Blogs Untitled (Blog) Interviews

#OpenCurating: Yasmil Raymond on Curatorial Ambassadorship

By

Continuing #OpenCurating, its series of interviews and events exploring the ways Web 2.0 and social media technologies are informing new practices in art, the curatorial office Latitudes hosted an event in Barcelona recently with Dia Art Foundation curator (and former Walker curator) Yasmil Raymond. As #OpenCurating’s content partner, the Walker has participated in these conversations, both [...]

fkjsldkfjsdlkjsdkldjflsjd

Yasmil Raymond (left) with Latitudes’ Mariana Cánepa Luna and Max Andrews at Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Februrary 19, 2013

Continuing #OpenCurating, its series of interviews and events exploring the ways Web 2.0 and social media technologies are informing new practices in art, the curatorial office Latitudes hosted an event in Barcelona recently with Dia Art Foundation curator (and former Walker curator) Yasmil Raymond. As #OpenCurating’s content partner, the Walker has participated in these conversations, both through an interview with our web team that launched the project in September 2012 and through publishing key pieces from the project on our recently redesigned homepage. Held February 19 at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, the event focused on Raymond’s work with Dia, where she’s been employed since 2009, and her current projects, including the forthcoming Gramsci Monument, a project by Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn that launches in July. In this excerpt from the full interview, Raymond fields questions on “curation,” including one from former Walker chief curator Philippe Vergne:

Latitudes: Philippe Vergne, the Director of Dia Art Foundation. Philippe’s questions are great but tough: “It seems today that everybody is a curator, that ‘curator’ is the new ‘DJ.’ How do you see the evolution of your own profession? Is there a different way to work with artists? And is Dia a place that has embodied proto-curatorial practices (in the 1970s) and post-curatorial practices (now)?”

Yasmil Raymond: As to how I see the evolution of the profession, I’ve only been in this profession for eight years — one year in dog years! But I do see an evolution in that the curators of the past like Harald Szeemann were so concerned with their authorship. Then we have great curators like Hans-Ulrich Obrist or Hou Hanru, Lynne Cooke or Catherine de Zheger, Ann Goldstein or Elisabeth Sussman, a whole generation of curators who I admire for their boldness and rigour on some levels, their scholarship and playfulness, their poetry. Some of them are phenomenal authors, they curate as if they were writing a book. I’m not interested in authoring in that way. When I write a text I am an author, but when I am working with an artist I’m not. I’m more interested in being a host. I look at it from the point of view of politics. I am the one that has to defend the work, first of all to my colleagues inside the institution, and to convince them that this is an exhibition that we need today, an artist we need to support today. Then we all have to convince the visitor. Winning those battles with enthusiasm and knowledge gives me real satisfaction. I’ve never thought of myself as a DJ, I’m not interested in playing to an audience in order to entertain. I am hostess, I make sure that the experience is unforgettable for the artist.

The artist Alejandro Cesarco recently gave a powerful talk at Dia about On Kawara, and it was like an artwork lecture, a homage to the great work of On Kawara. The next day I called him to thank him and he said to me that the experience of preparing the talk, of going to the archives, meeting the registrar, and so on, had really humanised his experience of the institution. I thought that was great. I’m a humanist and I want to insist on being humane, and for caring for the one-on-one, the face-to-face. So yes, I do think that Dia is gearing towards the post-curatorial in the sense that I don’t think artists need to be curated, I think artists need to be supported, enabled. And Dia means that, the word “dia” in Greek means “through,” and we have always said our mission is to facilitate, to be a conduit. So perhaps I’m not a real curator, I’m something else, an enabler, a vessel, and soon I’ll add ambassador to that list.

Latitudes: Let’s quickly move to the final questions. [Independent critic and curator] Maja Ćirić has asked, “What are the ‘cutting edge’ curatorial practices in United States today (spaces, agents, projects, exhibitions)?” And Agustín Pérez Rubio [Director, MUSAC, León, 2009–2013] asks, “As a curator with a Latin American background, how do you perceive the situation of Latin American art in the US, and more specifically in relation with Dia? Some of the most important Latin American artists lived or live in New York, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres to Luis Camnitzer… what is the relation with them?”

Raymond: “Cutting edge,” what is that? Well, I mentioned before The Artist’s Institute in New York, Anthony [Huberman] is asking very interesting questions about format, methodology and duration through his model of curating exhibitions. To answer Agustín, one of the founders of Dia in 1974, Heiner Friedrich, was a German art dealer who represented many of the artists than ended up entering the collection. There has been a few gifts since the 1970s but it is not like there was ever a plan or a committee deciding what to acquire, and we would need to have enormous resources today to commission or acquire large-scale projects in the same way as he did in the 1970s. So the idea of going back – not just to Latin America, but to any context – and to try to collect in depth a whole room of an artist such as Lygia Clark, it is just not possible. There is simply not enough work available to be able to go and buy a whole room now. Perhaps the situation is different with Felix Gonzalez-Torres. But in terms of this relating to my background, I don’t really work in that way. Perhaps my Latin gene is only active in my personal life. I’m interested in the energy of really extraordinary art, whether than happens to be made by Luis Camnitzer, or Gonzalez-Torres, or whoever, it doesn’t matter. But there is always a question of urgency. Gonzalez-Torres transformed what we understand today as art. But his work has been the subject of really important recent exhibitions and we need to weigh our priorities knowing that Dia cannot do it all. Perhaps one day, but not at the moment, we’ve made commitments to artists for the next four years.

Interview with Robert Bechtle

By

Robert Bechtle has been painting his surroundings in the San Francisco Bay Area since the 1950s. When I went to interview him the other day, it was a bit like being inside one of his photorealist works. On my way to his place in Potrero Hill I walked up some steep hills flanked by rows [...]

Robert Bechtle in his studio.

Robert Bechtle has been painting his surroundings in the San Francisco Bay Area since the 1950s. When I went to interview him the other day, it was a bit like being inside one of his photorealist works. On my way to his place in Potrero Hill I walked up some steep hills flanked by rows of sunlit flat-front houses, under crisscrosses of power lines, and in and out of morning street shadows I recognized from his paintings and drawings. I crossed the streets in 20th and Mississippi Night (2001) and a few blocks over to the east is the corner in Covered Car – Missouri Street (2001)—both charcoal on paper drawings in the Walker’s collection. He would say later, “They’re all things that I’ve noticed just living here. Things that I see on my walk in the morning, or I’m driving by and something jumps out and says, ‘Photograph me.’” He may be the most familiar with San Francisco’s architecture over the past 60 years. Sometimes he’d draw and paint the same scene several times. (more…)

Selections from John Waters’ Library

By

Filmmaker/author John Waters — who guest curated the Walker’s Absentee Landlord exhibition — was recently invited to San Francisco where he extended his curatorial prowess to a new Reading Shop in the city’s Mission district. The shop is part of Kadist SF (counterpart to Kadist Art Foundation based in Paris, France)—a mixed-use 1,400 square foot nonprofit [...]

Filmmaker/author John Waters — who guest curated the Walker’s Absentee Landlord exhibition — was recently invited to San Francisco where he extended his curatorial prowess to a new Reading Shop in the city’s Mission district.

