Syndicate: IRWIN 2 for Oliver Fromer

["Miran Mohar" <miran@mordor.kud-fp.si>]

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AN INTERVIEW ABOUT THE ROLE OF THE CURATORS AND THE CONCEPT OF THE
INTERPOL EXHIBITION

INTERVIEW WAS A PART OF IRWIN PROJECT (LEFT,  RIGHT,  UP,  DOWN) AT
THE INTERPOL EXHIBITION IN STOCKHOLM, 1996



Questions by E. Cufer & Irwin


VICTOR MISIANO

What is the role of curator nowadays? How would you define your
occupation?

The curator, as a figure in contemporary art, has in fact appeared
quite recently. Curators in the contemporary, modern sense of the word
appeared in the late fifties or the beginning of the sixties. Jan Aman
and I, we are the third or at most the fourth generation of curators.
The first two generations of curators in Europe introduced concepts,
which they used to justify their activity. At the beginning the
curator was an emissary of a group of artists or of an individual
artist. The curator-manager appeared a little bit latter. In all these
cases it became clear that the appearance of the curator was creating
a completely new situation by being in between a group of artists who
at that time still had a lot in common and represented a certain
homogeneous unity. I think we are now living in an age in which any
homogeneity, any group projects in the sense of  a homogenous style,
trend or the same philosophical tendency, become impossible. In Moscow
I can't find any group of artists who think more or less in the same
way. I have in Moscow a group of different persons, extremely strong
personalities. They are not a classical type of artists who would
produce their art from their stomachs, but would be unable to talk,
explain their concepts, and justify their positions. Just the
opposite. They are all very good exactly at that. Therefore, I don't
have anybody to represent as a group or as an individual. None of them
needs me to write about his or her position because they are all very
capable of doing that by themselves. All these completely different
personalities, and most of them are represented at the Interpol
exhibition, are intellectually extremely sophisticated and advanced.
They are not only capable of presenting their own positions in a very
articulate way, but they are also capable of writing about the work of
other artists. They have great analytical capacities. So the concept I
use to justify my activity is to be a curator-mediator. This is
someone who is in the middle just to help others to speak with each
other. My idea of curator-mediator is similar to the function of a
mediator at a conference, round table or colloquium. The mediator is
responsible for the topic of the colloquium or for the topic of the
exhibition. He is responsible for bringing together appropriate
people, for making appropriate combinations of people. Because if you
combine Mr. X with Ms. Y you get one result, but if you add Ms. S you
will get a completely different result. So the curator-mediator is
responsible for making such combinations of people, he is involved in
discussions which can be colloquia but also discussions about the
exhibition, and he is also responsible for the success of such a
conference or exhibition, because he is mediating, and in the process
of meditating everything depends on the mediator's capacity to stop
the discussion when it gets too boring, to change the subject if the
discussion if it gets too aggressive, and so on. The main imperative
he must pose to himself is the capacity of being in-between.  And in
fact it is not by chance that a lot of projects I initiate are based
on the idea of process, that these projects are based not only on the
involvement of artists but also of non-artists, intellectuals. Even if
a particular project takes form of an exhibition with objects
installed in the space, such exhibitions are often based on dialogue,
on involving the most strange people, on the imperative to internalize
the Other; co-artist, co-partner in the intellectual exchange, in the
work. Well, this procedure is typical of a curator-mediator, but not
of a curator who is an emissary or manager of an artist or a group of
artists.

What are your and Jan Aman's reasons for choosing such an unusual
strategy - concept for the Interpol project? As curators you are only
responsible for creating the circumstances of this project, without
suggesting any specific topic, subject...

There are a lot of reasons. When defining my position as a
curator-mediator I've already told you some of the ideological and
practical reasons. If speaking about the ideological reasons of the
curator-mediator, he can not build an ideology. If Interpol had an
ideology, it would have a very clear topic. But this would contradict
with the identity of curator-mediator, because the success of the
curator-mediator is the process of generating intellectual meaning,
the message, statement which emerges from this process, from
discussions; it can't be established in advance. To be very concrete
-- and that is just an ideological preview -- we are living in an age
marked by the crisis of all ideologies and big discourses. A statement
can no longer be established in advance. Practically speaking, it is
extremely complicated to embrace the works of completely different
artists, such as Juri Leiderman and Alexander Brener, for example, or
Vadim Fishkin and Oleg Kulik, in a clear emblematic statement.

So you are saying that the establishment of a proper dynamic is the
key role of a curator in this situation? The final goal, statement is
not so important at all?

