In Conversation with Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen

Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen is a Canadian, Stockholm based, artist. Her work evokes participatory readings. Puzzle is a piece where the audience is invited to assemble a monochrome puzzle; and Car is a work in progress where the artist collaborated with other professionals form the artistic field, in creating the audiovisual context making up the piece.

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Maria Efstathiou: In all your pieces’ nature and process, you are somehow eliminating the curator from the process of the exhibition event, by making self-, or pre-, curated work.

Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen: I don’t take the curator intentionally out of the process. I think that the artist is also a curator. If an artist is working with an art piece and art in itself, then s/he is working with the art object. From modernism we moved onwards to something else; if we are working beyond the object, then we are working with the room, and from the room with relational aesthetics, therefore with people. Then this for me becomes an equation which has to be taken into account when making an art piece that is not just giving essence to the object, but thinking beyond that; the architecture, the space, the audience, the people, how it’s going to be received and all those knots are as important as the object. To think of an art piece without an audience is like writing a book without a reader… then it has no existence.

M.E.: Your work is an apparent illustration of Roland Barthes The Death of the Author; you make yourself invisible in this production. In Car, you are presenting an actual car, nonetheless prepared for an audience; you disappear from the scene and you offer the experience to the viewer, you don’t terminate the piece but you offer it to the reader in order for it to exist through, and in, [a] narrated experience.

J.H.N.: I am playing with that issue and by extension questioning the notion of the viewer specific, moving from site specificity to how each viewer then becomes a site in itself with its own specificity; the way the work is being encountered, and how the viewers take in their own experience.

M.E.: I would say that your work is a “how to read and narrate art in the C21st” workshop. Your audience is given the opportunity to come in on a blank page- no prior information of your practice, or art for that matter- and narrate it, regardless of their demographic characteristics, and the experiences encountered in the space with the work would have similarities.

J.H.N.: What I find hard with dry conceptual art, is the lack of this notion. Sometimes the aesthetic elements are missing and it’s hard to trigger something into the viewer. If it is distant, then it’s hard to give place for a relationship between viewer and art work… it becomes more intellectual.

M.E.: In your displays people are invited to put the art together either physically or in abstractly. Do you approach these as participants or audience?

J.H.N.: I would call them a participatory audience. Participation requires conscious and active decision making. Taking part in something is about the course of what is happening. The term audience is too passive.

M.E.: The Unilever Series, 2006, at Tate Modern’ Turbine Hall by Carsten Höller, was an amazing spring of interaction; the narration could have taken a number of forms. In this movement being trotted, if as a viewer one doesn’t participate and take the art into their hands, then s/he cannot claim that to have seen what is on display… and perhaps “ to experience the art on display” would be more of an appropriate contemporary term for describing the exhibition experience.

J.H.N.: To see Carsten Höller’s piece in Tate Modern is to see the piece utilised. Seeing the objects [slides] alone as a free standing piece, would be absolutely misunderstanding because the participatory audience is needed to give a function to all that space which he activated.

M.E.: Art behaves differently according to the cultural setting it is placed in. There are places where to show participatory pieces there would have to be host triggering the “aping” characteristic of the audience into experiencing participation. In previous waves there was almost a dictation of the art being precious. Having the Please Stand Behind the Line perception, created boundaries in the theatricality allocated to the viewer in the exhibition space.

J.H.N.: As an artist you take for granted that you try to trigger enough to suggest something with which the durable will be let, and expect the audience to follow.
This also lies in a matter of tradition and background. In count we’ve worked with the strict tradition of modernism not to touch. I know, for example, that when my parents see Car, their reaction will be “OK… what is this? Car songs… thank you” and they’d move on to the next piece, not coming closer to the work. But then again that is also an element I am currently working on: the impossibility of having the totality of the piece/ the narration which is happening. Car deals with that issue as well; if you are not taking part in the car ride you are also having an element of it as a participant in the rest of the audience. It becomes your own responsibility how much you want to encounter the piece. In video work, as a viewer you accept, this invisible agreement whether you are going to stay and watch it in its entirety or not. If you decide not to, then you accept that “I saw five minutes of this, I’ve had enough” or “I saw five minutes, it was great, I think I got it”. The entirety in Car lies in a limit of two or three people maximum who can take part at once. Then for the out-of-car-audience there is a narration outside the car, a back flash happening which might also be heard from inside the car; and then, it being heard inside the car is possible but uncertain. I am trying to put different layers to it, bits to grasp but not being capable of taking all of these in.

