ICI PERSPECTIVES IN CURATING NO.

Talking
contemporary
Curating

T.rry Smith

Sne
te of Art

INDEPENDENT CU RATORS INTERNATIONAL

Caro Christov- B akar giev
On not Flaving an Id ea:
docuMENTA(13)
Director ofthe l4th Istanbul Biennial (2015), lrom I999 to 2001. Other group exhibitions
Caroln Christov-Bakargiev is an organizer of she has organized include Faces itz the Croud,
evens and exlibir ions; a reserrchcr into artstic London and Turin (200'l), Tbe Modems,'lurin
practices, the histories of art, and the politcs (2003), and Citta'Nantru (1997) Her books
of aesthetcs; and a writer. She was recently indrde William. Kenr'lge (Brussels: Socit
appointed director of Castello di Rivoli Museo des Expositions du Paais des Beaux-Arts de
d'Arte Contemporane and Galleria Civica Bruxelles, 1998),Ane Pouera (London: Phaidon,
d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Trin. 1999), and, for dOCUMENTA (13),the 100
Fom 2009 to 2012, she was the artistic director Notes - 100 Thougbts series as well as The Logbook
of dOCUMENTA (13), which took place in (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2012) and Tbe Boo
2012 in Kassel, Germany, as well as n Kabul, Hatje Cantz, 2012) She
of Booles (Osrldern:
Afghansran; Alexandria and Ca.iro, Egypt; and has recently held academic positions, including
Banff, Canada. Previous Christov-Bakargiev the Edith Kreeger Wolf Distingrished \./isiting
was the artistic director ofthe l6th Biennale of Professorship in Art Theory and Practice at
Sy dtey (Reo htt ion s-F ortu s Th at Tint, 2 008) and
o Nortlwestern University (20 I 3-l 5).
chiefcurator at the Castello di Rivoli (2002-8;
interim direcror in 1000). She ws s.nior curator We spoke at the New Museum, New York, on
at PS.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, October 14,2012.

Terry Smith: I am fascinated by the fact that so many curtors

claim that they operate, like artists, mostly through a mixture of
pragmtism and intuition, and by reactive, instinctive response,
rather than by applying reason in the wy of, they say, historians
and theorists. I reject this stereotype, for curators as much as for
artists. I find it interesting instead to ask, what is contemporry
curatorial thought? F{ow can it be expressed in an exhibition?
How do you show the frictions of world difference, and of world
proximity, or of world sameness? How do you show the waywe
live in the "conditions of contemporaneity," as I call them? How
do these conditions actually impact exhibitions? I think that in
many ways, curtors around the world are very interested in
answering these questions, one wy or another. I believe that you

37
CAROL}J CHzu STOV- BAI(ARGIEV
TAI,KING CONTEMPOR{RY CI,RTING

did through dOCUMEI{TA (13), and so I hope we can talk World Waq "'Io write poetry after Auschwitz
is barbaric,,,that
about that.
(Yei, maybe, one could o,;;,' ,;;
Y:::l::!*-'l*,o:1y
rync poerry was possible ar rhar time...) ^t
Carollm Christov-Bakargiev: I have an allergy toward curatorial
discourse in general, and thus to any sort of discourse that would The advanced, digital age of cognitive and
attempt to define the field of contemp orry art. Furthermore, I financial capitalism
in which we live today is baed or,
,. .r"r"t, *hi.h ;r;h;"i;g",
warn you that I always speak with skepticism and, fundamentally, are,much less important th-an they wee
ten, or rwenty, years ago,
with Adornian suspicion: whenever one says anything, it's false at the tail end of the age of spectcle.
the minute it is said. So, it is difficult to hold a conversarion about
curatorial prctice generally, let alone my own.

I also believe in projects and utterances rhat resist summary

the easy idea of the list as exhibition, or a Wikipedia-like
abbreviation of everlrthing. What I like the most about an artistic
project is the resistance of the text to the subject matter it's trying
to imbricate. Everything needs to be apprehended ar the time
that it is said or done, and not outside of its historical and
cultural context.

