10,000 FRANCS REWARD (ThE CoNTEmpoRARy ART muSEum, DEAD oR AlivE) MINISTERIO DE CULTURA Edition: © SECRETARÍA GENERAL TÉCNICA Subdirección General de Publicaciones, Información y Documentación © SOCIEDAD ESTATAL PARA LA ACCIÓN CULTURAL EXTERIOR © UNIVERSIDAD INTERNACIONAL DE ANDALUCÍA © ASOCIACIÓN DE DIRECTORES DE ARTE CONTEMPORÁNEO DE ESPAÑA © of the texts: the authors © translations: Ben Goldstein, Antonio León Correa, Rodrigo Nunes, Cymbeline Núñez Sheriff, José María Ruiz Vaca © of the images: the authors and Thierry Boccon-Gibod (p. 95), Ph. De Gobert (p. 126), Éditions L´Arachnéen, www.editions-arachneen.fr (pp. 95, 96, 98), Marc Pataut (pp. 104, 105) NIPO: 551-08-134-8 ISBN 978-84-7993-074-5 ISBN 978-84-96933-30-9 (SEACEX) Legal Deposit: B-xxxxx-2009 Printing: Ingoprint S.A. Contemporary art is in a particularly healthy state in Spain. Evidence of this lies in the emergence in the last few years of an important number of art museums and centres which, besides being able to connect with the general public, have helped set in motion collaborative networks of great importance within the sector. In this regard, the creation in 2004 of the Association of Contemporary Art Directors of Spain (Asociación de Directores de Arte Contemporáneo de España, ADACE), was a crucial step. The meetings in Baeza, the fruits of which are compiled in this publication, are the result of the collabora- tion of this association of art institution directors from all over Spain with Central Government –represented by the Ministry of Culture and the State Corporation for Spanish Cultural Action Abroad– and the International University of Andalusia. Likewise, the Baeza meetings exemplify the need to unite our finest profes- sionals in the contemporary art world with their international colleagues with regards to defining the role of our current society’s art criticism and contemporary art centres. I am honoured to present the results of these Baeza meetings and continue working alongside the ADACE. Related to this, in 2008 a great meeting of Ibero-American art centres has been organized, in which, once again, the international language of contemporary art will act as a way to bring together those of us committed to creativity and that common experience, aesthetics, which so helps to define us as human beings. César Antonio Molina Minister of Culture Ever since it made its appearance towards the end of the 18th century, At a time when art opens out unceasingly to the most diverse horizons, the museum as public institution has gradually renovated its goals and its breaking down barriers in style and tradition, genre and base, we propose – own image. Without abandoning the social purpose, which has its roots with special attention to the youngest creators – also to collect the multiple in the Enlightenment, that turned it into an indispensable instrument for requirements of art of our times, backing all means of expression which are culture, the widening of this institution, in our modern mass and consumer other ways of understanding reality or contributing to transform it within society, necessitates a re-definition of spaces, institutional mechanisms and beyond the walls of museums, museums which are ever more linked to and communication routes. These challenges are even greater, if possible, the city and the territory they are lodged in. For all these reasons, SEACEX when attempting to display a contemporary artwork in permanent could not do other than back this museum forum, whose international transformation and whose size – in limits, character and even sense – repercussions attempt to help fulfil the goals that constitute its reason for serves as material for an open debate that is inseparable from all cultural existing. genres, ever larger and more open to technology and communication. Thus the need to channel the dialogue of the experts with the rest of Charo Otegui society, as stated during these conference sessions held in Baeza. The President of the State Corporation for Spanish Cultural historic Andalusia Renaissance town serves as a setting for an event that is Action Abroad, SEACEX absolutely up to date, and is indispensable to face the future of a cultural area, that of contemporary art museums, which in Spain is one of the most dynamic settings in recent years, thanks to the decisive commitment of the most diverse public and private institutions. Dialogue between technicians and heads of various Spanish museums and those of other countries is an attempt to go in depth into the rigour, collaboration and in sum, progress of reflection on modern museums. Thus the full sense of participation in the organisation of these conference events of the State Corporation for Spanish Cultural Action Abroad (SEACEX), which has as its fundamental target the propagation of all facets, past and present, of Spanish culture in the rest of the world. With this in mind, we have been carrying out a wide programme of activities in all continents in which an outstanding feature is that of monographic and collective exhibits of contemporary Spanish artists, as well as, in a very special way, the collaboration with other institutions that we will attempt to back in order to make current Spanish artistic vitality known to as wide a public as possible. An organisation for management and cultural dissemination such as SEACEX, which attempts to render service to