As Kaiama Glover once reminded me, part of the definition of the noun resilience is not only “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness”66https://www.dictionary.com/browse/resilience but also the ability to return to that shape that one, or the object, was in before the difficulty, or injury, occurred.
Is it resilience to continue to hold the same space/shape?
Wading as refusal of the logics of our domination and diminution
"wading as refusal" engaging in renewal is also a form of refusal—refusal to accept the status quo or dominant systems of power and control.
What is individual wellness in an ill system?
Sharpe asks "what is individual wellness in an ill system?" . But what is individual wellness regardless of the system? To me this seems to call to the marketing efforts of "wellness" a billion dollar industry looking to sell us "things" (apps, wearables, clothing, supplements, memberships) all in the name of making us feel better. Individual wellness in an ill system fuels our current capitalist economy, creates silos in communities. Can an individual be well if they are living in an ill system? Seems contradictory...can they co-exist?
Scholars Strike Canada
10 Demands made by Scholars Strike Canada in October 2023: https://www.scholarstrikecanada.ca/teach-in-summary-2023
To make matters worse, the time-based mode of many cinematic installation works precludes a truly shared discourse around them; if works are too long, spectators will simply desert them. What would be seen as an act of betrayal in a cinema—leaving the projection while it lasts—becomes standard behavior in any spatial installation situation. In the installation space of the museum, spectators indeed become traitors—traitors of cinematic duration itself.
I would challenge this statement as well...perhaps I don't fully understand what Steyerl is referring to? Yes, in cinema leaving mid-projection could be considered traitorous, however, isn't this free will? Further, a capitalist/economical response to spending money to see a specific film and then disliking your purchase so you don't want to experience the whole thing. Whereas in the museum/gallery the cinematic installation is part of the whole exhibit, and sometimes not meant to be experienced for its full duration. We just experienced this with the 3 hour long piece at "On Americanity" at Onsite Gallery. Where the film is not meant to be watched for it's full length but rather it is long to express a certain feeling (dedication etc) in the work itself, which contributes to the entire exhibition.
This extreme control over visibility sits rather uncomfortably alongside the perception of the museum as a public space. What does this invisibility then say about the contemporary museum as a public space? And how does the inclusion of cinematic works complicate this picture?
I would challenge this point in that perhaps when this was written there was a greater distinction between public and private space. However today, this "invisibility" no longer holds true. With social media and iphones, cameras and filming has become inherent in how works are displayed and are used as tools to increase visibility in to the museum.
There is a lot of money in this game, for it is in many cases financed by municipalities, monarchs, and oligarchs who have discovered in the cultural field a new, advanced form of social capital.
This reminds me of an exhibition I saw in 2000 in The Guggenheim in Bilbao Spain called “The Art of the Motorcycle”. It was sponsored by BMW. The exhibition started in the Guggenheim NY and was toured to Bilbao and Las Vegas because it was very successful. Where the first show in NY is said to have increased attendance by “45% daily” and “attracted the largest crowds ever at that museum, and received mixed but positive reviews in the art world, with the exception of some art and social critics who rejected outright the existence of such a show at an institution like the Guggenheim, condemning it for excessive populism, and for being compromised by the financial influence of its sponsors.” (Wikipedia) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_the_Motorcycle#:~:text=The%20exhibition%20attracted%20the%20largest,excessive%20populism%2C%20and%20for%20being
At the other end of the spectrum, some of the most fruitful investigations of public life and art are occurring in the most private, sequestered site of all—the home. For just as the public space has become diminished as a civic site, the home has become, in many senses, a more public, open forum. The public world comes into each home as it never has before, through television, radio, and personal computer.
PERHAPS ANOTHER ONE OF the great problems of public art today stems from its fundamentally ecumenical intentions. Artists striving to meet the needs of their public audience have too easily subscribed to the notion that these needs can best be met through an art of the widest possible relevance. The ideas of ecumenicism and relevance are not onerous, but they can have—and in the case of public art, often do have—insidious and oppressive dimensions. For broad-based appeal and the search for a universal common denominator are not a priori esthetic concepts, but a posteriori results. Reverse that order, and the art’s in trouble, for art is an investigation, not an application. So it’s disturbing when it looks as if artists are campaigning for public office—going for the majority consensus at all costs.