But you include people like me in your book-the so-called

reticent curator who says, it's all in the exhibition, don't talk
about it, don't do congresses or conferences about curatorial
practice, because you can only do it, you can't speak about it.
Theodor Adorno rightly identified the speechlessness of art in
Europe in the period just after the Second World War.lThen, in
later decades, once criticality, also in the name of Adorno, became
a pre-requisite for meaningfulness in art, some Conceptualists
accused the Art Informel artists and the Art Brut generation-the
artists who understood and embraced this speechlssssss-25
constituting a reactionary conservative impulse. They were
wrong. Certainly, in 1967, to say "I cannot speak about art, I can
only paint" would have been idiotic. But to say, as Adorno did in
1949, faced with the horrors, the unspeakability of the Second

l. Theodor Adorno, "Cultura Criticisrn and

Society" [1951], in Privts, trans Samuel Weber
and Sherry Weber (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press,1988).

38 39
CAROL\J CH RI STOV-BAI'ARGIEV TALKING CONTEMPORARY CURATING

like you looks back at our age, he or she will write a chapter lecture' "Avant-Garde Attitudes," arguing that the core
driver
called "The Curatorial Age," recognizing a time when no one of avant-garde art throughout the laie niieteenth and
nentieth
could speak about art without acknowledging rhe curatorial centuries was the efforts of a few artists to match the
presence. So, most probably, with hindsight, we might see
old Masters
in terms of qraliry.2 To those of us who dreamt of making
that you, T.ry Smith, are actually making art with "curatorial avant-garde breakthroughs, especialry from within such
istant
practice." It is the most topicl material that you could be using. places, this was too .e"ciiorrry to be borne. I
was the yo,rrrgr,
This places your work as an intellectual and researcher in relation member of the staff of the instirute that brought him
ut, tf;e
to those artists-you mention them at cerrain points in the book:
artile as
Power Institute at the universiry of Sydney. y first
Goshka Macuga, Liam Gillick, and so on-who are using the an art critic was an attack on that lecture,
of Greenberg's
curtorial as mterial for their work. One can go back also to principles. Of course,.the key people in Art ""d
& "Languag._Tef.y
Marcel Broodthaers, whom you mention in another capacity: the Atkinson, Michael Baldwin, Joseph Kosurh, Irn Brr?rr,ind --
artrst as curtor Mel Rarirsden-had a.lrgady gon through this ,p,r.rrirrg
of the
formalist father. Arid it is tru that that p,rrrrirg ,prrrr
us on,
Being a Conceptual artisr, a member of the Art & Language for a number of vears.
group, one of the founders of Conceptualart,you've come full
circle and are doing the same thing that was done in the late right up to the presenr, one of the blurbs on rhe
190s, but within a different context. (I'm superficially analyzing ,book.C9Ti"g
rs by
Boris Groys, who describes the book as an,,act
you right nowl) That was very important turn, because it was
of
global mta-curating.,,
the moment when the artist found a kind of emancipation from
the art critic, from the Greenbergian position that imposed its CC-B: I think you are turning it back inro arr, which is
a more
taste on everyone. It is as if there was a voice inside the artist interesting thing, and exactly what Art & Language
did with
saying: I must be able to use these words myself. I don't need verbal commentary.
to have this art critic interpreting and deciding what I'm trying
to say. TS: Yes, but we did it in a particular way, with what
came
to be called "institutional citique" th. goal. There was
This was a power relationship, a slave/master axis that an interesring momenr in l97f when ", DanIel Buren,
Robert
developed because, as we said before, ten years earlier the artist smithson, and others refused to participate in Harald
szeemann,s
had said, I cannot speak because the conditions are unspeakable. Documenta 5. This struck us at the time, and ever since,
as
So, ten years after the art critic seized power, Conceptual artists strangely anachronisric. Even though, at that point,
these
took back the voice and the conceptuali zation of their own artists were denying the romantic view of the artist'as
author,
practice. In away,I feel that whar you're doing with curators is they retained the view that they should remain in
totar control
the same. It's another turn in this spiral of love, which is, each
time around, a different one, but is also the same. So, that is kind 2. Clement Greenberg, Aaant-Garde Attitutle:

of cool. rte

TS: Your analysis is acute. Actually, my first rejection of Clement Modent j9l7-1969, ed.
O
John iversirv ofChicago
1
Greenberg came when he visited Australia in 198 to deliver a Press,

