I Am Writing To... Open Letters in Art Criticism

OpenLet-ters

in ArtCriti-cism

I am Writ-ing To…Ed. An PaenhuysenA collection of exercises from the online courseCreative Forms of Art Criticism and Writing.

Node CenterNotebooks

Vol.2

Introductionby An PaenhuysenHanako Fujiito Chris KrausMercedes Carriquiryto Sophie CalleAlex Bowronto JonAnnette Abelto Harald SzeemannClaudio Craveroto Rirkrit TiravanijaFlavia Dalla Bernardinato Marina AbramovićMarina Kassianidouto Francis Alÿs (in Four Parts)Maeve Hannato curator Marnie Fleming,Oakville Galleries (Canada)Annalisa Pellinoto the non-participants of theForum of Italian Contemporary ArtSarah Mercadanteto NadiaSujin Jungto Fatih AkinVoices

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Open letters are a genre that art critics rarely use. If they ever did so, these letters did’t seem to go viral. It’s different with artists’ letter writing. There are several famous ones: Adrian Piper critiquing art critic Donald Kuspit, Yvonne Rainer opposing museum director Jeffrey Deitch, Danh Vō fighting with his collector Bert Kreuk.

Mostly, these open letters are written with emotion. The emotion tends often to be negative, coming from a place of anger. Open letters are a great way for releasing that anger, protesting against injustice or denouncing malpractice with the knowledge that also a wider audience will be informed. Instead, the positive thank-you letter seems to be a rather private matter.

Introduction 4

An Paenhuysen

Like the private letter, the language of the open letter not only allows feelings, but it is also highly personal. Both feelings and the personal might be the reasons why art critics avoid the genre of open letter writing. Many art critics embrace the impersonal and the objective, sometimes even to the point of avoiding a clear, singular positioning.

“Sincere” and “authentic” might sound cheesy, but they define the spirit behind I Am Writing To... Open Letters in Art Criticism. These letters were written by worldwide based art critics during the online course “Creative Forms in Art Writing” at Node Center – Curatorial Studies Online. It is suprising, but all the letters ended up being positive, and this is not because negative thoughts were censured. Yet, don’t we all know that expressing gratitude is not an easy thing to do privately, and does it get any easier when your praise goes public?

5 I am Writing To... Open Letters in Art Criticism (Notebook), ed. An Paenhuysen

Auckland, New ZealandSaturday, September 5, 201508:21am

Dear Chris, Catt, and Sylvie,

In beginning this open letter I immediately think back to two days prior. A funeral — a moment of excess fresh in my mind. I broke away from the feeling of grief once my best friend took to the podium. She was to make a formal dedication to her late father. It’s strange because it’s a tired format, a ritual, but unavoidably personal and expectedly devastating. Though the display was of more strength than sadness. Her conviction and intellect was a lasting impression of her father’s influence. It was an embodied thank you.

It seems then that it’s difficult to talk about someone’s lasting impression without effectively embodying the result of their influence. I would hope that this open letter is then both a self-conscious and subconscious display of the way I think, after having read your writing. Admittedly, I am unsure as to whether I am addressing you as Chris Kraus the author, or as the “Chris Kraus” within the characters of Chris, Catt and Sylvie. I am content with this ambiguity. I’m also not sure if this is an attempt to imitate your writing. I suppose it is indeed. Thinking in a roundabout, contradictory way comes

Hanako Fujiito Chris Kraus

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easily. It’s because what I have read of yours allows me to. Combining fiction with nonfiction, while inserting art criticism with feminist connotations is honest and candid and makes me want to evoke something similar. It’s audacious and I want to be audacious.

Aliens and Anorexia was the first book. I think it’s one that I will always go back to. I’m very glad to have read that first because it is set in New Zealand and I am obsessed with place. I also understand you went to Victoria University in Wellington. I only almost went there. I wonder if you would consider yourself a New Zealander. I’m very interested in this sort of expat, migrant, dislocated life. I like to think that your idea of Lonely Girl Phenomenology is related to this somehow. The Lonely Girl as the physically and metaphorically dislocated self. It could be the most un-lonely way of thinking.

I never realized the extent to which my thoughts are influenced by place. Or influenced by a lack of place or too many places. It’s the contradiction of becoming insular. I think this idea recurs throughout your novels — the prominence of long-distance driving back and forth. It’s relevant as I am about to leave New Zealand for some time and I am not sure if that means I will be a migrant again, or an expat. I am resolutely useless in either category.

