Curatorial Culture
A Theoretical Framework: Foundations of a Speculative Proposal
Although archive collection is often proposed as a method for resisting cultural amnesia, how to construct an exhibition archive collection capable of such resistance leads to a complex question: what to collect? What kind of framework? Especially when it is not, or is not just, a part of the curator’s personal archives,2 this is still a question that needs to be considered because it needs expanding on with more theory and good examples. The generative studies school (critique génétique) initiated in France, due to its more than 50 years of good theoretical and practical accumulation, will be the primary reference for this article’s constructive proposal. Although generative studies today encompass more than just literary texts, this is still its mainstay. Next, I will use the framework proposed by Pierre-Marc de Biasi,3 a leading figure in the school, as the primary reference and call it the “text model,” hoping to offer an “exhibition model” for establishing a generative studies archives of the exhibition.
The proposal of such a framework, I hope it is practical, but of course, it should not avoid more critical theoretical issues, such as falling into another extreme on the back of its coin when promoting the healing of cultural amnesia with archives – namely archive fetishism. However, these issues have been dealt with in a previous book chapter discussing archive theory4 on the one hand, and on the other hand, the appropriate length of current online publications does not allow for further depth; therefore, please consider the following points as a preliminary “proposal”(芻議) popularly named in the early years of the Republic of China. It has a propositional nature and calls for more discussion and reflective practice.
Before entering this “proposal,” I still believe that reminding about a preliminary principle is quite important; that is, why conduct [textual] generative studies? What possibilities and importance does it have? According to Pierre-Marc de Biasi, the leading reference scholar cited below, the basic assumption of generative studies is based on the following belief: “The work in its final completion stage is still the effect of its various stages of transformation and retains its own generative memory.”5 That is to say, even if there is no intention to preserve the material traces of its generative process, any work retains its generative process memory within its final construct. But it must be preserved through generative “documents”6 in order to make these multi-layered memories formed during the generative process accessible for subsequent interpretation and research. Or it can be considered, as Freud once mentioned, that these memories are still retained and play a role.7 [this needs a specific Freud reference and citation] But without analysis, it cannot be presented in view of consciousness. For this special issue on “Exhibition Amnesia,” I think this [work’s] internal memory issue is a meaningful aspect. Therefore, before entering the “proposal,” I will raise it first.
In the generative studies of the text model, from the starting point of manuscript writing to the final printing and publishing, after this long-term operation, two major divisions have stabilized into the writing phase (phase rédactionnelle) and the editing-publishing phase (phase éditoriale). These two major stages can be further subdivided into the preparation period before writing (phase prérédactionnelle) and the formal writing period, the pre-editing and publishing period (phase pré-éditoriale), and the formal editing and printing period.
In the preparation period before writing, as can be seen from the existing research of literary manuscripts, at the earliest phase of this stage, there are often reading notes, preliminary plans, brainstorming, and other documents, and the mediums that may appear are pretty divergent, such as notebooks, past manuscripts (unfinished projects), letters, book reading notes, visual records (drawings, sketches, photography, image reproductions) or audio-visual documents.9
Suppose this stage is transferred to the process of exhibition planning. In that case, it will roughly correspond to the work stage of pre-exhibition [curatorial] research, preparation, brainstorming, etc., but due to the characteristics of the exhibition, there are a few supplementary discussions that can at least be proposed.
