New Media CURATING Hell – part 2

Disclaimer: Due to the political sensitivity of the content of this article, one of the organizations is unnamed.

Keywords: curation, event production, staging issues, ethics.

This multi-part article deals with my production experiences as a new media art curator in over the last few years: attempting to bring to light issues often not often discussed on the staging of media art curatorial events in gallery and non-gallery settings, with little or no internal organizational support. It explores my personal experiences and trials as a self-taught event producer and curator, and my likely biased but passionate and frustrated perspective.

Curating can feel like the fleeting pleasurable part and the rest is planning, liaising, and coordination and production. If the whole organization is a little unsure what its doing whoever has an inkling ends up making it happening. I found myself doing that and so I felt the real job of getting to know the artists, the work and the integration of the works, what the trends are and what contribution the curation has to the larger community is a luxury that this org and I had no opportunity to indulge in. This was my on-going conundrum. How can we see ourselves as a festival part of the larger discussion on media art and its development if we are always in survival /production mode and have no time to reflect and have dialogue on the larger goals of this art community and contribute to it? I’m afraid it might be awhile before the unnamed event has the luxury of self-reflective and simultaneous external exploration time. For me as a curator, I felt this was the wrong environment for me to grow and be able to have those conversations with the wider community.

It seems like the Media Art or Net Art world is moving so fast that it’s difficult to keep up with all the transformations and innovations. Sometimes you feel like you’ve managed to understand the cutting edge and its gone already. I read as much as I have time for on new media and curating, I'm now undertaking a PhD in the field, I read listservs and now likely should be a an RSS subscriber (but don't really have time to even read the listserv posts usually), and try get out and about to events as often as I can as well. But the world is spinning far too fast to manage to keep pace with it.

Curatorial Challenges

2003

Curatorial /Selection Process - creating selection criteria, setting up jury, making sure all other curators follow rules and deadlines:

As a curator some challenges faced, especially when I was new to it, were trying to come up with a curatorial design plan to bring disparate projects together. Together the curators decided to choose some artists for the Commissioning Grant for each event and then a call for submissions was sent out to attract emerging, professional, international and local artists, performers, presenters, and speakers. We came up with a specific theme that we asked artists to address, but for many of the works or most really, the connection was tenuous or conceptual but not as evident in the visual work. Some among our curatorial group thought it better to select works that were adhering to the theme closely, while I wanted to show the best work. I decided as the lead curator of the festival in discussion to create a jury from the community of new media experts and give them criteria to follow that was similar to the criteria arts councils follow when jurying work. We sent out invitations to people we thought that were qualified to jury in different areas and set up a date for the jury. We had the curators from each area cull the works to their top 10 or so and then the jury would choose from there. This worked the first year for the gallery show and the some of the performances, but then I discovered that the music section had curators that felt that they didn't have to follow this path and could select their friends and ignore the process I had cultivated for fairness and ignored all the submissions in the music area to choose their friends. This pissed me off as it undermined me but also was a totally corrupt way to select after all the other artists were selected in a different and more fair manner. This was just one of many things that drove me away from this org. Why did they get away with it ? Because the Executive Director of the org said that they could. So this continued into the following year - which I had quit before, but was begged back to clean up a mess the board had made in an effort to to my job.

2004

At this point now as Event Producer and Curator, I decided it was my job to:

- Interpret the instructions given by the artist on their exhibition or performance;

- Implement the technical requirements of an artist's vision as much as possible within the confines of our budget;

- Make arrangements to access the venue, tech support and equipment, organize finances and collaborations with other artists;

- Maintain (where possible) the control of the overall technical realization of event;

- Translate artists’ ideas to programming committee;

- Artists/programmers/curators then interpret and work with the instructions given by Festival director.

My job included many resources and specifications, such as equipment, planning, logistics, budgeting, scheduling and the plans, specs, schedules, budgets etc. that I utilized in my work. There were a few suppliers and venue liaisons that I worked with, but mostly this was handled by others; listed in order of expense/magnitude of their contribution.

Call for artists: Despite my warnings that the call for artists needed to go out earlier and didn’t, the call for artists went out too late. There needs to be enough time to gather the submissions, then have time for the curators to evaluate the works and short-list them, then present their short-listed works to a jury of impartial community jury members, selected form the academic and non-profit professional artists community to help make the final selections. This process makes sure that curators are following the theme and mandate of the festival to include a good mix of artists from local and abroad, emerging a professional etc. This process was forgone due to time constraints and scheduling issues and wasn’t well organized by curators and producers alike (myself included).

