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Mind Games CrONICAL March 31 2006
Discussion between Kerrie-Dee Johns (co-curator of Mind Games), and three representatives of Conical: Adrien Allen, Jason Maling and Katie Lee.
Notes:
All the participating artists were invited to this discussion but for various reasons were unable to attend (mainly geographical – or perhaps some didn’t like us). Fiona Bate was the second curator – she resides in Berlin & didn’t come out for the show.
The artists were: David Keating (Berlin/Melb), Gabrielle de Vietri (Melb), Bree Dalton (Melb), Ms & Mr (Syd), Something Haptic (Edinburgh) & Ry Haskings (Melb).
To give some background context to this discussion it is worth reading the PDF catalogue first.
This is our first recorded CrONICAL session. For the sake of coherence It has been lightly edited from the original transcript.
KL: (Katie Lee) I’d like to hear about how you sourced the artists and the process involved in them coming together.
KD (Kerrie-Dee): Well it was all kind of web based actually. It was really strange to see a work from the web and have a good idea about it straight away.
AA (Adrien Allen): Were you seeing works similar to the ones here (in the exhibition) or different works?
KD: I saw different works and I got a surprisingly good idea of the work from their websites. I didn’t have the feeling that I only had fragments and that I wouldn’t know what they’d put in the gallery when I actually got them over here. Fiona (Bate) researched them. As it turned out (I didn’t think about this before I was putting up the show) … but it was half & half in terms of the selection of the artists.
JM (Jason Maling): Did you have the framework for the show in mind?
KD: Well she (Fiona) suggested that we put in an expression of interest, and that she had a few ideas that referred to an article, however I responded to her open ended suggestion, she hadn’t proposed a theme, so I responded with a straight theme for the show, and said, “what about Mind Games”. There was a bit of push and pull there and a bit of exploration about what that meant…
AA: One of the things I picked up from the catalogue and from conversations with you was the idea of Mind Games representing a sort of subjective realm – the subjective realm of the artist, and perhaps the viewer as well, and the way that this idea has manifested in the show. I see a series of ‘habitats’ - quite discreet habitats, and I think you referred to micro utopias (in the catalogue). I wonder how that territorial sense plays into the theme. Do you see territory as a metaphor for the individual cell of subjectivity or something?
KD: Yeah, I do. I was really thinking about people in the world, academics who go off and research one idea and are dedicated to one project and people who also tend to engineer their own reality, I don’t know if you’ve ever meet any of those sorts of people… (laughs). A platform, a very everyday platform, a theoretical idea - I was thinking of that with Mind Games as a way, as an opposite of the standardization that goes on in the world.
AA: As the opposite of say a collective realm?
KD: Yeah.
AA: As the opposite of a globalised, generic realm? Something that was more about individualism?
KD: When I came up with the idea I was loaded with assignments about institutional imperatives for big shows and large scale exhibitions, and I felt myself getting tired of hearing about the rationales for shows that were in the spectacular realm, leaning towards entertainment and seemingly trying to rationalise their own existence. I just want to strip it down to the interaction between the artist and the audience.
JM: You are describing a kind of personal utopia, or delusion, someone who convinces them selves of one reality or another. I would say that state is very disregarding of everybody else’s reality… it’s almost like they don’t care. People approach other people with that disregard or people try to engage with people like that or the viewer does try to access that internal world, but often it matters not… I’m happy, I’m inside that.
AA: It’s the realm of the subjective I suppose.
KD: It is but … at the same time…
JM: We were thinking earlier of the idea of the magician, or the mind game literally as something that requires a punch line or a delivery point or a point that the rug is pulled from under them, or the illusion works or the trick falls flat. How much is the nature of making art about coming up with your own hermetic reference points that you hope are picked up on by the viewer? Often they don’t, they do not connect. Was that was a consideration when choosing these people?
KD: I hoped that because someone built up their world strongly enough and it had a strong enough presence and a deeper meaning, often that’s the best gift that you can give the viewer. How can I talk about it? I’ll talk about it with this feeling I had when the show was finally formed. I thought during the opening, I really like this show and it means something to me. It’s not that I care what other people think but I like it and therefore it has a personal effect on me and I have invested my energy into it. It’s like when someone writes a very poetic or subjective meaningful song lyrics, because they have actually made that risk and that leap, that’s a bigger gift to the viewer, rather than trying to appeal to the viewer, or to try and entertain you instead…
KL: So are you saying that the show came from inviting the artists to make something private and bring it into the public realm without considering it… that it was like an opening the door onto that private world?
