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.

***

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.