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You said there was a lot of madness here because it is a “mean and isolated little country”. To others it still carries the idea of the Godzone. I feel and know both notions, it’s a living contradiction. I’ve suddenly carried around with me a recurring feeling of nausea. Counting down the days before my departure and the effect is physical, the nausea is coming from the middle of my spine. Or maybe it’s the pull of the Super Moon. Sometimes I find myself thinking that I am leaving to come back.

My assumption is that your novels are about you, only in the sense that you use yourself to talk about something bigger than yourself. I would want to imitate your writing in that regard. A selfless selfishness. I especially like when you talk about physical and metaphorical entrapment, as I connect it to identity politics and the capitalist society we live in. Entrapment. It’s the institution inside of us.

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I often think that making a film about Aliens and Anorexia would be my next project. Maybe not an adaption, but it would be in conversation with your work. Lonely Girl Phenomenology can be a hypothetical thesis. It can start here. A thesis as an embodied performance, an ambitious attempt to un-bludgeon my subjectivity.

In mentioning my friend’s dedication to her father, it’s probably clear that I think ideas are best shown through correspondence. When there is a dialogue to create a sort of instinctual ‘affect’. It makes me think of the lengthy emails exchanged between myself and a friend from high school after she moved to Los Angeles. We use these emails to talk to each other, and I think ultimately it helps us to talk to ourselves.

I saw this resonate through the letters Chris wrote in I Love Dick, as she was writing to herself and to everyone like her. None of it was really about Dick. It never is.

Hanako

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10Mercedes Carriquiry to Sophie Calle

September 10, 2015 - 23:56Montevideo, Uruguay

Salut Sophie,

I’m caught by your work. Don’t get cocky and stop reading; I haven’t been snooping around for long. I actually met you (if I can say so) in Colombia three years ago. I saw your exhibition douleur exquise in Bogotá. I’m not sure if seen is the right verb, I suffered it. How could you? I never though I could experiment grief ever (I’m way beyond insensitive), even less that I could own somebody else’s angoisse.

Mercedes Carriquiry


Maybe the fact that you used your writing, your photographs, your art and mise en scene, made it so soul stirring. I’m not sure, it does still not sound enough. The repeated boards really created the sensation of time, and made it very Oulipo style (personal stamp yeah..). If ever somebody would ask me how does it feel to agonizingly forget I will know what to say.

I am not particularly a big fan of your art in terms of aesthetics but the mixture of your photographs and writing… the moment I start reading, bang I’m gone. That’s probably what Auster talks about in Leviatan, the ambiguity of what you do and the difficulty of classifying as photographer/artist/writer is kind of thrilling too.

I won’t flatter your work all night long; there is still a lot to be read for somebody who is very, very, new at this art-thing. Just letting you know that the fact you could transmit “Mallarmé’s angoisse” in an exhibi-tion was for me not only inspiring but also hopeful. It definitely encour-aged me to find the way to transmit what’s going on up there.

I took the rest of the day off that day, I couldn’t keep visiting. It sucked the tears out of me (not a big deal, art is the only thing that has made me cry so far). If I ever reach that level of power and openness in an exhibition I will not only write back, but will also owe it to your inspiration. Partially.

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Mercedes Carriquiry


Best,Mercedes

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Bowron to Jon

April 25, 2015

Dearest Jon,

About eight years ago I left a Sunday morning drop-in life drawing session because I needed to step outside and cry. I had been struggling that day to get my lines just right and my frustration hit me hard. From a fountain of tears sprung my life’s only true epiphany: I cared more about producing a competent 2-minute sketch then I did about anything else I had done up until that point. I knew then that I needed art, and once I understood how to get it, there was no turning back.

One of the most important skills I have learned since then is how to curb my empathy just enough so that I can function in the “real world”. Despite the hardships of a tricky income, I devote my life to seeking, making, thinking and writing about art because it not only tolerates but encourages and rewards my imagination. Art recognizes that imagination is a skill.

Alex Bow

ron15 I am Writing To... Open Letters in Art Criticism (Notebook), ed. An Paenhuysen

April 25, 2015

Dearest Jon,

About eight years ago I left a Sunday morning drop-in life drawing session because I needed to step outside and cry. I had been struggling that day to get my lines just right and my frustration hit me hard. From a fountain of tears sprung my life’s only true epiphany: I cared more about producing a competent 2-minute sketch then I did about anything else I had done up until that point. I knew then that I needed art, and once I understood how to get it, there was no turning back.

