The experience of self-curation is intriguing as beneficial a process of self-identification, a way to articulate and define one’s practice on their own terms. It can be fruitful in the production of knowledge and meaning, a way of stepping away from the work and rethinking concepts and issues in a new light. However, the act of the artist taking on the role of the curator can also be very problematic. There are confounding interests that lie in curatorial choices when one is faced with curating his own work, vanity and self-promotion may sometimes play too large a role in the process of organizing and installing a show. The challenge of curating only one’s own body work may result in there being a lack of objectivity, as the artist is too involved in the creation of his work and personal interests. For this reason, I wish to invite other artists to collaborate with me in attempt to create a new dialogue through the project in Delft.
Taking into account the title of the project “Negotiating equity” along with the ideas that have been set forth concerning the position of the artist as curator, I would like to propose a project that involves a more active involvement on my part in the practice of curatorship. Having no previous experience with this kind of endeavor, I wish to explore this foreign role, to immerse myself in the work and action required of a curator.
The space in Delft is of great interest to me as a foreign situation and location which lends itself to the investigation of new and original ways of thinking about, and investigating further, the ideas that have been developing through my artistic practice as of late. Playing around with roles and characters is quite fascinating, being able to remove oneself from the constraints of the positions one has consciously, or inadvertently imposed on themselves is exciting. Within the context of the project proposed in the IDAERERS space in Delft, I would like to play around with the idea of identity of the self, taking the opportunity to let go of the preconscripted notions of identity that I have allowed myself to fall into, and explore different facets of artistic play. One of the primary areas of interest for me lately has been the method and execution of curatorial … Visiting a wide aray of shows, from large museum exhibitions to more intimate solo shows, I am constantly drawn by the way the works of artists are exhibited and the impact it has both on the work itself, and the way in which the viewer is able to receive and appreciate the work. Often I have found myself in a position to critically think about the work of the curator and the choices made for for the installation of a show, particularly in an exhibition I recently saw of the works of Rodney Graham and Hroum Faroki at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. Working with two very different artists, both in terms of their work and the content of their practice, I was astonished to see the way in which the curator decided to organize and display the incredibly rich collection of works by both artists. I appreciated the difficulty of having to put together two extremely different artists in the same space, I was none the less disheartened by the way in which the works were placed and the way they were forced to relate to one another.
Whilst being inexperience on a practical level of the work involved in curation, I am very recognicient of the organizational and fundamental role they play in the success of a show. More so, I am fascinated in the way that curators often put full trust and faith on the artist, believing in their creative vision whilst nurturing their artistic practice. It is this role that I wish to experiment within the residency proposed to us in Delft. Having recently been more and more involved in text and narrative works, I wish to extend this practice of collecting bits of information, stories, narratives and dreams from people into the project there. The building that we are meant to be staying and working with has a great deal of importance, the physical location of a space always being an important factor in the consciousness and reality of the people experiencing it. The fact that the building is meant to be destroyed, either immediately or soon after our stay there is also intreiging to me. Knowing that the archetecture, the floors, the walls and ceilings that surround you will, in a short while, no longer exist, has a large impact on the way one experiences and interacts with a space. The building is there, concretely present as a space that can be inhabited an used to create new works, yet the knowledge of it’s disappearance will be persistently present. In a curious way, it is this ephemerality of the location that I wish to evoke in the project that I would like to pursue in Delft, the temporal space that the building as occupied and the way it creates memories. I am interested in collecting information from the people that experience the building, both as a transitory environment for creating work, as in the past artists that have resided in the building as well as the other students that will take part in the project, as well as from the residents of the town. It would be curious to understand, through the words and eyes of others, what position and significance the building, as well as the space it has generated, has had for them.
My project in Delft will center around the notion of a type of archive,a collection of texts and stories somehow connect to the space. I am very much interested in the idea of storytelling, of somehow collecting information from others to create a new tale of an architecture who’s lifespan wil soon come to an end. Finding relationships with the stories, understanding how to position them in a narrative and their interaction within each other will then become another challenge in itself, and will hopefully bring about a new way of reflecting upon different modes of storytelling, collaboration and art.
Laetitia Queyranne