KD: Yeah, kind of. They develop the world hermetically and then it was opened into an exhibition environment.
AA: That process suggests a kind of risk - that you weren’t quite sure what each artist or group of artists would turn up with at that time.
Also I feel there is a strong bent toward representation in the show – particularly a representing of fictive narrative scenes within the artworks. Perhaps not all works – I think we are probably sitting in a work that is an exception to that (Gabrielle De Vietri’s Ideas Catalogue), but a number of the artists have that fictive sense to me. On another level I think of the show as attempting to represent a curatorial theme. The work is not particularly spatial, it’s more that the viewer is somewhat disembodied, and ‘reads’ the narrative - it’s literary. It’s not a criticism. The other thing I would say is that there’s a kind of even-handed-ness in the collection of responses. It would have been interesting to see some more spatial interventions within this fictive world. Some works need to be more experienced than read. I think Ry Haskings work suggests that, he starts to open that up, but I don’t think that David Keating’s work (in close proximity) is enough to take that through spatial dialogue and carry it through the show… Perhaps that is a criticism.
JM: We were looking at Ry’s work and thinking, “what if the axe was in that wall?” (at the rear of gallery – away from the rest of his work). What is the interplay then in terms of the viewer taking a narrative reading from the point, the candle, then the axe, then this wall, and they are breaking into each others worlds… however these elements are very contained. I can understand it when I hear you talk about the artists coming up with their own environments, but how do you best facilitate that, without shaping and controlling it, but at the same time having a show that is cohesive?
KD: It’s very hard.
AA: You talked about (in the catalogue) a disillusion with the curator as auteur. I concur with that having seen many artists struggle to illustrate themes that supposedly reflect the curator’s insight. It’s not a matter of fitting a round peg into a square hole, it’s more that anything will fit into anything if it’s malleable enough.
KD: If you look for proof in something you’ll find it.
AA: The other book-end to that would be the absolving of responsibility for curatorial intervention. I’ve noticed that during the installing of this show, there were moments when (correct me if I’m wrong) when you were unsure whether to intervene more or to step back.
KD: Yeah, I was unsure.
AA: Earlier, Katie brought up the notion of the curator as ‘host,’ as opposed to some sort of interventionist role that is more assertive or perhaps even interfering with the placement of work or worse the content of the work – which is such a no go zone in many ways. Did you feel these things?
KD: Definitely, it was really quite funny because it’s also just my personality as well. I could see Something Haptic (a collective duo from Edinburgh who both KD & Conical had many interventionist-type discussions with during install) having a point of contention with us, however I can also see the rationale of an interventionist role. I couldn’t in my mind evaluate which one was better.
JM: So the way you set the space up… was that something that you deliberately tried not to specify?
KD: Oh no! I did deliberately put forward the idea of a kind of pavilion style – I wanted to put that out to the artists, but I didn’t want to dictate a curatorial rationale to the point where that changed their work…
JM: And were they willing to talk to each other and think about the possibilities?
KD: Well with regards to cohesion, I talked to Adrien very early about the idea of cross-pollination – but the reality was the artists were working separately in their studio – one in Berlin, one in Melbourne, etc. They all have solid practices of their own, and unless they are a collective practice (which Something Haptic was) it is really a fiction to say that they do cross-pollinate.
KL: Do you think that’s part of the invitation when you initiate a show? Whether you are facilitating or curating, because there’s probably a distinction between the two. You are either facilitating two peoples practices to converge at a point and then leave them to work it out between themselves. As you are saying they develop those practices fairly autonomously and it’s pretty difficult to actually arrive on site and start that negotiation – whether or not the negotiation actually starts when you suggest it. How do you determine what you are inviting them to do?
KD: I had in my mind that it would be that kind of show.
KL: Was that part of your process, did you express that to them in the determining of the show?
KD: Yeah, I did – I think it’s hard to remember back to that, but I certainly wrote way too much. I got some response from Ry, he thought I was one of those people that talked too much about art…
AA: Just let us do it! Stop over-prescribing and over-mediating it.
KD: Exactly!
KL: Did you feel that there were some artists that were more resistant to this process, and did this influence who came together in the end within the group (of artists).
KD: Well I actually didn’t assert myself in any of those… I actually just put it out there and I wanted, for eg: with Ms and Mr’s work – it could have come out of the wall a bit, come out of their drawings, include a performance perhaps – but they were quite opposed to that because they thought that it would take their work to the ridiculous and the absurd and they didn’t want to take it to that point.
