“There must be no tyranny in conversation. Let everyone have their share and have the right turn to speak.” [1]

This essay grows out of an on-going research process, in which I am concerned with the issues of conversation. [2] My interest in the conversational mode governing current curatorial production and the deeper implications connected with what I would like to put forward here as a conversational turn in curating stems from both, my practice as a curator and my practice as a theorist and writer. I am seeking out to sketch the outline of a larger project of the conversational driving the curatorial from within, which is not necessarily entirely dependent upon “exhibitionary” formats [3], but also not entirely freed from the still prevailing exhibitionary imperative. Our conceptualization of the exchange we can have with others is in many ways based on what I would like to call a “specific conversational mode” which governs interactions, shapes sociability, and ultimately reaches deep into the current debates on knowledge production and production of ideas and their debates within the fields of artistic and curatorial practice.

My entry points into the discussion of conversations are at once historical and contemporary and I will be crossing back and forth not only through time but also between two different fields of knowledge: philosophy and curating. Even though conversations are transitory in nature, and they share this with exhibitions, they have also been a well established literary format in the form of staged or fictitious conversations or philosophical investigations to be published in written form. From Plato’s Dialogues to the dialogues of Emmanuel Levinas and Philippe Nemo on Ethique et infini one could easily develop a historiographic and epistemological investigation based on the dialogical or, for the sake of my argument here, the conversational model in philosophy. Over the last few decades, coinciding with the beginnings of the process of globalization in the 1980s, we have witnessed the turn to the conversation in the art field. The contemporary modes of production in the art field are based on the mode of production governed by conversations. The need for a historiographic and epistemological investigation based on the conversational model of contemporary and current curatorial production thus arises.

Let me begin by simply looking at the word “conversation”. The Latin root of the word provides the insights which are necessary to understand how the other is always implicated in the process of conversation. The Latin word “conversare” simply means to talk, but its constituents point us the right way for the context I am establishing here. “Con/cum” means “with” and “versare” has two established strands of meaning, firstly “to be”, “to find oneself” or “to live” and secondly “to turn” or “to live”. So in conversation we find ourselves (by way of talking) with others, or, interpreted from a more radical standpoint, in conversation we twist and turn ourselves with others, or, to point more explicitly to the transformational qualities, we are finding ourselves turning and twisting, or turned and twisted, while the process of turning includes both, ourselves and the others involved. So, a conversational turn is if we follow the etymological imperative of taking words quite literally a double turn, a twist of the twist, a turn of the turn we are finding ourselves and others to be part of.

Jean-Luc Nancy stresses that the category derived from the prefix “co” or “con”, in Latin, or “syn”, in Greek, is an undertheorized category in the history of philosophy. From the category of “co-“,which – as one should not overlook – cannot stand on its own, but invokes the existence of the other, the in-between, by its being a prefix that is joined with nouns in order to produce new proliferations of meanings, Nancy arrives at thinking about ‟making sense” [4]. From that I can conclude that in order to find ourselves making sense we are in need for conversations with others. [5]

In current curatorial practice the conversation with others is to produce knowledge, be it in a more private setting in dialogue, more often than not to be published later or as a public format with all its challenges to the conversational which originally denotes the informal. ‟A conversation”, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is the “informal exchange of ideas by spoken words”. And the example for the use of the word given reads as follows: “the two men were deep in conversation.” For the conversation to go public, to leave behind a certain degree of informality, led to a shift in curatorial practice from the exhibitionary format to the inclusion of or expansion towards a more discursive format, in other words towards talk or conversation. I can discern a variety of different formats of varying degrees of publicness and of different political conceptualisations of the public’s role and involvement, which correspondingly differ largely in their spatial setups and degrees of separation. Even though, in principle, the participation of the public is desired or no public at all conceptualized since everybody involved is a participant anyhow, it is the becoming-public which has profoundly impacted on the very nature of the conversation (to be performed in front of others rather than only with others) and, as I would argue, this shift towards publicness is part of the conversational turn.

The plethora of formats and spatial settings to engage in conversation range from decidedly informal scenarios to big performances on stage in front of the public eye. Be it in conjunction with biennales or in connection with blockbuster exhibitions, be it at an artist-run centre or an off-space, be it at a regional art museum or a historical painting and sculpture collection, we can be sure to run into a lecture given that day or a panel discussion announced for next week or a symposion soon to be hosted by that institution. The conversational turn is a standard feature of the globalized biennale circuit and I would include the documenta in the logic of the biennale even though it is strictly speaking based on a five-year rhythm.