the whole of society, going beyond national frontiers, constitutes an instrument that is especially valuable to facilitate, or in some cases promote, all sorts of cultural projects backed by scientific rigour or aesthetic quality. This instrument is inseparable from the work done by specialists and institutions such as those that are gathered in these sessions, whose work we attempt to make as approachable as possible, and in accordance with the special sensibility of culture in the widest sense of the term that the Spanish Government wishes to impress on all the activities it carries out. The International University of Andalusia (UNIA) was established with the goal of contributing to the creation, development, transmission and critique of science, techniques and culture by means of teaching, co- ordinated research and the exchange of relevant scientific and technological information on an international and inter-regional level. Set within the framework of the Andalusian University System, it stands out because of its open nature, geared to post-graduate education and with a commitment to the society it forms part of, yet at the same time, it also stands out because of a clear vocation of solidarity and co-operation, especially with Latin America and the Maghreb. The UNIA, precisely because of its specific nature, is a flexible institution capable of adapting to the needs of new training and research processes in current society. In this sense, it is also the home of the project UNIA artandthinking, which has as its goals incorporating university institutions into debates, production and propagation of considerations associated to certain matters of art critique and contemporary culture; with the understanding that its initiatives and programmes are not only a way to complete the academic offerings of the International University of Andalusia, but also above all as a way of relating the university with the cultural and social milieu, in such a way that society grows ever more interwoven, thus producing projects that are generative, cross- curricular, inter-disciplinary and trans-national related to thought, art and contemporary action, so enabling the development of a culture of process, of trajectory, of dialogue, so that art and thought receive value within social relations. When the people responsible for this encounter invited us to participate in the organisation of these work sessions on the role of museums in contemporary art, it is easy to see how we accepted without hesitating, due to the importance of the content that we publish here and their scope in the future. The celebration of 10,000 francs reward (The Contemporary Art Museum, dead or alive) a gathering of local and international experts in the halls of our headquarters in Baeza, in the place where the poet Antonio Machado was born, makes more obvious, if possible, our firm resolve to be a universal university that is committed to both large and small matters of our times. I would like to thank the Ministry of Culture, SEACEX and ADACE for enabling these workshops to take place by counting on the International University of Andalusia for the organisation in our headquarters in Baeza, where, according to popular wisdom, among its streets and noble architecture and surrounding olive groves, the soul of Antonio Machado still wanders. Juan Manuel Suárez Japón Rector of the International University of Andalusia Presentation 12 Yolanda Romero 10,000 francs reward 14 (The Contemporary Art Museum, dead or alive) Manuel Borja-Villel The Museum as a Space 18 for Regeneration Lecture: Benjamin Buchloh Other participants: Simón Marchán Fiz and Santos Zunzunegui Moderation: Manuel Borja-Villel Between the artistic fact 51 and the document: the translation Lecture: Martin Jay Other participants: Jean-François Chevrier, Antoni Muntadas and Suely Rolnik Moderation: Nuria Enguita Mayo What history are we telling? 120 How are narrations built? Lecture: Mieke Bal Other participants: Beatriz Herráez and Allan Sekula Moderation: Javier González de Durana The subalternate voice: Latin America 144 Lecture: John Beverley Other participants: Gustavo Buntinx, Paulo Herkenhoff and Ana Longoni Moderation: Teresa Velázquez Towards a Perverted Pedagogy 207 Lecture: René Schérer Other participants: Manuel Asensi, Ute Meta Bauer and Martha Rosler Moderation: Juan de Nieves Profiles 239 14 15 10,000 FRAnCS ReWARD If we had to describe a museum visually, it would be represented by an equilateral triangle whose first tip would indicate the narrations, the second the intermediation (THe COnTeMPORARy ART MuSeuM, structures, and the third the audience. There are abundant studies and theories on DeAD OR ALive) narrations and display elements. However, a convincing theory has yet to be put MANUEL BORJA-VILLEL forward on audiences and education. This is possibly the reason for the pessimism of some essays that have appeared recently. Artists’ proposals and exhibition formats are analysed, but nothing of the sort that constitutes pragmatics of the museum itself. The museum today is a place that generates new modes of sociability. If we do not want it to be a place of control and exclusion but rather, on the contrary, a democratic space, it is essential for its laws to be shared by all those who frequent it. There is thus an urgent need to move from a modern archaeology of knowledge to a post-modern