Fwd: Chris Gilbert's resignation over Venezuelan Exhibition (5.21.06)

Begin forwarded message:
>
> more background on the exhibits discussed below are here
> http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibits/nowtime/index.html
> more soon
> d
>
>
> Chris Gilbert - statement on resigning 5/21/06
>
> I made the decision to resign as Matrix Curator on April 28, but my
> struggles with the BAM/PFA over the content and approach of the
> projects in the exhibition cycle "Now-Time Venezuela: Media Along the
> Path of the Bolivarian Process" go back quite a few months. In
> particular the museum administrators – meaning the deputy directors
> and senior curator collaborating, of course, with the public
> relations and audience development staff – have for some time been
> insisting that I take the idea of solidarity, revolutionary
> solidarity, out of the cycle. For some months, they have said they
> wanted "neutrality" and "balance" whereas I have always said that
> instead my approach is about commitment, support, and alignment – in
> brief, taking sides with and promoting revolution.
>
> I have always successfully resisted the museum's attempts to
> interfere with the projects (and you will see that the ideas of
> alignment, support, and revolutionary solidarity are written all over
> the "Now-Time" projects part 1 & part 2 – they are present in all
> the texts I have generated and as a consequence in almost all of the
> reviews). In the museum's most recent attempt to alter things, the
> one that precipitated my resignation, they proposed to remove the
> offending concept from the Now-Time Part 2 introductory text panel (a
> panel which had already gone to the printer). Their plan was to
> replace the phrase "in solidarity" with revolutionary Venezuela with
> a phrase like "concerning" revolutionary Venezuela – or another
> phrase describing a relation that would not be explicitly one of
> solidarity.
>
> I threatened to resign and terminate the exhibition, since, first of
> all, revolutionary solidarity is what I believe in – the essential
> concept in the "Now-Time" project cycle – but secondly it is
> obviously unfair to invite participants such as Dario Azzellini and
> Oliver Ressler or groups such as Catia TVe to a project that has one
> character (revolutionary solidarity) and then change the rules of the
> game on them a few weeks before the show opens (so that they become
> mere objects of examination or investigation). At first, my threat to
> resign and terminate the show availed nothing. Then on April 28, I
> wrote a letter stating that I was in fact resigning and my last day
> of work would be two weeks from that day, which was May 12, two days
> before the "Now-Time Part 2: Revolutionary Television in Catia"
> opening. I assured them that the show could not go forward without
> me. In response to this decisive action – and surely out of fear
> that the show which had already been published in the members
> magazine would not happen – the institution restored my text panel
> to the way I had written it. Having won that battle, though at the
> price of losing my position, I decided to go forward with the show,
> my last one.
>
> One thing that should make evident how extreme and erratic the
> museum's actions were is that the very same sentence that was found
> offensive ("a project in solidarity with the revolutionary process in
> contemporary Venezuela") is the exact sentence that is used for the
> first Now-Time Venezuela exhibition text panel that still hangs in
> the Matrix gallery upstairs. That show is on view for one more week
> as I write.
>
> The details of all this are important though, of course, its general
> outlines, which play out the familiar patterns of class struggle, are
> of greater interest. The class interests represented by the museum,
> which are above all the interests of the bourgeoisie that funds it,
> have two (related) things to fear from a project like mine: (1) of
> course, revolutionary Venezuela is a symbolic threat to the US
> government and the capitalist class that benefits from that
> government's policies, just as Cuba is a symbolic threat, just as
> Nicaragua was, and just as is any country that tries to set its house
> in order in a way that is different from the ideas of Washington and
> London – which is primarily to say Washington and London's
> insistence that there is no alternative to capitalism.
>
> I must emphasize that the threat is only symbolic; in the eyes of the
> US government and the US bourgeoisie, it sets a "bad" and dangerous
> example of disobedience for other countries to follow, but of course
> the idea that such examples represent a military threat to the US
> (would that it were the case) is simply laughable; (2) the second
> threat, which is probably the more operational one in the museum
> context, is that much of the community is in favor of the "Now-Time"
> projects – the response to the first exhibition is enormous and the
> interest in the second is also very high. That response and interest
> exposes the fact that the museum, the bourgeois values it promotes
> via the institution of contemporary art (contemporary art of the past
> 30 years is really in most respects simply the cultural arm of
> upper-class power) are not really those of any class but its own.