40 41
CAROL\N CHRISTOV-BAIGRGIEV
TATKING CONTEMPORARY CURAIING

of their work, at every stage from conception right through TS: Curated the Biennale of Sydney, in 2008.
to presentation and publication. Like the early Conceptualist
approach to photography, they thought that exhibiting ws
a relatively neutral means to an end. There was simply no
anticipation that curators would be creative. It was like they
were saying, you will show my work in the way I want it shown;
you will not use it in accord with any other logic or any other
approach; you cannot have an idea that is as provocative, or
critical about exhibiting, as mine; if you try that, I won'r allow you
to show it. When Art & Language was included in Documenta
5, in the section "Idea/I-ighr," curared by Kasper Knig, the
in Sydney was Nick
members involved simply took over their allotted space and did
York City particularly, but
their thing, exhibiting Index 01. Szeemann was fine with that, ,,curator."
, as you would sa2,
they told me.
TS: That's what he called himself, by the way.
Like many artists from that time, we put a lot of thought into
connecting with audiences and, I believe for the most prt, we
actually did it better than the curtors. We showed work-not
only ours, but also that of others-in a more interesting, critical,
and analyticalway than most of the curators around at the time,
just like we thought about it, and wrore about it, better than the
critics and others. Whether I'm still doing that, I'm not sure.

CC-B: We're always doing the same thing, all our lives.

TS: If you sy so, but it wasn't conscious in the book.

CC-B: No, of course not. But the only interesting things are non-
conscious; they come from the other side of the brain.

TS: I was just trying to learn something.

CC-B: And you didl You brought rogerher an incredible archive

of possibilities for positioning oneself in relation ro art. One of
the first things you introduce is a picture of a blackboard. You
are Australian, and I know something about Australia because I. 3. ck\'aterlow, Australin Bientule lggg: Front
the Southent Cros: View of Wortd At
directed the Biennale of Sydney- c. 1940-1988 (Sydney: Biennale
of Sydne 1988).

42
43
CAROL\N CHRI STOV- BAI'ARGIEV TALKING CONTEMPORARY CURTING

READING A CURAIOR'S about

TESTAMENT Latin, ut
that he
CC-B: Shortly before being killed by his son, Waterlow wrote or she would love him." Curating in order to care. ,,passion,'
a text he called "A Curator's Last Will and Tstament." It takes used to mean the suffering of Christ on the cross. It comes
the form of seven sttements, written as if on a blackboard, and from passio in Latin, which means "to suffer', or ,,to endure
I was so hrppy to see them reproduced on the first page ofyour pain." It came to mean "a strong desire,, in the thirteenth
book. Number 1: "Passion." That's the left side of the brain. century but in the 1600s, whenJohn Donne was writing his
Number 2:"An eye of discernment." Number 3: "An empty incredibly sexual, yet also very religious, poems, the terir began
vessel." Number 4:"An ability to be uncertain," which is one to imply what it does today.
of my main principles: uncertainty. I'm deeply skeptical and
that's why we only offered "maybe-education," not education, On page 25 5 , you wrote, "f would love to see curators
in dOCIIMENTA (13). I don't even know if dOCUMENTA keeping detailed records of every stage of their thinking and
(13) was an exhibition. You tell me. Number 5: "Belief in the planning." I did itl I kept hundreds of notebooks in corinection
necessity of art and artists." I would agree with that, although
I don't necessarily believe rhat the field of art will exist as a
field in fifty or one hundred years, which doesn't mean that the
people who make it, and their specific, situated knowledges, will
not exist. They have existed since time immemorial, but they
have not always been called "artists." They have been called
all sorts of things-"alchemists," for example. Number 6. "A-
medium: bringing a passionate and informed understanding of of learning by walking through the exhibition and rheir sense
works of art to an audience in ways that will stimulate, inspire, of whatvarious audiences made of it. Of course, itwould be
question." And 7: "Making possible the altering of perception."