The shop is part of Kadist SF (counterpart to Kadist Art Foundation based in Paris, France)—a mixed-use 1,400 square foot nonprofit art space on the corner of Folsom and 20th. Since last March when Kadist SF opened it quickly became popular in the local art scene for its flexible, laid-back, and definitely riveting program of exhibitions, events, artist/art magazine residencies, and, notably its reading room. The room would open Saturdays 11 am to 5 pm, inviting visitors to come by and check out more than 100 international art magazines not often available elsewhere. The visibility of these imports brought the public nearer to critical dialogues on art happening from Vancouver to Tel Aviv, and for the most part pretty far beyond the main distribution channels of arts discourse.

This month, in response to the Reading Room’s steady increase of visitors, Kadist SF expanded it into the Reading Shop—a reading room/bookshop. It not only stocks art magazines but also highlights independent publishers, and invites notable cultural producers to curate selections from their personal libraries. Waters was the first guest. He was given free hand to compose a list that includes novels such as David Gates’ Jernigan and Patrick White’s Voss, Jean Genet’s biography by Edmund White, and several writings by Waters’ himself (some of which you’ll find in stock at the Walker Art Center shop, too). The books bring new insight into the ways in which fiction has influenced the filmmaker’s work.

I asked curator Devon Bella about the Reading Shop’s culture, content, and the prompt to invite Mr. Waters:

Brooke: What is the story behind the Kadist Shop? Why did it open, what’s stocked, who does it serve?

Devon: The Reading Shop launched on the premise, and expansion of, Kadist’s Reading Room. It is a hybrid of a store and a library. As a program, the Reading Shop loosely addresses the current state of publishing, but in the most expansive and speculative sense — by making available selected art books and international magazines, creating space for public use, and responding to interested readers. It borrows various conditions from bookstores and libraries, and expands on them in order to heighten the culture of art publishing locally.

The Shop comprises a rotating selection of magazines and books – two racks of international art periodicals, one shelf dedicated to publications from an independent art publisher, and a table full of books culled from a personal library. All of the magazines hanging on the racks for the past few weeks are far too many to mention (I only order one copy per magazine), but in collection they represent an expansive view of contemporary practices in art publishing internationally. They include: Pages (Rotterdam and Tehran), It’s Nice That (London), Picnic (Tel Aviv), No Order (Milan), Graphic (Seoul), Fillip (Vancouver). This season we also opened with a survey of J&L Books, a small art press founded in 2000 by artists Jason Fulford and Leanne Shapton, alongside the library of filmmaker and artist John Waters.

In San Francisco, there are very few resources to peruse art publications from other countries, with only a small handful of art distributors circulating magazines for the entire US. Yet during the last decade, English has informally become a trade language of the international art world, so dozens of magazines from Europe and Asia that once printed in their local language were made increasingly legible for US readers. All this to say, the Reading Shop is an endeavor to intensify local art discourse by making known, and disseminating artistic and cultural perspectives from other city centers, from Seoul to Tel Aviv to Rotterdam, because each magazine produces, and is produced within, a context, and the experience of browsing and discovery has so much potential for cross-pollination.

Brooke: Could you talk a bit about the titles? How are they selected?

Devon: For each title, I always like to explore the visual characteristics, the editorial voice, and its seriality. I’m interested in how a publication date is also punctuation of time, and for magazines, in particular, how they evolve, or dissolve, from one issue to the next. Some of my favorite magazines over the last five years are no longer in circulation, and I find this impermanence really thrilling in the case it germinates further titles and new networks of producers, writers, etc.

A couple of my favorite magazines are produced by artists with wildly different editorial approaches:

Toilet Paper (Milan) is a high-production, lo-brow, text-free magazine combining commercial photography with dream-like narratives directed by the artist Maurizio Cattelan and photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari (Le Dictateur). It follows in the wake of Cattelan’s cult publication Permanent Food, with every issue produced under a provocative, hyperrealist theme. What really fascinates me about it though, is the online counterpart, where the absurd scenes one muses on in print are animated, and come alive for the screen. The magazine exists in a state of flux, in new space between print and the internet. Not to mention, even the fine print is curious, where one expects to find the typical names of contributors, editors, etc– TP credits include “stuntman,” “party boy,” and “ice cream whippers” (!!!)

Pages is a bilingual English and Farsi- magazine started in 2004 by artists Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi, both Iranian-born conceptual artists based in the Netherlands. Pages publishes roughly twice-yearly with ruminations on Iranian art, culture, architecture, theater, history, and politics. It functions as a platform for dialogue between artists and writers from Iran and elsewhere, and in the process conveys a complex understanding of the region, a realm that remains primarily uncharted territory for mainstream media outlets.

Brooke: How does Selections from the Library of John Waters jibe with programming currently at Kadist (if it does)?

Devon: The library, as it operates within the context of the Reading Shop, is a lateral, programmatic shoot, with John’s library formalizing his various roles as a writer, filmmaker, artist, collector, and storyteller. Waters is the ultimate bibliophile, and I wanted to show the books he has read over a lifetime; it is an elaborate index of pulp, subversion, and bravura, where the substance of each title and the life of John Waters are intricately woven together, inhabiting a reflective, interior space of John himself. In comparison, I wonder if his exhibition at the Walker now also inhabits this kind of space, as it uses the very same formula.

…

In a way, yes. In the Walker’s parallel gesture of inviting Waters’ private art collection and his own artistic work to be thoughtfully positioned in public space, there’s this intimate look into the construction of a consciousness (some sliver of it). Inevitably the checklist and layout lends insight to Waters’ influences, affections, politics, and jokes. But while the exhibition may expose, somewhat indexically too, this interior mind space, I think there’s a lot of intrigue in the way curating becomes a provocative art form for Waters.

“Can artwork sexually attract each other?  Does minimalism make pop horny?  Does pornography elevated to high art lose its erotic power?  Does size matter or can a tiny joke compete with a maximalist icon?  Can art ever be “funny” without losing academic enthusiasm?  Would Fischli/Weiss and Roman Signer fight over who’s more droll?  More Swiss? And even more importantly, if all these works had to live together would Carl Andre ever be able to laugh?” – John Waters



The exhibition is imbued with his filmic language and contemporary art world critique. Walking through the galleries, you do find yourself, like Devon said, in this new fantastic context where John Waters the filmmaker, the writer, the artist, the collector, and the storyteller intersect. I’d like to know more of the visitors’ perception of what it was like to come to the Walker and experience this artist/curator sensibility. It’s so important to grant space for artists’ curatorial expressions, especially as the notion of curator is so radically changing, and it’s totally wonderful that Kadist SF is doing that.

En Route to ‘Baby Marx’

By

Baby Marx began as Mexican artist Pedro Reyes’ idea for a television sitcom in which puppet versions of key figures in the history of economics are brought back to life. Intended as a way to make the lofty and often distorted fundamentals of socialism and capitalism accessible to a broad audience, the piece has undergone [...]

Baby Marx film still, 2009. All images courtesy the artist, Detalle Films and Labor Gallery, Mexico City.