JM: When I looked at Ms & Mr’s work I thought the element of the ridiculous & the comic were essential to their ideas.
KD: Yeah, but when you put that into a performance…
JM: Hearing you say that I immediately think that is far more interesting than what is presented here.
AA: And you know why that is more interesting? Because their world is presented in the same manner as everyone else’s world. It’s strange to enter anyone’s head, we all know it’s a leap of faith – who knows what lurks? Yet here (in this show) we are getting an even-handed display of everyone’s head space – as if ones internal space is the same as the next.
JM: I wouldn’t say that about this one though (indicating to the Gabrielle De Vietri’s Ideas Catalogue). I wouldn’t say that this had to do with anyone’s headspace.
AA: Maybe you’re right. Yet this brings up a further point – that Gabrielle’s piece is sort of floating off – the carpet being an apt metaphor for what the work is doing, sort of floating off. It suggests a demarcation between this work and the next.
JM: You don’t attach it to the artist (Gabrielle) either, you don’t get the sense that it’s dependent on the artist or the performance. The fact that we’re sitting here now, says something entirely about the void officey set up. It’s cheap and nasty but at the same time anyone could step up and play it.
AA: I feel here that we’re only talking to half of the curatorial team. I’m wondering how you feel about Fiona’s absence?
KD: Well, it was weird at first, but then I did feel a little bit like I was doing it on my own, but at the same time, I couldn’t have curated this on my own, she did put a lot into it.
AA: Was there was a point where the curatorial collaboration finished? You were here alone during the install, was that still part of the curatorial process for you?
KD: Yeah, but it was a good thing too, I mean, too many voices can complicate things, and we were kind of separate in our roles.
AA: Separate in that you chose different artists?
KD: Well she worked on separate grants, and it was sort of segregated, you know she did the British Council grant and I did the Arts Vic Grant…
KL: But you were talking about the same project in those grants, how much was the curatorial brief determined at that point?
KD: The cohesion came from all of our dialogue – all of our emails. We had spent a little time together and we had similar ideas about what we like and don’t like and similar tastes about things. I just put it all on the line, and put it all forward, and I felt I had a partner who wouldn’t be passive. I had Fiona’s ideas when I came into the space, like the idea of the artists having separate worlds had already been discussed.
AA: It’s an interesting dualism you set up between the two of you – on one hand individualism and on the other hand collectivism. This idea that the curator shouldn’t be the auteur – bringing their individual viewpoint to the situation, yet, conversely the group show shouldn’t be about subsuming individual authorship, that’s the way I read it anyway, I mean, am I offline with that?
KD: No, not at all, it’s definitely that way.
AA: Okay, but the feeling I have is that overwhelmingly it’s about the absence of both those two things. I think it’s interesting to have the two bookends, but where is your position? After reading the catalogue I only feel that more strongly. I mean there are pertinent ideas and interesting discussions, but I wonder where you throw your dart amongst it all? What’s your position?
KD: It’s a really difficult question to ask me – what my position is!!
AA: I know, don’t nail it now – but I think it’s a question worth raising.
JM: A curator often does that – creates a set of reference points and expectations and ways of dealing with their artists which is effective, yet laden with an expectation that the artist fits in, and the process of fitting in. Even the way that the curator sets up the relationship between the artist and the viewer is another type of environment as such, which is an extension of their universe or their idea, and obviously you haven’t taken this position in this case, but the theme of mind games suggests the potential in so many ways to have messed with your artists or with the viewer.
AA: Do you have a responsibility to be there or do you opt out at a certain point. You are quite critical of established curatorial practice, you have a particular attitude towards it, but we are not getting a sense of the attitude you have or the claim that you stake within this show, as a curator. It would have been good to have the artists here, to talk from their perspective, because obviously you are not solely responsible for the success or failure of a show.
KD: I probably would say that a curator is more of a facilitator for these art practices. I wanted to persuade them from the more representative toward the play aspect and they didn’t want to do it.
KL: At what point did you make that suggestion?
KD: It was kind of like, all along the line.
JM: What was their rational… logistics? Do they always present work in that way?
KD: There was talk about a screen projection.
AA: That’s not to say that the way it’s been achieved is a failure, it’s more to talk about your role as a curator.
KD: It was a pity that I couldn’t assert myself, and say ‘NO! You have to do that!’
AA: Do you regret that specifically or is that your stance on curatorship as a whole?
