Asher_Michael – what's next?

Institutional Critique Revisited

admin — Mon, 05 Jan 2015 13:16:15 +0000

The American artist John Baldessari has said that the most important goal of art education is to demystify artists. “It is important for art students to learn that art is made by human beings, just like them,” he said.
We believe the same is true of art institutions. They too are created and run by human beings and can therefore be criticized, rethought and imagined differently. Too often, however, everyday practices and power relations make us stick to old habits and prevent us from seeing the possibilities.
The teaching material Never Underestimate the Institution (2014) is intended for curatorial and artistic study programmes but available for anyone interested in the topic. Since the 1960s, artists have taken on institutions in order to reimagine the material frameworks in which art has been presented. “Institutional critique” has been art historically institutionalized as a genre of artistic practices and become part of the canon. The idea behind the publication is to return to the practices of the canonized figures of institutional critique by reviving their critical perspectives.
The purpose of the material, commissioned by the MA programme in Curating, Managing and Mediating Art at Aalto University, Helsinki, is to stir up the established notions of institutions by revisiting some artistic practices of past decades that take on institutional structures in one way or another. The artists and artist groups selected represent strategies that are closely -associated with the genre of institutional critique. By presenting examples from recent history, we want to urge reflection on how the institutions have actually changed during the last decades and on what they might look like in the future.
Institutional critique’s development can be asso-ciated with poststructuralist and critical theory and with their impact on visual practices. Subsequently, it was also linked to social developments, especially the civil rights and feminist movements early on, and postcolonial and queer politics later, as well as theore-tical critiques of the opposition of high and low culture, or Modernist and mass art. The institutional frameworks related to practices of displaying art have been called into question since Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades in the 1910s, when the entire institutional -context in which the work of art occurs came into focus. Since the 1960s movements such as Fluxus and the Situationist International also contributed to the questioning of the institutional framework of art. Many artists later identified as occupying the genre “institutional critique”, such as Hans Haacke, Daniel Buren, Michael Asher and Marcel Broodthaers started off in the late 1960s, followed by a “second wave” of -artists such as Andrea Fraser and Fred Wilson in the 1980s.
In addition to the artists mentioned above, the material presents Mike Kelley, Mark Dion, Martha Rosler, Jimmie Durham, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, and the collectives Guerrilla Girls, Group Material and Critical Art Ensemble. Over the decades, institutional critique has come to be used as a label for specific artistic practices, and seems in 2014 to belong in the past. The publication Never Underestimate the Institution asks: What could we learn from these artists today – and what could institutional critique be but like complaining when everyone throws you a party?¹Simon Sheikh has suggested that institutional critique should be seen as an analytical tool, a method of spatial and political criticism and articulation that can be applied not only to the art world, but also to disciplinary spaces and institutions in general. Similarly, we hope to inspire discussion with a wide perspective and to revitalize questions that have lost none of their relevance. Below is a selection of assignments from the material to inspire critical thought and action.

Instructions for a Museum
Find the mission statement of a museum. Create instructions for the museum by cutting words or phrases from the mission statement and gluing them onto paper.
(Wir Spielen²)
What are the underlying basic assumptions of the text? The starting point for this exercise is the vocabulary of the museum. Can you subvert, alienate or highlight meanings in it by simply rearranging words?
Optional exercise: Send the final result to the museum director.

Get a copy of the floor plan of a museum that you are visiting. Map your own way through the exhibition and mark any pauses. Also write down any thoughts, wishes and dreams.
Research into museum architecture by watching visitors can reveal many things. Are visitors free to move as they want, or disciplined into a predetermined choreography?

Monument
Commission a monument for someone or something you want to commemorate.

Curriculum
Propose an alternative curriculum for a school subject of your choice.
What is the purpose of Physical Education? Could Geography become more critical and be taught imaginatively? Is the Music curriculum multicultural enough? Can history education be made less nationally focussed?

