⁰¹ Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Where is Where?, 2008, HD installation for six projections with sound. Written and directed by Eija-Liisa Ahtila. Photographed by Marja-Leena Hukkanen. Courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris. Photo: Kristof Vrancken.
⁰² Michaël Borremans, Taking Turns, 2009, 35 mm film, colour, 8’ 35”, loop. Courtesy of Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp. Photo: Kristof Vrancken.
⁰³ Matthew Buckingham, Caterina de Hemessen is Twenty Years Old, 2009, continuous silent colour 16 mm film projection installation with mixed media. Co-produced by Contour Mechelen vzw, Belgium. Courtesy of Murray Guy, New York. Photo: Kristof Vrancken.
⁰⁴ Andreas Bunte, Künstliche Paradiese, 2009, two 16 mm films, B/W, silent. Co-produced by Contour Mechelen vzw, Belgium. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Ben Kaufmann, Berlin. Photo: Kristof Vrancken.
⁰⁵ Maryam Jafri, Staged Archive, 2008, single-channel digital video (DVCPro 50), colour, sound, 9’. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Kristof Vrancken.
⁰⁶ Yorgos Sapountzis, Charleroi. In memory of wealth, celebration and religion, 2009, video and mixed media installation. Co-produced by Contour Mechelen vzw, Belgium. With the support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. Courtesy of the artist, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin and Loraini Alimantiri Gazonrouge, Athens.
⁰⁷ Ulla von Brandenburg, 8, 2007, 16 mm film, B/W, silent, looped, 8’ 10”. Courtesy of the artist, Art : Concept, Paris, Produzentengalerie, Hamburg and Pilar Corrias Ltd., London. Photo: Kristof Vrancken.
⁰⁸ Vincent Meessen, Vita Nova, 2009, single-channel video, colour, sound, 26’. Co-produced by Contour Mechelen vzw, Belgium. With the support of the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF). Produced by Normal, Brussels. Courtesy of Normal, Brussels. Photo: Kristof Vrancken.
⁰⁹ Julian Rosefeldt, The Ship of Fools, 2007, four-channel film installation, colour, sound, 7’ 23”, loop. Filmed on Super 16 mm, converted to HD-SR and transferred onto DVD. Courtesy of the artist and Arndt & Partner, Berlin/Zurich. Photo: Kristof Vrancken.

Luigi Fassi: I want to start asking you about the reference you made in the Contour catalogue essay to historian Tony Judt, who claims we are in the midst of an ‘unpolitical age of forgetting’, characterised by sacrificing history to myth making and denial over memory. You also quoted John Tosh who goes even further claiming that being active and concerned citizens within a democratic society implies thinking historically and being aware of the past. You wrote that it is not a coincidence that in light of this situation artists are increasingly interested in recapturing the importance of the historical sense. Can you elaborate on that? Did you have this context in mind before starting working on Contour or is it something you gradually became aware of when preparing the show and doing studio visits?

