Unfortunate exchanges and the issues between the co-curators of Manifesta 7- Raqs Media Collective and xurban_collective
Posted on | February 16, 2008 by imam | Comments Off
To the Public;
As cultural producers, we obviously need to have some sort of infrastructure so that we can continue to present our work. Over the last decade we worked with many institutions, curators and organizers. When our projects involved political risks and/or physical danger, we received necessary trust and support, which we require to produce our work effectively.
Our main task involves observation of vast socio-political transformations and we try to make salient research and production. We tend to analyze large processes in specific instances, by actively positioning ourselves and facing problems and taking risks. We think that collaborations and intellectual exchange are vital for our understanding of the positions of “alternative-global resistance”. As artists, we operate in highly charged political circumstances that are at times exposed to harsh criticism and in certain parts of the world, to mental and literal persecution. Nevertheless, we try to keep apart artistic production and social-political activism. Our means, tools and venues of critique are preferably within the pockets that can be found in the art establishment.
In the same vein, we are not project junkies, i.e. we do not apply to museums or biennials to be shown at every possible occasion. We do not run after funding opportunities either, not because of inertia, but on the contrary, because we think that this type of ‘professionalism’ ultimately dilute artistic/political potentials and create mental dependencies on institutional processes. We are usually invited to shows through our intellectual connections, or through organizers who contact us via our website. As part of the contemporary cultural-institutional package, we recognize that curators have ultimate responsibility in selecting artists and these selection processes pose risks and conceptual difficulties for both artists and curators. Furthermore, we appreciate that to organize such big exhibitions are not simple tasks and curators may choose to work or not to work with a specific artist!
When Raqs Media Collective officially invited us to participate in Manifesta7 (note that we did not contact them), we kindly accepted the opportunity to develop a new work for the show. We met with Shuddhabrata Sengupta in September during the 10th Istanbul Biennial, when we were presenting two of our works in Istanbul Modern and Santral Istanbul. We had a constructive meeting and discussed Raqs’ exhibition proposal, general geo-political issues and our previous and current work.
Issues
Our initial agreeable experience with Raqs Media Collective transformed into series of distasteful correspondences after their miscalculated accusations, quick and inaccurate assumptions. We now feel the necessity to share these written exchanges with the public (please see the attached e-mails)! It was indeed very disappointing to see an internationally recognized art group’s lack of intellectual understanding, unneeded offensive attitude, and most importantly its failure to differentiate between artistic position and curatorial responsibility! Looking retrospectively, we see that Raqs’ didactic, authoritarian manner and careless finger pointing created an unproductive situation.
Once more, we think that art requires taking active risks, it involves visual research and production and it continues where the language stops. We wrote position papers and proposals to give glimpse of ideas so that we could ‘communicate’ and exchange ideas with the curators. Obviously we are not subcontractors of other artists: we prefer to take our own intellectual risks and we certainly did not ask for this kind of unnecessary power journeys. At this point we have no reason to think that Raqs’ attitude is generated bona fide, but rather we think that their contradictory position reflect some sort of self enlargement as curators/artists, which is a common symptom of contemporary art subjectivities.
Finally, we definitely do not want to create a big deal out of this small unfortunate incident, and of course we do not have any harsh feelings either. Things happen and we have larger questions to tackle with! In writing and formulating these paragraphs, we think that curators of Manifesta7’s lack of professionalism and improper communication skills and attitude need to be exposed to the public. Therefore we would like to present all the correspondences between the parties as direct historical data!
Sincerely,
xurban_collective
February 2008
E-MAIL CORRESPONDENCES
To: “Raqs II” raqs @manifesta7; “Monica Narula” monica@sarai; “Shuddhabrata Sengupta” shuddha@sarai
Cc: pope@xurban
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 6:20 PM
Subject: Re: From Raqs
Dear Shuddha and other members of Raqs collective,
Hope this finds you well. Thank you for your e-mail. After having
been invited to the exhibition months ago, we are now extremely
disappointed by your last message which indicates a misunderstanding
of our artistic intentions. It is clear now that we need to
steadfastly clarify our position. We ought to articulate ourselves
for the sake of record!
