In-between, and in small numbers
A letter from Hou Hanru to Hans Ulrich Obrist
Dear HUO,
Thanks very much for your recent thoughts on the Nanomuseum. These are issues so important to our search for new forms of space for presenting art in a time when the market and established institutions, with their hegemonic and often frozen formats, are increasingly monopolizing the way art is produced, shown and consumed. They are also issues I’ve been trying to explore for more than a decade now in my curatorial experiments, as well as in our regular conversations and collaborations – projects such as the 4th Gwangju Biennale (2002), the Second Guangzhou Triennial (2005) and the 10th Istanbul Biennial (2007), for example.
These issues have to be raised again today because of art’s new context. At the moment, contemporary art is being developed and disseminated around the world under radically contradictory and ambivalent conditions. On the one hand, there has never been so much attention paid to contemporary art or such great resources invested in it. This is historically unprecedented, therefore promising and exciting. On the other hand, contemporary art has never been so constrained or even formatted by the rules of the established, quasi-corporate institutions and the market. Its nature has rapidly turned from avant-garde intellectual exploration into mass entertainment, while its model of production is inevitably ‘industrialized’.
Resorting to ‘informal’ resources
However, the art world itself finds itself in a dilemma: how to preserve and develop creativity, criticality and freedom of producing difference as art’s essential and moral commitment in the face of such a powerful imposition of the establishment. More and more artists, critics, curators and engaged members of the public are now striving to imagine and invent alternative modes of production, presentation and communication of art work, resorting to old and new, often ‘informal’, media and socio-economic resources. Looking at the big picture of our life/world, there also appears to be a trend towards engagement with globalization and modernization across the world. In this movement of resistance, thousands of independent collectives and individuals including various NGOs and bottom-up initiatives have shown incredibly creative capacities to propose alternative and diverse forms of economic, cultural, social and political visions, productions and exchanges based on the principle of the multitude and collaboration.
Of course, the search for new models of production, presentation and communication of contemporary art works, events and projects, in a time when there is no longer (as Toni Negri calls it) an ‘outside’ of the system, can only take place inside, or in close connection to, the system. What is crucial is to invent ways of doing things and to formulate structures that are situated in the space ‘in-between’, in which some radically different usages of the system and its products, resources and values are put forward. It’s a space that falls into the category of the everyday according to Michel de Certeau (ref. L’Invention du Quotidien), or the non-official side of the system, the very living world facing the static and fixed infrastructure of the establishment – be it institutions or the market. De Certeau’s idea of encouraging different usages of the products and ways of doing (manières de faire) is especially inspiring here.
A ‘cellular’ art world
The actions that one takes to develop alternative models are mobile, improvisational, flexible, ephemeral, borderless, guerrilla-styled. Like Hakim Bey’s Temporary Autonomous Zone, the spaces opened up by such actions are sites of insurgency against the hegemonic power of the dominant system. Provocative and even revolutionary visions and forms of expressions are encouraged.
At the same time, various initiatives in different parts of the world, often of small scales, are looking for mutual connections in order to form a global network. Together they form a truly powerful and effective ‘cellular world’ cutting across the vertebral structure of the dominant system, as Arjun Appadurai explains in his Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger, where he provides us a wonderful picture of how this kind of network can work against the injustice of the dominant system of globalization. The nodes of this network are like moving guerrillas targeting weak points in the nerves of the dominant system by inserting the differences of small numbers, short distance, intimately connected but fundamentally opposed visions, actions and forms of expressions to constantly problematize and disturb the normal functions of the dominant system. And, ultimately, this constantly helps the guerrilla initiatives to obtain new relevance for their projects and actions.
In other words, this process of forming the cellular world, in both the artistic-cultural context and economic-political terrain, becomes a generator, or producer, of constantly renewed relationships between art and society.
To understand initiatives like the Nanomuseum from this perspective, one can see its contemporary relevance much more effectively in spite of the historic links to Marcel Duchamp’s Box in a Valise, among others. This reminds me too of the idea of infinite exhibitions within the exhibition that we experimented with in Cities on the Move (1997-2000) – and especially, as you mentioned, Ozawa Tsuyoshi’s Nasubi Galleries. Over the years, Ozawa has invited numerous artists to interpose work in and reinvent the small milk boxes that he sent them. The boxes containing the works of those artists have been collected and exhibited in the large exhibition, and continued to circulate to other projects.
Biennale of works ‘smuggled’ in suitcases
Finally, I’d like to suggest looking at one of the most remarkable and important projects for the last couple of years in the global art scene: the Emergency Biennale in Chechnya curated by Evelyne Jouanno, a typical but unique suitcase exhibition. This project was initiated at the peak of geopolitical conflicts in 2005. The art world was celebrating the first Moscow Biennale while the war in Chechnya was undergoing its most violent period – and the fancy art world showed its ignorance of the cruelty of the warlords and suffering of the people. In response, Jouanno tried to mobilize more than a hundred artists to express their concerns and engagement in order to help the Chechen people recover their culture, dignity and identity, which had been largely violated by the invaders through the destruction of their cultural heritage such as museums, libraries and schools. Artists from all around the world answered the call of the curator and contributed to the project. Each artist submitted two works: one was to be put in a suitcase and ‘smuggled’ into Grozny, while the other went to an exhibition outside of the country in another suitcase, in order to attract the public’s attention to the war and the fate of the Chechen people and culture. Within less than a month, the curator had received more than a hundred works and managed, without any budget, to show them both in Paris at the Palais de Tokyo and at various sites in Grozny.
On February 23, 2005, the opening day, a public panel discussion, co-organized with humanitarian and cultural NGOs as well as Chechen immigrants, was held. Since then, the exhibition continues to travel to different parts of the world in a few suitcases. It grows at every step, gaining new contributions by local curators and local artists, and new panels exploring the issues of geopolitical conflicts, human rights, and of course, the destiny of Chechnya and other emergency situations. The reactions of the publics at each of the venues (11 so far) across the world – Paris, Bruxelles, Bolzano (Italy), Milano, Riga (Latvia), Tallinn (Estonia), Vancouver, Puebla (Mexico), Istanbul, San Francisco, and Blalystock (Poland) – have been extremely positive and encouraging. Ultimately we are expecting that both works by each artist will reunite in Grozny to form the first collection of a new contemporary art museum (www.emergency-biennale.org).
Bonne chance!
All the best
Hanru
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Originally printed in ART iT No.20 Summer/Fall 2008