Uncurating Politics in the Gallery space: the Possibility of Resistance and the Performance of Alternatives

This article starts with reflection on two compelling essays which I read in parallel. One was a text by Lina Džuverović and Irene Revell on the unwell and unwilling curator – “Lots of Shiny Junk at the Art Dump: The Sick and Unwilling Curator” - the other was by Boris Groys – “Politics of Installation” – a text that observes on the sick and poorly art work in need of a curator to restore its powers. The first writes about the free labour and unconditional, affective work required to be valued as a “young”, not institutionally secure, curator, and the resulting precarity and illness that such an insatiable environment produces: “One’s value lies in one’s willingness to bring these gems of ideas and funding like religious offerings to institutions whose operational structures are based precisely on sucking out this kind of enthusiasm for as long as possible.” The second discusses the apparent powerlessness of the artwork that remains unpublicised, unshown, unseen, as a sickness and helplessness to be cured by the curatorial project: “in order to see it, viewers must be brought to it as visitors are brought to a bed-ridden patient by hospital staff.” While Groys critiques this understanding and attitude, and sees a potential for resistance in the installation as an autonomous artistic sphere of practice able to reinstate the sovereignty of the artist in her own material organisation and work, Džuverović and Revell see a potential resistance in a sense of care and healing: the curare of the curator herself, in solidarity and by going slow.