of possibility, to look after it, to build institutions on it or structures on it in which such a speculation can happen. To develop an enclosure if you like, where some of these things can happen, within capitalism of course, but a little bit defended from its destructive, mocking forces.
I read something where you were explaining that the curator is an expert on art and that he has real knowledge of art. I'm really interested in what that knowledge would be?
Look, on one level it's a simple knowledge of different practices that are going on around the world. I mean, curators are paid and expected to know what is going on at a particular moment and place. So their knowledge base and understanding of current activities should be much wider than somebody who doesn't spend all that time in the art field.
So if you have somebody who has greater knowledge, does that mean that he would be a better curator?
I see what you mean ... No, because it's about applying that knowledge. And how you apply that knowledge comes from the specific position that you articulate as a curator. So the curator has a specific position and specific interest. I've tried to point towards that in my own journey from politics to art. If you ask another curator, then you'll have another position and so on. I would hope.
So how can a curator be valuated at all or at best?
Against each other
and also in relationship to terms I would use, like possibility, like
notions taken from Jacques Derrida and Klossowski of hospitality, of generalism,
perhaps even of fluidity. If a curator wants to do an exhibition, the
judgement offered might be: Does it create possibility for that moment,
for the place and for the artists? Does it work for an audience in a way,
which is hospitable, which encourages some kind of engagement? Does it
function in relationship to a social situation, which is constantly changing,
or is it fixed? Does it address broad social questions or only art's own
issues? Those are the kind of judgements you might bring to an exhibition
that a curator makes. I mean there are all sorts of ways that you can
judge but those would be the criteria that I would want to use.
Does that mean that you see a curator as an independent author?
I mean it more as a mediator or a facilitator than an author. Of course you have your own idea, I don't think we should deny the fact that a curator has a position, but your position is to choose, select those artists or projects that you find compelling, interesting, that satisfy the criteria you have and then to facilitate them and mediate them to an audience. That's why the judgements have to be about the context as much as the precise content.
You often talked about your friendship with artists, the fact that you work very closely with them, how important that is ...
Yes, it's important, vital.
But that probably affects your choice, your selection to a great degree?
Totally, totally, I wouldn't deny it for a moment. But why do you want some objective criteria outside of myself? I mean if you invite me as a curator to do a project, I bring the people I know, believe in, love and trust. It's based on previous experiences so the circle does grow constantly, but I'm not independent from those people and I don't think I should be nervous about that at all. I have my own position. Like, if you want a building like Rem Koolhaas, you ask for Rem Koolhaas, if you want a building like Frank O. Ghery, you ask O. Ghery. Because you know, they have positions.
Yes. But you can still ask Koolhaas why is he doing the particular house, why is he doing it in such a way, etc. In the same way as I'm asking you those things. So for you, in a way, friendship and artistic quality are coinciding?
Not always. Because it depends: as you discover situations by research, by travelling, by meeting people, by looking at work you're drawn to. You're drawn to it for those criteria I already mentioned, as well as for reasons of surprise, innovation, things you can't predict in advance. I see something and go 'wow! that's really great'. Probably it's connected to particular social, political or economic questions that I'm interested in and I can see the artist is really investigating those in a way that I had never thought about. Then my job is to get to know them, my job is not to say: 'Wow, that's great, let's take that work'. I might do that, of course, but in saying it I also want to get to know who I'm dealing with. So, the friendship, the politics of that friendship come out of the work that I see and the work that interests me. In that sense, friendship is not a blind emotional reaction but grounded in my interests.
But do you see any problematic sides in this way of seeing things? For example, Viktor Misiano also has some special and in a way very similar ideas on friendship as you do. But since he is the strongest and if we emphasize a little, the 'only' curator who is really working outside Russia and in the West that means ...
... you have to be friends with Viktor in order to get out.
How can we solve this?
I think it may be slightly different in Western Europe because there's more pluralism; there are other people that you can work with. The weakness of it is if there are only very few people who are actually making these kinds of judgements. What we need are more people making these kinds of judgements and more transparency or honesty in how it works.
Let's say that I'm a good artist, here from Slovenia, who you are interested in, but who is now making you nervous because I'm posing these questions. What would that mean? That I don't fit in your exhibition? If I don't get along with you, does that then somehow affect the quality of my work with you?
