'ART IN DEBATE AND DEBATE IN ART'
A project co-curated by UM Curatorship Students & MAFAD Art Students
This co-curated project was organized between and by the students of Arts & Heritage MA of Maastricht University and the students of the Academy of Fine Art and Design of Maastricht. The project was done as part of the second part of the special Elective course ‘Curatorship’ offered in the last class period by the University of Maastricht. Therefore, the purpose of this ‘assignment’ was to bring us into contact with the art students mostly in the format of ‘curators versus/with emerging artists’ and explore how these dynamics work.
It has been a quite interesting and challenging project for two main reasons. Firstly due to the versatile communication dynamics and personal aspirations which at parts collided between the two groups and secondly because of the team work abilities which had to be challenged from both sides until we reached a consensus. The initial purpose was to co-create and co-curate a project which in the beginning had no particular format or concept and which we had to create together from scratch. I believe that this has been the trickiest part since all of us (at least in the beginning) had completely different ideas and desires about what output we would like to have in the end – if any.
It has been a quite interesting and challenging project for two main reasons. Firstly due to the versatile communication dynamics and personal aspirations which at parts collided between the two groups and secondly because of the team work abilities which had to be challenged from both sides until we reached a consensus. The initial purpose was to co-create and co-curate a project which in the beginning had no particular format or concept and which we had to create together from scratch. I believe that this has been the trickiest part since all of us (at least in the beginning) had completely different ideas and desires about what output we would like to have in the end – if any.
Photos taken by Emilie Sitzia
In the end we decided to isolate the center of the space we had available at the Academy of Art, the open library to host a ‘performative’ debate in relation to art and its relation to debate. When we decided to host a debate instead of an exhibition with the subject ‘Debate in Art and Art in Debate’, it was interesting to observe the gap in understanding and perceiving art, artists and the artwork.
The main issues which came out of this project were whether art can be indifferent, whether the concept of ‘polis’ in Hannah Arendt’s political theory was relevant for the programme and in which sense, whether there can exist an exhibition without an audience and other issues such as those. It was very intellectually stimulating, however I do not think that the thematology has been very closely related to curatorial matters, seen from the point of view of exhibition design and management.
Another subject was the importance and definition of a debate through the spectrum of philosophical inquiry. An interesting definition which also agrees with the ones I found is given by Marchart (2007) “A public sphere results if and only if a debate breaks out among those standing around. A debate is not a discourse ‘free of domination’ and guided by reason that aims at an ultimate consensus, as Habermas describes it; rather, a debate takes place in the medium of conflict. Only at the moment when a conflict breaks out does the public sphere emerge, with the breakdown of the consensus that is otherwise always silently presumed” (p.43). This coincides with Hannah Arendt’s definition where “public sphere is the only sphere of freedom, the only sphere emancipated from necessity, because it is constituted directly between people in a common area through revealing ourselves in communicative speech acts” (Bokiniec, 2009, p.76). This interplay of definitions was also very interesting to happen in the library where it’s a semi-public, semi-voyeuristic private space.
The space was also very flexible and it helped us navigate not only mentally but also physically, which I think was a valuable component.
The main issues which came out of this project were whether art can be indifferent, whether the concept of ‘polis’ in Hannah Arendt’s political theory was relevant for the programme and in which sense, whether there can exist an exhibition without an audience and other issues such as those. It was very intellectually stimulating, however I do not think that the thematology has been very closely related to curatorial matters, seen from the point of view of exhibition design and management.
Another subject was the importance and definition of a debate through the spectrum of philosophical inquiry. An interesting definition which also agrees with the ones I found is given by Marchart (2007) “A public sphere results if and only if a debate breaks out among those standing around. A debate is not a discourse ‘free of domination’ and guided by reason that aims at an ultimate consensus, as Habermas describes it; rather, a debate takes place in the medium of conflict. Only at the moment when a conflict breaks out does the public sphere emerge, with the breakdown of the consensus that is otherwise always silently presumed” (p.43). This coincides with Hannah Arendt’s definition where “public sphere is the only sphere of freedom, the only sphere emancipated from necessity, because it is constituted directly between people in a common area through revealing ourselves in communicative speech acts” (Bokiniec, 2009, p.76). This interplay of definitions was also very interesting to happen in the library where it’s a semi-public, semi-voyeuristic private space.
The space was also very flexible and it helped us navigate not only mentally but also physically, which I think was a valuable component.