Due to the characteristics of exhibitions involving specific, materially existing works, for many professionals, and considering the multi-faceted cooperation essential for this preparation period, strictly speaking, it is not easy to set its objective’s upstream boundary. For example, curators may have had exhibitions or part of their elements conceived when viewing books, works, and other exhibitions many years ago. The interaction between curators and participating artists may not happen because they want to start writing curatorial plans and so neglect starting visits or setting up interviews. Instead, they are relying on past acquaintances and exchanges (those who have appeared in previous exhibitions organized by curators or institutional factors: for example, in the 1975 exhibition “New Topographics,” in which case some photographers exhibited were already familiar with the curators beforehand. Or their works just had recent contact with the exhibiting institution, or they may be members of the exhibition institution themselves.10) As for the works, they may be collections of exhibiting institutions or were included due to some situational factors. For example, a work may have just been recently restored, or needs to be restored (sometimes the exhibition itself is an opportunity to get a restoration budget), which is why it was selected. The exhibition history of works may also play a role; for example, recent opportunities for them to have a good appearance may also be an important reason for the selection of certain works. In terms of commissioned works made for specific exhibitions, on the one hand, should the research preparation period of those works be included, and if so, how included? On the other hand, similar themes or styles of creators’ works may become factors influencing their invitation to create. All these complications may require that the preparation period for various elements of the exhibition be extended further. These all make the “preparation period” of exhibition planning’s upper limit blurred, or even (due to possible changes in viewpoints) unstable.
As for another boundary of this stage, if one looks at it entirely according to the notion of words and ideas, it should end when the writing of the exhibition plan begins. But in practice, this is often more complex, because from the beginning of writing an exhibition plan to finalizing it, it usually goes through many changes and modifications, mainly because exhibitions must occur at specific times, in particular spaces, or even institutions. There are quite a lot of changing elements involved (including funding factors). The revision of plans is therefore almost a regular factor. At this time, research-preparation work must often be carried out again or rely on previous preparation (extract resources from so-called “backup”). These situations make the pre-writing period in the context of exhibition planning at this point, where its stage is completed, also become blurred, even unpredictable.
Because generative studies founded on a text model focuses on manuscript research and has produced fruitful results, some exciting forms derived from literary writing case studies are worth referring to in the context of exhibition planning and practices.
First is what is called “crossing lines” (faux départ), or more neutrally speaking, an “unsuccessful start.” Among them, a famous literary case is Flaubert, who had written a story related to one of his stories in his novella collection “Three Stories” (Trois contes) 19 years before its publication, which can be said to be its pre-writing plan.11
Another phenomenon has to do with the writing methods themselves. Some writers write in a “one-way unfolding” process from the beginning of writing. They unfold all the way forward, and at this time, the first sentence (incipit) or paragraph becomes very important because subsequent writing is almost just its thematic unfolding. But more commonly, authors prepare so-called “writing scripts” (scénario), which may be outlined in very sketchy drafts, and then the writing is executed according to it. Among past researched authors, Zola is a representative figure in this way of writing. After he has outlined, he will also conduct a self-dialogue discussing various possibilities for development in written form; during this process, he will still conduct fieldwork and literature research so as to enrich his understanding of his writing content.
Referring to these writing examples, we should also be able to find various types of writing conception planning in the exhibition model, but this also depends on the prior establishment of archive data. However, previous case studies of the text model remind us that when collecting data documents of various types and time sequences, sometimes this involves material that we cannot cover in advance (for example, Flaubert’s case sometimes even has to do with a writing of 19 years ago).
Because the overall generative studies of the text model are based on research on modern manuscripts that ultimately lead to the printed form, this methodology has a very delicate subdivision in the writing (manuscript formation) stage. Still, it is limited by a clear and narrow concept of text. Compared with the curating of exhibitions, first of all, there are many differences in terms of conceptual content: if it can be said that the completion of the final version that can be printed represents the birth of the work to some extent (without having to wait for the completion of printing – this can be known from the analysis of the concept of copyright of creationism); however, in terms of the exhibition model, the realization of the exhibition planning is not the formation of the project – no matter how detailed and accurate, the exhibition project is still just a “paper operation” – that can represent it. To express it analogously, an exhibition plan may be closer to a score in music. Even if someone (here representing an expert) can read a score, understand musical ideas from it, and even enjoy it, for most people, if music lacks a concrete realization (performance or singing), it still does not appear as a manifest event.
