poetry anthROPology

The following are a few thoughts on curating. I confess .. I cobbled these together for a position that didn't quite come through (the mayhem interjected – because of timing – would have been immense, so not altogether sorry). But I think the ideas hold up .. even with some invariable oversights (I forgot to mention schmoozing relevant and neighborhood power players .. you can avoid doing same).
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While exhibitions may rely on a variety of tools to stimulate, intrigue and engage audiences, they must at heart be driven by ideas and they must communicate meaning. To my mind, this is best achieved by a process of conceptual development that ensures the project coheres and achieves its objectives, as well as supports the larger institutional mission.

While my own curatorial interests are not limited to one particular area of study, I am driven by curiosity about the human experience – in particular, the connective threads, cultural pattern-making and systems of explanation that bind people to a place, time and series of events. I am fascinated by the odd telling details found in material culture and history, not as anecdote but in the sense that there is truth to be discovered in their analysis and juxtaposition.

In this regard, the framework – the exhibition’s architecture – is of paramount importance. In developing exhibition content, one should identify both that which renders the subject relevant to a cross-section of individuals (which can provide an entry point to learning) and relevant in a larger social sense (i.e. why should the subject matter?) While the “big message” need not be broadcast loudly, it should inform the work as it unfolds.

At times, this process requires that the curator think about, interact with and involve audiences, as comprised both of individuals and “communities,” loci of identity that in an increasingly interconnected world span from the local to the national, global and online. It is of paramount importance to partner with a variety of institutions, organizations and groups; to move beyond supposition (sometimes through the tool of evaluation); and to understand that communities are things in flux, which reconfigure, overlap and locate salience in response to an ever-changing social, economic and ideological context.

In creating exhibition frameworks, there should be room for diverse visitors to reflect and create their own associations (as well as define their own paths) and, in so doing, to arrive at their own unexpected truths. In this regard, exhibitions are not just didactic but poetic, interactive and many layered. After all, sometimes it is in the interstices or unintended conjunction that discovery takes place; thus it may be less important that a visitor leave with a boilerplate synopsis (“I learned such-and-such”) as with an aroused curiosity and a series of impressions that resonate over time.

Further to the above, the ways in which a question (or problematic) is framed can elicit thought and deepen visitor engagement, as well as provide a more trenchant experience. The goal then should be to use interpretation to stimulate the imagination and provoke conjecture for multifaceted audiences, of different ages, temperaments and backgrounds. Methods should also allow visitors to relay back their own ideas and impressions and incorporate these into the project, whether in the formative or post-launch phase. By awakening the imagination through the exposure to new ideas, visitors of all walks recognize something of their own experiences in other cultural or historic prisms, and thereby gain greater insight into their own and others’ culture, heritage and current experience.

At the same time, the role of curator is situated very much in and of the world. To begin with, there is a practical aspect to managing project work: drafting a clear statement of purpose and outlining project parameters (timelines, budget, work-plans, etc.) serves to ensure that a project meets its objectives.

Secondly, as sometimes the best ideas (or the seeds therefor) are generated during brainstorms, a collaborative approach is often of value. To this end, involving the design side early on in the conversation, as well as scholars, educators, stakeholders and others, encourages innovation and ensures all angles have been considered.

Thirdly, museum projects small and large must take into account institutional considerations and objectives. Recognizing that museums play a strategic role in society, one whose purpose is to serve the common good, one should consult regularly with senior administration.

Lastly, partnerships, with government agencies, foundations, universities and other social institutions are today integral to offering valuable learning experiences that achieve widespread inclusiveness. To this end, it is important to establish new resources, whether in the form of scholarly knowledge or professional networks of expertise or potential funding or bridges to communities and new audiences.

Here are a few guidelines for artists looking to submit grant proposals (in spite of the new penury). I wrote these out for a friend -- and then thought others might find useful.


GUIDELINES FOR FUTURE APPLICATIONS

1. With every grant application, there is a list of questions the reviewers want answered. Use that as your outline and answer each one. The order likely reflects their priorities. Also the questions are not optional -- any one not answered is a strong mark against you.