Katerina Gregos: I have always been interested in history as a necessary tool for knowledge, understanding of social, political and cultural contexts, and even self-knowledge. It is a truism that if one does not know where one comes from one cannot have an idea where one is going. It’s like the story of the adopted child who almost always goes in search of his or her biological parents. Contour 2009 came exactly 20 years after the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of socialism. If we agree that there are three key dates that marked the twentieth century, with 1918 and 1945 being two of them, then 1989 is certainly the third. During this time we have witnessed enormous geo-political and social shifts and the consolidation of capitalism and ‘globalisation’. Therefore, I thought it was a timely occasion to reflect on the changes wrought in this period, and the highlight the importance of re-instating historical discourse in the public arena, since many of the things that occur on a socio-political level are subject to the suppression of history, or the narration of only one side of the story — the so-called ‘Master Narratives’ by which a large part of history has been recounted through the ages (invariably by those in positions of power). We can also see the problematic relationship with the past in former Eastern bloc countries where Communism has, on occasion, been completely demonised, whereas we know that each such ideological system cannot be reduced to sweeping generalisations, having good and bad sides, and many ‘gray’ areas in between. In that case, it is always wiser to speak of histories (small ‘h’, plural) rather than History (with a capital ‘H’, singular). Our consumerist culture with its incessant emphasis on the consumption of the ‘new’ is also to blame for amnesia or ignorance in all sorts of quarters. Ignorance of history may also breed racism, xenophobia, nationalism, political bias and enable the emergence of myths that serve particular interests. Tony Judt and the great historian Eric Hobsbawn were also very important to me in that respect, as they both speak of the dangers of historical amnesia, with Hobsbawn drawing attention to the precariousness of the situation especially in relation to our highly technological times. On the other hand, I was also aware of the so-called ‘historiographic turn’ in art practice, which one could say is also — in Europe particularly — largely due to the geo-political changes that happened at the end of the ’80s and beginning of the ’90s, with the collapse of socialism, and the subsequent desire to mine hidden, unknown or repressed territories. And indeed it is no coincidence that artists seem increasingly preoccupied with the idea of history, as a way of retaining certainties and safeguarding identities in a rapidly changing but also increasingly unipolar, homogenised world. What gradually became apparent over the course of my research is the large number of artists who are grappling with issues in this territory. So given my own interest in history I embarked upon research for the biennial where I came upon some thinkers and artists who I thought were doing some very interesting work on re-instating the importance of history, remembering, and memory. Furthermore, however, we can also talk about the importance of historical awareness even in the domain of the contemporary visual arts itself where we often see artists producing works without having a clue of their genealogy. In that sense, one has to know ones fathers, even if one is eventually to kill them, as the metaphor goes.

LF: The ‘historiographic turn’ you talk about has been indeed an impressive phenomenon in recent art practice. However, in several cases I have the feeling historicity has become for younger artists (and art students) a sort of standardized practice emptied out of a broad historical awareness, as if history might be handled in a rather episodic way, devoid of a precise sense of social and civic-responsibility. The risk is that in the worst cases this approach brings us back to the historical amnesia we started our conversation with. In this respect I found very intriguing that to a large extent you decided to involve artists in the biennial who already have extensive experience in art-making and a very structured set of ideas and stakes about their practice. TJ Wilcox, Lene Berg, Eiija-Lisa Ahtila and Michael Borremans could be cited in this regard among many others. Some of them could be even defined as mid-career and Contour has brought to the fore some insightful clues about their generation.

KG: I totally agree with you on that first point, and also think that there is a great difference between resorting to history as a kind of nostalgic exercise, a ‘glossing’ over particular historical events for whatever reason, and ‘real’ engagement with the subject, together with the necessary knowledge and research needed in this respect; likewise there is a difference between history as kind of superficial point of reference and history as a legitimate field of research. Personally I am interested in history not as a nostalgic retreat into the past but as something with which one can make meaningful connections to the present: history as a necessary tool for understanding the present before one is even able to posit visions of the future. Many of the artists in the biennial approach history with the zeal and discipline of a professional historian or an academic, garnering the necessary knowledge, and doing extensive research into their chosen subject. Mark Godfrey has called this phenomenon ‘the artist as historian’ meaning that these artists probably have the knowledge and insight into a particular — even if sometimes limited — subject that is not far from that of professional historian. In the case of TJ Wilcox for example, it takes him about a year to make a short 16 mm film; likewise Matthew Buckingham, for example, does an enormous amount of research into his given subjects before embarking on the production of an artwork — gaining in-depth, specialist knowledge much in the same way a historian would. On the other hand I did not only want to include emerging and young artists in the exhibition, and not only because I am wary of this incessant quest for the new, however exciting it may be; these mid-career artists such as TJ Wilcox, Matthew Buckingham and Eija-Liisa Ahtila — due to the fact that they experienced and remember this remarkable transitional period we have been through post-1989 — also possess a longer-term perspective on recent historical issues of importance, the maturity to have processed these issues, and greater identification with them in comparison to younger generation artists who have invariably grown up in more a-political, a-historical times and with more uniform cultural references and experiences of reality (Internet, YouTube, iphone, Facebook etc.)

LF: I think the theoretical approach you had toward Contour also advocates the necessity for an articulated political dimension within society. It seems to me the way in which you claim for a deeper awareness of the historical dimension within the present time becomes also a claim for the ‘return of the political’, to use Chantal Mouffe’s terms.

