RE-DIRECTING: EAST
Conversation # 18
Lena Prents "When Form Becomes Attitude: Exhibition Cultures and Their Critique"

June 18, 2014, 6 p.m., CCA Laboratory Building
The presentations are held in English.


Lena Prents
"When Form Becomes Attitude: Exhibition Cultures and Their Critique"
In the summer of 2013, the Prada Foundation in Venice reconstructed the "When Attitudes Become Form" exhibition, which was originally curated by Harald Szeemann in Bern, in 1969. As the New York Times commented, the original show now has a “near-mythical reputation“. Despite myriad academic research papers, studies and reflections on Harald Szeemann’s curatorial practice and his demonstration of power, the re-enactment, held more than forty years after the original, repeated old patterns. The ‘remake’ of the exhibition, created by a traditional ’old-boys’ club’ consisting of curator Germano Celant, artist Thomas Demand and architect Rem Koolhaas, once again created a cult of genius and mythic exaggeration. The dimmed lighting and perpetual instructions issued by security staff clad in uniform-like clothing contributed to the impression that the visitor had entered an auratic space. This, along with similar examples of international exhibition practice, raises the matter of the relationship between academic criticism and curatorial practice, the former having developed thanks to a host of curatorial degree programmes and events. The talk poses questions as to the contemporary state of art critique and its changing role today. It addresses the language of curatorial statements and curatorial gestures which maintain relevance and critical reflection, but do not, in fact, engage with profound implications with any reality. It examines the possibilities for artistic and curatorial strategies under conditions driven by corporate interests or in societies under autocratic governance, such as Belarus.
 

Lena Prents is an independent art historian and curator. Having studied German at the University of Linguistics in Minsk and Art History and German Literature at the Free University of Berlin, she then worked for the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, the Bauhaus-Museum in Weimar and the Museum for Contemporary Art in Leipzig. Her work focuses on the intersections of art and exhibition practice in relation to certain socio-political discourses. From 2011-2012 for the Goethe Institut-Lithuania, Prents designed a project on art in public space in Belarus, Lithuania, Kaliningrad and Germany, "Going Public: On the difficulty of a public statement", carrying it out as an art director. Lena Prents is currently working on her PhD dissertation on the socialist modernist architecture in contemporary art, and teaching at the European Humanities University in Vilnius, a Belarusian university in exile, and Brandenburg Technical University in Cottbus. She lives in Berlin.

RE-DIRECTING: EAST project is realized thanks to the support of City of Warsaw.

CCA media patronage: TOK FM, Elle Decoration, KMag, Label, Aktivist, Purpose, artinfo.pl, Stolica