One of the most important skills I have learned since then is how to curb my empathy just enough so that I can function in the “real world”. Despite the hardships of a tricky income, I devote my life to seeking, making, thinking and writing about art because it not only tolerates but encourages and rewards my imagination. Art recognizes that imagination is a skill.

What I want you to gather from all of this is that I stay in the game because of artists like you. I am driven by art that requires imagination and forces me to learn new things. Your work takes the stuff of this world and hands it back to us in fully recognizable but entirely new ways. You possess an almost dogmatic lack of commitment to any one medium. In making, you are able to acknowledge the endless details of your materials (ideas, people, locations). You possess the skills to disassemble and reconfigure in ways that achieve the most amount of change with the least amount of intervention. I respect your devotion to building a life that requires you to function as a master of many trades (researcher, explorer, laborer, engineer, administrator, project manager) and a Jack of none.

Only you can so effectively represent the tragedy of being bound by the limitations of ones own makeup through the erratic gyrations of a tubular air dancing “fly guy”.

Thank you for that.Alex

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What I want you to gather from all of this is that I stay in the game because of artists like you. I am driven by art that requires imagination and forces me to learn new things. Your work takes the stuff of this world and hands it back to us in fully recognizable but entirely new ways. You possess an almost dogmatic lack of commitment to any one medium. In making, you are able to acknowledge the endless details of your materials (ideas, people, locations). You possess the skills to disassemble and reconfigure in ways that achieve the most amount of change with the least amount of intervention. I respect your devotion to building a life that requires you to function as a master of many trades (researcher, explorer, laborer, engineer, administrator, project manager) and a Jack of none.

Only you can so effectively represent the tragedy of being bound by the limitations of ones own makeup through the erratic gyrations of a tubular air dancing “fly guy”.

Thank you for that.Alex

Alex Bow

ron17 I am Writing To... Open Letters in Art Criticism (Notebook), ed. An Paenhuysen

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to Harald Szeemann

Dear Harald,

— or Harry as you have always signed your letters — it’s been ten years now that you have died and quite often I am asking myself what I have done on this day in February 2005. But no matter how hard I try I can’t remember. Isn't it weird that sometimes only retrospectively we understand the significance of events? Isn’t it almost like history has the tendency to be constructed retrospectively rather than in the present?

Although I can’t precisely remember what I've done on the day of your death, I can still remember that around the same time I became aware of my obsession for art and decided — to the disappointment of my parents — to give up my studies in literature. At this point in my life verbs like “curating”, nouns like “curator” or definitions like “artist-curators” were hardly on my mind. Nowadays, these words and ideas rule my mind…

During the last six years of my life, your work and your theoretical bequeathal has turned into the main ally of my thoughts and ideas. Many of your ideas have accompanied my daily walks, they brought me to the verge of despair while interpreting them, I’ve met-aphorically danced with them, I’ve criticized them,

Annette A

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I’ve tried to fight against them, I’ve been obsessed by them, I’ve tried to banish them… and although I've turned and twisted them, they became fundamental parts of my very existence and carried me through life.I think you would be quite surprised how fundamen-tally things have changed the last decades in the art system. Although you had been fundamentally import-ant for the definition of the profession of a freelance

curator, I question that you would favor all the ongoing developments. Instead of a clearly

defined profession, curatorship has become a new fashionable career perspective along

the lines of "I Curate, You Curate, We Curate". Curatorial programs at uni-versities, curators as artists, artists as

curators, biennales, everything aesthet-icized, everyone can do everything but only

a few seem to be able to do things properly.

You once said it is better to have just a few visitors that are willing to truly see and feel the artwork instead of a 10000 exhibition visitors who do not truly care. What happened to the purpose of art to comfort the disturbance and disturb the comfort?

Harry, I am very well aware of the fact that you won't answer my questions and that the only thing that seems left for me now is to go once more on a long walk by myself and talk to you in a thousand silent voices.

Annette

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20Claudio Cravero to Rirkrit Tiravanija

Re: From relational art to utopian art

Dear Rirkrit,

We were introduced to one another on the occasion of your trip across UAE with Philippe Parreno and Anri Sala. Actually, we didn’t talk exactly in person there, but, nevertheless, I was so much seduced by our silence in that conversation that I feel such a level of propinquity with you, so I can call you friendly “dear.” In fact, this silent likemindedness pushes me to get in touch with you to involve you in one of my biggest dreams. And if it is true that greatness is usually accompanied by audacity, I dare to ask you as follows:

Claudio Cravero21 I am Writing To... Open Letters in Art Criticism (Notebook), ed. An Paenhuysen

So, to keep it short, let me just say I was not only amazed, but exponentially bewildered and fascinated while walking through your Jardin des syncrétismes in Sharjah. Therefore, I dream to import and adapt your magical and lustful garden on the borderline that separates Saudi Arabia from Bahrain. As you probably know, discontents between the two Kingdoms occur on a daily basis, and religious restrictions avoid people’s leisure in public spaces.