praxis – that is, to realise what the museum consists of as a discursive phenomenon in its own right, what its place is in the age we live in and what models of resistance it can provide us with. 2. With a not inconsiderable dose of humour, we called this meeting a “summit”. We were attempting to be ironic about the political and economic summits in which prominent people of all kinds claim to speak on behalf of humanity, when in fact they are moved by very specific interests. It was not our intention to pontificate about certain issues but quite the opposite. We were seeking a space for questioning, which is always partial and fragmentary. Questioning is the act of speaking that enables outsiders to our discursive setup to do so, that is, those who are not part of our system of intelligibility. It is also the moment of a certain exteriority, of an otherness, different from the institutional community that defends its interests. As questioning 1. In a society like our own, in which the difference between production and always entails acting from outside, it is by definition the opposite of consensus. reproduction is shrinking and the typical post-fordist player performs mental or That is why the debate between speakers and audience was very important and both symbolic tasks, art and the museum as a privileged setting in which this player were drawn from very different sectors of the cultural sphere. operates have acquired a heretofore unknown centrality. It is therefore not surprising We cannot forget that we are living in an age in which everything seems to be valid that literature on museums is abundant and that conferences and symposiums are and jumbled ideas are the norm. The general trend is leading us towards a sort of constantly held to discuss its limits and functions. low-intensity eclecticism that is claimed to be a manner of safeguarding a supposed 10,000 Francs Reward is the title of an interview granted by Marcel Broodthaers democratisation of culture. It is precisely now that what Max Weber called substantive to Irmeline Lebeer in 1974. In it the Belgian artist criticised the fact that art was a rationality is becoming more relevant that ever. We are living in a period of systematic prisoner of its own ghosts, decorating the walls of institutions as a symbol of power crisis and it is therefore our duty to point out certain paths as opposed to others. and wandering like a shadow through the nooks and crannies of history. Clearly, This choice cannot be technical or dictated by a formal rationality but rather by the Broodthaers was distancing himself from the modern stance according to which the rationality involved in reconciling what we learn from science and morality; and museum, as a repository of artistic essences, needed to make immediately visible a it always signifies an ethical choice. Particular attendees and speakers, as opposed universal reality that would transform society. Over thirty years later, the questions to others, took part in these debate meetings. Their work and track record point and doubts raised by Broodthaers about the modern museum are not only valid, but in in a specific direction. It was not, then, an eclectic choice. Nor was it attempted to most cases remain unresolved. represent that which is fashionable in the art world. Authors whose ideas allowed us to Arising in the 1960s as a manner of securing art a place in the discursive network analyse the museum as a discursive practice and its position nowadays were invited to through which the dominant social groups exercise their power, institutional criticism take part in the debate. has not always understood the new circumstances in which the society of general intellect and cognitive work has subsumed the fact of art. A great many of the studies 3. Five study tables were organised. In the first we put to the speakers the possibility and analyses that are conducted on the museum are thus melancholic, nostalgic even, of regarding the museum as a space for social regeneration as a basis for imagining in nature. They fail to recognise that the museum is structured around a discourse new forms of sociability. Above and beyond Huntington’s clash of civilisations, it is that naturally entails narrations (the stories we tell or show through a series of works, very possible that we are currently witnessing the close of a period of history and that events or documents), but also the audiences who adopt these narrations, questioning this period will end up as a worldwide conflict or, at the last, the overall weakening of them, in accordance with display elements located between the former and the latter. 