Doha, 2018

It was back in 2013 that I first heard about the acquisition of Harald Szeemann’s archives by the Getty Research Institute (GRI) in Los Angeles.
I had known very little about his archives until I came across the book Individual Methodology: Harald Szeemann¹ by Session 16 of the École du Magasin. As a participant of the same curatorial program in Grenoble, I remember the discovery of this publication in the students’ library as fundamental for the research on curatorial archives I embarked on right after, and that is still ongoing. Having access—albeit indirectly—to Szeemann’s personal notes, sketches, and correspondence, initially gave me a glimpse of his personality and intentions as a curator, which eventually led me to a much wider and richer understanding of the man and his work. Considering the growing number of studies and publications on the history of exhibitions and curatorial discourse, the increased attention given to archives as a tool to understand curatorial methodologies comes as no surprise. Nevertheless, at present, these archives are primarily used as documentation by specialists, definitely not as independent sites mirroring and contributing to the world’s—and not just the art world’s—organization.

A curatorial² archive is much more than a curator’s archive; it is also an instrument and working place for the curator and/or the institution that hosts the archive. This publication aims to promote the idea that curatorial archives should be considered not only as resources for objective research, but also as systems or operational structures where curatorial visions are set out. In other words, a place where practice is expressed and takes shape; a salon where it is possible to enter into discussion with individual and collective methodologies. Here I intend to consider curatorial archives as extensions of the curator and his/her methodology. The potential of these para-curatorial tools lies in the fact that they are both the origin and the resulting witness of a complex process³ and could be used as an apparatus to better understand wider curatorial dynamics.

An archive exists between two places; it is a crossroads where personal and professional, subject and object, past and future, undefined and definitive inexorably merge. Exhibition views, plans, sketches, notes, correspondence with artists and art professionals, speeches, administrative files all gather together for a yet-to-be-told story that intertwines the curator’s private life and professional practice. An archive is a space where the curator thinks, works, and puts fragments together in order to create new narratives. Yet, like a ghost, it somehow lingers in time. To be in this archive is to think alongside the curator, through—and despite—his/her absence: in absentia. The outcome of considering this accumulation of material is significant for the future history of art and exhibitions, possibly an open and plural one, especially as it reveals a lot about our society and its mechanisms. Curatorial archives appear to be fundamental in shaping a curatorial discourse. Nevertheless, a methodology for their exploration has yet to be imagined, and a cohesive bibliography on this specific matter was still missing when I started this research. If much has been said about artists’ and art critics’ archives, serious consideration of curatorial archives is still lacking at present. I embarked on this series of interviews hoping to contribute to filling this gap and finding connections between a curator’s personal approach to archives and exhibitions, i.e. in terms of building structures and conceiving the display of various materials and works.

Curatorial Archives in Curatorial Practices is not intended to give a comprehensive overview, but an accurate one based on the experience of curators I have come across in the last five years. Some of them I know well; others I wanted to meet because I felt their understanding of archives would add valuable reflections to this project. I visited and went through many of their archives, others I have only seen in pictures or glanced briefly. In this publication, theory interweaves with practice, and memories mingle with ideology and conjectures. Different generations of curators regularly encounter curatorial and archival tools, which they use and question accordingly. The variety of content and approaches inevitably reflects the constellation of personalities and practices that helped me map out this issue. In fact, when I look at the ensemble of interviews gathered here, I picture a chorus of ethical viewpoints and behaviors. This colorful and multifaceted landscape is reflected in the heterogeneity of archive types that have been portrayed and crystallized in each interview’s heading. If some of the current trends related to curatorial archives emerged in a natural way during our discussions, analysis of the similarities and differences among the curators’ reactions is complicated. Generally speaking, most of them were reluctant to the idea of taking care or simply keeping their own archives. Others had a clear sense of how pivotal the archive is to their practice and the reason for this. Some of them were keen to show their emotional attachment to it. Basically, one would be tempted to say that curators who care more about their archives are those who have a strong sense of authorship of their exhibitions and a clearly defined, individual, creative position. On the other hand, curators who are relieved to let go of the archive’s weight by entrusting it to art institutions, appear to be those with greater focus on collective action than personal behaviors. Going through curators’ archives and engaging in a conversation with them felt like an anthropological journey, one that ends where it began: at the core of our times, caught up with the obsession to document the ephemeral; in the need to order, to take care, to curate the huge amount of data that we produce; and, in the social and political strategies that this mechanism implies or reveals. Interestingly, however, interviews began with the question “Do you have an archive?”, and most of the curators answered “No, I don’t” without hesitation. I then realized that what I meant by archive was something different to what they had in mind. In fact, most of them did not have a systematic archive of their professional activities, but I was not looking for that either. In my opinion, only what is unclassified, transitory, ambiguous, and left behind can truly speak of what remains unspoken. Consciously dealing with the past and doing so with respect for the ephemerality of a curator’s activity is as rare as it is precious. Indulging in archival study, contemplation, and reactivation while these ensembles are still fluid and alive appears to be a suitable approach, in contrast to the heavy establishment-run, traditional idea of how to keep an archive, collect the past, and freeze the present by conveying static forms of representation.