With all that in mind, I was also reflecting on the word “Utopia.” It originally stems from ancient Greek and stands for a non-place, both ideal and unattainable. This image is something that recurs frequently when we think about Eden, paradise, or whichever garden with luxuriant greenery. However, it is a matter of fact that a garden exudes sensuality in every corner with its vegetal extracts. Exactly the way you did by planting tea seeds, aromatic plants and a thousand of roses. In the end, the roots of

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eroticism are basically love, aren’t they? Do you know how great your seeds of love are in terms of allowing people’s benevolence to flourish? I know your concept within this artwork was no longer relational, it was rather based on a meditative status. And we are aware that the more we meditate listening to the present, the less frightened by the future we become. Beyond any kind of differences and overshadowing conflicts.Since as a dreamer I am convinced that dreams can come true, I am thinking that visionary non-places can become real and not only ideal. From your lesson on relational art we have learnt that the strength of contemporary art resides in the power to transform the goals into means. If you think about your interventions and performances, you and Philippe have always wished to reach an authentic relationship with the public attending your “dinners.” But the same relationship, which was meant as an end of your process, became the means to reach. Wasn’t that amazing?

Claudio Cravero23 I am Writing To... Open Letters in Art Criticism (Notebook), ed. An Paenhuysen

Let’s think about it, and feel free to ask me any further questions after perusing my attachment.

I look forward to receiving from you and sharing dreams.

All my best utopias, Claudio

Flavia Dalla Bernardina to Marina Abramović

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Dear Marina,

I’ve always wanted to stare at you in silence like in that performance you once did — I don’t remember when or where.

I’d like to talk to you unpretentiously. I’m not sure whether you drink or not, but it would be nice to have a bottle of wine, so maybe we could laugh a bit or say things we don’t mean to. That might connect us or at least break the ice (for me). Maybe you won’t need any kind of camouflages to let go, but I still do.

I imagine that I will be all excited talking about things I don’t know, things that I didn’t read, experiences I did not have. While you’ll be in silence, with those profound eyes of yours, saying one or two things very gently in a generous way. Sometimes you’ll say things you don’t want to, although you believe in them. This is what happens when you perform life: you live so much, you experience so much that you don’t have room for words. It’s all in your body like tattoos you can’t never erase. Your life and your performances are one. Or you are a shadow of your own life, performing a constant performer role.

Flavia Dalla Bernardina


Dear Marina,

I’ve always wanted to stare at you in silence like in that performance you once did — I don’t remember when or where.

I’d like to talk to you unpretentiously. I’m not sure whether you drink or not, but it would be nice to have a bottle of wine, so maybe we could laugh a bit or say things we don’t mean to. That might connect us or at least break the ice (for me). Maybe you won’t need any kind of camouflages to let go, but I still do.

I imagine that I will be all excited talking about things I don’t know, things that I didn’t read, experiences I did not have. While you’ll be in silence, with those profound eyes of yours, saying one or two things very gently in a generous way. Sometimes you’ll say things you don’t want to, although you believe in them. This is what happens when you perform life: you live so much, you experience so much that you don’t have room for words. It’s all in your body like tattoos you can’t never erase. Your life and your performances are one. Or you are a shadow of your own life, performing a constant performer role.

Of course I am creating our conversation, I am creating you right now. The you that I want to talk with, I want to learn from. There’s nothing wrong with that, considering it’s practically impossible for us to really meet. Unless we walk through the Walls of China and meet right in the middle of it. Once we reach this absurd point we would stare at each other with an old eye of recognition and empathy. Then we would smile without showing our teeth. We might hug or not, I’m not sure yet, but I’ll think about it. And then we would walk back to our own path, lonely as everyone else’s life, but with one conviction: anything can happen. Being shadows, performers or dreamers.

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Of course I am creating our conversation, I am creating you right now. The you that I want to talk with, I want to learn from. There’s nothing wrong with that, considering it’s practically impossible for us to really meet. Unless we walk through the Walls of China and meet right in the middle of it. Once we reach this absurd point we would stare at each other with an old eye of recognition and empathy. Then we would smile without showing our teeth. We might hug or not, I’m not sure yet, but I’ll think about it. And then we would walk back to our own path, lonely as everyone else’s life, but with one conviction: anything can happen. Being shadows, performers or dreamers.