I find this interesting because it's making me think. So I'm quite enjoying it and it's more likely I'll want to see your work. But then, I'm not sure it really matters. My experiences working in marginal places like Glasgow and Malmö, is that the situation in such places (also like Ljubljana) only really functions if it starts to sustain itself by developing a supportive local community, a critical mass of quite modest institutions and a self-confidence. That's the energy that somebody coming from the outside could see and get turned on by. So things are in your control as well, rather than only waiting for the blessing of the international curators. In Gwangju, we tried to reflect this by inviting 26 small groups and artist run spaces to represent themselves.
You work in a museum. I read somewhere that you explained, before you started, that you would try to move the ordinary existing exhibition program into something more various, that it would have a more productive role. So, how far are you with that?
The first thing that
I did was basically to cut what has traditionally been a showroom for
art into different functions. We used the three floors differently and
upstairs we made two studios that are semi-private/semi-public. The artists
who are there won't necessarily ever show in an exhibition, but the invitation
is for them to be present around the building. Meeting our visitors.
Upstairs we also set up a project room, which is a kind of a really boring
idea and we did it because we couldn't think of anything else. Now we're
running a course with the Art Academy in Malmö with eight students, four
artists and four who define themselves as something else, curators or
critics or even with a background in sociology. On the middle floor is
the main exhibition hall where we try to use the language of the exhibition
as interestingly and effectively as possible. However, in April we will
use it as a film studio and open it only occasionally to the public. Our
technical team will be used to build the sets or build the constructions
that are necessary for the film. Then downstairs we're playing with the
idea of an archive, so we have on one hand a Rooseum archive, where people
can see what we have been showing in the past, and a future archive, where
we ask all the artists who we work with, to give us a list of ten books,
CDs or videos that are in some way inspirational, influential or important
to them. It builds up as a very eclectic, strange library in which you
can get to know the artist whom we're working with in different ways because
you can see, maybe, where some of their ideas start or some of their points
of departure for their work, whether it's classical books like Negri's
Empire or a Mad Max film. And then we have a microcinema/discussion space
where we have a video program, club nights and talks. So basically, from
the whole thing being a showroom, we now have four or five different kinds
of space for different kinds of activity. Those spaces themselves are
always up to question. So, for instance, the exhibition space becomes
a film studio, the project room wasn't really good so we closed it down.
I think that in a way, now it is a trend of doing things like that, in a multifunctional, 'laboratory' way. Is there a successful museum or gallery working in this way that you could mention? Because you know, I've been to some places with such an inclination lately - like Palais de Tokyo -, and I did not find them very inspiring.
I really hope that we're not like Palais de Tokyo. Not that I want to be critical, but I think it's very different working in a small town with a relatively small audience and doing something in Paris. You have to take the context into account because if you don't then you miss half the reason for doing the things that we're doing.
Sometimes such places, where they're trying to be very open, they are at the same time extremely closed, because they are maybe to concentrated on those few people they work with. And when you come to such a place, it's like ...
You feel thrown out of it. I understand that. I do believe in what I'm doing but of course I'm self-critical. I don't want to defend Rooseum automatically because the question is fair enough. Again, I'm going to answer you through rhetorical language of defining terms though I think our projects like Superflex are real examples of this. One term, which I used before, is hospitality, which I'm very interested in trying to embed into the institution. At least in Derrida's terms hospitality, is saying 'Yes' essentially. It's saying 'Yes' to the other, to the visitor, to the unexpected guest, alive or dead, vegetable or mineral, divine or human. He says it's about trying to say 'Yes', trying to learn, disciplining yourself to say 'Yes' to the demands that come. Now I think that hospitality is on one level, a very pragmatic aspect of welcome. So if you were to come to the Rooseum, I hope, what would happen, is that you would feel welcome in a way that perhaps you might have not been in other places ... In other words, somebody would come and actually talk to you. On another level, hospitality means being responsive to your concerns, changing to accommodate the needs of the guest to the point of giving up ownership or authorship. Now, how that works out in practice is under construction but we have a programme called Open Forum that invites people from Malmö to propose and carry out their own projects. It's slow but it is beginning to work.
