I am a Curator

I am a Curator was a process-based exhibition project by artist Per Hüttner that took place at Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK, 5 November – 14 December 2003.

"[4] Over the years, the project has gained recognition and has been hailed as being ahead of its time and has been widely appreciated for its visionary qualities[5] in readers on curation and research on the subject of art and exhibition making.

[6] Hüttner carried out a series of exhibitions that democratized or investigated the curatorial process in the late 1990s and in the early years of the new millennium.

In these projects he developed ideas and practices that pointed towards a new way of relating to the art object and exhibition making that eventually became manifest in I am a Curator.

‘These two disciplines are beginning to mix and merge in ways that some people find appalling and others see as a powerful new development in the history of art making,’ Paul Clay explains.

"Hüttner has since developed these strategies both in projects like Repetitive Time,[11] Democracy and Desire,[12] (In)Visible Dialogues[13] and in the international research network Vision Forum.

In order to realize this strategy the artist developed some basic concepts: Curator of the Day: The daily slots were administered through an application process through which we tried to give as many different people as possible, in relation to occupation, age, sex, social and ethnic background.

[15] But Celine Condorelli and Gavin Wade took their brief further and allowed Support Structure be a questioning and critical tool and an important aspect of the process of the project.

The structure took the centre stage, but in an unexpected way the Curators of the Day remained strangely blind to the eleven meter long monster object on wheels and few, if any, references were made to it in their reports.

They were Patrick Bernier, Melanie Keen, Lisa Le Feuvre, Tone O. Nielsen, Reid Shier and Per Hüttner.

The Interface Cards along with the website (which used the same design) were the main tools for the Curator of the Day to select artwork and devise their exhibition.

The process had a very easily achieved self-perpetuating logic that extended to colour-coding drill batteries, masking tape, spirit levels, any tools that we may have set down for a moment.

"Other shows included Sebastian Roach's Art for Wine Day 13/12/03 which took quite a nihilist approach to the task of selecting work:[20] ”In exchange for the donation of a bottle of wine (or beer, or spirits – even a miniature, the important thing is the token) a visitor can select and display any piece of work in the show.

In addition, through the course of the day I will install myself in an ‘office’ created by using the versatile structure as walls drinking wine, smoking cigarettes and writing.

What I write will be spontaneous and in response – directly, indirectly, or entirely tenuously – to the work, the environment and the situation, and will obviously also be tempered by the increasing consumption of alcohol.

I was pleased on the last day of the exhibition that the two anthropologists Lisa Maddigan and Fuyubi Nakamura did a project that looked at the accumulated information.

That slippage between artworks and objects, or between people’s roles in the process, is something I see as having been central to the project, so I don’t know if I necessarily see the need for a posthumous proliferation of the term “artwork.” It feels like laminating a piece of paper you are still making notes on.

Other contemporary artists have engaged in a more externally oriented art practice which involves ‘ordinary’ people in the making of work.

[2][27] For the 10 year anniversary of I am a Curator David Roberts Art Foundation in London invited Per Huttner to reflect on the project.

It is therefore important to revisit these questions after 10 years have passed, and to see how they have influenced individual artistic processes and how they can guide us into meaningful future reflections on related issues.

"[29] Per Hüttner was joined by artist/architect Céline Condorelli, neuroscientist Stephen Whitmarsh and Anette and Alberto Giacometti Foundation Director Véronique Wiesinger.

Roger Andersson, Roderick Barton, Patrick Bernier, Mariana Botey & The Invisible College, BRING OUT THE GARBAGE, Blair Butterfield, Lee Campbell, Lucia Cipriano, Celine Condorelli & Gavin Wade, Richard Couzins, Andrew Dadson, Daedalus, divine forces radio, Nathalia Edenmont, Sam Ely and Lynn Harris, Ivan Fayard, Jon Fawcett, Carlee Fernandez, Leslie Fratkin, Hans Jörgen Johansen, Anya Gallacio, Henrik Gistvall, Morten Goll, Colin Glen, Kate Grieve, Arni Gudmundsson, Joachim Hamou, Alexis Harding, Dan Hays, Sharon Hayes, Robby Herbst, Guillaume Janot, Melanie Keen, Arnold J .Kemp, Calum F Kerr, Charles LaBelle, Runo Lagomarsino, Lisa LeFeuvre, Fernand Léger[dubious – discuss], 21 March, Helen Marshall, Amitis Motevalli, Valérie Mrejen, Stéphanie Nava, Tone O. Nielsen, Michael Euyung Oh, Leonard Palmestål, James Porter, Nathaniel Rackowe, Laercio Redondo, Scott Rigby & Maciej Wisniewski, Lenke Rothman, Marina Roy, Reid Shier, Nebojsa Seric - Shoba, Stellar, Tommy Støckel, Tamura Satoru, Althea Thauberger, Johan Tirén, Christina Ulke & Neil Stuber, V3TO, Eti & Daniel Wade, Julia Warr, Gillian Wearing, Eva Weinmayr, Simon Woolham, Mario Ybarra, Jr.