Extract From White papers, conference on Networking in Copenhagen in 2010: RÅ HVIDBOG
Knut Ove Arntzen (Bergen, Norway)
A general background lies in the situation of the 1960s. When it comes to art intermediation and education, this development is fairly interesting described in a book on performance in Canada by Alain-Martin Richard and Clive Barker. “To be an art student and to witness the social practices of both the academy and the marketplace did not avoidably encourage the prospects of an art career”, as they put it. This statement was further expanded on the reflection that relationships of artists to their professional institutions, like museums, galleries, art schools, funding agencies, etc., is a peculiar and unique entanglement. It resulted in a rush to try to replace traditional institutions with networking of an informal kind. In the 1970s informal co-operation movements was widely spread not only in Canada, but also in Britain and Germany. There was a focus on artists who wanted to stay in touch with each other by mail, travelling or by creating modest centres of activity. As Richard and Robertson put it, “this made a lot of sense to artists living in isolation, including behind the -then – “Iron Curtain”. Many artists then took to the alternative notion of networking centres for exhibition, production and distribution. There was a difference evolving between networking as practiced by institution and alternative networking with regard to social and experimental alternatives. This was connected to what would be referred to as “utopian peak” at the end of the 1970s. Artists wanting to experiment in this direction would look for inspiration among other places within the American Fluxus movement, connected to concept like happenings and performance. Groups of artists would go for new directions in different informal art contexts, as it happened in Canada in Vancouver and Halifax, and in Vancouver, it would also be connected with the notion of cabaret. There would in the United States appear a gap in-between two generations, those who would stick to a centrist conceptual art of a formalist kind, and the succeeding generation who worked on media aesthetics, like Laurie Anderson, Julia Heyward and Michael Smith among others. This generation represented the basis for later experimentations in art and new technology.
The impact of the cabaret would reflect a dramaturgical tradition of a fragmented kind, which in many ways both would cover up for political activism and visual kind of dramaturgy that was represented by Robert Wilson and Richard Foreman in the US. Anyhow, new centres for production were needed and artistic groups popped up from the Fluxus movement until cultural centres like Le Lieu and Obscure in the City of Québec, which were operated on collective basis. This is a vast development to map, and many similar constellations would be found all around what at this time would be referred to as the Western World, also attracting a lot of attention from behind the Iron Curtain as well as from some of the big cities in East Asia where a middle class audience had developed, like in Hong Kong and Singapore.
Some words about the curator-creator and producer
This development is the background for the free enterprise of the curator, somebody who is hired from a museum or a gallery to organise an exhibition or do such work on a freelance basis. Famous are the curators of the big events like Kassel Documenta or the Sao Paulo Biennale. Pontus Hultén is a Swede who directed Centre Pompidou in Paris for many years and being responsible for some of the big axis exhibitions like Paris-New York. The Belgian Jan Hoet for instance was responsible for the Documenta in 1992, himself coming from the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst in Gent. He was the kind of curator with a background from the alternative networking generation, bringing his point of view into one of the most significant art events in the world. Another example of a curator in transition from project to project is Nigerian Okwui Enwezor who has been responsible for the Johannesburg Biennale in 1998 and has also been responsible for the Kassel Documenta in 2002.
The curator as well as the producer in project-oriented theatres, is a creator in scientific, artistic and critical way. It is a person whose skills and knowledge about the international artistic scene will be able to take the responsibility for designing and organizing exhibitions. As far as he is not in a fixed position, he will work on a temporary or project oriented basis and go for new jobs after one is finished.
As a conclusion: Geocultural perspectives and new art-centres
Another aspect of the question of art-centres and production houses in relationship to transnational processes is dealing with reflections on layers of geocultural perspectives. Artistic events in different countries are an approach to understanding geocultural dimensions. Geographical and climatic similarities can be related to society structures and political/historical differences and similarities. Why, for instance, is there an identity connected to the countries around the 60th latitude and what consequences does it have to know about it? The aboriginal situation as a common denominator can be mentioned, and one could exemplify by questions connected to Scandinavia as well as Canada and see what artistic reflections on positions in independent performance art can be raised.
This is also a question of understanding artistic landscapes as a cultural reflection based on defining cultural situations and comparing them.
References
Gavin Jantjes, Aftenposten, Oslo, 15.12.1999
“The complicity of culture: Hybridity and ́new internationalism”, Cornehouse Communiqué no 4, Manchester, 1994 in Cultural diversity in the arts, ed. R. Lavrijsen, Amsterdam 1993
The complicity of culture…”, p. 37
Performance au/in Canada, Toronto, 1991
© Knut Ove Arntzen