Collectives
Form different new collectives and name them according to their goals.
A name can be everything from a power statement to a parody. Try the style of established institutions for a small, informal collective and vice versa.
Optional exercise: Use image-editing software and existing photographs to create a mock institution.

Wiederabdruck
Teile dieses Manuskripts wurden bereits früher veröffentlicht in: Helena Björk, Laura Kokkonen, „Never Underestimate the Institution“, CuMMA Papers #11, November 2014, https://cummastudies.wordpress.com/cumma-papers/.

1.) Trisha Donnelly, www.frieze.com/issue/article/keywords.
2.) The workgroup WIR SPIELEN (WE PLAY) is a critical/analytical reading and action group with a focus on contemporary strategies of sharing and the cultural production of art and action. http://wirspielen.net.

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admin — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 12:42:46 +0000

In my view visual art should not ask the question of how art can represent or document politics, but how visual art is inextricably intertwined with the politics of production. One could say that visual art is a kind of celebration of production, it is a production which has no primary use value, but a production which is a reflection of production in general. In consequence visual art has always reflected, consciously or not, the latest in technology: from the very beginnings of civilization with the recognition of stones as a tool enabling cave drawing until the latest in military technology resulting in video or internet art.
But what does it mean for visual art if the cultural technique or very idea of technology itself becomes problematic? The development of technology has always meant progress in how to transform material or natural resources via human labour. The transformation of material is the key mode of production of any society up to date. It transforms ‘nature’ into supply goods in order to decrease supply shortage and to diminish the treats of nature, both of course aiming at enhancing quality of life. But since the middle of the 20^th century with the appearance of excess supply in western societies as well as mankind endangering of the specific disposition of nature in which human life seems possible, the hegemoniality of the transformation of material as the mode of production has been deeply questioned. So, equally the development of this mode of production, technological progress, has become problematic.
Basically, all visual art works are produced by transformations of material, there are only very few exceptions (e. g. some of Michael Asher’s works). For visual art to keep on affirming this mode of production and following its development does not seem very interesting to me.
Art that does not address this politicity of its own medium, but all the same puts itself underneath the banner of progressive politics, performs a gesture which is dangerously reactionary on the one hand, because it proposes that there can be critique without self-critique (which implies the possibility of a place outside of society, a site of disinvolvement), and on the other because it proposes that art has to actively connect itself to politics, implying that there is no apriori connection between art and politics. Jacques Rancière has commented on the problematicness of the latter when saying that just as proclaiming ‘the end of politics’ the proclamation of ‘the return of politics’ is equally just another way of cancelling out politics, which in this particular case would be the cancelling out of the intrinsic connection between visual art and economical production.
The question I would prefer visual art to pose itself is, how can it help in developing and promoting alternative modes of production or other approached to production instead of constantly reaffirming the dominant and highly problematic ones? So that in a Rancièrean sense a new voice ruptures the hegemonic discourse on production of which visual art is until now a chief representative.

Wiederabdruck
Dieser Text erschien zuerst in: noroomgallery (Hrsg.): Den Letzten beißen die Hunde. Was man in der Kunst tun sollte/könnte/müsste. Visionen künstlerischer Praxis, Hamburg 2008.

Museum Futures: Distributed

admin — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 12:42:38 +0000

Museum Futures: Distributed – is a machinima record of the centenary interview with Moderna Museet’s executive AYAN Lindquist in June 2058. It explores a genealogy for contemporary art practice and its institutions, by re-imagining the role of artists, museums, galleries, markets, manufactories and academies.

Centenary Interview 2058

Interior: The common room, Moderna Museet v3.0
A beautiful lounge, comfortable seating, local lighting, graduated windows with breathtaking views of the sea.
Ayan Lindquist, fixed-term executive of Moderna v3.0, is waiting to be interviewed in real-time from Guangzhou, in the Asian Multitude.
She is browsing screens as a face fades-up on the wall window.

MS CHAN
Nihao, hej, hello!
Hello is that Ayan Lindquist?

