Spaces of conflict

a project by Mike Bode & Staffan Schmidt

Nina Möntmann

To society space represents an important political factor in the sense that the meaning of space is closely bound up with the actual conditions of society and its forms of organization. According to Lefebvre space and spatial policies are expressions of social conditions, finding in their turn their expression in these.

Social space is typically determined by social structures. The concept was born out of the insight that space is neither to be seen as a homogenous formation, nor as a category, but as a product of social circumstances, subject to change. George Simmel defines space as an activity, thus pointing to a characteristic that is vital to social space. Even in the early 1900s Simmel established the importance of space as a socialization phenomenon. With the concept “the sociology of space” he countered the homogenous view of space in the hegemonic discourse of modernity.

It is precisely this critique of homogenous spatial models that is the starting point for the research-based work of the Swedish artists Mike Bode and Staffan Schmidt. In their joint project they examine potential spatial methods and their social effect. Their first field of study is architecture, rebuilding, and its role as a mediator of social and psychological contexts. Under the title Spatial Expectations they have worked since the year 2000 on a series of projects addressing the connection between physical and social space with the help of concrete examples such as the housing estates built by the Danish government in the early seventies in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, or a Kämpinge holiday home for workers from the Addo factory in Malmö, in use from the forties to the nineties.

Focusing on the space of the art institution, in their visual essay, Spaces of Conflict, they have interviewed curators and directors of six international museums as well as students from colleges of art in the same cities. The questions refer above all to the role of the exhibition space, both in the city and in society: “In what way does an art space contribute to society and to the place where it is located?” or “Are there today any well-founded hopes for the future that an art institution has to live up to?” The interviews also problematized the way in which the specific architecture of the art space supports or stands in the way of the visitors, the artists and the curators’ work and visions. The lack of correspondence between physical and social space became especially evident in these places, for instance in the work with contemporary art inside the heavy and prestigious architecture of Oslo’s Museum for Samtidskunst, in the building which previously housed Norway’s National Bank. As project leader I assumed that those who, at the request of Bode and Schmidt, had been chosen to represent previous batches of students would harbour many more expectations and utopian ideas as regards the social role of the art space and the effects of the work of the art institutions, while the curators of these institutions, who have to deal with budget deficits and a multitude of practical decisions on a daily basis, would take a more sober view of the situation. The case was almost the obverse. For example in Malmö in the interview with the director of Rooseum, Charles Esche, he stated that the task of the institution was “collecting ideas, concepts, and experiences, which are excluded by the dominant consumer model” while the art students advocated the classical aspects of the mediation of art.

The voices in Bode and Schmidt’s work are not subordinated to the message. There are no “talking heads”; instead you see photos and film sequences from exhibition spaces. In some of the premises new shows are being mounted; you can see exhibitions, lobbies, offices, staircases, or parking spaces – the interiors and immediate exteriors of the art space. The sound recordings are not synchronized with the pictures, which means that we for instance hear a student talk in Copenhagen while we are watching Kunst-Werke in Berlin, or else we hear the director of the Helsinki art gallery speak while we are seeing the newly redecorated rooms in Vilnius’ Contemporary Art Center.

Selected opinions on the inner and outer space of the institutions are combined with theoretical comments on spatial issues. Displacements between various levels of art mediation are expressly problematized, at the same time as the conceptual approach of the seventies is invoked. This can for instance be observed in Martha Rosler’s photo-text work The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems (1974–5), which contains photos of derelict buildings in Bowery Street in New York in conjunction with ambiguous statements about the living conditions of the inhabitants. In Bode and Schmidt’s video works, too, words and pictures are presented side by side, linked together not as integrating but as complementary systems of representation. One separate part cannot on its own bear authentic witness of the situation of the institution, nor can a direct and open relation between the components bring about a unified signification. In contrast to a documentary, the “visual essay” encircles its subject at the same time as it diversifies it. The structure of the work has a discursive approach and presents many-faceted perspectives rather than relying on a single thesis. Also in exhibiting the work these tendencies are realized. The form of the exhibition is not established once and for all – it is not mounted in the same way everywhere. In cooperation with the institution new forms of presentation are created. The exhibition program, the spatial arrangement and the surrounding local community’s relation to the art space are matters of discussion and negotiation. In Malmö one showing is followed by a panel discussion while in Berlin there are plans of conducting a dialogue with the exhibition at Kunst-Werke, the theme of which is changed alternative art spaces, and with other exhibitions in the district Mitte.

