Reflections on the MDE11 and its structure
When asked to be a part of this curatorial team I was looking forward to the opportunity to work with such a talented group of people both within and without the museum. Artists, writers, teachers, administrators, organizers, all have played an important role in shaping the MDE11. As a curatorial group, our varied experiences and backgrounds created a dynamic balance of ideas and proposals.
When we began the discussions two years ago of how we wanted to define the MDE11, it became clear that certain aspects and relationships from the MDE07 had to stay. The Espacios Anfitriones program, for example was a success in that it generated a network of collaboration amongst independent art spaces in South America that is still active today. Other elements weren’t as appropriate for this version as we focused on learning and pedagogy. So we set about organizing a three-part structure (Laboratorio, Estudio, Exposición) that gave us the freedom to build-off and develop these three central categories.
An important consideration, given our varied curatorial backgrounds, was that we didn’t want to create an oppositional dialectic that positioned one kind of practice or methodology against another. This would not have been useful to anyone and art is a big enough camp to accommodate them all. What we wanted was to carve out a space where the theme of “teaching and learning” could be considered from various perspectives. We also wanted to push the pedagogical metaphor as far as possible through exhibition formats (Taller Central), extended research proposals in the city (Trabajo de Campo), experimental collaborations with other organizations (Interlocuciones), and lectures and workshops (Aula Dialógica and Taller de Construcción). Through this structure we could move away from the either/or ghetto and begin to think about what one form of work could learn from another. An investigation in one area of the MDE11 was encouraged to find its way into other areas and formats of working. For example, a concept that drives a project in the exhibition is also investigated in a panel discussion, it is then a point of inquiry for artists in the city, and later a strategy shared with collaborators that then gets presented back to the public for discussion, and the cycle goes on…
As I see it, the MDE11 as previously mentioned, had to be based both conceptually and curatorially on local artistic methodologies taking into consideration how pedagogy was being practiced and redefined everyday here in Medellin. The topic might be universal, but its form and content is not. One of the critiques of Relational Aesthetics is that it isn’t critical of the post-fordist informational and sociability economy – how it feeds into the way our very relationships are being marketed back to us – sociability as a medium or a field of capital investment. From my perspective, one of the reasons this critique has taken hold so strongly is that many art organizations and events have followed suit in riding the “sociability” wave. This is partly the reason that public practices (many of them working out a counter-logic to this marketed-sociability template) have gotten the global art circuit’s attention. It’s also one of the many reasons why the MDE11 needed to take a clear position on what it was trying to achieve.
Local practices, tempered by what the curatorial team brought to the city, gave the MDE11 its form and content. By doing so we didn’t confuse representations of the social for the haptic work being done by artists to generate new social fabrics. We found a place for numerous methodologies to dialogue, understanding that artists work in different ways. Given the multiple factors at play, I think the MDE11 found some synergy. We formed relationships with a wealth of willing collaborators who, given their day-to-day work in the practice of teaching and learning, were immensely generous. I hope they took away as much from these exchanges and the MDE11, as I have from working with them over the past two years.
It seems clear to me that their work was as much about things the art world could openly and confidently debate as it was about things it has very real problems discussing – from art’s role in remaking civic discourses and art as a site for re-modeling nonviolent forms of consciousness building to inquiries into the city’s educational infrastructure and its pedagogical traditions and histories.
Working with multiple organizations and actors in a city is not easy. There are have been failures and missed opportunities, false starts and several mid-stream adjustments. There were numerous meetings with municipal civil servants and heads of various organizations – too many to count. I made it a priority to meet as many artist-run corporaciones as I could during our intensely scheduled visits to the city.
As a curatorial team, we considered and discussed many ideas. We debated the role of the archive, both lost and established, the materiality of learning, as well as the role of performance, libraries and the academy. Projects are planned all over the city and we’ve invited theorists and artists from Medellin and elsewhere to expand on these topics and fill in the numerous gaps. Everything was, and is still, up for discussion. By that I mean that our curatorial position, and the MDE11 as a whole, took Paulo Freire’s idea to heart: everyplace is a site for learning and everyone is both a teacher and a student.
Footnotes
1. The MDE11 is purposely not a biennial as it attempted to challenge certain biennial structures. One very important distinction was the extension of the event. Its first, and more recent iteration, the MDE07, lasted almost six months. My point is not to approximate or use them interchangeably but to highlight certain challenges that still exist among similar formats.
2. Olga Fernandez. “Just What is it That Makes ‘Curating’ so Different, so Appealing?” OnCurating.org 08/11 (2011) 40. http://www.on-curating.org/issue_08.html
3. Michael Brenson. Acts of engagement: writings on art, criticism, and institutions, 1993-2002. (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004).
4. Stephen Wright. “The Future of the Reciprocal Readymade: An Essay on Use-Value and Art-Related Practice” 16 Beaver (2005) http://www.16beavergroup.org/monday/archives/001496.php
5. Grant Kester. Conversation Pieces. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004).
6. Jürgen Habermas. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1991).
7. Enrique Dussel. Twenty Theses on Politics (Latin America in Translation). (Raleigh: Duke University Press, 2008).
8. Ultra-red, “Art, Collectivity, and Pedagogy: Changing the World in which we Live,” Chto Delat 08-32 (2011): 16. http://www.chtodelat.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=234&Itemid=414&lang=en
August 2011
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