COLLECTIVE CURATORIAL PRACTICE AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO HEGEMONIC NARRATIVES

Since the theoretical discussions generated by the educational turn¹, a movement that began in the mid-1990s, which to date reverberates as institutional criticism and has as its general purpose the critical understanding of what we call cultural institutions – as well as their educational role towards the communities in which they are inserted – it was possible to perceive greater proximity between curatorial and educational centers in cultural institutions worldwide.²

The movement of convergence and collaboration between these nuclei creates a third approach called educational curatorship, which appears as an institutional alternative to the hitherto clear hierarchy of roles that, in many cases, places –until today – the curatorship, responsible for the conceptualization and assembly of the exhibition, as a procedure prior to the pedagogical strategy. 

This hierarchy – which at first appears to be an intuitively logical choice, since the concept and design of an argument (the exhibition, for example) is usually conceived before its presentation – implies the expectation of using pedagogy as a translator (HOFF, 2013) of these arguments to the general public. This takes place through mediation, a function in which expectations of filling a social gap existing between cultural institutions and their audiences are based, and not as an integrated part in the process of designing what is assimilated as a body of knowledge generated by the curatorial process.

In a lecture hosted and held by the e-flux platform, researcher and curator Maria Lind addresses the difference between curation (to curate) and curatorial – a body of knowledge and narrative that is acquired through research that precedes an exhibition. Lind explains that “curation would be precisely the technical modality we know from art institutions and independent projects, and curatorial would be a more viral presence that consists of processes of meaning and relationships between objects, people, ideas and places” (LIND, 2017) ³ . 

If we think that much of what is acquired in the curatorial process goes beyond what is transmitted through the relationship between curatorial texts and the arrangement of objects, as there is a process of meaning and narrative construction prior to what is displayed as a result of this curatorial process, it  is necessary to recognize that this space and process constitutes knowledge, as it combines objects, contexts and meanings that produce experiences that transmitted and finaly be understood.

If cultural institutions, and especially museums, are spaces that constitute knowledge, it is interesting to question how this knowledge is constituted and by whom it is created. When we look at the dynamics that takes over most classrooms at all levels of education in Brazil, we see a very clear line: the teacher, as a spokesperson for knowledge, connected with the student as a receiver. There is room for speech on the part of the person who “receives” the knowledge, as a way of softening the dynamics that, in the end, continue to be hierarchical due to the credibility convention of those who share the knowledge acquired in their professional training. 

Spaces that extrapolate this dynamic, in school and academic environments, such as study and research groups, which are often more horizontal, not infrequently take place outside class hours and manage to cover a tiny portion of the total number of students, as few are able to reconcile external tasks to their education. The consequence of these dynamics goes beyond the student's lack of interest in whatever the subject taught is: it shapes the format in which one believes to be possible to obtain knowledge.

 Overcoming a colonialist dynamic, which occurs through the notion of transferring supposedly superior knowledge and epistemology to the parts that theoretically lack this knowledge, is essential to break the notion that education needs to take place along these hyerarchical lines. As Freire explains (FREIRE, 2002): 

it is necessary […] that the student, from the very beginning of his training experience, assuming himself as a subject also of the production of knowledge, is convinced that teaching is not to transfer knowledge, but to create the possibilities for its production and its construction.

When we look at the way knowledge is produced in cultural institutions, they rarely escape similar settings, however, the process takes place through other nomenclatures, which causes a certain camouflage. This becomes more evident when we think of the curator as a teacher, as the person who creates, architects and exposes the narratives they created to the public –the latter being the representation of the student. 

Overall, the educational turn rests on its concern to democratize art using pedagogical strategies (such as the act of mediation, which is used as a bridge between the exhibition's message and the viewer). However, there is a clear need for a reallocation of stages in which democratization must be inserted. In order to escape a hierarchical logic, there is the need for opening up the authorship of narratives to the non-artistic community, so that these groups can create narratives inside art institutions as well , as opposed to a mere translation of said narratives by the curator/teacher. In other words, in addition to conversations with the curators, it is necessary to go deeper and open up the writing of narratives and meanings composition for the community.


For that, a proposal of dynamics that escape the colonialist logic are the collective curatorships. In the Brazilian context, this initiative has as a recent example the exhibition Textão, held from December 2018 to January 2019 at the Museum of Sexual Diversity, which brought together three art collectives: Lastro Arte, Explode! and Lanchonete.org. The collective curatorship of this show appears as a possibility of creating narratives that deviate from the adoption of an individual construction of meanings and, with that, engages subjects who talk about their experiences in the writing of their own narratives, involving them in the process of curatorial signification – and, therefore, in the constitution of knowledge through art and cultural institutions.

The exhibit, which has as its title a Brazilian slang commonly used by black, LGBTQ+ and feminist communities, and stands for long texts with denunciative tone that are normally posted on social media by members of these communities, used the collective curatorial approach as a possibility of creating narratives that deviate the adoption of an individual construction of meanings and, thus, engages subjects who talk about their experiences in writing their own narratives - that was only possible, and genuine, because the members of this art collectives were part of the communities the exhibition talked about - as well as involving them in the process of writing curatorial significance and, therefore, in the constitution of knowledge through art and cultural institutions.

In order to properly adopt the new, yet not very widespread, knowledge as narrative to decolonial educational approach in art institutions, it is of great importance that the institutions itself attempt to the fact that creating an exhibition that has the guided visit approach as one of the only attempts to connect with its spectators, or by expecting that visitors take a more personal and free, not curatorial or object imposed, interpretation approach while visiting cultural institutions, is not enough, because there are still preset elements (selection of artworks and concept of the exhibit) that do not allow the visitor to truly create their narrative.

Finally, one way out of failing the new approach at the very beginning of it can be to allow the community to create and submit curatorial projects based on the institution’s collection. In that way, the spectator can effectively be a part of the creation of its own narrative, and therefore knowledge. 

Notes

1. See Paul O'Neill & Mick Wilson, “Curating and the educational turn” (M. Londres: Open Editions; Amsterdam: De Appel, 2010).

2. Examples of this phenomenon in the Brazilian context are the 2007, 2009 and 2011 editions of the Mercosul Biennial. See Mônica Hoff, “Pedagogical Curatorship, artistic methodologies, training and permanence: the educational turn of the Mercosul Biennial” in Pedagogy in the expanded field, Pablo Helguera and Mônica Hoff (Porto Alegre: Fundação Bienal de Artes Visuais do Mercosul, 2011) pp. 113-123.

3. Lecture for the e-flux platform. Translation and transcription by the author.


Bibliography


FREIRE, Paulo. Pedagogy of Autonomy: knowledge necessary for educational practice. São Paulo: Editora Paz e Terra, 2002.

HOFF, Monica. Mediation (of art) and curatorship (educational) at the Mercosul Biennial, or art where it “apparently” is not. Interdisciplinary Plot , v. 4, no. 1, p. 69-87, 2013.

“Situating the Curatorial,” lecture by Maria Lind. e-flow videos. e-flow . 31 March 2017. 1h33min36s. Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/video/152657/e-flux-lectures-maria-lind-situating-the-curatorial/.

Short article for ArtContexto magazine on collective curatorial practice as way of creating diverse narratives and knowledge. Originally published in portuguese, in 2019.