Here, it must also be emphasized that although the completion of an exhibition project can be analogous to manuscript writing and benefit from its detailed classification and substantial research results, an exhibition project is not just a text or completion of a conception: for example, the establishment of an exhibition work list, from its initial proposal to its final decision (or close to its actual exhibited items list), represents much real coordination and collection work behind it. This includes coordination and negotiation with lending bodies; or, when curators or curatorial units are internal staff of the exhibiting institution (so-called in-house curator situations), this work will include administrative coordination between different branches and understanding and adjustment of exhibit conditions (including restoration or simpler condition processing). If exhibits (or even performances, planned creations) are commissioned or at least need to be adjusted according to actual venues, then preliminary coordination with creators or groups is also necessary at this stage. This means that the writing stage of an exhibition project includes a certain degree of feasibility assessment and discussion and even negotiation and documentation of exhibition participation intentions (such as signing letters of intent for exhibitions or participation). This is why in an exhibition planning above a certain scale, its planning writing has already gone beyond what separate individuals can bear and must be carried out by a team. The latter sometimes involves different professional fields (equipment, technology, finance, communication, marketing, etc.) and must introduce expert collaborators from all such aspects. In summary, these cooperative writings, which are finally edited by professionals into complete drafts, compared with literary manuscript writing, which is mainly completed by a single author, are very different.
In manuscript research mainly based on literary creation, the internal subdivision of the writing stage is generally a progressive process from idea to more concrete development, from simple to complex, from draft to completion. It can be divided into:
- Development procedures similar to script nature, in which you can see gradually enriched outlines and drafts planning gradually from overall to detailed sketches (a bit like in the architectural design process from conceptual overall design into a detailed design that can be used as construction drawings), the appearance of chapter structure. If it is extended novel writing, sometimes even separate spatial sketches or notes will be set up (for example, it is rumored that Jin Yong used maps to reflect the overview of many moving personages when writing Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils) or the genealogy of characters, chronology of events or generations, etc. may be used.
- Detailed literature reading notes and research stage: specific authors, due to writing needs, will conduct reading field investigation, travel research, or search for and study images and topography during the writing process. And then documents produced at this time will include sketches, diagrams, drawings, photography or photocopying or collected documents, downloaded files, etc. The recently translated best-selling American novelist Dan Brown’s Inferno features an illustrated version with rich and accurate landscape pictures and artwork reproductions that corroborate a paragraph at the beginning of this book: “Statement: All artworks literature science and historical backgrounds in this book are real.12” Many Japanese manga works also detail this kind of investigation information at the end of books.
- The final specific writing stage: including the first drafts, drafts with details, various versions of drafts that are constantly rewritten; clean drafts completed for the first time (the process of achieving them may produce notes, manuscripts sometimes reformed for helping memory, outlines of intermediate stages, summaries for clarifying thinking, spatial notes, diagrams, sketches); finally completed drafts confirmed by authors themselves and revised into submitting status.
If one wants to transfer this layer-by-layer enrichment subdivision to the completion of exhibition planning writing, the following points can be discussed:
- Based on experience, this writing process should be simple to complex, from drafting to gradual completion. Its starting point is usually an initial conception document left behind. It may be initial conception drafts, preliminary proposals, and more stages of enrichment correction, gradually coming to submitting status. Because exhibitions usually have sponsors, venue owners, or institutions different from curators or groups, various stages of proposals to sponsors or venue parties and submission of final exhibition projects can be used as clearer starting and ending signals for the writing stage and various documents’ modifications in between are often supported by private documents (notes, diaries), correspondence exchanges, meeting records, and other related documents. The latter often play a crucial role in understanding the reasons for changes. Sometimes curators or curatorial units are internal staff of the commissioner (so-called in-house curator situations), exhibition initiation meetings record, coordination between different internal parties, and discussions or negotiations with external parties (lenders such as museums, galleries, collectors) are essential document records for understanding its development.
