Curatorial Plays
Curatorial Plays
When the curatorial concept becomes the object of research, the result usually generates much less pleasure and stimuli than an investigation and presentation of artworks in their own right. The curatorial position in fact, when restricted through voluntary abdication, is turned into something similar to a performance: it enacts the predetermined tasks as though they were a script.Hoffmann seems to have adopted the institution as a framework limiting his freedom, similar to his previous curatorial games.The curator second and art first? It appears so. But appearances may deceive. Francesco Manacorda speaks to Jens Hoffmann, new director of the ICA in London. About the theatricality of his exhibitions and the beauty of games and limitations. Self-reflexive exhibition making usually dissects and analyses the fundamental stages of curatorial practice. Often the gesture of putting to the foreground what is normally concealed is valued for its potential to generate experimental results and it aims for a critical understanding of this process. In the last years, Jens Hoffmann has become one of the prominent representatives of such practice. The conceptual framework that allows curating to be the subject of his investigations usually involves a formula, a question or a delegation to other players. It not only follows the sine qua non of any game (rigid instructions and a restricted group of players) but can also be seen as derivative of conceptual art’s experimentations with play and performance art’s enactment of a predetermined task. One of his first curatorial experiments, The Show Must Go On, took place at the NY Guggenheim in 1999. At the same time as the museum’s exhibition on motorcycles beside the presentation of the permanent collection, Hoffmann showed works by five artists on a shelf in his office. He sees it as: ‘the first project I did that responded to today’s exhibition business and the first that in a creative way challenged the idea of what an institution can do.’ The act of staging an art exhibition where it is conceived, logistically produced and organised can be paired to another project, A Show That Will Show That a Show Is Not Only a Show (Los Angeles, 2002). This exhibition opened when Hoffmann began researching it, and it changed continuously in its three months research period to include events and a growing archive of material from other exhibitions. The gallery became a stage where the performance was the curatorial research, literally presenting the process by which an exhibition comes together. Hoffmann explains: ‘The show aimed to present a curatorial strategy that would react to the increasing deficiency of time allowed for curatorial research. The concept of long-term exhibition planning was re-examined, as the research and the development of this exhibition started only with the first day of the show.’ Hoffmann’s shows always include a prescribed set of rules simultaneously restricting and enabling the curatorial performance. However, when an exhibition’s theme is conceived as the main content, it risks overshadowing the works in it, and if pushed to an extreme, could exist with no works at all, as Hoffmann claimed in the press release for The Exhibition as a Work of Art (Rio de Janeiro, 2003). On that occasion, the exhibition was composed of wall texts of the responses by curators, critics and artists to the question of whether a show can be an autonomous artwork. This experiment took place at the Escola De Artes Visuais and aimed to gather an overview of curatorial practices in Brazil. The outcome was an open discussion and an exhibition with no art. Hoffmann recounts: ‘Some of the participants replied affirmatively and others negated it. Ultimately, the questions whether or not an exhibition can be a work of art is not necessarily interesting. It is more the possibility to allow a thought to arise that might indicate that there are more creative ways in which an exhibition can gain form.’ Not surprisingly, Hoffmann was trained as a theatre director and he reveals that this was his path into contemporary art: ‘I have always been interested in a crossover of theatre and visual arts. In 1997 I was asked to organise the theatre program of Documenta X, which seemed like a perfect fit for my interests, and this was the moment in which I stepped out of the theatre world moving more and more towards the visual arts.’ The programme was organised in a very dynamic way. Ten theatre directors were asked to go to the exhibition opening in order to experience the show and get the chance to talk to Catherine David and to the artists. They subsequently had to come up with a proposal for a new production related to the show, perhaps collaborating with one of the artists. This first encounter seems to have opened a door allowing the two worlds to become interconnected. Since, Hoffmann has constructed variations on this theme.Hoffmann’s debut as Director of Exhibitions at London’s ICA, Artists’ Favourites, stands at the cusp of this dual practice. It is an exhibition of works selected by forty artists as their personal most-loved work of art, accompanied by the selectors’ statements explaining their choice. The first striking feature of this game is its ambiguous identity: while it is an exhibition of works of art that are richly significant, it is also an exhibition of statements uttered by absent practitioners – the selectors – who portray themselves via some else’s work. More openly than on previous occasions, Hoffmann dealt with the limited set of components by casting them in a theatrical framework. The exhibition was in fact split into two parts, referred to as Act One and Act Two, and the accompanying ‘programme’ listed all the acting participants in their different roles. Hoffmann attempts to downplay this theatrical reference: ‘many of the theatrical allusions are completely intentional, while others just emerged while we went along.’ Although he might describe it as but a secondary facet, this factor of theatrics is the most meaningful channel into the exhibition and its most innovative aspect. In Artists’ Favourites the artworks and the explanatory texts perform as characters based on their absent selectors. The curator directs them, constructing the narrative interplay. Following this approach, the exhibition ‘ground’ becomes a frozen stage where the exhibits stand both for themselves and as indices of a judgement. They are the traces of an absence (the ultimate example is Tiravanija selecting John Cage’s 4’33”), like actors in a play. The works and texts in the exhibition are also carefully composed self-portraits. Some artists were trying to make a display of intelligence, others selected works that they could have done themselves. Others came across as mythic identification (André Cadere selected by Orozco), political statements, and finally confirmations of pure passion – such as Susan Hiller’s declaration of unconditional love for Kurt Schwitters. In Act Two, the artist group Art and Language, which was invited as a selector, short-circuited Hoffmann’s game by presenting a work made by one of its members. The text-based artwork in an over-rhetorical tone expresses that ‘the institutional instruments of management and curatorship are not here disrupted, but rather magnified […] the curatorial presence in the exhibition has been doubled’. Hoffmann’s intention to question and disperse his position of power by handing over the reins to the artists is a trompe l’oeil. The curator’s central role only seems surrendered. Perhaps involuntarily, the partial delegation to the artists or to other actors of the curatorial process ends up re-invigorating, instead of downsizing, the directing role as curator. The curatorial position in fact, when restricted through voluntary abdication, is turned into something similar to a performance: it enacts the preset tasks as though they were a script. Hoffmann openly indicates that his London debut is a watershed: ‘This show has a particular meaning for me. I see it as a summary of previous projects, and also as the beginning of something else that I want to embark upon. I see many of the exhibitions that I have done before almost as exercises that I had to go through in order to analyse and understand the nature of exhibitions and of my practice. Now that this aspect is somewhere behind me it can take a step back or maybe even two steps back but it will be present anyway while I do something completely different.’Hoffmann’s strategy of limiting his own power of decision in order to investigate aspects of curating seems to have been an apprenticeship that will further develop inside the institution. Such a position leaves less room for extreme experimentation, as an institution’s public mission implies an attitude of accountability towards its audience. This means that the degree of Hoffmann’s experimentation has to switch levels: ‘I definitely will not overemphasize the curatorial aspect of the exhibitions that we will organize at the ICA. I’m glad about the constraint imposed on me by the institutional setting because it forces me to think in a different way about exhibitions.’ Hoffmann seems to have adopted the institution as a framework limiting his freedom, similar to his previous curatorial games; they both constitute conceptual challenges that set a creative solution in motion. The institution becomes then a new set of rules to be tested and played with. Hoffmann continues: the ICA and its role in London might become a direct target of future investigations in making exhibitions.
Francesco Manacorda