Selection of artists: There was a system/process that I tried to put into place, but all the curators quickly threw out the process as it suited them, as was started by the music group, and I found out, encouraged by the ED again behind my back : before, during and after selection. There were too many friends of curators who were selected after the official process was over – which was entirely unfair for those who went through the process legitimately. For example: many of the Low Art(music and A/V gang) applications weren’t even looked at and seemed appropriate and compelling. Too many invited artists were friends of curators.

More strict rules and ethics need to be in place and enforced(and the lead curator not undermined by the ED), so that this type of thing doesn’t happen – it makes the festival and curators look unprofessional to the outside world – numerous comments from outsiders have been made to me in this regard. It was not just Low Art, it was systemic throughout the programming and it needed to shift or there to be a consistent message form Directors on the rules, and to involve more outside jurors to be part of the selection process, to keep it clean. Since others were doing it, most curators did it too, they were almost all guilty except a few. It was not fair to the “clean” curators or artists, and looked completely terrible on the festival. Since it happened the previous year as well, I was in a less powerful position during 2004 year,and I was unable to stop it due to being given less authority to do so.

Low Art Curators also refused to use the database for their artists, until after the selection was done, and even then it took months for them to enter all of their artists, so that the rest of the staff could not work with their data for the website and catalogue/promo materials until they were pressured to do it by the ED - these rouge curators felt that they didn't have to do any work because this ED was who they decided to answer to and he didn't care what they did (they were his friends). This was frustrating, especially since Low Art Curators seemed to suggest that they needed to be treated differently for some reason. I felt that all artists, regardless of programming area, needed to be treated with the same fairness and standards in selection and curation as everyone else.

Curators/ Programming: I was in a situation whereby a board member was allowed and pushed her way to become co-curator on an event I was curating, and this made it a conflict of interest for both of us, in terms of producing the event. It also hindered my ability to make decisions at a producer level, as I was asked to give preference to the event I was co-curating with this board member, who had power over me, rather than treat all events I was producing with equal favour. I still did my best to maintain equality, but this continual pressure was difficult to handle at times and resulted in numerous blowouts between us.It is my understanding that usually other organizations don't allow their board members to be in this conflicted situation, if and especially not involved in the overall: festival programming, curating individual events, AND as an artist in the festival as well – I believe this results in layers of conflict of interest and is not good for the longevity of the society and reputation of the festival. As producer or artistic director I should have had autonomy to make decisions that best suit the events, but with multiple events I was producing, I ethically had to give all equal favour and assistance. The board’s role is to assist the running of the organization, management, and financial health of the society, not to control the programming and the flow of influence to various events.This was not rectified until 2 years after this situation!

My view on the programming in the 2004 Festival, since I lost control of both the events I personally curated and others and the two parts I co-curated ended up with too many artists selected and added afterward by other co-curators I worked with. Some of the additional artists were better than others, and unfortunately, those that were selected but couldn’t come, in some instances, were better than those that did come. That’s the luck of the draw. I swore never to work with these people ever again, mostly because our aesthetics and ethics are different and I conceded to things I wouldn’t otherwise do in programming. They also got rid of the jury process I set up in 2003 and created a programming committee made up of staff and board members, and I feel that programming by committee doesn't create a very strong cohesive vision, it seemed fractured and discontinuous/ disconnected. Much decision by committee ends up being ineffective, as everyone concedes to others and then nothing as powerful comes out creatively, especially because many of the people on the committee had no artistic background. Curators should be given more control over the creative vision of their event and / or a programming committee should be made up of other artists and curators as a sounding board only.

This group of curators chose too many repeat artists (including in the events I co-curated, but not by me), making it seem like the group had no new or original ideas and just kept having their friends and creating a personal clique in the festival, like one big love fest. Some curators chose to invite artists from their family, friends, teachers and academic supervisors, this to me is nepotism, but I was unable to stop this situation since I was given less authority when I came back in 2004, so my limited decision-making power and the catch 22 of co-curating with board members (my boss) made things worse.

My view on the process from the beginning of involvement with the festival in 2004, from a curatorial standpoint, is that I felt constrained by the programming committee both as a curator and producer. I felt like I had to clear everything with the committee and that my decisions, creative and organizationally were not valued – I lacked autonomy to do my work and that I was being controlled and that when I did make autonomous decisions I often got called on it or mildly reprimanded because the ED was threatened by me and thought I was trying to take the festival away from his inexperienced and incompetent hands, and on some level he was correct, because he had no clue what he was doing and the only reason he was kept in position was that he had money to keep the festival afloat and he had connections in high places that served the festival well. So no one called him on his poor decision-makign skills and while they wanted my skills and for me to do the work no one wanted me to call him on his shit or suggest he be removed from his powerful position. Having also board members who were also self-intersted didn't help either.

There's more but I'm not sure I care enough to continue anymore, since I've learned, moved on and am having new exciting endeavours I'm working on....