SP: Phillips believes one of the significant challenges in contemporary public art is its overly inclusive approach. Artists often feel compelled to create art with broad relevance, assuming this is what the public wants. While ecumenical and relevant art ideas aren't inherently bad, they can become problematic. When artists prioritize broad appeal and seek universal common ground, they risk compromising their artistic integrity. Art should be an exploration, not just a crowd-pleasing exercise, and it's concerning when it appears as though artists are trying to cater to the majority consensus at any cost.
Question: Keeping in mind this article was written in 1994. Do you believe the above statement to be true today? I feel that while public art has sought to reach a broad appeal in the past this is slowly changing.
In fact, some of the answers to these questions will be found in other questions: those that address the implications of the temporary in public art. For in the bureaucratization of public art, there has been a tremendous emphasis on the installation of permanent projects. (Organizations such as the Public Art Fund Inc. and Creative Time, Inc.—dedicated to sponsoring short-lived exhibitions and installations in sites throughout New York—are two of the exceptions.) When evaluating proposals for art that will be commissioned to last “forever,” it is not shocking that selection panels have often clammed up and chosen the safe, well-traveled path of caution. When faced with the expanses of eternity, it is not surprising that many artists themselves have tended to propose those cautious, evenhanded solutions. Therefore, the temporary is important because it represents a provocative opportunity to be maverick, or to be focused, or to be urgent about immediate issues in ways that can endure and resonate. But I would argue that the power of the temporary asserts itself productively and genuinely in situations where the pressure of the moment is implicit in the work. Seen in these terms, the temporary is not about an absence of longterm exhibition commitment on the part of any particular sponsor, but about a pledge of a different kind, with more compressed intensity, on the part of the artist.
The City of New York, for example, has granted many developers the right to upscale the height or bulk of their buildings, contingent upon their agreement to provide a little more “public space” at ground level. But what qualities and characteristics these spaces must offer have been inconsistently interpreted. Thus public space has served as a great new incentive—not to be “public,” however, but to satisfy far more profit-motivated market objectives. When public space and public art seem to appear spontaneously, it is usually because some savvy or enlightened developer has discovered that beauty can be profitable, and that offering something to the community (even if no one really understands the nature of the gift) can enhance the corporate image. In the same way that “good fences make good neighbors,” the clear delineation of a public space has been packaged as a neighborly gesture, with public art the fence that identifies boundaries.
ONE BASIC ASSUMPTION THAT has underwritten many of the contemporary manifestations of public art is the notion that this art derives its “publicness” from where it is located. But is this really a valid conception?
Public art—as it is normally understood and encountered today—is a nascent, and perhaps naive, idea. It bears so little resemblance to earlier manifestations—especially the most immediate precedent of civic, elegiac art of the 19th and early 20th centuries—that the idea of a historical progression of uninterrupted continuity seems spurious; there are few instructive models. And so, though public art in the late 20th century has emerged as a full-blown discipline, it is a field without clear definitions, without a constructive theory, and without coherent objectives. When the intentions have been apparent they are usually so modest (amenity) or so obvious (embellishment or camouflage) that they seem to have little to do with art at all. In short, the making of public art has become a profession, whose practitioners are in the business of beautifying, or enlivening, or entertaining the citizens of, modern American and European cities. In effect, public art’s mission has been reduced to making people feel good—about themselves and where they live. This may be an acceptable, and it certainly is an agreeable, intention, but it is a profoundly unambitious and often reactionary one. And even these small goals are infrequently satisfied; public art doesn’t generally please or placate, or provide any insistent stimulation. Instead, public art today, for the most part, occupies. And just at the moment when so much apparatus has been assembled and oiled that might aid in the development of a rigorous critical foundation for public art, there is a growing feeling of—well, why bother? Indeed, an enterprise that emerged with such idealism now feels like a lost opportunity.
gent one.
Test
We all knew the importance of seeing ourselves.
Question: Representation is important. However, in the context of this article, I question what makes up the "Canadian Identity" to the author a that time. Suddenly making videos is a "Canadian thing". Is it the producing or is it the content of these videos?
