Carolyn Christoph Bakargiev was the curator of the international dOCUMENTA exhibition in 2013, in Kassel, Germany. This lecture will discuss the curatorial approach to contemporary fine art which generally, has been focused upon through the forum of dOCUMENTA, a once every five-year exhibition, and which is, in essence, a place for testing new ideas and artworks in contemporary circles.
Carolyn originally made quite a splash in her introduction as a curator some time ago, and by the time she came to curate the dOCUMENTA 13 exhibition she had already been recognised as the new voice in contemporary art.
However, in many peoples views, when her position is analysed, there is very little difference regarding the commentary that she is making to the process philosophy and the classical Greek approach from some 650 to 400 BC. Bakargiev is very much focused on multiple disciplines and the "new"-ness of contemporary art, but, most of the tropes coming out of the work is still pretty much the same as it always has been.
Nevertheless, at these symposiums the positions that people take, whilst on the face of it may seem quite radical and new, in truth, are really quite orthodox. There continues to be heated debate, much discussion and lots of arguments at these venues, simply because artists have to make their case even though it has mostly been said and all heard before.
If we turn to some of the work that was displayed at dOCUMENTA 13, we can see the same old patterns emerging of "process philosophy".
Consider firstly, the work of Geoffrey Farmer and his installation piece entitled "Leaves of Grass".
This art piece was constructed on a massive scale, and has views from the multiplicity of perspectives. On approach to it, one can see a massive, three dimensional photo-collage of complex views of culture, formed into threaded and intricate multiplicity, and pluralism abounds. The concept that the curator is in step with the "materialism as a virus" is the theme of this work.
Another piece of art by Pierre Huyghes, entitled "Bee headed woman", explores the dematerialised sense of the self through a sculpture of a naked woman whose head has been completely covered with a swarm of bees. At first this looks quite radical, however in reality, Heracletus (c535-475B.C.), in 500 BC, (the Greek philosopher), would have been quite happy with the piece and would not have disagreed with its position as a philosophical totem.
The next piece of work that Carolyn Christoph Bakargiev placed within the exhibition was work by Song Dong entitled the "doing nothing garden" which basically consists of a mound of earth in the middle of a park garden which is making the statement of an unnatural creative act. Over time this mound becomes covered with grass flowers and weeds. Here, Song Dong was trying to allude that over time, nature will simply take over and 'do its thing' on any monument or man-made structure.
It is at this point that contemporary art pushes the boundaries even further with the work of Ryan Gander and his piece of work called "I need some meaning I can memorise". At first sight this work appears to be an empty room with just a breeze of wind flowing through it, that gently moves the net curtains around the window frames. Nobody can see any exhibition item in tthe room. It is just an empty room. In fact, it was actually the breeze that Ryan Gander was trying to exhibit. In other words he was engaging with the ethereal or the background. It is a study in perceptual and virtual existence that continues throughout our daily lives, which we probably take for granted. This art piece is intended to highlight the materiality of our current culture, which has found its antithesis here, in Ryan Gander's work.
With regards to publications, the Documenta exhibition is presented in various ways through the usual art critique magazines. Carolyn Christoph Bakargiev, as part of her role as curator, wants to engage with all of these publications. (Remember that publicity, however received, either good or bad, is in fact 'good publicity'. It is 'publicity' and will remain so.) Interestingly, most reviews, if not all, were positioned as a kind of process philosophy view. Bakargiev wants to fold together the materialistic culture that we live in and the natural elements of nature that surrounds us at the same time. The Friedricianum was the central building of the documenta exhibition and it was this that housed Ryan Gander's works.
The frieze magazine, one of the most influential magazines, does indeed provide a process philosophy type of view of the work.
The New York Times, also talks in terms of human centric cultural analysis. A cultural response with a human materialistic touch. It goes on to discuss that Bakargiev has put together exhibitions containing a project by a quantum physicist together with work from a geneticist and also an anger management workshop were all put on to display.