There's only one word that is repeated-"passion"-i

statements number I and number . So I went to look for that
word in your book. And the word-or something very similar
to it-comes up on page 255.

llS: That is a very thorough reading. similar issue." In fact, the narcissistic disorder of many so-called
curators like myself has meant that I have never real written
CC-B: You use the word "love," which is quite connected to that much about other exhibitions that have inspired me.
passion. And the word "caring" is connected to love, which
is connected to Nick Waterlow. But, when you look at them,
"caring" and "curating" are actually formed using the same +. dOCUMENTA (13), Tbe Logboole: Catakg 2/)
(Ostf ldern: Hatje Cantz, 2012).
letters, except that you have to take out the "u" and the "t" in

44 45
CAROL}TJ CHRISTOV-BAKARGIEV TALKING CONTEMPORARY CURATING

TS: Why is that? cc-B: It actually resists being about something in that sense.

CC-B: Well, I don't know, it's like some disease...

So, we go to pge 227 , where the word "passion" appears,

in this passage: "For most curators, wherever (and whenever)
they are situated across the infrastructural spectrum, the ideal
is to strive to work from an independent, relatively autonomous
professional perspective based on a passion for art itself, an
approach that balances respect for the vision of particular artists
against commitment to developing audiences for art and that
brings these two together in exhibitions that enable shared
insight into the contemporry world-its dark, its dazzling, and
even its dull, ways of being." That's a beautiful sentence. I love it
also because, strangely enough, as I was searching for "passion" The wall demarcares the entry to the rotunda space, which
I found the other word that I really like right next to it, which is is called "The Brain ," andwhich is full of a variety -
"commitment." This to me comes fromJudith Butler, who might thirty-five or forty, objects: works of art,photogrph , -".
say dOCIJMENTA (13) was a "committed" exhibition, if one artifacts... some in vitrines, some on walli. FeaL.d on^n
orr.
were to ask her. I think a lot about commitment-cuzn mittere, by Giorgio Morandi, made
"to put togethe" "to put with." It has an unfortunate relation to area behind that wall are works
"communion," but we cn leave that religious aspect aside. But, I objects rhar were crushed in
really haven't given you any theory at all...
virrines, are s ome absolutely, *"f#: ,tli;*,*l.'fi.""
THE EXHIBITION AS A BODY princess sratuetres. It is an extraordinry.il".tion
of items and

TS: Let me now put before you my thoughts about i:::",l:::"'

dOCUMENTA (13) because this is a really unique chance to
spend some time with someone who has, I think almost for the that I had enrered the mind of the ."*.J'#1;h::;l;i:
first time, made an exhibition that exhibits curatorial thinking were conceiving the exhibition, but also acrually the
mind of the
as part of its core content. Which is to say, the exhibition shows exhibition itself.
the results of thinking about what it is to be in the world today,
and how art is in the world today; how art is in fact impinged Tlel I $oySht, if "The Brain" is the exhibition,s mind,
on, and acts on, and transforms the world today. So, it's not just you might think of the other buildings in Kassel as
its body,
an exhibition that is bout something, in the sense that mny not necessarily a humal body, but some kind of animate
bdy r
exhibitions are about this or that topic. in extenso connected with other bodies: other buildings,
in
the parks, through the city. We, the spectators, becoe
the
circulatory system.