Although the diversity of possible institutions is wide, there are clearly certain models which do not happen here (as Fashion Moda, in New York), and those started on entrepreneurial rather than bureaucratic or museum models, tend to crumble under the weight of the national characteristics (chorus: bureaucratic tendencies and the protestant work ethic), to participate in the nationally funded cultural character, not as it is defined in Secretary of State studies, but as it defines itself within this sketch of an art world, in which each centre plays its restless role, takes poses, tries stances before certain genre backdrops, assumes certain props and gestures to create the indicated reality of its politics, style, affiliations… all in front of the same camera, each in turn flexing particular muscles, but generally participating in the unspoken network of spontaneously generated rules of self perception. These are museums by artists.
SP: Bronson goes on to say that while they were successful in creating ANNPAC, a place where a Canadian Artist will finally have the opportunity to develop a "connective tissue" to create an "art scene", the museum run by artists is still fraught with bureaucracy. While the artist may feel free to follow their "poetic aspirations" they are still met with the bureaucracy of the "real world". Further more that even when the artist run museum is run in an entrepreneurial model (VS museum "bureaucratic" model) it is subject to "participating in the unspoken network of spontaneously generated rules of self perception".
As an artist writing about museums by artists, about my own history, which is a story beginning in 1968, a Canadian story with elaborately Canadian characters dreaming the Canadian dream of one community, that is a network of communities, sea to sea, in that reticent evocation of collective consciousness which seems our national destiny; as a Canadian artist then, wanting a Canadian art scene just like in New York, or London, or Paris in the thirties; as a Canadian artist typically unable to picture the reality of a Canadian art scene except as a dream projected upon the national landscape as a sea-to-shining-sea connective tissue; that is as a dream community connected by and reflected by the media; that is, authenticated by its own reflection in the media; as such a Canadian artist desiring to see not necessarily himself, but the picture of his art scene pictured on TV; and knowing the impossibility of an art scene without real museums (the Art Gallery of Ontario was not a real museum for us), without real art magazines (and artscanada was not a real art magazine for us), without real artists (no, Harold Town was not a real artist for us, and we forgot that we ourselves were real artists, because we had not seen ourselves in the media – real artists, like Frank Stella, appeared in Artforum magazine); as such an artist desiring such a picture of such a scene, such a reality from sea-to-shining-sea, then, it was natural to call upon our national attributes – the bureaucratic tendency and the protestant work ethic – and working together, and working sometimes not together we laboured to structure, or rather to untangle from the messy post-Sixties spaghetti of our minds, artist-run galleries, artists’ video, and artist-run magazines. And that allowed us to allow ourselves to see ourselves as an art scene. And we did.
Connection: I found this opening paragraph problematic in that I could not get past the comparisons of a non-existent “Canadian art scene” with that of “New York, London and Paris”. Wouldn’t it make sense to compare existing art scenes in Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver with other international cities? It truly felt as though this was not a fair or accurate comparison to make. What were the connections in the USA, France and England that made the art scenes in New York, Paris, and London more vibrant than those in Canada? I found the article to be ironic at times and was pleased that that irony was identified further in the text when explaining the Grand Art Ceremony at the AGO. It led me to explore more of AA Bronsons work and I came across this article in Art Forum by Richard Rhodes. The article is a review the 20th anniversary of Bronson’s “From Sea to Shining Sea” exhibit at the Power Plant 26 June – 19 August 1987. The exhibit “chronicles the history of artist-initiated activity in Canada”. Rhodes writes, “Listening to Bronson’s version of recent Canadian art history, you’d think it was one long epic mope in a vacuum. You wouldn’t know Montreal, London, and Vancouver had had vital, energetic art scenes before the artist-run centers were established..”
https://www.artforum.com/events/from-sea-to-shining-sea-221806/
However, another aspect of New Institutionalism can be told as an ostensible success story.
Connection: In their interview with Charles Esche, he expands his explanation that he never really agreed with the term ‘new Institutionalism’. He goes on to explain that what they were doing at the time was “learning by doing” and these acts were more adequately described as “experimental”. They wanted the institution to become an active space, “part community centre, part laboratory, part school and not so much the showroom function that traditionally belonged to the art space.” He goes on to say that “new Institutionalism, ‘ actually did not produce anything stable and lasting as ‘new institutions’. But they did produce experimental results, which informed what he was doing at the Van Abbenmuseum”, and why the term “experimental” to describe what they were doing was more adequate than “new”. https://www.on-curating.org/issue-21-reader/we-were-learning-by-doing.html
For our review of the discourse of New Institutionalism it is particularly interesting that these various debates were initially conducted without ties to particular disciplines. The key actors were theorists, curators and artists who discussed their own institutional practice. There was little reference to a possible history of research on institutions or any attempt to write such a history. This is linked to the fact that the historical reflection on exhibition practices only becomes more widely established around the same time as the discourse of New Institutionalism. A little later, in 2010, Charles Esche with Mark Lewis edited the series Exhibition Histories for Afterall Books, thus creating an important platform for the historicizing of the curatorial.