- The ultimate goal of generative studies in the text model is to send to publishers for editing and printing and in its final stage the clean draft, the status being decided by the authors as to when it should be to be sent to publishers. This will involve so many changes in form and content, but especially changes in form, that are related to this ultimate evolution; in contrast, the organization and writing of an exhibition project, as mentioned before, is related to even more other people, parties and concerns (including many considerations of space, schedule, technical feasibility) and even in the case of a commissioned curation, there may be many negotiations or interferences by the commissioning party. However, when it is finally completed, because it is almost about to enter the following “exhibition installation” stage, its final completion stage often has many more “rigid”, or “final draft” statuses, that are difficult to adjust again, especially when including detailed budgets, exhibition designs, exhibition lists, all of which are challenging to making significant adjustments to after sending them out, because there will be a “pulling one hair moves the whole body” impact. So, although the curatorial work of exhibitions cannot be fully covered by the “writing” of the project itself (while writing is almost equivalent to the completion of manuscripts), from a document perspective, this analogy is feasible. It’s just that auxiliary materials that can affect future use and interpretation at the text writing level may yet occur, but do not necessarily play a key role (as mentioned in 2. of the previous section). Still, in the exhibition model, they mostly become critical, specifically affecting final results and presentation status, and are very important in the subsequent archive collection process. In other words, the establishment of an exhibition archive during the writing stage, in addition to collecting various versions of projects sufficient to affect its future interpretation and interpretation, requires all kinds of “auxiliary” documents, including correspondence, negotiation, and meeting records, that must also be collected.
- From the actual research of manuscripts in textual genetics, such as the manuscript research on Balzac and Flaubert, it is often found that rewriting 5 to 10 times is normal, and particularly difficult paragraphs may even go through 15 to 20 rewrites, and up to 50 rewrites of the same page have also been found. The number of rewrites is a sign. On the other hand, crossing out or revising (rature), or changes in key points, are more of a qualitative aspect of essential changes (for example, in Kafka’s The Castle, one-third of the protagonist in his manuscript is “I” (ich), and later becomes the famous “K”).13 These observations involve many future conceptual uses and interpretations of archives. Still, the previous research results of the text model can provide us with a pre-set expectation regarding archive collecting, enough to avoid missing critical collections because we do not understand how they may be used and/or interpreted.
In the text model, the author sends the final draft to the publisher and then to the printing factory for preliminary sample printing. After several rounds of proofreading, the author sends the final approved version (bon à tirer). This whole process is called the pre-publishing period. Although the media and technical characteristics of editing and printing are relatively similar to the exhibition’s installation stage, there are several points essential to supplementing this process:
- The process from sending to the publisher for editing to printing usually takes much longer than the exhibition installation time (rarely more than a month, mainly two weeks or even one week) and allows for many changes. The simplest example is the correction of typos, and even larger changes, such as exceptional cases like Balzac and Joyce, can be referred to. Balzac’s special writing method is to write a simple sample in the manuscript and ask the printing factory to provide a “printed draft” with a large amount of blank space. He then adds to the work by filling in, sometimes even changing the structure. This operation will be repeated 8 to 10 times, during which the original 30-40 pages draft becomes a 300-400 pages novel. Joyce’s case is even more unique. The final draft that was normally irreversible will be rewritten as a whole by Joyce, exercising his author’s authority, although this certainly dramatically increases the difficulty for the publisher.14 In the exhibition model, due to many practical restrictions (including space, the schedule that cannot be changed drastically, limited use period of exhibits, etc.), it is hard to imagine how such exceptional cases will happen: changes during the exhibition period are often forced changes (such as requirements imposed by censorship, or sudden withdrawal, or changed proposals by lenders/artists), rather than the exercising of the curator’s authority.