46 47
CAROLIJ CHzuSTOV-BAKARGIEV TALKING CONTEMPORARY CURAIING

CC-B: The veins, the blood, yes. CC-B: I think that's very interesting. I have to think about it. I
mean, you catch me off-guard, I've never thought about it that
TS: Butwhat are the works of art? In this metaphor, what way. I always think in other rerms. such as temporalit spatiality,
are all the things you show? Are they in fact whatw's in the and p-artiality. I think dOCUMENTA (13) is bsicallyabut
unconscious: your unconscious, or, really, that of the world itself. transforming temporalities into spaces. I really resist the idea of
To me, the works of art have come from the unconscious of this compressed time. There are other moments that are more about
exhibition and, as it were, surfaced. Tlue, you could move from reflection, such as the seminar. which is why we did rhree years
one room to another and pick up certain narratives that you of seminars in Kabul as part of dOCUMENTA.
obviously intended. But, often, that doesn't happen. It is a little
like what Freud says: the detritus of the unconscious constantly
.IF"l you try to consrruct something that has no concept,
fills our conscious minds.s He did not mean simply bits and no-''idea," you have to find a system so that it is not always
pieces of random stuff. He meant breccia, an aggregte made up collapsing. I used "The Brain" in n open polemic with
of various kinds of crushed materials that are held together in neuroscience, because I find its fundamental premises anti_
some kind of binding medium. One of his metaphors for the philosophical and unable to address the complexities of what's in
conscious mind was the Roman forum s we see it, all of those the brain. Neuroscientists eliminate from tn nel of research
beautiful ruins. llhe unconscious, however, is all the rocks and that which is complicated: the palimpsests, the associations with
stones and sculptures and buildings that have, over the centuries, the psychoanalic, and so on. To them, philosophy died
lnemory:
been crushed and re-used as the core materials for successive during the twentieth century. Then there is a poliiicar dangr in
layers of architectural structures-like foundations, platforms, neuroscience, a potential return to phrenolog), to the idea that
columns, whatever. Much of it is ing around in plain sight but the mechanics, the hardware, are the importnt part. So I use
we never consciously look at it. So, that's how I read your show, "The Brain" inrenrionally, polemically, against that perspective.
as exhibiting what has been, and is being, crushed and repressed. The word "mind" is not an adequate option, becaus it soggests
Does that make sense to you? that there is something produced by th" body but someho
disembodied. I side with the Imagists, the poets, who would
CC-B: Yes, it does. But I never thought of the artworks as the say, with William Carlos Williams, ,,No ideas but in things.,'
unconscious becoming manifest. Therefore, there is a language, which is more like a hierolghics,
in "The Brain."
TS: Items from the unconscious. That's what Freud talks about.
Not the unconscious itself, which always remains invisible, but TS: But it's not grammatically grounded in the same systematic
eruptions from within it. way'

CC-.B: Well, hieroglyphs are nor as grammarically grounded as

5. Sigrnund Freud, "The Dream-Work," we think. They operate on three simultaneous levels, the image,
Lecttre II, lntroductory Lecturts on Pslchoartasis,
The Standnrd. Edition oftbe Com.plete
i
or the thing that you are writing about; rhe pronunciation of ihat
Prychological 'orks of Sigmtmd rettcl, vol. 15 word in ancient Eglptian; and then there 's a purely syllabic level.
(London: Hogartl, 1.955-74), p. 181-82;
dso in Tbe Interprettion. of Dream.s ll899l
(Harmondsworth, Pengrn Classics, 200).

48 49
C ARO L\N CHRISTOV-BAK,{RGIEV TAIKTNG CONTEMPOR{RY CURATINIG

I agree with you that dOCUMENTA (13) is also a project

about curatorial practice; as I actually mentioned earlier, it's
an nthology of all the modes current in use, ranging from
the most classical modernist display, like in "The Brain," to
the idea of activist public art. AND AND AND did projects
all over the world, for years, as part of dOCUMENTA. And
then in Kassel, they have done projects that were absolutely not
controlled or progrmmed by me , projects dealing with different
political problems within the city or in the world at large. These
are activist art projects, none ofthem foregrounded through
documentation or publications. They just happened and were
what they were. Art outside art venues is another mode: Theaster
Gates's work in the Huguenot House, or Sam Durant's work in
the park, where passersby rub up against the destination audience.
As well, there is the sculpture park model stretching to the outer
park. And the so-called educational turn-the "maybe-education"
program as n example of a curatorial project-the art-as-
education model. Altogether, this is more or less an anthology of
every exhibitionary mode you can think of.