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QUESTIONS

A response in the negative was also a clue to understanding that most curators do not have time to archive. Most do not even have an assistant to deal with it, at least not in a way that would go beyond merely storing and classifying. What would be the point of letting someone else archive one’s professional life, losing the intimate connection with data? Or maybe this work should be done by someone else in order to be legitimate and not self-representative? Both positions seem valid. Their conjunction proposes a sketch for an emerging professional figure yet to be instated: the curatorial archive’s curator—a hybrid position intersecting research, storytelling, curating and archiving, challenging the traditional role of the gatekeeper, and guaranteeing flexibility to these combined structures.

Curating curatorial archives is one issue among many others brought about by these interviews. Many questions were raised, yet remain unsolved or for further discussion, namely:

• How do curators understand, create, and use archives? What are the old and new ways of conceiving, structuring, curating, and displaying archives? (G. Carmine, H. Hanru, H. U. Obrist)

• What testimony of our time can an archive offer to future generations of curators, researchers, and intellectuals? How can we benefit from the sensitive elements that can be found in archives while they are still active and in the form that their owner and creator imagined for them? Should we be afraid of talking about emotions when discussing curatorial archives? (C. Bertola, C. Lauf, P. Rigolo, M. Borja-Villel)

• What is the role of art institutions in this process of meaning creation? How can the ephemeral nature of the curatorial media be translated into a non-static tool within the private and public archival system? And more generally, how are personal archives transformed when they go to institutions? How do institutions use their curators’ archives? (V. de Bellis, C. Esche, A. Karroum, V. Kortun, B. Vanderlinden, M. Borja-Villel)

• What are the boundaries between docu- mentation and artworks, archive and collection, personal and public, freelance and institutional, that we should consider when approaching the issue of curatorial archives? Can the archive be a tool for rediscovering individual methodologies to be transformed into collective thinking? (F. Barenblit, F. Manacorda, V. de Bellis, S. Hapgood, V. Kortun)

• What is archive fetishism, and how can we contextualize archives’ economic value? Is memory being commodified? Is there a commodifiable memory? How important is oblivion? (F. Barenblit, M. Borja-Villel, L. Benedetti, C. Esche, J.-H. Martin, F. Manacorda)

• How do curatorial archives participate in the reactivation of exhibitions as a “curatorial paradigm”?⁴ How can they contribute to reactivating previous exhibitions? (L. Benedetti, V. Misiano, H. U. Obrist, B. Vanderlinden)

• What are we missing in terms of understanding and organizing current knowledge about curatorial disciplines? What do we want to save from our own times, and are we ready to undertake the work necessary to achieve this? (S. Hapgood, J.-H. Martin, V. Misiano, V. Kortun)

In general, I have the feeling that our era’s claim for oblivion is unprecedented, and that’s understandable. Remembering has never been more important in making the untold and marginal the focus of caring, and yet it has also never been a more painful and heavy exercise to undertake. Sympathy and attention need to be promoted by a collective act of selecting what is to be remembered.

At the conclusion of the interviewing process it was clear that even choosing not to do something is to make a choice. Neglecting the issue of the curatorial archive could have long-term consequences, but times are propitious to take proactive action and heighten awareness. I have tried to imagine the future of curatorial archives together with the curators who generously let me begin the conversation with them. Only time and comprehensive research on sharing curatorial archives will reveal how their potential might be expressed in the future, and to what kind of future they will contribute.

FOOTNOTES

1. Harald Szeemann: Individual Methodology, ed. Florence Derieux (Zurich: JRP|Ringier, 2007). ↩︎
2. “What is the curatorial exactly? Maria Lind makes it clear that ‘the curatorial’ is not analogous to ‘curating,’ the latter of which she considers to be the ‘technical moda-
   lity’ of the work of the curator. The curatorial, on the other hand, appears to be a methodological impetus, a way of thinking about one’s practice that can center on art but also exist beyond it. Lind defines ‘the curatorial’ most succinctly when she claims that it is ‘a more viral pre- sence consisting of signification processes and relations- hips between objects, people, places, ideas, and so forth, that strives to create friction and push new ideas.’” Maria Lind, cited in Jens Hoffmann, “Curating Between the Lines,” Critique d’art [online] no. 41 (Spring-Summer 2013). http://journals.openedition.org/critiquedart/8314 ↩︎
3. Ibid.
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4. Terry Smith, unpublished interview by Michela Alessandrini, February 2016. ↩︎