Erratum

Compensation Portait: (Manifest) The Lyon Biennial, catalog text
Original Author: Tirdad Zolghadr, 2007
Notable Changes: Lyon is replaced by Pardubice, Skupina 42 is inserted to add Czech flare, Evian is changed to Mattoni.

Introduction

The Representing the Nation publication was prepared in relation to our participation in the International Triennial of Contemporary Art (ITCA) organized by Tomáš Vlček and Milan Knížák at the National Gallery (NG) in Prague in 2008. We were invited to create a new work.

We wanted to characterize the NG in Prague as an institution. In 2008 the NG was a member of the Association of Czech Galleries. We decided to visit all of its member institutions across the country during a six month period. This gave us an overview of topics, complications, facilities, and staff issues, including an understanding of the challenges the respective institutions face, in respect to the regional, economical, and historical collections of art for which they are responsible. How do they think about and reflect on their own practice? What kind of functions, positions, roles, or ambitions do they articulate?

Despite being dissatisfied with the research material, we made a decision to maintain the project’s original framework. We had anticipated more substantial visions or statements, so we applied an improvised strategy of so-called Compensation Portraits, inspired by a concept from the exhibition catalog First Papers of Surrealism held in New York in 1942. In this case, the surrealist painters were asked to bring photographs of people other than themselves to represent them in the publication. In this spirit, we selected theoretical texts on institutional critique from a range of international writers, translated these texts into Czech and presented them as texts from Czech institutions and their representatives.

The project as a whole was self-financed. The sponsors or partners whose logos are printed on page 59 at the end of the publication are all imaginary sponsors, themselves unaware of any seeming participation. Thus, the publication falsely takes on the form of a serious international cooperation between the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Practices (eipcp.net), the EU Education and Culture D6 Framework Program, the Association of Czech Galleries, the National Gallery Prague, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Prague, the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, and funded by the Austrian Raiffeisen Bank. This parody reflects the trend of corporate sponsorship supporting critical, progressive, intellectual, and autonomous initiatives within locations of their respective markets.

The Representing the Nation publication was immediately distributed to all of the represented institutions. The project was not appreciated by the organizers of the ITCA / NG, generally disappointed in not understanding the basic conceptual framework. They refused to cover production costs or to further communicate concerning the project. In addition, part of the publications went missing from the NG depository. Few institutions encouraged further dialogue, and there was limited interest by other representatives and researchers from various institutions in Prague.

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The East-Bohemian Gallery in Pardubice

Authority: The Pardubice Region
Director: Mgr. Simona Vladíková

History:
The East-Bohemian Gallery in Pardubice was founded in 1953 as a regional gallery and a part of the East-Bohemian Museum. Since 1961 it is an independent institution. At the time the outlying buildings of the Pardubice chateau were put at the disposal of the Gallery and there it remains to this day. The East-Bohemian Gallery could not practice aline itself with activities of local collectors as the fairly small collection in the municipal picture gallery in nearby Holice was destroyed by fire in May 1945. Consequently from the very beginning the Gallery had to focus on creating its own collections.

Collection:
The Gallery has a small collection of Czech 19th-century art with paintings. In addition, there is a collection of 20th-century Czech art and of works by regional artists. The most significant collections in the Gallery include civil and social art of the 1920s, works by members of the Skupina (group) 42 and from the 1960s, from the 1968 and 1969 Artchemo symposia, works of conceptual art. Also of importance is the relatively recent acquisition of J. Toman’s negatives and photographs.

Statement:

To paraphrase Warhol, there are enough art exhibitions that look like art exhibitions. And do nothing more then be art exhibitions, for people who enjoy art exhibitions. Which is fine, but if all contemporary art can do is sit there and look pretty, you may as well reserve it for days you need a family outing, or a spacious, quiet cube to nurse a hangover. So the announcement to radically rethink the grammar of the East-Bohemian Gallery is extremely promising.
It is reassuring to chance upon people and situations which share the suspicion that contemporary art can be more than a social pastime, or entertainment, conceptual acrobatics, storytelling, political debate or formal beauty; starting with the option of representing unexpected combinations thereof, but also the ambitious possibility of being more that a sum of those parts. My Pardubice brief for my new job as a director, further suggests I write a “manifesto.” It’s much easier to critique something then to formulate what you actually want, so I’m not very good at manifestos, and as someone pointed out recently, “I don’t wear a hat, and I’m not Joseph Beuys.” But perhaps these excessive, at times contradictory demands (which I myself fail to meet) will be helpful in some way.

