Why does bureaucracy get a different opinion between critics in the US and Canada? I've been 401 Richmond, Artscape and other spaces, outside of arc, national gallery, and community centre, what kind of art community is capable of artistic productivity, efficiency, and organization?

Summary: Class became the core of Fraser’s institutional critique in a time. Her examination of class, philanthropy, public policy and plutocracy could review back to the studies started in the 1980s. Till today, the use of words like “plutocracy" and the fact that class studies are gradually ceasing to be at the centre of institutional critique.

Connection: I think an interesting comparison is the corporate model of Rembrandt that is always referred to in pop culture, who chose to be marketable to be free from the constraints of his patrons. I've also been asked many times by friends what was the difference between Rembrandt's style after his bankruptcy. And the model about artistic labour again reminds me of a group of American minimalist artists such as Donald Judd, whose artworks were commissioned in factories. I don't think these examples should be seen as counterexamples, but rather as special cases that hold powers in the artistic labour structure. In another word, they have choice.

Summary five: In conclusion, for Katja Commodification is not a solution. Katja sets a target that “to de-commodify work and divorce it from being the source of our livelihood”. Understanding art as a form of work is not fixing it in this structure, but demand wages in current neoliberal world, and dispel the essentialized definition of artistic labour by the genius and creativity narratives.

Summary four: There is an analogy between the predicament of art creation and the Marxist feminists analyzing of domestic work. Domestic work is defined as an attribute of being a woman, not an extra effort/labour.

Two key contributions from feminist epistemology are, 1. the condition for creating invisibility in working is the separation of public and private field, but the private field still has value creation and exploitation; 2. the essentialisation of working and skill, in other words, the artistic labour is the nature, essence and fate of a small group(artists) in society.

Summary three: Artistic labour becomes the practice field of neoliberal rationality, an internal transformation of work is settled by the instrumentalisation for two aspects—the autonomy and the creativity. By promoting and encouraging both above to generate the self-sufficient, self-relying individual, and then weaving the dream—art creation is not related to business, and one who would make art because they love and want to do it. That back to the argument— the intrinsic/spiritual value of art above the financial income.

Summary two: To review this problem in economy perspective, art separated with other kinds of labour and separated with rewards. Some scholar studied the labour in the art and still focus on its emancipation properties “exceptional non-commodified emancipated work”, others argued the artist actually is the model worker in neoliberal era. In Katja’s opinion, the exceptionality of creative work is the reason of art labour became invisible, vice versa, the exceptionality is supported by the idea of the autonomy of art. All these issues are rooted in the social structure of capitalism neoliberal era

Summary one: The ideology of western art is: art is not same as work, and low paid situation is the inevitable outcome for artists. Because art is outside the realm of labouring, it emerges continually as a product/evidence of self-expression, witchcraft and creativity. The basis of praise for the artist is the mystification of art creation and the veiling of art labour.

The Hyphenated identities made people notice an alternative reality and broke the hegemony position of experience and nationalism. Exhibitions that had segregated ideas turn attention to gender, sexuality or disability, these are the experiences of long-time marginalized individuals/groups embodied in art spaces and discourses. These experiences bring variety and complexity to the art world as well.

Connection: this working style reminds me a video work Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death by Arthur Jafa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR8DsmLMX04

Katherine corresponds learning and presenting in art practice with the note-taking pressure from the education system, for black people the pressure is taking notes and presenting, demonstrating confidence, curiosity, and one's own inadequacies to others, an action that the biases of the educational system have pre-empted. The artist's process of researching, digging and learning is also demonstrated in his work, emphasizing the vulnerability of art creation. The artist's "immature" ideas are examined in a wider social context during the displaying, and discourses are opened by connecting various small ideas with the audience, then forming a network.

Q: What are the pros and cons for creating a character A for a group? It reminds me “everyone was an artist”. For the common, poetic and artistic living means remember self history, and make yourself your own curator-artist-documenter. Is it?

Challenge: Do we need more curators or more artists? Or we need more conditions for conflict?