As xurban_collective, over the last decade, we have stated our
position and critiqued dominant discursive stratifications which
instrumentalize dichotomies such as north-south, east-west, first
world – third world. Our pre-proposal is intended to cut into this
polar understanding and find cracks in which we can further develop.
Our “archaeological approach” is to uncover certain layers in an
attempt to “undo” by uncovering and reformulating them via artistic
strategies.
Our initial concepts were not intended to wholly render our artistic
work but only to give a glimpse of ideas such as “returning a gift
back to Europe”. We proposed further development after visiting the
site and understanding its spatial configuration.
Let us explain a bit more; when we talk about “returning” as a form
reciprocity, it in fact characterizes something impossible; this is
the impossibility of returning items that were not given in the first
place; this is a pseudo-reciprocal artistic gesture, i.e. there is no
donor and there is no recipient. Returning back does not imply an
obligation to any related parties of this transfer. In a way, for us
“returning something back to Europe” is a parody of transference
itself, it is a suspended act because in the end, some of the money
provided to Manifesta, which we were to use to purchase or
manufacture the gift, is coming from European Union funds, right?
“Returning a gift back” is a reciprocity failure, because at the end
of the installation we would either discard or take the gift back.
How impolite is that? Charity becomes an artistic display. As we
described in our initial proposal, reciprocity failure is a failure
of a linear relationship, a moment when misbehavior starts, in this
case making “fields of reciprocity” a failure, a failure of
charitable act, a failure that we can learn from, a failure that
makes European/non-European relationship visible. Our conceptual
strategy is in a similar vein to the one that Michael Hardt puts
forward when he discusses the conception and politics of love in his
latest work. According to Hardt charity objectifies its subjects and
it has nothing to do with the love of the “other”. Loving the other
is the understanding of “other” as multiplicities. Love itself is not
a unity but rather a new form of two multiplicities together. Charity
negates love by moralizing¾for instance “others” as “third world’.
In this case when we talk about the “third world”, it presents a
fait accompli rather than a conceptual tool. World bank, IMF, EU, or
their extensions such as British Council, etc, put forth policies
that objectify their subjects by actively reducing them into various
(mostly nation based) identity categories. At this point the question
is how we are going to deal with this given moment. Does simply
ignoring the terms help? We believe a feminist critique would be very
helpful us here. There is vast feminist literature on impossibility
of using “male language” and develop a salient feminist critique with
it. We find ourselves in an impossibility, we do not want to take a
didactic approach like conventional leftists, which we think is not
deliberate and we definitely do not want to authoritatively “teach”
others how to get rid of the binary oppositions, but rather we want
to develop an intuitional artistic approach in order to jump into the
very core of the problem, by actively taking risks and positioning
ourselves within the problems.
In this regard, the concept of gift and reciprocity in charity is in
line yet different from Marcel Mauss’ anthropological research on
gift as a system of exchange, or Karl Polayny’s reciprocity in
traditional societies. Although gift/charity requires a reciprocal
framework as subject and object and it is based on a moral/social
framework, it also operates in the political realm, because social
obligations are replaced with official agreements by the donor and
the recipient on the state level. In some cases the state becomes an
instrumental apparatus in receiving and distributing of donations,
but today new form of NGOs bypass traditional state responsibilities
to its citizens and and reduce the citizens to objects as victims.
This is very much apparent in immediate charitable responses to
immense catastrophe (particularly in Asia, lately) and the misguided,
miscommunicated and vasted efforts to relieve the pain of “others”.
Furthermore, although we feel that it was really important to address
your initial conceptual questions, we do not think that we needed to
be in total agreement in what we were proposing, simply because we
are not your contractors or your collaborators, but artists doing
independent work for an exhibition. Your decisions should have been
shaped by a complete set of critique, body of works and concepts that
we have acted upon for a long time and we are afraid your judgement
results from an utter blunder of intellectualism on your part.
