Between 2001 and 2004 the Swedish Curator Maria Lind was director of the Kunstverein in Munich. The following interview was conducted by artist and curator Paul O’Neill at theMunich Kunstverein in October 2004.

Paul O’Neill:

How would you describe your current practice?

Maria Lind:

As from early on, I am now very influenced by artistic practice, so many of the ideas and methods I use come from looking at work and talking to artists. I would like to underline thatthe starting point is the art and artworks themselves. I am also interested in context and how you relate to a specific situation, whether it is institutional, social-political or something else.More than ever it is important for me as curator when I start a project, to have a feeling that I cannot predict what the outcome will be. There has to be an element of exploration, ofresearch, of realising something new. I am also less interested in display as the main modus operandi. I want to go beyond display, and if you look at the programme at Kunstverein Munich, you cansee that the pre and the post is often as important, if not more important, than what we traditionally see as the moment of art in an institution; which is the display moment.

Paul O’Neill:

For the project What If: Art on the Verge of Architecture and Design at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, you invited artist Liam Gillick to participate as a ‘filter’, through which theartworks would take shape in the design and layout of the exhibition. Having an artist make exhibition installation decisions meant that certain dynamics happened within the design ofthe show that may not have been possible if the curator did them. How affective was this as a curatorial strategy and is this a model that you have worked with again, even in amodified form?

Maria Lind:

When we did What If: Art on the Verge of Architecture and Design, Liam was involved at an early stage and the filter role was, as you say, to work with me on the layout of theexhibition, but also to be a partner in a ping-pong game. Some of the ideas that were actually carried through in terms of the method came from our discussions, not only aboutdesign but also about preparation for the exhibition. One result of our discussions was that a year before the show opened, nine artists who had dealt with art on the verge of architectureand design came together in Stockholm for a brainstorming weekend. Eventually I selected the artists and the artworks, and Liam signed the installation design. We have recently donesomething related here at the Kunstverein. It was a project entitled Totally Motivated: A Socio-cultural Manoeuvre in 2003 which was not only a collaboration between a curator and artist,but also between a group of curators themselves. There were five of us, people who were or had been assistant curators like Katharina Schlieben, Tessa Praun and Ana Paula Cohen, the curatorSøren Grammel and myself. We wanted to do something collectively and we realised that the notion of amateur culture, non-professional art making, was an interesting field and we invited a group of artists. Everybody had an input as to the selection of artists and all the curators and all the artists met prior to the exhibition here at the Kunstverein. We actually asked Michael Beutler to design something over-arching for the big space, and Carla Zaccagnini as well. Theyended up doing the floor and the ceiling. Carla Zaccagnini made a huge graphite drawing on paper, covering the whole of the second floor, like a Max Ernst frottage, which left tracesnot only all over the place in the Kunstverein, but in all our houses as well, as graphite doesn’t stick to paper. Michel Beutler made a huge wooden ceiling in his typical do-it-yourself style.

So here again, the artists were somehow responsible for the overall design, but in discussion with the curators. I think it is often easier for artists to accept, to be part of other artists’overall designs than if it is the design of the curator and in Totally motivated the collaboration between the artists worked well.

Paul O’Neill:

In the last fifteen to twenty years there has been an unprecedented interest in the defining contemporary art curating. How do you think the role of the contemporary art curator has changed during this period and what are the dominant forms of curatorial practice that have developed during this time?

Maria Lind:

I find it a little bit tricky to answer, as I cannot really say so much about how it has developed, but what I can say is that mainstream curating is still dominated by institutionallogic. It is not following art and artists and this is a problem. I also think that the market has an astonishingly big influence on curatorial practice. This is something we don’t like totalk about but it is definitely there and it often has corrupting influence. If you look at the programme at the Kunstverein a majority of the artists we work with don’t show withgalleries, they don’t sell at all and this is unusual for a contemporary art institution. Not that anybody is collaborating in the sense of sleeping with the enemy, but I think that we shouldoften be a little bit more wary of these things than we are. Mainstream curating is mostly happening in the bigger institutions and it’s easy to do. It is a formula that you quicklydiscover and can imitate. Most of the time it works, but it’s not particularly interesting as it rarely develops new ideas and doesn’t push anything further. I think it would be great ifpeople could take more risks.

