2007/10/15
writing on PS trip 07
Though Tobias asked me and others in the curatorial programme to write about the trip already in Istanbul before we parted, haven't really the time or the determination to write on the rest of the trip. After coming back, failed again to scramble up something quick for Jörg Heiser (German editor of Frieze magazine, author of Ploetzlich diese Uebersicht - was ist gute Kunst) who happened to be in town, for it was just few days before the HistoriCITY function.
Missed that first deadline, I asked in a later meeting about in what style should we write in, for it is always crucial (for me at least) to know first what publication platform or target audience one is writing to and or addressing. Gladly to hear, Tobias suggested we start with the most causal kind of writing as that of writing in yr own blog. I took it literally and this is what you are seeing here in my blog now.
In my first draft for Heiser, I started then with a larger picture, for I thought I could easily get lost in the details with so much that I have seen on the trip, but with actually not much big idea or strong opinion about the things I saw. I might like one work seen here, recorded an observation there, the only constant thought running through is excitement (new places) as much as fatigue (more art). Most of the materials (particularly the written ones) I gathered, I have not digested yet. But I am thus cheating wanting to be more informed (playing it safe by taking in others opinion first), rather than pronouncing my instinctive judgement?
(Take for example, the roundtable at Platform in Istanbul just days after the opening of the Istanbul Biennial Hou Hanru curated. How Tobias speaked up then, against a round of negative views on the Biennial. That certainly left me a strong impression, of how a quick confident judgment with a certain degree of articulation is cruical in the, let's say, business/trade of curating. (Hope I could upload a CLIP here later.) And I am actually as much impressed, when after revisiting the few exhibitions in the biennial, Tobias could frankly allow himself a certain degree of adjustment in his view, thinking that the show might not be as great as his first praised.
Yet writing maybe something different altogether, by putting yr views black in white. Despite that you could write about your second opinion, you can't erase what has been written/published. I am at least more used to giving things an after thought, or the distance gain via a "thinking through writing" approach.)
This is how I originally started this article:
Venice-Basel-Kassel-Munster (Grand Tour), then Istanbul-Lyon-Athens (floating territories). The meaning of the Europa Grand Tour has changed with the "Transbiennial". No longer to visit the heritage (however much in ruins), but Biennials one after the other. If it is the linkage to what kind of heritage that decided who we are, no wonder, we recognized ourselves as Contemporary, with an insatiable pursuit of the latest.? (But equally in ruin?)
[floating territories (L.Gillick design) n grand tour]
But then last week, picking up the Sept issue of Art Forum from Para/Site,
[While Tobias bring to our notice that Art Forum (Sept07) was having the same cover featuring the same work as Frieze, Art Forum came up with the idea of asking Enwezor (last artistic director of Documenta) to review this year Documenta, and Francesco Bonami (last artistic director of Venice Biennial) to review this year Venice Biennial!]As I was reading Okwui Enwezor’s “History Lessons,” I discovered that the author has lend a similar strategy and topic to begin his article:
… the so-called Grand Tour – an anachronistic label for this year’s trio of shows that, in truth, only hints at the level of dehistoricization at which contempoary art field is currently operating …
He also argued, that “of all the exhibitions this summer, Documenta 12 is the only one that invites us to take a shot at it – impelling us to reject it, to quarrel with it, to debate the purpose of an exhibition as an aesthetic and intellectual experience.”
I am not sure if he has seen Istanbul, Athens and or Lyon Biennials before he wrote the article [As matter of facts, he has contributed both to the catalogue of IB07 and LB07 with his essays], but I personally find no personal urge to write about these shows that I saw in the trip. (Pity though, it was not so much the other possibility, that I am starting to learn and appreciate the works in the biennials ignoring the curatorial.) Or even Documenta, if just for argument sake. Why is that? Does it owe to the formulation of the exhibitions or is it just me (my fault).
[Maybe more on Enzewor's dehistoricization later, for it seems quite a contrary consider the art "about" social political issues in Venice, Istanbul and also Lyon Biennial that look back at the past decade. For me, the dehistoricization is more in tune with Paul Virilio's "contempoary art, sure, but contemporary with what?" as he put it in Art and Fear. In a different context, Julian Stallabrass mentioned about the eclecticism of contemporary art as a tradition of rupture, hence a tradition simultaneously historical and dehistoricized.]