Fatona said she creating and maintaining the space for herself and Blackness in the art world and academia. She has pressure to work hard, and let people who touch the standard, who want to be credentialized become credentialized. Working in OCAD, she concentrates on expanding the communities and helping people who have fewer voices in the space. For her practice, the care, balance, and enlightening from inside and outside of art are key concepts.

“folks who are interested in supporting the arts, who understand the role of the arts in my life, and in their lives, but who don’t exist in the arts”.

Connection: It reminds me of this movement in 1980s China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_Art_Exhibition

The substance of one exhibition is inside in its method, content and form, they cannot split, they affect each other. This argument doesn’t mean presenting is message or context is content, but tends to have the responsibility that cares about the methodology of curating practice. The author admired exhibitions that have their particular methodology and form, which developed from the material intelligence and risk of the artworks.

Question: How to deal with the questioning of social practice art in the aesthetics field? How can an art hold up under a non-aesthetic, non-mythological discourse? Is art only important for social change and relationships? Throughout the social practice, the artist removed the aura of individualism and the identity of the creator, i.e., their power in artworks, Could curators abandon their power? How? By new institutionalism?

Summary: Collaborative art and social practice formed the scene of the avant-garde in the 2000s. The artist uses social situations to produce dematerialized, antimarket, politically engaged projects. Bourriaud said “art is the place that produces a specific sociability”; Kester argued about the society we live in that “we are reduced to an atomized pseudocommunity of consumers, our sensibilities dulled by spectacle and repetition”. That is, social practice art alleviates separation and alienation of relationships in society, devoted to reconnecting each other. However, the gene and the gesture of social practice art let it be born with no return— social practice art has its political task, and it appears with greatness and morals. Therefore, the author argued for a critique of social practice art, analyzing the questions of ethics and aesthetics involved in these practices.

Question: Is carnival fundamentally irreconcilable with the nature of museums and institutions?

Summary: In this paragraph and several paragraphs above, Claire Tancons cited many critics’ discussions and essays of Mas. They demonstrate the similarities and differences between Mas and performance art: Is mas performance art or not? could Mas be discussed within the Western criticism structure? or Mas lead over the performance art that is defined in Western art history—“features practically all the dynamics of cutting-edge performance art and installation while predating those forms by over a century”. Then, Claire summarized that Cozier’s contribution is he developed Minshall’s Mas, which is the Mas are strategies of theatre and visual art to bring new shape and meaning to traditional carnivals; he uses concept moments and monuments to define Mas. Aside from traditional documents, a carnival is a memory place, a discourse place encompasses the existence of actions and moments.

C & Q: I am not sure what's that means "two-story rather tony building was gutted by fire ", "ex-stable", "waiting to be invaded by the rawer sensiblities of these artists led by Mother Marien as the figure of Victory". I checked the history of A Space and the Nightingale Arts Council but there is no information on the details. Is this a short review of one exhibition, or this is a story of their early address?

https://web.archive.org/web/20181012105008/http://ccca.concordia.ca/traffic/profiles/a-space_profile.html

C: Here I found an essay, it gives a overview of this Miss General Idea Pageant.

https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/in_depth/general-idea-54852

SummaryFive: Bronson puts forward that ANNPAC is a structure, a union of museums by artist. ANNPAC is a being, outside of its particular physicalities. Artist settled in this flux of dream-galleries, to live as the things-as-it-is, to dream and grasp the art world as their archetype dreams. From the other side, Bronson would like to discuss the problem of bureaucracy. The signature characteristic of bureaucracy is a series of long and pedantically democratic meetings. He points out that most ARCs are suffered from the national images/features and trapped in questions of self-image/self-definition/standpoint.

SummaryFour: In 1971, File magazine published by General Idea. For File magazine and publications, first it is an archive that respond artist’s networking through media, it collected images, manuscripts, and ephemera. Then it is a medium, let artists to see their networks and generate their self-images, and let them to be a component of the scene. For videos, Bronson said it is “the only way to see ourselves is to see ourselves on TV”, video is such important for artists. Bronson argued that artist publication and video records are two parts of connective tissue. Archives and videos they depict a dynamic, fragmental and asynchronous pattern in different interaction.