AYAN LINDQUIST
Nihao, hello.
Yes Ms Chan, this is Ayan.
We are in sync.

MS CHAN
Thank you so much for finding time … you must be very busy with the centenary launch.

AYAN
It’s a pleasure.
We really admire your work on mid 20th C image ecologies. Especially your research on archival practice.

MS CHAN
Well I’m flattered. For many Asian non-market institutions, your pioneering work with long-term equity contracts has been inspirational too!

AYAN
Oh, there was a whole team of us involved … So lets begin.

MS CHAN
Ok. Just to refresh, for the centenary I’d like to archive your live-thread recall of Moderna.

AYAN
Yep, that’s fine, I’ve enabled about 20 minutes.

MS CHAN
Ok, live.
Maybe we could start with some personal history. What were you doing before you became executive at Moderna Museet v3.0?

AYAN
Well, I joined Moderna 2.0 in 2049, almost ten years ago. First as adviser to the development working group. Then as part of the governance team. I participated in the forking of Moderna 3.0 in 2’51. And was elected fixed-term executive in 2’52, ….. uhmm, … until today.
I’ve got another four years in the post.

MS CHAN
And before that?

AYAN
Immediately before joining Moderna I collaborated in the exhibition programme at the MACBA cluster in Mumbai for six years. Although, more in resource provision. That’s where we worked on a version of the equity bond issue you mentioned.

MS CHAN
And before that?

AYAN
In programming again at Tate in Doha for four years, particularly developing exhibitionary platforms. And even before that, I participated in research on cultural governance, for the Nordic Congress of the European Multitude for six years. I suspect exhibition agency and governance are my real strengths.

MS CHAN
Maybe we should dive into the deep-end. Could you briefly say something of why Moderna v3.0 devolved, and why was it necessary?

AYAN
As you can imagine there was a lot of consultation beforehand. It’s not something we did without due diligence. For almost forty years Moderna v2.0 has explored and developed the exhibitionary form. We pioneered the production of many collaborative exhibitions, resources and assemblages.
We helped build robust public – what you prefer to term non-market cultural networks. And scaled those networks to produce our i-commons, part of the vast, glocal, Public Domain. We have continually nurtured and developed emergent art practice. Moderna can proudly, and quite rightly say that we participated in shaping the early 21st century movement of art. From an exhibitionary practice based around art-artefacts, spectacle and consumption – to that of embedded co-production.

MS CHAN
Do you mean …

AYAN
Of course there are many complex factors involved …………
But we were agent in the shift from a heritage cultural mind-set of ‘broadcast’, to that of emergent, peer-to-peer meshworks. Following the logic of practice, we became an immanent institution.

MS CHAN
Could you say a ……………

AYAN
Uhmm …….. Although having said all of that ……….
We’ve not really answered your question, have we? Given that Moderna 2.0 continues its exhibitionary research, some of us believe that exhibition as a technology, and immanence as an institutional logic needed to be subject to radical revision. So this is what we intend to explore with Moderna 3.0, we want to execute some of the research. To enact. To be more agent than immanent.

MS CHAN
Ok. I wondered if you could you say a ……………

AYAN
Sorry to over-write, but in a way the forking follows something of the tradition of Moderna Museet. Moderna 2.0 mutated through 1.0 because the tension between trying to collect, conserve, and exhibit the history of 20th Century art, and at the same time trying to be a responsible 21st Century art institution proved too difficult to reconcile. Moderna 1.0 continues its mandate. Its buildings and collection has global heritage status. In turn, this early hybridization enabled Moderna 2.0 to be more mobile and experimental. In its organizational form, in its devolved administration, and its exhibition-making practice ….

MS CHAN
Could you just expand on the ‘more complex factors’ you mentioned earlier….

