Broadsheet., v. 38.2, June-Aug, 2009
The following is a discussion between Vasif Kortun and Melentie Pandilovski on curating, biennales, and contemporary international art developments.
Vasif Kortun recently visited Australia as curator of the exhibition Socially Disorganised (19 February—21 March 2009, Experimental Art Foundation, in association with the Adelaide Film Festival). Melentie Pandilovski recently finished his tenure as Director of the Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide (2003-09). From 1999 to 2002, he was Director of the Contemporary Art Center, Skopje, Macedonia. He was the editor of Art in the Biotech Era (Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, 2008) and Understanding the Balkans (Contemporary Art Center, Skopje, Macedonia, 2002). His writings include ‘On Modes of Consciousness(es) and Electronic Culture’, Glimpse, Phenomenology and Media, San Diego, California, 2000; ‘The Position of Culture in Southeast Europe’, Understanding the Balkans, Contemporary Art Center, Skopje 2002; and ‘Consciousness and Electronic Culture’, Consciousness Reframed (Catalogue of 4th International CAIIA-STAR Research Conference), Perth, 2002.
Melentie Pandilovski: In your career spanning two decades, you have taken on the
role of biennial director, curator, gallery director, etc. You have lived in New York and
Istanbul left a strong impression on both cities. In the mid-1990s, you were the
founder and director of the Museum of the Centre for Curatorial Studies at Bard College
in New York (and the Centre bestowed an award upon you a few years ago). After your
return to Istanbul, you founded Proje4L, Istanbul Museum of Contemporary Art, and then
Platform Garanti. Istanbul seems to have been the source from which you have drawn
the most, and the one you are mostly interacting with.
Vasif Kortun: If it ends with Istanbul, you wrote my epitaph! The reasons I stay in
Istanbul is not because of the art world I am only enduring. I analyse the
context and respond to it from a broad perspective, and I always take into account the
long haul, but I hope Istanbul will not be the closure.
MP: Istanbul and Turkey are nevertheless always important to you. You have always
been aware of the context in which events have taken place. During your formative
years Turkey went through a very long period of transformation. The Cyprus Crisis of
1974, which almost ended up in a war between Turkey and Greece, presented huge
implications for both countries. In Greece the military junta collapsed, thus introducing
democracy to the country. In Turkey, enormous economic, social and political tensions
occurred. In 1980 the Turkish army implemented a coup d’etat, and took direct power by
suspending the Constitution, suppressing the work of all political parties and dissolving
the Chamber of Deputies. These events made you leave the country, as you were a
member of a leftist group and I believe your life was in danger at some point during
this turbulent time. Is there any truth to that, or am I misinterpreting the situation?
VK: I was part of a leftist movement, but like anyone with a conscience.
I left the country without any problems, but when I returned a year after the coup
d’etat, I had my passport taken away for no reason. I got it back eventually. My life
was not in more danger than anyone else who was politically involved, but guys I
knew well they were killed. You could say it was a normal situation then.
MP: What enticed you to contemporary art in the first place? Which exhibitions
influenced you most as you were starting to curate your own exhibitions? The end
of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s also signified the inclusion of artists from
previously neglected countries and continents, such as Africa. The emergence of the
‘mega-exhibition’ was quite apparent, such as the 1984 exhibition Primitivism in 20th
Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York. Tribal artifacts were coupled with modern art, thus addressing issues of
classification between the modern and the primitive.
Then there was Magiciens de la Terre, curated by Jean-Hubert Martin, at the Pompidou
Centre in Paris in 1989, which claimed to be the first global exhibition of contemporary
art by showing a hundred artists from forty countries. Of course, it presented well
known artists such as Marina Abramovic, Hans Haacke, Nam June Paik, Mario Merz,
etc. but the exhibition also included many artists who were unknown to the West (as they were from previously ignored countries) such as Gu Dexin and Huang Yong Ping from China, Jak Akpan from Nigeria, Kane Kwei from Ghana, Cyprien Tokudagba from Benin, Bodys İsek Kingelez Congo from the Democratic Republic of Congo, etc.