Flavia

Flavia Dalla Bernardina


Marina Kassianidou to Francis Alÿs(in Four Parts)

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September 06, 2015

Dear Mr Alÿs,

Two days ago, I saw your work, The Silence of Ani (2015), at the Istanbul Biennial and I wanted to share that experience with you. None of my friends and colleagues have seen the work, which makes it difficult to talk about it with them. And even if they had seen it, you would still be the best person to talk to, about how my encounter with the work unfolded:

The space was quiet. The film had ended and was about to restart. The benches were full and people were standing along the walls, whispering. I found some space near a corner. The whispers faded as a nearly mute landscape of ruins, with wind gushing through the wild vegetation and stray rocks, appeared on the screen. I stood on my toes, peering between people’s heads and shoulders and swaying left and right.

(Before continuing, I should mention that, in general, I have little patience for videos and films in an art exhibition, let alone a biennale. I especially dislike long videos that follow a set story with a beginning, middle, and end. I find their attempts to control my time rather frustrating. As an artist working with drawing and collage, I have a different relationship to time. I

The Silence

Marina Kassianidou


can devote hours looking at a drawing if I choose so; in fact, before seeing your work I had just spent fifty minutes with a drawing by another artist. Videos, however, seem to make that choice for me — I have to see them from beginning to end. That makes me uneasy. Call it juvenile if you must but there it is. The experience becomes even more frustrating when I don’t know how long a video is. I usually watch it for a few minutes and then wander away, without ever knowing at which point in the story I entered and at which point I left. It was, thus, a bit disappointing to walk into the space and to discover that your work was mainly a video with a story and an unidentified duration. I started watching, not sure how long I would be able to stay — I had to get to Istanbul Modern in half an hour for a talk by another artist.)

A few moments into the film, bird sounds are heard, softening the muteness of the ruins and the harshness of the wind.The person standing in front of me — a very tall man by my standards — moved, blocking my view. I tilted to the right to regain access to the landscape. A nearby woman glared at me and I nearly tumbled over. As the bird sounds grew louder, I realized that I hadn’t turned off my cell phone. Then I remembered that it wasn’t working. Since arriving in Istanbul, I had no signal. Nobody could call me.

The Birds

Gradually the performers revealed themselves: several teenagers holding strange-looking instruments, hiding in the plants surrounding the ruins, making bird sounds with their instruments, running, crouching, listening, making more sounds. The sounds crescendo and combine into almost-music, a concert of fabricated birdcalls, wind, and moving human bodies. All these merge, becoming something else. The performers stop being imitators of bird sounds and begin becoming-birds; the wind and birdcalls are becoming-music; the landscape is becoming-alive; everything is becoming-landscape.I have to say — and it is rather embarrassing — that it was moving. Not in a sentimental way but moving in that something somehow moved — in the video, in the sound, in the landscape, in the performers, in the space, in me.

As the film proceeds, the sounds diminuendo. In attempting to reach out to something other — the non-existent birds, the landscape, the past — the performers become tired and fall asleep amidst the ruins. Returning to silence felt odd. It was technically the same silence we began with — the landscape, the ruins, and the wind. Nobody in the audience moved or whispered. The man in front of me and the woman nearby seemed hypnotized. I had

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The Performers

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somehow found a perfect balance and was no longer swaying, even though I was still standing on my toes. Delicate silence and stillness. We were almost in a different place. When the film ended, someone was clapping. I moved quickly towards a bench and sat down. The film started again.

I wanted to ask, did the performers actually sleep or were they pretending? Not that it matters. To become exhausted in an attempt to achieve the impossible — to lure birds back to a ruined place — is an absurd and admirable pursuit indeed, whether it occurred or not. Another question: Were the performers different when they woke up? I imagine they would be.

Before I end, I have the following request: If you ever use the bird instruments for another piece and need performers, can you please let me know? I cannot read music sheets and I am completely tone deaf. Give me one of those instruments, however, and let me run in a field, and I am confident I could sing, eventually.

With best wishes,Marina Kassianidou

Marina Kassianidou


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Dear Marnie Fleming,

I never saw it, your final show You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me, from the permanent collection. But for me, it really summarizes the strength that you had as a curator of contempo-rary art. On Oakville Galleries’ web-page I read: “On the occasion of my retirement, I am taking this oppor-tunity to share some of the acqui-sitions that resonate most strongly for me. … — art that has moved me, challenged me and made me think in new and unexpected ways during my twenty-plus years here.” It is a sentence that says a lot about your curatorial practice: compassionately and gently caressing art into exhibi-tions so they sang to the visitor.

