At long last, after all these years, Hans Ulrich Obrist has come to the same conclusions that we did at workfortheeyetodo in about 1993-4, that the ‘c’ word is beyond redemption. At the time we issued a lapel button-badge, merely stating that whatever we did was uncurated. Now he writes in a piece entitled Life brought to art in the Financial Times of August 18th:
Fly-in, fly-out curating almost always produces superficial results:it’s a practice that goes hand in hand with the fashion for applying the word ‘curating’ to everything that involves simply making a choice- radio playlists, hotel decor, even the food stalls in New York’s High Line Park. Making art is not the matter of a moment, and nor is making an exhibition: curating follows art.
When will he make a similar assault on the ‘p’ word, the even more spurious notion of practice that artists are always talking about ?
