PRAXES WHAT YOU PREACH

The practice-based PhD PRAXES WHAT YOU PREACH takes as its vantage point Rhea Dall’s curatorial practice in founding and running the art institution PRAXES Center for Contemporary Art in Berlin (www.praxes.de) from 2013 to 2015 in collaboration with Kristine Siegel.

As an unconventional institutional proposition, PRAXES did not present new artistic positions in highpaced rotation. Instead it followed a different model: to work intensively with two, unassociated artists over a stretched temporality, mounting more consecutive exhibition modules of each individual practice over a half-year period—named a “Cycle.”

Consistently mixing processual reflections, autobiographical investments, and theoretical discussions, the PhD thesis aims to analyse and churn into writing this site- and time-sensitive experiment.

The text does this in two main parts. Firstly, the introductory section outlines “what” PRAXES was and further discusses “how” to and “why” write about such an institutional experiment. In the text’s second and main part, eight essays—each corresponding with one of the artists engaged at PRAXES—set out to consider both the particularities of the individual practice’s Cycle and how PRAXES, as an institutional experiment, shape-shifted its modus operandi (its timing, tone, architecture, and so on) accordingly. The chapters trace the processes of working with respectively: Jutta Koether, Gerard Byrne, Judith Hopf, Falke Pisano, Matt Mullican, Christina Mackie, Rimini Protokoll, and Chris Evans.

In her introduction to the 2017 anthology The Artist as Curator, the American curator Elena Filipovic ascribes some of the changes happening in exhibition-making to “curators endeavoring to find an exhibition form that would respond to the nature of the work shown.” (p.13). This thesis considers exactly this problem: how the aesthetic and critical, temporary, political, and geographical questions posed in each artistic utterance morph, discuss, and push at the art institution as a mechanism.

Den praksis-baserede ph.d.-afhandling PRAXES WHAT YOU PREACH beskriver Rhea Dalls kuratoriske arbejde med PRAXES Center for Contemporary Art (www.praxes.de) – en kunstinstitution, som hun grundlagde og drev sammen med Kristine Siegel i Berlin fra 2013 til 2015.

PRAXES var en anderledes institutionel model. Fremfor hele tiden at vise nye kunstneriske positioner var institutionens fokus at arbejde intensivt med blot to, af hinanden uafhængige kunstnerskaber over længere tid, og således at vise flere udstillinger med samme kunstner over et (helt) halvt år – en såkaldt ”Cycle”.

Afhandling analyserer dette steds- og tidsspecifikke eksperiment. Dette gøres gennem en blanding af processuelle refleksioner, personlige erfaringer og teoretiske diskussioner.

Teksten falder i to dele: I første del – introduktionsafsnittet – diskuteres, “hvad” PRAXES var samt “hvordan” og “hvorfor” skrive om en sådan eksperimenterende kunstinstitution. Anden del – afhandlingens hoveddel – består af otte analytiske essays, som hver diskuterer samarbejdet med de involverede kunstnere, henholdsvis Jutta Koether, Gerard Byrne, Judith Hopf, Falke Pisano, Matt Mullican, Christina Mackie, Rimini Protokoll og Chris Evans. Hvert essay analyserer her både det konkrete kunstnerskab, og hvorledes selve kunstinstitutionen PRAXES ændrede sig, fik andre regler og en anden rytme (sproglig tone, udstillingsfrekvens- og arkitektur med mere), alt efter den enkelte kunstneriske praksis.

I sin introduktion til antologien The Artist as Curator fra 2017 peger den amerikanske kurator Elena Filipovic på, hvordan nogle af de forskydninger og nybrud, der sker i udstillingspraksissen i dag, skyldes, at kuratorer forsøger at finde nye formater, der svarer på kunstværkets natur. Denne afhandling forsøger at reflektere over akkurat dette problem: hvordan kan de æstetiske og kritiske, politiske og geografiske spørgsmål – som er indlejret i den enkelte kunstners stemme og ytring – flytte, ændre og teste kunstinstitutionen som mekanisme?