VK: There were exhibitions that transformed the way I looked at the world and others that one could not remain indifferent to. Some exhibitions, good or bad, affect you in an interminable way. Back in the summer of 1977, backpacking in Europe after my junior year in high school, I stumbled upon Paris-New York and Edward Kienholz exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou. That was my ‘porte-cochere’. A few days later I saw the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. It was like the world stood still. I knew some of the stuff I saw like Kienholz from books in the high-school library, but had no idea about what happened when things came together! That’s what exhibitions do, and that is not something one can replicate in another medium. One can replicate the Mona Lisa and extract even more pleasure from it perhaps in the intimacy of the reproduction in a book. Heck, the original can even be a let-down and remember I came from a place where there was not even a faint notion of an original being accessible when we grew up. However, the climate of an exhibition where works begin to unfold through space and communicate with each other, and with your body, and what you bring to them -there is no surrogate for that experience. At least, I felt so, and this is not about a pure experience but about intellectual engagement. Because you cannot replicate them, exhibitions remain ephemeral and frail. It is the memory, or rather an active recounting of a memory that changes slightly each time you recall it, is what I find interesting. In the 1980s, during graduate school in art history, I was lucky enough to be in the midst of transformative discussions in New York around contested exhibitions like Primitivism in 20th CenturyArt. Jean-Francois Lyotard’s Les Immateriaux was another landmark. It was Magiciens de la Terre that forced me to react in the same medium.
MP: You have curated numerous exhibitions. I will only mention the biggest roles you have assumed, such as Chief Curator/Director of the 3rd International Istanbul Biennial in 1992 and Co-Director with Charles Esche of the 9th International Istanbul Biennial in 2005. You have been co-curator of Tirana Biennial, the 24th Sao Paolo Biennial in 1998, as well as having curated the Turkish Pavilion for the 2007 Venice Biennale and the Turkish Pavilions for the 1994 and 1998 Sao Paolo Biennials. You were also the founding Director of the Museum of the Centre for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, (receiving the 9th Annual Award for Curatorial Excellence from the same Centre in 2006), and the co-curator of the 2008 Taipei Biennial. What do you consider the most important and radical exhibition you have curated, and would you elaborate on why you think this?
VK: I would like to be remembered for projects like the 2005 Istanbul Biennial, Memory/Recollection II in Istanbul in 1993, the Taipei Biennial in 2008, or Exhibited in 1994. There are others, too, but I like each for a different reason. They are well threaded with a flow of intelligent narratives; some are contextual and make evident the story of the space they inhabit. The fold and the frictions work! I am super happy because all these projects have become tools for further study in ways I could not have foreseen. They all had an afterlife, a template-like quality, even if we did not return to occupy the history of these projects as an afterthought. I don’t know if exhibition practice is a fully conscious endeavor. It is a process that one can better comprehend when one returns to it after the fact as both curator and audience. Exhibitions are open works as much as each work of art is, and the multivalence of readings unhinges any pretension of a curatorial authorship.
That is partly why revisiting an exhibition you have put together gives you the sensation of a personality split. Even more so, because the exhibition is not remotely your responsibility, you can be responsible for the work you have selected but not for the job in and of itself.
MP: Art institutions, especially emerging ones, face numerous issues, many of which are of a funding nature (which can be seen as substantial cornerstones of the art programs) including plain survival. Organisations go about this different ways and very often their approaches include attempting to get support from international arts foundations (such as the Soros Foundation, Ford Foundation, etc.), corporate or private donations (various
banks), complexities of private/public ventures and other municipal or governmental funding sources. After your great push for the founding of Proje4L and Istanbul Museum of Contemporary Art, envisioned as a publicly funded institution, you had diverted your attention to Platform Garanti, which gets the core of its funding from a private bank with the same name. How do you account for this ‘diversion’?
VK: As are most cultural institutions in Istanbul, both were privately funded. We launched them to coincide with the 2001 Istanbul Biennial. Proje4L established very quickly a strong legacy as the sole institution of scale devoted to a radical and youthful contemporary art. With Platform’s focus on memory, lectures, research and residency, the two together were synergistic powerhouses, giving the disregarded a foothold. It almost transformed the situation but it was a bit insane to run both simultaneously. I stepped down from Proje4L as my preference was clear; an educational, resource specific, collegial institution. Unfortunately, they made a mess of Proje4L after I left.
MP: The ‘new institutionalism’ seemed to be one of the key new concepts, coming around the turn of the millenium and is seen as still important. Parallels are often given in regard to the curators who run these institutions. You have been noted as one of those important curators turned directors and Platform Garanti has been very often mentioned as a model to look forward to (in regard to the ‘new institutionalism’). Others who are also mentioned in this respect would be Maria Hlavajova (formerly director of the Soros Centre for Contemporary Arts in Bratislava, curator of Manifesta and now director of BAK in Utrecht), Nicolaus Schafhausen (Kunstverein Frankfurt), Nicolas Bourriaud/Jerome Sans (Palais de Tokyo). What do you think about this notİon? What is in fact the rationale behind Platform Garanti? Can you tell me more about Platform Garanti’s structure and program. What is the relationship to the bank that is funding the Art Centre.
