Daniel Tucker in conversation with Nato Thompson on Curating Political Art
Conducted via email on 2-2-2010 for the upcoming issue of Squealer http://www.squeaky.org/squealer

Daniel Tucker works with the journal and event series AREA Chicago and is releasing a book of interviews with activist-farmers in the fall of 2010 on Chronicle Books (co-authored with Amy Franceschini). Nato Thompson is the Chief Curator at Creative Time and has a book about art and activism coming out on Autonomedia later this year. Together they have worked on several exhibitions and events, including “Town Hall Talks” – a massive interview project with socially engaged artists in Baltimore, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City for the “Democracy In America” project by Creative Time in 2008. Here they discuss in general and specific terms some of the challenges and possibilities of curating and facilitating socially and politically engaged art today.

Transcript:

Daniel Tucker (DT): In the early 2000s there was a trend in institutionally sponsored art exhibits to incorporate activism as a subject in and of itself. Activist groups were displayed like artists, artist groups made art that borrowed aesthetically and conceptually from political activism. Some examples include Democracy When? (2002) at LACE in Los Angeles, Hardcore: Towards A New Activism (2003) at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and your own smaller scale example Counter Productive Industries (2000) at 1926 gallery in Chicago and later on The Interventionists (2004) at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. What do you think happened when street protest groups and tactics were activated or put on display in the exhibition space?

Nato Thompson (NT): Well, first of all. I wouldn’t necessarily agree there was a trend. It really depends on how one might measure such a thing and in comparison to what. The exhibitions you mention besides the Interventionists show I curated at MASS MoCA and the exhibition at Palais de Tokyo were all fairly small. There was a lot more movement in Western Europe but that could almost be described as a more prevalent institutional tradition over there. It is important to provide a word of caution in regards to the misleading idea that there was trend, because it assists in answer to your question. In the late 80s, there was a much more asserted trend toward political art that resulted in certain artists and collectives like Group Material, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Hans Haake, Krzystof Wodizko, Tim Rollins and KOS, having more stable art gallery lives. That is to say, the trend resulted in a paid artistic living with a specific type of result. This could not be really said of the intermittent movement of activist art practices at the early part of this decade. I’m not really put much a value judgement on that since lack of commercial success for a movement can provide certain benefits (like limited professional jealousy and divisive behavior) that can be productive. However, we must also bare in mind the trajectory of the alt-globalization movement that certainly motivated, and inspired, the spirit of art activism at the beginning of this decade. Certainly, its dissolution on US soil after 911 and the election of Bush has been absolutely crushing in terms of the prevalence of this kind of work.

So, what happened after some projects were displayed? Well, I would say that hopefully one of the functions of heightened visibility of political practice is a sort of legitimating of that kind of work. Teachers, young artists, older artists, and the curious are able to see a kind of way of participating in civic discourse that exceeds the methods they are familiar with. This type of legitimation across institutions is certainly useful in shaping the range of what people think is possible and acceptable. That type of legitimation can also go toward helping some artists get faculty work and then, perpetuate this type of thinking in their students. I wouldn’t say this happened on a large scale, but more in a limited manner.
Continue reading “Curating Political Art: A Conversation”