- Is the exhibition closer to the building process from drawings to actual construction? The answer is both yes and no. From the perspective of their similarities, indeed, both exhibition and architectural construction are about converting plans from paper ideas into three-dimensional space, becoming “actual, concrete, and walk-in spaces.” Thus, just as architecture is an object that must be entered and traversed to appreciate it truly, so is an exhibition. Its complete experience cannot be just “viewed from afar.” This also makes it insufficient for records during the exhibition installation period to rely solely on paper materials. It would be best to mobilize all kinds of static and dynamic images (3D digital animations, time-lapse photography, documentary short films, etc.), maquettes, or even virtual reality presentations. On the other hand, architectural construction often takes a long time, with many projects taking more than a year, while exhibitions are usually completed within one to four weeks. Only interior architecture or interior design can be compared if one wants to compare them. Many things in exhibitions are not made on-site (especially for collected exhibits), which also lowers its comparability with architecture.
- Common sense might compare the process after manuscripts are sent to publishers and enter printing factories with the exhibition installation. At this time, opening an exhibition for visitors is equivalent to a publication going on sale. However, returning to the stages set by textual generative studies reveals that processes like typesetting, layout design, and completion of informal samples for media promotion are all included in the first stage of the publication-editorial period. This intuitively does not match up with work done during the exhibition installation period (for example, something equivalent to layout design in exhibitions would hardly take place during the exhibition installation period unless it is a very simple exhibition). The completion of informal samples for media promotion can probably be compared with a “sneak preview” or media preview during the exhibition installation period. This gap also involves issues related to book stability and the temporal development of exhibitions, which will be discussed in the next section.
In generative studies of the text model, major divisions in the editorial-publication stages are based on publications produced during the author’s lifetime and after death. In normal circumstances, the author controls all processes and version changes during the former stage by using vested authority and rights (piracy being an obvious exception), and each version’s stages and boundaries are clear-cut. In contrast, there are many areas for discussion and necessary changes regarding the exhibition model:
- Compared to the material stability of books, current exhibitions are increasingly becoming an ‘event’ that changes in time and space rather than a ‘text-object’ that stabilizes once it opens. Rolling out in time, project-based or event-based creations are often part of the exhibition list, and their proportions and numbers are increasing. Forum-like events are increasingly seen as an integral part of the exhibition (for example, the recent Taipei Biennale included forum planners on the curatorial teams, which can be seen as a sign). Regarding space, it is common to have exhibits distributed in different buildings or outdoor venues. These phenomena make the exhibition as an object of viewing and research appear vague and challenging in respect of determining its contour. Another aspect that makes the exhibition contour vague or spatially extended is its related publications – including online publications. The publication of exhibition catalogs is delayed, compared to the opening, which has become normal, especially when there is a requirement to represent the installation shots of works or even to include forum records or publications in separate volumes by texts and images, or through audio-visual recording. In short, an exhibition is a complex object, and these changes in time, space, display properties, and strategies make this complexity even higher.
- In the text model, changes in the author’s lifetime publications are shown by the degree of change in each version. Its amplitude may be higher than commonly assumed: for example, there are over 600 local changes between different versions of “Madame Bovary,” and Balzac’s novel version changes are in the thousands;15 in the Chinese world, it is well known that Jin Yong’s martial arts novels have undergone several major version changes; more special cases, such as Foucault’s History of Madness in Classical Times, first translated into English as an abridged version of Madness and Civilization,16or Newhall’s History of Photography, which I have studied intensely,17 evolved from the original New York Museum of Modern Art’s centennial photography exhibition catalog, which later was transformed into a book version to become a classic textbook. Each of this book’s subsequent version transitions has significant changes and updates. Compared with version changes in the text model, what can be equivalent in the exhibition model should be the frequent replacement of exhibits and different display methods, often due to venue conditions when exhibitions travel around; “Cities on the Move” (1997-1998), curated by Hou Hanru and Hans Ulrich Obrist, intentionally incorporated changes due to environmental context into core curatorial concepts when moving between cities, thus becoming a classical reflexive project in curatorial history.18
- Compared with the types of versions released after the author has died in the text model (addition of criticism or reference materials, textbook versions, popular versions, or various adaptations/abbreviations), closer forms in the exhibition model should be various forms of exhibition remakes, although they often do not have to wait until the curator’s death before proceeding. Recent remakes like “When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes: A Restoration / A Remake / A Rejuvenation / A Rebellion” (2012) have some distance from the concept of pure remakes (which also shows the difference between the ontological nature of exhibitions and literary texts), often adding dialogues with contemporary creations, or due to a long temporal separation, if it’s hard to find works, and there’s a big difference from the original exhibition; this situation is like “Revisiting the Classics – Special Exhibition of Existing Works of Taiten and Futen” (2020-2021); but this exhibition concretely presents the separate situation of the Oriental Painting Department and the Western Painting Department in the Taipei Prefecture Exhibition back then, and also reproductively published the original complete set of exhibition catalogs, which should be able to achieve some effects of exhibition remakes for contemporary audiences, enabling them to understand and experience the exhibition as it was back then.