AYAN
That’s a big question!! Let me re-run a general thread from composite ………… […] … uhmm
Well, a good place to start might be the bifurcation of the market for ‘contemporary art’ from emergent art practices themselves. Although the public domain has a long genealogy; Waaaay ……. back into ancient European land rights, ‘commons’ projects and commonwealth’s.
It was the advent of digitalisation, and particularly very early composite language projects in the 1980’s which – and this appears astonishing to us now, were proprietary – that kick-started what were called ‘open’, ‘free’ or non-market resource initiatives. Of course, these languages, assemblages and the resources they were building needed legal protection. Licenses to keep them out of property and competitive marketization. The General Public License, the legendary GPL legal code was written in 1989.

MS CHAN
It’s not so old!

AYAN
So then, text and images – either still or moving; artefacts, systems and processes; music and sound – either as source or assembled; all embedded plant, animal and bodily knowledge; public research, and all possible ecologies of these resources began to be aggregated by the viral licenses into our Public Domain. Landmarks include the releasing of the sequenced human genome in 2001. The foundation of the ‘multitude’ social enterprise coalition in 2’09. Intellectual Property reform in the teen’s. The UN-Multitude initiated micro-taxation of global financial transactions in 2’13 – which redirected so many financial resources to Public Domain cultural initiatives. Well I could go on, and on, and on. But anyway, most participants will be over-familiar with this thread.

MS CHAN
Remind me, when did Moderna affiliate?

AYAN
In-Archive records suggest Öppna dagar or Härifrån till allmänningen, with Mejan ……. I’m sorry. We did some collaborative ‘open’ knowledge projects with Mejan in Stockholm in late 2’09. And when Moderna 2.0 launched in 2’12 we declared all new knowledge General Public License version 6, compliant.

MS CHAN
Wasn’t that initiated by Chus Martinez, one of your predecessors? She seems to have shaped early Moderna 2.0, which in turn, became an inspiration globally.

AYAN
It’s nice you say so. Since 2’12 we collaborated with the fledgling Nordic Congress, in what was to become the European Multitude, to form the backbone of the Public Domain cultural meshwork. It eventually convened in late 2’22. So we were at source.

MS CHAN
Ok. Uh ha, thanks.

AYAN
Now simultaneous with the exponential growth of the Public Domain, was the market for what we still call ‘contemporary art’. Many historians locate one of the sources for this ‘contemporary art’ market, as the auction in New York in 1973 of the art-artefact collection of Robert and Ethel Scull. An extraordinary collection of paintings by pop-male-artists like Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Ed Ruscha, and …… er …… I recall …….. Jasper Johns.

MS CHAN
Ok. From composite I’m streaming the John Schott analogue film of the sale, from New York MoMA’s Public Domain archive.

AYAN
It’s a great film, and many of the art-artefacts have subsequently devolved to Moderna.

MS CHAN
I have the catalogue.
It’s present, ………. I’m browsing.

AYAN
That auction set record prices for many artists.
It also connected art-artefacts with financial speculation in a way previously unimagined.
By 1981 one of the ‘big two’ auction houses, Sotheby’s, was active in 23 countries and had a ‘contemporary art’ market throughput of 4.9 billion old US dollars. Soon, global Trade Fairs mushroomed. Commercial galleries flourished and a sliver of ‘branded’ artists lived like mid 20th Century media oligarchs. By 2’06 complex financial trading technologies were using art-artefacts as an asset class. And most public Modern Art Museums were priced out of the ‘contemporary art’ market. In retrospect, we wasted an enormous amount of time and effort convening financial resources to purchase, and publicly ‘own’ vastly overpriced goods. And we wasted time wooing wealthy speculators, for sporadic gifts and donations too!

MS CHAN
That connects! It was the same locally.
The conflictual ethical demands in early Modern Art Museums were systemic. And obviously unsustainable. Reversing the resource flow, and using Transaction Tax to nourish Public Domain cultural meshworks seems, …………………… well, inevitable.

AYAN
Ahhh, sometimes, rethreading is such a wonderful luxury! Anyway, auction houses began to buy commercial galleries. And this dissolved the tradition of the primary – managed, and secondary – free art market. As a consequence, by 2’12 the ‘contemporary art’ market was a ‘true’ competitive market, with prices for assets falling as well as rising. Various ‘contemporary art’ bond, derivate and futures markets were quickly convened. And typically, art-asset portfolios were managed through specialist brokerages linked to banking subsidiaries.

