Amy Halliday Interviews Clare Butcher

Amy Halliday: Clare, you've just curated a successful show in Denmark which included Lara Baladi, Lucia Nimcova, Agnieszka Polska and Nandipha Mntambo. How did that come about?

Clare Butcher: I think as so many things for me come about: there is a something, like an event, a space, an offer, a moment within which one could work. And this leads to a concept, an idea, bridging snippets of thought, conversations, readings that I've been doing and artists' projects that I've seen. I responded to an open call from Aarhus Kunstbygning in Denmark for exhibition proposals that could somehow be linked with their theme for the year - 'Modifications'.

I had been wondering how I could work with some artists I had been impressed by, and then this moment came - an opportunity to bring them together. This particular constellation of artists is unusual as they all come from distinct and diverse geographic positions (Lebanon/Egypt, Slovakia, South Africa and Poland) and political histories - making the logistical possibilities of getting them all in the same place (in Denmark where none of them are from!) at the same time (we only had four months to put it together) a little more complicated than just coming up with a good idea to do so!

AH: The title of the show was 'The Good Old Days' - what was the driving force behind this concept?
CB: I had first of all proposed a show called 'Circumscribe' with the same group of artists, focusing on their 'new generation' approach to various forms of more traditional media. Each of these artists, I observed, was layering themselves over the 'master' copies of history, such as the apprentices of the Renaissance painters would do in this case, transforming the work through the act of layering and reapplying in a new context. This concept didn't fly in Aarhus as the concept of circumscription I was told, didn't exist in Danish. Interesting, no? So back to the drawing board; how to keep the show from being inaccessible to a different audience in a place I had never actually been without compromising the conceptual glue of the project...

I had been reading Homi Bhabha's The Location of Culture again - well, the first chapter which I seem to read over and over - and in this he cites an example of the postcolonial move beyond a given past which holds us nostalgically back: the miners' strike in Great Britain during the 1980s where women workers were involved. These women were struggling for something so much more than better wages: they were struggling for equality in the home, equality with their male colleagues, a change in the system that did not imply a return to some idyllic, 'good old' past, but signaled a move forward into a future of visibility, acknowledgment and therefore a new solidarity.

For me, this summed up the challenges posed to my own generation growing up in states which were falling apart, rebuilding, re-remembering pasts in order to construct presents and future horizons. I found that each of these artists was approaching history, using archival or domestic material to search for the joins, the new connections between moments, stories and ideas which might be found in a society now. The word 'nostalgia' is ever-present along this kind of investigation though, as Svetlana Boym points out in her Future of Nostalgia, there are different kinds of nostalgia, one that seeks to reflect on the past, and another that seeks to reconstruct it. The artists I was interested in were each reflecting, taking liberties with these 'official' texts, and working into them their personal perspectives and uncanny truths.

AH: And at 24, you're currently a guest curator and coordinating a lot of the publishing at the contemporary art museum the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven: that's quite a tall order! How have you found working in the Netherlands?
CB: I feel blessed to have had these opportunities to learn about contemporary art practice in the context of a well-resourced, centrally-located place like the Netherlands. How art is done here is just completely different, but also only appropriate for this set of conditions. There is a lot of public money for art because channels have been established over centuries. It means you become this professional grant application writer, which is good experience, and that you might have a crazy idea that actually gets realised (the recent series of conversations and publication which I initiated - entitled The Usual Suspects - is testament to this). This level of possibility makes you approach things differently, though such a sophisticated funding structure also means that art practice and institutions are beholden to this kind of public wish; certain agendas that art then becomes a part of and can't really escape because it seeks to remain somewhat free of corporate frameworks.

AH: How would you compare the possibilities or privileges of being a young curator in the Netherlands versus in South Africa?
CB: In the Netherlands the sophistication of this funding system is on a different level. And not only young curators benefit: whether you're young or not, depending on your tenacity you might actually be able to make things happen. However, in other ways SA is not that far away from this: in terms of being able to carve your niche, SA holds far more possibility because the system is far less regulated.