VK: ‘new institutionalism’ is an enervated, exhausted term. Those who claim that mantle publish more about it than practice it. Others have fumbled to such an extent that their institutions have come to a full stop. At the end of the day, “new institutionalism” is a post-welfare West Kunst representation. Platform is different, we are a locatable institution, embedded in our context with a claim that is powerful enough to have the international community absorbed in it. It is a well networked, modest, private institution in public service with the funding primarily provided by Garanti Bank. It is about informal education, research archives, and library and exhibition functions. Since we are private, we do not collect because if we fold, we would jeopardize that collection. I am not much of a believer in institutions, even if I have worked in them for many years. If they do not have a rationale, they may as well close. I’m not interested in good or bad. I believe in unique institutions. Our relationship with Garanti Bank is exceptionally professional. We have the privilege of working with an intelligent group of superiors who are wise enough to leave the ship to the captain. But things should go as long as necessary. There is no need to fetishise institutions in a field as fickle as contemporary art. We are now merging with Garanti Gallery to develop into an intra-disciplinary, non-medium-specific enterprise.
MP: Since you have curated the Istanbul Biennial several times, what is your current relationship to it?
VK: I am on its advisory board. I am over-identified with it, having critiqued each edition and curated two. I take the advisory position very seriously. Let me tell you a story. I was on the Manifesta board, but I resigned after the Frankfurt exhibition in 2002. It was terrible, but the board would not discuss the failure. This is telling because there are no criteria in the curatorial field. Some colleagues will curate one mortifying exhibition after another and have a career! For the Istanbul Biennial, I am much more particular. It is my town, and I will do my utmost not to tolerate idiocy- there has been enough of it around already.
MP: Do you find it an inner necessity to express yourself in the different roles of curator, director, and art critic? As a curator, you often write curatorial essays, and you have assumed the role of an art critic. What do you think about the state of critical writing today?
VK: To the first question, yes. I do not worry about the state of critical writing so much because the stuff I read is not about the art world.
MP: Your breakthrough exhibition was the 1992 Istanbul Biennial. You were a quite young curator for that role and for many it was a surprise that you were offered it. How did you see the whole situation and what were the constraints in putting it together?
VK: I was initially asked to organise it, just as in the first two editions. But I wanted to hold the exhibition in a firm hold. The first two Biennials suffered from having a local, uninformed advisory group. I bypassed them and did what I wanted -the arrogance of youth! It had a ridiculous budget, something like $600,000. There was almost no funding from Turkey. It meant dependence on other countries as guests. It was clear that I had to work with these different countries, which was all against the background of the Iraq War of 1991. During those days, more than now, the official representations of most countries were handled through bureaucratic processes and political powers. That was a problem. Moreover, some countries I wanted to work with did not have a secularised system of appointments, transparency, or contemporary art professionals. So, instead of going to the countries directly, I went to certain curators in certain countries, like Victor Misiano, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Sub Real and Anda Rottenberg from Poland. Also, I put a kind of perimeter on the show, which was to include artists mostly under thirty-five years of age and to work with the theme of the “production of cultural difference.” I worked as a meta-curator.
MP: You co-curated the 2005 Istanbul Biennial with Charles Esche and the 2008 Taipei Biennial with Manray Hsu. Can you describe your experience of co-curating -it must be quite different to curating on your own, and it would seem to me that it entails many compromises.
VK: Not really. Any exhibition is a collective process, and as such, it involves a set of compromises. When my colleagues fulfill their share of the responsibility, it all works fine. It is a privilege to work with good people. This was a choice, not an imposition.
MP: Do you believe that your work as a curator has been critiqued adequately, as critics can be unsympathetic to artists and curators? Have you felt that some of the criticisms you have received in your career were undeserved and/or hostile?
VK: If you are asking me if it gets to my head, not really. I know what I have accomplished and nothing that idiotic critics write in their journals are relevant in the grand scheme of things. The problem here is unfortunately that as makers you have to go back to the work and re-articulate for the future, for history’s sake; you just cannot leave it to the critics.
MP: Many of the independent curators such as Nicolaus Schafhausen, Maria Lind, Marija Hlavajova, Charles Esche (and yourself) have taken on the role of directors of major contemporary art spaces. That might be a natural progression; still, the power relations have substantially shifted. Has the role of the independent curator changed in the last decade or so-what is the role of the independent curator today, if any?