MS CHAN
Ok. I also see some local downturns linked to financial debt bubbles bursting. Spectacularly in 2’09, again in 2’24 and again in 2’28. Market corrections?

AYAN
Probably. Market corrections and their repercussions. Overall the market expanded, matured in 2’27 and has remained sufficiently resourced ever since ……… More or less. By 2014 formerly commercial galleries, the primary market, had became a competing meshwork of global auction franchises. By 2‘25 they needed to open branded academies to ensure new assets were produced.

MS CHAN
I can see the Frieze Art Academy in Beijing, that was one of the earliest.

AYAN
The market for ‘contemporary art’ became, to all intents and purposes, a competitive commodity market, just like any other. Of course, useful for generating profit and loss through speculation. And useful for generating Public Domain financial resources, but completely divorced from emergent art practice.

MS CHAN
Ok. This might be a bit of a dumb query.
But does Moderna feel that in the self-replication of the ‘contemporary art’ market, that something valuable has been lost from public Museums?

AYAN
To be perfectly honest, no. No, we only experience benefits. You see, through the UN Multitude distribution of Transaction Tax we are much better financially resourced. Which in turn, has enabled us to develop our local cluster and node network. Generally, competitive markets thrive on artificial difference and managed risk. They are just too limited a technology to nurture, or challenge, or distribute a truly creative art practice. And just take all these private art-asset collections, built by speculator-collectors, and supported through private foundations.
Apart from the hyper-resourced, they all ultimately fail. Then they’re either broken-up and re-circulated through the ‘contemporary art’ market. Or, more usually, devolve to the multitude and enter public Museum collections. Here at Moderna, we have benefited enormously from a spate of default donations. Consequently, we’ve a comprehensive collection of ‘contemporary’ art-artefacts through reversion.

MS CHAN
Ok. Then this was the basis for the amazing Moderna Contemporary Art exhibition in Shanghai in 2’24. It was reconstructed as a study module while I was at the Open University in 2’50. I can still recall it. What a collection! What an amazing exhibition! Ok, so maybe here we could locate an ethic approaching something like a critical mass. As Moderna Museet’s collection. exhibitions and activities expanded – and of course other Museums too – the ethic of public generosity is distributed, nurtured and also encouraged. Everyone benefits. I can see that when the Ericsson group pledged its collection for instance, it triggered a whole avalanche of other important private gifts and donations.
Like the Azko – la Caixa collection, or the Generali Foundation gift. Or like when the Guggenheim franchises collapsed as the debt-bubble burst in 2’18, and the Deutsche Bank executive decided to revert their collection.

AYAN
We think that’s a slightly different case, and certainly of a different magnitude!! Although it’s a common trajectory for many public/private museum hybrids.

MS CHAN
Ok, it’s certainly true of museums locally. The former Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, ………. and MOCA in Shanghai for instance.

AYAN
That connects. The increased resources, and the gifts, donations and reversions enabled us to seed our local cluster devolution. From 2’15 we invested in partnerships with the Institutet Människa I Nätverk in Stockholm; with agencies in Tallin and also Helsinki. With the early reversion of the Second Life hive, and with Pushkinskaya in St Petersburg. We created, what was rather fondly termed, the Baltic cluster.

MS CHAN
Ok, from composite I see there had been an earlier experiment with a devolved Moderna. During the enforced closure in 2’02 – 2’03, exhibitions were co-hosted with sympathetic local institutions. There was even a Konstmobilen!

