While we were working together on a curatorial project, a friend
recommended I look into Andreas's post and its replies.
I must say, I find it a fascinating conversation, and far from
resolved--I doubt it can be resolved in any absolute way.
I have curated shows that included my work and ones that did not. The
ones that did not were shows where where I had extensive institutional
support. The ones that did were shows of peers where one person took
responsibility for organizing the effort. Calling that person a
curator was perhaps the best public face to put on the role, one that
certainly could provide some further impetus to publicizing it. In one
instance, an online exhibition, my curatorial work was itself an
artwork--the design, engineering, and narrative that structured a
virtual space. I think there is a time-honored tradition of this sort
of effort, as various people noted. Perhaps, too, the opportunity for
a curator to exhibit is part of the reward for hard work when there is
no substantial financial support, as often happens with small museums
and other non-profit venues that are not affiliated with larger
institutions.
At the grass roots level, I think there is a lot of leeway in how
people conduct themselves, as long as things are stated up front and
the process is transparent. Where there is substantial institutional
support or prestige, I do not feel that artist/curators should include
their own work. Although I have no idea of the exact circumstances to
which Andreas was referring, it strikes me that a juror or curator
working on a committee oversteps bounds that are widely understood in
pressing for his or her own work to be shown. In jurying for Siggraph,
for example, jurors were expected to step back if there was any
possible conflict of interest (like selecting a colleague or partner's
work).
I have been asked a few times why I curate shows, and have often
answered that it's a matter of self-defense. I write about art for the
same reason, at least in part. Back in the days when I was just
starting to work in new media, Jud Yalkut told me that artists should
concern themselves with creating art and let the critics decide what
it meant. In new media, it turns out, you often have the sense that
you must establish an acceptable theoretical value for your work in
order to show your work. At Siggraph a few years ago, James Faure
Walker criticized much "digital art" for seeming to make the wall
label more important than the work. Of course, new media artists
organized shows and wrote because the mainstream was ignoring them. If
your conceptual framework as an artist is not well represented,
whether in the mainstream or in alternative venues, organizing a show
of like-minded people is one way to establish its validity. You can
also write about work that has a bearing on your own. The aim is just
to be visible--nothing is likely to happen in the grander institutions
without that initial visibility. As Woody Allen puts it, "90% of life
is showing up."
Caroline Langill and Simon Biggs both make good points about artist-
run culture and the multiple roles an artist could take on. If there's
anything I regret about all the roles artists assume, it's that
scholarship can suffer. People who dedicate themselves critical
theory, art history, or contemporary art criticism can acquire far
greater depth than practicing artists usually do.
In this discussion, less has been said about the influence of the art
market, though it seems to me to be a constant backdrop--conflicts of
interest arise because careers and money are involved. When there
starts to be more acceptance of new media work in museums and
galleries outside of academia and media festivals, perhaps the stakes
get higher and the ethical issues more acute. Not that we can't
squabble all the better over low stakes.
I suspect that anyone who works any length of time as a curator for an
institution will run into a circumstance where work is placed into a
show because it happens to be part of the museum's holdings donated by
an important patron. Like critics writing catalog prose for gallery
shows for a fee, it's a standard but unpublicized practice. The money
is probably not the principal reason for this sort of thing, but it is
a contributing factor. The critic will make the effort to write,
lending prestige, for a fee. The patron's collection will be enhanced
because a donated work was shown. Such situations are one of the
reasons why the gallery/critic/museum system is often charged with
being incestuous. They are one reason to value independent curators
and artist/curators, although I suspect that the museum system has its
ways of influencing them, too.
Thanks for the interesting discussion.
-- Paul
On Dec 22, 2008, at 6:02 PM, NEW-MEDIA-CURATING automatic digest
system wrote:
>
> Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 13:27:19 +0100
> From: Andreas Broeckmann <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: artist curator ethics
>
> friends, a question:
>
> it sometimes happens that artists work as curators; it also
> occasionally happens that these curator artists choose their own
> artistic work for their exhibitions or programmes.
>
> in my view, this looks bad and should not happen, i personally wished
> that there was a 'code of conduct for curatorial work' that said: 'if
> you curate a project, you don't select your own work for it (not even
> if you are a member of a curatorial team'.
>
> i know that some practising artists (who also curate) see this
> differently, for them there is no ethical problem in selecting their
> own work if it fits into a specific project or conceptual framework.
>
> what do people think about this?
>
> regards,
> -a
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