17 Lin Chi-ming, « De l’ exposition au livre d’art. Éléments pour une étude de la genèse au long cours de The History of Photography (1937-1982) », Genesis, 15, No. 40 (avril 2015) : 67- 77.
1 Scott Mcquire, Visions of Modernity: Representation, Memory, Time and Space in the Age of the Camera (London: Sage Publications, 1998), 127–131.
2 For example, the famous curator Harald Szeemann’s (1933-2005) entire personal archives along with the book collection are housed at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
3 Pierre-Marc de Biasi, La génétique des textes (Paris : Nathan, 2000).
4 Lin Chi-Ming, “Archival Turn: Concept and Critique,” in Document Preservation and Reuse in the Museums (Taipei: Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 2012), 128-143.
5 Pierre-Marc de Biasi, La génétique des textes, 9.
6 Cf. Lin Chi-Ming, “Archival Turn: Concept and Critique.”
7 Freud is fascinated by psyche’s “unlimited receptive capacity” and its “retention of permanent traces”, “A Note upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad’, in Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud , Vol. XIX (1923-1925) (London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1961), 227.
8 Lin Chi-Ming, “Archival Turn: Concept and Critique.”.
9 Biasi, La génétique des textes, 34.
10 John Rohrbach, “Introduction”, in Reframing the New Topographics, ed. Greg Foster-Rice and John Rohrbach (Chicago: Columbia College Chicago Press, 2013), XVI.
11 Biasi, La génétique des textes, 36.
12 Dan Brown, Inferno (illustrated version) (Taipei: Times Publishing Inc.), 11.
13 Biasi, La génétique des textes, 74.
14 Ibid, 47-48.
15 Ibid, 49.
16 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization, tr. Richard Howard (New York: Vintage Anchor Publishing, 1965).
17 Chi-ming Lin, « De l’ exposition au livre d’art. Éléments pour une étude de la genèse au long cours de The History of Photography (1937-1982) », Genesis, 15, No. 40 (avril 2015) : 67- 77.
18 Cf. Terry Smith, Thinking Contemporary Curating (New York: Independent Curators International, 2012), 206.
19 Mike Jones, Artefacts, Archives, and Documentation in the Relational Museum (London and New York: Routledge, 2022).
20 Ibid, 6.
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Author
Lin Chi-Ming, art critic and curator, is a distinguished professor at the Department of Arts and Design of the National Taipei University of Education, Doctor of Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. He specializes in the fields of Art Theory, Aesthetics, French Contemporary Thought, Theories of the Image, Contemporary Photography, Transitional Justice and Trauma Studies, the Relation between Geopolitics, Anthropocene, Artificial Intelligence, and Art.
He has published in Chinese, French, English and Italian. His recent book titles include “Multiple and Tension: On History of Photography and Photographic Portrait,” and “Translator’s Introduction to Histoire de la folie”. He has been the Director of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (2018-2020) and is now the director of CCSCA (MA in Critical and Curatorial Studies of Contemporary Art) at NTUE.
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