16 17 democracy. Recent political events, fundamentalist movements of all kinds and the sort Finally, it is essential to address our interrelation structures. Who are the museum’s of self-imposed authoritarianism into which Western democratic models appear to be audience? What access do they have to culture? Pedagogy is precisely the aspect that degenerating would seem to indicate this. In this connection it is appropriate to think is closely linked to the audience and is still not considered an element of liberation. that, as in the neo-realist period in Europe of the 1940s, art and the museum may Most teaching programmes promote inequality and hinder true access to knowledge. acquire a capital role in regeneration, in re-establishing new areas of freedom. We cannot fail to acknowledge the good intentions of the museum institution, which Benjamin Buchloh’s paper referred precisely to the disappearance from society of devotes considerable effort and resources to “bringing art closer” to its audience, spectacle, and of the consumption of this public sphere propitiated by the bourgeoisie in order to disseminate the treasures it holds. These reformist measures have done with the intention of it becoming a place for criticism and for contesting power nothing but perpetuate some of the fallacies on which modern pedagogy rests, such relations. Simón Marchán Fiz, on the one hand, and Santos Zunzunegui, on the other, as transparency, progress, education as mere transmission and access. How can put forward two positions as a solution to this crisis. Whereas in Simón Marchán’s a museum explain the history, the memory/memories of which it is a repository? view, in order to recover its critical position the museum should stick to its modern Evidently, education and narration are inseparable. It is not possible to develop an parameters and not take in works from a broader field, Santos Zunzunegui considers alternative education policy without the story/stories that are told being alternative that it is precisely the cinema that can prevent the museum being absorbed by the too. Taking up some of the proposals of the French thinker René Schérer, Manuel market and enable it to create margins of resistance. Asensi, Martha Rosler and Ute Meta Bauer attempted to provide an answer from The second and third tables are intrinsically linked. As a result of its idealist origins, different perspectives. modernity understood there to be no division between thought and speech, and it failed to take into account the linguistic nature of the museum. It was taken for granted that artworks transmitted their contents in an immanent manner. We know that this is not so, and we therefore need to reconsider the way in which we tell the story, what the narrator’s role is in it, the documentary nature of any work and the compatibility between document and fact of art. The first roundtable questioned the possibility of finding fictional devices, new tales to be told. The second discussed the need for a narrativity that is not necessary literal. In view of Martin Jay’s radical criticism of the predominance of the visual in the culture of modernity in his book Downcast eyes, and Mieke Bal’s studies on narratology, they were asked to head the discussions. Suely Rolnik, Muntadas and Jean-François Chevrier, on the one hand, and Beatriz Herráez and Allan Sekula, on the other, contributed diverse viewpoints. With the fourth group we wished to deal with another fundamental aspect of today: the subaltern voice. How can we give a voice to those who lack one? How can we generate areas that make disagreement possible? If the modern museum model is a thing of the past and if it stemmed from a hegemonic dictate that despised the existence of the other as uncultured or backward, the urgent need for this other to be visible is obvious, especially in a world in which frontiers have disappeared. However, when the dominant discourse is multiculturalism, and the political culture is that of the politically correct, we tend to imagine an artistic setup in which the other can speak to us, when this in fact is not the case; and, ultimately, we tend to quell any kind of difference and antagonism. The need to understand subalternity is fundamental if we do not wish art as an institution to turn into a sort of republic of letters and artists into our national patriarchs. The choice of Latin America was not a matter of chance. At no point was it intended to establish a table of “marginals” (John Beverley, Ana Longoni, Paulo Herkenhoff and Gustavo Buntinx are not at all marginal), a ghetto; rather, by bringing these voices together we wished to draw attention to the fact that the questioner does not exist without the questioned, and that nor can we speak of Latin America without speaking of ourselves. The same notion of Latin America as a unity would merely perpetuate that idea of the excluded other, lacking in complexity. 12 13 PReSenTATiOn can be of general interest. In our opinion, 10,000 francs reward is precisely that. It is a platform for debate that attempts to generate a space for opinion and the exchange YOLANDA ROMERO of ideas on what role is played by a museum, and what its future is. With this idea President of ADACE we started working almost a year ago with the idea of celebrating an international encounter in which the members of our association, in touch with other professionals in the field of contemporary art (thinkers, artists, commissioners) could activate a forum for discussion, analysis and critical debate. However, we don’t wish to be an isolated event, and for this reason we want 10,000 francs to be the start of a long- lasting initiative that will be biennial at least, as the relationship structures are built up with time, and on a long-term basis. Within the sector of contemporary art, the need to establish international working networks that can contribute to better awareness of Spanish art beyond our boundaries is a unanimous opinion. Undoubtedly this type of encounter enables closer relationships between professionals, this type of event contributes to making them more fluid and stable. The same