[artinfo] The Exhibitionist: Journal on Exhibition Making

[e-flux]

The Exhibitionist: Journal on Exhibition Making
Issue 12 now available

<http://the-exhibitionist.com/>the-exhibitionist.com

The Exhibitionist's 12th issue, a special "La 
Critique" issue in which we take a critical look 
at recent matters within our pages and 
discipline, is now available.

Issue 12 scrutinizes our founding premise, that 
The Exhibitionist is a journal "by curators, for 
curators." When we launched six years ago, this 
circuit of self-reflection seemed necessary, and 
enabled a conversation that was not available in 
other venues. But one effect of this focus, as we 
see it now, was a siloing-off of curatorial 
thinking from other parts of the field of 
exhibition making-which is, after all, based in 
collective forms of authorship.

Therefore this issue centers on that social form, 
and features conversations between curators and 
artists who have worked together over long 
periods. We encouraged them to move past 
caricatures of their relationship as a zero-sum 
game in which either the artist is the autonomous 
genius or the curator is the overwhelming 
performer stealing the artist's thunder. We 
rejected as well the whole consideration of 
"artist-as-curator/curator-as-artist" as 
hopelessly circular. Instead we focus on 
exchanges of ideas, points of mutual influence, 
connections, conflicts, struggles, and social 
life.

In the first section, Fia Backström and Anthony 
Huberman discuss the territory between 
manipulation and collaboration. Anne Ellegood and 
Kerry Tribe weigh how a curator's provocation can 
inspire an artist's practice and vice versa. Inés 
Katzenstein speaks with the painter Juan José 
Cambre about the shifting identities of artists 
and curators, understanding both to inhabit the 
same mental geography, the all-encompassing "cosa 
mentale." And The Exhibitionist's founding editor 
Jens Hoffmann talks with Claire Fontaine about 
collaborations in which "sublimated aggression, 
humor, and a slight insanity on both sides play 
important roles."

This section concludes with a missive written by 
the eccentric artist James Lee Byars to the 
iconic curator Harald Szeemann at a point when 
their once-convivial relationship had begun to 
sour. Flush with affection and antagonism, Byars 
proposes to embody Szeemann in a performance of 
the latter's death.

For the second section we invited writers to 
respond to The Exhibitionist's archive. Triple 
Candie investigates the slippery lines between 
artistic action and curatorial practice. Emiliano 
Valdés resists the emphasis on artist and 
curator, instead considering the relation between 
artwork and audience. Daniel Birnbaum charts the 
institutional cooptation of attitudes from the 
Situationist International in the 1960s. 
Nontobeko Ntombela points to misapprehensions of 
the curatorial role in South Africa, while 
artist-publishers Slavs and Tatars speak of that 
role in semi-mystical terms. Finally, Rachel Rose 
meditates on curators' and artists' shared 
impulse to transform the unknown and chaotic into 
meaning.

Issue 12 will be the final issue of The 
Exhibitionist as a biannual journal. In early 
2017 we will release the journal's entire run as 
an omnibus edition with new essays, copublished 
with DAP. The book's release will be celebrated 
at a public event co-organized with Independent 
Curators International and featuring members of 
the editorial board, contributors, and others. 
The journal's continued activity will shift to 
<http://the-exhibitionist.com>the-exhibitionist.com, 
as well as to upcoming books and special issues.

The Exhibitionist is a journal made by curators, 
for curators, focusing solely on the practice of 
exhibition making. The objective is to create a 
wider platform for the discussion of curatorial 
concerns, to encourage a diversification of 
curatorial models, and to actively contribute to 
the formation of a theory of curating.

The Exhibitionist: Journal on Exhibition Making
Editor: Jens Hoffmann
Senior Editor: Julian Myers-Szupinska
Associate Editor: Liz Glass
Editor at Large: Chelsea Haines
Copy Editor: Lindsey Westbrook
Design: Jon Sueda / Stripe

Friends of Exhibitionists: Noreen Ahmad, Jack 
Kirkland, José Kuri, Mónica Manzutto, Elisa 
Nuyten, Outset USA, Andrea Rosen, Ross 
Sappenfield, Luisa Strina, Julia Reyes Taubman, 
and VIA Art Fund

Editorial board: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, 
Okwui Enwezor, Patrick Flores, Massimiliano 
Gioni, Mary Jane Jacob, Maria Lind, Carol Yinghua 
Lu, Chus Martínez, Jessica Morgan, Hans Ulrich 
Obrist, Adriano Pedrosa, João Ribas, Gayatri 
Sinha, Christine Tohmé

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