The biggest difference for me would be the geographical proximity of these hubs to others with which they can exchange and productively interact. The Netherlands is just so central and it's always been a country (for centuries now) where people move around and between other places. For me this has been the most amazing part, the fact that I can get work in Sweden as I did last year, or Denmark this year, or work with an artist from eastern Europe, or go see a show in Brussels just because it is nearby. This casts the notion of 'regionality' in a different light. I've noticed that the lack of borders between places (you'd only notice that you're in Belgium because the roads become a bit bumpier) means that working locally is pretty expansive. While at the same time, often people tend not to look in their own vicinity for interest; the classic syndrome of 'greener grass'. It doesn't matter where you are, Africa or Europe, everyone is always looking for something exotic, in the broadest sense of the word. I think the urgency of close-sighted institutional practice in the Netherlands is lacking.

AH: What kind of effect does this kind of mobility have, do you think?
CB: Well, when you get that flow, everyone seems to be much broader in their thinking of 'region' and 'culture', though I would argue that there are still 'in' clubs where the aesthetic is quite similar and people don't often really consider the possibility of other ways of being modern/contemporary. There are other 'clubs' though and it's this plurality, together with and because of, the system that can support it, which I really am amazed by. The Netherlands is not at the centre of this either: the network has so many nodes connected to one another, although the network seems to stop at the equator, just incorporating some of North Africa and the Middle East. This is why Europe (in the expansive sense) can afford to speak about a limited 'modern', and conversely why the limitations of geography and infrastructure make it so difficult for the global south to participate in this exchange.

AH: How could the global south participate more in this exchange, within the current infrastructural limits?
CB: More could be done if the network of communication was more developed. E-flux is this incredible database of art events and exhibitions as well as an online journal where people can read well-written, sometimes provocative articles. In South Africa we have two art journals online (ArtThrob, and Art South Africa - though they are very selective about what is online and are mostly focused on print) and a few really good blogs. Why is it that we're not reading each other's stuff? Why do we never see South African names in the E-Flux journal? People need to know, and I think perhaps the challenge for practitioners living in 'diaspora' is to make these links, make the threads extend further south and move the southern African network into view in Europe, as well as vice versa, resulting in perhaps lesser-known foreign artists showing in South Africa.

AH: Before this job at the Van Abbe, you completed the prestigious de Appel curatorial fellowship in Amsterdam. Clive Kellner is the only other southern African I know of who was chosen for this fellowship in the past - is it true that only three people from the African continent have ever participated in it?
CB: Yes, Clive did the programme way back in 1994. It was one of the first groups, and was also part of one of the most memorable projects in de Appel's history, I would say. We all kind of have this 'fraternity' thing going on and are constantly comparing each year's project with the next and theirs -'The Crap Shooter'- was definitely the most radical response to de Appel's commission which they issue each year's group.

The de Appel programme was one of the first curatorial programmes, in the timeline of both practically-focused and academic ones. It came at a time when freelance curators had been around for a while, floating between institutions working on different kinds of projects, organizing exhibitions and helping artists produce work. There was a need to consolidate this knowledge and open it up for a new generation of art historians and artists. The de Appel course was always small and short and international. It would be made up of 6-8 people, always for 9 months or so - and this kind of 'gestation period' was considered enough time that a young professional could commit to this non-certified course, emerging not with a degree in curating but a super-concentrated experience of working collaboratively on a show together, traveling together, seeing different ways of making shows in other places, meeting important figures within the contemporary art scene from all over and also exchanging knowledge.

AH: You did a lot of travelling during your year with de Appel. Which did you feel were cities to watch out for in terms of contemporary art, or museums/galleries that excited or surprised you with what they are doing?
CB: I was really excited and interested by the former 'Eastern Bloc' countries. I had a colleague from Serbia and we traveled to a couple cities in Poland and the overlaps in terms of what regions like this and SA share were surprising. Southern Africa and Eastern Europe could not be more distant in a sense, but there is this kind of telepoesis in terms of working through recent memory institutionally, and the kinds of cultural infrastructural challenges each geography faces.