Finally, we feel very sorry and dissatisfied with your decision. We
were in fact really excited about the opportunity to participate the
larger discussions that Manfesta would present! Unfortunately, it
appears that we will have to wait for another occasion and other
related parties that we can communicate and cooperate properly.
Sincerely,
xurban_collective, January 2008
——————————————————————-
From: Raqs II raqs@manifesta7
Date: January 5, 2008 4:56:23 AM EST
To: imam@xurban
Cc: Raqs II raqs@manifesta7
Subject: From Raqs
Dear Hakan,
Greetings for the new year. Thank you for your mail elaborating on Xurban ideas. I regret to say we find your proposal, despite our earlier email conversation, too fixated within the locus of the ‘third world’. The binary assumptions of ‘donors’ and ‘recipients’ that underwrites your articulation of reciprocity seems to us to elide the complexity of the entanglements of contemporary political economy. We have seen way too many art works in the contemporary art scene that betray a rhetorical but imprecise purchase on global political economy. While this may be driven by sincerity, we feel that this ultimately blunts rather than sharpens the edge of the possibilities of the contemporary moment. In other words, what we are expressing to you is an honest and respectful disagreement with the foundational concepts of your proposition. In such circumstances, we feel that it would be insincere on our part to engage with this particular proposed work, and thus, regretfully, we have decided that it cannot, in all honesty find place in the exhibition that we are imagining.
Moreover, we do not think that the proposition that you have sent responds to the concept of ‘residue’ that we are trying to develop through the exhibition.
We hope that you will understand that our refusal is not by any means a sign of our lack of appreciation of your work. Rather, because we disagree, in this specific instance, we would find it disrespectful not to express our disagreement with clarity.
warm regards,
Shuddhabrata Sengupta
for Raqs Media Collective
——————————————————————-
From: imam@xurban
Date: December 5, 2007 11:36:06 PM EST
To: Monica Narula monica @sarai
Cc: Raqs|| Raqs raqs @manifesta7, pope@xurban shuddha@sarai
Subject: Re: Grant info sheet
Dear Monica,
We are going to fill this form but we were waiting to hear from Shuddha about possible site visit so that we can clarify our proposal after our impressions….
However I talked with Guven (other xurban_collective core-member) today and we decided to go ahead on out ideas and work on our production details.
We will let you know ASAP.
Kind Regards
Hakan
——————————————————————-
From: Monica Narula monica@sarai
Date: November 16, 2007 5:33:23 AM EST
To: Raqs|| Raqs raqs@manifesta7
Subject: Grant info sheet
Please do fill in this sheet as soon as possible – we are trying to put this info together to gather the budget for your work.
Look forward to hearing from you
warm regards
M
Monica Narula
Raqs
Sarai-CSDS
29 Rajpur Road
Delhi 110 054
www.raqsmediacollective.net
www.sarai.net
——————————————————————-
From: imam @xurban
Date: November 8, 2007 7:42:37 AM EST
To: shuddha@sarai
Cc: pope@xurban, Raqs@sarai
Subject: Re: Invitation to Manifesta 07
Dear Shuddha,
Thank you for your critical response. As I said in my previous e-mail, these ideas presented here are “pre-proposal” and we will develop our concepts and actual installation proposal once we see the space and discuss all the possibilities with you. I understand that giving some keywords created a “faint image”, however, in a way, we thought that it would be good enough to start with these concepts which will be developed along the line. At this point I don’t think that we can depict a clear exhibition proposal and we can not exactly know what we are going to do, however, per our conversation, we were hoping to do this some time at the end of January or February. Unfortunately we can not make it to December.
Let me go through your questions and try to address some of your concerns;
“I remember that in our conversation in Istanbul we had discussed ideas
that had to do with the way in which mechanical engineering processes
replace labour and how that equation gets transformed when the context
of production moves from one site (say in Europe) to another (say in
Turkey, or elsewhere).”
