Let’s talk about Curatorial Ethics. A cycle of conferences at Kunsthalle Vienna

Vanessa Joan Müller and Nicolaus Schafhausen, organizers of Curatorial Ethics at Kunsthalle Vienna, introduced the conference cycle starting from the etymology of the verb “to curate.”

“The verb ‘to curate’ derives from Latin ‘curare,’ and means ‘to attend to something’ and thus also to take responsibility – for an exhibition, for the participating artists, for the works, etc.”

The etymology was just a starting point. Obviously, the lecturers of Curatorial Ethics have sought to figure out something more then the linguistic root of the discipline. Nicolaus Schafhausen, for instance, immediately tried to characterize a theoretical framework for the discussion, he talked about the artworks and the definition of economical value in art. Artworks are not priceless, but they don’t respond to the law of supply. He quoted Adam Smith in comparison with the art market and his economic model. The law that regulates the art market is more than a simple re-adaptation of the law of supply and demand. The problem of the definition of value becomes, nowadays an artistic statement, thus contemporary artworks become the object of the impossible value. Using economical tools, Schafhausen immediately contextualized the discussion outside a specific artistic dimension. Thus contemporary art is a field of the theoretically, politically, and empirically engaged. In three days of talks what clearly emerged was that we are still looking for a genealogy of the discipline. In this text I would like to try and draw out the route that I had a glimpse of in Vienna.

Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz, photo Davide Bevilacqua

Historically, at the end of the 20th century the figure of the curator became popular. In this period, the curator escaped the institutional context of the museum to become independent, only to return to institutions later on. What happened to the curator during this travel? Is she/he just an exhibition maker? And why did the organizer feel the need to combine ethics with curatorship? The needs of discussing the heterogeneous factors of the curatorial discipline was revealed from the large range of questions that the conference faced. Ethics and Economics, Exploitation and Struggles are all themes that a curator must face in the organization of an art event.

In 1972, researchers at MIT published their eye-opening study The Limits to Growth. The project used computer simulations to demonstrate the potentially devastating impact of exponential capitalist growth in a closed system with finite resources. By examining the growth trends in human population, industrialization, pollution and resource depletion, the authors of this report suggested several possible scenarios of “overshoot and collapse” in the global system by the half of the twentyfirst century. Is this dystopia the evolution prospected for the art world? In the panel “Total Economization of the Art World,” Nikolaus Hirsch, Tom McDonough, Deimantas Narkevičius and Monika Szewczyk discussed about the symptoms of this prospective.

Curatorial Ethics. Vanessa Joan Müller, Lorenzo Benedetti (De Appel Arts Center, Amsterdam) and Beatrice von Bismarck (Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig), photo Davide Bevilacqua

Lorenzo Benedetti and Beatrice von Bismarck gave an example of the connections between curatorship and school education. They brought their own case, respectively De Appel Art Center (Amsterdam) and Hochschule für Grafik und Buchdruck (Leipzig). Beatrice von Bismarck gave an interesting answer when asked if those kinds of schools are just places where to stoke impossible ambitions: in her opinion, curatorial schools are, first of all, places where people learn how to think critically, and not places where to learn a trade.

Curatorial Ethics. Zoë Gray (WIELS, Brussels), John Beeson (art critic, Berlin) and Fabian Schöneich (Portikus, Frankfurt am Main), photo Davide Bevilacqua

The Panel “Ambitioned vs. Instrument,” with Zoë Gray, John Beeson and Fabian Schöneich, has sought to draw a curatorial prospective taking under consideration the new generation of curators. How do emerging curators see their profession today? What ambitions can the job fulfill when faced with the potential holds for instrumentalization? From the words of John Beeson, the figure of the curator has emerged as a part of a system instead of as a decisions maker. Curators can decide what kind of world they want to represent, criticize or analyze, but these decisions must be made through a dialectic process. Curators are part of a discourse, they are a voice, more than the only voice of the discourse.

The ethic and prophetic value of Guy Debord’s book Society of the Spectacle was discussed by Tom McDonough and Olaf Nicolai. Guy Debord’s 1967 masterpiece, which argues that not only authentic social relations, but even the bricks and mortar that frame them, and the tarmac that connects one to another, have all been replaced with their representation. Starting from this shift, Olaf Nicolai and Tom McDonough underlined how for Debord the annulling of center and periphery is not a “supersession,” but rather an “erosion … visible in the eclectic mélange of … decayed elements.”

Curatorial Ethics. Nicolaus Schafhausen (Kunsthalle Wien), Olaf Nicolai (artist) Tom McDonough (Comparative Literature, Binghamton University) in Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz, photo Davide Bevilacqua

Curatorial Ethics. Nicolaus Schafhausen (Kunsthalle Wien) introduces Olaf Nicolai (artist) and Tom McDonough (Comparative Literature, Binghamton University), photo Davide Bevilacqua

The panel “Art, Politics and Society” with Defne Ayas, Bart de Baere, Fulvia Erdemci and Nikolaus Hirsch sought to discuss the role of art events in the political context. They mentioned the case of the Moscow Biennale 2015, which will be curated by Bart De Baere, and the relation with the public in a country with evident problems of democracy. The Istanbul Biennale 2013, curated by Fulya Erdemci during the anti-government protests in Gezi Park, represented the base ground to discuss how art could face political issues. This panel left us with a big query. In a context in which neither political parties nor social movements seem to be able to transform the indignation into a tool for institutional change, what can the rule be for the arts? I would like to leave the readers of this article with this same question.

“Curatorial Ethics,”  9–11 April 2015 at Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz
Click here for an audio recording of the conference

Curatorial Ethics. Defne Ayas (Witte de With, Rotterdam), Bart de Baere (MUHKA, Antwerp / 6th Moscow Biennale), Fulvia Erdemci (13th Istanbul Biennale) and Nikolaus Hirsch (architect and curator, Frankfurt am Main), photo Davide Bevilacqua