Baby Marx began as Mexican artist Pedro Reyes’ idea for a television sitcom in which puppet versions of key figures in the history of economics are brought back to life. Intended as a way to make the lofty and often distorted fundamentals of socialism and capitalism accessible to a broad audience, the piece has undergone several iterations since its inception four years ago. For his upcoming exhibition at the Walker, on view August 11, 2011 – November 27, 2011 Reyes will use Perlman Gallery and the entire Walker campus to begin filming a documentary version of Baby Marx that examines its development to date as well as the complex issues with which it grapples. This past spring Reyes joined curators Bartholomew Ryan and Camille Washington to discuss the project in depth.

Camille: How did Baby Marx begin?

Pedro: I first had the idea for something I was working on in London, but it was too ambitious and was rejected. So, I put it in my drawer of unrealized projects. Then, in the lead up to the 2008 Yokohama Triennial in Japan, I was riding the Tokyo subway with Akiko Miyake, one of the curators of the exhibition, and I told her, “Well, I have this idea for a TV puppet show whose main characters would be Karl Marx and Adam Smith.” I like that there is a saying in Japan that says “A samurai doesn’t know the word impossible.” Miyake-san responded like is a true samurai, she said, “If that’s what you want, we’ll do it.” From there deciding what kind of puppets to use led to a super interesting exploration of the Japanese tradition of puppeteering.

Bartholomew: Why puppets?

Pedro: I think that puppets require a mastery and spontaneity not found in stop motion or animation. Also, puppeteering has been the historical equivalent to political cartoons in the performing arts. It is a form of critique similar to the ventriloquist or the court joker who was the only one who could make jokes in front of the king. The joker also often used some kind of doll or puppet. So, the puppet would spit out truths that would be unbearable from the mouth of a person.

Bartholomew: This was around 2007. Can you remember what it was about Smith and Marx that felt relevant at that moment?

Pedro: They didn’t feel relevant at that moment. This is the time before the credit crisis and the collapse of the markets. It felt like a subject which was precisely not fashionable. People would ask, “Why Marx?”However, there was something I wanted to find out not only about the state of the world, but also I wanted to know where I was standing in the political spectrum.

At a certain point in your life, you have this negotiation of your own ideas. When you first read Marx it makes so much sense, but then if you read Smith it also makes sense.Marx tells you “In order to have some rich people, others need to be poor” and then you read Adam Smith who tells you “Hey, what is all that equality business? You work more; you shouldn’t earn the same as the lazy one, right?” You may just ignore these voices but in my head I continued to hear these two people debating. So, I thought it could be interesting to stage this conflict. Here you have two philosophers who didn’t have the chance to meet in real life talking to each other. But also you have two conflicting sides of human nature. The task at hand was to choose fragments from Marx and Smith (among others) and weave a story, hopefully with the idea that it would become entertaining.

Smart-O-Wave logo

Camille: How does the Smart-O-Wave microwave oven that you used for the initial teaser and pilot of Baby Marx fit into the picture?

Pedro: Actually, the invention of the Smart-O-Wave was a turning point. It became a dimensional door that allowed me to bring any thinker into the story by placing the book they wrote in the oven. So by “defrosting” their thoughts they come back to life. It’s like a flying carpet, it can take you anywhere.

Camille: You speak a lot about mobile seminars and radical pedagogy. Is that something that also really underpinned the project in the early stages as much as entertainment did?

Pedro: Yes, Baby Marx was thought of from the beginning as a primer, or you could say Political Science 101. Sometimes you see the movie before reading the book, and for this subject puppets seemed the perfect treatment. Plus there was no Marx movie, no Adam Smith movie.

Bartholomew: The puppets were designed in collaboration with famous Japanese puppet maker Takumi Ota. I know the process was quite extensive. Can you talk about working together?

Pedro: Takumi Ota was the perfect match for this project, because he is a genius at leaving out everything that is not necessary and using the simplest forms. My obsession was the use of abstract shapes both in fine art and folk craft. In Japan, wood carved toys made in the wheel are very similar to Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus costume designs. So, fascinated by this extreme degree of abstraction, I started to design the characters using only platonic volumes; to cast the personality of a character in the simplest form. In fact the simplest form is a silhouette.

Solids of Rotation, 2009

Bartholomew: This is when you made the Solids of Rotation studies…

Pedro: Exactly. This limitation was very productive. I gave Frederick Taylor a silhouette based in a hyperboloid, like a sand clock, because Taylor was obsessed with time management. With Marx’s it was obvious that I had to use his characteristic hairstyle which is like a trapezoid. Then, when you turn it into a solid of rotation it looks like a bit like samurai helmet. For Friederich Engels I took his long beard and made it into a spiral, like a party-blower; Che Guevarra has his beret and his goatee, so I made the head and the goatee like a top, and with the addition of the beret the solid of rotation looks like a hazelnut.

Camille: Did you work on the initial design alone or in collaboration?

Pedro: Takumi Ota  made three-dimensional versions of drawings that I worked on in discussion with him. In the 1970s he designed characters for a series called Hyokkori Hiotan-jima, which means “the pumpkin island,” because the puppet heads were made with pumpkin seeds. The creative dialogue was great because I was thinking of what Ota San would like, almost trying to please him. It was almost a telepathic thing of trying to speak the same language, seeking the most extreme abstraction possible.

Bartholomew: You both passed these designs back and forth via the internet. He was in Japan and you were in Mexico for the most part.

Pedro: Yes, exactly. Due to the 15 hours difference Akiko and I met with Ota-san at 9pm, which would be his night. After seeing my drawing I would go to sleep and he would go on working all day making a clay model based on our conversations. Then, at 9 am in the morning (his night) we would meet again and review the progress. We went like this it a year and a half.

Camille: So, did you go there and finalize your designs with him or were they finalized by the time you arrived in Yokohama?

Pedro: There were several trips and meetings during that time. One of my favorite parts was the mechanics of how specific puppets operate. For instance, the Milton Friedman eyes turn and blink like dollar signs. Also, one side of his mouth is smiling and the other side is angry. His personality changes depending on which side of the camera it is facing. It is a way to show that two sides of capitalism: one charming and seductive, and other greedy and cruel.

[They laugh.]

Milton Friedman puppet, 2008

Pedro: So, there are some interesting philosophical limits to the characters, but also the way they are built conditions their performativity.

Camille: Before the pilot you made a teaser. In fact, you exhibited the teaser along with the puppets for Yokohama. Was the trailer an exercise in how the puppets ultimately would move and function and be filmed?

Pedro: Yes, in the beginning I met Ryo Ito who is an amazing puppeteer and became the leader of the puppeteers. He could take a shoe and make it perform Hamlet. So the movement design for each character was genius: the arrogant manners of Adam Smith, the tidy and nervous movements of Taylor. Again Frederick Taylor was obsessed with time management, so he would say, “OK, we’re going to make him swing like he’s a metronome for music.” Just perfect.

Camille: How does the type of puppet you use for Baby Marx differ from others?

Pedro: Rod puppets move very differently than glove puppets. Glove puppets like in Sesame Street look at the camera and open their mouths. In Japanese puppeteering the rapport between characters is conveyed more through the eye contact and with almost no mouth movement. Is much more subtle, and the intent is not necessarily to make you laugh. They can also perform on a darker note, which is something difficult with glove puppets. I like this style, which is not necessarily for delivering puns all the time.

Bartholomew:  When you made the trailer, you had these gestures and a very distinct choreography for each of the characters. Camille and I were watching it again, and it’s very funny. It’s very enjoyable how each puppet moves and the ways in which they come into the piece.