Paul O’Neill:

Although the commercial art market informs curatorial practice, but do you think there has been a development of dominant forms of curating within a curatorial market?

Maria Lind:

There is definitely a market, and the dominant form of curating is the type of mainstream curating that I just mentioned. Then there are value systems and exchange systems whichare not directly commercial, but which involve as much value, so to speak. That is obviously to do with which curators get to do such prestigious projects and so on. There are peoplewho are more frequently appearing in those circuits than others and that is also problematic, particularly in the Biennale circuit.

Paul O’Neill:

In her book The Power of Display1 Mary Anne Staniszewski highlights a kind of art historical ‘amnesia’ towards innovative exhibitionary display practices of the past, in particular thelaboratory years from 1920s to the 50s and the curatorial role-played by people such as Alexander Dorner, Frederick Kiesler, El Lissiztsky, Herbert Bayer, Lilly Reich, Alfred H. Barr etc. Projects that you have you beeninvolved in such as Totally motivated: A Socio- cultural Manoeuvre and Telling Histories: An Archive and Three Case Studies at the Kunstverein in 2003, appear to haveaddressed a kind of amnesia. Do you think this amnesia has affected the way we perceive contemporary art curating and how do you think curators could address this repressedhistory?

Maria Lind:

I think it definitely has effected it, but via negativa. Most of us haven’t really been aware of these things and have partly re-invented the wheel again. On the one hand this is sad, on the other good not to know everything because that can inhibit you and create a lot of anxiety. However, I think we need to look more at these older projects. I amcurious myself and, as you have said, we have tried to address some of these issues here at the Kunstverein. With Totally motivated: A Socio-cultural Manoeuvre it was more a focus on a type of culture that was very present in the seventies and which has now been pushed to the side or brushed under the carpet somehow: the amateur and activist relatedpractice rather than particular exhibitions or projects. Telling Histories: An Archive and Three Case Studies on the other hand, looked at three key exhibitions in the history of the Kunstverein, one from the seventies, one from the eighties and one from the nineties, all of them having caused a heated local debate. Søren Grammel, Ana Paula Cohen andmyself were interested in investigating what these reactions were and what caused them. We looked at the 1970 exhibition Poetry must be made by all; Transform the World whichwas an entirely documentary exhibition about some of the art movements of the early twentieth century, where art and life were placed side by side. The students at the academyin Munich made an additional part to this show and they had, at that moment, recently rioted against the conservatism of the academy, which at that time still had professors who hadbeen acting Nazis. This exhibition caused such controversy that the Kunstverein was eventually closed. The second exhibition was the 1986 Dove sta Memoria by Gerhard Metz,which was discussed because of its use of Nazi iconography. The third was Andrea Fraser’s A Society of Taste, from 1993, where she used what later has become her brand ofinstitutional critique, namely a Bourdieuesque investigation into the functioning of this particular type of art organisation, and how it interplays with the high bourgeoisie social life ofMunich. There was information in the show, but not the way you would normally encounter documentary material in an historical exhibition, namely as photographs on the walls, oras maquettes. There were a limited number of photographs and a fairly short explanatory text on each show and one round-table designed by Liam Gillick per show. Not a whole lot in the first instance. Then we showed all our archival material, in terms of files, all the photo documentation that exists and through this project we actually managed to assemble all the photographs; we had them labelled for the first time. All the catalogues were available that were produced here and all the press clippings. The way the archivewas organised was very much influenced by the Brazilian artist Mabe Bethonico’s choice. She made a kind of journey through the archive and divided it into collections: exhibitionfiles, catalogues, and photo-documentation and press clippings.