Maeve Hanna to curator Marnie Fleming, Oakville Galleries (Canada)

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anna33 I am Writing To... Open Letters in Art Criticism (Notebook), ed. An Paenhuysen

Before moving out west, I did see your Freedom of Assembly. The title itself: quick, witty and clever. As I grow, I intend to keep a list of witty titles that I can return to: titling an exhibition is a challenge in itself.

You were two steps ahead at every turn, vigorously researching in your quiet office that overlooked Lake Ontario. When I climbed the stairs in the morning to go to my shared office I would peer into yours at the top of the stairs. There you would be at your desk, overlooking a beautiful bay window with a view of the Lake. You showed me a webcam you had set up outside that was taking stills

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of the lake for an art project. Every five seconds it would capture the character of the lake, ever changing, through time of day, seasons. Through sun, hail, snow and wind. I imagine that after 30 years with that view, from that window in particular, you will miss it. You were a Virginia Woolf with a room of your own and a view where you wrote, and you did so beautifully.

Your exhibitions had moods, for the walls changed with each new install. Deep burgundy or gold. Sometimes shy grey and others, the deepest black. Then a glowing pink, like the happy cheeks of a newborn baby. Freedom of Assembly was a

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anna35 I am Writing To... Open Letters in Art Criticism (Notebook), ed. An Paenhuysen

revelatory exhibition for me. It seemed so simple, but wasn’t. Is collage simple? You ran with it - moving away from this stagnant idea of collage — paper and glue — and demonstrated all the different ways we can see it: sculpture, assemblage, paintings even. You looked at collage from, as Joni Mitchell might say, “both sides now” and more even, multiple angles, and in such innovative and compelling ways.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge, your curatorial vision. You have had a resonating impact on me.

Maeve

Annalisa Pellino to the non-participants of the Forum of Italian Contemporary Art

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Dear non-participants,

Last weekend I went to the Forum of Italian Contem-porary Art, the first meeting organized by the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art in Prato (Tuscany) that aimed to propose new strategies to revitalize the Italian art system.I t was a challenging three-days tour de force of forty roundtable discussions, with about ten speakers each and an indefinite number of atten-dants, most of them professionals.

On the one hand, I was impressed by the fact that, contrary to my expectations, most of the speakers were younger than the average age of those who usually take part in that kind of conference in Italy. But on the other hand, I must say, I got a strange feeling in not meeting there many of you, I mean that large group of independent and young people we are part of: curators, art historian and critics, art bloggers and artists. This fact led me to the following line of thought: we belong to a generation aged between 30 and 40, which has to deal with a scenario made of a general and endemic — both in the institutional and independent field — job insecurity. That means a lack of a professional identity and recognition and, in other words, to be part of a cultural working-class without a working-class culture, which is definitely Italian in a certain way and quite hard to translate in other languages.

Annalisa Pellino


Interesting, this issue about language and the embarrassment, the incompleteness present in every attempt of translation! It was the topic of a roundtable on the issue La lingua italiana proposed by the artist Cesare Pietroiusti, the most interesting talk in my opinion. It focused on the fact that in an English speaking art world the mother tongue is a competence we often have to give up, whereby we risk to loose not only the chance to speak — that is to express our personal voice in an incisive, poetic and emotional way — but also to think. What about our analytical thinking skills in absence of a mother tongue?

The oddity is that I found the roundtable titled Revitalizing art criticism equally interesting and complementary to the first one, but unfortunately it was held concurrently. Which one would you choose to participate in? I simply decided to go back and forth between both, to mash up my notes while giving green light to free associations and thoughts. How to reinvent the language of art criticism in order to give it more strength and efficacy in communication?

I would love to know your opinion! The podcast of each discussion should be available next week and I hope you will have the chance and the willingness to listen. So, let’s start to bring the debate in a wider and pluralistic roundtable in order to think of new proposals for a discussion panel in the forum’s second edition.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you.Annalisa

Sarah Mercadante to Nadia

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Dear Nadia,

Today I write to you even if it’s a strange way for me to talk to you. My intentions are good and the letter format seems to be the appropriate medium to express what I want to reveal to an atypic, surprising and sparkling woman like you. Take it as a declaration of my respect towards your involvement in the arts, your speech, and your friendly approach when we first met. I am still startled by the simplicity of how you explain the gallerist’s job. Last December, for instance, you described your show as “a way to drink wine and spend time with the artists you support.” I can’t imagine my face when you said that! I was really taken aback by the freshness of your words.