The Guardian newspaper also discussed repetition and endless return and they seemed to miss the point somewhat because it is in fact the repetition of difference but was being displayed.
Basically, Bakargiev is suggesting that multidisciplinary art practice just does not work. She argues in interviews that it is "coherence" that is what is important. However this is a contradictory position and I am beginning to think that she simply takes a stand of abject contrarianism, and to what the press may be saying.
For example she goes on to try to discuss a sort of 'new ageism' and then struggles that her vocabulary patterns when trying to explain her ideas, which are that curator or practice must be creative, but as a creator, one get into a state of mind, as a result of her constant engagement with so many disciplines. The mind therefore becomes preoccupied with collaboration and attempts to make it coherent, so the whole state of mind becomes a coherence in itself. She says therefore, that both scientific and craft centric approaches must be the result.(?) I've no idea how this conclusion comes from the argument, but then again, I'm not a curator....
From this it can be concluded that she is interested in the full "actor network theory", in other words a knowledge of all knowledges, that are not just human, but also animal and objects, as in the agent being capable of being anything, with some inherent material knowledge. Through this she talks of the alliance between the most advanced thinking, but also the state where which it is conjoined with the most primitive form of knowledge. She is also saying that human knowledge is in fact very limited and ignores the accumulative knowledge of the whole of nature, or indeed the whole universe, this comes through in her discussion about the fact that we are mere atoms and particles of matter all jostling amongst ourselves to form humankind and for that matter any other kind.
Carolyn Christoph Bakargiev situates herself as someone who is in the feminist thinking camp, with influence from ethology and the works of Henry Bateson. She makes the claim that we are "meta-stable" consistencies, stating however, that she has never been a keen reader of Giles Deleuze, and yet she also talks in terms of the rhizome, multiplicity and many ideas that seem to be from the book 20,000 plateaus by Giles Deleuze (!)...
This seems to be contrary and it's a contradiction again, because she also talks of how Henry Bateson had very much influenced her but not Deleuze. However, in fact it was also Henry Bateson who Giles Deleuze counted upon as one of his biggest influences too. So from this one can deduce that she is positioning herself as being a very feminist, and some may say capricious, towards any similarities of the philosophy propagated by the French philosopher Giles Deleuze!
One area that I do agree with, is the use of her claim that 'we as a culture and society are never in an age when "we have all worked [everything] all out"'. Bukargiev is genuinely interested in how culture and society, - and the individuals within it, perceive the world around us. She agrees with researching through practice, such as the importance of understanding: colours by using colours. She also discusses the concept that "art is a way of using up time". This in itself, gives it a functional role. It is interesting that if art is a way of using up time, how it has also become a financial overlay with society, and for society to use it as a type of currency.
