Sofia Landström – practicing researcher, educator and writer
Exhibitions are a tool, not the result. Art should open up for a democratic dialog and rethink the ‘ordinary’ exhibition practises. Martha Rosler: “art make difference to a social movement only when it is made in cognizance of those movements.” . Exhibition making can be a model of resistance, a tool and not the result.
Theorizing the curatorial territory
In today’s interactive and media overloaded society, anyone can be a curator. Google makes us able to curate our own profiles, menus at fancy restaurants are curated by food experts, etc. A profession, once driven by a strong desire to communicate with the public through art, is currently being extended and forced in to every field of organizing images and actions.
To be able to find the core in what a curator should be in the interactive art movement, we have to theorize the curatorial territory and define work in to a more specific area. To do so, I would like to refer to Robert Storr and his essay, “Show and Tell”, where he rather uses the term “exhibition-maker” rather than Curator.[1] By using the term “exhibition-maker,” this person stands as a spokesperson to both the institutions and the artists; the exhibition maker is the editor, the critical reader and the one that’s putting pieces and artists in to the right contextual space. To specify the exhibition-makers work in the current interactive art movement, one could say that they are using the exhibition space as the medium where ideas are visually phrased. The exhibiton-maker’s territory is no longer just to organize images and actions, but rather to be the part of the professional aspect that conceptualizes and contextualizes the ideas in to an understandable, visual exhibition.
By theorizing the curatorial work into a definition of a “exhibition-maker,” we can see that the curatorial territory is rather suited to find the best context, exhibition spaces and the most appropriate medium to show this kind of art rather than a aesthetical control over the gallery space. Their most important quest is to explain, conceptualize and choose what interactive medium makes an interesting and critical exhibition.
Sofia Landström - practicing researcher, educator and writer 