[iDC] the googled documenta

[Luis Camnitzer]

Sounds like Group Material revisited all over. Only that then one agreed
with the concept and it was a team enterprise.  If curators want to be
artists, why don't they go ahead and be artists, instead of misusing other
artists? Is hyper-appropriationism the way to go? (This said without having
seen Documenta 12 and being totally skeptical about authorship).

Luis Camnitzer

On 10/9/07, Stallabrass, Julian <Julian.Stallabrass at courtauld.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>  David Joselit's posting was provocative and salutary, and I to am all for
> using art works beyond and if necessary against the intentions of their
> authors and the sensibilities of critics, particularly in these times when
> the most urgent issues of the use of images in the service of imperialism
> and war press on us. Indeed, I am in the process of curating a series of
> shows on the image war, and would be very grateful for any suggestions and
> directions.
>
> My problem with Documenta was less the instrumental brutality with which
> it treated works or with the sometimes hostile environments into which it
> slotted them, but the clarity of the concept to which they were bowed.
>
> Moving from work to work, and puzzling about why I kept coming across
> McCracken, brought about the idea of the Curatorial Coherence Coefficient
> (CCQ). Imagine an (ideal and never to be seen exhibition) in which all the
> works gathered together to make a perfectly coherent curatorial and
> historical argument, which unfolded with total clarity from work to work.
> That would have a CCQ of 1. Now imagine picking art works at random and
> sticking them up in an order governed by chance--that would produce a CCQ of
> 0. Most contemporary art exhibitions have pretty low CCQs, and this has
> something to do with a deep and systematic characteristic of curatorial
> thinking. The Documenta (to make a guess): 0.15.
>
> The challenge, then, to treat works of art against artistic convention,
> for sure, but to do so in the service of a more systematic project, one that
> is not content to nestle comfortably in subjectivity and endlessly multiple
> meanings--the most fundamental art world conventions of all.
>
> --Julian Stallabrass
>
>
>
>
>
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