VK: The trail has been predictable from independent curating to medium size institutions to museums—of course, if you are not dead or totally compromised by the time you get there! There are still too few of us who have been trusted with institutions that can make the difference. It is not enough to run art centres, you need a giant machinery in a big city to affect the kind of transformation needed. A younger generation of curators are working towards institutions, whereas my generation curated away from them. Curating has been over-institutionalised these days and as such it has become hegemonic.
MP: Each generation produces curators of a different kind. Harald Szeemann was the first truly independent curator, working for almost half a century with the foresight to trace a path for those who followed, offering large scale group exhibitions contextualised by his personal curatorial vision. What is the role of the independent curator today and are independent curators still necessary?
VK: We need independent minds, those who can take a risk and go blindly. Being an independent curator does not mean much within an already institutionalised, networked sphere.
MP: There seems to be a stronghold of prominent curators such as yourself on the major biennials around the world-are there many chances today for emerging curators?
VK: I absolutely believe in empowering new people. I have turned down many biennial offers in the past. I really need a reason to take something on like that.
MP: You seem to be very interested in contemporary art outside the Eurocentric model-you have worked with artists in your own country and the art scenes of the Balkans, Asia, Middle East, South America and Africa. What do you think is the importance given to these art scenes today within the canon of modern/contemporary art?
VK: It was a foregone conclusion in the sense of being in graduate school in the USA in the 1980s during the great crisis of art history, with the shift to French poststructuralist theory, followed by the fall of the Berlin Wall. I had been interested in regionalism from very early. My 1992 Istanbul Biennial was probably more international and consequently regional than most other biennials of the time. Later, I found it necessary to expand the ‘question’ of the Balkans to the Middle East on the heels of the Yugoslav Wars, but I took a lot of time to pursue this. I am not talking about geographical inclusionism or generosity-i couldn’t care less about that. What propelled me was to explore a continuum along the Middle East and the Balkans, following the thread through the Ottomans of which Istanbul was once the capital. Also, how are you going to ignore such strong contexts? The problem was the absence of public support, and it is exactly that time when such support could move mountains.
MP: Where do you see the biggest experiment in art happening today?
VK: For me one of the most exciting places at the moment is Egypt.
MP: Can you tell me more about Egyptian art and your involvement with it?
VK: I do not have any particular involvement other than being keenly interested. It is a vital and interesting scene where the artist community is now strong enough to challenge and question their financial and institutional marginalisation. There are exemplary institutions like the Townhouse. I am humbled by what I see there. On another level, we are involved with colleagues in the region with the localisation aspect of the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim. I’m also at Artist Pension Trust Dubai. The region is walking a thin line between crass commercialisation and something which we cannot predict that will be absolutely unique in terms of the specificity of a critical discussion.
MP: The collapse of the Iron Curtain and Berlin Wall in 1989 has resulted over the past two decades in a great transformation of established values in Eastern Europe-the changes to political and economic frameworks have significantly influenced its social structures. Eastern Europe had to quickly redefine its societies and solve problems derived from this shift of systems, such as low production rates, high unemployment rates, emigration of intellectuals, etc. The gravity of this situation also led to changes on the cultural front. Fortunately, the role of culture was directed to the opposite side of the pendulum by supplying precise creative responses to social issues and promoting civil cohesion, regardless of the confrontations on the axis between cultural analysis and cultural praxis. This was largely aided by the fact that over the last decade of the twentieth-century, even though shyly in the beginning, the concept of civil society made its way into the former socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, including the Balkan countries. During the 1990s, South-Eastern Europe witnessed the increasing role of non-governmental organisations in comparison to the State and private sectors. Of course, the aim of these NGOs was to identify common Balkan concerns and strengthen the ties among institutions, individual artists and cultural workers, all of this responding to complex challenges. These networks were seen as promoters of a new civil society, raising the public awareness of shared issues in the social, political, economic and cultural transition by providing a creative space for discussion and debate in a regional context. At the beginning of the 1990s this was largely assisted by the Open Society Institutes, but the concept was later picked up by organisations such as the European Cultural Foundation, European programs like PHARE and even by governmental agencies like the Swiss Pro Helvetia and the government sponsored association KulturKontakt in Austria. Artists felt intuitively that repositioning themselves within the cultural matrix of Europe was necessary. The Slovenian art collective IRWIN positioned through their project East Art Map the notion that East European art practices had not been validated appropriately in the context of the Western art canon and had thus attempted to ‘correct’ this. Do you believe that Turkish art has also not been validated accordingly within this Western context?