META-CURATING

TS: Tbinking Contempor.ry Curting ends on the question, why

don't curators articulate curatorial thinking? It's a creative act, as
you say, and in a certain sense it's an artistic act. So, why not be
explicit about it in statements, texts, even in exhibitions, which,
after all, are your main medium? I call that "meta-curating," and
called for it in the book, hoping that it would happen in your
show.

CC-B: Yes, you did. You predicted it in the last chapter, which
you wrote before the exhibition,opened. It's such an honor that
the last words are about dOCUMEN:IA (13), based on that one
text that I circulated when you were finishing your book.

TS: And then you did it.

50
51
CARO L\J CHRISTOV-BAI(ARGIEV TALKINIG CONTEMPORARY CURAIING

in the Documenta-Halle. I put the knife in "llhe Brain," right of conditions so that this is somehow elicited by the framework of
next to two ancient Roman sculptures that had been burnt the show.
during the Lebanese civil wars and so were fused together into
this horrendous, incredible, abstract sculpture that looked like CC-B: Yes. That's why most of the projects are new. But they
something from post-second World War Art Informel. So in that ren't new and fetishized as being new, they were just a journey
sense, yes, there is that kind of relationship within the exhibition. "with," you know. Like in a marriage, or in a life. It's a journey
with someone...
But I would only agree with the analysis if the unconscious
were understood as simultaneously producing itself and, at the THE COIJTEMPORANEITY
same moment, throwing.up the detritus, which is revealed, QUESTTOt{
perceived, and articulated. I would reject the idea that the
detritus is being caught at a second moment, if you think about it CC-B: I have a quesrion about the difference berween
temporally, by me as a curator operting consciously to do exactly "contemporary" and "'contemporaneity." Why do you use these
that. So, does that nswer your question? terms in that way And why am I allergic ro "contemporary"?

TS: Yes, that distinction is what I had in mind when using the TS: Well, for people who haven't read my recent material, let
extended metaphor of Kassel as the body in relation to "The me explain that I itart from the idea of opening out the word
Brain" in the Fridericianum. "contemporary" in terms such as "contemporry at," and in
a phrase we often hear, "the coritemporary." I object to the
CC-B: I have to read, from page 22, the sentence I like most in sense that these terms can describe a singularity, for example,
your book. I didn't quite get it, and I'm not sure that you did immediacy, or being of the present, or being up to date, or
when you wrote it, which is w it's beautiful. I think you're being more contemporary than someone else. In effect, this
making a logical jn-p, but not explicitly, which is really nice: reduces the multiplicity, the differentiation that shapes what it
"Think of the terms of my title"-the title of the book-"that is to be in the world today, and turns it into one kind of world
flash independently, in bold isolation, but then combine into a being. That's not just inaccurate, it's oppressive. I became very
number of almost sentences"-I love "almost sentences,t'it's like concerned with the question of contemporaneity after 9/Il,
the "maybe-education" of our project-"seemingly located at particularly when the post-Cold War idea of the lJnited Stares as
levels below and more basic than those allowed by the surfaces
of spoken and written language, through which they often,
these days with accelerating insistence, break." So maybe the
relationship between what's outside and inside "The Brain" has
something to do with these "almost sentences"?
emergency into a kind of constant contemporaneity.
TS: That's, actually, exactly right. It's avery good parallel to
the way I'm reading your exhibition. It's not that you, yourself, CC-B: To make it permanent.
have the ability to predict what's going to come up from the
unconscious of either artists or the world, but you set up a range