She also wrote some shorter texts and excerpted things from interviews she made with our administrator, who has been here for twenty-five years. Some of these texts werethen shown on the walls and she also set up a database, which is super useful, whereby any visitor to the show could ask how many times a particular artist has shown at the Kunstverein Munich, how many visitors the Kunstvereinhad in 1991, what were the exhibitions in 2000 and so on. There was always someone in the exhibition operating the computers, so people could get a printout of all of this.And in addition to this we also did three so-called talk shows – one for each of the exhibitions. We invited people who had been involved in the show at the time and alsosome younger people who we imagined would have interesting things to say about them. The talk shows were moderated by Søren Grammel and staged in the exhibition space as talk shows on television, filmed by several cameras, with an audience. They were later edited and they are now being sold as videos, as we decided not to make a catalogue.

Paul O’Neill:

At both Kunstverein Munich and Moderna Museet you encouraged a more flexible approach to the institutional framework, where the institution functions as a research centre,production site and a distribution channel. This is something that Charles Esche also tried at the Rooseum in Malmo with the museum operating as he puts it ‘part communitycentre, part laboratory and part academy.’ Are these isolated cases or are there new institutional models evolving and how do you see the primary function of the contemporary artinstitution?

Maria Lind:

There are definitely new models evolving and developing, but they have a hard time. I am not entirely optimistic in terms of the possibility for survival. One of the mostimportant things today for curatorial practice is duration - which things can go on for quite a while?

But to run these kinds of programmes like Charles Esche has at Rooseum or that we have done here, or what Catherine David has done at Witte de With in Rotterdam, has provento be difficult in all three places. None of us are continuing and that’s not a coincidence. There are other people elsewhere who are trying, but these are perhaps the clearestexamples. I hope that they can survive, but it’s hard because the audience are not prepared and it’s, for instance, quite difficult to get press coverage on these types of events,because the press is still needing and expecting maximum contact surface, meaning they more or less only write about big things which many people can see. So if it is a one-evening event or a series of events where a critic has to come back several times, it is very unlikely you will get coverage.

Paul O’Neill:

In some ways this comes back to the question of amnesia.

Maria Lind:

Yes, this practice is running much bigger risks of becoming forgotten, absolutely. I believe art criticism today doesn’t do its job, so to speak, in terms of developing formats or ways of writing that fit this kind of practice. We are not doing this because we think that this kind of practice is so new and experimental. It is a response to the art and if we are not responding to the art, then what’s the point? Much more interesting work is being done today in terms of curatorial practice than in terms of writing about art, but I hopethat the art writing will catch up somehow as writing offers a particular, often more precise, way of developing ideas. It probably won’t happen within the framework of the establishedart magazines.

Paul O’Neill:

In her essay Harnessing the Means of Production2, Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt critiques this new institutionalism for what she believes is as a co-option of process-led art practice into the curatorial framework of the institution. Do you think this is an unfair critical analysis?

Maria Lind:

When she talks about the co-option of process-led art practice she is mainly criticising institutions like Tate Modern and the ICA, London. She is also criticising Rooseum andthe Kunstverein, but less so than the others. Unlike her, I don’t think the institution itself, per se, is suspicious. I think you can do a lot of good things with the institution. Iam inclined to agree with Roberto Mangebeira Unger, the Latin American professor of law and activist, who is calling for a new institutionalism, a kind of renovation, andreinvention of the institutions. He argues that in both the neo-liberal societies and the social democratic societies the institutions are in crisis in general, but that we shouldn’t givethem up, we should reinvent them from the inside. But where Rebecca has a point is in terms of ‘duration’, because where have these attempts to reinvent the art institutionsurvived? The DIA art foundation maybe, but elsewhere it’s sadly rare. They might be allowed to exist for a while, or they mutate into something less challenging, somethingmore streamline, and that is a problem. I don’t think there is an inherent opposition between artists and institutions. Institutions have for a fact exploited artists, but not all institutionsdo it all the time. There are other ways of reconfiguring this relationship.