> Importantly the museum and the bourgeoisie will always deny the role
> of class interests in this: they will always maintain that the kinds
> of cultural production they promote are more difficult, smarter, more
> sophisticated – hence the lack of response to most contemporary art
> is, according to them, about differences in education and
> sophistication rather than class interest. That this kind of claim is
> obscurantist and absurd is something the present exhibitions make
> very clear: the work of Catia TVe, which is created by people in the
> popular (working-class) neighborhoods of Caracas, is far more
> sophisticated than what comes out of the contemporary art of the
> Global North. The same could be said for the ideas discussed by the
> Venezuelan factory workers in the Ressler and Azzellini film that is
> shown Now-Time Part 1. (Of course, it is not because these works and
> the thoughts in them are more sophisticated that we should attend to
> them; what I am saying is simply that it is clearly an evasion and
> false to dismiss anti-bourgeois cultural production – work that
> aligns with the interests of working class people – on grounds of
> its being unsophisticated.)
>
> To return to the museum: I believe that the enormous response to the
> "Now-Time" cycle – there were 180 visitors to the March 26 panel
> discussion that opened "Now-Time" part 1 and if you google "Now-Time
> Venezuela" you get over 700 hits – put the class interests that
> stand by and promote contemporary art in danger, exposed them a bit.
> I suppose some concern about this may have given a special edge to
> the museum's failed efforts to alter my projects.
>
> I think it is important to be clear about the facts that precipitated
> my resignation: that is, the struggle over the wording of the text
> panel, which fit into months of struggle over the question of
> solidarity and alignment with a revolutionary political agenda. That
> issue is discussed above. However, it is also important to understand
> the context. Again, it is too weak to say that museums, like
> universities, are deeply corrupt. They are. (And in my view the key
> points to discuss regarding this corruption are (1) the museum's
> claim to represent the public's interests when in fact serving
> upper-class interests and parading a carefully constructed surrogate
> image of the public; (2) the presence of intra-institutional press
> and marketing departments that really operate to hold a political
> line through various control techniques, only one of which is
> censorship; finally (3) the presence of development departments that,
> in mostly hidden ways, favor and flatter rich funders, giving the lie
> to even the sham notion of public responsibility that the museum
> parades). However, to describe museums and other cultural
> institutions as simply if deeply corrupt is, as I said, too weak in
> that it both holds out the promise of their reform and it ignores the
> larger imperialist structures that make their corruption an
> inevitable upshot and reflection of the exploitive political and
> social system of which they form a part. Such institutions will go on
> reflecting imperialist capitalist values, will celebrate private
> property and deny social solidarity, and will maintain a strict
> silence about the control of populations at home and the destruction
> of populations abroad in the name of profit, until that imperialist
> system is dismantled. Importantly, it will not be dismantled by
> cultural efforts alone: a successful reform of a cultural institution
> here or there would at best result in "islands" of sanity that would
> most likely operate in a negative way – as imaginary and misleading
> "proof" that conditions are not as bad as they are.
>
> In fact, with conditions as they are, a different strategy is
> required: there should be disobedience at all levels; disruptions and
> explosions of the kind that I, together with a small group of allies
> inside the museum, have created are also useful on a symbolic level.
> However, the primary struggle and the only struggle that will result
> in a significant change would be one that works directly to transform
> the economic and political base. This would be a struggle aiming to
> bring down the US government and its imperialist system through
> highly organized efforts.
>
>
> We live in the midst of a fascist imperialism – there is no other
> way to describe the system that the US has created and that exercises
> such control through terror over populations both inside and outside.
> History has shown that to make "deals" or "compromises" with fascism
> avails nothing. Instead a radical and daily intransigence is
> required. Fascism operates to destroy life. It installs and operates
> on the logic of the camp on all levels, including culture. In the
> face of that logic, which holds life as nothing, compromises and
> deals at best buy time for the aggressor and symbolic capital for the
> aggressor. One should have no illusions: until capitalism and
> imperialism are brought down, cultural institutions will go on being,
> in their primary role, lapdogs of a system that spreads misery and
> death to people everywhere on the planet. The fight to abolish that
> system completely and build one based on socialism must remain our
> exclusive and constant focus.
>
> Chris Gilbert
>
>
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