Pedro: The election of the characters had to do with its potential for the plot. As much as you have the Marx and Engels duo, you have Adam Smith and Freddy Taylor, who are like the ideologist and the technocrat. The first is a persuasive courtesan and the second is an obsessive-compulsive. The characters fit in with certain roles. You need the archetype of Lenin in the revolutionary section, the Bolshevik giving grand speeches, but that rhetorical power has its counterpart in the pragmatic Che Guevara, who is willing to open (a loving or a fighting) fire. As the story unfolds Che Guevara ends up having a romance with Miss Lena, the librarian.

Bartholomew: There’s that moment at the beginning of the trailer where I think the titles are saying we’re living in a post-ideological age, and then the camera which is looking at this beautiful librarian zooms in and runs its gaze up her leg.

Camille: As she flicks her heel!

[They laugh.]

Pedro: I use the joke as a mechanism. Wittgenstein said that a serious philosophy book could only be written through jokes. The marvelous thing about a joke is when it presents the thesis and the antithesis in such an abrupt way that you synthesize it as laughter, a sort of airbag that cushions the collision of reality with your expectation of reality; the collision of ideology and realpolitik.

Camille: What is the time period for the original Baby Marx pilot?

Pedro: The story takes place in the present time. Crisisville, the city where the library is located, is a way to say that whatever we consider the status quo or “final state” of the world can change sooner than we expect. The last decade has been a good example. From 911 and the stupid wars that followed, the collapse of the economy, and today the revolutions in the Middle East, or the nuclear accidents in Japan. We have seen the map of the world shaken and transformed within a matter of hours…

Camille: I’m sure all this influenced your decision to set the entire Baby Marx narrative within a library as a place of ideas. Can you speak a little bit about the decision to use that setting?

Baby Marx set installed at Labor Gallery, 2009

Pedro: The library is a space which represents, on one hand, the post war idea of humanism. The capitals of the columns are like those in Le Corbusier’s Assembly building in Chandigarh, the tables and chairs are inspired by Jean Prouvé, the handrails are like Niemeyer and the lattice like México’s modernist Mario Pani. The atmosphere is reminiscent of a generic modernism that could belong to any country, like Korea, Brazil, Mexico, the U.S. or southern Europe. The fight to take control of the library also represents the current debate regarding the privatization of public services that used to be associated with the state. In general, it’s a caricature of the political-economic doctrines and models that decisions are based upon today.

Bartholomew: One thing that is really interesting about Baby Marx is that it’s a project that has emerged in stages where you re-imagine the project over time. Now we are coming up on a stage where the question really seems to be, “What are the terms of this piece?” This leads to wider questions about the intersections of ideology, entertainment, distribution, and so on. In terms of this journey was the pilot ever linked explicitly to Japan? Was it something that you imagined could be on Japanese television?

Pedro: Even if some of best talent for making puppets was in Japan it did not mean the best talent for writing was there because the humor in Japan doesn’t translate into the rest of the world. Or it translates but not in this register of political critique that you find in the United States, which has become in recent years one of the more sophisticated globally in terms of political satire. It seemed to be the most interesting challenge to reach or to try to be attractive to an audience in the United States because ideas have greater currency and potential for distribution.

Camille: When we were first talking about showing Baby Marx at the Walker, the project was still a pilot for a U.S. television show. Then a transition happened last year and you decided to make a feature film. Can you talk about that?

Baby Marx pilot in production, 2009

Pedro: TV and Film are two different markets. You cannot launch yourself into making a TV series without having a sale for a whole season. My producer Moises Cosio and I had very good meetings from different people from HBO, Sony, etc. They were interested, but none were ready to commit. I remember one “suit” who explained to us very clearly that “TV series are only a means to sell ads,” so I loved the contradiction of having a capitalist venture with a socialist content. However in TV, you can be on hold for an indefinite amount time. We realized that we didn’t need any approval to go ahead and do a movie on our own.

Camille: How did you go about drafting a script that would satisfy those demands?

Pedro: Well, during the writing process we discovered that the people who are best acquainted with the history of economics and politics are not funny. [Laughter] And the people who are funny as writers are not acquainted with the history of politics.

Bartholomew: That’s quite a predicament.

Pedro: Yes. I didn’t want to do something funny but superfluous, or to have something which is serious but boring. So, I have this rule of life that says “If you have to choose between A and B, do A and B.” Ergo, the decision to have both serious moments and funny moments. This is something you can do more easily in film than in TV. In TV the tyranny of the genre is harsher. If you are making a comedy you have to deliver one joke every 5 seconds.

So, with the film I also want to have pleasurable moments of seriousness because there you can have philosophers and political scientists comment on the subject. In between those moments of cleverness is where the opportunities for comedy arise, sketches, animation etc. That’s the stage we are in now.

Bartholomew: A while back when we were still thinking in terms of television the three of us visited PFFR, the television writing group that did the MTV2 puppet show Wonder Showzen using puppets a la Sesame Street but with outrageous content and approaches. It was super entertaining to listen to them just throw a few ideas around. Their instant suggestion was that Karl Marx and Adam Smith had to make love and have a baby. There was this sense that yes, this could be really funny, this could be really entertaining, this could be ridiculous and absurd but how hermetic it might become, in the sense that the “radical pedagogy idea” or any kind of instructive parallel to the comedy would likely have fallen away. In this sense perhaps moving towards the documentary structure which is, again, more open-ended and less resolved as an operating premise, feels like a natural move for the project.

Pedro: I think that one of the very interesting things about our meeting with PFFR was realizing that a variety show structure (episodic scenes with different approaches which they used in Wonder Showzen for instance) would be an ideal way to proceed. I realized that mixing the universe of real persons with the universe of puppets, and including devices such as animation, interviews, etc., we would make a more agile and diverse piece. The documentary is a little like a variety show in this sense. If you have too tight a structure it becomes harder to tell the jokes, and harder to tell the interesting facts. It’s not that the previous approach was wrong; it’s more than the addition of all the different approaches combined is much more powerful. So I do believe that, for the public, it will be much more interesting to have this embedded quality where you’re moving between universes.

Camille: Right, so the exhibition as Smart-O-Wave.

Pedro: Yes!

Camille: As curators, this development has led us to ask how we would articulate the exhibition to other people. And in asking that we discovered that the real way to talk about it is to be up front about that questioning, to see the Walker as a moment of reflection in the project, one that asks, “What is this thing?” What does it mean to bring together entertainment and ideology in some kind of popular format?

Pedro: One of the privileges of being an artist working with curators is having the room to ask these purely ontological questions. To question form and content entirely.

Camille: Yes.

Pedro: We have asked very important questions. How will be to shift from TV to film? How do we negotiate the exhibition space as a production space? How do we engage the public as participants in the critique of the content and of the medium? What is the design and function of the public events we are planning in relation to this new structure?
Basically, beyond asking what this project is, we are asking what the project is becoming.

Bartholomew: One of the questions that Baby Marx asks implicitly – something that mirrors PFFR’s suggestion that Smith and Marx make a baby together – is what could be a point where Adam Smith and Karl Marx could meet ideologically? Is Baby Marx about marking and pointing out the presence of the ideological inheritances we are all sifting through, or is it more interested in moving towards some kind of future model?