In fact, the idea of philanthropy is put forward along these line. Instead of being literal about these processes by concentrating on mechanical production, accumulation and by-product (residue) directly, – which what we discussed based on your initial exhibition proposal- we wanted to go little further and look to crystalized outcomes of these processes; in short philanthropic activities which mostly function on the realm of religious morality; help, aid, charity, donation etc…
“Also, since you (rightly) do away with the binary antinomies of ‘North/South’ and ‘East/West’ I find it hard to see why you persist in retaining the language of the ‘developed & developing world’ (which seems to be more a kind of UN ‘developmentalist’ hangover) and does not seem to us to sit well with the sophistication in your argument elsewhere in the text.”
hmm, what a surprise and somewhat redundant comments to us! They made me laugh!
I agree that we should have just put quotes(“-”) where we were talking about certain technical models in the “West”. And in fact, our primary reference was New Orleans. We did not refer to any ‘under developed countries’ or wanted to create a sort of binary statement, however, when we need talk about the population control, disaster management, charity versus (western) state apparatus, we are trying to understand them in reference to Foucault.
Next couple of week we will try to clarify some of these point and perhaps we can come with a proposal…
Please let us know about the travel schedule.
Kind Regards
Hakan
p.s. Shuddha, I am glad that you are creating a creative dialogue, perhaps we can organize some sort of discussion series or workshop together which can crittically overlap our roles as artists and curators. What do you think?
——————————————————————-
From: Shuddhabrata Sengupta shuddha @sarai
Date: November 7, 2007 5:37:10 AM EST
To:imam@xurban
Cc: pope@xurban, Raqs@sarai
Subject: Re: Invitation to Manifesta 07
Dear Hakan,
The concept of ‘Reciprocity Failure’ is an interesting one, and the
theoretical and political questions you want to pursue take it into engaging directions. But from your document we get only a faint sense of how these ideas would be actually materialized in the exhibition. the idea of the ‘return gift’ that you propose is tantalizing, and we would like to know more.
Also, since you (rightly) do away with the binary antinomies of ‘North/South’ and ‘East/West’ I find it hard to see why you persist in retaining the language of the ‘developed & developing world’ (which seems to be more a kind of UN ‘developmentalist’ hangover) and does not seem to us to sit well with the sophistication in your argument elsewhere in the text.
It would be helpful if you could send us a detailed note on what exactly
you propose to do and what the constituents of the work you imagine as being. We need this to begin to think about the resources, space and technology that would be necessary.
I remember that in our conversation in Istanbul we had discussed ideas
that had to do with the way in which mechanical engineering processes
replace labour and how that equation gets transformed when the context
of production moves from one site (say in Europe) to another (say in
Turkey, or elsewhere).
Do you still see these ideas as having a play in your proposal?
warm regards,
Shuddha
——————————————————————-
From: Shuddhabrata Sengupta shuddha @sarai
Date: November 4, 2007 9:54:00 PM EST
To: imam(at)xurban
Cc: pope@xurban, raqs@manifesta7
Subject: Re: Invitation to Manifesta 07
Reply-To: shuddha@sarai
Dear Hakan and Guven,
Many thanks for your mail. We are travelling at the moment. Will be back in Delhi tomorrow. We will read your text of an initial proposal and respond in detail as soon as we are back. We are going to be in Italy around the 11th and 12th of December. Would it be possible for some of you to come then?
regards
Shuddha
——————————————————————-
From: imam(at)xurban
Date: August 5, 2007 6:53:54 PM EDT
To: shuddha@sarai
Cc: Raqs@sarai, pope(at)xurban
Subject: Re: Invitation to Manifesta 07
Dear Shuddhabrata (and other members of Raqs Media Collective),
It was really nice to meet with you in Istanbul. I really enjoyed our conversation. As we talked, we would like to give you a short text as an initial proposal (please see attached PDF). We have some ideas about what we are going to do in space and we would like to further develop and do research on the idea of /reciprocity/ and /philanthropy./ However it would be nice if we all can meet in Italy sometime in the beginning of february so that we have an idea what we can do in the factory and discuss some of the logistical details.