SummaryThree: After Intermedia Faded, a bunch of ARCs were established across Canada. This period started in 1967, “summer of love” was a landmark movement; then founded of ANNPAC in 1976 was the climax. Some ARCs in this time are: NE Things Co., a simulation of modern business and management, the couple have their exclusive art practice method and bypass the gallery system. Image Bank, letters were sent through the postal system to allow artists to communicate with each other and built decentralized art scene; General Idea, by connecting and co-op with other ARCs (Image Bank, Coach House), they performed Miss General Idea Pageant; Nightingale Art Council curated exhibition Concept 70 that showed works by General Idea, Dennis Oppenheim, Ian Carr-Harris…and Nightingale Art Council created a simply space, which is A Space gallery. Finally, Bronson mentioned a key link is travel grant established by Canada council. With such a funding, artists are able to travel to the openings, seminars, projects. It decreased the connection built by media like postal system, made artists have more and more actual contact.

SummaryTwo: AA Bronson defined the function of media, which is a necessary configuration, a mean to form a tissue (also ARCs and Canadian Art Scene), as well as a draft painting to depict Canadian Art Scene. In 1960s, American art scene and media promotion still concealed Canada, Canadian was lack of their own voice and exposing. In later 60s, Intermedia is the first artist-run centre in Canada. For Bronson, Intermedia is “unbeatable, unforgettable and indescribable wonder”; to seen Intermedia set up was like tasting blood to him. In 1960s, Intermedia and General Idea became the earliest appearing group of ARCs (collectives, artist groups).

SummaryOne: AA Bronson argued that art scenes of Canada is “sea to shining sea connective tissue” and “a dream projected upon the national landscape”, he pointed the importance of the REAL museum, magazine and artist to art scenes. In his era, a large number of artists do not have the opportunity to appear in the mainstream platform. Therefore, Artists connected with each other and built Canadian art scenes through media, thus also recorded, reflected and displayed themselves. These connections based on media also spawned organizations, artist groups and ARCs. 

This reminds me artist Hiba Abdallah's work REHEARSING DISAGREEMENT. It is a section of a one year program, Art in Use, which is commissioned by MOCA. “The installation investigates ways to explore disagreement and conflict through the lens of art within the structure of a museum“. Here, MOCA freeing up the space for the artist and his interactive installations and actively engaging the audience in this opinion-generating art installation.

http://hibaabdallah.com/rehearsing-disagreement

Questions: Does the new institutionalism is limited in European or Western discourse? Whether new institutionalism should not define as a theory, is it just a self-renewal technique for traditional institutions? Does the new institutionalism allow mainstream institutions to crowd out alternative spaces?

Summary: The second stage of institution critique in 1980 regarded artworks and meanings are generated in the relationship, which is “encounter the demand of place and the methods of producer”. In this stage, criticizing and reflecting of institutions more from the roles(curator, artist, cultural producers) that collaborative or affiliated with museums, author named them “fellow traveler”. Some scholars suggests the participation and reflection of institutions should regard as the replacement of the canonized institution critique, which distinguished from the first stage of institution critique in 1970s. In this situation, curators neither fully represents the institution nor sees as a cultural producer as Szeemann. Therefore, they are able to encounter art in a pure ways. However, due to curators’ status on the power structure of art ecosystem, and the different prespectives of curators and artists in institutions, the practices and demonstration also could be seen as a role-playing game of host and guest.

For curators and cultural organizations, how can make these datas more transparent? How to make statistic datas to express and teach public in a efficiently ways?

Summary: Author In this paragraph with the following twos provides some solutions to meliorate the narratives in the exhibiting space, especially in the mainstream platform (public gallery, museum, biennale). These points are also constructed thoughts of curatorial activism and brought new curatorial approaches. The curatorial activist should push forward the statistic data transparent, let the public walk out from the discrepancy of perception; The mainstream curator should suspect the Greatness that existed in institution, to make sure the greatness is not just represented by western/white artists; Curators must have the determination to review themselves and self-critique. Curators should be cautious about their thoughts and the cultural significance behind them.

