Artist/curator Anton Vidokle reworks an excellent lecture on the problems of curator/artists in the latest issue of e-flux journal
I feel that whereas artists’ engagement with a range of social forms and practices not normally considered part of the vocabulary of art serves to open up the space of art and grant it increased agency, curatorial and institutional attempts to recontextualize their own activities as artistic–or generalize art into a form of cultural production–has the opposite effect: they shrink the space of art and reduce the agency of artists.
Curators claiming the mantle of art for their shows is an issue at least as old as the 1960s, but it has been exacerbated, Anton says, by the demise of the critic’s power. All in all, a sharp read. [via afc]
Related: Gregory Battcock and ‘The Essential Triad’