All the best
imam
ATTACHED PDF:
FIELDS OF RECIPROCITY
by xurban_collective, august-november 2007
As an artists’ collective, we are interested in political struggles as they surface and are made manifest in different organizations and re-organizations of power in diverse everyday encounters. They do not offer poetry at first glance, and we are neither social scientists nor ideologues to theoretically and politically charge these signs. They merely supply us with instances to observe, as artists usually do, and from which we may begin to aestheticise a visual and verbal critique of injustice, oppression, war and violence⎯in short, the global phenomena of today.
We have witnessed these phenomena collectively for seven years and investigated, researched and brought them into the spaces of art and various publications with both oblique and direct references. Other signs are deeply engrained and interwoven in a peculiar social body, but nevertheless carry the potential to offer a view of the ‘developing’ world and specifically of the Balkans, Anatolia and Mesopotamia, which comprise the mythic lanscape.
In order to deliberately keep away from the false dichotomy of the East-West (or North-South) axis, we repeatedly denounced the idea of ‘civilization’ in the past to get a grasp of the warring factions. We think that focusing on the micro-mechanisms through which power is distributed, transfered and legitimized to inflict misery on the masses is essential, and we closely follow Foucault, Deleuze and others. Anachronistic as it is (and closely knitted into historical instances that Foucault would bring up), claims on the ‘real’ ownership of the repressive state, its western-style institutions (functioning and quasi-functioning), its authoritarianism and conservatism, its grip on religion and its military-police character that meanwhile permits a ruthless neo-liberalism, make up the ground for clashes and truces among extremely splintered socio-political bodies. In these terms, and as it now is, our object of study deserves to be a museum case from the paleo-politics of the nation-state (a rare find), and with all its strange ways, to be frozen, studied and dissected by anyone wishing to understand the symptoms of global change acting on this part of the world.
Concepts
Keywords:
philanthropy, aid, marshall, aftermath, structural transformation, charity, kindheartedness, altruism, generosity, assistance, subsidies, privatization, preparedness, immobility, protection, ….
As a long-time recipient of aid and charity, the third world has been the subject of the philanthropic gaze. The pauperization of the world has gone hand-in-hand with global investment strategies, flow of capital and privatization of all valuable resources; and the social state has turned into another charitable organization by seeking donors and outsourcing crucial tasks when needed. Meanwhile, as the pop stars solicit money from the rich for charity, we listened to the sweet music with awe and inspiration.
Reciprocally, today the true meaning of globalization shows itself through the misery bestowed upon the poor and the discriminated subjects of the developed world, as the policing and confinement of the suffering populations become the primary post-catastrophic issue. Disaster management is a corporate business, as humane as the corporation can be time of crises. In this respect, Iraq appears to be the prime example where war and its relief are handed over to the privatized corps, as a corporate operation embedded into the military-industrial complex.
Reciprocity Failure
… is failure of a photographic emulsion to follow the principle that the degree of darkening is constant for a given product of light intensity and exposure time, typically at very low or very high light intensities.
The possible project would be based on ‘returning gifts’ and countering the philanthropic enterprise, overcoming the inability of a reciprocal relation…
END OF PDF
——————————————————————-
From: imam(at)xurban
Date: August 5, 2007 6:53:54 PM EDT
To: shuddha@sarai
Cc: Raqs@sarai, pope(at)xurban
Subject: Re: Invitation to Manifesta 07
Dear Shuddhabrata,
Thank you for your kind invitation. Manifesta 07 concept and proposed venues sounds very interesting. We are certainly interested in developing a new project for the exhibition as we think that our research interests largely coincides with the ideas you presented here!
During the Istanbul Biennial we are exhibiting two works; one at Istanbul Modern, the other at Santral Istanbul. Guven and I will be there during the biennial opening period. Therefore we can meet somewhere during that time.
Guven’s cell phone: ++XXXXXXXXXX
Looking forward to meeting with you in Istanbul.
Kind Regards
xurban_collective
———————————————————————————————–
From: Shuddhabrata Sengupta
Date: August 4, 2007 10:06:05 AM EDT
To: felt(at)xurban
Subject: Invitation to Manifesta 07
Dear members of the Xurban.net collective,
I am writing to you on behalf of the Raqs Media Collective to invite
you to contribute work to Manifesta 07, which we (Raqs) are co-curating.