structure of operation of this summit, in which, along with almost twenty first-rate speakers, we have in attendance almost one hundred museum experts, commissioners, artists and museum directors, will be very stimulating in this sense. On behalf of ADACE, I wish to thank you all. We are grateful to the speakers who have made the effort to be here in spite of their busy agendas, enabling us to share in their knowledge; to the participants, because of the interest shown in this project; to the institutions, for not backing just a grand event, but rather a more fragile-looking The Association of Contemporary Art Directors of Spain (ADACE) was created over event, yet more necessary and long-lasting, as this space for thinking is. To all in two years ago, and today includes directors of about twenty museums and contemporary conclusion for their contributions, reflections and ideas, and especially Carlos Alberdi, art centres in Spain, many of whom are with us here today. Ever since our foundation, Maribel Serrano and Juan Manuel Suárez Japón, who have backed this encounter we have made ourselves known through diverse communiqués and public interventions from the very start and have believed in the need for it to take place. requesting the modernisation of the structures and rules governing our museum Yet I would not like to finish without making a brief mention of the poet who gives his institutions, as in the end these institutions must guarantee managing museums, and name to these headquarters of the UNIA in Baeza, Antonio Machado. In 1936 at the producing them as a public service. Many of you may be surprised to know that these dawn of the Spanish Civil War, Machado published a book in prose, Juan de Mairena. requests have not gone far beyond asking various administrations that art centres receive Sentencias, donaires, apuntes y recuerdos de un profesor apócrifo, and in its pages he financial aid and enough staff for them to operate correctly from their initial stages of talks about society, culture, art, literature, poetry, politics and also includes his ideas creation; that cultural institutions should not be subject to the to and fro of politics; about teaching. For Machado there is no trade more noble than that of teaching. Juan that the choice of their directors should be made through regulated procedures that are de Mairena, the heteronymous name favoured by Machado, understands that teaching transparent and competitive; that museums and art centres should have necessary self- is not indoctrination, but rather mental gymnastics with the students, helping them rule and stability to carry out their plans; that it is not good for them to be subject to the to limber up the grey matter immersed in slander or negligence. ‘You know,’ Mairena tyranny of visitor statistics, or that the structure of their sponsorships should be carried tells his disciples, ‘that I am not attempting to teach you anything, and I am only out under criteria of professionalism and independence, among other things. dedicated to shaking up the inertia of your souls, to plough the stubborn fallow land In summary, we have wished to call attention to the need to solve those matters that of your thoughts, to plant inquisitiveness, as has been very reasonably said, and support the full efficiency of our museums and art centres. However, denouncement I would say rather, to plant concern and discernment.’ is not the only goal of our association, as ADACE does not wish to play a merely reactive role in view of certain events in the cultural life of our country, but rather Thank you very much, and welcome. we are working to build a forum for reflection, a space for opinion in which we can debate in a constructive way and with professionals of other disciplines, museums and contemporary art centres: their functions and goals, their methods and work instruments, their independence and self-rule in planning the activities they carry out, their sources of financing, etc: these are some of the subjects to be debated. In short, ADACE has been created to have a collective voice that can make itself heard in matters which, because they belong to the public side of the arts and their services, 18 19 THe MuSeuM AS A SPACe the other great institution of the bourgeois public sphere, in which the differentiation of the bourgeois subject in terms of a secularly formed identity, was guaranteed. FOR RegeneRATiOn Since this conference has chosen as its title ‘The Fraudulent Promise’ that Marcel MAIN SPEAkER: BENJAMIN BUCHLOH Broodthaers gave to the fictitious interview he had offered, in which questions and an- OTHER PARTICIPANTS: SIMóN MARCHáN FIZ swers were entirely written by Marcel Broodthaers himself, I might as well begin with the question of what type of museum Marcel Broodthaers might have actually had in AND SANTOS ZUNZUNEGUI mind when he made it one of the centres of his artistic investigations in 1968. MODERATOR: MANUEL BORJA-VILLEL Was Broodthaers’ series of museum fictions a project of allegorical redemption driven by a melancholic desire to hold on to a disappearing institution whose historical time had come? After all, this was a feature of Broodthaers’ work that has to be recalled at this moment: his perpetual emphasis on melancholy as an integral dimension, if not as an integral strategy, of all contemporary aesthetic production from his perspective. Manuel