Conferência "The exhibition as space of possibility".
11 de Março de 2011 (dur: 30 minutos). Clique aqui.
Artigo da autora na e-flux.
Conferência "What comes after the show? On post-representational curating".
Abril de 2011. (dur: 1h13). Clique aqui.
Conferência "Being able to do something: educating and curating in the post-representational museum".
Apresentada em Helsínquia, Maio de 2011. Texto disponível aqui.
Artigo "Memorial sites as contact zones. Cultures of memory in a shared/divided present".
Dezembro de 2011. Disponível aqui.
Artigo "Whose universalism is it?"
Março de 2007. Disponível aqui.
Conferência "That Certain Savoir/Pouvoir. Gallery Education as a Field of Possibility"
Apresentada em Novembro de 2012. Na nossa conferência!
Since the 1990s, the debates within the field of gallery education have become reflexive. Now, guided tours must do more than simply convince and captivate; in mediation projects, approaches to artistic work, trends and themes should do more than simply be as interactive as possible. Rather, in art mediation theory, language and action have become focal points in themselves. In numerous seminars and conferences, in mediation teams, and in the multitude of museum and exhibition study programs that have increasingly been cropping up, their own position within power relations and institutions has been discussed.[1] In this vein, with recourse to approaches from New Museology[2] and institutional critique within the art field,[3] mediation has been located in the middle of the knowledge/power nexus.[4] Art educators have critically examined their everyday practices and found many of their basic assumptions shaken to the core. But that is no reason for resignation: because right between knowledge and power might also be the space for agency within art mediation.
Now that art mediation’s institutions, methods and language have been critically reflected upon and questioned over the past few years, this text seeks to examine the field of possibility within art education from different perspectives. In her book Outside in the Teaching Machine, postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak deals with the question of agency and with devising a critical theory of agency. In an essay entitled "More on Power/Knowledge,"[5] she reads Foucault using the theoretical instruments of Derrida, enabling her to gain a new and empowering perspective on the knowledge/power nexus (savoir/pouvoir). In French, pouvoir means not only power, but also "to be able to." Spivak reads the combination of the verbs savoir/pouvoir as savoir-vivre [an understanding of social life and customs], as "being able to do something only as you are able to make sense of it."[6] With this re-reading, she fundamentally shifts the focus: knowledge and power are not only the two relations between two forms of agency; they also produce a space by placing them in relation to one another. In this Spivakian sense, this text seeks to locate the agency in the middle of a critical praxis of art education.
Gayatri Spivak's reading of Michel Foucault makes it possible to use theory to locate agency, which is never innocent and always operates in the middle of things, on a theoretical level. What is this "in the middle of things" in an exhibition space: how can it be conceived of as a public space of negotiation and agency? Who are the actors and by what means do they act? And if, following Spivak's line of argument, there is no longer such a thing as an outside perspective or a bird's eye view of knowledge, then art education can cast aside the powerful distinction between the production and reproduction of knowledge and begin to act.
1. Acting in the Middle of Things
At first glance it may seem that reflexivity, discussions on the power of discourses, and institutional critique could have allowed agency to fade into the background. Much of what was considered self-evident, important and progressive within mediation—the opening of institutions, working with visitors’ free association, or employing interactive strategies of mediation, for example—has been critically assessed and closely examined with regards to ideology, hegemony, bourgeois-institutional or paternalistic strategies.[7] This revealed the institution's role in the construction of values, tendencies, truths and histories, so that it was no longer possible to view the visitors as autonomous subjects who had to be enlightened and brought to maturity. Thus, one could reason that since we, as autonomous subjects, along with our strategies of mediation, have so strongly been called into question, nobody knows how to act appropriately anymore.
This could lead to the question: "what's left for us to do?" In fact, this question was not raised, or more precisely, it was not raised as a gesture of resignation: reflexivity is far from being simply paralyzing, as it has led to a number of forms of expression within a kind of art mediation that perceives itself as a critical praxis.[8]
It is therefore clear that the critique has changed. It can no longer set itself apart and assume an outside perspective; instead, its place is just as much in the middle of discourses and power relations as that to which it refers. Within this process, critique fulfills a double function. On the one hand, it functions as a critique of something and, on the other hand, critique also entails its own claims to validity. Therefore, the place from which critique comes becomes a subject of critique itself--and it, too, becomes suspicious. The result is critique in a dual sense: self-critique and social critique.[9] This "double occupation" of a critique that does not take itself out of the equation is what theorist Irit Rogoff calls criticality:
"In ‘criticality’ we have that double occupation in which we are both fully armed with the knowledges of critique, able to analyse and unveil while at the same time sharing and living out the very conditions which we are able to see through. As such we live out a duality that requires at the same time both an analytical mode and a demand to produce new subjectivities that acknowledge that we are what Hannah Arendt has termed ‘fellow sufferers’ of the very conditions we are critically examining."[10]
Rogoff also makes it clear that learning involves being taken apart in the process of learning, because "one does not learn something new until one unlearns something old."[11] It is in this sense that art education theorist Carmen Mörsch calls art education a critical praxis: art education becomes a context in which one grapples with society, with institutions and with oneself.