But Palais de Tokyo also promises that somebody will be there for you with whom you will be able to talk if you want to talk, etc. But nothing really happens. That means that we are faced with a model, which is by trying to be something, turning it into the exact opposite?
Yes, I'm really sympathetic to you and I'm thinking about these problems. But the attempts are genuine ones. I mean, we might fail, I totally understand and we have to learn and be self-critical, but I think the attempt to be hospitable is one that's worthwhile. The attempt to try, as Palais de Tokyo is doing, to create an institution which does have a different sense of the time that you might engage as a visitor, a different sense of the way that you might work with the artists, a different sense of the possibilities of meeting - I think none of that is wrong. Perhaps the delivery should be criticised but the fundamental approach is basically right. So, I wouldn't really want to criticise Palais de Tokyo but I do think, in a strange way we have an advantage being provincial. Because we can have a more intimate relation with our audience, we're not a tourist city.
Before you entered the institution you seemed very proud of the fact that you were an independent curator, and you talked about that on numerous occasions. So, I would like to know: Why did you return to the institution?
I made a very deliberate decision to return to the institution because I did not want to be an independent curator any more. And what you might have read was absolutely true then but I don't think I have to be always consistent. I think time passes and I learn more how to achieve things.
What were the main reasons for returning to the institution?
Very precisely: as an independent curator working in the institution you have very little possibility to change the fundamental structures through which that institution is run. To a certain extent you are a decoration on top of them. You're invited to do your thing, whether it's the Gwangju Biennial or it's the Tate, you're invited to do the thing for which you are identified as being interesting and then you go away and the institution is left completely unmoved. What I became interested in is not who to invite, is not this artist or that artist, but rather how that invitation is made, in what way you have a conversation and create a possibility for an artist or a visitor. And that was impossible to do as an independent curator because you were only moving from one site to another and taking a crowd of artists with you (with this issue of friendship I would agree) but you couldn't actually go very much further - all you can do is take them to another place. Now I didn't do it so much, but I did it enough to realize that that's not my main interest. And actually I think with Rooseum, my main interest is becoming structural the 'how' you invite, what's the nature of the invitation, rather than the fact of the invitation.
When I spoke to Pierre Restany, he said that he sees a curator as a master of compromises.
I understand that because you're dealing with the whole series of pragmatics. Coming from the political position that I had before, and basically still have, makes me wary of compromise but, as I said, there's no comfortable outside position any more. You have to get your hands dirty to achieve anything you want to do, and that means compromise.
Do you see yourself as a master of compromises?
Not a master, I see myself as forced into compromises.
Is that different?
Yeah. I feel myself more as a victim of them, or them as an inevitable evil.
In contemporary theory, people like Lash, Kurz, ®i¾ek, speak about our period as of a period of 'self-inscenated criticism', which is not a true criticism, but more, an appearance, a stand to be seen by others. Do you think curators often use this appearance of being critical and why?
Well, let me think about this because it's complicated. If there is no externally validated position to make critical judgements (socialist analysis or whatever) then criticism is staged to some degree. And the art world is often self-validating with collectors sitting on institutional boards, institutions supporting galleries and underwriting artists projects that then have to succeed etc. But the question is: does the loss of external criteria make the activity invalid? Can we still think by using self-staged criticism or does it just affirm the status quo? My answer is that it does not only affirm but also opens up new lines of thought that might produce the breakthrough to another way of imagining the world. That goes back to our start, in a way.
How do you see your position in the relationship with collectors and commercialism that you mentioned and how do you see in them your politics of friendship, which could be problematic in a similar way?
I agree with that. But you know, first, I don't feel very engaged with collectors myself. I think there is a social democratic position of working in an institution with public money, where we have to find justification for why you receive that money. It is certainly not in order to flatter board members' collections or support the value of an artist. The justification of that public money will be whether we create a real, active discourse, a speculative territory for artists internationally and people living locally to test out some ideas about themselves and our society. Now, I'm not ashamed to have a close friendship with some of those people at all - in fact I think it is necessary. I mean the alternative would be to have a completely objective, scientific curator who has no relationships with anybody, is completely dissocialised and relates only to the objects. Now that is to some extent the old model of the curator, but I think that's more problematic than not acknowledging a social exchange that affects your opinions. Though the work should still be the primary element that facilitates that social exchange that leads to the friendship. I think an objective scientific view that you're looking for just doesn't exist. If you want the curator to be outside the capitalist structure and collection, to be outside relationships with artists, to be outside relationships with the institution ... that's somehow taking a godlike overview, I think that's really mistaken. What I'm talking about is being in the mess of social, political and economic pragmatism and still trying to take a position and create the place for art to contribute to social change and emancipation.
