"On Curating: Interviews with Ten International Curators" by Carolee Thea

On Curating: Interviews with Ten International Curators by Carolee Thea

This is a slim but dense collection of 10 interviews conducted by independent curator and scholar Carolee Thea, garnered I believe between 2000 and 2008. The focus is on internationalism with an impressive roster: Joseph Backstein (Russian director of several museums in Moscow), Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (who is curating the 2012 Documenta), Okwui Enwezor (born in Nigeria and currently at the San Francisco Art Institute), Charles Esche (director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven), Massimiliano Gioni (curator at the New Museum in NY), RoseLee Goldberg (founder of PERFORMA festival in NY), Mary Jane Jacob, (Art Institute in Chicago), Pi Li (dealer and curator in Korea), Virginia Perez-Ratton (running a non-profit space in Costa Rica) Rirkrit Tiravanija (master of all enterprises, living in NY, Bangkok, and Berlin).

These are people with complex career paths, many of which cross several national borders in addition to job definitions (critic, artist, curator, dealer, etc.) As such, they operate in a realm of the visual art world that is different than my immediate experience. I can't even keep track of all the biennials, triennials, festivals, and more mentioned in these relatively short essays. And there is a large focus on politics and social engagement, which isn't my strength in terms of curating.

But the interviews are quite engaging. They are short, almost too short, but Thea jumps right into issues and ideas, often focusing on a specific complex project, such as Gioni's collaboratively curated 4th Berlin Biennial, or Enwezor's Documenta XI from 2002. While I'm not familiar enough with these specific exhibitions/events to comment on the curators' own thoughts, I will say that Thea does a good job of pushing the curators to really consider their approaches to projects and their outcomes. In the interview with Russian curator Joseph Backstein, Thea calls him out for trivializing if not romanticizing the Soviet era, actually saying to him in response to his comments "This is bogus." That's fun to read in an interview, having a person actually respond to an answer as opposed to following a script.

Unlike "A Brief History of Curating", which featured interviews with curators by Hans Ulrich Obrist, "On Curating" as LOADS of photographs. If not of the exhibitions being discussed then of artworks by artists mentioned in the interview. This helps tremendously, particularly if the reader, like myself, is not "in the know" with these projects.

I found this idea put forth by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev interesting: "Hans Ulrich Obrist employs a Boetti strategy, providing simple rules to produce a kind of chaos, and another order arises. This is creative curating: taking over the creative side too much, the curator may seem to become the artist and the artworks may seem to be illustrations of his or her idea, but in reality, the curator is playing a game, creating a decoy which may seem protagonistic but is actually a device, a magic trick to keep the interface between the world at large and art in a state of positive misunderstanding." I love that idea, of an exhibition as a decoy.

I was surprised for some reason by how much I enjoyed the interview with Gioni, he was more straightforward and candid than I expected. Here's a great quote regarding the art world: "It goes in cycles, but without the artist, none of this exists."

That's reassuring to read, don't you think?