So, here is an Attempted Transcript of her thoughts about the curation of dOCUMENTA 13, as played on Thinking-in-practice.com;
It is an attempt to be in an old fashioned way, say coherent... although I am in praise of the incoherence and uncertainty and the condition of the 'may-be', ...it's somehow more meaningful because you are testing your ideas as you go along in practice. So the documenta was a state of mind I suppose you could say it is a bit new age'y' like you're in a state of mind which is a state of mind of for example term experimenting with forms of alliance for example between knowledges of science and early knowledges of people who were living today lived in the past outside of most aspects of modernity. One state of mind was the alliance between the most advanced knowledge and the most primitive knowledge a state of mind embraced creativity or it trying to consider it from a broader perspective of not only human so in an act of some sort of it will call it a kind of almost spiritual perspective on what's compassion might mean and what being together of thinking together might mean so it wasn't coming from a feeling of the same place of some sort of hubris, I know it all and I know how the plants thinks and I know how the dogs think. - It was more a state of mind of humbleness where one understands that the human knowledges are only a very small part of the knowledges of the knowledge that is constantly shared and co-evolved through interactions as the feminist and physicist Karen Berard, who was an important influence on my thinking, has pointed out in her book meeting the universe half way. So some people thought she is into the way dogs think and multi-species evolution because she is Donna Haraway's friend and also was on my committee. -of its much broader than that in the question of dogs it's a question of understanding there is at we ourselves are made up of billions and trillions of small elements which each have their own intelligence weather its a cell or even smaller subatomic part of particles and in a way it exists as a provisional even though we doesn't quite exist it exists as a provisional equilibrium of a letter servants of equal things are very fragile equilibrium that has a multiplicity of itself which is constantly it acting together with all the other makers of the world and the inanimate so of course one could say there is a democratised only in the Deluzian background which is much older than, oh, say that Gregory Bateson would be a bigger influence on me than any of the recent things, so that would be the state of mind. So of course there are Art Works that are made for humans by humans and that concerned with questions that are primarily of interest to humans but it's an overall state of mind. Documenta is the kind of humbleness of the human involvement in the whole thing which is why I put the inside outside and the outside inside, which is why there are houses in the park on the outside and then while Ryan Ganders' wind in the whole ground floor which is a kind of invisible material why matter matters wind blowing through the whole which is very much about the inversion and questioning of the demarcation thing which is human made and which is not human made so it's not that I sent celebrated nature in a romantic way that there is no difference between nature and culture because culture is also natural that because the painting is made from subatomic particles which go through reactions in space and so that is not exactly an artificial human made thing it is only partially human made at thing and vice versa and everything in the world is coming from something else. I'm in a period which has now been going on since last October and August of trying to figure out what document to 13 actually was in trying to answer that question, so I'm not completely able to answer it, I mean Ireland but at the time I thought and I may be thinking but not sure if I think it any more in the same way that I was motivated by thinking that human fields of study and knowledge are historically determined and do not last forever and I used to be against this but we don't have them any more we have chemists things come and then things and also you know and a novel appears that the certain moment in literature and it doesn't appear before and it won't appear on the future etc so I thought that will I have this thought long ago art history is based on a very modern idea of art which is an idea of autonomy and idea where the artist is researching how perception is articulated into knowledge or transferred into knowledge through the subject matter itself being the means through which that investigation occurs so it kind of has a kind of self-referential artifact, For example you would restore colour with colour and representation with representation and gestural with gesture etc and the kind of rectal philosophy made through using the materials through the experimenting as a means by which to experiment that thing which kind of makes it practical philosophy because your language is not for instance verbal at like a philosophers is there but it's a thing as a kind of rights where a philosopher talks about the jug is holding vessel and so on and so forth whereas our tests explore this by making a jug and what is the definition of art which was questioned by the early 20th-century avant-garde's which wanted to break the distinction of reality and producers because at the beginning of industrialisation at the same time they were society of thinkers and reflectors and a secure and they also needed to have a non-useful activity to the useful activity is the non-useful activity hence the idea of automata which basically continues to add that I think I thought so does over and field demarcating field cold art may be over and so doesn't make sense once other common things between physicists and artists rather than artists an artist so maybe in the future there will be no Tate Modern or Pompidou Centre or in the way that they are now. I'm not saying that there wouldn't exist as buildings with collections and so on but there may be a time of those collections are reorganised completely and everybody who lives in a certain style of period everybody thinks everything is for ever because that's the way we are was the best because it would last forever and today we can't imagine anything different what we have today is the best but actually these multiple symptoms feels of knowledge change all the time and in the early 20th century for example when our bodies were separated from bodies of other animals, light when that zoology whatever Museum of anthropology of ethnology whatever the birth of the consolidation of the field of ethnographic studies and anthropology and that the time it was revolutionary....At this point I gave up...
As can be seen from the above example, this curator is talking so fast that she is unable to coherently make much sense at all. Some say art for art sake, well, here is an example of talking for talking sake. I question the usefulness of such. Psychiatrists call this "word-salad"... Look it up.
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