Borja-villel We start off this first day with Benjamin Buchloh’s address. Ben- But it is, of course, treacherous, as is always the case with Marcel Broodthaers’ work, jamin is well known to all of us: his work in Interfunktionen, as editor of October, his to take any of his statements verbatim, instead of recognising their profoundly dialec- books about Richter, the intensity with which he has studied the works of some artists tical character. Often enough, Broodthaers’ words turn our own words or interpreta- such as Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, etc. One of the main subjects of his activity tion of concepts applied to his word upside down, even before their meaning has been as critic and art historian is his institutional critique and the role played by museums. fully grasped, so it might be adequate to ask at this moment whether Broodthaers’ In this way, it seems logical to begin this meeting with his speech. His intervention staging of the museum was not in fact rather an act of singularly provocative irrever- is relevant not only with respect to what it can contribute from a theoretical point of ence, that in fact it was a clown show, very much in the spirit of 1968, dismantling the view, but also because his work reflects a series of historical moments in art in recent hierarchical structures of the discursive and institutional seed of power within which years which seem to us fundamental in understanding the present. Two other speak- Broodthaers’ own practice as an artist was constituted and contained. Would that not ers will also accompany him in the meeting. On the one hand, the critical presence of be a more appropriate description than the melancholic model? Simón Marchán Fiz in the Spanish art context has been essential in understanding our After all, one of the primary functions of the institution of the museum had been, recent history. No one is as familiar with the process of change that some institutions since its inception in the late 18th century, to imbue artistic production with value and have gone through in Spain, and his studies have become a reference point. Finally, it authority, to provide it with legitimacy. Broodthaers seems to have assumed at the time, seemed to us important to have the presence of an author such as Santos Zunzunegui as most of us did until recently, that if a work of art is not accredited by the museum, it who, coming from another discipline, will shed light on various important issues relat- cannot funcion in the market either. The museum seems to have operated as the institu- ed to the art institution. In the last few decades, the expansion of cinema has led to its tion of legitimisation and accreditation, where the fictitious values of the aesthetic are unexpected appearance in various museum spaces. His talk will focus on this question. given their political, cultural, ideological and economic warranties and endorsement. This would then be an exact analogy to the way that, after the disappearance of the gold standard, it was the institution of the national state bank that endowed paper with its assigned value, defining it as money. That is, the traditional interpretation of THe FRAuDuLenT PROMiSe Broodthaers’ activities concerning the museum, including my own interpretations, all BENJAMIN BUCHLOH started from the assumption that Marcel Broodthaers, in a manner typical of the mo- ment of 1968, in fact wanted to invert and upend the power structure of the tradition- al hierarchical organisation of the museum. This reading, and now I am wondering Thank you. I certainly want to reciprocate the generous introduction that Manolo whether it might still be justifiable to some extent, argued further that in the context just gave by thanking him for his activities as a musem director in Barcelona; one of of the student and worker uprising of 1968, Broodthaers had at least symbolically the few, I would say, museums currently operative within the sphere of contemporary dismantled the hierarchies that determined his existence and subjectivity as an artist. and recent art production that seems to maintain the initial social and historical task When he exchanged the role of artist for that of director of his own fictitious museum, of the museum as an institution of the bourgeois public sphere in its more advanced he performed a revolutionary reversal of the classical dialectics between master and forms in the present day. slave, or he performed along the model of the workers’ council, perhaps, in the watch What that dimension of the institution of the museum as initially formed in the factory in the south of France, dislodging the supreme directorial administrative pow- bourgeois public sphere means, in terms of its proposal of a didactic introduction to ers by the rise of his self-determining subject of production. certain forms of knowledge that are otherwise not accessible, is one of the focal points But this reversal of roles actually had many more ramifications than I understood at of my talk today. Another focal point of my talk is the question whether the museum the time. And those ramifications would only become apparent at a much later mo- in the contemporary situation, in fact, still claims to be part of the legacy of the public ment in history, some of them as late as today. sphere and its functions, as it was once defined in correlation with the university, as