Despite your statement, the artworks of the exhibition were tenderly displayed. It made clear to me that the connections between the artworks on display went beyond the traditional way of exhibition making — with a thematic or aesthetic proposal. As a young curator I force myself to have

Sarah Mercadante


Dear Nadia,

Today I write to you even if it’s a strange way for me to talk to you. My intentions are good and the letter format seems to be the appropriate medium to express what I want to reveal to an atypic, surprising and sparkling woman like you. Take it as a declaration of my respect towards your involvement in the arts, your speech, and your friendly approach when we first met. I am still startled by the simplicity of how you explain the gallerist’s job. Last December, for instance, you described your show as “a way to drink wine and spend time with the artists you support.” I can’t imagine my face when you said that! I was really taken aback by the freshness of your words.

Despite your statement, the artworks of the exhibition were tenderly displayed. It made clear to me that the connections between the artworks on display went beyond the traditional way of exhibition making — with a thematic or aesthetic proposal. As a young curator I force myself to have

Sara

h M

erca

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a theoretical consistency in my shows. It seems to me that otherwise, the exhibition will be a huge mess. But you taught me that it could be much more than following the “rules.” You dare to try things no matter if something limps. You carry on with your heart convinced that working in art makes you a better person. I share your vision on that point.

How is it possible to feel such a connection with only three encounters? Maybe two passionate souls always end up speaking together. By the way, when I explained to you my way of working, you told me that it was the same mindset that made you create a gallery.

Our work will cross during the next decades. I don’t care if it will be by mail correspondence, in a gloomy café or during a fleeting visit of our respective events — as long as we stay in touch.

Yours sincerely, Sarah

Sarah Mercadante


a theoretical consistency in my shows. It seems to me that otherwise, the exhibition will be a huge mess. But you taught me that it could be much more than following the “rules.” You dare to try things no matter if something limps. You carry on with your heart convinced that working in art makes you a better person. I share your vision on that point.

How is it possible to feel such a connection with only three encounters? Maybe two passionate souls always end up speaking together. By the way, when I explained to you my way of working, you told me that it was the same mindset that made you create a gallery.

Our work will cross during the next decades. I don’t care if it will be by mail correspondence, in a gloomy café or during a fleeting visit of our respective events — as long as we stay in touch.

Yours sincerely, Sarah

Sujin Jung to Fatih Akin

Sujin

Jung

42

Dear Fatih Akin

Today, I watched your film Soul Kitchen, which I always wanted to watch but, for some reason, I did not do so. My friend, who likes Japanese film, recommended it to me and the movie title made me think it would be a Japanese film. Talking about food (of course, it might eventually be talking about something through food) is a trend in Japanese film. Well, obviously not! It’s a German film! That was really interesting and funny to me, haha.

However, what is more impressive than how silly I was, is the location of this film and the human relationships it displays. It makes me want to do an exhibition based on film! Watching your film, I cannot help thinking I would like to visit your Soul Kitchen and create a similar kind of place.

Sujin Jung43 I am Writing To... Open Letters in Art Criticism (Notebook), ed. An Paenhuysen

Probably, my thought expressed here above is inspired by nowadays’ Korean art scene. The fact that I watched this film right now is fortunate and great timing, haha. Because, nowadays, there are many places that are being remodelled and those places are used for exhibitions, cafés, etc. However, what I was thinking about is a little different: I would like to make an exhibition about those kind of places. It would be an exhibition for the “soul,” just like the chef’s dishes in your movie are for the “soul.” Aren’t you curious about this exhibition, which might be fantastic? I will give you a sneak peek just in case you are really really curious about this:

“Hello, I am today’s tour guide! The exhibition is based on the film Soul Kitchen directed by Fatih Akin. Have you ever thought about an exhibition that is based on a film? In the film, the main character bought an old warehouse and remodelled it into a restaurant. So, we can see an old warehouse being changed into a restaurant where everyone can not only have dinner but also enjoy their time. This way it turns from being an abandoned place into a location where everyone want to hang out. We can see the human relationships inside this transformed place. This exhibition focuses on that moment in the film. It’s about places that change from being a factory, a motel in the past, to being used as an art museum. Plus, it deals with the relationships and events inside those places. Let’s move on to the first room. It’s most interesting that

Sujin

Jung

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we are seeing the places inside the place. I mean, this art museum was also a warehouse before. However, recently it was remodelled and now it holds this exhibition! You can still see some traces. So, I can say that this show displays kind of art-works inside a kind of art-work! Oh, the must-do thing in this exhibition is actually the exhibit-related program, which is also a tour! You can visit those places in person. If you want to participate, make a reservation as soon as possible, because it’s really popular!… (To Be Continued)”

How was the guided tour? I hope you enjoy this. Imagine that this exhibition happened for real. How awesome it would be. Hahaha. Oh, I almost forgot to say this, I have never seen this kind of lovely film before; thank you very much for making this film! Oh, let’s talk about other subjects in this film later, definitely!

