On Tuesday 15 October, Paul O’Neill, David Blamey (the mind behind Open Editions publishing) and I launched Curious at the lovely Tenderbooks bookshop in Covent Garden. It was a relaxed evening, with friends, colleagues and students, during which Paul and I alternately read fragments from the fourteen interviews that we re-edited for this volume. I had fun selecting statements from the female voices, including Andrea Fraser and Ute Meta Bauer, who both spoke about amnesia.
Andrea observed: ‘The art world in general is rife with amnesia and it’s not surprising that it also affects curatorial practices. It may be symptomatic of the weakness of the professionalisation of curating, at least compared to academic disciplines in which people are required to study precedents. Curating is caught between scholarship and showmanship. That’s the conflict. Historical perspective, on art and on curatorial practice itself, is diminishing relative to the rise of showman-hip, where what’s important is not what’s innovative but what generates a big audience. One sees that in artistic practices too, and in the criteria that curators put into place and apply in making choices about what artists to show – in their gatekeeper and tastemaker functions.’
Ute stated: ‘Well, we also need some amnesia to create something new and reinvent what has been done in another formulation. Think about how often painting has been claimed dead… As a teacher I know how frustrating it can be for students to realise that what they work on already exists but generated at a different moment and therefore in a different context. The passing of time gives it another reading and perception.’
In keeping with the colour scheme of the book – a black cover with white type – below an ‘action shot’ captured by artist Jasmina Cibic, who posted this on Instagram.
Gerrie van Noord 