So, if the analysis of the last few years has revealed that art institutions are powerful sites where canons and values are produced and established, then it could be said that precisely those spaces in which the canon is (re)produced are the spaces where something can happen. In this sense, exhibitions and art institutions are located at the interface of dominance and liberation. They are structured spaces of administration, but they also harbor the possibility of acting within the social realm. And it is precisely at this point that counter-narratives and critique can take place—without, however, ever remaining fully innocent. "You take positions in terms not of the discovery of historical or philosophical grounds, but in terms of reversing, displacing and seizing the apparatus of value-coding,"[12] Gayatri Spivak on the role of postcolonial educators, thus clearly emphasizing that an outside perspective is just as much a fiction as is the possibility of using it as an excuse to withdraw from a position. Here, art education should be understood as a framework within which this certain savoir/pouvoir can become effective, and within which, in the middle of the institutions, in the middle of the power/knowledge nexus, a space opens up, in order to be able to do something.
2. Taking issue with the apparatus of value-coding
Critically examining institutions and their strategies—from collecting, conserving, researching, narrating and exhibiting to educating[13]—therefore also means perceiving them as constructed, historically contingent and transformable, actively unlearning the powerful production of knowledge (for instance, what counts as good art), and thereby, in the midst of the apparatus of value-coding, taking issue with it. This means not only simply listening to other forms of knowledge, but also allowing and enabling the existing order of knowledge to be fundamentally questioned, seized and changed.
In order for this to happen, it is necessary to deconstruct the notion of the triad of object-mediator-visitor and to try to unlearn many of the fundamental truths within the art and exhibition field: what if educators were no longer the ones with knowledge and visitors no longer those in need of knowledge? What if mediation processes were conceived as spaces of collective agency, in which to engage with different forms of knowledge?
Looking at agency from this perspective enables us to see potential for change, beyond simply calling for participation, by addressing the power relations involved in defining the institution itself. If we understand art institutions as public spaces that are not only open to everyone, but that strive to be sites that belong to everyone, then we are dealing with the question of the possibility of change. This crucial differentiation between what merely appears to be participatory and participation in a political sense affects our understanding of art education and mediation. Carmen Mörsch distinguishes four different types of education and speaks of affirmative, reproductive, deconstructive and transformative approaches: According to Mörsch, affirmative approaches are frontal forms of passing on the knowledge and values of institutions, while reproductive approaches tend to work with dialogue-based and interactive methods for acquiring institutional knowledge and values. In both cases, however, the institutional canon remains unquestioned. This takes place in the third category, through employing deconstructive approaches. While these reflect on the logics of institutions and the institutions themselves, only the transformative strategies go a step further: they aim to not only analyze, but also to transform the institutions.[14]
It is precisely at this point, when art education and mediation allow for something to happen—something that is not predetermined and that does not only question social and institutional logics, but also intervenes in them—that art education steps off the path of reflexivity and deconstruction and begins to engage in transformation. Taking this into account, it would make sense to cease to conceive of art education and mediation merely as a transfer of knowledge, but rather as a way of engaging with different forms of knowledge.
3. Objects that act
Which forms of knowledge come together in exhibitions? Against the backdrop of the various critical discussions on "how" to educate, methodological questions regarding "what" have somewhat receded into the background in the past few years. In order to create a perspective that not only entails an awareness for the gallery educators’ role and work, we should also question the possible roles of objects and art. What if we were to imagine that we were no longer dealing with important and valuable objects, from which we extract knowledge simply by looking at them? We are only too familiar (as numerous catalogue and exhibition texts in the field of contemporary art have shown) with assigning artwork an enigmatic character and imagining that its meaning lies silently within, a meaning that cannot be deciphered through words, but the multiplicity of which can be "sounded out"[15] with a great deal of compelling knowledge of iconographies, contexts, tendencies, theories and discussions. Here, I would like to propose engaging with works of art in exhibitions in a way that does not overload them with a particular aura, or treats them as a enigma, but instead understands them as agents that act within power relations and prerogatives of interpretation, with their own materiality, history and positionality.