On the visual level Spaces of Conflict demonstrates the common project of various kinds of institutional architectural form, from the very chilly to the prestigious interiors, from Copenhagen’s businesslike x-room and department-store aesthetics, and the conversion of an old margarine factory in Berlin into Kunst-Werke, to Helsinki’s art gallery, which was built in the neoclassical style to house art exhibitions. These architectural projects were at best intended to mediate the ideas of the institutional work and support public productions, which can be seen as a “formal condition of spatiality” (Simmel). In actual fact they were built for other purposes, or else they load the public space with the representative ideas of art-historical institutions, which has little to do with the space where curators more or less consciously produce art projects for a participating audience,

The topical debate about the necessary restructuring of art institutions is introduced in a Baltic country by means of selected examples from the Nordic countries, and also from the German capital which is such a hot spot for Nordic artists. The altered situation of the institutions in the welfare states and in what used to be Eastern Europe plays an important role here, as do the personal contributions of the curators and the individual opinions of the art students. Bode and Schmidt’s explorative spatial methodology enables a comparison between institutions whose exhibition policies and goals remain obscure due to the displaced sound tracks. Thus the individual expressions are raised to a general level enabling the viewer to compare the observed spaces with the utopian or pragmatic ideas of the curators and the art students. The viewers may also interweave these ideas with their own conceptions of the meaning of an active public institutional space for art.

Spaces of conflict

A panel discussion about art institutions, expectations and visions.
Saturday 28 May at 2pm-6pm at Rooseum

Panelists
Anders Kreuger, curator; Nikos Papastergiadis, guest professor at Malmö University,
associate professor at the University of Melbourne;
Simon Sheikh, curator, assistant professor at Malmö Art Academy;
Lene Crone Jensen, acting director, Rooseum;
Mike Bode & Staffan Schmidt, artists.

Moderator

Nina Möntmann, curator NIFCA Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art

As an extension of the project Spaces of conflict by the two artists Mike Bode & Staffan Schmidt
currently shown at Rooseum (21 May – 5 June) Rooseum together with Nina Möntmann and the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art, organizes a panel discussion about art institutions, their roles and the expectations the public have on them.

The way people look at art institutions is permanently under discussion, and curators and artists are testing out the role of the museum, or kunsthalle in society. The spaces for art have a history of conflicts: individuals, different groups and cliques have struggled over the right to exhibit, but the conflict has perhaps particularly involved the art and the meaning it has been ascribed as space in society.

The panel discussion at Rooseum will take up questions of institutional exhibition practice and the relation between physical and social space both in everyday curatorial practice and and conceptions and in our visions. How can institutional space be designed and used in order to correspond with the presented artistic or curatorial ideas? What models already exist? How do they work, and how did they change? And to what processes of economies and knowledge production are they related?

The panel discussion will also connect general understandings and reflections about art institutions with the local context of Rooseum, that is, Malmö and the Öresund region. In order to address the possibilities for institutions today, here, with a focus on contemporary art and the visions for the future, the panelist have been invited to take their point of departure in the key concepts that also formed the framework for Bode & Schmidt’s project: contribution, expectation, and alteration:

A: In what way(s) does an art space contribute to a community, a city or the society?
B: Are there any expectations that an art institution has to negotiate and/or live up to?
C: Are there any actual spatial alterations that could improve the way that institutions work and communicate?

With these questions as a basis the discussion is open for viewpoints on the conditions, practices and economies that shape the structure of the institutions for contemporary art in the region.Everyone is welcome to participate!

The panel discussion will be held in English.