KG: Indeed. In addition, I think the return of political consciousness and praxis — in terms of activating citizens in the public sphere — is more urgent now than ever. We are living not in post-political but in ‘apolitical’ times and the notion of politics itself has become very distasteful — especially for a younger generation of people who view it with distrust and cynicism, and often with good reason. This is a disheartening state of affairs. Consumerism has become the dust thrown into our eyes to render us apolitical and inactive, propagating the myth that as long as we are able to consume, we are happy. Not only consumerism alone, but the increased affluence we are experiencing in the Western world has also certainly added to this political apathy (not that you have to be poor and disenfranchised to be politically aware.) And of course, add to that the arch-individualism preached by neo-liberalism as well as the often invisible censorship that is exercised by governments and corporations to keep us in the dark. So we sit by as lame ducks while decisions are made and laws are being passed left right and centre that deeply affect our lives, and about which we have no say. In that sense, I do agree with Mouffe’s idea of the ‘return of the political’ but not only in the theoretical terms she is proposing because they are purely theoretical; rather I am more in favour of active, participatory citizenship, for we are facing enormous challenges ahead. Mouffe’s argument in favour of a radical democracy of agonistic pluralism where all antagonisms could be expressed is interesting in theory, and I particularly like the distinction she makes between political ‘agonism’ and ‘antagonism’ as a way forward politically. The question that arises, however, is ‘how’ this might be given a form of expression and actually implemented. And for this, she does not seem to have an answer. The relationship between history and politics is, of course, a fundamental one. John Tosh, whom you mentioned further up, was also important in this context because he speaks about the precariousness of hiding historical facts for political purposes, using over-simplified historical analogies to justify public policy decisions, or hand picking arguments to suit courses of action; he advocates the return of the function of history in the public sphere arguing in favour of ‘the serious employment of history as a tool to support political choices’.

LF: In a recent piece on curating published in Artforum, Maria Lind defines the curatorial as a qualitative concept, a viral presence striving to create friction and push new ideas from different sides, curators and artists, but also educators and editors. In this regard according to Lind, as an active catalyst generating tensions, twists and disturbances, the curatorial parallels in an interesting way the notion of the ‘political’ as conceived of by Mouffe. It is an interesting opinion because it provides an insightful idea about how the curatorial can put to test traditional representation-processes and be observed under the lens of its responsibility toward the social realm. How did your personal approach to curating change and develop, if it did, by working for Contour?

KG: It is more or less an open door that a curator can develop disturbances, highlight situations and ideas and bring to the fore discursive nuances, much in the same way an orchestra conductor can do. This is the added value that a curator in an ideal situation can and should contribute. At its best, curating makes new relationships visible but also allows the artworks to ‘shine’, if I may use the term, further elucidating their meaning and relationship to other works in their immediate surrounds, as well as highlighting issues and raising questions beyond these surrounds. On the other hand there is always a danger for these ‘disturbances’ or ‘ideas’ to be overbearing, eclipsing the role of the artworks themselves or producing forced discourse; worst yet, is when a curator uses an artist’s ideas in order to illustrate one’s own curatorial concept. I don’t know whether curatorial practice in general parallels Mouffe’s concept of ‘the political’, which is in its essence a rather theoretical construct with little practical value for a curator, or even for a politician for that matter. But let’s just say that a particular brand of curating: one which is ethical, responsible, socio-politically aware, and critical, can come close to Chantal Mouffe’s notion of ‘the political’, which is inextricably tied to notions of dissent, and practices that disturb existing power relations. In that sense I agree with Maria Lind when she says that the curatorial involves not just representing but presenting and testing; indeed asking questions of all sorts. But to answer your question proper, whenever you curate a new show, your approach to curating changes and develops, inevitably. For me, the most important and rewarding aspect of curating is the contact with the artists. In the discussions with them your ideas are challenged, chiselled and put to test — this is the most important component of the curatorial ‘development’ you are talking about. The biennial was very instructive in that sense, because all artists were present in Mechelen on numerous occasions and we had many opportunities to exchange our ideas. As far as my own approach to curating is concerned, I’d say I’ve become more concerned with the idea of deceleration; the slowing down of perception; investing more time in all that relates to the making of the exhibition, including spending time with the artists; and doing projects only when I really feel I have something to say.