52 53
CAROL\J CHRISTOV-BA(ARGIEV TALKING CONTEMPORARY CURATING

TS: Yes. That's the kind of "contemporary" that I am utterly d War_after the atomic bomb,
against. We have versions of it in the art world, and various other
lly since the late l90s, the word
worlds. So, what I've tried to do is go back to the core concept, to increasingly substiruted with
see how "contemporary" points us to the many different ways in
defining the
which all of us-individually and, necessarily, together-exist in
which for me, as
time, always at the same time as others. And always with the sense
that others, even when they're sitting right next to us, are actually,
it has to do with
The obsession with the ,,here and
or have the potential to be, in a different time. That's immediate now" is really about tryrng to undersra"
*rr"i,rr rr.ipr"g
and personal. On world-picturing levels, all of us can have a sense this atomic bomb means. Whrt is .he meaning
of that .torr, ,n",
of belonging to our own time, but also feeling out of joint with it, instant during and just after the romb falls?
or being disposed against it, being what Nietzsche calls "untimely,"
to which I would add: in away that's different from everyone else. TS: The world could end. has shrunk to that kind of moment.
But we can also, at the same time, share some, perhaps man), things ''me
with others; we can become each other's contemporary. In short, CC-B: Yes, it is the instant. So it's very different
from the
there is a multiplicity of ways of being in time in the present. To be notion of time, or undmeliness,
contemporary in this sense is .very rich, very layered experience. "contemporariness,' is a modern
It is the exact opposite of what is promoted s "contemporary" at with the jate nineteerrth-".rrrory o
the great auction houses of the world, and by the highest-priced moderne. But it's articulated diffrentry
:t
because it takes away the
artists-whose time, perhaps, has come. Bergsonia
and this instantaneity
as
- tI.rone c
a historical gaze. As if
I think that exhibitions like dOCUMENTA (13), whether one could
me. So, to understand
consciously or not, are in fact impacted by the layering of the that "conr outside ,rrrd".rt"rri;g,h";._
world-by the different temporalities that exist for people is a presumpruous idea of the twentieth
lenfirry an exffaordinarily
throughout the world. It's possible for curators to exhibit this desffuctive belief.
contemporaneity, it's important for people to write about it, for
artist to grapple with it in the work that they make. I cannot make It is similar to the more recen
it a rule, but to me, it's avery deeply impor ant thing to be doing.
So, that's what I mean by "contemporaneity." Do you have a
different understanding?

CC-B: lVo, no. I would agree with that definition of the word outside perspective, a perspective
of 1
"contemporaneity." I would agree that that is what I was trying to either of these two terms, "o.ra.-p
tary,, or,,global.,, I prefer
do with dOCUMENTA (13), whatwe were all trying to do-to to use the word "worldly."r So, I love -
thJ *"y ,r, yor, #
live with this sense. I thinkyou are suggesting avery interesting
breakaway from the word "contemporary" while you keep using g:

the root of it. You kro-, curn templre, "with the times." I know
you trace it back through the centuries, but for me the important