AYAN
Ja, and it was always considered something of a success. Distributing and re-imagining the collection through the cluster – incidentally we cut our carbon debt to almost 12 – radically scaled our activities. So, while developing locally, we also began to produce a wider Moderna Museet network. The first Moderna node opened in Doha in the United Arab Emirates. We participated in the local ecologies restructuring of resources; from carbon to knowledge. That was in 2’18. In 2’20, Mumbai emerged, Ex Habare three-year research project in cooperation with several self-organised Research Institutions – I recall Nowhere from Moscow, the Critical Practice consortium in London, and Sarai from Delhi. And as you already mentioned Shanghai launched in 2’24 with the landmark Contemporary Art exhibition, then the Guangzhou node went live in 2‘29 with La Part Maudite: Bataille and the Accursed Share. A really timely exhibition! It explored the distribution of trust and ‘well-being’ in a general economy. The ethics of waste and expenditure; and the love, and terror, implicit in uninhibited generosity. Isn’t that node’s location near your present Guangdong Museum hub? On Ersha Island, by the Haiyin Bridge?

MS CHAN
We’re almost neighbours! As for the La Part Maudite: much of that source work is still live, and still very present.

AYAN
We saw you did some restoration to the image server codecs recently, thank you for that.

MS CHAN
Ok. A pleasure.

AYAN
Our most recent node emerged in San Paulo in the Americas in 2’33. Through the agency of the Alan Turing Centenary project Almost Real: Composite Consciousness.

MS CHAN
Ok, if I may, I’d just like to loop back with you, to the 20’s and 30’s. It’s when many academic historians think we entered a new exhibitionary ‘golden age’ with Moderna. You co-produced a suite of landmark projects, many of which are still present.

AYAN LINDQUIST
We’re not too comfortable with the idea of a ‘golden age’. Maybe our work became embedded again. Anyway, if there was a ‘golden age’ we’d like to think it started earlier, maybe in 2‘18. We set about exploring a key term from early machine logic – ‘feedback’. And we made a re-address to the source, the legendary Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London; on the exhibition’s 50th anniversary.

MS CHAN
From composite – I see Tate has many Public Domain archive resources – it’s recorded as the first exhibitionary exchange between visual art and digital assemblies.

AYAN
For us at Moderna, that exhibition set in motion two decades of recurrent projects exploring Art, Technology and Knowledge. Its most recent manifestation, linked to the Turing research, has resulted in Moderna 3.0’s cooperation on a draft amendment to Article 39 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. We are seeking to extend certain rights to organic/synthetic intelligent composites.

MS CHAN
You’re co-producing sovereign composites?

AYAN
Yes, yes, that’s what I was hinting at earlier; about Moderna being more agent, and executing as well as exhibiting.

MS CHAN
Now I understand Moderna’s centenary proposal for a Museum of Their Wishes. It’s absolutely amazing! I know it’s a very common thread, but definitely worth re-running. The one about the foundation of the Moderna Museet’s collection with the Museum of Our Wishes exhibition in 1962. And how this was revisited in 2006 by Lars Nittve, with the Museum of our Wishes II – to address the lack of women artists within the collection.

AYAN
We see our legacy as a resource, not a burden.
It’s something we have been working with for a while, recursive programmes. It’s at root. Actually, Wish II was finally fulfilled in 2’22, when some Dora Maar photographs reverted. But, with the emergence of self-conscious composite intelligence, addressing ‘their’ wishes seemed appropriate, even necessary.
And it’s true, if the draft amendment is ratified, it will be an amazing achievement.

MS CHAN
Ok. Even if you don’t like the term, maybe a new ‘golden age’ is beginning?

AYAN
For that, we’ll all just have to wait and see. But earlier, you were right to suggest that in 2’20, with Ex Habare The Practice of Exhibition, we consolidated the idea of emergent art. And, distributed new institutional practices.

MS CHAN
In the Asian network it’s common knowledge that Ex Habare reaffirmed the role of the Museum in civil society.

