| Sparwasser HQ presents: "Curating Degree Zero Archive" A Series of Evening Talks and Performed Recommendations |
Written Summaries by Joel Mu
| 9. September | docu | Kent Hansen |
| 11. September | docu | Ulrike Kremeier, Bettina Steinbruegge and Florian Wuest |
| 13. September | docu | Barnaby Drabble, Lise Nellemann and Beatrice von Bismarck |
| 17. September | docu | Ulrike Solbrig and Astrid Mania |
| 21. September | docu | Henriette Bretton-Meyer and Dominic Hislop |
| 23. September | docu | Madeleine Park, Angelica Richter and Martin Conrads |
| 25. September | docu | value (Christoph Lang & Stephan Meylan) and Sencer Vardarman |
| 27. September | docu | Michael Baers, Eoghan McTigue and Maren Richter |
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In conjunction with the Curating Degree Zero Archive (CDZA) exhibition at Sparwasser HQ, invited guests 'performed' the Archive through a series of evening talks in order to provide visitors with navigating recommendations for the CDZA. From these performances, Sparwasser's own re-interpretation of the CDZA was made possible while simultaneously making the material and knowledge held within the CDZA accessible. This verbal strategy taking the form of evening talks was made possible by the generous contribution of invited artists, curators, cultural producers, art historians and those who move in-between these practices. Approached from different critical positions, the resulting discussions included both positive appraisals as well as critical engagements that at times questioned the entire CDZA project. Responding to the CDZA's previous installations, Sparwasser organizers Lise Nellemann, Joel Mu and Pernille Böttcher re-interpreted the CDZA around a network-based navigation system. Originating from the following performed recommendations, this method of navigating the archive relied on a system of face-to-face communication, socializing and anecdotal referrals to visitors who missed the evening talks. This priority given to the function of public talks and social forums follows Sparwasser's existing exhibition practice, where art projects and invited artists and curators are continually discussed and critiqued by Sparwasser's extended network and participating public. Recognizing the problems associated with transcription and lack of time, these summaries are presented as suggestive snippets of the CDZA public talks program held from September 9 through September 27 (2005), 20:00 Uhr at Sparwasser HQ, Berlin. Please note: not all of Sparwasser's invited performers/guest speakers are themselves represented in the CDZA; some are instead drawn from Sparwasser's own network.
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Kent Hansen is an artist and art organizer Performed on September 9, 2006 By first presenting his own work, the artist found other works in the CDZA that fitted with his own practice. Describing himself as both an artist and art organizer, Hansen describes his work as being about the relationship between the public sphere and large corporations. Most recently, Hansen's artistic practice has involved participatory-based projects that work together with corporate companies. Seen as joint-projects between art and corporate organizations, Hansen's practice sets out to place artistic interjection within the corporate environments that both house and 'support' his art projects. Hansen's Demokratisk Innovation (2000) for instance, attempts to express, from the inside-out, the working structure of a given corporation. Working in collaboration with the participating corporation, this project critiques how a corporation identifies and brands itself, as well as the mechanism used to produce corporate power. This strategy of working from the inside-out, which is described as a kind of internal reformism, seeks to create an external openness by internal resistance. The artist, who resists the conventions of corporate work, thereby causes the corporations to publicly critique themselves from these artistic interjections. Hansen's work sets out to create a discourse around art and corporation culture that upon critical engagement is intended to produce corporate change. Tonight's CDZA recommendations:
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Ulrike Kremeier is an art historian and artistic director
of Platform in Berlin Performed on September 11, 2006 Performed as a conversation between the invited participants, the problematic of archiving was discussed. Framed around specific questions, they ask: "what is the difference between an archive and a collection of material; what kind of archives are there; how does an archive function; what is the implication of their existence; and what is the public's relation to them?" In this regard, CDZA was critiqued and the question of knowledge production and reception came to dominate the night's discussion. Differences in opinion, however, did query the preferred approach to archiving. Scientific vs. artistic models of archiving were compared, concluding that the CDZA's archiving model sat in-between these two approaches. For Steinbruegge and Wuest, the scientific approach of Reinigungsgesellschaft former Halle Für Kunst in Lüneburg CDZA interpreters was regarded as an effective approach to knowledge production and navigation. Specifically, both Steinbruegge and Wuest, preferred the