I'm re-editing my film, so it won't quite be the nine minute marathon that I was planning. But it might make more sense.
Then I just have to change out of my dusty clothes, and nervously talk to people whilst secretly looking at them looking at my art and cursing them/myself/the art for not putting the effort in/enjoying the art/being easier to enjoy.
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Last night we went to a curators' talk at Eastside Projects. Robert Blackson, who is the public programme curator at Nottingham Contemporary and Morgan Quaintance, the Inspire fellow at IKON Gallery from MA in Curating, RCA. I've met Morgan before,at 176 who have close links with RCA curation students. Robert Blackson was a curator at the Baltic between 2007-2009, so I'm sure I would have seen some of the shows he worked on when I was in Newcastle.
They were both really interesting guys. Morgan explained how his background is in music and his move in to curating art was guided by an interest in contemporary dance and theatre. He spoke about his intuitive approach to art and his love of 'new interiorities', which from what I can gather, means the explication of an entire subjective world. He showed part of Matthew Barney's Cremaster as an example of what he meant by this, and it seemed to me that what he meant was maybe a more technically explained version of Dave Hickey's theories of art as cool stuff in a room. He did then mention the idea of taste ("you either have taste or you don't), which seemed a bit odd as the concept of taste feels to me less like a natural state and more like aesthetic sparring between the classes.
Robert Blackson gave some readings from books and spoke about a few projects he had been working on. He asked us to fill out forms to become blood donors, so that he could apply to get Nottingham Contemporary turned in to a blood bank for an upcoming exhibition. As Jo later said, he had a soothing voice and it was nice to just listen to him speak. I asked him whether the recession would mean slashed budgets for 'public programming' (events, live art, interactions), and what that meant for a field of art making and curation that has become more and more prominent within large institutions, but never seems to take centre stage. He made some defensive noises about this being an interesting and useful time, but also said that he would never subjugate what he did to education, which is the one thing in art that is guaranteed funding. I felt that was laudable, and something I certainly agree with in principle, but the pragmatic nature of artistic careers (especially for curators on good salaries) means that I couldn't totally believe him.
Then we moved on to the Florian Hecker show at Ikon Eastside which was great. Though we didn't have enough time to appreciate the whole exhibition piece by piece (and, I think, there were probably too many people in the room to really experience it), I was really impressed by the seriousness with which the show was curated and the sound allowed to stand alone, with very little accompanying information, and no distracting information panels. Sparse and beautiful. And also painful at times. It reminded be a little of Louie Rice's piece at {Empty Sets}, but maybe that's a lazy comparison and an easy plug...
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Right I suppose I better do some work, otherwise the blog doesn't mean a damn thing.
see you tonight!
Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau
Possible Monuments
6pm-9pm,
The Lombard Method
68a Lombard St
Digbeth
Birmingham
B12 0QR
