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© Clive Robertson, 2005. Used by permission
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The Artist-Curator: Struggles Over What Matters And For Whom It Matters
by Clive Robertson
Date: 02 December 2005
Event: Toronto
Clive Robertson
Artist, curator, critic and publisher Clive Robertson began his own media arts practice and programming at Reading, UK in 1970. He has been a co-founding director of W.O.R.K.S. Calgary and the Parachute Center for Cultural Affairs; publisher of Voicespondence Artists Records and Tapes; founding editor and publisher of Centerfold - FUSE magazine; and National Spokesperson for ANNPAC/RACA. Robertson co-authored the first book on Canadian performance art, w.o.r.k.s.c.o.r.e.p.o.r.t, Beau Geste Press,(UK) 1975 and with Alain-Martin Richard co-edited Performance au/in Canada 1970-1990, Éditions Intervention & Coach House Press, 1991. He is completing books on Canadian cultural politics (Policy Matters, YYZ Books, 2006) and artist-run culture theory (Movement + Apparatus, forthcoming). With artist-curator Julie Fiala, he currently is assembling, THEN + THEN AGAIN a touring archival retrospective of his art and curatorial collaborations which opens at Modern Fuel, Kingston, September, 2006. Clive Robertson teaches Time-based media, contemporary art history and cultural policy studies at Queen’s University.
Abstract
The Artist-Curator: Struggles Over What Matters And For Whom It Matters is an illustrated presentation that offers a preview of past projects and an introduction to some critical reflections and organizing themes accompanying my upcoming touring retrospective, Then+Then Again, a collaboration with artist-curator, Julie Fiala.
This archive-derived retrospective project spans thirty-five years of work evidenced by mixes of art production, curatorial practice, critical writing, facility and publishing initiatives. One of the aims of this project is to re-assert a troubling of the distinctions between individual and organizational production particularly in contrast to the enduring curatorial and critical preoccupations with 'masterworks' and 'exceptional artists.' My interests in value-and-belonging tensions typical in the making of art and the organization of cultural practices draws attention to how aesthetic and social practices emerge and reemerge; the concepts, investments and cultural politics they recognize; and the collaborative productions that capture - or are captured by - particular moments. Such moments e.g. film and video censorship, questions of cultural access and/or resource distribution connect to art-making and display projects through locally organized events. Such events I propose are not always or merely 'programming' or 'politics' but can be clearer indications of how the 'social domains of art' can be differently constituted.
I have been and remain more interested in the 'prototypes' required by the developmental stages of art production practices than I am with the necessary routinizations that mark their wider circulation or success. (This logic continues as much of my time is now taken assisting graduate students in their struggles to find, read, question and write contemporary art history and policy studies alongside advising and supporting art students in their individual and collaborative interests in art-making, curating and administrative matters.)
Perennial questions that have been differently posed by conceptual, feminist and post-colonial approaches to art production include: what presentation and interpretation structures and modes of curatorial and critical interpretation have relevance? What publics, audiences and participants are summoned and addressed? What infrastructure reforms are possible, and what responsibilities (aside from building such concerns into their art-making) can or should artists as curators, critics, administrators, etc. take on?
Over time, a mix of opportunities, access to finite resources and work done within new or existing institutions brings the vocational artist, critic, curator or historian into common circumstances and shared professional dilemmas. At some point in our world of expertise and meritocracy we contemplate the internal and external perceptions and effects of occupying too little or too much discursive and institutional space.