SP No. 4 edited: The key point to note here is that Kolb and Fluckiger indicate that discussions/debates surrounding ‘New Institutionalism’ were conducted by theorists, curators, and artists rather than being tied to specific academic disciplines. Also, during this time, there was minimal reference to a historical research background on institutions. The historical reflection on exhibition practices started gaining prominence concurrently with the emergence of ‘New Institutionalism’. In 2010, Charles Esche and Mark Lewis edited the "Exhibition Histories" series for Afterall Books, contributing to the historical analysis of curatorial practices.
The motivation of Ekeberg’s New Institutionalism to group together institutions characterized by a focus on (critical) examination of the organization and disposition of art was also shared by other protagonists and corresponded to a certain necessity, perhaps even a “coherent cultural movement.”[14] An example is Jorge Ribalta, curator of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), who conceived of institutional practice as “experiments in a new institutionality.” Ribalta spoke explicitly against valuing the exhibition above other activities, instead recommending that institutions develop workshops, lectures, publications or online activities as “alternatives to the dominant models of museums,” which are committed to a traditional view of the art object and to spectacle. His 2001 project Las Agencias situated MACBA as a collaborator of social movements by defining the art institution as a working space for social activists. According to Ribalta, the politicization of the institution by enabling it to become a place for collaboration with activists and thus “part of social struggles” seemed essential.[15]
SP No3 edited: ** Ekeberg's New Institutionalism, which focused on critically examining how art institutions are organized and functioned, was shared by other figures in the art world, thereby creating a sort of cultural movement. This movement in the early 2000’s emphasized the importance of workshops, lectures, publications, and online activities as alternatives to the more traditional museum models. Furthermore they were not only examining how the institution functioned itself, but how it engaged with the public.
-- The motivation behind Ekeberg's New Institutionalism, which focused on critically examining how art institutions are organized and functioned, was shared by other figures in the art world, thereby creating a sort of cultural movement. For example, Jorge Ribalta, curator of MACBA, advocated for viewing institutions as spaces for experimentation in a new form of institutionality. He emphasized the importance of workshops, lectures, publications, and online activities as alternatives to traditional museum models centered on exhibitions. Ribalta's project "Las Agencias" positioned MACBA as a collaborator with social movements, aiming to make the institution part of social struggles.
Similarly, curator Jens Hoffmann organized the "Institution 2" exhibition and seminar in Helsinki in 2003, focusing on ten European art institutions with flexible and progressive approaches to engaging with art and the public. The goal was to explore various institutional models and highlight their differences and strategies.
reflections on a change of direction in the relationships between art institution, artists and visitors.”
Connection 1: My personal connection to this statement and the idea of art institution as community centre is my experience bringing my children to the Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors Exhibit at the AGO, in 2018. The children were two and seven years old at the time. The children interacted with this exhibit like none other they had attended to date (albeit early in their lives!). It was not their first time in an art exhibit, but it was their first time interacting with “immersive” art in a gallery. The two-year-old, was taken by the final exhibit in the “Obliteration Room”, where visitors were provided with dot stickers to be applied in a white room with white furniture. The typical role/experience as visitor changed in this room as for the first time, they were able to touch things and interact with the art. I feel this exhibition at the AGO relates to some of the ideas presented by 'new institutionalism'. Beyond the exhibit itself, the entire building, including stairways and waiting rooms were branded with dot decals, and this extended further into the city in it's promotion of the exhibit with dot pattern decals on streetcars and subways for example.
