Curator and Epimelet: The Ritual, The Context and The Thing
The reconstruction of the classical entrance of Athenian Acropolis (source)
Epimelētai, translated from Greek as “overseers” or “carers”, were individually appointed in Athens for particular festivals, such as the Panathenaia. Their functions, as presumed by historians, was to oversee the festivities, orderliness and livelihood of the happenings.
‘Curator’ takes the etymological root from Latin “cura”, which stands for ‘healing’. Curator therefore is therefore ‘healer’, ethical and aesthetic ‘doctor’ for the communities (s)he is active in. Later on, curators role were redefined as guards and conservationists of the cultural memory.
As currently the status and role of the curator becomes more and more blurred, I’d like to suggest to look at the nature of activities that were carried out by epimeletai.
Available to us sources suggest that they were appointed to oversee mysteries - such as already mentioned Panathenaia, the most important event in ancient Athens, Dionysia, Eleusinian and other what we would call now ‘festivals’. They were responsible for appropriate ‘content’ - the staged ‘performances’, but mostly importantly rituals. In fact, they had to make sure that the whole festival doesn’t become a mere entertainment, but preserves its ‘magic’. The objects, that were used in the mysteries - such as statues of gods, gifts, costumes, masks, etc - had to carry holistic and ritualistic value, united in embodied and well-communicated to participants. Epimelet is a ‘civil servant’, that makes sure to remind about ‘thingness’ of life and its worth amidst the risks and hardships of existence through the vivid, lively and immersive ritual.
Art today is one of the creative industries, however its ‘magic’ is still referenced to be somewhat special. Totems of prestige, the withholders of value, an alternative to cryptocurrencies exchange mechanisms in the freeports, etc - the objects of art serve many functions, that weren’t imagined even decades ago. Silly melancholy through is felt when the discussion about the ‘magic’ or ‘mystery’ of it is on the table.
But perhaps, we’d still benefit as a whole more from a little less preservative healing and a little more lively magic?
Nature of meta-curation and responsibility of contemporary art in the crisis of scattered postmodern societies
written in 2014
Marcel Duchamp. The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass). 1915–23, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965–6, lower panel remade 1985 © Richard Hamilton and Succession Marcel Duchamp/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2017
Everything can be art [Marcel Duchamp], and everyone can be an artist [Joseph Beuys] - the
legitimisation and general acceptance of spillover of the ‘artistic’ into all fields of human
activities since last decades is becoming greater than ever. Somewhat a ‘mystery’ of
contemporary art platforms attracts exponentially more people on local and global scale to
visit galleries, museums, biennales, pop-up art events and shows. It is explained partly by the
fact of rigidity of existing frames of dialogue about the future in other platforms like academia
or politics, which results in growing boredom, absenteeism and escapism in societies.
Accelerating development of innovations in the field of dissemination of information, namely digital and internet revolution, helps art to penetrate more areas - both retinal and conceptual power of influence on spectator has ever increasing potential.
There is a parallel logical process: blurring the borders of structures and roles in the art world. Commercial galleries, for instance, become de-facto a legitimate stage for presenting contemporary art not only as a product for consumption, but also contribute to meta-narrative of contemporary art as they are capable of much faster response to the zeitgeist than bureaucratised museums and formal cultural institutions.
The roles of curator, critic, collector and artist are re-defined in the direction of further hybridisation. As art expands further beyond the conventional area of “visual history of humanity” and often assumes the role of actor in political and social life, the agents of “artistic” become interdisciplinary “portals” in between the worlds that seemed to be functionally separated before. This post-structuralist shift commenced and was noticed by philosophers several decades ago - today we witness the scaling effect of it’s magnitude.
One of this new “agents” or “ambassadors”, “sherpas” of multi-dimensional interrelations between art and the areas where it actively spills is meta-curator. Who is the meta-curator and what is the medium of meta-curation dealing with?