We went to your website and looked at the documentation of several of your projects in detail and found the way you look at urban spaces very interesting.As it happens, we will be in Istanbul (for the Istanbul Biennale) in early September and we would like to avail of this opportunity to meet with you and get to know more about your work.
Manifesta 07 opens on July 21, 2008 and will be on till the end of
September 2008. This time, Manifesta takes place across a region – in
The Sud Tyorl-Alto Adige region of northern Italy, (bordering Austria),
in venues in the towns of Bolzano, Trentino and Revereto, and in an
abandoned Fortress north of Bolzano. Most of these venues are large
abandoned industrial or military sites that sit within a magnificient
landscape that straddles a key north south axis that has historically
connected Europe to the Mediterranean world.
The presence of abandoned industrial, or military-industrial sites as a
kind of stage setting for the exhibition inspires us to continue our
own ongoing investigation of the idea of ‘residue’. While we have mined
this concept in our own work as artists, we are interested in seeing
where this takes us curatorially. Some time ago, we had arrived at a
note that we had made for ourselves on the idea of ‘residue’ that we
would like to share with you as the beginning of what we hope will be a
continuing conversation.
“The extraction of value from any material, place, thing or person,
involves a process of refinement. During this process, the object in
question will undergo a change in state, separating into at least two
substances: an extract and a residue. With respect to residue: it may
be said it is that which never finds its way into the manifest
narrative of how something (an object, a person, a state, or a state of
being) is produced, or comes into existence. It is the accumulation of
all that is left behind, when value is extracted…There are no
histories of residue, no atlases of abandonment, no memoirs of what a
person was but could not be.” – (Raqs : With Respect to Residue, 2005)
As is evident from this note, we are interested in thinking about what
actually happens when things are rendered valuable in the world. This
involves a slowing down on our part, a concentration of attention on
processes that normally seek to obscure the traces they leave behind.
It is an attempt in a certain sense to come to terms with Capitalism’s
self-fulfilling amnesia, and see what can be salvaged from the oblivion
to which it normally consigns the residues of modernity.
The task of creating a network of art works and processes for an
abandoned industrial site (the former Alumix Aluminium Factory in
Bolzano, Sud Tyrol, Northern Italy – see images in attatched pdf file)
seems to us to be the perfect opportunity to invite artists,
practitioners and intellectuals whose work we admire and find
interesting to enlarge the horizons of this conversation. While Europe
is full of art spaces and events that occupy abandoned industrial
sites, there is at the same time a kind of overlooking of what the
combination of the memory of the frenetic energy of industry and the
deep melancholia of current abandonment actually means. In some ways
this amounts to Europe’s unwillingness to come to terms with aspects of
its own difficult path into and through the 20th century. Perhaps
because it requires of anyone interested in undertaking such an
exercise to simultaneously inhabit the location of a deep interiority
vis-a-vis Europe along with a willingness to go beyond the available
limits of European identity in order to look back upon Europe. Perhaps
it requires people who are willing at some level to be both ‘insiders’
as well as ‘traitors’ to Europe.
We invite you to join this process of investigation with your artistic
contribution so that we can introduce a few necessary notes of
hesitation into the discussion of cultural, political and social
processes. Through this exhibition, we are interested in creating a
network of affects and ideas that describe an itinerary through
concepts such as residue, extraction, recycling – not just as
descriptions of material processes but also as fertile metaphors that
aid us in thinking about the world and our time. We think that your
body of work is suggestive of what can be fruitful explorations in this
direction.
We would be delighted if you could accept our invitation to contribute
to Manifesta 07. We are definitely interested in exploring the
possibility of new work for Manifesta 07, and would be happy to discuss
the modalities and logistics of production with you, should you accept
our invitation.
Warmly
Shuddhabrata Sengupta
for
Raqs Media Collective (www.raqsmediacollective.net)
Co-curators, Manifesta 07
July, 2007, Delhi
—–
END OF CORRESPONDENCES
— NOTE: E-MAIL ADDRESSED ARE MODIFIED BY XURBAN TO ELIMINATE SPAM —
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