LF: Contour is a Biennial for Moving Image and indeed except some photographs, there are only videos, films and time-based works in the project. How have you been coping with this rule? Did you perceive it as a limitation or as a challenge to analyse and put to question the relevance of this genre? Do you think it can still make sense in the future to have a video and time-based biennial?

KG: First of all I should mention that one of the first things I did when I was appointed was change the original title which was ‘video biennial’ to ‘biennial of moving image’ because the former now seems limited as a description. I didn’t feel limited by the medium-specific focus of the biennial because moving image today is such a rich and fluid domain, which takes so many different shape and forms, and also incorporates other media that I personally consider it one of the most versatile and multi-dimensional art forms (not to mention the immersive properties of the medium and the fact that it relates more than anything else to our televisual and cinematic age). From single-channel video, to analogue film, to multi-channel video installations, and installations which incorporate sculptural and other elements, there is such a wide variety of languages and practices within the field that a medium-specific biennial can be totally justified. I tried as much as possible to break any possible sense of uniformity by presenting a wide variety of practices: from Yorgos Sapountzis’ sculpture-based installation, to Andreas Bunte’s and David Maljkovic’s architectural sets upon which the films were presented, to Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s expansive video installation and TJ Wilcox’s or Michael Borremans’ pure filmic spaces; and there would have indeed been more supplementary material in other media but as we also produced a large number of works, we were then limited in budget and could not afford to bring any additional two or three dimensional works (as was the case with a suite of drawings by David Maljkovic which proved too expensive to transport from New York). In that sense, given the fact that so many artists working with video are also working with other media, a ‘video biennial’ need not be limited to video alone. That said, I am convinced of the relevance of the ‘moving image’ for many reasons. Though I am not exclusively a film curator most of the things I have been seeing in recent years that I found the most interesting have been works that were predominantly lens-based. I don’t feel its necessary, on the other hand, to challenge the relevance of the medium because I don’t think there is a question regarding its legitimacy in art practice today (as opposed to questions about the ‘death of painting’ for example). Film and video are so close to other aspects of our culture — TV, cinema, the development of the digital technologies — that they can be considered the most contemporary artistic languages, indeed the ‘language of our times’. The challenges in doing a biennial that is moving image based mostly relate to space and architecture; and that is one of the problems with video and film in exhibitions: that they are so often badly installed without an iota of consideration of spatial parameters. It’s either a question of ‘black box’ or ‘white wall’, often without any care at all for light, sound conditions etc. In fact, each work in the moving image — as testified by this biennial — is so different and needs separate, individual consideration and different spatial configuration. Viewing film and video works is not only a question of viewing the works themselves but actually being a part of a specific space and partaking in a specific spatial experience. So for this edition there were certain fundamental decisions made: one, fewer artists given the time-based nature of the exhibition; two, installation in numerous spaces and not one big exhibition hall to allow a pause and breathing room in between each work; and three, selection of spaces which bore some relation to the content of the work, to develop a certain synergy and spatial relationship between the two.

LF: I’d like to ask you about your personal stance toward documentarism. With regard to historicity, the last years have seen an explosion of documentary time-based practices, accompanied by a remarkable amount of theoretical production on the subject. By visiting the biennial and looking at the works I hade the feeling you wanted to take a different path. It is very interesting because given the theme on the relevance of history you embarked upon, one might have expected a biennial with a vast selection of documentary-based works which, with some relevant exceptions, was not the case. As you mentioned before, it seems you wanted to open up as much as possible the time-based structure of the biennial, regardless of the languages employed. In any case, I am curious to know what your thoughts and ideas are with respect to contemporary documentarism as an art genre.