AYAN
Well to start, we un-compressed the Latinate root of exhibition, ex habare, to reveal the intention of ‘holding-out’ or ‘showing’ evidence in a legal court. It’s obvious, that implicit in exhibition is the desire to show, display and share with others. By grafting this ancient drive, to desires for creative co-production, we enabled exhibitions to remain core to Moderna’s aspirations. It’s also true that to source, participate, co-produce and share, to generate non-rivalous resources, are vital to the constitution of a Public Domain. And indeed, a civil society. There’s a neat homology. Ex Habare distributed these values, and it’s also true, they replicated at an astonishing speed.

MS CHAN
It’s so good to be reminded! Even I tend to take the power of exhibition as a technology for granted. Do you think that this is because artists and others moved into collaborative relationships with Moderna?

AYAN
Var ska vi börja?
Artists and others realised ……….. that the 19th Century ideological construction of the artist, had reached its absolute limit. As configured, art as a ‘creative’ process had ceased to innovate, inspire or have any critical purchase. Quite simply it was irrelevant!

MS CHAN
Everywhere, except in the ‘Contemporary Art’ market!

AYAN
That heritage ‘broadcast’ communication model of culture that we mentioned earlier, privileges creative exchanges between artist and media in the studio/manufactory. Exchanges which were distributed through competitive trade and collecting institutions. At best, ‘broadcast’ extended a small measure of creative agency to the encounter between audiences – often referred to as passive ‘viewers’ – and artworks.

MS CHAN
Ok, I have material from composite. So even when this model was disrupted; like in 1968, the Modellen; A Model for a Qualitative Society exhibition at Moderna for example. It looks like we fell back into umm …… Perhaps the wider creative ecology was just not receptive enough.

AYAN
You might be right Ms Chan. It was really when artists began to imagine art as a practice, and explore creativity as a social process ….

MS CHAN
Sometime around the late 1990’s perhaps?

AYAN
Yes, yes, then we could detect something of a change. Artists began to engage creatively with institutions, and vice versa.
With all aspects of institutional practice; of course through co-producing exhibitions, but also through archival projects – which you’ve done so much to research Ms Chan – through organisational engagement, administration, and so on ……….

MS CHAN
Ok, I’m browsing material from composite on Institutional Critique. Michael Asher and Hans Haacke, they seem to be mostly artists from the America’s in the 1970’s–1980’s

AYAN
Not sure if those are the appropriate resources? Artists associated with Institutional Critique, I recall Michael Asher and Hans Haacke but also Julie Ault and Group Material, or Andrea Fraser. They had a much more antagonistic and oppositional relationship with exhibitionary institutions. They resented being represented by an exhibitionary institution.
Especially those linked to a 19th Century ideology.

MS CHAN
Ok, now I’m browsing material on Sputniks, EIPCP, Bruno Latour, Maria Lind, Arteleku, Van Abbe Museum, Superflex, Franc Lacarde, Raqs and Sarai, Moderna’s projects, Bart de Baere ….

AYAN
Yes, this constellation feels more relevant. As artists rethought their practices, they recognised themselves as a nexus of complex social process. And that creativity was inherent in every conceivable transaction producing that nexus. At whatever the intensity, and regardless of the scale of the assembly. The huge challenge for all of us, was to attend to the lines of force, the transactions, and not be dazzled by the subjects, objects or institutions they produced. We recall that it was under these conditions that artists’ practices merged with Moderna. Merged into relations of mutual co-production. And so in exchange, Moderna began to think of itself as a creative institution. Subject to constant critical and creative exploration.

MS CHAN
Ok, so these were the forces generating Moderna 2.0 in 2’12

AYAN
You’re right. We simply stopped thinking of ourselves as a 19th Century museum – which had to constantly expand, commission signature buildings, evolve huge administrative hierarchies – exhibition, education, support, management and so on. And more on instituting – in the ancient sense of the word – of founding and supporting. On instituting creative practice. So, we started to play, risk, cooperate, research and rapidly prototype. Not only exhibitions and research projects, but ourselves. Some values were lost – which is always painful, and yet others were produced. And those most relevant maintained, nurtured and cherished. We learnt to invest, long-term, without regard for an interested return. And that’s how we devolved locally, and networked globally. We’ve had some failures; either exhibitions couldn’t convene the necessary resources, or we made mistakes. But as an immanent institution, most experiences were productive. Ahm ……… Not sure if that jump-cut thread answered your query …………

MS CHAN
Sort of …..