2. Reviewers hate to wade through dense text. They don't want to fight for the information they are looking for (see above). Answers therefore should be clear, succinct and cogent. Wordiness of any sort should be avoided.

3. Answers however should be compelling -- they should contain real ideas and avoid over-simplification or defensiveness (e.g. "I do this because it expresses what I feel").

4. Periodically read the text you write out loud. If you can't breathe and it doesn't flow, you need to edit -- add commas, paragraph breaks and/or shorten sentences. This will cause ideas to shine.

5. A few key messages are better than throwing in everything but the kitchen sink. Don't give away too much detail. If you throw in too much data, it looks like you are trying to prove you know something that would go without saying for those who know better.

6. The first step is to hone a concept statement. This should consist of one short and to-the-point paragraph, akin to what some people call their "elevator speech" (or a brief description of what you do uttered in less in 3 minutes). Everything else should derive from this.

7. Avoid introducing too many ideas. While creative association can be helpful, too much of it will confuse the reviewers and they will assume your project lacks focus.

8. Never include the following kind of statement: "... the imagery will be processed through my own artistic style and personal beliefs". While true, this application is a chance to try and convince the reviewers you are somebody interesting .. they don't know you from Adam and therefore don't care about your personal anything.

Can the use of a metaphor fail because it is anachronistic? In other words, is it possible to explain successfully an historic event using a literary metaphor that has no resonance with the time described or the worldview of its actors? Would we say a cave man saw through a magnifying lens, for example (although one can imagine a drop of water achieving the same feat)?

I am thinking in particular of an anthropology lecture that suffered a few weaknesses, one of which consisted of the use of mathematical fractals to explain the sorts of violent fractures and re-assembly of identities that everyone likes to say are endemic in the Balkans. A good 20 minutes or so were devoted to seeking correspondence between fractals (as something nearly phantasmagoric) and civil war .. or incipient civil war. The metaphor was not meant to evoke but was asserted as the thing itself, i.e. the ethnic divisions and civil conflicts that plague the Balkans are not merely a result but a living breathing example of a mathematical object, one whose rules are (a) abstract enough to be incomprehensible to most people living through ethnic civil strife and (b) on some level deterministic (although in a random and non-determined manner because that is the nature of fractals).

This was as troubling to me as the debate within a philosophy class on whether a glass of orange juice poured into the ocean undoes Marx's theory of surplus value, but will leave that to another day.

My problem with the use of the fractal as a metaphor is that for those living through the events, fractals have no meaning as a descriptor. And I think on some level we determine our myths to suit our actions and in re-playing certain stories, there are mitigating or underlying reasons therefor. There is a reason a metaphor employed in the Balkans in a given time has salience. And there are many such metaphors and fully developed narratives -- and they are indescribably volatile. So how do mathematical concepts employed as literary metaphors help us to further our understanding of the Balkans? Is this not then another literary ploy -- one grafted on top of all the other literary devices used by nationalists to further their venal ends? Is this not then another secondary means of incantation? We can all nod our heads and be no further the wiser.

Okay, the interesting part concerned the idea that the fractal is identical no matter the scale .. and one certainly does see village-level events (for example, a rape) transmogrified in no time into a crime against the nation. Or the revanchist tendencies to uphold the zadruga or patriarchal law as models for state development. But these are artifices .. intentional constructions with political and economic real-time motivations (as opposed to the sense of tragic history that is promoted as unavoidable fate).

Perhaps she is seeking a new model of analysis but frankly I'd rather lean on political economy. Having researched the war in Yugoslavia in grad school, I would think any scholar on the Balkans would be able to finger any number of real causes .. in the case of Yugoslavia, for example, a dive-bombing economy (gas crisis/commodity price depression/debt) leading to the failure of Tito's vision of a progressive and industrialized future married with draconian structural adjustment, which then sets the stage for nationalist movements as a power-play by vying minorities attempting to capture greater national resources.