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In the established genres of art the code of conduct, along with aesthetics, are set, almost as in a manual of how to read these works. But in participatory art it’s different, for a new field is being entered for which the rules are still to be set.In situations, such as Tino Sehgal’s, first encounters are awkward, almost uncomfortable. The viewer observes the interpreters chanting a phrase over and over, or moving in slow motion as if you had before you, in visual aesthetics, a three dimensional Bill Viola piece. Live aesthetics require a collaborative input and approach in order to come alive in the frame they are intended to, both during process and during display. The viewer is bound to feel disoriented and look for the end of the twine to untangle. Live aesthetics, as Mikael Scherdin puts it, require a collaborative input and approach, during both process and display, in order to come alive in the frame they are intended to.

Instructions: cut up words, if required modify sensibly,

move and mix as desired, add others, and read out loud.

&

cut	copy	paste
industry	everyone	products	craved for
home-housed	assembly process	eliminate costs	feasible
machinery	ready-cut	quality	capabilities
craftsman
surface	realised	right to	democratise
knowledge of “how”	supply	components	“towards”
“everything for everyone”
low cost	labour	oneself	parts
directions shit	built	dream
buy	box	guidelines	includes
labelled	illustrated	bits-and-pieces	perform
yourself	temporary workshop	habitat
arrive	goal	outcome	make it your own
easy	basic abilities	available tools

Organisational Breakdown of Nymålat

An exhibition Presented in Galleri Öst, Konstacademin, Stockholm, Sweden, as a celebration of the HötorgsStipendiater tenth running year.
Curated by Lisa Boström and Maria Efstathiou
Ptotos © Dag Sundberg

All which comes to be prevalent in my mind commencing our first encounter with the art firm (Pierre Gullet de Monthoux, 2004) which we directed and coordinated for a while, is that in other people’s theories it all sounds so magical and idealistically intellectual, when in reality it is all too pragmatic and stale. Beuys had a vision for a “[…] new economy of Central Europe […] based on the human side of business”, and Hirsch described the cultural industries so well (INFORMS, 2000, Vol. 11); culture has as a base the social evolution, which through time came to involve industries, assembly lines and commodities. As stated by Paul M. Hirsch “… fine art and popular culture both exist in social environments which commingle elements of art and commerce, it has rendered and intellectual service” (Hirsch, 2000). The abovementioned industries lead to the production of “cultural products” (Hirsch, 2000), which are non material (Katja Lindqvist, 2007). “For economic modelers, this poses a question of how people will allocate their leisure time…” (Hirsch, 2000). It all seems so poetic on paper, but in action it is so stiff and real, it kills the magic. “Art as Global Industry, Art as Political Power, Art as Atmosphere, Art as Social Relations, Art as Economy, Art as Creative Policy” (Pierre Gullet de Monthoux, 2004) … it’s all too utopian for the realms of this breakdown.
In this cultural commodity there were a number of factors building up to the final product, and even though personally I find the marketing and “selling” of such events to be of a much more interesting calibre, it all has to have some process before arriving at a product/event. The process in this organisation, takes up the viewpoint of the identification and illustration of an organisational structure followed by an organisational onsite decoding of the installation days, and the factor of getting organised when working bilingually in a unilingual project (the creativity it requires and the problems this issue poses).

