Natalia Smolyanskaya’s cycle of seminars Institutional critique in contemporary art

What makes institutional critique a unique phenomenon is its ability to resignify the artist’s practice: where does art abide? and where does life itself happen? The category of “topos”, which has different meanings depending on the context, may be translated to English as either “place” or “site”. And whereas in the latter case, the “place” refers primarily to artist who doesn’t need institutional backup, the former, “site”, points to the localization of the artist’s practice (this idea originates from the manifesto of the art critics, founders of the Foksal Gallery in Warsaw). For Robert Smithson—an artist who aimed to solve the problem of “cultural confinement” in a narrow gallery space—“topos” and ou-topos” (or, place and nonplace) brought forth the dialectics of “inside” and “outside”. The real “place” where art is created, becomes the life itself, untruncated by any barriers, the most crucial among which is the barrier between the exhibition space and the outer world.

For the artist, the very art system appears as an institution imposing restrictions, an institution that should be surpassed by moving beyond the limits, set by vertical power structures, to the area of personal interrelations. The claim to “surpass art” was announced by the generation that was later labeled “the 1968 generation”. Within this context, Daniel Buren, who criticized the very “place” of the artist, i.e. the artist’s studio, Julio Le Parc, who emphasized the necessity to destroy the word “art”, and Guy Debord, who aimed to live his life as a continuous art project, were equally critical of their main life activities and the art itself as an institution, with each of them also wishing to “surpass art”. Often questioning conventional approaches to art and its relationship with the “spectacle” of mass production, these artists, have radically undermined the notion of artwork in their own practices.

In 1968, members of the Visual Art Group (GRAV) called for the “demystification of art”, aiming to desecrate it, deprive of its sublime, even royal status and open art for everyone, as well as to ridicule the artist’s “unique” mission and “exclusivity”. In this sense, Marcel Broodthaers’s Department of Eagles can be regarded as an example of antiauthoritarian critique of the 1968 generation, as well as a total project of desecrating art and the artist, where the metaphor of eagle alludes to the “sublime”, the “royal” and the “unique” practice known as art. Replicated and ridiculed, the eagle is a marker of a lot more other things that look equally absurd.

The critique of the museum performed and articulated by artists, such as Daniel Buren, Hans Haacke, Seth Siegelaub, Marcel Broodthaers, and the Art Workers’ Coalition (AWC) reflected the overall critical mood of the era. But it was equally determined by these artists’ individual practices which reconsidered the category of exhibition space as an environment full of socio-political implications. In this regard, Michael Asher’s and Seth Siegelaub’s shows reassess the very “internal” subject matter of an exhibition without rejecting it—but by redirecting the viewer to discover certain exposition strategies: rather than offering a “white cube” space which concentrates the visitor’s attention on objects in their sacral meaning, here the vectors are displaced. Being included in the exposition, a gallery space obtains markers signifying the interconnections between exhibition and non-exhibition, place and nonplace. The viewer in this situation gets involved in a signifying game, becomes a voyeur observing the usually concealed part of the gallery space, as well as an active element of the critical process, instigated by the artist’s actions.

The texts of Andrea Fraser and Alex Farquharson suggest an approach that implies transition from the criticism of institutions, “external” for the artist, to the analysis of the method itself, the very critical function as such—as it is conducted by artists. The transdisciplinary nature of this method allows to avoid stereotypes and establish new, alternative institutions that help to promote agenda driven art.

The term “occupy” became crucial in the year 2012 marked by protests and “occupations” — when people, globally, began taking over public spaces. Historically associated with the occupation of plants during the French workers’ strike movement of 1936, the term has been reappearing throughout the 20th century. Hito Steyerl positions “occupation” as art which “divvies up roles in the figures of artist, audience, freelance curator…”. Occupation should not be reduced to merely invading a space, physically or symbolically, it also means the dislocation of accents, the shift of roles and sometimes the exit from the realm of art into reality, as it happens in the projects initiated by The Yes Men duo who refuse to call themselves artists altogether.