If one wants to examine the role of literary metaphors, one could consider the ways in which the underlying political and economic developments led — not inexorably but because of specific actions coinciding with specific conditions — to a reassertion in the public imagination of patriarchical rural family (and the zadruga as its embodiment) and violent "private law" purposely conflated with the nation. In a nutshell. But at least I have asserted that it was the very power of metaphor corresponding with real political and economic developments that in a sense produced the war. And the war was a production — in a kind of grotesque dramatic Hollywood sense. Is it fair to use Hollywood as a descriptor? I would argue that the violence was very much a media tool. Sad because real lives were destroyed.

One cannot forget too the ways in which historic events are evoked in later times as explanations for current woes. And so reliance on ideas (so often newly fabricated) of "tradition" or a future course as pre-determined by the past are common recourses during times of penury etc. Our histories are our myths in that they reflect the past onto the future (what was must be). The mistake of any historian would be to accept such a deterministic vision, to be seduced by the myths .. and then fail to understand how converging interests/differences lend salience to those myths.

The greater mistake perhaps though is that of the anthropologist who forgets to look at history. And so I must return to this same lecturer and her second error -- which in a funny way spurred the first. As I recall (the essence .. some of the details might be hazy), after carefully conducting ethnography in a region of Bulgarian and Greek "Macedonia" she discovered two anomalies. In the first instance, there was a group of people who refused to identify themselves as belonging to a particular ethnicity in a place where identity is greatly weighted. In the second instance, there was a people who were spoken of with loathing -- I believe as a result of their collusion during World War II -- but their members were nowhere to be found.

What a little research in the archives might uncover is whether the two groups were in fact the same. In other words, do those who claim they have no special heritage do so because their heritage is in fact tainted in the eyes of the greater society? Perhaps this would be seen as a betrayal of the interviewees .. but at the very least the question should have been asked.

Lastly, I can only imagine that the lecturer used an extemporaneous metaphor -- one drawn perhaps from the current-day language of critical theory, information design or mathematics (or even the technical sublime) -- to explain historic dynamics not just in Bulgarian Macedonia (or Macedonian Bulgaria) but the entirety of the Balkans because she simply forgot that she herself exists in a moment of history, as do the groups of people she studies, but that her own path and those of her subjects do not neatly converge.

1. Detritus and culture; detritus versus culture

By this is meant what is the difference between the extolled/fetishized object and the discarded object; the objects that define existence, the objects that we rid from our existence. Archaeologists fix on the detritus of dead civilizations, forensic anthropologists piece together the histories of crime from pieces of debris. The question that arises concerns not only what it means to read meaning into shards, but rather what that investigation says about those carrying on the investigation. At base, this investigation must be seen as "literary" rather than purely scientific, as in novels small details are made potent as metaphors. Large themes are extrapolated from thrown-away moments.

2. Detritus and spatial politics

Junkyards are formed on the brink of cities and civilizations, in no man's lands or wastelands or wetlands. How the perimeter becomes defined as such involves the evolving history of a particular place over time. Marginal terrains — places beyond the pale — are often defined by a set of prescripted parameters: they sit on the edge of metropoles (or civilizations); they mark the edges of city or empire; they are perceived as "lawless" places, or places ruled by private law. The way in which they are scripted tells much about the empire that abuts them (whether past or present). Do they reveal a failure of imagination or are they the terrains where the imagination is allowed to explore unfettered (a kind of backdrop for the psyche)?

In anthropology, there was a school of thought (which arose out of Latin America in the 1970s) that divided the world stage (and more importantly relations of power) into cores and peripheries. Studies were done that showed that violence tended to be greater on the periphery than in the core. One significnat study concerned the difference in labor treatment between a British-owned mines in Zimbabwe and in Great Britain. Subsequent studies have focused on relations of time, space and power. As a blunt example, the United States can claim a majority of patents because the U.S. Government controls their distribution, often rendering valid patent claims in far-flung corners next to impossible.