New Institutionalism
SP No 1: ‘New Institutionalism’ coined by Jonas Ekeburg describes the framing of art practices in mid-sized institutions (from curatorial to educational) from the 1990’s to early 2000’s. During this time these art practices moved away from more “traditional” framing of art seen since the 1920’s, such as solo exhibits and/or thematic displays. The exhibition was conceived as a social project and spread to include integrated events such as: reading groups, online displays, invitation cards, posters, and residencies. These formats were adaptable, open to changed and happened simultaneously and frequently intersected. It is important to note that during this time not all actors adapted/fully accepted the term. Furthermore, in the late 1980’s, the term ‘new museology’ was used to describe emerging studies of the procedures in classical museums. It was conceived that museums were a “place of action”, exhibitions put together with “multiple actors and conceived as political-discursive practices confronting social questions. These approaches often labelled ‘project-based exhibitions’, ‘un-exhibition’, or ‘non-exhibition-based curatorial activities’.”
In his role as museum director Charles Esche continues certain principles of his time at the Rooseum. He creates experimental situations the outcomes of which are not fixed in advance, in accordance with his long-standing interest in open-ended formats. The project Play Van Abbe, for example, investigates the potential of the museum collection as a source for social and political debate and emphasizes the social dimension of the works shown over their status as highlights. Another project, Academy. Learning from the Museum, also refuses the museum’s logic of representation, instead initiating an open, contingent learning process with viewers. This touches on a further aspect of the above-mentioned success story, that ideas associated with New Institutionalism have been partially implemented in large museums. We might say that New Institutionalism “spread like a bug all through the system and upwards in the system.”[43] It has become commonplace to view all aspects of the institution as related to artistic and curatorial work, and almost every large institution operates with a variety of formats, includes a project space or invites artists to engage critically with its collection. Many of the practices emerging from New Institutionalism appear dislocated and reintegrated in other places within the art system. Yet the institutional approaches discussed here are always subject to the danger of being instrumentalized for the reproduction of the very hegemonial logics of production they critique, and it can be criticized that the rhetoric of politicized institutional acting was nothing more than a “flirtation”[44] which was not able to trouble existing conditions. Still, interventions in the structures of art institutions always contain the potential of rendering the politics of these institutions visible, and thus generating new ways of speaking and thinking about the institutional organization of the art field—changes
SP No. 5:
Charles Esche, in his role as a museum director, continues to apply certain principles he practiced during his time at the Rooseum. He creates experimental situations with open-ended outcomes, emphasizing a departure from fixed conventions. For instance, the "Play Van Abbe" project explores the museum's collection as a source for social and political discourse, prioritizing the social aspect of artworks rather than their traditional status as highlights. Another project, "Academy: Learning from the Museum," challenges the museum's representational logic, fostering an open and contingent learning process with viewers.
These approaches reflect how ideas associated with ‘New Institutionalism’ have spread into larger museums. They've led to a shift where all aspects of the institution are viewed in connection with artistic and curatorial work. Many large institutions now incorporate various formats, project spaces, and engage artists in critical interactions with their collections.
However, it's worth noting that while these institutional changes aim to critique existing production norms, there's a risk of them being co-opted to reinforce established power structures. Some argue that the rhetoric of politicized institutional action might have been more of a surface-level "flirtation" than a substantial challenge to existing conditions. Nevertheless, interventions in art institution structures have the potential to make the politics within these institutions visible, fostering new ways of discussing and thinking about how the art field is organized. These changes create new opportunities for action and impact how we can engage with the institutions.
All these elements, as well as the architecture of the space, sound, or light, lose their respective autonomy and begin to serve the creation of a whole in which visitors and spectators are also included. Thus, stationary artworks of the traditional sort become temporalized, subjected to a certain scenario that changes the way they are perceived during the time of the installation because this perception is dependent on the context of their presentation—and this context begins to flow. Thus, ultimately, every curatorial project demonstrates its accidental, contingent, eventful, finite character—in other words, it enacts its own precariousness.
Question 1: Following this theme then, could an architect be considered to be a curator? We spoke briefly at the first class about the broad use of the term curator, however, if the elements in the space and the architecture of the space combine to serve a common purpose / or story, is the the architect the curator? Could this even extend to a broader scale, such as Walter Gropius and the foundation of the Bauhaus movement?
The curatorial project, rather than the exhibition, is then the Gesamtkunstwerk because it instrumentalizes all the exhibited artworks and makes them serve a common purpose that is formulated by the curator
Connection 1: This sentence resonates with me and my experience as an interior designer. The assembly of finishes, and furnishings and their placement, combined with the architecture of the interior space are all controlled by the interior designer. Resulting in a Gestamtkunstwerk or “total art”. The other connection that comes to mind is that of architect Frank Lloyd Wright who controlled all aspects of his projects.