“Catherine David had already extended the spatio-temporal nature of the exhibition format by organizing “100 Days – 100 Guests” – one guest per day, taking part in discussions, debates, and events – over the course of documenta  X (1997). “ [6]

Catherine David, curator of the documenta X, was present on all the 100 days with the 100  guests she had invited. [7] The invited speakers included Ackbar Abbas, Giorgio Agamben, Edward Said, Étienne Balibar, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Geeta Kapur. Issues of state and nation prevailed and the positions invited clearly emphasize the post-colonial perspective of the programming and the outreach beyond Western European-centric thought. The title of the programme refers to the idea of hospitality, yet, the guest has, as we know, an ambivalently strong and precarious status. In a globalized world with ever more borders, not everyone is a welcome guest. Critical debate’s outreach acted as a catalyst. The power of conversation acted in favour of the agency of a civil society. The international antiracist network “No Person Is Illegal” was founded at the documenta X, assisting immigrants regardless of their immigration status. Seen in this light, the guest does indeed become a critical figure. It is the guest who truly lets the documenta, “like biennials now understood as vehicles for the production of knowledge and intellectual debate” [8] become a public conversation. When speaking about the guest, I am thinking of both, the invited guests, the so-called speakers, and the invited guests, the so-called audience or public. If the conversation is indeed transgressing from the confines of the art world into real world impact, then I am very much in favour of aligning myself fully with the conversational turn. To add another point in case I want to quote Ute Meta Bauer on the documenta which she described as the space of refuge and the productive misunderstandings.

“One of the documenta curators under Enwezor, Ute Meta Bauer, called this a temporarily ‘adopted country’ for intellectual diasporas from diverse origins and disciplines where art functioned as ‘a space of refuge’ – an in-between space of transition and of diasporic passage. … where ‘the inevitable discrepancies and irritations that come with it are not only retained as a structure but moreover are inserted as catalysts for new forms of understanding that can be developed – perhaps as productive misunderstandings, perhaps in fruitful confrontation of different methods, ways of thinking, and languages.’” [9]

Yet, I want to add a word of caution to the celebratory mood of the conversational turn which indeed does possibility to critical change. I am weary to join in a fully euphoric celebration of the potentials of the conversational turn which can undoubtedly nourish the strengthening of the public’s awareness of controversial issues and the rise of the agency of civil society. I would like to turn now towards a more critical reading of the conversational turn in curating and its implications for the positionality, and the accrued symbolic (and at times even monetary) capital, of the curator. My weariness comes from the positionality of the curator under post-Fordist conditions of working and of the implications this has onto the very desire that knowledge may be produced by way of conversations. After all, we might conclude that a society that calls itself a “knowledge society” is indeed after the production of a new and much needed unit of today’s power which we should not refer to as the old animal-man-labour-unit of HP, horse power, but as the new unit of KP, knowledge power. Having said that, it is necessary to point out the ambivalences inherent in the power of conversation. The conversational turn ran and still runs in parallel or, at times in union, sometimes even in personal union, with the emergence of the public positionality of the curator as the post-Fordist or flexibilist model worker par excellence. [10] Based on this, we can then establish the following sequence: art is work/labour, the curator’s positionality is modeled after the artist’s positionality, curating is work/labour, the description of the artist’s and the curator’s work/labour (what in the past would have been called a job description) requires conversation, conversation is work/labour.

Does the conversational turn in curating actually shake up the process of curating [11], or does it ultimately only reaffirm curating and alongside with it the ever-rising prominence of the model-worker of the curator who has also enormously gained with regard to the drama of recognition played out on the stage of conversations to echo Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel’s Introduction to Aesthetics. “It is upon the stage of history (…) that the violent drama of recognition will be performed.” Since we have learned with and after poststructuralism that we are constantly making history, we know that we are also making history in the present ime, history in real time. Hence, I perceive the “production of reality conversations” [12] as Hans Ulrich Obrist calls his interviews and his interview marathons as a strategy to talk history in real time, which allows me to me see the structural similarity between the stage of history upon which the violent drama of recognition is performed and the stage of conversations upon which the violent drama of recognition is performed in front of the public eye in real time.

However, I do not want to end on the disillusioned note of rendering the conversational turn as having been fully co-opted within the logics of the hegemonic paradigm of post-Fordism and its inherent imperative of changing everything into work. Even though initiating a conversation might only lead to more work based on the equation I made earlier between “art is labour”, “curating is labour”, “conversing is labour”, it might also lead to a much needed rethinking and a re-curating of currently prevailing dilemmas. In thinking back to the Latin root of the word conversation and how we find ourselves twisted in talking and twisting in talking, I can only say: keep talking or maybe even better: let’s twist again…

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[1] Madeleine de Scudéry is quoted in Mary Vidal, Watteau’s Painted Conversations: Art Literature and Talk in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France (New Haven: Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 132, who is quoted by Grant H. Kester, Conversation Pieces Community + Communication in Modern Art.

[2] The research is part of my current PhD project The International Dinner Party. A Curatorial Model Re-Mapping Affinities, Transnational and Feminist Practices at the Research Platform for Curatorial and Cross-disciplinary Cultural Studies, Practice-Based Doctoral Programme, a co-operation of the Department of Art at the University of Reading (UK) with the Postgraduate Programme in Curating at the Zurich University for the Arts, Institute of Cultural Studies, Department of Cultural Analysis (CH)

[3] Tony Bennett introduced the term “exhibitionary” in his analysis of the political rationale of the formation of the museum in the nineteenth-century and its connections with the nation state. Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum (Oxon and New York Routledge 1995).