What can be said of lives lived on the periphery ... of the sorts of meanings inferred by a marginal existence? Are there prescriptions to be found by outsiders? Wisdom in a broken bottle? Foucault speaks of transgression as that edge where truth/morality is redefined as a constantly shifting limnal edge. I think it is possible to consider "transgression" both in moral and spatial terms, as in the idea of going beyond, the words "terra" and "terror" sharing affinity. In contemporary times, trailer parks are often the scenes of our most volatile and uncontained dramas (both in the literary world and in "real-life dramas" such as Cops). Have the trailer park residents (or inhabitants of the interior of Maine) come to stand in for the roles played by the Greek gods in Athenian society (among whom jealous rage, murder most foul, incest, etc. abounded)? On other frontiers ... the spaces that were the remote colonies former empires, for example ... the most horrific "crimes against humanity" have unfolded (e.g. the Balkans, Africa, Afghanistan, Cambodia, etc.).

3. Detritus, happenstance and permutation

This section speaks to random association as an underyling given of both creative exploration and scientific progress. The detritus of ruined civilizations speaks to a collapse of meaning, junkyards to an instance where strange bedfellows abound. Something like reading bones or tea leaves ... it is in the accidental association that truths are revealed. (Is it too no wonder that New York City is known for being a "dirty" city where filth and happenstance abound? In New York, however, the equasion is reversed as ).

Two concepts that arise out of postmodernism -- facsimile and nostalgia -- will be explored in conjunction with the idea of detritus. If all products in the "age of reproduction" are facsimiles, what does happens when the facsimile decays? Does the item in question undergo the same form of "sea change" as the original work did, once it was reproduced or in other ways translated?

The collector is a fetishist, the art of collecting an act of admission that the thing desired can never be possessed, never experienced fully ... only held in the limbo of one's limbic regard.

The artist Gerhard Richter is a fetishist. His work entices the viewer is to reach out and hold something but then slaps the hand in recompense. The viewer recoils .. forcing him or her to enter into a space where the beloved is belittled, where evocation first lures with promises of the sublime before quickly reeling in upon itself, in essence becoming a footnote to itself. The artist, sheared off from ever experiencing fully that beheld, collects mementoes instead, enchanting the viewer and then snatching back the thing proffered. For he himself can experience no satisfaction.

Richter denies the epiphany of a Casper David Friedrich or Hudson River School painter. So a landscape presents a horizon line drawn with a straight edge, plumber and truer than any horizon shall ever achieve .. it severs land from sea like a knife edge. The viewer rebounds from reverie and slams against an obdurate and sharp coldness. The same is true for two portraits of a roll of toilet paper painted to perfection, until one realizes the joke: not merely epistles of the everyday, the one rolls from the top, the other from the bottom. A perfect commentary on marital arrangements perhaps ... only the cynicism deters any solace taken in the brush strokes.

There are portraits both innocuous and somehow familiar/compelling of seven young women, taken perhaps from schoolbooks .. all professionally posed, poised on a brink before their lives unfold. No, not a yearbook but a newspaper -- their faces forever etched under the gaze of a greater public who first beheld them only after they had been slaughtered. Are the paint strokes expressive, sensitive? It barely matters only it does .. the generic surface treatment is somehow critical, softening their visages as if under snow. Is this meant to add distance? Again, these are lives once so brutallly violated can never be regained. A killer uses and destroys that which he can by no other means have. Does the artist's appropriation mirror this same act of appropriation? Are their portraits now merely the objects of collectors?

A quick note on the giant silver cloud gateway created by Anish Kapoor for Chicago's extraordinary Millennium Park, which has become a major point of convergence in the city. Burnished to a high sheen, the piece reflects, refracts -- and pays hommage to -- the Loop's dramatic city skyline, while simultaneously glorifying the visitors below (by placing them in a multi-point perspectival reflection that is accentuated by a platform of converging tiles much as in a Renaissance painting such as The School of Athens by Raphael). The interior however clearly references Tiepelo, only with spectators below now inverted towards the heavens, sent to serve as cherubim in a series of ascending concentric circles.

By shifting position, once is constantly delighted at giant shifts in perspective and multiple reflections. Outside, one sees groups of visitors placing themselves just below the great tumescent swelling in order to capture vivid photos, the reflection enhancing the camera lens. Oddly enough, this piece both encourages direct visitor interaction while achieving something of the sublime. If the sublime however signifies that moment of awe and/or horror when the individual is made suddenly aware of their tiny place in the scheme of things or is undone by a vision that escapes words, this piece takes a more merry approach, as the visitor becomes a key piece (albeit one of many) in a giant kaleidascope.