To reinvent the regional exhibition genre, one could and should:
I. MAINTAIN DISCRETION
The thing about stated intentions is that the more you insist on them, the less convincing you become. Announcing “subversion,” for example, is always cute. Proclaiming “criticality” is no better. Maria Lind has compared this to saying, “this is going to be really funny” before telling a joke. One might as well assume the very opposite of what the packaging promises. The blueprint for this essay’s title, Charles Esche’s Modest Proposals, a set of parameters for rethinking artistic practice as we know it, is undeniably brilliant, but it’s not modest in the slightest. Why proclaim you’re rethinking an institution, rather then simply going through with it. Heated expectations and theoretical bombast serve no one, and have indeed become part of institutional folklore. The more heroic the discursive superstructure, the more wistfull the promises of glocal mélange, the more desperate the attempts to forget that we’re not Rosa Luxemburg, not Lawrence of Arabia, not even the UN, the greater the disappointments will be.
II. REVISIT DIVISIONS OF LABOR
In order to rethink the cliché of the artist as a fountainhead of individual creativity – be it in the shape of a site-specific delivery service, or a free-range incubator of creative objects – recurring experiments in working conditions would be useful. Some people have, for example, been rethinking conventional divisions of labor between the artist and the curator, but also the administration, technical assistants, financial decision makers, critics, theorist, etc. This needn’t imply group therapy, populism or the carnevalesque, all of which would just cement the notion of the artist as a medium with privileged access to ideological and aesthetic truth. Rather, it would suffice to rigorously query what is expected of whom in which situation, who is credited in which context, and by which financial or symbolic means. The result can be anything at all, from useful clarifications, to useful skepticism, to unpredictable collaborations, to a complete waste of time, to new office furniture, to the conclusion that not everything needs to be screened and okayed by the curators.
III. IMPROVE THE LEVEL OF CONVERSATION
It is particularly crucial to revisit the division of labor between visuality and discourse, or “exhibition versus symposium/catalogue.” Predominant discursive models in the artworld are limited to the lecture and the seminar, or to excrutiating “panels” flanked by Mattoni bottles and a Powerpoint presentation. The arts perpetuate discursive rituals steeped in medieval university traditions, but without the academic content that lends them meaning. Perhaps the answers to art-reflexive questions on new audiences, new sites, new politics, etc. will be more refreshing if our modes of discussing them were less fossilized in scenography, dramaturgy, architecture, and rhetoric. From the seating to the staging to the topics and the speakers, it would not be difficult to make a small but decisive difference.
IV. FLAUNT THE HISTORY
Recently there have been numerous calls for more critical awareness of both the stuff and the epistemological trappings of art history, and I can only cite my own ignorance as a case in point. History lessons are equally a good way of toning down the rhetoric, and putting things in more modest perspective.
V. BE AS PATIENT AS POSSIBLE
Not everything needs to be immediately visualized. The accurate makeup of an artwork or situation should be able to disclose itself over time. Nor does everything need to look accomplished by the time of the opening; if one believes in fostering experimentation and risk, then criteria beyond ceremonious coherence are needed. It is easly to agree on this count, but harder to sincerly take the risk of something not looking “right” at the opening.
VI. HIGHLIGHT THE HEGEMONY
We all love being flattered by our own progressive credentials, and it’s always tempting to stage level playing fields everywhere. Be it between the New Institutionalist director and the employees, or between the politically engaged artist and the subaltern of choice. But point II, for example, is not about softening hierarchies and conflicts, but actually highlighting them, underlining the disparities between professional roles, class backgrounds, first and third world privileges etc. It’s quite a challenge to pursue critical practices that go entirely without quick-fix solidarity, and for this, a generous measure of art world reflexivity is necessary, as annoying, passé, or boring as it may be.