VK: I can follow your previous question. I have a different way of articulating the ‘Eastern’ question. East Art Map articulated the Yugoslav experience into the post-World War II Soviet space. That is legitimate. I am, however, interested in a different “East art map” that predates socialism, that is systematically suppressed. But if you do not see that, you cannot understand the Bosnian War or the Kosovo Independence movement. Furthermore, the Istanbul Biennials were productive for the ‘East’ for mediation and repositioning. If that were not enough, the histories of proscriptive regimes-state socialism to state capitalism—make Turkey and the Balkans similar in their difference-anyone who takes a careful look into the art production of the last twenty years will find uncanny similarities.
MP: In the 1990s, in part a legacy from the Balkan Wars, the region experienced huge fragmentation—cultural and education policies remained rigid and were unable to follow international standards. There were instances where freedom of the press was attacked, in some cases directly by the shutting down of oppositional print or electronic media. However, the post-Dayton Accord period (a peace agreement reached in Dayton, Ohio, USA, November 1995 which put an end to the 1992-95 war in Bosnia) and especially the period after the Kosovo War and Nato intervention (1999), the region has witnessed increased cultural collaboration.
Independent networks facilitating communication, exchanges and sharing of information and resources among artists, researchers, curators and institutions were launched. During the period 1999-2003 there were quite a few international projects dedicated to the Balkans. The Balkan Art Network was founded in Sarajevo in 1999 and it was instrumental in many projects such as Balkan Art Generator exhibition in Brussels in 2000. The Balkan Art Network had also worked with Harald Szeemann on Blood and Honey which was held at the Essl Sammlung in May 2003. The Syndicate Network had organised The Future State of Balkania meeting and workshop at the KIASMAin Helsinki in 1999.
A year or two later the South East European Contemporary Art Network become very active and organised various projects during 2001-03 such as the forums in Thessaloniki, which were organised by Appolonia and Artbox annually. I was very much a part of this until 2003 when I left the Balkans and relocated to Australia. There were other Balkan projects as well-Peter Weibel, Roger Conover and Eda Cufer curated the In Search of Balkania exhibition in Graz, Austria, 2002 and Rene Block curated the exhibition In the Gorges of the Balkans in Kassel, Germany, 2003. Then the Tirana Biennial was initiated. It seemed as if the eyes of the world had turned towards the Balkans.What does the situation look like now in terms of major Balkan projects and exchanges?
VK: Rene Block’s and Harald Szeemann’s exhibitions were great. Harry Szeemann brought the hearse of Franz Ferdinand. Rene Block responded in his exhibition with Ferdinand’s assassin Gavrilo Princip’s grave mark. A beautiful articulation of where you look at it from. Things are more subtle on the Balkan front now. Work goes on under the radar, smaller projects, collaborations, residency programs, the WHW (What, How & for Whom, a non-profit organisation for visual culture and curator’s collective based in Zagreb, Croatia) curating the Istanbul Biennial.
MP: There are quite a few Turkish artists known to the world and you have been instrumental in promoting them. You have curated Nasan Tur’s video The Puddle and the Blue Sky for the exhibition Socially Disorganised at the Experimental Art Foundation, along with Halil Altindere and Ahmet Ogüt. Needless to say that you have worked with many other important Turkish artists such as the late Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin, Gülsün Karamustafa, etc. What do you think of the current state of contemporary Turkish art?
VK: That’s a difficult question. Suffice to say that the scene in Turkey is somewhat unique because the country is very large and seems to be self-satisfied. There is a form of expanded provincialism that stops things from going to the next level. Never having been a colony, it has a different relationship with Europe. Without any public funds and contemporary art museums considering living artists, the situation is pretty compromised. But, there are at least two good art schools, a burgeoning initiative, a gallery scene and amazing artists. Turkey has a profile problem—you hardly hear of it.
MP: How is art in Turkey supported? What is the role of the private and international foundations in this respect? Do the national Turkish and municipal Istanbul arts councils have a favorable grants policy for emerging and established artists?
VK: All private!
MP: How is the Turkish art market responding to the works of contemporary Turkish artists?
VK: It is developing to accommodate contemporary art but unfortunately, the great generation of artists between forty and sixty has been bypassed. The younger generation works very much within the frame, so they are prone to be circulated within a financial scheme. But things have changed a lot in recent years.
