Unauthorised Exhibition-Making

‘Brand Innovations for Ubiquitous Authorship: A group exhibition stolen by Eva and Franco Mattes’, Carroll/Fletcher,  London, 23 April – 11 May 2013. Curated by Eva and Franco Mattes.

'SELF-LOVE', Copenhagen Place, London, 19 July 2011. Curated by Jennifer Chan

SELF-LOVE was directly inspired by Ben Vickers’ inclusion of works without permission in NO PERMISSION / ABSOLUTE HEARTBREAK (see the earlier post on that exhibition below). Chan explained in the press release that  “[SELF-LOVE] extends attempts at non-consensual exhibition of iconic artwork in No Permission: Absolute Heartbreak…” What’s interesting to point out here is that Chan didn’t attend Vickers’ exhibition in person but viewed it later online via the New Gallery website. She also chose to use the press release as a means to explain that the exhibition was “a selfish endeavour to exhibit emerging web-based art without ever contacting selected artists.” On her reasons for doing this, Chan has said that “it's both homage and at that point I wanted to provoke the community a bit as the culture of artistic peer support and back-patting seems to express itself through non-verbal gestures like re-blogging on Tumblr, ‘Like’-ing and tagging on Facebook. (It still is this way).” Not only did she characterizing the exhibition as a physical act of re-blogging, but she also represented “the social dimension of the internet as a public domain.” She re-made web-based artworks based on documentation she had seen of them online “as a way of challenging authorship after work has been released into the public domain and dispersed through image aggregators like [T]umbler.” Each work was selected because of its interest in how emotion is actualized and experienced on or via the internet. They included Cxzy.biz by Kaja Cxy Andersen, a website rendition of the Facebook interface which functions as a way of expressing the artist’s internal emotions and Kristin Smallwood’s Maximum Exposure, a website and video which simulates the characteristics of experience with the computer interface through fictional narratives.

‘When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/ Venice 2013’, Fondazione Prada, Ca’ Corner della Regina, Venice, 1 June – 3 November 2013. Curated by Germano Celant in dialogue with Thomas Demand and Rem Koolhaas.

This post looks at a recent example which takes unauthorised exhibition-making to a new extreme. ‘When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/ Venice 2013’ was an attempt to literally remake the exhibition ‘When Attitudes Become Form (Works – Concepts – Processes – Situations – Information), which was curated by Harald Szeemann and which took place from 22 March to 23 April 1969. New walls and floors were constructed inside of the Ca’ Corner to replicate the exact dimensions and design of the Kunsthalle Berne in Switzerland. Artworks from the 1969 exhibition  – made up of a mixture of originals, replicas and markers where the works have been lost – were placed as precisely as possible in their original locations.

Putting aside the sheer thrill of being able to supposedly step back in time, to physically experience an exhibition which most visitors would have only read or heard about, there are is one, somewhat disappointing predicament which appears to have been brushed over in published reviews to date.  In the exhibition catalogue Germano Celant makes a point of explaining that an incredible amount of research was carried out to produce  ‘When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/ Venice 2013’, from the examination of Szeemann’s archives, to firsthand accounts by artists and documents, to photographic and written traces in the Kunsthalle Bern library (“Why and How: A Conversation with Germano Celant”, in When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/ Venice 2013, p. 403). The catalogue itself overflows with essay contributions by a dream team of curators and writers in addition to Celant – Claire Bishop, Boris Groys, Charles Esche, Jens Hoffman, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Terry Smith and Jan Verwoert – just to name a few. Notwithstanding these factors, absolutely no mention has been made in the exhibition or the catalogue of the other seminal exhibition of 1969, ‘Op Losse Schroeven (Situations and Cryptoestructures)’, which was held at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and which opened one week before ‘When Attitudes Become Form’. The fundamental importance of ‘Op loss Schroeven’ to understanding the importance of ‘When Attitudes Become Form’ was explored in a book entitled ‘Exhibiting the New Art: ‘Op Losse Scrhoeven’ and ‘When Attitudes Become Form’ 1969’, edited by Christian Rattemeyer and published in 2010 by Afterall Books. In his introduction Rattemeyer explained that:

Less known today, yet equally prominent at the time, was an exhibition with which ‘When Attitudes Become Form’ shares a considerable history… . Organised by Wim Beeren (1928-2000)…  ‘Op Losse Schroeven’ had much in common with ‘When Attitudes Become Form’ and referred to the Bern exhibition on the title page of its catalogue. Both exhibitions included many of the same artists, were reviewed together in several publications and were perceived as companion shows by contemporary critics. They shared organisational resources (Szeemann had a larger budget and routed many artists via Amsterdam so that they could install their works for ‘Op Losse Schroeven’), as well as intellectual and conceptual traits. However, despite the remarkable overlap of artists, travel schedules and studio visits, and despite the fact that Szeemann’s notes on organising ‘When Attitudes Become Form’ were published in the catalogue for ‘Op Losse Schroeven’, the two exhibitions have fared rather differently in their long-term reception, with Szeemann’s show claiming a considerably larger share of the historical record. Due to its somewhat longer roster of artists, better funding and publicity, catchier title, and in so small measure due to the subsequent prominence of Szeemann himself, ‘When Attitudes Become Form’ assumed the role of the representative exhibition of that moment, while ‘Op Losse Schroeven’ has almost disappeared from history, its reputation largely confined to Dutch-speaking historians and audiences. (“ ‘Op Losse Schroeven’ and ‘When Attitudes Become Form’ 1969” in Exhibiting the New Art: ‘Op Losse Schroeven’ and ‘When Attitudes Become Form’ 1969, London: Afterall, 2010, pp. 15-17). 

Rattemeyer also contributed an essay to the catalogue for ‘When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/ Venice 2013’, but other than his use of a single footnote which mentions this book, the relevance of ‘Op Losse Schroeven’ is not mentioned, not by Rattemeyer, nor by any of the other contributors. This predicament demonstrates the myth-making power of exhibitions and all of the writing that comes with them, catalogues, wall texts, press releases and so on. Arguably, both ‘When Attitudes Become Form’ and ‘When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/ Venice 2013’ are exemplary exhibitions, precisely because of their success at writing and re-writing (art) history.

In light of the recent opening of the latest Venice Biennale, here's a Venice Biennale-themed unauthorised exhibition from the past. This one comes from 1948. It's the earliest case (so far) in my unauthorised exhibition-making archives. 

No photos found as yet, but click here for a lovely rant written by Giorgio De Chirico as the debacle unfolded. 

'No Permission/Absolute Heartbreak', New Gallery, London, 23 September 2010. Curated by Ben Vickers. 

The premise of NO PERMISSION / ABSOLUTE HEARTBREAK was to emulate the rapid production that takes place online. The relevance of the cut and paste culture of the internet to the exhibition was explained by Vickers in the press release: “The transmission of image, the sharing of work, and the constant reference to form through the portal of [G]oogle image search, renders our attempt to claim an autonomous practice futile. Our relationship with the net has become ubiquitous and as a result the subsequent production of work cannot exist or begin to sustain itself without its points of reference.”

Vickers selected “works culled from the online archive of art history and contemporary production”, but did not ask the authors of those works for permission to include them in his exhibition. Rather, their works were “downloaded, reproduced and restaged, curated to transmit a feeling, to summon an atmosphere, one of HEARTBREAK.”