Art curation needs public engagement
Yeung Yang is critical of the approach taken by the arts council and M+
The Arts Development Council and M+ have announced that they are working together in preparation for Hong Kong's participation in the Venice Biennale next year. The collaboration marks a major policy change in that it institutes a different way of distributing the right of participation in the biennale from an open call to invitation only. It is also the first time the two public institutions will work together on the international presentation of art from Hong Kong.
Before the announcement, there had been no review of past presentations, or any explanation about how this infrastructural change relates to the topography of existing museums that also work in the field of contemporary art and its overseas presentations.
Instead, the council calls it an "experiment" with M+, to be reviewed afterwards. By turning a public matter into a bipartisan one, the institutions are depriving art of the right to become socially relevant to the public and the right of the public to a role in determining the development of art in Hong Kong. What makes both institutions think they are free to introduce this big policy change?
In response to the public's call for information, the council's chairman, Wilfred Wong Ying-wai, said the minutes of the council meetings that endorsed the policy change could not be revealed because closed-door meetings facilitated a "free exchange of views". M+ executive director Lars Nittve talks of the importance of "curatorial freedom", in that the selection of artists should not be done by "vote, committee, and under pressure".
In both cases, a superior kind of freedom is called on to justify their act. I would argue otherwise: the kind of freedom the institutions are entitled to is no different from the freedoms all members of the public enjoy. Once one kind of freedom is measured against and claimed to be worthier than another, the so-called freedom becomes a privilege.
More specifically, curatorial freedom expresses and is derived from fundamental civic freedoms. When we are free from coercion and domination, we can reason independently, express our ideals and seek out the truth. In curating, this means seeking out the truth for art, which is for everyone.
A good analogy is the editorial freedom that news organisations uphold. Journalists and editors safeguard editorial freedom in defence not of some privileged access to information but of the equal right to access information by all. The media upholds this freedom by applying its specialised knowledge in the context of the public good.
It's the same with curatorial freedom, which is meaningful only when it imposes limits on itself: the duty to listen to others, to understand differences, and to be humble in the face of arguments that invalidate our own beliefs, for example. Curating values art by its selection, presentation and articulation. In doing so, it sets up different, even competing ways of valuing art. It is through learning from and discussing these differences that our public life and the public life of art are enriched.
When curating exercises this independence of mind in public, the curation becomes political not because it serves particular partisan interests, but because it exercises the same freedom the way other members of society do. It is political because it manifests the quality of relations in society - it opens itself up for other people's challenges.
This is why no good curation is single-minded, for no art, no human endeavour, is single-minded. The ability to deal with complexity, which is etymologically associated with being connected together, is precisely a demonstration of the freedom to act responsibly with regard to others. It is to acknowledge freedom alongside determination, and independence alongside dependence.
Without this intellectual rigour and civic-mindedness, any "world class" curation is nothing but the empty slogan that local luxury property advertisements circulate.