Organisational structure
A schema drawn by Gullet de Monthoux Pierre’s theories, comes to illustrate any production, let alone Nymålat, perfectly. Everyone involved in such a project- artists, curators, technicians and audience- are working with epicentre the art, and to be more specific the vernissage of the art to the public. If there had to be drawn a graph for the climax of this and any (art) project, the hype point would be indicated as the opening evening, towards which all prior events- agreements, studio visits, budget, advertising, putting together installation team, press, catalogue etc- built up to, and all receding issues smooth out and bring back to point zero.
Two young, freelance, student curators, Lisa & Maria, agree to set off for the realisation of an exhibition project, carried out for Hötorget organisation with director, the founder of the organisation, Bertil H. Schulze.
The control was an issue dealt with by Bertil. Cooperation was something which needed to be established between all elements of the group involved, including Bertil, L & M, ten artists, three assistants, two onsite and two offsite technicians, PR agent, advertising agency, event planner, two photographers, writer and editor/proof reader, and venue people. Coordination of the project was primarily handled by the curators. Culture was the characteristic of the commodity produced and on display. Hierarchy was something the curators in this case decided to avoid- from their step on the ladder downwards-. Innovation only came to be realised of after the vernissage, commencing the comments of people such as Niclas Östlind’s that it was the only “really curated” exhibition in Galleri Öst, Konstacademin, ever seen by the latter. The roles of the leader and manager of Nymålat, fluctuated from the initiating organisation and Bertil, to the curators. Management of the project was also a fluctuating role between Bertil and the curators. Motivation in hard times was the statement that “a successful project is one which is realised” (Katja Lindqvist, autumn seminars 2007, Art Management Module II, Stockholm University); for the artists motivation was the experience and the exhibition which would give them visibility once more, and for everyone else involved motivation was the salary they would get at the end of the project. Organisation and organising were issues the curators dealt with, in collaboration with Bertil, the advertising agency, the PR agent and the event planner; so organisation and organising was filtered through the curators at the primary and concluding stages, having other elements’ guiding in the formation of it. The politics in this project were too solid to deal with, so as curators we merely accepted past and facts which come to be part of constituting Hötorget and the nature of the exhibition they initiated. Power was clearly a trophy of Hötorget, who allocated it momentarily and temporarily to curators and artists accordingly. The resources were a matter which Bertil undertook, with help and guidance on the budget from the curators. The people involved were not mere staff but team players. The strategy, fluid and intuitive. And tradition of the grand allocated to graduating Mejan students by Hötorget goes back ten years; of the organisation, fourteen.( the terms in block are taken from Katja Lindqvist’s notes on Sub-area Management during the Art Management Module I, Spring 2007)