There is a spirit of self-organisation there that I was inspired by; recent art history graduates were just renting a cheap apartment and exhibiting the work of friends from the art academy. This is how it starts... I mean, these shows might not be cutting edge but this is how they get there.

AH: Before you went to the Netherlands in 2008, you completed a BA Honours in Visual and Art History at UCT. As an aspiring curator, while studying you always had your fingers in several other proverbial pies. How did you get the relevant work experience to apply for a competitive fellowship in the Netherlands?
CB: Well I've never really been a one-job kind of person and while I was studying art history in a conceptual or more textual sense I really felt the need to work through things on a practical level. My Honours thesis focused on the politics of working with and displaying amateur documentary photography and my position at CAS (the Centre for African Studies) meant that during that time I could work with other photographers (an exhibition with Mimi Cherono from Kenya and as assistant to Mikhael Subotzky), which gave me some idea of the actual practice rather than idea of photography. I was then able to make an exhibition at the end of the thesis.

I think an increasing number of academic institutions are looking into this idea of practice-based research where practitioners are expected to practice rather than just think through certain quandaries. It's wonderful when one is given license to fail in a sense. In an academic environment the expectations are different from those of a public or commercial space where your success is measured in numbers. There was one beautiful lecture I can remember from first year in university where a professor drew our attention to the root of the word 'essay' which is the French essayer: to try. And basically, this should extend not only to written papers, but to the doing of one's research: we try, we fail, we try again. I would really encourage anyone anxious to experiment with curating to make their own rules, to get involved with seemingly unrelated things and to relate them, just by virtue of the fact that they are the same person, involved in each thing, and then, most of all, to try.

AH: South Africa is producing some very exciting curators, often people similarly working at the intersection of academia, art criticism and curating. Who are you most impressed/inspired by currently?
CB: When I was in Cape Town in December I was able to see the 'Dada South?' exhibition at the SANG, curated by Roger van Wyk and Kathyn Smith. This was just so exciting for me - the constellation of works they'd chosen, the kinds of pieces they'd managed to bring together - and overall the wonderful boldness of their curatorial vision on the entire project (coupled with an amazing sounding symposium in February which I did not get to attend). This is the kind of rigorous research and exhibition-making possible in South Africa, and something young curators should be aspiring to.

Anthea Buys just did a show in JAG called 'Time's Arrow' and this was also something super-contemporary in terms of its relation to a worldwide trend of recovering archives, of artists reinterpreting and appropriating certain institutional memory through art objects. Also, the Gugulective is getting a lot of attention overseas and it's wonderful to see a different model of collective art practice being critically engaged with by the more often individually-oriented methods of most western European artists. It is really exciting to see these connections and SO important for the rest of the world's art circuits to take note: this part is down to communication and I can only hope that via publication (online or printed matter) these projects can enter a wider debate. 

AH: Do you think South Africa is providing adequate training or opportunities for aspiring young curators?
CB: I think that things have changed dramatically in the short time I have been away from South Africa. The Cape series, I hope, will provide a really accessible means of getting some hands-on experience on quite a high-profile level for young curators. But the discourse lags behind. The history of exhibition-making must be taught in detail. People need to get a sense of what has been done in the last 50 years of art history, not only the 200 years preceding the Second World War. The world is a different place after 1989, after 1994 - institutional departments need to acknowledge this and open themselves up to the knowledge of other disciplines which inform and implicate artistic practice in everyday life. And if this is not happening institutionally (as these are slow machines and take so many years to adjust), then young curators, critics, thinkers, doers, should make this happen for themselves. Make space for art and do it well. Make contact with neighbouring African countries - Africa needs to devise models of practice appropriate to itself, to itselves, should I say. Let's not hanker after or completely reject certain European ideals, but formulate workable, relevant means of supporting, producing, displaying and discussing substantial art that connects with us, not who we think we should be.

AH: What is the future of exhibition-making?
CB: Localised.