Just as I told my friends, that since I have no lessons from the curatorial training programme before I visited these exhibitions, I have not with me any new tools/special perspective to see them other than in the way I used to. But I joined in this programme partly because I felt exhausted with my previous arbitrary (hence inexhaustible) way of writing. Seeing more obviously did not help. I am a bit bored by them, or felt the biennials becoming rotten (mainly because of the parties nights after nights?).
So I rather turn back to the basics here. (but what is actually the basics? other than unanswered, or even unformulated questions?)
To begin with. What is to comment, to write about? (Are we really (bounded to) having so much opinions?) Over the years, I became doubtful who really cares about your personal opinion? To see things objectively for a change, in a more professional (occupational?) manner? Or that our raised discussion could actually help shape the language and discourse over this (still relatively young?) profession/trade of curating?
What I am interested in, of this phenomenon of seeing art, visiting biennials, is how an audience is supposed to response, and not just to one show, but a train of them! How is one to discuss about one singular biennial? Judging a biennial being “outstanding” perhaps implies already the need to compare (and not just the shows happening around the same time, but also it precessors). Or should we treat each of them as unique, as if a work of art by itself?
Very often, these comparison between biennials are portrayed as competition (aesthetically?), but the “grand tour” arrangement has already demonstrated it otherwise (cultural tourism wise?). Instead, it is coming close to that it is the comparison or competition in the visitors’ mind, which make the individual shows (the single trip) all the more interesting. So the assessing of one show is really by the comparison of it with another? hence an excuse for ever more travelling?
(I do think however that since these shows happened within a short span of time, they do might share a similar global context which make a comparison between them more valid. {Take for example, the works dealing with the theme of war in Storr's VB07 and the thematic treatment on gobal warfare in Hou's IB07.} While comparison with previous biennials make sense with the local context, venues selection etc. {Take for example, the character of Arsenale in various VBs, the choice of venues in Documentas} Yet, as the global and local context are certainly interwined, and so together they inevitably redirected our attention to the curator’s vision (What to focus) being the key again?)
(Yet since a biennial will soon be in another curator’s hand, or these institution as big as Documenta or Venice Biennial could, no matter what, have things their ways, in the end, it is mostly the reputation of the curator which is more at stake? With the curatorial frameworks inevitably being the focus of comparison?) Considering the scale, are we inevitably looking and apprehending the curatorship, or is it still the addition of “outstanding” singular work(s) that decide on the quality of a show. What is coherence in a show? What's the difference between having a curatorial contextual wrapping and turning works into merely curatorial illustrations?
I am not trying to criticize the development, the scale of biennials, at least not here (many has been commenting on this already, see for example BIENNIAL CULTURE by Jerry Saltz), but this condition of mobility, inevitably remind me to think of what kind of tourist and traveler am I? If as some has argued, that artists should not be air-borne, I don't see why viewers could still do so? I thought I am worst than the tourists lining up in front of museums in Venice, or those on the grand tour in the past, eager to embrace their heritage. Ours is so much more a kind of instant consumption, taking everything in without real digestion.
Earlier, I read Lam Wai Kit’s photo essay in Muse magazine on Venice. And interestingly, Lam took quite a few shots, not of the touristic city or sights, but that of the tourists (as if trying to stand apart from them?). Ofcourse, to my disapppointment, its text describing the Hong Kong Pavilion in Venice is just like taken straight out from the press release. But to be honest, if I have to write on the HK Pavilion (ofcourse a PC incorrect term), I don’t think I could fair any better. To me, Amy Cheung’s work has stopped functioning (at least on the days we were there) or the collapsed tent of Cao Fei in the China Pavilion (btw, also curated by Hou Hanru) as I posted here earlier, could be the only thing I particularly like to raise, for that is the truth of reality, but these news were never getting any coverage.
(I really wonder why, for example, I heard no one connecting them with Ai Wei Wei's collapsed work in Documenta as pronouncing the same phenomenon, if not symptom? Simply because we are not travelling with Cao Fei to the next opening somewhere in the world, seeing her performing again live in Lyon for the opening preview, but travelling in a wrong direction and being too late arriving at Venice that is to blame?)
(part 2 coming)
