Via: martha rosler

i am surprised at Brian Holmes for presenting this document this way,
though I note that your wording, Brian, ultimates begs the question.
A curator with an ethic of solidarity perhaps, but to many readers
I've heard from (since this has been circulating for a week), this
appears to be a case of someone stepping in front of the material
they wish to put before the public and thereby, as they say, making
himself (or his labels) the story.

Perhaps solidarity can be evoked and supported in the viewers by not
predetermining quite so firmly the rhetorical turns that might
accompany it. (Of course, what one discusses in house is different
from what the viewer sees, and the document in question is not part
of an exhibition but a letter circulated out of an impasse...over a
word.)

in soildarity
martha rosler

cira pascual marquina @ 07.06.2006 22:21 CEST
Martha Rosler’s dismissal of curatorial agency here is more visceral (having to do with the umbilical cord of cultural capital that connects her to the art system) rather than considered. Like many critical artists, she would rather have curators be silent deal-makers, thus ensuring that a monopoly on critical positions is maintained (read: contained) within the theatre of artists practices. That's how the business of political art proceeds. So when a curator threatens that arrangement -- first through developing an overtly and actually politicized exhibition practice then through denouncing “business as usual,” of course that occasions her grumbling. In fact, what she is doing is slapping Chris (and Brian’s) wrists for disrupting the silent commerce that so-called critical artists maintain with the art system. She calls this “stepping in front of the work” in her posting; Chris and I call it taking a stance (something we do not as individual curators but in alignment with social processes and movements).

En solidaridad desde Venezuela Bolivariana y revolucionaria,
Cira Pascual Marquina

elena @ 27.06.2006 04:52 CEST
Cira Pascual and Chris Gilbert, are you really in Venezuela? Since you write "desde Venezuela Bolivariana y revolucionaria", I assume you are there. Many of us here, would love to know what you are doing. Perhaps working for policeman Farruco Sesto, who fires curators from museums claiming that curatorial voice is a very unnecessary thing in art practice, not only unnecessary but also dangerous. Are you helping him implement this point of view and putting it to practice? How many people are you thinking of censoring, firing from their jobs, because they do not worship the ground that chavez walks on? Please keep us informed of your activities. A lot of people here in Caracas are anxious to know more. As always it is the JOHN REED complex, the gringo who goes to the banana republic to fight for the HUMMER ROBOLUTION.

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