These data reminds me a report TORONTO’S VISUAL ARTS SCENE by the Greenline. In the second part Feature, two engineers collect personal informations about the artists contracted in galleries, which is artist's age, gender, nationality, place of birth… then they built a databases to express the diversity of Toronto art ecosystem. I’m sad to see that after I clicked the category Chinese-Canadian or Chinese in the legend to exclude them from the pie chart, I don’t even notice any change of the pie chart. They are just two slight lines on this pie chart.

https://thegreenline.to/issue/visual-arts-scene-toronto/#part_two_feature

Q: Except for Gesamtkunstwerk and the hero character of a curator that Wagner and Szeemann created. What other roles of curator and ways of presenting artistic events?

Connection: Holding lots of events and theatralization of the museum remind me chief Ferran Adrià was invited into the documenta 12. He didn’t go to Kassel but kept a table in his restaurant El Bulli as exhibiting space, and two audiences in Kassel would be chosen to have a meal at his restaurant. I think this example illustrates that museum space has been reconfigured, and the experience of flowing in space as well as time prompts the viewer to speculate about how artistic event goes about constructing out art history, which is the position of documentation in media space. In this case, the discussion and controversy over Ferran Adrià, biennial and alternative exhibition space are still frequently mentioned in critique.

Summary: The exhibition of contemporary museum kept amount of past artistic events through multiple means such as digital memories, these artistic events all became documentations. At the same time, the traditional artworks are shown as the things. Through the preservation and comparison of traditional works, artistic events and documentation, through analyzing the relationship between events and its records, the past documentations have re-energized and became part of the discourse of new events. However documentation, because of its recorded perspective and transience, is different from the reproduction of traditional works. For exhibiting space, presentation of relationships and examination of eventfulness make the flow of time thematized. For the space and each element within it (the audience, the work, the record), their fixed state of being is thus forgotten and entered into the flow of time.

Connection: This line reminds me about the studies of art history. Art history is loose organized with discourses varying from region to region, and at the same time a cohesive enterprise that shaping collective memory, it could be build together; the exhibiting space expressed this situation very well. We need to build more connection and partnership horizontally, but it is obvious that under the difference of art history in this world, there is a standard, a narration goes through everywhere. Examples of Centre Pompidou and the Stedelijk showed two different kinds of tendencies. And then later on the case in China, showing the pursuit for the Western canon. In non-western museums, the artworks of the Western canon is more of a trophy, or like a loss leader of a grocery store, which is a irony and at the same time a compliment. This case is a reverse perspective that reflected the geopolitical reality of the world. All these phenomena remind me of Saudi Arabia and PIF‘s efforts to shape the country's image in sports (soccer) in this summer.

Question: I’m not sure of what is meant by cultural journey here and also Stuart Hall’s attitude, is it means the process of an artist living, studying, and making art in different regions? or the artist have the authority to represent one region once he has lived there? or artist is actually caught in a state of cultural dislocation and diaspora.

Summary: The first part (intro and theoretical aspects) of this essay describes the discrepancy of the claim of decolonization theories and the theoretical practice in institutions.

From the postcolonial to decolonial thinking, the decolonial thinking emphasized the practical action, rather than straight borrowing the thought form non-Eurocentric ideas and postcolonial theories to reveal the state of cultural scenes in the second half of 20th century. Decolonization theories built on the critiques of Eurocentrism and Third World fundamentalisms, colonialism and nationalism.

In decolonization, some radical theoreticians regards the postcolonial theories as a covert repetition of the colonialism. As Araeen’s argument about Bhabha, Said and Hall, he criticized them for their cooperative attitude about multicultural project in agency without prudence, “it would be anhistorical and would help promote ‘postcolonial exotica’”. This would put post-colonial societies into a systematic cultural deviation. In general, about the decolonial thinking, theoreticians was caught up in the eternal recurrence of self-correcting. In this first part, the writer also puts forward a question,“What do we expect from theory and from the theoreticians?”