Organisational Onsite Decoding
To break down an organisational form, which is not a formulated one but one which followed the course of events and came to existence in a cognitive manner, I will have to work backwards and narrate all which I feel important in this disassembling towards an understanding. Hence I wish to begin at the installation days and the events during those decisive and hectic hours (of stress-filled days).
Nymålat was well underway and had been in production since May 2007. The load of work arrived in waves, beginning from September 2007 and then with each week which followed, there was added a wave slap of more work, and therefore more stress swashed into this production. So on the 12th November 2007, when we moved into Galleri Öst for installation, first acquaintances with the team players were well in the past and there was an already established relationship with the people who were present.
Meeting everyone prior to the installation - since this was the most vital period of the project- and establishing friendly relationships with each and everyone of them created a friendly atmosphere, rather than a faceless production. The assurance of the presence of such an atmosphere, came at the vernissage evening, when one of the artists who were installing for the past four days, run after us on exiting the venue at 22:00 and said “this has been a really great experience, this has been really good”. This was proceeded by similar comments from the other artists during the evening. Was our inexperience a bonus to the relationship building between the team/group? And if yes, could we come to keep it in future jobs? Or is this a mere characteristic of the individuals who were curators in this case?
Whatever the answers to the above questions, we’ve come to the conclusion that discharging the role of the curator to a more approachable one, where the curator is not overwhelmed by the status of the title they bare, makes them better team elements. If the curator descents from the elusive cloud of the title status, then hierarchies are erased and are not an issue of friction in a production.
Our aim for these four installation days as curators, was to provide an environment in which everyone present would feel happy to work and would be productive. As the human instinct dictated, this meant supplying for the human basic needs: food and drink; give everyone their own space; be ready to supply and assist them with things they might need; and erase any sort of hierarchical structure between the ones present.
The division of labour was not done in a hierarchical or rational manner (which according to the sociologist Erich Fromm, rational and logic are not included in the genius, instinctive, virtues of our species, but the man-made ones required to be in place for the smooth functioning of this world), as described by organisational theorists, such as H. Simon where the ones in the high positions decide the “what” and the ones in the lower positions supply for the “how”. In actual facts, high and low positions were virtually inexistent. Apart from the characteristic job titles given to everyone- for convenience of all who were onsite knowing what each one of the other onsite people were responsible for in the space- there where “what” and “how decisions taken by everyone. This was due to the fact that we worked towards a quest of pleasing and meeting our requirements, which at the time came to translate into being practical and realistic about the possibilities and the actions which were to be taken towards a satisfactory outcome. After all, the managerial decisions one in the post of a curator- or art director and project manager- takes, come to constitute, or even enhance, the concept of the project (an idea Linus Elmes supports). Through the “Action-Vision-Desirable Result” (Katja Lindqvist’s illustration of a plan), intuition along with rationale, came to characterise the production of Nymålat, in a satisficing manner, as H. Simon had coined as a concept of administrative behaviour. “Organisational change” (Pierre Gullet de Monthoux, 2004) is something we might be able to claim to have achieved in this project.
Having a good personal relationship with the people involved seemed to be a must component and also something which we arrived at rather intuitively, without thinking that it was a “have to” burden; I was later on explained of the Swedish diplomacy, and the importance of staying at a neutral standpoint in situations, which came to give more validating sense to this “getting along with everyone” characteristic which we came to experience. But I think everyone will agree that keeping friction offsite is the best policy to keep in wish to see a project realised. From prior experience in the cultural field, creating hidden agendas which one aims to use within the project at a later stage, only brings the project to a premature closure, and hence failure.

Working Bilingually
We are all familiar with the phrase “lost in translation”; both of us- the curators- got lost back and forth and in loops. Being in a Swedish setting- working for a Swedish organisation, with Swedish artists and technicians, in a Swedish venue, with Swedish press, PR, advertising agency etc- and not speaking the language, could be described as near suicide. Working in the mist of two languages, where the formal one was carried throughout, made me (the non-Swedish-speaking curator) somewhat numb. This issue called for creativity in order to be faced constructively.
Lisa being the one who could communicate on a local level with people involved in the project, faced a serious load of communication with the PR agent, the advertising agency, the technicians and so on, leaving me in a paralysing position; creativity on our behalf should be employed in order to deal with the issues which were pending, one of them in urgent matter being the catalogue. Therefore, the questions to be directed at Bertil for the interview text to be included as one of the main essays in the catalogue, and the catalogue texts for the artists, were written first in English, and then performed and translated into Swedish.
As the exhibition’s audience was identified as primarily Swedish, we concluded that the best way to divide labour in this stressing situation, would be to write the texts in English, and pass them on for translations into Swedish; it seemed like a good way of eliminating pending work. The essence was there, it only had to be put into another language and another context. Did this come to create more work? Was the translating issue more than finalising a draft? It proved that one of us not being able to work in the final/formal language of the exhibition was an issue we did not account for as we should have. This bilingual element was an unforeseen hurdle for the both of us, as we are used to handling matters in two languages, being on the course at the University, and leading our lives parallel to this. We had not accounted for outside people’s comfort in the language used, and didn’t think that perhaps the language we are used to communicating in would come as a forced effect on locals within the near periphery of the exhibition.
Most of the meetings we had (with the advertising agency, the PR officer, the event agent, the artists and so on) were in English, and as the matter of fact some took this form rather forcefully. It began to be a tiring issue for everyone, having to switch from one language to the other; and all this just for a sole person in the project…
And here I come to ponder: isn’t the art world supposed to be an international establishment? Isn’t English the official language of the art world?