Reinigungsgesellschaft's CDZA display because the exhibition used 'Keywords'; 'Themes'; and subject-matter based bookmarks to order the CDZA material. Kremeier, who generally supported Reinigungsgesellschaft's approach, questioned the denial of other more artistic archiving approaches. For Kremeier, artist's archives, like personal archives for instance, were interesting because they suggested less academic approaches to collecting and sorting material, and ordering and presenting of knowledge. A significant criticism of Sparwasser's own CDZA display was its reliance on curator names for the ordering of artistic material. For all three participants, this approached privileged art world audiences, who possessed a previous knowledge of curators and curated projects. Furthermore, the absence of artists names from the CDZA's webpage references was also criticized, as it appeared to elevate curators over artists. With these points considered, all three participants suggested that CDZA's archiving position needed to be clarified, with its critical themes specifically stated and selection criteria made more transparent. Tonight's CDZA recommendations:
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Barnaby Drabble is co-founder of Curating Degree Zero
Archive Performed on September 13, 2006 Opening with a brief history of the Archive's inception, Drabble explained the premise of the 1998 CDZA symposium in Bremen. Since Bremen, Drabble described how the CDZA symposium was re-interpreted as an archive, and then further re-interpreted into different touring exhibitions. Questions and critiques emerging in response to the archive's exhibitions included: definitional queries (what is an archive, what is curating, what is critical and what is experimental?); questions of power between curators and artists; critiques about presentation and display; issues regarding (curator) self-promotion and marketing; questions regarding differences and similarities between archives and exhibitions; and issues relating to the archives current touring schedule vs. establishing a permanent location. The subject of navigation placed the general practice of archiving against the spatial experimentation undertaken by the CDZA's previous exhibitions in Europe. Seen from its interdisciplinary approach, Drabble asked: "Is an art exhibition necessarily about art?" Following Drabble, von Bismarck asked: how is criticality in Art addressed? Referring to various projects represented in the CDZA von Bismarck suggested that one aspect of criticality must always address the question of audiences. Teasing out the idea of "organizing the public" or "audiences organized critically", different positions of critical curating were unpacked for their audience engaging devices. Seen from these different perspectives, audiences were given not as immediate certainties, but rather as unpredictable contexts that needed to be considered and folded into art. Talking about Sparwasser's
re-interpretation of the CDZA, Nellemann discussed the importance
of hosting and inviting, and viewing the exhibiting space as
a situation of project and research. Explaining the motivation
behind Sparwasser's performance-based navigation, Nellemann suggested
that both speaker and audience participants were tools for socializing,
and for the fulfillment of curator/artist (critical) evaluations.
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Ulrike Solbrig is an artist and independent curator Performed on September 17, 2006 Mania's contribution to the Sparwasser talks focused on the materiality of the CDZA's exhibition, namely its catalogues. Understanding the conception and production of the exhibition catalogue as an important part of curatorial practice, Mania stressed the role publications have in bringing past exhibitions into the present. Mania criticized that most exhibition catalogues failed to represent the distinctive qualities of art shows and artist works. From this perspective, Mania drew on material that strayed away from the conventional, opting instead for creative catalogue models that have an independent life after the exhibition and can be considered interesting publications in their own right. Dissatisfied with standard catalogue conventions Mania presented artist books and catalogues from the CDZA that played with their image documentation, written content, published format and finished fabrication. Drawing on her experience as a member of the Berlin-based artist-group, Unwetter, Solbrig introduced the notion of "uncurating" as produced by the groups "Discursive Picnics". Regarded as the opposite of curating, Solbrig described Unwetter's uncurated strategy as an open and inclusive meeting of artist types, who wish to present work or material of general interest; start critical discussion or propose future artistic actions. For Unwetter, this function of socializing usually around food at a picnic is central to the groups work. Similar to CDZA's own archiving interest, the collection of material is also carried out by Unwetter's participants. However, unlike the CDZA, Unwetter's approach does not employ a system of judgement, selection, inclusion and exclusion. For Unwetter, the archiving of material is open to anyone who participates in Unwetter's events. . Tonight's CDZA recommendations:
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