Curation: An Action for Social Innovation

　　【Bright Arts Point】

　　Since the 19th century, modern art museums have established a standardized public display-viewing system with its pure, bright and neutral spatial structure, and distance is precisely the core element of this system.

The standard modern art gallery space is defined as the "White Cube", which began in 1893 with an exhibition of the art genre "Secession" in Munich.

No matter what type of artistic practice, it can be presented as a "work" in this space, and presented as the object of the viewer's gaze.

As O'Doherty said: "In such a display environment, an ashtray almost becomes a relic."

However, the "white cube" of the museum is essentially a kind of isolation: it isolates all works from the living world in which it originally occurs; isolates the creative situation from the viewing situation; separates the aesthetic experience space from the daily experience space isolated.

　　Therefore, as a curator, one should not only be the caretaker and preserver of the precious objects in the museum, but also the developer and producer of it.

　Curating is an artistic practice as well as a social practice

　　In addition to static "things", there are also moving "people" in the museum.

Today's museum is already a Rubik's cube-like place, a space complex, in which not only the relationship between the individual "viewer" and the "object" of gaze, but also the relationship between the self and others, not only the relationship between people and things, And people-to-people relationships.

Therefore, the works in the museum are not only the objects of gaze, but also the starting point of communication and action, and a mirror that reflects the social relations of people.

　　Classical art historiography makes a distinction between "internal art history" and "external art history", but from a curatorial point of view, the history of art has no such distinction as inner and outer, because art history and social history have never been separated. .

Curating is an artistic practice as well as a social practice.

Curators not only traverse between tangible things such as artists, audiences, art galleries, and galleries, but also connect invisible things such as art history, media, institutions, and ideology.

These tangibles and intangibles together constitute the great cycle of art history, museums, mass media, art market and social consciousness, and curatorial sideways to it is to ask: in this great cycle, what is the "meaning" of art Where is it located?

Where does the "value" of art originate?

Where does the "work" and "creation" of art begin?

Where does it end?

　　Curating in this sense can be regarded as a century echo of the "art movement" advocated by Lin Fengmian, Lin Wenzheng and others a hundred years ago.

In 1924, more than 20 Chinese artists living in France, headed by Lin Fengmian, Lin Wenzheng, Liu Jipiao, and Wang Daizhi, planned the first Chinese art exhibition at the Rhine Palace in Strasbourg, where nearly 500 pieces of Chinese ancient and modern art were displayed. artwork.

As a preview of the China Pavilion at the Paris International Arts and Crafts Fair the following year, this exhibition became a cultural declaration that inspired the Chinese people in that era.

It was through this exhibition that Lin Fengmian and his art group entered the vision of Mr. Cai Yuanpei, the pioneer of modern Chinese education.

Four years later, Mr. Cai invited Lin Fengmian to set up the National Academy of Arts in Hangzhou and served as the first dean. The history of higher art education in China began.

　　"China Art Exhibition" can be said to be a "pre-history" of the China Academy of Art, and this history begins with the "curatorial work" of a group of young artists.

In those days, exhibitions were organized for the "art movement".

From the "Hobbes Painting Society" called the "Overseas Art Movement Society" in 1924, the founders of Gome, Lin Fengmian, Lin Wenzong, and Li Jinfa, took promoting the art movement as their mission, "introducing Western art and organizing Chinese art. , to reconcile Chinese and Western art, to create the art of the times".

　　For this group of young artists headed by Lin Fengmian, the art academy is not only "established for academic research" as Mr. Cai Yuanpei said, but also for the art movement.

During Lin Fengmian's period, the National Art School and the "Art Movement Club" were co-constructed.

Until the 1930s, members of the Art Movement Club had spread all over the country. They planned and held national art exhibitions and organized the West Lake Expo, which became an important force in modern Chinese art creation and social enlightenment.

Their artistic movement constituted the forerunner of Chinese curation.

　　In the sense of contemporary art, the earliest curation in China was partly driven by critics in the 1980s, and partly by the self-organization of artists.

Up to now, the art world is full of curators, but most of them are just the executors or intermediaries of the art consumption mechanism. As the organizers and promoters of exhibitions, they are not even aware of their intermediary position.

　　In 2003, the China Academy of Art established the first curatorial major in China, and in 2010, it was reorganized into the "Institute of Contemporary Art and Social Thought" and placed in the School of Intermedia Art.

Through more than ten years of practice and teaching, we have gradually condensed an understanding of curatorial practice. In my opinion, curatorial work can be roughly divided into three levels: 1. Use works to construct issues and form awareness of problems.

Curators must learn to unfold artworks in social space and construct social narratives with artworks.

Second, construct a critical and creative production situation.

The second level of curation is to construct the context, or to construct the curatorial context, in which the production and mobilization of art unfolds.

3. To carry out artistic movements and promote social progress.

At this level, curation is a social movement of the mind, a social spiritual production, and an action that promotes social innovation.

　Curators do not create heroes but create trends

　　Curating is all about creating a situation.

I really liked Wong Kar Wai's "The Grandmaster", which confirmed my understanding of exhibitions.

The palace master in "The Grand Master" said to his senior brother: The reason why he went south to promote the North-South summit is not to create heroes, but to create the current situation.

Do not create heroes and create trends, this is the foundation of curation.

Curators plan exhibitions not to introduce art stars or masters, but to create a situation and a trend.

Events are born from the times, and heroes are created.

In my opinion, this is a testament to the vocation of curating.

　　In another scene, Gong Er and Ip Man meet in a dark alley in Hong Kong after being separated for many years.

In the gloom, Gong Er told Ye Wen very melancholy that her father had said that there are three realms in martial arts, "The first realm is to see oneself.

She said, "I have seen myself a long time ago, and it is considered to have seen the world, but I have only seen all living beings, but I have never been able to do so.

This gave me a huge inspiration - why "seeing all beings" should be put at the end?

For ordinary people, "seeing the world" is already the highest state, why does the palace lord put "seeing all beings" at the highest level?

This event inspired me a lot and made me firmly realize that curating is fundamentally social.

　　Here, two kinds of exhibitions should be distinguished: one is to conceive a certain theme, pull the artist’s works into the venue, and place them within the ready-made conceptual framework, so that the works can have their own place in the thematic and hierarchical units of sub-themes. Each has its own merits in the classification of sex.

　　Another kind of curation is to expose the production relations and social procedures that make the works come to fruition, to make the works stir up in the dynamic and temporary assembly, to make the senses agitate and the meaning to bloom in the perceptual struggle.

Curators not only need to intervene in the evolution of art production and art history (this evolution is not only metaphysical, but also quite illusory), but also participate in the shaping of the sense of reality and social consciousness through artistic actions.

This is what I call "rehearsal", which is to use events to dismantle and transform the physical properties of works of art, that is, between the author and the viewer, between the individual and the group, to form an intertwined collision of symbols and desires, thoughts and feelings, and cohesion. A torrent of reflections and reverberations between perception, production and action.

　　Heidegger reminds us: "We are far from thinking fully about the nature of action." For Heidegger, the essence of action is completion, and completion means: unfolding something into it in the richness of the essence, that is, produced.

Here, action is production, which is to make consumerist individuals locked in their respective social strata, historical stages, and relational units rejuvenate the potential of production and the kinetic energy of the subject, giving birth to a kind of self-creation and self-liberation. strength.

In this sense, curation is a "book of action".

Everything written in this "Book of Action" is not about the art of fetishism, but about the art of liberation and the festival of the future.

　　(Author: Gao Shiming, Dean of China Academy of Art)