KD: I kind of do regret that in a way. Perhaps I could have been very sure of what I wanted to do in the very beginning, and bring Mind Games into a more experiential type of way. And if I could have brought that out from the beginning instead of just trying to have, ‘suggestions….’ I am defiantly now thinking more ‘interventionistly’
AA: What we are talking about here is a language of the Group Show – the language of commonality and difference. It could be one work or a series of work as it is now. Should the curatorial role be more assertive, or are the artists at the point where they are so informed that they will make that decision for themselves?
KD: I took the role of an informant, and wrote extensive emails. We spoke early on about how the artist should interact, and I wrote it all up.
AA: I mean, again, they just read it on email – that type of engagement is difficult.
JM: This kind of platform that you can get on is eternally difficult to resolve. You get similar things happening with theatre, where at least you have the stage, but here you have a gallery space, there is still have a perception that they have part of that space to occupy,
KL: Carved up space.
AA: Territorial.
JM: Or loosely tied together by a spurious framework that the viewer isn’t party to until they read the catalogue.
AA: In this case the framework isn’t spurious but perhaps it could be manifested in a way that suggested the reality of how we play mind games within each other’s subjectivity.
KL: Did you find the artists were resistant to this themselves? I found that they were never here at the same time.
KD: It was very much like that throughout – it was very difficult, there were people coming from all over the place. I mean for the floor-plan meeting there were two people missing. It was really difficult
JM: I mean, did they say, “I want my work to interact with that”
KD: I don’t think so. If you don’t have that type of practice in the first place, it’s very difficult to go into that mind frame.
AA: I keep looking at those blank spaces in the “keep playing those mind games forever” – the John Lennon reference (in the publicity artwork – see the catalogue) – and thinking about those absences. I think Jason is talking about those absences and the waiting for a gesture to fill them.
I talked to you about the old urban planning idea of ‘the donut’ – an empty centre (the CBD) with everything clinging to the edges (the suburbs). I keep thinking of a type of centrifugal force pushing everything to the edges. There’s a tentativeness that someone is waiting to, ‘force’ open – to put their foot in the centre. I think that’s what we tried to put onto the work of Something Haptic. They became a scapegoat for something that wasn’t happening, an absence. It may not have been fair, but we were trying to look for an intervention that would interrupt a polite reading.
KL: I think it was the territorial aspects of the other works that had already been placed. The carpet was here, the wall had gone up, the works on paper were carefully hung, and their work was the only negotiable piece. It was the last element of play that we had.
KD: Exactly, I think if I’d strongly stated the element of play from the beginning and it hadn’t been such a conservative show about scale and intimacy, and if I’d really put that play in the beginning.
AA: Jason was using that word ‘play’ a lot too
JM: Well it’s the playful nature of the title that sets up an expectation, and then you enter the space and I guess you are waiting for the rug to be pulled.
AA: You used the word ‘gag’, for Ry’s work, but the problem was that there was no response to the gag.
JM: He played the gag on himself and it articulated itself really well, yet I didn’t feel it was counter-pointed from there. It’s really tricky.
KL: It’s a nice idea that you are the host – as we termed it, and within the theme of mind games, you become the Mind Games Host, which is a nice idea, but the title brings to mind so many possibilities that it is also a mine field, in that there are so many expectations about perversion of some kind… that there will be a deception or a trick…
AA: I think there are wonderful exchanges going on here. Perhaps we’re erring on the negative a little. We are trying to articulate how we feel about it, but how do you feel about it? What do you take out of it? I wonder what will be next for you, is it always group shows or… ? You have a real literary flair, you seem to want to express literary ideas, not so much spatial ideas. I don’t think the materialism of how ideas manifest themselves in a visual art exhibition are your great strength at this stage, but the literary sensibility is a strength. I wonder how the negotiations between the writings, the imaginings, the phantasmagorical things that come up in your head, and the brute materialism of chucking shit in space.
I mean how do you create an ‘aura’?
KD: I don’t know how to do that.
KL: But the question was what would you do next.
KD: I would probably go more literary.
KL: How so?
KD: I want to do my thesis on art that relies on information systems for distribution, the web, things like that – so that it is forced to become less materialised,
AA: And bypasses these big issues!
KD: Yes! Very convenient for me.
AA: By saying that you are recognising that there are certain issues you confronted in a large space where artists weren’t particularly engaged with the space or with each other. Some of that wasn’t helpful for you, yet that experience may drive you in future projects or you may move into different territory.
KD: I would like to take it to a different territory, but I know the concerns of this show will come up again and surprise me.
AA: They are the concerns of every show in a way.