MP: And the state of art criticism in Turkey and the neighboring regions?
VK: Dismal.
MP: You have curated numerous times Turkish artist Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin with whom you also shared a great friendship. The last time you collaborated was at the 2007 Venice Biennale where he exhibited his installation Don’t Complain in the Turkish Pavilion. You have also dedicated a room at Platform Garanti to Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin’s memorabilia. I met him (around the same time I met you) at the opening of the 4th Istanbul Biennial in 1995. Hüseyin was exhibiting Turk/Truk, a red Soviet truck laden with plastic soccer balls. The work was witty and humorous and yet laden with social connotations, including looking into the consequences of the collapse of communism, the deconstruction of post-Soviet space, displacement of people and the subsequent economical harshness faced by millions.Hüseyin’s education as a philosopher, as well as this social awareness, allowed him to move swiftly through various states of affairs offered to us by these newly developing societies. Tell me more about your relationship with this exceptional artist.
VK: I cannot tell you how much I miss his generosity, intelligence and wit. We first met in Ankara in the early 1990s, where we taught and wrote together. He was a philosopher turned artist, concerned with the underbelly of globalisation, with a universe of authorless products, and itinerancy. We did quite a few interviews together, I wrote a lot on him and worked with him many times. We fought a lot too, but the ethics of his art was flawless and relentlessly obsessive. He was unable to differentiate between economic class, colour, origin or anything else. Exemplary really. We are now archiving everything of his, thousands of negatives, little objects, notes, the library. I would like to have a Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin exhibition without any artworks in it.
MP: Perhaps we can start to contemplate contemporary Australian art as you visited Adelaide and Sydney in February this year, invited by the Experimental Art Foundation in collaboration with Artspace and Casula Powerhouse (assisted by Australia Council and the Bigpond Adelaide Film Festival), and have witnessed some of its artistic scene. Despite the long presence of Australian art in major events such as the Venice Biennale and the publishing activity of numerous art magazines such as Broadsheet, Artlink, Photofile and lately Art World, most of the international curators are not very well informed about Australian contemporary art (with the exception of Aboriginal art and a few celebrities such as Tracy Moffatt and Stelarc). How do you interpret this? How do you see the place of Australian art within the context of the contemporary art project?
VK: Having a strong domestic situation is more important than having a great media profiled (international) context. I would prefer the context in Australia to that of China or Dubai, which have been ‘all the talk’ in recent times. Politically, Australia could have done more in the vast region it is in. But you know, you cannot make an art scene. It makes itself by some miracle when there is not even a penny. Great, unique art schools and a strong critical context are essential. Being away from binge is also good for incubation and introspection. I felt Australia is a bit normalised, too smug on the surface, but it is hard these days to make sense of totalities. There was at the same time of my visit a lot of restlessness -channelled productively, if it does not become a culture of complaint, it could make wonders.
MP: You have curated the exhibition Socially Disorganised at the EAF and have conducted a week-long curatorial workshop with emerging to mid-career Australian and international curators. What were your impressions from your visit and interactions with local curators and artists in Adelaide and Sydney?
VK: It was too short to know, but there are great people. I wished I’d stayed much longer.
MP: Most of the international art market has Aboriginal art as a focus for Australia. How do you interpret this? Any market action, critical or commodity, outside the national scene must have benefits. On the other hand, the breadth of Australian culture is distorted. Maybe this isn’t such a bad thing—a payback time, assuming that indigenous artists do benefit directly.
VK: There should be room for everybody. I am not comfortable addressing this issue. Not yet.
MP: Currently the world economy is in very bad shape; we have seen the credit crunch affecting all segments of society and have witnessed political changes in America and Australia, in which both saw neoconservative ideology and politics retreat substantially. Is this paralleled in the domain of art, or is art a refuge island in regard to the general state of crisis we are witnessing today?
VK: The art world has turned into an unhesitating service provider for leisure industries and experience economies. It had no problems with producing without introspection and in doing so guzzling the cash. Speed was the name of the game. When it all came to an end many people realised that neoliberal economies had taken the art world hostage. It will take time to undo the damage of the last thirty years. There was a time when the general economy and the ecology of the art world did not perfectly pair, not with the last crisis! It is a more difficult time, but hey, nobody’s asking you to be an artist or a curator, so be it. Things were getting untenable. I truly believe that the art world is a better place now and it has now the potential to remember where it should be.
MP: Finally, do you believe that art today is more socially responsive, being affected by this huge crisis of global capitalism?
VK: Better be.
vasıf kortun 