Best wishes, Sujin Jung

Sujin Jung45 I am Writing To... Open Letters in Art Criticism (Notebook), ed. An Paenhuysen

P.S. I wish I could send you a voice-file of my guided tour, haha!

Voices 46

Hanako FujiiHanako has the low, mumbling tones of New Zealand's Southern plains, complete with a sharp rolling “R” — not yet overtaken by the extended vowels of the North. Though the subtle singsong simplicity of her Japanese voice also remains. Unlike the result of translation, the intention is distinct. It's the blunt edge of her Kansai heritage.

Mercedes Carriquiry There is no anonymity in Uruguay, at least not the one that lasts. You can grasp sporadically a glimpse of privacy (only sporadically) and it will soon be gone. The country size, the small population or the slow way of life may be the reason. All the same, as cozy as being 24/7 home may sound, the result is Uruguayans living under the gaze; an annoying, troubling gaze. Cozy, à l'abri at home, still unable to get away.

Alex BowronMy Geographical Voice oscillates between caution and combat. It is trained in adaptation and attention to detail. By remaining silent it can access intellect and intuition as one.

Annette AbelNietzsche, Kant, Adorno… The Germans define themselves as the nation of poets and philosophers and surely it is true that they are obsessed by theory, by details as well as by knowledge. Yet, it almost seems as if their long dead thinkers have become ghosts inside of them they too often obey to and that sometimes even deprives them from finding their own/individual voice.

Claudio CraveroSaudi Arabia’s art scene is as tense as the hot air The Kingdom discharges in summer. While the Government still oscillates between timid supports and strong public censorship, the artists continuously stretch the boundaries of what is considered art in the country. Since their childhood they learn to double-deal with their social and private face: the two sides of the same coin.

Flavia Dalla BernardinaI feel like a no man's land, as if I belonged nowhere and everywhere at the same time. I could live anywhere and speak so many languages I wouldn't have time in this life to learn them all. I am split in so many countries, cultures and colors, disguised in a loud and expansive caucasian Brazilian woman, with Italian citizenship.


Marina KassianidouVoices live within, are formed by, and are shared between bodies. Cypriots intuitively know this. They talk by waving their arms, swinging their legs, bouncing up and down, contorting their faces, transforming their postures, reaching out towards their listeners, and continuously altering the tone, volume, and rhythm of their voice. A total, lived-in, embodied mode of (mis)communication.

Maeve HannaMaeve Hanna is Assistant Curator at Two Rivers Gallery in Prince George, BC Canada, 9 hours from anywhere and everywhere. The dichotomy between East and West as opposed to North and South becomes very pronounced once you cross the Rocky Mountain Range bridging Alberta and British Columbia. The mountains are staggeringly high, cut off weather patterns and communication with the other side in some ways. The West is all photo conceptualist, First Nations iconography rehashed in the 21st century in neon lights and graffiti on gallery walls. East is Toronto bound (up in).

Annalisa PellinoItalians are self-referential. They don’t really trust collaboration and are not confident in sharing competence and creativity. On the contrary, they have a masturbatory attitude in talking and chatting and twitting… not really having anything to say. They don’t see participation as an occasion to be present but as one to make an appearance.

Sarah MercadanteI'm a young curator in Paris, my native town. At the moment I curate exhibitions in non-official places with artists I trust, or sometimes I curate to test if it works between our way to work. Ultimately, I try to escape the loud and speedy rhythm of the French capital.

Sujin JungIn South Korea, everything suddenly becomes trend and suddenly becomes old-fashioned. It looks like there are a lot of changes, but in fact, it never changes since the class with power is always the same. Making a real change barely happens. Also, although there are tons of contradictions and distortions, everyone is really good at pretending we are doing well, even the best, if only just among the Asian countries.

Published by Node Center – Curatorial Studies Onlinewww.nodecenter.net © 2016 Node Center and the authors

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I Am Writing To... Open Letters in Art Criticism