What experience in your life best prepared you for curatorial work, particularly exhibition-making?
I'm not primarily interested in exhibition making. I operate from the position that standardized exhibitions are an exhausted format, and that audiences are either oblivious to the narratives that curators propose, or that they are over-influenced by them and see groupings of artworks not as individual voices in proximity, but as singing the same song. Some would call this a lack of confidence in the viewer (who might be reconsidered as an active participant/producer in the attention economy), or say that I've just seen too many mediocre exhibitions, both of which are true. Ultimately I find it more productive to start from a position of not-exhibitions and only move in that direction when necessary.
A number of curators have been influential in my thinking, starting with the Richard Flood, Philippe Vergne and Douglas Fogle, who were at the Walker Art Center when I lived in Minneapolis, and later Ralph Rugoff, Renny Pritikin, Matthew Higgs, and Kate Fowle who were teaching at CCA when I studied curatorial practice. Following school, Sylvie Gilbert and then, later, Kitty Scott at the Banff Centre. And finally, Benjamin Weil and Raimundas Malašauskas who I worked with at Artists Space.
For whom do you curate?
I'm concerned with the production of space, and I hold the idea that artists aren't just producing objects but are defining spaces (zones of thought) which "structure relations" and define a "field of action" (to borrow two phrases from Lefebvre). I think space and its production is an area where artists and curators can meet and work together. The kind of space, and what actions or interactions might be possible there, are one of the key factors that determines the whom.
I'm interested in thinking about, but not acting on behalf of, multiple or overlapping publics. We certainly see a braiding of parallel communities at Kadist, here in San Francisco. I think of the artworld as a cluster of related sub-cultures, but that we collectively (and I'm no exception) suffer from a cultural imaginary that art is relevant to a broader culture, even forming some of its root structure. I find myself aligned with an idea borrowed from Sartre, that the "most challenging and productive exercise is to write for two widely different audiences simultaneously."
Can art exist outside of the art world?
I hold several, and in some ways contradictory, ideas of what art is and how it's meant to function or live in the world. Like Gramsci's idea of retaining a pessimism of the intellect and an optimism of the will, we need skepticism and criticism about the potential of art's received value, meaning, and experience, while also serving as an advocate, interpreter and host to its milieu and critical frameworks. Art requires us to think in multivalent, and even non sequitur ways about its presentation and reception.
I think the most successful kinds of art that exist in the outside world are only thought of as art by the artworld. I contributed to a book called Byproduct, edited by Marisa Jahn, that identifies artworks embedded in alien environments such as businesses or government. It's unclear whether these projects should be understood as barnacles or medicine, but in many cases art and artists are understood as a foreign (invasive) culture representing a disjointed or conflicting set of values. It's in the instances that they're grafted on, or assimilated that they seem to function best, but also the moment that they begin to lose their identity as art.
Do curators make artists or do artists make curators?
The complex nexus of interests and forces inherent in the artworld make the artist/curator relationship symbiotic, or at least reciprocal. I acknowledge a somewhat hazy notion of artistic integrity, which for me means that the crucial choices, the ones that most directly affect an artist's work, should be made (whenever possible) by the artist, not by the curator. That said I also don't believe artists are geniuses, nor that they are the only creative mind at work in the production of an art project or event. I've witnessed too many good ideas (that get adopted) come from the preparators or the assistants to think otherwise.
What ethical considerations have most significantly impacted your curatorial thinking, if any?
I take it as an ethical imperative not to think or act in an authoritarian way. To this end I approach artworks and critical ideas dialectically, and contextually. That said, everything in moderation can also be a kind of extreme. It's important to act and think against ones tastes or inclinations often and repeatedly. A fairly even distribution of power helps. I work horizontally and collaboratively as much as possible.
Joseph Del Pesco is the Program Director at the Kadist Foundation in San Francisco.