Baby Marx film still, 2009

Pedro: Ideologies indeed intermarry in our minds and then give birth to our own thoughts which, obviously, inherit the beauties and defects of their parents. What interests me is to present these genealogies in progress, not as a final conclusion but as a tool. One such tool is called counterfactual history, which means: What if…? To imagine parallel histories that could have occurred. In this case, interesting arguments between two characters who did not have the opportunity to meet during their lives. An example of this is The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu by Maurice Joly, which exposes the ideas of the state from two different perspectives. These two characters debate their doctrines and analyze human nature. Staging philosophical conflict is the aim of the project. Though, it never reaches a conclusion. It’s more about showing that instead of there being one right answer, there’s a myriad of answers, none of which should be embraced dogmatically. They should be used on a more ad hoc basis, according to the occasion and actuality. When we say, “OK, this is the truth and it should be applied in every case,” that’s when things go wrong.

Bartholomew: For some reason I once read a book on how to write day-time soaps for American network television, and they pointed out that the most durable storyline that can carry an entire run of a show over many years is that of a love divided, that it is the most engaging device and should never be resolved. The best storylines will always just toy with resolution.

Camille: So, Baby Marx as an ideological cliffhanger…

Bartholomew: Right.

Camille: That’s built into the system!

Bartholomew: Exactly!

Camille: There is no ultimate truth, no finality. It’s all ongoing. And so really the idea that this documentary is constructed in a similar way makes it really relevant to the ideas.

Pedro: Yes, I think that often documentaries are used also with a rhetorical purpose designed to drive you to some conclusions. I’m more interested to lead you to questions, than to drive you towards a dogmatic embrace of a particular idea. In the twenty-first century, we should read Marx like any other classic. However, we should examine the idea of capitalism as the hegemonic final model. That is, people assume that capitalism is a natural law, that the world simply functions that way, and that a different model of social organization is impossible to achieve. During the twentieth century, the United States demonized left-wing ideas in such an emphatic way that the word communism had the meaning that terrorism has today. All this had a very clear objective, which was to impose a transnational economic model under the name of “liberal democracy.”  History is full of examples of crimes committed in the name of this paradigm.

Q & A with Clara Kim, the Walker’s new senior curator for visual arts

By

China, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia … and now Minneapolis. Clara Kim arrives here August 1 after some particularly intensive globetrotting (more on that below). She was was most recently gallery director/curator at REDCAT, downtown Los Angeles’ center for innovative visual, media and performing arts, where she has worked since its inception in [...]

China, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia … and now Minneapolis. Clara Kim arrives here August 1 after some particularly intensive globetrotting (more on that below). She was was most recently gallery director/curator at REDCAT, downtown Los Angeles’ center for innovative visual, media and performing arts, where she has worked since its inception in 2003. In her new role, Kim will continue to shape and develop the Walker’s program of exhibitions, artists’ residencies, acquisitions and special projects.

In between finishing a curatorial fellowship, preparing to host a two-day conference on it for international colleagues, and continuing her work at REDCAT – not to mention preparing to relocate – Kim has few moments to spare. However, she graciously used a few of them to answer some questions:

REDCAT is a relatively new institution for contemporary art, and you played a key role in building its international influence. What aspects of your work there are you bringing to the Walker?

REDCAT is a much smaller institution than the Walker but residencies and new commissions have been the core of its programming. Like the Walker, artists are central to the institution, which serves as a safe and supportive place for new artistic production. That along with an international, interdisciplinary perspective on contemporary artistic practice — which has also been very important to REDCAT, especially the Pacific Rim i.e. Asia and Latin America, as these regions are critical to Los Angeles and increasingly important in the global economic and cultural community.

You’re completing a circle of sorts by coming to Walker, since you began your career here as an intern in the late 90s. How have you seen contemporary art and the museum world evolving since then?

Immense changes. The boom and the subsequent downturn of the economy has greatly affected cultural production. As museums all over face pressure to meet the bottom line, we need to act and think creatively, and not lose sight of the things that matter.

What kinds of trends and ideas have dominated your practice as a curator?

I suppose a commitment to a diverse, international perspective on cultural production. I believe that art should challenge and open up our minds to new ideas and thoughts; as well as speak to the social and political moment we live in.

Can you talk about exhibitions, projects, or commissions you’ve undertaken that have stood out in your mind?

Two memorable projects for me at REDCAT are with the Tokyo-based architecture studio Atelier Bow-Wow – who created three original structures in response to their three-month residency in LA investigating the Case Study House program; and, more recently, Irish film/video artist Jesse Jones’ film shoot on the Russian choreographer Meyerhold’s studies in biomechanics that involved student actors and crew from CalArts. Integral to both projects was the collaboration, participation and engagement of many individuals across different fields and disciplines. The process of building relationships and trust became as critical as the end result. In fact, after the exhibition of Bow-Wow’s structures, which were made of recycled wood acquired through a local non-profit, we ended up dismantling the structures plank by plank and put the raw materials back into the cycle of use and circulation. It makes me very happy knowing that Bow-Wow’s houses morphed into skatebowls for at-risk urban youth and also helped beautification projects for Edgar Arceneaux’s Watts House Project.

Thanks to a curatorial fellowship from the Warhol Foundation, you recently had the opportunity to travel  throughout Asia and Latin America exploring alternative art spaces and independent projects. Any findings or experiences or travel anecdotes you can share from this experience?  

The research has been fascinating — full of surprises and contradictions — for instance, a region as wealthy as Hong Kong does not yet have a major contemporary art museum and a politically and economically unstable place such as Colombia has so many dynamic, critical artists and curators.

What did you learn from the fellowship that might affect your new role at the Walker?

That you need the support and participation of everyone in the building from top to bottom, from bottom to top, in order to make it work well.

What will you miss about Los Angeles? And/or what are you looking forward to in re-locating to Minneapolis/St. Paul?

Getting fresh produce year round. And taking up winter sports.

 

Dismantling My Career: A Conversation with Alec Soth

By

The exhibition From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America opens here on September 12th, 2010 and we are starting the install this week. I thought now would be a good time to post this conversation I had with Alec last winter. It also appears as one of several texts in the exhibition catalogue, which has been [...]


Alec Soth stills from the video slide show The Democratic Labradoodle 2009

The exhibition From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America opens here on September 12th, 2010 and we are starting the install this week. I thought now would be a good time to post this conversation I had with Alec last winter. It also appears as one of several texts in the exhibition catalogue, which has been printed and will be arriving in the next few days!  There are a lot of interviews with Alec out there and he is always very engaging. Siri Engberg, the exhibition’s curator, and I were wondering what we could do to make this contribution special, and we decided that it would be good to concentrate on Alec’s new body of work, Broken Manual and also on other pursuits that inform  his photography practice such as blogging and book publishing. One of the most interesting things about Alec is that he is a fine art photographer who is also a member of Magnum Photos, traditionally a photojournalist cooperative. I wanted to explore that a little, the feedback loop between working on commission, and producing self-authored bodies of work.