Paul O’Neill:

Time, rhythm and different speeds of activity seem to be crucial to your programme at the Kunstverein. One of the projects you instigated is the ‘Sputnik Model’ as a means of developing slower, on-going, and more long-term relationships with curators, artists, writers and cultural practitioners. How have these ‘Sputnik’ or ‘partner’ projects developed as partof your programme? And how have these partnerships affected the way in which the Kunstverein operates as an institution?

Maria Lind:

When we started, the curatorial team consisted of myself, Søren Grammel and Katharina Schlieben. And we invited fifteen people as Sputniks, most of them artists, a couple ofcritics and curators as well. And they were invited to travel with us; the word means travelling companion in Russian and we also asked them to think about a project, each of them,and that could be very different depending on who they are and what they do. They were all invited for a meeting here before the programme started in the winter of 2002. Mostof them came and since then the collective meetings have mostly been via email. Some have been very engaged and have interacted in various ways, other have kept quite quiet. Thatwas interesting because people who I thought would be more active were not, for various reasons. I think at least a couple of people felt uncomfortable with the very openness of thesituation, as there was no budget framework, time limit, or spatial limitation. The Sputnik project that has had the greatest impact on our everyday life working here at the Kunstvereinis Sustersic’s lobby, which is the first interface between the Kunstverein and the audience. It looks very different to how it used to look and is more inviting, comfortable and flexible thanit used to be.

This is where we do plenty of events, including lectures, screenings and talks and it is also where we hang out and where, at times, we work. Each member of the curatorialteam is on duty here in the lobby handing out information once a week and we also use it for our meetings. Another project that has followed us, literally, is Carey Young’s Viral Marketing, which until now has had four parts. She has made various interventions into the communications structure of the Kunstverein. The first was a ‘negotiation skills’course where we, as the team, were the raw material. A trainer, who is usually working for Siemens, spent a day with us trying to teach us how to negotiate better. In CareyYoung’s terms, of course the question of how effectively we are communicating and negotiating with sponsors, members, artists, audience, press and so on is something that has areal effect on how the Kunstverein is operating. Some of us felt this was a learning experience, some felt that they didn’t learn anything from the day.

This was documented one year after the event when Carey came back and made interviews with all of us and I liked that; she gave us some time to digest and then after ayear we could give a report on when and how we had possibly used these skills. There was a moment of reflection upon reflection.

Paul O’Neill:

In some way, there seems to be a parallel between archival research and the kind of ever-changing nature of the part played by serendipity and chance in the temporalprocess of exhibition making?

Maria Lind:

Yes, I think it is important to create a structure, but it mustn’t be too tight. There must always be room for manoeuvre, space for playing and the Sputnik model has providedsome of that, I think. We have given people time.

Paul O’Neill:

One of the things that struck me at the Kunstverein was how soft or quiet certain aspects of the display were and how busy other parts were. In the Teasing Mindsexhibition for example: Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s single video projection occupies a very large space on its own. The projected image is so vague and without the lights off itis almost not there. Whilst in the adjacent spaces with projects by Bik Van der Pol, Ibon Aranberri, Copenhagen Free University and others there is an abundance of information inthe form of literature, audio works, video interviews, seating etc. A very slow and contemplative space is produced next to a rather congested, hyperbolic display that demands a lot of involvement, reading, viewing and participating. Is this a dichotomy that you are conscious of?

Maria Lind:

It is very conscious. I think it is exciting to encounter things in different ways and this is one way of doing it. The video work in the first space by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster must be shown in a very bright space. It is an overexposed video itself, so you should almost not see it. It is like you have some dirt in your eye, which is annoying you,and then you realise there are some figures running around in a very bright landscape in the video. The Teasing Minds project evolves around ideas of failure, mistake andthinking something is missing.

Everybody has contributed different parts and I can say that somehow the whole is like what Philippe Parreno sometimes calls ‘narrative cloud’. So there is a narrative cloud goingon, but within this there is openness at the same time as there is quite a lot of precision. I wanted to include this very video, because of its otherness. You look at the video and youthink that must be people of vacation running around on a beach, having a good time.