The role of intermediary between artist and public was existing before, but curating as conceptualised discipline and profession is quite young, maybe 30 years old. The concept of discourse of Michel Foucault played an important role in it’s genesis. As Zigmund Bauman put it, “curator is on the front of the big battle for meaning under conditions of uncertainly”. A special attention to the curation was drawn in 1990s when the level of ‘uncertainty’ started to grow exponentially with collapse of bipolar world order. The medium of “curation” was then widely discussed and contextualised in leading art magazines - since then “curator” was established as accepted role and verb “to curate” made it’s way to conventional usage. The story had just started there - conceptualisation of curation opened a field of redefining the relationship between contemporary art and life in all it’s aspects as it continued expansion to the other fields at the accelerated pace. Contemporary art came in with an important multi-dimensional analysis and research of the society as creative laboratory of alternatives to the accepted conventional methods of language, storytelling, research and so on in humanities. Art is no longer primarily serving the function of the mirror of social and political events, or creative narration of histories and present. The rigidity and limitations of ever-bureaucratising institutions (academia, politics, etc.) triggers a search for alternative channels of delivering innovative ideas, that challenge accepted frames of understanding of the society history, present and future. For example, why performance art cannot be legitimised as social experiment in sociology? Why think tank strategic mind mapping and political science hypotheses are separated from pictorial representation of ideas in contemporary conceptual art?
Meta-curator is an “agent”, a theorist and an artist of the intersecting discourses, who has a task of researching the variables of answers on these and many other questions. Meta-curator is not the trader on the market of discourses - this is the work for propagandist, who’s task it to narrow down the complex meta-narrative to simple binary formulas in order to achieve particular advances in institutional structures. Meta-curation is a creative analysis of meta-narrative of societies, contextualised and conceptualised on the intersections of multiple disciplines of knowledge. Means of this analysis are variable - therefore meta-curator can wear a hat of artist, if this is the chosen language of dissemination of ideas; as well as he can be active in the mediums of writing, criticism, observation or reviewing. In fact variability and possibility to change, intersect and combine the mediums of expression is offering more space for possible innovations.
Meta-curator has responsibility to mediate and structure a better understanding of the processes of spillover between arts and other disciplines, providing the space for interdisciplinary dialogue, that should trigger development of the ideas, schemes, strategies to reform social and political structures. Contemporary scattered postmodern society is lost under the heavy rain of accessible at the tap of the finger on the touchscreen or laptop keys zillions of terabytes of information. Information as a commodity became inexpensive, while comprehensive cross- sectoral meta-analysis of anthropological, social, economic, political, etc. processes is in the opposite flux: limitation of the capacity of conventional frames of analysis and production of viable in modern time ideas for adaptation to rapid changes in continuum.
Meta-curation actualises and analyses the issues that shape and change meta-narrative. It is a reflection of visual and conceptual representation of the elements of meta-narrative in the form of creative storytelling via exhibitions, performances, shows, artworks, texts - the list of mediums is never closed. It is a cooperative activity.
The task of a meta-curator is to suggest, analyse and contemplate on innovative, prospective, groundbreaking embodiment of aesthetics as a platform for staging interdisciplinary dialogues beyond the traditional frameworks. One of the questions he/she has to ask - what makes contemporary artwork great, outstanding from increasing amount of recycled narratives, manipulated messages and ever repeating stories? How contemporary art can influence the way the world looks and thinks about the issues, that might have been regarded in the same way for thousands of years before? How this new ways of looking at issues can change/improve our lives?
The apparatus of meta-curation expands beyond representation or construction of discourses for illustrative purpose. Free from pre-defined frames observation and analysis of singularity of synergies opens up possibility to understand phenomenon of serendipity. Meta-curator is first of all a reflective mediator, who’s span of activities can bridge, for example, artistic practice with scientific researches in various fields. Charting bits of modernity as a whole for further progress of humanity is probably the right concise way to shape meta-curation as a continuous process.
Meta-curation is expanding field itself: it assigns to contemporary art the responsibility for raising questions and staging the dialogue about alternatives for future in scattered by ambiguity and uncertainty postmodern society. It is an issue of paramount importance as it has been becoming more obvious with the crisis of academia and enforced, neo-dogmatic framing in political, economic and social sciences: the freedom of discussion of alternatives for future is increasingly limited. Shall we fall in dark of new Medievalism until another enlightenment, proving that Hegelian law of repeating histories is instantly correct, or should we try to breakthrough?
Reference text:
Paul O’Neill. The Curatorial Turn: From Practice to Discourse // pp. 13-26, Issues in Curating
Contemporary Art and Performance. Edited by Judith Rugg, Michèle Sedgwick. Intellect Books, The
University of Chicago Press, 2007.