AYAN
The short answer could be that artists have transformed Moderna, and we in turn transformed them.

MS CHAN
Ok, but that last sound-bit is rather banal.
Although, the thread’s not uninteresting.

AYAN
Ironically, our playful devolution of Moderna 2.0 reanimated the historical collection displayed in version 1.0. We freed art-artefacts from their function, of ‘recounting’ the history of 20th Century Art; however alternative, discontinuous, or full of omissions we imagine that thread to be. And once free, they engaged with real-time discursive transactions. They became live again, contested nodes in competing transactions of unsettled bodies of knowledge.

MS CHAN
Um ………, I’m not sure I’m following this ………….
As time is running out, and there’s so much to cover. I just wonder if you could mention ……
Could you recall, even briefly, some beacon exhibitions. Like Transactional Aesthetics, or the Ecology of Fear.

AYAN
Rädslans ekologi, or the Ecology of Fear was timely, given the viral pandemic throughout DNA storage – so many systems were compromised; and the various ‘wars’ that were being waged, against difference, material resources, energy, and public attention ……..
And I guess the same for Transactional Aesthetics. It was the right moment to be participating in the production of local social enterprise and well-being initiatives ……

MS CHAN
Could you just mention the legendary ARARAT, Alternative Research in Architecture, Resources, Art and Technology exhibited at Moderna in 1976, which you revisited on its 50th anniversary in 2’26. From composite I can see archive materials. They’re present.

AYAN
There’s not much to add. Obviously the first version of ARARAT explored appropriate local technologies for buildings and urban systems – using sustainable resources. In 1976, this was the beginning of our understanding of a global ecology, and of the finite nature of mineral resources; especially carbon. Given our population reached 8bn in 2’26 it was vital to revisit the exhibition. To somehow, take stock … The first shock was that so little of the initial exhibition was recoverable – we invested in reconstruction and archival research – it’s all Public Domain composite now. And the second, was the realisation that so little of the source exhibition had had any real effect. We suspect a serious flaw in the exhibitionary form.

MS CHAN
The lack of resources from those early exhibitions is always disheartening. It’s hard to imagine a time before, even rudimentary Public Domain meshworks, embedded devices, and semantic interfaces.

AYAN
Well, one of the great outcomes of the Moderna Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2’08, is that they revisited and reflected on the preceding fifty years. We recently found shadow-traces for a Moderna History book. And for reasons that are not entirely clear, it remained unpublished during the Jubilee celebrations – so, we intend to issue a centenary heritage publication. We’ll be sure to send you a copy.

MS CHAN
I see we have overrun, I’m so sorry. I just wonder before we disconnect, what is Moderna re-sourcing in the near future?

AYAN
Well, for us, there are some beautiful assemblies emerging. Real-time consensus is moving from a local to regional scale. Triangle in the African Multitude is distributing amazing regenerative medical technologies. Renewable energy has moved through the 74 % threshold. Um ….. live, almost retro, music performance is popular again. Nano-technology has come of age, and 1:1 molecular replication will soon be enabled, linked to scanning technology hardwired to the manufactories in the Asian network. Outside of heritage, singularity will be overwritten by difference.
Now that’s exciting!

MS CHAN
Exciting indeed! Thank you so much Ayan. It’s been a privilege, really. Enjoy the centenary celebrations, we’ll all be there with you in spirit.
Zai Jian, goodbye.

AYAN
Thank you Ms Chan.
Goodbye, zai jian, hejdå.

The project was a collaboration with Marysia Lewandowska, commissioned by Moderna Museet Stockholm, Sweden, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary in 2008.

Wiederabdruck
Dieser Text erschien unter http://www.neilcummings.com/content/museum-futures-script-0 [4.4.2013].