You see some kind of constructions looking like beach huts or something. Then you realise, no, there is no sea here, no water what so ever, this must be something else, probably adesert. When you look closely at the title, you understand that it is a work from an American desert where they have made nuclear tests, which is of course a repressed part of recent history and it has paradoxically enough become atourist site. That was important for me to have as an entrance to the project and then this density in the middle, and then at the back, Andrea Geyer’s work. Parallax is a complex slide installation looking at notions of citizenship after September 11th from an American perspective, but using two big cities as its stage: New York and Los Angeles. She uses newspaper material, information from news agencies and photographs she has staged and taken, with a female protagonist moving through these two big cities. There you have something that is kind of missing in the discussion about how citizenship has changed in the US. You get bits and pieces but you don’t get it as a developed discourse. It isvery important that these two works are the beginning and the end of your trajectory through the space. The middle part is more about reading, listening and talking; a workshopspace. One thing does not exclude the other throughout the display. Art is there for discursive reasons, but art is also there for contemplation, it is there for critical investigation, like inAndrea’s work. I am distinctly not interested in judging things, for me its much more exciting to plays things off one another. It is important to mention that Teasing Minds is a curatorial collaboration between Bik Van der Pol, the architecture group Stealth, the Kunstverein curator Judith Schwarzbart and myself.

Paul O’Neill:

This brings me to the question of performativity, which can be understood as the constitution of a meaning through practice or a certain act. In the short essay published on the Kunstverein website: “Reflections on the concept of the performative” written by Katharina Schlieben, ‘performative-curating’ is represented as a dynamic process of mediationand self-reflexivity where the ‘per-formed’ events remain transparent about their production process whilst remaining open-ended and unfixed – a kind of materialised thinking through speech acts. Could you expand on how certain concepts of the ‘performative’ link to your ideas about contemporary art curating? Have you used the concept of ‘the performative’ as a testing site in relation to your curatorial practice and activities at the Kunstverein?

Maria Lind:

For me, the notion of performative curating came up in discussion with Søren Grammel before we started here in Munich. When we were trying to find words simply in conversation to describe what we meant when we were having a focus on the pre- and the post-, of how things come about. I think in my case, it’s also a materialist, pragmatist position, beingconcerned with conditions and means of production, and with the fact that things don’t only come about before they enter the institution, they also come about from scratch withinthe institution. For me the performative relates to a pragmatic interest in the means and conditions of production.

Paul O’Neill:

Does the performative represent a demystification of the contextual thinking behind a curatorial idea and how that manifests itself in different formats of its production andmediation?

Maria Lind:

Yes, but it is not that we have used the performative as a focal point here. It is something that has come up when we have struggled to describe what it is we have been doing. Its on the side of the practice, it is not that we try to be performative, but rather that we operate in a way that we find appropriate in relation to the art we areinvolved with. When we then call it performative, it is just a designation, which certainly can be elaborated. At the moment I am not so concerned with investigating the notion ofthe performative in curating but rather to carry on doing projects, which may or may not be described as performative.

Paul O’Neill:

It has become a slippery term for curating, like ‘doing as thinking’ and ‘thinking as doing’ within the exhibition-project. The exhibition as a speech act becomes a kind of vessel for visibility of the curators’ thinking and doing. Is this not too vague?

Maria Lind:

If you want to make a parallel between this and what we have done here at the Kunstverein. I’d say that it is much more pragmatic than a simple act of naming. In the sense thatit is about doing, testing something that you don’t know beforehand. We might be able to give it a name afterwards, but while we are doing it we can’t really.

Moreover I don’t think we should be able to name it because we don’t really need to. If you make the parallel to speech acts, to me there is more to showing the love inwhat you do and how you do it than merely saying ‘I love you’. So it is less about talking and more about doing and thereby not about making a promise. But you test it afterwardsagainst the result. Does the result match with the expectation?