Broken Manual came out of a book project that Alec worked on with the writer and artist Lester B. Morrison who had written a manual on how to disappear. Lester is a regular contributor to Alec’s blog, and his work is featured in the current Soap Factory exhibition, A Theory of Values, a biannual survey of Minnesota-based artists curated by the Walker’s own Scott Stulen and Kris Douglas of Rochester Art Center. I was at the opening on Saturday and bumped into Morrison for the first time, here he is chatting with Alec.

There will be more Soth related posts over the coming weeks, so check back!

Bartholomew Ryan:
In 2007 you were invited by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta to make new work for its Picturing the South photography series, a commission that concluded with a recent exhibition there.<1> But this project expanded very soon into Broken Manual.

Alec Soth:
These last couple of years have been about taking apart everything I know—Broken Manual. The reason it’s broken has a lot to do with the fact that I can’t escape all these outside pressures. It did start as this commission, but then I started dismantling the project.

Just yesterday I was doing an online interview. One of the questions was: “What’s the project that has the most meaning for you?” And if I were just going to answer off the top of my head, it would be Sleeping by the Mississippi because there’s just nothing like that first time where you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re neck-deep into the work. What I’ve been trying to get back to—and in a funny way, what I am now at this moment getting back to—is that newness.

(more…)

Working Knowledge: the Walker’s visual arts curatorial fellows

By

This is a longer version of the interviews with visual arts fellows Dan Byers and Andria Hickey, from a story in the July/August issue of Walker magazine. Design fellow Noa Segal has posted her interview and Mylinh Trieu’s over on the design blog. For nearly three decades, the Walker has been recruiting recent graduates and [...]

2009po_fellows_001

Left to right: Mylinh Trieu Nguyen (Los Angeles); Andria Hickey (St. John's, Newfoundland);Dan Byers (Newton, Massachusetts); Noa Segal (Haifa, Israel) Photo: Gene Pittman

This is a longer version of the interviews with visual arts fellows Dan Byers and Andria Hickey, from a story in the July/August issue of Walker magazine. Design fellow Noa Segal has posted her interview and Mylinh Trieu’s over on the design blog.

For nearly three decades, the Walker has been recruiting recent graduates and junior professionals to work as fellows in its design and visual arts departments. As full-time, full-fledged staff, fellows experience the entire scope of graphic design and curatorial work in a museum, while bringing with them fresh energy and new ideas. A number of Walker fellows have also gone on to prominent positions at museums and design firms around the world. As their time here draws to a close, the 2008-2009 group talks about what brought them here, what they’ve experienced, and what’s in store as they move on.

= Daniel Byers =

I got into this line of work because … after some time as a studio art major in college (mostly painting, some textiles stuff), I realized I wasn’t the sort to of person who could be by himself in the studio for hours on end – people, and collaborative work are very important to me. Working with artists and Ian Berry, the curator at Skidmore’s Tang Museum, provided a model for being engaged with artists and artwork – as well as writing – in a collaborative, experimental environment. In a way, I was also attracted to a line of work where taste, aesthetics, theory, history, craft and the sense of sustaining public culture all connected.

My first impressions of the Walker came from …

I’ve known about the Walker since I was an undergraduate at the Tang Museum, and admired the publications (from the magazine to the beautiful catalogs) that came across my desk. It always seemed a sort of beacon of — to use an abused word — maverick integrity, creativity, and commitment to artists. Since working at the Fabric Workshop and Museum I’d always hoped that I’d end up at the Walker one day.

While working here, I contributed … to catalogs for two Walker-organized exhibitions: The Quick and the Dead and the forthcoming Abstract Resistance (opening in February 2010). Equally import were the many, many meetings and discussions with fellow visual arts staff and staff from other departments, which more often than not allowed real discourse — and a good amount of humor.

Other high (and low) points … Quick and the Dead catalog writing and crazy work before its deadline (this was a simultaneous high and low point!); discussions with curator Yasmil Raymond about Abstract Resistance; karaoke with selected Walker curators (they know how they are) at the Art of This benefit; laughing at lunch with the visual arts department.

I love what I do because … I get to work with interesting people, I get to research and write, I get to talk about art, and most important, I participate in the creation of public culture. Curating, is, at its core, enabling artworks — culture — to enter the public discourse, in a public space. I’m committed to the relevance of art exhibitions the same way I’m committed to the survival of newspapers, public space in cities, public radio, small businesses as community meeting places, music venues — anything that allows people to meet around information, opinion, and expressions of culture. We need these spaces more than ever, and sadly they are withering as private culture and personalized content dominate our sense of how to engage with the world.

A Twin Cities image that will remain with me is … walking to work in January: two dead squirrels on the sidewalk, frozen from the cold, separated by a few blocks. Good thing I had a heavy coat.

After leaving the Walker … I will be working as an assistant curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh–a position I would not have gotten without my experience at the Walker.

An exhibition I have in mind … involves Charles Burchfield and a few artists from younger generations. Burchfield’s work is hard to place and its incredible otherworldliness has interesting analogs with artists working through the 60s to today.

= Andria Hickey =

Before coming to the Walker . . . my experiences working with artists really centered around my involvement with artist-run centers in Newfoundland and Montreal as a programmer and board member. In Canada these centers form an extensive part of the national contemporary art scene. I’d followed the Walker for a long time, mostly by way of the Web site and catalogues, and I had always admired how it maintained an artist-centric mission. When I received a travel grant from my school (Concordia University in Montreal) to do some research for my master’s thesis on Kara Walker, I jumped at the opportunity and soon discovered the fellowship program–it seemed like a dream job. One thing led to another, and two years later, here I am. It’s been an incredible opportunity to work with and for some of the most exciting artists of our time.

I wanted to come to the Walker because . . . Besides getting to work with some of my dream artists and on dream exhibitions, joining the curatorial team is a very rigorous experience that has challenged me to think outside the box, push myself and my ideas harder. Just observing ways that different curators work is an incredible experience, and as a fellow I really became part of a family at the Walker. I’m not sure if the chemistry comes from the level of dedication, creativity, and brains in the building, or from the extreme cold–winter in Minneapolis is colder than Canada!

Some of my high points . . . hanging the Richard Prince show with Philippe Vergne; burying a skeleton and working out the “spatial voodoo” of The Quick and the Dead with Peter Eleey; trying to fly a homemade hot air balloon at 5 am in rural Minnesota with Tomás Saraceno, Yasmil Raymond, Alberto Pessavento, and James Flaten, followed by a “traditional” Perkins breakfast.

The Quick and the Dead: Q&A with curator Peter Eleey

By

The Quick and the Dead, one of the more ambitious exhibitions the Walker has organized, is getting installed in our galleries this week and next. We’ll be posting videos soon that show curator Peter Eleey talking about some of the works; for now, here’s an interview I did with him about the show for the [...]

The Quick and the Dead, one of the more ambitious exhibitions the Walker has organized, is getting installed in our galleries this week and next. We’ll be posting videos soon that show curator Peter Eleey talking about some of the works; for now, here’s an interview I did with him about the show for the new issue of Walker magazine. (The show opens April 25, with an After Hours preview party on the 24th.)

Julie Caniglia: How did this show begin for you?

Peter Eleey: I wanted to do an exhibition about the things we don’t know, the big questions and deep mysteries in life, and our desire for experiences that transcend those we have every day. These are things that science, philosophy, and religion deal with perhaps more obviously than contemporary art does, but throughout history, art has offered us ways of thinking about things beyond the here and now. We expect to see objects when we visit museums, and yet this show allows us to consider things beyond what we can see. It’s very much about all that is “more than meets the eye.”