Michael Kimmelman today gives a biting critique of France's new museum of non-western cultures (A Heart of Darkness in the City of Light, NYT, 7/2/06, p. AR-23). Designed by renowned architect Jean Nouvel, he claims the museum succeeds in the areas of "novelty and theatrics" only: "Quai Branly's story is the spectacle of its own environment. Spectacle becomes its attraction."

Among the many criticisms levelled are the poor organization; the over-stated jungle theme of the design (dark rooms where objects emerge out of the gloom, tree-branch motifs filtering light from windows, meandering paths); and the scant interpretation. The criticisms are in many ways familiar: like many of the museums built today, there is a danger in the design of the vessel variously overwhelming, out-performing or out-shouting the contents. This in a sense points to why the discussion between scholars, curatorial and design is so important ... failures stem when a balance between these realms has not been achieved. The example cited -- the ignoring of the advice of a collections' long-time curator to show the B-52 bomber painted on the back of a Vietnamese scarecrow by installing a mirror -- does not cast a good light on the situation at the Quai de Branly.

I would offer one codicil. Designers seek inspiration from all sorts of sources and it is likely that the viewer will not always understand the association. And that's sometimes okay. In this, the jungle motif might have functioned merely as a springboard; were it to do otherwise (and be too literally quoted), then one is in danger of wandering into the Tiki Room at Disneyland. The danger in using this motif with this museum is (1) the geographies represented include areas with no tropical rainforests and, more importantly, (2) the jungle is perhaps "chaotic" and "dark" only to those who are not familiar with it. Perhaps it might have been more instructive to consider the jungle from the insiders' point of view. In other words, as a designer or architect (even one as talented as Jean Nouvel) seeks an underlying concept to support a design, it is even there necessary to go beyond the cliché (meaning unconsidered and conventional).

Kimmelman also raises the issue of the need to find balance between ethnography (I read this as contextualization or interpretaiton) and aesthetics. Elsewhere I have questioned the use of pseudo-scientific language to ascribe meaning or paste definitions onto a "people" as a discrete uni-vocal entity. And indeed Kimmelman also mentions the sorts of conflicts that arise when deciding whose voice should determine the interpretive approach (e.g. in discussing Polynesian work, would it be the political ethnonationalists, the religious fundamentalists, etc.).

But I think this issue needs to be pushed further: I am not entirely sure of the purpose of ethnographic museums as such, unless we begin to include aspects of our own culture within them. We need to apply the same lens to ourselves to test its validity. There is still a fear that that which is broached too close to home is too "dangerous" perhaps. Thus it is better to impute meanings on foreign groups -- the idea of bridging cultures or understandings on some level a mask for our need to explain or own "foreigness" and barbarity.

Kimmelman also raises the question as to why African, Oceanic and Native American works should be grouped together at all. I am reminded of a bronze monument in Paris (perhaps the Luxembourg gardens?) comprised of the "four corners" or four idealized nudes representing Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe all holding up the world. I like to think in Chirac's view, they would rather all hold up France (the center of the world afterall). Kimmelman is right to ask why the work should be separated from its western counterparts. We tend to forget that our "art" museums hold works deemed sacred and profane, fantastic and mandane ... begging the question as to whether a Jackson Pollock stimulates the seem degree of reverie as a totem from some other culture and the hidden desire of most western artists in any event to inspire the sublime.

On the facing page of the arts section in which Kimmelman's article appeared, there was a series of photographs (by William Christenberry) taken of a simple wooden structure and its radical evolution over time (from store to bar to shack to small town museum). In a sense these photographs function as a pure form of ethnography in the sense that we witness a kind of cultural/historic transformation without over-contextualization (reams of dry bits of data paraded by as if they have some kind of overarching significance) and paternal condescension (or variously paternal glorification) found in too some anthropological displays.


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