KG: I am extremely interested in documentary practices, and am a big fan of documentaries whether for cinema or television, or made by artists for the art circuit. However, I am not sure that a large-scale exhibition or biennial where considerable demands are made on the viewer’s time, are the best places to see this kind of work which is better suited for, in my opinion, for cinema, TV, individual screenings, or the festival circuit. Its ok to have one or two works like that in a group show, but being predominantly narrative based, they need time to be seen from beginning to end. I avoided having too much of this kind of work in the biennial primarily for this reason — information overload and time constraints. But I also avoided it because I wanted to opt for a particular ‘feeling’ or aesthetic in relation to the moving image for this particular show. What I wanted to avoid at all costs is the kind of amateurish, D-I-Y, trivial and mostly deadly boring documentary video that we unfortunately see all-too-often in contemporary art exhibitions. In that sense, I was interested in re-instating that old-fashioned notion of ‘skill’ in film-making by choosing artists who are capable not only of producing a distinct filmic language and sense of visuality, but who actually have the ‘technical competences’ to make a film or video, regardless of budget; that means proper camera-work, editing, sound, etc. etc. For the biennial I consciously opted for works that posit distinct, memorable visual languages as opposed to amateurish, documentary approaches, facile video registration, or ‘cinema-verité’ style. Overall, it was my goal to maintain a balance between four areas: new aesthetic or formal practices, poetic-political or documentary film ‘with a twist’, cinematic practices, and the legacy of experimental film. So some works are rooted in a documentary tradition, but they are not straightforward documentaries but rather works which have an idiosyncratic artistic character like Lene Berg’s Stalin by Ricasso which uses the documentary narrative format but is made exclusively out of collages handcrafted by the artist; or Wendelien Van Oldenburgh’s work Après la reprise, la prise which features a pared-down, fragmented narrative in the form of a slide show in a specially designed architectural setting. Documentaries by artists can be an incredibly interesting and content-rich genre when they are made more-or-less according to the same standards of a professional documentary director — regardless of subject matter, budget or duration — and when they are imbued with the artistic ‘twist’ I just mentioned, that particular quality that raises them out of the orthodoxy of documentary practices.

LF: A consistent part of the works on view in Contour have been commissioned directly by the organisation. How did you handle that and what kind of strategy did you develop to commission?

KG: I chose artists already working consistently within the thematic field of the biennial so I was confident they were not treading in unknown waters. Initially there was a discussion about the concept and then proposals by the artists followed. The artists were free to develop any project they wished, taking their cue from the general framework of the biennial which is wide enough to allow for a variety of viewpoints and subjects. I certainly didn’t say ‘can you make something like this or something like that’. In that sense, I conceived of the exhibition not as a novel but more as a series of short stories that may or may not relate to each other, but all fall under one rubric. I closely followed the production of the work and did not interfere in the content but more contributed on technical questions such as editing, sound, presentation, or responded to any questions/doubts the artists had along the way. I don’t see myself as an artist-curator so its not my business to direct content but rather offer advice on how a work can be better produced and ‘read’ within an exhibition context and with a public in mind. The most important part of commissioning is maintaining a close relationship to all the artists and having a continuing discussion on the work. There was of course — and always is — a case when you see the final result the day before the opening and that’s ok too, but its always much more rewarding for all sides when the process of production is followed closely. And after all that there are questions like following the budget so it doesn’t de-rail, and searching for partners for co-fundings and co-productions.

LF: I think it is interesting you recount Contour as a series of short stories not necessarily linked to each other but grounded in the same agenda. I personally found this biennial effective because it was centered around a specific set of complex but clear questions and themes, in a frank way. What I find highly problematic in contemporary curating is to see curators competing in generating fancy curatorial strategies with distrust to address relevant contents. With a touch of irony, would you mind being defined ‘old school’ in this regard?

KG: Not at all. I am a self-professed old-school curator! I am very critical of ‘drive-by’ curating, hastily put together shows, shallow theorems, borrowed or half-read and misunderstood philosophical ideas, lack of original thinking, instrumentalisation, exploitation or disregard for the artist, overbearing curatorial concepts which neatly ‘package’ an artist’s practice, all-in-all aspects of superficial curatorial practice which are at the expense of proper in-depth research, quality time spent with the artists, and sincere interest, commitment and engagement. It would be nice to see a bit more risk, imagination, and ‘heart & soul’ in some exhibitions and less a list of ‘checks and balances’ and strategic choices. For me, however, a curator first and foremost has responsibility toward the artist; that means securing the proper presentation of the work and the conditions necessary for that. From then on there are many other things we know a curator does such as what we discussed further up. If it is old fashioned to say that we have to put the notion of care back into curating (thinking of the Latin origins of the word: ‘curare’, to take care), then you could definitely say I am a very old fashioned curator.


Katerina Gregos was the curator of Contour ’09: 4th Biennial of Moving Image, Mechelen, Belgium
Luigi Fassi is a curator & writer, artistic director of ar/ge kunst Galerie Museum in Bolzano, Italy