[4] Jean-Luc Nancy, “Mit-Sinn (Zürich, März 2010)”, in >Mit-Sein< Gemeinschaft – ontologische und politische Perspektivierungen, Elke Bippus, Jörg Huber, Dorothee Richter, eds., (Zürich Edition Voldemor and Wien/New York Springer Verlag 2010), p. 23.

[5] Jean-Luc Nancy speaks of community (Gemeinschaft [communauté]), communism (Kommunismus), compassion (Mitgefühl [compassion]) and commemoration (Kommemoration [commemoration]) and turns his attention to the prefix “co”, which runs like a read thread through these heavily charged terms as he succinctly describes them. See Jean-Luc Nancy, “Mit-Sinn (Zürich, März 2010)“, in >Mit-Sein< Gemeinschaft – ontologische und politische Perspektivierungen, Elke Bippus, Jörg Huber, Dorothee Richter, eds., (Zürich Edition Voldemor and Wien/New York Springer Verlag 2010), pp. 21–32.

[6] O’Neill (2012), p. 81.

[7] This 100-day engagement with the visitors brings to mind Joseph Beuys’ Organisation für direkte Demokratie durch Volksabstimmung (Organization for Direct Democracy Through Referendum). In 1972 Beuys was present at documenta V for the period of 100 days and engaged in discussions with the public. So the curator, Catherine David, follows a model of conversation or discussions with the public, practiced earlier by the artist, Joseph Beuys.

[8] O’Neill (2012), p. 81.

[9] Ute Meta Bauer, “The Space of documenta XI”, 103–107, cited by O’Neill (2012), p. 83.

[10] Marion von Osten has published widely on the issues of post-Fordism, precarity and the labour of art. See for example Marion von Osten, “Irene ist Viele. Or what we call ‘Productive Forces’”, in Are You Working Too Much? Post-Fordism, Precarity, and The Labor of Art, Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood and Anton Vidokle, eds., (Berlin Sternberg Press, e-flux journal books, 2001). Dorothee Richter has analyzed Hans Ulrich Obrist’s positionality as a curator from a psychoanalytical perspective of patrilinearity and also from a critical perspective on post-Fordism. The “curator” figure is currently being re-interpreted from an authoritarian, patriarchal figure (Szeemann) to a contemporary, post-Fordist, networking, globe-trotting male figure, still reminiscent of Foucault.” This quote is from a forthcoming publication. “Feminist Demands on Curating. Dorothee Richter, interviewed by False Hearted Fanny”, in Women’s Museums: From Collection Strategies to Social Platforms, ed. Elke Krasny, (Vienna Löcker Verlag, 2013.)

[11] In her text on the “Educational Turn in Curating” Irit Rogoff points out how a turn necessarily needs to shake up or make uncomfortable what has previously not been understood to be in need of profound re-orientation. “Secondly, it seems pertinent to ask to what extent the hardening of a ‘turn’ into a series of generic or stylistic tropes can be seen as capable of resolving the urgencies that underwrote it in the first place? In other words, does an ‘educational turn in curating’ address education or curating at precisely the points at which it urgently needs to be shaken up and made uncomfortable?” Irit Rogoff, Turning, http://www.e-flux.com/journal/turning/ 2008, accessed 21. January 2013.

[12] Hans Ulrich Obrist has largely contributed to the conversational turn in curating and has coined the “production of reality conversations, otherwise known as interviews”. He has also steroided the interview format onto the public stage as a format of performing for the witnessing public. In Obrist’s marathon series he, sometimes together with Rem Koolhaas, turns the conversation into constant production, conducting non-stop interviews with leading local intellectuals, thinkers, social philosophers, political analysts and artists. Such marathons have so far, amongst others, taken place in London, Athens and Delhi.” A large number of the countless interviews conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist have been published as Interviews Volume 1 in 2003 and Interviews Volume 2 in 2010, together almost 2,000 pages of words now circulated in print. The interviews have also resulted in an ongoing publication series under the title Conversation Series, edited by Obrist and published with Walther König Verlag.

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Elke Krasny

Elke Krasny is a cultural theorist, urban researcher, curator and author, as well as Senior Lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, exhibiting and lecturing internationally. She works with process-oriented research on architecture, urbanism, socially engaged art practices, politics of remembrance and feminist epistemology and historiography, resulting in exhibitions, books, walks, symposia and talks. As an independent curator she was working with the Architecture Centre Vienna, the Jewish Museum Vienna, Centre de Design de l'UQAM Montréal, the Hongkong Community Museum Project and rotor association for contemporary art in Graz (Austria). In 2011 she was visiting artist at the Audain Gallery/Simon Fraser University Vancouver and in 2012 visiting scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal. Her exhibition Hands-On Urbanism 1850–2012 was shown at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2012.