Economy, politics, social relations… almost all aspects of our present are undergoing a process of redefinition. And art is not left out. Institutions, exhibitions and also curating are in crisis. Reinvent or die, that is the question.
Curating is a relatively recent activity that, in four decades, has gone through a cycle of emergence, splendor, saturation and is now experiencing moments of confusion and questioning. Emerging in parallel with the practices of the 60s and 70s (with Harald Szeemann as one of the first references), the figure of the curator experienced a moment of absolute prominence in the 80s and 90s. It was then that it became professionalized and training programs in curating emerged.
Started in 1996, Manifesta, the European biennial of contemporary art, celebrated its eighth edition this year. Since it has been self-proclaimed as an “experiment with innovative curatorial methods and models” from the very beginning, a review of its history and, especially, that of its curators can become illustrative of this evolution of curating and its current crisis.
The first edition of Manifesta took place in Rotterdam in 1996. Its curators were Katalyn Neray, Rosa Martínez, Viktor Misiano, Andrew Renton and Hans-Ulrich Obrist. In other words, a collection of international and independent profiles who have been repeated in biennials and major events. Manifesta 1998, which was held in Luxembourg, served as a platform for the international career of its curators Robert Fleck, Maria Lind and Barbara Vanderlinden.
The press conference for Manifesta 3 in Ljubljana, where its four curators, Francesco Bonami, Ole Bouman, Maria Havajová and Kathrin Rhomberg, refused to sit at the same table to defend it, showed the failure of the experiment of forming a random curatorial team of diverse geographical origins. In its fourth edition, Manifesta landed in Frankfurt and its curators, Iara Boubnova, Nuria Enguita Mayo and Stephane Moisdon-Trembley, worked more on guidelines of consensus than intellectual debate. In the fifth edition, in San Sebastian (2004), the curatorial team was reduced to two, Massimiliano Gioni and Marta Kuzma, who seemed to develop two parallel Manifestas that crossed paths from time to time.
Manifesta moved to Nicosia in 2006 with the intention of having a real impact on the context, starting with the proposal to create an art school, that is, that Manifesta’s stay in Nicosia meant laying the foundations for starting to work in art. The political problems and division of the country forced the proposal to be cancelled and it is curious that on the Manifesta website (http://manifesta.org/manifesta-6/) it appears as “cancelled” and not even the names of the commissioners appear.
Anselm Franke/Hilla Pelleg, Adam Budak and Raqs Media Collective were the commissioners of Manifesta 2008 in Trentino, Alto Adige. And this year, which was held in Murcia, three collectives formed this tripartite commissioner, which in reality generated three independent exhibitions. Alexandria Contemporary Art Forum, Chamber of Public Secrets and tranzit.org are the names of three collectives with members spread across almost all five continents in a supreme example of delocalization.
But what is most worrying is the way in which these collectives define themselves and put forward their proposals. Transzit.org, for example, presents itself as “a collective of autonomous cultural production units.” The opacity of its language and the accumulation of clichés and commonplaces in its discourse is very well reflected in the report on Manifesta made for the television program Metrópolis http://www.rtve.es/television/20101….
The eight editions of Manifesta offer a good mapping of the evolution of curating, from the ubiquity and intensity of Obrist to the current dissolution of authorship, location and, it seems, also of ideas. Too many learned codes and little vision. Too much self-referentiality. The focus has become professional projection and not so much vision and risk. If we add to this the oversaturation of professionals and “international curators” and the containment of institutions in their programs, what is the future of independent curating? We could venture to rethink, investigate in depth, raise relevant questions, bet more on content and rigor and less on networking strategies. Approach other disciplines, explore formats and other forms of communication and, of course, forget about self-referentiality. As we said, reinvent yourself or die.