Pierre Huyghe's "Timekeeper"

Pierre Huyghe's "Timekeeper"

JC: So is that where the connections to conceptual art come in?

PE: In a sense, although the show’s not about conceptual art per se. Artists from the heyday of that movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as Bruce Nauman, Adrian Piper, George Brecht, and Robert Barry, had a keen interest in those big questions and deep mysteries. Brecht, for example, was a research chemist before he became an artist. Barry wanted to make things that could last forever and expand infinitely-he worked with materials from science supply stores. Lygia Clark made foldable sculptures that could be turned repeatedly inside out. They are like personal models of the universe.

JC: Can you talk a bit about how those relationships between art and science play out in the exhibition?

PE: Well, there are works by a few actual scientists, like a 1966 drawing a mathematician did to illustrate how we could turn a sphere inside out without breaking it. Looking at it alongside one of Clark’s sculptures, it becomes clear that at right around the same time, science and art were both finding new ways to think about space. A group in Los Angeles called the Institute for Figuring was founded in 2003 by a science writer and an art historian to explore the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of math and science. They have used knitting and crochet-crafts, really-to model an extra dimension called hyperbolic space. They’re coming to the Walker on July 30 to teach people how to crochet their own models of this dimension.

JC: So this show is going pretty far afield from conceptual art and that popular notion that it doesn’t actually offer anything to look at. After all, The Quick and the Dead fills three sizable Walker galleries.

PE: Well, there are some invisible things, like an electromagnetic energy field, which you simply have to trust exists. But there is a lot to look at, from films to performances to sculptures to paintings and drawings. The earliest piece is a 1933 photograph that Harold Edgerton took of a glass of milk shattering; the most recent is a sound installation that Susan Philipsz has made for the Walker parking ramp.

JC: A number of other works are placed outside the galleries. Why?

PE: A lot of the artists in the show explore different ways of expanding time and space beyond the present moment or location. For example, Simon Starling has “borrowed” some sunlight from a desert in Spain to make his site-specific painting on the ceiling of the Hennepin Lobby. So it made sense to also expand visitors’ experiences beyond the physical space of the galleries. In addition to Philipsz’s work, other sound-based works in the show include John Cage’s Organ2/ASLSP. The Basilica of Saint Mary will host organ performances of the piece on selected Thursday nights. A Nauman work in the gallery broadcasts sound from the interior of a tree located outside the museum. And there are two works buried outdoors, along with some other things that we want people to discover once they’re here.

Roman Signer's "Rad (Wheel)"

Roman Signer's "Rad (Wheel)"

JC: Getting back to the idea of mysteries, right? So much of the art in this exhibition hinges on things out there that are simply unknowable. Which pieces do you think are ultimately the most confounding-or mystical? And conversely, in the course of curating this show, did you find any artworks that seem to clarify something-about the world, the universe, our lives?

PE: I’m a romantic, and I find great beauty in works such as Jason Dodge’s simple bundle of cloth sitting on the gallery floor. The artist asked a weaver in Algeria to make it for him using the length of yarn it would take to go from the surface of the earth to where the weather ends-essentially the border with outer space. Though it leads your mind to the outer reaches of the atmosphere, the cloth turns out to be much smaller than you might think. But I don’t think the works in the show clarify anything-like Jason’s cloth, they instead offer expansive ways of thinking about things that are much bigger than themselves.

The Walker Welcomes Chief Curator Darsie Alexander

By

Last October, Darsie Alexander’s sprawling retrospective of Austrian sculptor Franz West opened at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), where she had been senior curator of contemporary art. Now, as the Walker’s new chief curator overseeing programs in exhibitions, visual arts, design, performing arts, and film/video as well as the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Alexander is [...]

Darsie Alexander, Chief Curator

Last October, Darsie Alexander’s sprawling retrospective of Austrian sculptor Franz West opened at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), where she had been senior curator of contemporary art. Now, as the Walker’s new chief curator overseeing programs in exhibitions, visual arts, design, performing arts, and film/video as well as the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Alexander is charged with bringing the institution’s multidisciplinary vision to life. Here she talks about her path in contemporary art and impressions of the Walker as she transitions onto its staff.

Was there one particular thing that made you say, “I absolutely must take this job”?
The projects on the horizon, the staff, the extraordinary collection, and the collegial climate within the museum are just a few factors that had me leaning heavily in favor of seizing this opportunity. The “absolute must” became ever more apparent with my getting-to-know-you visits to the Walker. Even for first-time visitors, it’s clear that this is a special place.

You’re coming from an “encyclopedic” museum to an art center that is not only devoted to contemporary work, but also to interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary programs. What kinds of changes does that mean for you as a curator?
It widens the scope, to be sure. Understanding the relationship of contemporary art to the past as well as the future is an important part of my curatorial perspective, and clearly one informed by my time in Baltimore. But the Walker’s embrace of such a vast array of art forms in the present allows for tremendous experimentation. I am thrilled to be working at a place that puts performance, film/video, and visual arts on an equal footing.

How and when did you become involved with art?
My interest in art grew slowly, and usually revolved around some social outlet or space. The fine art studios were adjacent to the theater in high school, where I spent a lot of time, so there was a natural overlap. The ceramics studios doubled as our makeup and changing room, and we could hear our cues from the stage. Sometimes there would be long stretches before going out onstage again, so a lot of time was spent looking at what the art students were doing. I guess this was my first intent, quiet observation of student artwork.

Like a lot of kids, I was also exposed to art through books and magazines and postcards. I was introduced to Utrillo, Renoir, and other recognized names that way, and always retained a fascination with various forms of reproduction and dissemination. With the Internet, the scope and complexity of dissemination has grown exponentially, and the Walker’s attention to these outlets reflects a keen awareness of how art travels into people’s lives—now virtually.

Were there other art careers besides curatorial work that intrigued you?
For two or three years I wrote art reviews and features for several Boston newspapers, and edited a small journal called VIEWS. Writing so much, usually under deadline, was a great experience. I would see something in the morning, or do a studio visit, and then go home and distill my impressions. While I didn’t have time to process my reactions and thoughts with as much depth as I can enjoy in an exhibition catalogue, I gained a degree of freedom during that time that improved my writing and sharpened my capacity to assess work.

What were some key points in your development as a curator?
Working at MoMA as an assistant curator played an enormous role, both as my curatorial boot camp and my introduction to people who would be very important personally and professionally. I don’t think I could pinpoint exactly what I learned there; it went far beyond learning how to fill out a loan form or present an object to the acquisitions committee.

Close relationships with artists have also had an enormous effect. For example, teaching with people like Carrie Mae Weems and Coco Fusco at the University of Pennsylvania has been a great experience; their participation in final critiques produces profound moments for all of us, not just the student standing there trying to absorb their comments.

How did you come to focus on contemporary art and photography?
While photography will always hold a very special place for me, at a certain point I wanted to look toward the future; photography is, almost by definition, attached to the past (the second an image is captured, it’s gone, etc.). At the same time, I have always enjoyed contemporary art for its immediacy and the opportunities to work with living artists. So the shift from photography to contemporary art seemed natural, and when I became head of the contemporary department in Baltimore in 2005, I brought my passion for still images with me.