I agree with the first question, but as to the second one I must say
that, well, I'm not a classical Cautsky pupil. I'm not saying that the
process is everything and the result or goal is nothing. But my
personal position on this is that I'm somebody who is intimately very
touched by the lack of goals. This is my frustration and I believe
that I share this frustration with many other intellectuals. Actually,
I romantically believe that in the course of the process we will rich
some goal.

How did you and Jan Aman meet? What is your conceptual link, what are
the positions, beliefs that you two share? And how would you comment
on your collaboration now, a few days before the final stage of the
project?

Well, we met by accident, I suppose. We met thanks to Lars Kleder, an
extremely fascinating person who was the cultural attaché at the
Swedish Embassy in Moscow. He lived in Moscow for several years and he
really became a key figure of Moscow's cultural life. Jan came to
Moscow towards the end of the perestroika era. We met several times
and discussed the possibilities of different projects. In the
beginning, the idea was to make one issue of the magazine together,
then this idea evolved into the idea of putting up an exhibition and
finally we somehow came to the concept of Interpol. How would I
comment on our collaboration? Well, I think this collaboration was
very positive, even though -- as it is becoming more and more clear --
there were enormous differences. I'm not speaking just of personal
differences but more about the differences of our cultures. I
acknowledge the very strange effect in the confrontation of the
Russians opened to the European experience and the Swedes opened to
the European experience. What's interesting is that we have in fact a
lot of things in common. In the beginning, I never felt that something
I was saying was incomprehensible to Jan and vice versa. Probably,
that's because there are certain similarities between Russia and
Sweden, despite the obvious and enormous differences. The experience
of socialism and Marxism, for example, could be one of the premises of
the mentioned similarity, even though these two countries and their
cultural structures are, of course, completely different. In fact,
this ambiguity between similarities and differences was the source and
 the main inspiration of our collaboration. My first feeling after
meeting Jan was that of total comprehension. I understood all the
jokes, all statements, and all ideas of Jan perfectly and I believe
his feeling about me was the same. We immediately understood each
other, and only latter I realized that something I presumed to be
obvious, that something I thought of as total comprehension, was in
fact misunderstanding. Therefore, the success and the defeat of this
project from the curator's point of view, I suppose, is based on that.
A lot of times what I presumed to be clear and possible didn't really
function in practice. And I suppose that Jan has similar feelings. It
means that we represent two different positions, but in our
communication we failed to comprehend that the other is exotic, that
the other is unknown, that he is different, that you should make a
certain effort to understand him, or that you should be clear and
simple in your statements, that you should make an effort to be
understood. And for me that was very interesting because sometimes
when we Russians meet people from Portugal, or Spain, South America or
the Oriental world, or even from Russia's deep south, we acknowledge
the differences in advance, but in this case I never felt it in the
beginning. I don't know why. This is the curious aspect of my
experience with this project.

What has changed, from your point of view, after the fall of the
Berlin wall, for example, in the relationship between the Eastern and
Western cultural spheres, especially in the context of contemporary
art? Or, how do you see Jan's,  that is the Swedish position, in
comparison with yours, the Russian one?

The fall of Berlin? From my point of view the fall of the Berlin wall
represented, symbolized the of victory of internationalism in the art
community, but at the same time this victory already announced  its
collapse. As to the Swedish and Russian positions, I see a certain
paradox at work here. I find the Swedish artists to be much more the
victims of socialism than the Russian ones. I was born and grew up in
a country which protected my social needs, but what I'm witnessing
here is something else. I'm surprised to see in how comfortable a
situation art exists here, in how comfortable a spiritual balance
artists live, how well they are protected, how sure they are of
themselves and of their conditions. In the Soviet Union -- which from
today's perspective seems to me and to many artists as a paradise of
social security with great respect for art and great respect for
intellectual  production (in a social sense) -- we used to live in a
constant mental and spiritual tension. We had this idea -- probably a
very Russian idea -- that you should suffer to get the right to say
something. This sounds masochistic, typically Russian, but I believe
that this idea also contains a certain universal meaning. And the idea
of suffering to gain experience and the right to make a statement is
exactly something that doesn't exist here. At least I didn't notice it
and I'm not sure that its absence is something very positive. Of
course, from the social, humanistic point of view, the Swedish social
system is something that you should be envious of. Frankly speaking, I
don't envy it at all. I believe that really strong and important
statements appear, if not through suffering, then through big
tensions, through big confrontations.

What were your expectations of the Interpol project?  How is it
developing? What can you say about the level and quality of its
realization today? Is it going in the expected, desired direction?

