Lógica museística

Hans Ulrich Obrist: You were talking about the routine thing... 
Seth Siegelaub: [...] In a certain way, the gallery "tail" was wagging the "art" dog. These types of limitations are even more exaggerated with museum exhibitions, not just because of its very heavy administrative structures, but especially because the "authority" of museum spaces makes everything so "museum-like". This was the case, for example, of the exhibition "L'art conceptuel, une perspective" organized by Claude Gintz at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the first institutional look at the period. No fault of his, but it really looked dead. But isn't this one of the more important functions of museums, to kill things, to finish them off, to give them the authority and thus distance from people by taking out of their real everyday context? Even over and above the will of the actors involved with any given museum, I think the structure of museums tend towards this kind of activity: historization. It is sort of a cemetery for art - I think I must have heard this somewhere - the heaven for dead useless objects.

HUO: You formulated new forms of exhibitions, and a contract to change the relationship between artists, galleries and collectors. Have you ever been interested in formulating a new structure for the museum? 
SS: Nope. Museums were never a problem for me, as I have had very little contact with them. The problem of the museum is structural in the sense of its relationship to ruling power in society and their interests. Thus a museum without this authority and its subservience to power, could be very interesting, imaginative and even spontaneous, but to the degree it achieves this authority, it loses these possibilities. This, obviously, is true of many other institutions and people in an alienated society, including artists. I suppose if enough creative people gave enough thought to the type of exhibitions that were done there, one could probably formulate some ideas how possibly a museum could function in another way. But one has to first understand the contradictions here; to keep in mind that museums, more than ever, are directly dependent on larger interests, and regardless if you or I came up with some hot ideas about changing some aspects of museums (the social dimension of museums have changed in certain areas such as decentralization, interest in local communities, the art of minorities, etc.), the fundamental needs of the museum have very little to do with us; they have their own internal logic. And the margin for manoeuvre within this structure is probably less today than it was yesterday; or at least, the contradictions are different. So it's very difficult for me, here sitting on the outside, to imagine what a museum could be other than what it is, perhaps a few little touches here or there, maybe free coffee for artists every Tuesday, etc. But perhaps the real question is, why should I be interested in changing the museum? 

A conversation between Seth Siegelaub and Hans Ulrich Obrist (TRANS> #6, 1999)

De sentido común, realmente.

Vía Rui Guerra

Más sobre Siegelaub: The Publications of Seth Siegelaub