Curatorview [Alfredo Cramerotti]

Curatorial School Malta

September 2018

Alfredo Cramerotti: Curating and Contemporary Art as Social Practices

What I do as a curator is to develop and present statements through the combination of works of art and/or artistic practices that, in my view, ‘connect the dots’ about this or that social, cultural, political or aesthetics matter.

In this context, I have found myself working in a pattern of modes. Sometimes taking a more authorial role and developing concepts and frameworks, some others becoming a conduit for ideas not mine, but translated and transformed by the visual authors. Some other times, facilitating what was already there, and simply heightening the impact or making sure the audience’s experience was in focus. Thus, as a curator, the work undertaken is less about the “what” and more about the “how”.

PART ONE

Keynote: “Conditional Readiness” The Curator and Artist as Social Shaper.

Abstract:

The main idea to discuss is that what a cultural practice does through the audience’s simultaneous experiences shifts from what is represented and originally intended, to a relational-driven form of interaction. This contact stabilizes, only temporarily, a form of mediation that triggers provisional meaning.

We can roughly equate the agency of art with being prepared for something, a “conditional readiness” (MacKay 1969), which implies that one’s understanding of a message is not limited to what to do (in response to it), but is expanded to include what one is ready to do if certain circumstances arise; more an unconscious preparation for an exploration rather than a conscious setting off for a journey.

Meaning is produced neither by the ‘sender’ nor by the ‘receiver’ of the message; it is formed by a readiness to relate to external factors, in terms of ‘performability.’ The agency of art (both in its making and its curating state) therefore arises less from the act of contextualizing and interpreting what we see, and more from the internalized suggestions for possible actions to take; what this performance fosters is a context where we interpret and ‘make sense’ of artistic acts by what they do, the functional aspect.

Examples include a presentation of a few artistic and/or curatorial practices delivered by Cramerotti such as the Maldives Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennial 2013 and MOSTYN’s History Series Audience Development Programme 2014-17; and artist’s work such as that of Fernando Garcia-Dory, Sarah Pierce, Wochenklausur, the Craftivism movement initiated by Sarah Corbett, Assemble, and others.

PART TWO

Workshop: The Social, Humanitarian, Historical, Scientific as Art.

Day 1 – Participants are invited to develop and present to the group their answers to a set of questions, such as: What does beauty has to do with, for instance, climate change, migration, mental or physical conditions? What is our understanding of aesthetics in relation to ethics? How do we tackle social themes that lend themselves awkwardly to a presentation in the (critical) visual realm?

Day 2 – Starting with case studies such as the Maldives Pavilion and other experiences by the participants, the group will relate their respective projects and highlight what worked and what did not, and why.

Day 3 & Day 4– Based on the brief proposals sent in advance, participants are invited to present to the group their next project plan (exhibition, residency, online platform, public programme, architectural or design commission, educational initiative, symposium, workshop, etc.). This will be a practical, project management-focused ‘tool kit’ that can be used to refine their specific plans.

Day 5 – Alternative scenarios: Could each participant’s project be produced somehow else? Is its digital platform following the concept and the execution, or preceding it? Is the range of artworks / artists / partners / speakers leading to unexplored territories or consolidating an prefigured approach?

More information here.