Vienna. »Have the Cake and Eat It, Too« was the empowering title of an exhibition curated by Charlotte Martinz-Turek and Luisa Ziajat. Read the subtitle, and you know its main intention: to re-formulate institutional criticism as an instituting practice. The carefully chosen works by Agentur, Bini Adamcza k/ Persson Baumgartinger, Zanny Begg / Oliver Ressler, Zanny Begg / Dmitry Vilensky, Chto delat?, Anna Sigmond Gudmunsdottir / Tone Hansen / Marit Paasche, Martin Krenn, Lia Perjovschi / Dan Perjovschi, and Nuria Vila / Marcelo Exposito were presented as examples of a re-assessed institutional criticism. At issue are sociopolitical actions: »instituting practices« that are to be found in an activist, theoretical and artistic context as well as in the collaborative production of knowledge, functioning in networks and positioned in the form of analysis and criticism. I do not intend to take a closer look at the individual artists and producers whose works are on display the exhibition; rather, I would like to get an idea of the curatorial framework by taking a look at the format of the so-called »accompanying text.« These are props, additions and context materials that stand out as venues for institutional/ institutionalizing/ instituting interests. They are not merely surfaces on which to record respective interests and their strategic positioning; they are also dispositives of a predominant way of producing meaning. As such, they design, define and communicate spaces for action, where positions are taken and assigned. By making a statement, they create relations of representation, making them a decisive part of the practice up for debate here. The exhibition looked into »mechanisms of the definition-rich determination and its logic of involvement and exclusion.«¹ It dramatized these mechanisms and represented them. The venues for this supplementary plot were an introductory text distributed in a pamphlet accompanying the exhibition, a brochure on the writings by eipcp »republicart Kunst und Öffentlichkeit,« as well as an information board that constituted the exhibition’s backdrop. The exhibition hall’s front wall was painted with a broad black horizontal strip. To this surface, fleetingly reminiscent of a school blackboard (... what could be chalked up to this board ...), was attached, in the form of quotes, a collection of material on institutional criticism following established research aesthetics. Extensive passages out of books – standard works on the topic, published for the most part in the past 15 to 20 years –were copied and posted on the wall as blocks of text. The observer could have gained an insight into the practice and canonization of institutional criticism. But a summary that seemed to promise complexity only resulted in a shortened view, because institutional criticism’s diverging practices as well as its just as diverging efforts at historiography and placement of a postmodern art history had to converge in this display format. The opportunity was totally lost to expound on the problems of instituting institutional criticism with regard to its institutionalization – which could mean getting involved in this conflict according to the situation and history and thus updating it. Works like the special edition of the magazine »Chto delat?« or Lia / Dan Perjovschi’s »Detective Craft« could possibly be regarded in this manner. But any conclusions the curators could have drawn concerning their own venue and mode in the field of art from the »problematic case« of institutional criticism concerning the current conditions of production, distribution and reception of a neoliberal information and knowledge society were lost. As a result, despite or because of the conception of the formally »open« presentation of a provisional collection, the impression that came across was of a closed chapter of recent art history. Even the stories surrounding the history of institutional criticism were crippled in their disposition to criticize institutional criticism, cut off from the here and now. Following keywords, they were subsumed in a canon. By repeating canonization, the curators lifted the rehabilitation of institutional criticism onto the pedestal of a dispositive of instruction. Thus, these stories were staged as contents of the academic speech of an elitist art business. That is how institutional criticism reached the (storage) room of the »Autonomy of Art.« In a casually polemic manner, a funeral took place; without any grieving whatsoever, the urgency of a post-institutional-criticism-state is put to the observer. The argument that institutional criticism is »in the meantime part of the canon that it sought to fight«² was made – and once again kept aloft: »artistic institutional criticism that has not withdrawn into the autonomy of art, but that clearly understands itself as a sociopolitical actor,«³ the curators say, gave the exhibition »its historic context.«⁴ Do we sense doubt here as to how one should approach the canon of institutional criticism? In any case, the unresolved tension between the canonization, theory and practice in institutional criticism was not in evidence. The ambivalence of evoking artistic autonomy and citing its »partial and ideological character«⁵ – the reserve of advanced institutional criticism »in defense of art (and art institutions)«⁶ against their »use, reification and instrumentalization«⁷ – reached a standstill in this line of argument. Visitors were, however, offered information on the exhibition’s second central concept, that of »instituting.« Reading material was available on the subject. In these explanations, however, the option of participating in the concept of »instituting« and in the dynamics of its practical application remained open.

 

Translated by Jennifer Taylor-Gaida

 

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