So you're placing a great deal of importance on the difference between the involvement in the private and public sector, the difference between private and public financing?
Yeah, I really want to defend some of those things, for instance I want to defend the difference between consumerism and civil society, I want to defend the difference between public money and private money, I think that's really important otherwise we abandon ourselves to the worst parts of the American model, without their culture of individual responsibility.
But at the same time as you are defending this model, you are involved in the private, commercial art sector. Not long ago you were one of the British selectors for ARCO in Madrid?
I mean ARCO was something that I would not want to theorize about too much.
But if you have such a strong political stand, don't you think you have to be consistent, otherwise we come exactly to self-inscenated criticism?
Well, ... OK, this is a really good question. The reason I did ARCO is because it seemed to be an opportunity to create a possibility for a certain number of artists who otherwise wouldn't have their opportunity. The reason that I said 'Yes' to it was because it allowed me to invite certain people who I admired because of their work, through the mechanism of the gallery system. So what we did was not to invite the classical commercial galleries, but many different kinds of artists' run spaces that hadn't always been at the art fairs before. I think that was worthwhile. Anyway, the gallery sector is not bad in itself - it depends how and what it does - it's possible for gallerists to have an ethical position. I just find most of what they do uninteresting.
Yes, but before you said to me: Look at the context. What's the 'special' context here, why should you do it?
OK, ARCO is, in terms of its context, different from other art fairs. It was set up immediately post Franco, as the first cultural phenomenon that introduced post-modernism and pluralism to Spain. As such it occupies a special place in Spanish culture and it always had a very strong educational element. In contrast to Basel or Berlin a huge range of people attends it, and they come to look not only to buy. So, it does have a different local role than other art fairs. I also saw the possibility of trying to recognise the energy of the artists' run and non-commercial, non-government funded spaces that existed in London, Glasgow and elsewhere. So, there were specific reasons why I did it.
On numerous occasions you discussed how art should have a special place, defended its place in the capitalist system and how the curator's role is there to provide that. 'Providing art' for art fairs seems to me going exactly the opposite way. So, that's why ARCO fell into my eye.
Maybe you're right but … look, that 'special place' is within capitalism anyway, so we have to work from the same territory as the market anyway. The point is to use the structures against themselves to some extent, not dumb opposition like we had on the left in the '80s.
But you know, almost every art fair lately has a special thematic exhibition, special guest 'national' representation, is inviting young galleries etc.: also Basel and Berlin.
Not to the same extent as we did. No, really not.
Do you think that being appointed to positions such as the curator of the Gwangju Biennial, could be seen as an award for being a loyal and diligent worker within the system? Usually you were very critical towards the system; and getting those positions means: I'm really very much in the system.
Yeah. Because I don't think there's an outside of the system position. And I've said that and written about it many times. You know, we're all at the same table. So, I'm not unhappy about working within the system at all and I don't think that I've ever had a position outside the system - I have always been involved in it, even in the smallest initiatives in Tramway. What we were doing in Glasgow was trying to a large extent to be noticed by the system. We were also critical of the system, and not only because we were ignored, but it was reformist rather than revolutionary in its approach. And I think that's probably the only position that you can adopt as a curator - a kind of reformist one, rather than a revolutionary one. Because revolution is problematic at the moment - though we need to keep thinking about it.
And a reformist position is not problematic?
Of course a reformist position is problematic as well. There's no unproblematic position in this mess, but I think reformism or, let's say working within the system but also to try to use the tools that it provides, to offer or create different possibilities, is for me one that I'm happy with. I don't feel compromised so much by that because I don't see a productive alternative. But your reward thing is probably quite true - that we are rewarded for good behaviour.
September 2002
*First published: ®ivot umjetnosti, 69, 2003/XXXVII, Zagreb, pp. 58-75