Sankt Gallen, 2016

After working for several years as an independent curator and art critic—including projects and books with Norma Jeane and Christoph Büchel, as well as the temporary exhibition Unloaded (2002) in the former Swiss military bunkers in Oberschan—since 2007, Giovanni Carmine has been the director of the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen. He has curated shows by Swiss and international artists such as Ryan Gander, Mai-Thu Perret, Gedi Sibony, Loris Gréaud, Shahryar Nashat, Matias Faldbakken, and Navid Nuur. Carmine was the artistic coordinator of ILLUMInations, the 54th Venice Biennale (2011); co-editor of the accompanying Biennale catalog; and curator of Valentin Carron’s Pavilion of Switzerland at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013).

YOUR ARCHIVE IS…?

My archive is a neglected archive. Basically, it is all dead matter; an accumulation of all the books sent to me by artists, institutions, and, co- workers, through which I have no time to browse. In the end, everything is piled up in the office at the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen. There is neither time nor space to archive it, for very practical reasons. Of course, I have my own personal arc- hive at home, which is the documentation of my independent activity.

AND HOW IS YOUR OWN ARCHIVE ORGANIZED?

I belong to the generation that grew up with the shift between analog and digital, so the first things I ever did I was not able to document as I do now with a mobile phone. Most of my archive is in boxes. In general, rather than reflect on what I do, I prefer to do it. I don’t pretend to collect and organize everything that I have previously done. I don’t think that would be an interesting activity for me, nor would it be of interest to anyone else. Very often, archiving becomes an act of self-promotion, and I don’t like that.

DO YOU EVER CONSULT YOUR PERSONAL ARCHIVE?

I dive into the boxes when necessary. Most of the material is no longer used, and is a burden too. It takes up a lot of space, grows at a fast rate, is heavy, and gets damaged. It needs to be taken care of by someone. I’m thinking of removing the books that I no longer need to have in the Kunsthalle; they could be part of the resources of the libraries of Sankt Gallen and would be more useful there.

IS AN ARCHIVE SOMETHING ORDERED AND CATALOGUED IN YOUR EXPERIENCE?

Not necessarily, but it becomes interesting only when it is usable. It is important that [the archive] has a structure, whether catalogued or not. And above all, it is essential that other ideas, other knowledge come out of that material.

DO YOU EVER REUSE MATERIAL THAT YOU HAVE PRODUCED BEFORE IN ORDER TO IMAGINE OTHER PROJECTS?

Very rarely. I’m not sentimental. And when I need to fish out some images, the computer does it for me.

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF YOUR PERSONAL ARCHIVE?

I wouldn’t have a problem giving it away, if I were asked to. Mobility forces me to reduce the weight of things I carry with me, and the spaces I live in do not allow for a large number of books. Everything has to be selected. I’m very pragmatic about this. I have to ask myself these questions, because the material keeps accumulating and I’m frustrated to see it static, and not be able to share it to generate other things. When an institution acquires an archive, most of the material is thrown away. I leave no marks in my books, they are kept intact, so they cannot be interesting; not even for the traces I could have left on them, from a curatorial point of view.

I think that 99.9% of the information available in our hyper-informed and computerized era is unreliable. Why should it be more interesting in the twenty-third century to reread my emails to artists than those of a banker working for the Swiss government? An archive only becomes interesting when someone else works with it. With digital technology, many things are automatically archived. Many curators today are working for their image that will be posted online. This is also something fabricated that we will need to learn to recognize and analyze. There will be great access to curatorial material from the year 2000 onward, because everything is turned into images and disseminated. How do you actually archive this whole mass of information that we are producing? I think it will need a great deal of scientific analysis. There is a lot of material out there to help us understand and rebuild the artistic history of this period, but we have to see what we will do, what kind of stories we will tell from this.

Nevertheless, books will remain. They will resist water, magnetic storms, technological changes, and fires. We make a thousand copies and maybe a hundred end up in serious libraries; if we are lucky, and if they are well preserved, they will physically exist in a hundred different places at the same time.

WHY SHOULD A CURATOR’S ARCHIVE BE INTERESTING TO AN ART HISTORIAN?

Much of the discussion related to art takes place within the exhibition site, both in the physical space of the show and in what is produced around it. If you don’t know the exhibition system, it’s difficult to even understand the rules of the art system. Exhibitions produce a lot of knowledge.