The state of curators

During these almost post-post-modern times where philosopher Paul Feyerabend´s idea about the “all is valid” or “all counts” is more than used up, art as a discipline (or science) has been continuously fed up with this intellectual trend.

Within exhibitions, performances, lectures, seminars or simply cocktails people spend too much time at staring with critical eyes not only at pieces or lecturers, but at other people. Edward Munch´s “The Scream” faced arty militants pretending to know what the state of art is (the aesthetically correct piece), and deciding who is best or who is crap. In addition to that, they feel like style judges by looking at others form head to feet. Is it the real point of being at an exhibition opening? Is it the latest shape of the art world structure? “Art and the structures surrounding it have changed significantly over the past 40 years” [1]

This is perhaps true, new curatorial methods seem to be the trendiest determinisms which affect (or infect) the tension between curators and artists.

This apparently new epistemology intends to study the nature, basis, limits and validity of artistic proposals; therefore, “validated” works are the chosen candidates who will run for a place in this or that exhibition. There is a political elasticity between artists and curators.

Who is there to know what is valid and what is not?

Artistic civil disobedience in Austria, Hip-Hopish gang’s grafittis through almost all Paris tube tunnels, tens of thousands of trash tourism exponents “contemplating” paintings at the Louvre Museum everyday, aggressive dogs breeders training their puppies in Lund (south Norway), a sound installation in the Pompidou Centre, Leonard Richhard at the Kunstmuseum in Kristiansand, Ilya Kabakob´s brilliant installation in Norway´s National Museum of Contemporary Art, Kiss the Frog in Tullinlokka ( Central Oslo), “Populism” at the National Museum of Art in Oslo. “ Politics is big on the agenda in exhibitions across Europe, a UK radio station votes Karl Marx the world’s greatest philosopher, and Norway’s Royals eat prison food. So?[2]

So art and politics all in one, curatorial populist democracy, we are all future curators, but future for some old thinkers was one second ago.

[1] www.frieze.com

[2] Jennifer Higgie www.frieze.com