Curiously, I find that with contemporary art, I am drawn to extremely ephemeral works, often with a limited lifespan: conceptual or performance-based works, or pieces that are made with what conservators call “inherent vice”—they assert deterioration or change as part of their materials and meaning. Art’s relationship to time has been an undercurrent of the various projects I’ve organized.

With your retrospective on Franz West just ending its run at the BMA and traveling to Los Angeles, what would be your next dream exhibition(s)?
That’s a hard question. I have been so involved in this exhibition for so long. When Franz and I were talking about titles for the show, he said, “What about, ‘A Lot of Pressure?’ ” It sounded good at the time—and accurate! On the heels of a big one-person sculpture show, I’ll probably opt for something or someone quite different. You’ll be one of the first to know.

Do you think that Walker shows are different from those at other contemporary art spaces, and if so, how?
The Walker is known for innovative exhibitions, its integration of technology, and for being the first to recognize artists who are now considered leaders in the field. Then there’s the fact that the shows are situated against a much broader backdrop that includes performing arts, film, design, and video. The collection provides a backdrop, too—curators can draw upon, react to, or expand the institutional frame of the Walker, including its new galleries. It’s a place with a history that remains deeply committed to the future.

The Walker has been called “a safe place for unsafe ideas.” How do you interpret that description as someone new to the place?
I think there’s a freedom people feel within the institution to try any path, no matter where it might lead. One of the great things about the Walker is that it embraces a range of ideas, from the generally accessible to those that speak to a sophisticated art audience who welcome experimentation and radicality. I think it’s important to maintain that spectrum; what may be a safe idea for one person may be a very daring idea for another person. This flow, this rhythm and pitch between ideas as they are played out in an exhibition calendar or in a series of performances, is why the Walker is so dynamic. But it’s not just a place for ideas. It’s a place where ideas are made manifest in space—where they are hammered out and given some kind of form, even if the form is virtual.

A shorter version of this article was originally published in the January/February 2009 issue of WALKER magazine.

Simon Starling: Tiepolo and Duchamp

By

Simon Starling’s Three Day Sky (2004-08), which will be included in The Quick and the Dead exhibition at the Walker next spring, begins in the Tabernas Desert in Andalucia, Spain. The only true desert in Europe, it is a small area of undulating terrain bounded to the North East by the Sierra de Los Filabres [...]

Simon Starling’s Three Day Sky (2004-08), which will be included in The Quick and the Dead exhibition at the Walker next spring, begins in the Tabernas Desert in Andalucia, Spain. The only true desert in Europe, it is a small area of undulating terrain bounded to the North East by the Sierra de Los Filabres and to the South West by the Sierra Nevada, though it is growing in size each year due to climate change and poor land management. The Tabernas is home to both the film studios where Sergio Leone made many of his most celebrated Spaghetti Westerns, and to the Solar Platform of Almeria, a research facility developing the use of solar energy for the desalination of sea water – a possible way to stem the tide of ‘desertification’ in the region.

Three Day Sky uses convoluted means and a great deal of time to create a simple painting, relocating, as it were, a “piece of sky” from the desert onto the gallery ceiling. In the first part of this piece, two large solar panels were used to harness energy over a period of three days in September, just outside the secure confines of the Solar Platform of Almeria. This “stolen” energy from the sunniest place in Europe has been transported to the Walker in two large batteries, which we received last week, and on this occasion I spoke with the artist about the project. He will use the batteries to run a spray gun at the Walker in April, crudely recreating the sky over the Spanish desert in a section of the exhibition galleries; the three days of desert sun captured in the batteries will allow for just over one hour of spraying time. The Walker will be the third venue for this on-going work that has previously been installed at the Modern Institute, Glasgow and the Museum for Contemporary Art, Basel, each time using the same batteries.

Solar panels, Tabernas desert, Spain, 2008. Photo Uffe Holm, courtesy Simon Starling.

Solar panels, Tabernas desert, Spain, 2008. Photo Uffe Holm, courtesy Simon Starling.

How long does it take to fully charge the battery on this journey?

It can be done in 3 days of full sunshine. Inevitably the amount of energy varies depending on the cloud cover etc. The more blue sky in Spain the more blue sky in Minneapolis – it’s a very simple equation.

Does the quality of the light in different parts of the world have any effect upon the energy that is stored in solar cells, or the speed with which it they are charged?

I like the idea that the energy stored is in some sense culturally specific. The Tabernas is the home of the Solar Platform of Almeria, a European research initiative, chosen of course for its sunshine hours. It’s no coincidence in the work that the Tabernas Desert served as an ersatz ‘wild west’ for Sergio Leone – a cheap and cheerful Arizona. I was originally drawn to the Tabernas desert when working on Kakteenhaus at Portikus in Frankfurt – its there I found the cereus cactus I transported to Frankfurt in my Volvo estate car.  I once gathered solar energy in Suriname to use to power a boat around the canals of Amsterdam – on the equator batteries charge up very quickly, I filled battery on a 2 day boat trip from Paramaribo to the Afobaka Dam.

So you could quite easily charge this at home in Copenhagen, right? In other words, there isn’t anything special about the light in this part of Spain, is there?

Where’s the drama in that? It’s exactly that questionable ‘belief’ in the specificity of light that gives the work its absurdist sense. It’s as much about the journey as anything – this notion of the repeated ‘pilgrimage’ I’ve talked about in the past.

Likewise, how similar to the Spanish sky is the blue color you’ve chosen for the paint that will be sprayed in the gallery?

The first time a went to the desert to store energy, I took a series of color swatches (from a collection developed for a paint manufacturer by Le Corbusier in fact) I held a lot of these up to the midday sky and selected the closest match – that then become to color for ‘Three Day Sky’.

What works of yours do you think have the most in common with this piece?

It of course relates to the other works using solar energy  that I’ve mentioned already, things that I’ve been doing since 1998, but further than that it could be seen to relation to other more directly sculptural works like ‘Work, Made-ready, Kunsthalle Bern’ (1997) which involved making a bicycle out of a chair and a chair out of a bicycle. The metal in this case takes on a sense of specificity. I always think of this work in relationship to the ‘bad science’ in Flann O’Brien’s ‘The Third Policeman’ in which atoms transfer from a bike to its rider and vice versa. Slowly the bike takes on human characteristics and its rider starts leaning against walls. I would also think that ‘One Ton II’ has a very close relationship to ‘Three Day Sky’. This involved a journey to South Africa to photograph one of the largest platinum mines in the world. One of these images was then printed as many times as possible using the platinum that can be extracted from one ton of ore – five 20 x 24 inch prints were made.

A significant thread throughout modern art is the shift from illusionism to literalism, from making a nice painting of something, say, to just calling that something art. Is this an illusionistic piece–a painting of the sky in Spain at a particular moment–or an effort to give us something of the sky itself?

It’s a more generic piece of sky – more of a sign than a specific moment or place. I’m not a painter in that sense. It’s more Greek Taverna than J.M.W. Turner.

Do you think more about Tiepolo’s painted heavens or Duchamp’s bottle of Parisian air?

Tiepolo for form. Duchamp for concept.

Next