ONE LONE CURATOR CANNOT PROCURE
THE TOTALITYOF INFORMATION NECESSARY,
AS CREATIVITY EMERGES FROM ALL CORNERS
IN A MULTIPLICITY OF FORMS.
HARALD SZEEMANN
Introduction
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Artesur, Collective Fictions takes shape through a collaborative process of writing and curating. Informed directly by The Floating Admiral – a collaborative detective novel, Artesur, Collective Fictions uses the model of the exquisite corpse as an access entry to arte-sur.org, a rich on-line archive dedicated to the presentation and dissemination of contemporary art from Latin America.
For this project, Albertine de Galbert invited Isabelle Le Normand -curator and director of the Visual Arts department of Mains d’Œuvres, a pluridisciplinary space based in Saint-Ouen, France- to form a team with three other curators, living in different countries and with no previous knowledge of the artistic scene of this region. Curators Anca Rujoiu (Romania), Andrew Berardini (U.S.A) and Jesse McKee (Canada) were invited to browse through the archive and explore the works of more than 250 artists from all regions in Latin America to work alternately: each curator selects a work and produces a text following the previous person’s contribution. Albertine de Galbert will chose the work constituting the starting point of the exhibition.
The process will lead gradually to the constitution of a 20-piece exhibition through a writing marathon that will take place between February and April of 2013.
Artesur, Collective Fictions is a result of this collaborative process in which meaning is created through a subjective dialogue and relation between the works. Shaped by the restrictions of the website and a mediated access to work, the exhibition plays out the specificities of on-line resources raising questions of access and distribution and new curatorial methodologies in a globalized context.
Context
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The website arte-sur.org is a vector, a bilingual tool (English Spanish), collaborative and free, presenting the work of a selection of artists and professionals of Latin American Contemporary Art. Its main objective is the diversification and intensification of cultural exchanges and the opening of the artistic scene from all parts of the continent.
Designed and produced by Albertine de Galbert following a curatorial research conducted between 2008 and 2009 in ten countries in South America, the website is developed within the Beam prod. association by a small group of professionals, in close collaboration with specialists from all around the world.
The successful launching of arte-sur.org in November of 2011 at the Centre Pompidou is a clear sign of the raising interest in Europe for Latin American contemporary art scene.
The website registered in February 2013 more than 70 000 visits (without other kind of advertisement than word of mouth), and collected many testimonies of artists who have received several benefits (propositions for exhibitions, collaborations with French galleries etc.). The site was created with the support of the Maison de L’Amérique Latine, Paris.
Since it’s opening, arte-sur.org is constantly enriched by thousands of images of works as artists update their profiles. This creates a complex and active archive that needs to be stimulated by the critical and professional gaze, since without this constant examination the archive can easily be neutralized by the amount of information that it contains. This is why we devised a group protocol, editorial and curatorial, to put into perspective a selection of works.
Exhibitions
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The first exhibition will take place in June 2013, for the Season of Young curators of the Palais de Tokyo, Paris.
The exhibition will take shape through the curators’ correspondence, as it will determinate the choices and the relations between each work and the rest of the exhibition. The conversation, from which the corpus of the exhibition will take form, will also be also part of the show.
The exhibition can potentially be held in other exhibition spaces (potential partners: MOLAA in Los Angeles, MUAC in Mexico City, Museo de Antioquia in Medellín, MALBA Buenos Aires CASINO Luxembourg etc.), and will take other forms depending on the suggestions of each participant (conferences, events, workshop etc.).
Public
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Artesur, Collective Fiction is designed as a trip to Latin America with several guides. The exhibition encourages everyone to play the game of the collection, and to create their own show.
A resource center will be established as part of the exhibition; It will be constituted by the main documentary resources of the Beam Prod Association, and it will be completed with the support of the Maison de l’Amérique Latine.
A unique feature of this project is to ensure the transparency of the curatorial process. How an exhibition is done? Which criteria are used to determine the selection of works? How to approach the Latin American scene from other geological spots?
Beyond giving an answer to questions that could arise from the creation of a network such arte-sur.org (diversification and strengthening of cultural exchanges, opening up of the art scene to other geographical areas, etc.), This project is engaged with a reflection on the role of the curator and new working methodologies in a globalized context, placing the work of art in the center of the curatorial research.