Curatorial voiceless

For this (imaginary!) exhibition, we didn't want to filter the art for an already highly rarefied public through a language and spatial configuration intended either to sell it or persuade people that it is worth something. Normally, we make things that go on walls. But this exhibition does not treat the gallery as politically neutral ground. Instead it begins as an empty space, is filled, empties again, etc. For the duration of this exhibition, artists are facilitators of production. Their work is to discuss, negotiate, and organize the visitors to the gallery into short- and long-term collaborative groups, to move art out of the gallery and into something like real life.

Nothing is displayed in the gallery - although work might be fashioned there - and the artists are rarely present. They are more likely to be meeting in a park to discuss an upcoming project or staging a happening in the financial district. Visitors to the gallery are surprised to find it empty, but the press release tells them where the different groups can be located at what times if they want to plug in. The gallery is a door to leave from and the pilgrimages and cycles around the city that it begins move outwards in widening circles, becoming more and more numerous. They bring us into contact with other people who become audiences and collaborators in turn. Artworks are moments on these circles, around which individuals rotate, returning to the gallery periodically for purely logistical purposes.

The broad focus of the work is "the conditions of possibility for objects within a gallery to become art" - only because these conditions are the dam that prevents art from spilling over into the everyday pilgrimages of relationships, education, work, and so on. The dam should come down. The artists are going out on a limb - there is no guarantee that their work will not be recuperated, returned to the gallery, or made irrelevant by the market place. Nor is it clear whether anyone has the time or interest to come to this exhibit. Tired and defeated, the artists may return to the gallery.

But they are aware of this possibility. They are planning this exhibit with no input from me as a curator - in fact, I have had no hand in the choice of these artists. Nor did they approach me. Our meeting has the quality of a unique occurrence for which none of us has any explanation. There is no curatorial voice in this imaginary exhibit, but many different voices each curating their own experience for themselves and one another.