Catalogue Texts
Admittedly, some queries arose regarding the catalogue artists’ presentation texts. Upon conclusion of each of the ten studio visits, our closing lines included the fact that the artists were actually going to be paid and that this was accounted for in the budget, and that there was a catalogue being produced with artists’ presentations. At the time of the studio visits, we thought that writing these presentations ourselves, would prove to be exhausting- and in the end, it verified our worries- but what we hadn’t thought of was the budget and the money a writer would need to carry out such a task. Therefore, in the panic of the catalogue production, we took the decision of writing the texts ourselves, after all.
In this panic, the artists were asked to proof read/approve both the English and the Swedish texts, creating an opening to the vault of our stress and allowing them to enter it.
Artists seem not too bother a great deal about a presentation written on them. The task of them approving it, could prove to be a chore for them to carry out. They would care more if criticism was written on their work and practice, but a mere presentation, which could end up looking as a praise of their practice, is of least importance to them. When they come to disagree with it, then they rationalise this gap in finding a reflection of themselves in the text as a product and a turnout of the writer’s -in this case the curator’s- lack of knowledge/experience/etc.

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There are no answers to rhetoric questions as there are no formulas in going about matters revolving in the cultural industry sector. The only suggestions which arrive from this breakdown, are to be open to adaptation and be lenient in change, to take one thing at a time and be creative in stressful times, to evaluate every action, to find a good partner to trot alongside with whom you complete a persona puzzle, to choose you fights -as Lisa frequently said in killing the stress- and to put yourself on the same step of the ladder as the ones you are working with.

Jester of all Trades

Last spring I saw the project of the International Curating Management Education 2006-2007 class, at Stockholm University, and the term “jester of all trades” was imprinted well in my mind as the role of the curator; the “scapegoat”, as I like to call it on other instances. Nonetheless, both terms bare a sarcastic characteristic to their imagery. Is the actual title a joke…? Is it a fabrication of some preceding people in the art arena, who merely wanted to justify their somewhat unimportant roles? And is this “filling in the gaps” role an unimportant one, really? Being the tack which hold a bridge in place and in one piece, might indicate a small size but a vital role being carried out…

From my perspective on this, the role of the curator in rather big institutions or organisations, in the near future, will be more accurately defined in nature: space/venue curator, curator of programme, curator of educational programme, curator of administration, and so on.
And as the cultural industry grows, there will be more money invested in cultural productions and commodities, making funds easier to be found by freelance curators, where they will set up offices (curatorial teams and enterprises with stable revenue and funds) allowing the freelancers to concentrate on what they wish.

Artifising: to commingle, talk and make around the arts

This is an archive of issues within the arena of the arts; issues which are prevailing. Used -or/and to be used- material/projects, ideas and perceptions are all collected here; nothing of these is indented to be presented only here, in digital form alone. This is the collecting hub of the “memorabilia” of presented projects, in which I have been actively involved or have initiated.

The lack of ability- in some cases- to engage in art and cultural productions, is from my standpoint the result of poor pedagogic support around the subject on display, which was what led to this blog. The level and quality of information provided for the viewer has been criticised one too many times, resulting in the addition of “educational” departments within institutions.
-How much importance do we pay to information (printed on walls, leaflets, catalogues etc) related to the exhibition?
-What is the role of the educational/pedagogic departments in institutions, and how have they remoulded the institutional scene?
-Could we come to help one another in the reading and experiencing of an exhibition?
-What role (and at what importance) do hosts within a space play? Do we seek information from them? Do we feel secure in any manner due to their presence?

“Art is for everyone” or is at least intended for everyone. Not much different from a book, it should be accessible and inviting to a wide audience (speaking with my Cypriot background in view here).
Making art more accessible does not only include taking notions such as “Stand Behind the Barrier” & “Please Do Not Touch” away from the display, but also providing the audience with the reading apparatus and the appropriate equipment to see the art from an ally’s point of view: to stand with it on the same side of the field and play with it on the same team, as oppose to playing against it.