To be honest, no. When I proposed this project I believed in the
confrontation between the Russian, Swedish and other artists invited.
At that time I still believed in the power of dialogue. I  believed
that a new statement would come out of the confrontation with the
Other. I don't know what is actually happening here, but I presume
that this can also result in a total misunderstanding. In any case,
I'm surprised that no will has in fact appeared to discuss, to
confront different views in order to arrive at something new. And it
is not by chance that in the last moment we decided with Jan to modify
the project a little bit. Because if the final result of the Interpol
was to be a very unconscious will to avoid discussion, to emphasize
the solitude of the personality and communicability, we said let's
give to every artist the possibility to be closed in himself, let's
emphasize the idea of an island in the whole exhibition space. This
need for solitude, isolation, is not just the need of the Swedish
artists. If this need were in contradiction with the Russian artists,
that would be a constructive dynamic, but as a matter of fact the same
need for isolation appeared with the Russian artists too. In the
beginning Osmalowsky, Brener and the guest from Italy, Mauricio
Catalan, proposed a common project, as a united body, but now everyone
is working on his own project. In the beginning Gutev and
Zvezdochiotev were doing the same project but then Zvezdochiotev
disappeared and Gutev remained alone. When I proposed the idea of
dialogue for the Interpol project, this was probably at the moment --
not in chronological time but in political topology -- when the Berlin
wall was collapsing, so I believed in the necessity of dialogue
precisely because of the completely obvious tendencies towards
diffusion. So this emphasizing of dialogue was a kind of contra
strategy proposal, as a way of salvation from the very dangerous
tendency towards  atomization, towards the total defusing of elements
in the contemporary world. But what came out was in fact that this
idea of dialogue didn't work. Probably one of the solutions would be
not to oppose this process of defusing but to experience this
diffusion itself.  Probably there is a need for new amalgamation, for
structuring, but not through oppositions.

Do you want to say that the project should have been structured
differently from the very beginning? Of course, if you had known what
you know today.

Probably yes. I didn't think about it, but probably, yes. Or, who
knows? In the introductory text for the catalog I repeated many times
the statement that the preparations for this project took too long. If
the project had happened soon after we first came up with the idea of
Interpol, it would have been successful. Now, I think, it is really
based on a little bit old fashioned premises, because today the rhythm
of changes in art and theory is very fast.

Here we have a few interrelated questions. How do particular artifacts
here in the exhibition space correspond to your idea, vision,
preconception of  the exhibition as a whole? What were your criteria
in selecting the artists? What were the qualities you were looking for
when choosing the artists? What was the desired relation between the
intellectual and psychological character of the artist and the type of
art he or she produces? Did you pay any attention to "métier", the
level and quality of production of artifacts?

There is another thing which is, from my point of view, a little bit
old fashioned too. This is the exhibition itself. Because for me, an
exhibition as a solid place, a solid object represented on the
podium... I mean, it is so responsible. Frankly, I'm a little bit, how
to say... it's very hard for me to support just the fact to be someone
who decided to put some objects in the space. Because a gesture of
mere representation seems to me an incredible responsibility. This is,
in my view, first of all because of a deep crisis of representation
itself, which we are living now. This crisis of representation is in
fact just a tangible form of this crisis of big discourses, of the
crisis of values. Forgive me this pathetic expression. What has value
nowadays is exactly the bad consciousness of the lack of values. Not
just to have responsibility or irresponsibility to put an object in
the space and say; "..come, spend your time..", but to be conscious of
this crisis is to have "more" responsibility. It is to have the
courage to experience this crisis to the extreme and even to have the
capacity to lead a discussion, to give a proposal, to propose some
starting points for the discussion of something new, something
different. This, for me, is the basic criterion, which is beyond the
classical curators' criteria of the professional skills or reputation
of the artist chosen, of his or her  capacity for professionalism, and
so on. For me now the criteria are completely different, they are
based on the question of a person's  sensibility, on his or her moral
good and intellectual courage. The last is the most important.

At this exhibition the presence of objects, artifacts is obvious.
You've mentioned intellectual courage as your basic criterion. Do you
see any connection between these two things?

This problem is a little bit too close to the old Marxist definition
of form and content. Frankly, I don't want to discuss it. I don't want
to be dogmatic in the reverse way, dogmatic in radicalism. I don't
want to say: "The era of objects in art is finished, the era of
professionalism in art has gone." No, the opposite. But I don't want
to discus it, I simply want to say that representation itself is
suffering a deep crisis. This means -- and this is probably the
biggest quality of the contemporary era -- that because of this
crisis, human dimensions become very important. The quality of the
result is very relative. It is important now that an object -- and not
just an object, it could also be a gesture, a performance, all the
possible registers that Interpol tried to provoke -- is based on the
human gesture behind it. We are facing the moment when notions such as
style, fashion, language... have completely lost their significance.
It became ridiculous to discuss such issues, as for example the
European intellectuals in the fifties spent  a lot of time discussing
figurative and abstract painting, what is their relationship, etc.