In the last few years, French sociologist Bruno Latour caused quite a stir with the thesis that things act. He assumes that things are actors and asks: "what would an object-oriented democracy look like?"[16] He clearly shows that the idea that things are constructed through the way we imagine them, or our access to them, is a modern construct that harkens back to the era of order and classification. He proposes that things themselves be understood as actors within networks and writes: "Procedures to authorize and legitimize are important, but it’s only half of what is needed to assemble. The other half lies in the issues themselves, in the matters that matter, in the res that creates a public around it. They need to be represented, authorized, legitimated and brought to bear inside the relevant assembly."[17] For Latour, objects not only undergo construction, they act themselves, they impose things, they implicate others, they disregard rules, and in turn are regulated and demand that one positions oneself.
Drawing on Latour's theory of objects as actors, I would like to propose attributing agency to artwork in exhibitions as well. The triad has now been fully disbanded, the focus has shifted, and mediation appears to be a situation in which actions are taken and things can get out of hand.
In this way, gallery education could be conceived as an assembly in a public space where different actors and forms of knowledge come together: the knowledge of the objects and artwork, the knowledge of the institutions and the knowledge of the visitors and art educators. Of course, not all forms of knowledge are legitimized equally. But the division of legitimization as it is at this very moment has not always been this way, and does not necessarily have to remain this way. And, after all, this is what makes us yearn for that certain savoir/pouvoir...
[1] Cf. e.g. Mörsch, Carmen et al. (Eds.): documenta 12 education II. Between Critical Practice and Visitor Services Results of a Research Project, Berlin 2009. Or: Schnittpunkt (Ed.): Wer spricht? Autorität und Autorschaft in Ausstellungen. Vienna 2005.
[2] Cf. Vergo, Peter: The New Museology. London 1989.
[3] Cf. e.g., Welchmann, John C. (Ed.): Institutional Critique and After. Zurich 2006. Or: Fraser, Andrea: Was ist Institutionskritik? In: Texte zur Kunst 59/15 (2005). pp. 86-89.
[4] Here, the knowledge/power nexus refers to the space within discourse where knowledge and power intersect, as is elaborated on from different perspectives throughout Michel Foucault's entire body of work. In this way, art mediation is thus not necessarily different from any other discourse in society, since knowledge and power are the two intertwined aspects that constitute Michel Foucault's thought and which determine everything that can be said or thought (from categorizing to disciplining and from normalization to resistance).
[5] Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty: Outside in the Teaching Machine. New York/London 1993. pp. 25-51.
[6] Ibid. p. 34
[7] Cf. Sternfeld, Nora: Der Taxispielertrick. Vermittlung zwischen Selbstregulierung und Selbstermächtigung. In: Schnittpunkt (Ed.): Wer spricht? Autorität und Autorschaft in Ausstellungen. Vienna 2005. pp. 15-33. See also: Marchart, Oliver: Die Institution spricht; ibid. pp. 34-58.
[8] A number of great examples of this can be found in these two research volumes on art education at documenta 12: Güleç, Ayse et al. (Eds.): documenta 12 education I. Engaging audiences, opening institutions Methods and strategies in education at documenta 12, Berlin 2009; and: Mörsch, Carmen et al. (Eds.): documenta 12 education II. Between Critical Practice and Visitor Services Results of a Research Project, Berlin 2009.
[9] ibid.
[10] Rogoff, Irit: From Criticism to Critique to Criticality. In: translate webjournal 8 (2006), http://eipcp.net/transversal/0806/rogoff1/en [05 September 2012].
[11] ibid.
[12] Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty: Outside in the Teaching Machine. New York/London 1993. p. 63.
[13] Here, I purposefully refer to the responsibilities of the museum as laid out in the ICOM bylaws in 2001, albeit in a slightly modified form. There it is stated that "[a] museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment." http://icom.museum/statutes.html# [7 November 2009]. If art associations are to perceive of themselves as public spaces, this raises the question which of the aspects of the museum are important or applicable to them, and which are not. Part of the definition of the public sphere, according to Jürgen Habermas, is taking up the perspective of all. For Habermas, this necessarily requires linking the public sphere with universality: "The public sphere of civil society stood or fell with the principle of universal access. The public sphere from which specific groups would be eo ipso excluded was less than merely incomplete; it was not a public sphere at all." (Jürgen Habermas. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1989, p. 85.)
[14] Cf. Mörsch, Carmen: At a Crossroads of Four Discourses: documenta 12 Gallery Education in between Affirmation, Reproduction, Deconstruction, and Transformation. In: Mörsch, Carmen et al. (Eds.): documenta 12 education II. Between Critical Practice and Visitor Services Results of a Research Project, Berlin 2009. pp. 9-33.
[15] An extremely popular term used in exhibition texts.
[16] Bruno Latour. "From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik or How to Make Things Public," in MakingThings Public: Atmospheres of Democracy. Latour, B. and P. Weibel (Eds.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. p. 14.
[17] Ibid, p. 6
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