54 55
CAROL\TJ CHRISTOV-BAKARGIEV TALKING CONTEMPORARY CUR,{IING

"contemporaneity" into almost the opposite of "contemporary." history of the commercial world fairs of the ninereenth cenrury. It
You make it mean something like the palimpsest of different comes out of a wound. This gives it a different premise.s
trmes
The layering of the works that artists have made in the
TS: ... all at the same time, exactl)r past creates a context for the artists invited to participate in
Documenta. They might be thinking abour W"lt", De Maria,s
CC-B: Yes, but I'm not so interested in the "at the same time" The hticl Eanh Kilometer [1977], oJoseph Beuys's 7000 oaks
part. The rest I'm very interested in. If we think about it in lr982l- As director, you are preceded by ctherine David, who
terms of space, it has something to do with the partialities that brought incredible things ro the projeci, and Okwui En*Lror,
I discussed earlier. dOCUMENTA (13) was not just exhibited among others. In Venice, when so many things are going on in
in Kassel. Yet its existence there created a kind of partialiry that d there is also Giorgione's Tmpest nearby,
allowed for the Kabul serninars to have meaningfulness. And vice is less clear. It all becomes a blur, not a
versa. This sense comes fromJudith Butler, because I'm thinking Kassel was a blank slate, a neurral platform
about the notion of grievability and precarious lives: only if you that permitted a clear perception of the history of artworks that
know that something can be lost, or that there is something that were made in that palimpsest. None of my prd"."rrors wanted
you cannot have, can you fully appreciate what you have. So, to question that neutral platform-out of fear, because naturally
it's through the possible negtive that any positive is perceived. they.wanted to protecr it. It's like the united Nations building. If
That's one kind of partiality. y" 41 srart s.peaking about it as being in New york City because
the u.S. is the dominant country in the world, delegats from
TS: And you required every artist who was invited to some countries might not come anyrnore, or certainly might
dOCUMENTA to visit Breitenau, a former monastery prison, not come as the representatives of their countries. So erreryorre
work camp, concentration camp, girls'reformatory and politely ignores the obvious, which is that the tN buildin is not
psychiatric clinic, not far from Kassel. a neutral space. This also happened with Kassel until this
dition
of the exhibition. To question a neutral platform is a very ris
CC-B: Exactly. Documenta itself emerged out of trauma, after thing, especially when you want a platform on which to ,p."k
the rise and fall of fascism in German2, through the impulse together with others. But I did it anyr,r'ay. I did it becausei believe
to reassess positively what had been the exhibition Entat'tete in reality and in these forms of commrtment.
Kunst lDegenerate An] in Munich 1n 1937 organized by the
Nazis. It also emerged historically as a wish to reconstruct civil B't just
as I say this, I also say the opposite: it could have been
society after the horrors of the llolocaust, the bre akdown of anJwhere. I would have done it anywher. There's a cerrain history
international relations during the fascist period, during the of pain in Kassel, and there's a certain hisrory of pain in Kab
Second W'orld War, and more. In this context, art became a
vehicle for a form of transnational alliance that could be built
{ f\.y actually share somerhing. Documenta energes in Kassel
with the need to rebuild Germarry after the trauma of awar.
more easily through artists and cultural practitioners than
through other fields. IJnlike other international exhibitions,
such as the Venice Biennale, Documenta doesn't come out of the
(Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2011).

56 57
CAROL\{ CHRISTOV-BAKARGIEV
TALK]NG CONTEMPORARY CURATING

an),'where. And you can learn things that

lltl :11." you don,t
t<now everywhere. For example, there are things in traditional
d be imporranr lessons
nfortunately, of
e Marden' It would be
so grear to forget alr ome kind of lobotomy
and start a'
over in a
or primitivism at all; it,s just rejecting rh"
Pashtuns, and Tjiks. This strange contradictory condition linear history of art and 'civihzaon.'
ti"t ff::T.
somehow resonares with Germany during the 1950s.
TS: At some points jn the book, when I,m
This thing you say about co-remporalities... I don,t writing about
some very subtle efforts by curators
believe that time is linear. I know that's a postmodet'n idea, but and artists tJacdvate
overwhelming infrastructure, too much institutionalization,
actually time is layered, and different historical periods exist lots
of money concentrated perhaps in the
simultaneously. That's why there's one page, otr ot I don't wrong places, f zone out to
the.larger.world picture, and one in elsewh.
agree with in your book. ", I thirrkJBr"r',
glArgentina, much of China, through to Oceania and much
Africa, places where there is infrasmlcrure, of
TS: Let's look at rhaq then, as a kind of wrap-up. bur itt f.rgil.
could collapse ar any minute..\.44ren the "ii
political ..;i;;i;;g"r,
everyone is sacked and the other "team"
ALWAYS CRITICAL, comes in, ismantrin
everything. Or the buildings are des
EVERYWHERE Ar,i;;J."rrri"f
1.,i,vr,y has been pivotalin brilging ge
in these parts of the world, ir, l
CC-B: On page 257 you say somerhing like, ,,Of course, all that "rrd
commit to the infrastructures,
I've written about before is valuable for a place that is advanced, build them,
own sake, or in the vague hope that interesting
which already has all the infrastrucrure, a deep history of work art will appear. It
won't. You can never let on critical p.actice] .ro, ,.ry*ir'..., i,
around art, so we can question ourselves and discuss how we do |p
doesn't mtter what the circumstanc"r'rra.

consciousness about the curatorial." I disagree with that.

llS: So do I. Did I say that?

CC-B: You say it in a positive way,yetl find it somewhar

paternalistic-not from the point of view of W-estern culture
as a whole, but as a curator. I believe that vou can start from a

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