critical management in curating Tuesday, 9 December and Wednesday, 10 December 2014 handout in cooperation with the Volkskundemuseum Wien supported by

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critical management in curating Seit der Ausgliederung der Bundesmuseen Anfang der 2000er Jahre gewinnen wirtschaftliche Kriterien und Erwägungen im gesamten Museumsfeld zunehmend an Bedeutung und haben Auswirkungen auf Organisationsformen, Produktionsbedingungen und Entscheidungsprozesse. Gleichzeitig entwickelte sich seit den 1990er Jahren ein außerinstitutioneller kritischer Diskurs, der mit Referenz auf Gouvernementalitätsstudien Machtverhältnisse und Verwertungslogiken analysierte, die mit der Ökonomisierung öffentlicher Institutionen einhergehen. Aus diesen Perspektiven entstand der „New Institutionalism“ – ein Praxisansatz, der für eine strukturelle Veränderung der Institutionen von innen heraus steht. Zugleich wurden in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften Critical Management Studies (CMS) zu einem neuen akademischen Forschungsfeld, das ausgehend von der kritischen Theorie die Autorität und Relevanz des institutionellen Denkens und Handelns im Mainstream befragt, bestehende dominante Systeme herausfordert und neue alternative Entwicklungen vorschlägt. In einem transdisziplinären Seminar möchten wir diese aktuellen Debatten aus den Bereichen der Wirtschaft, der politischen Theorie sowie des Ausstellungs- und Museumsfeldes aufeinander beziehen und im Hinblick auf eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit institutionellen Praktiken produktiv machen. Das Seminar widmet sich sowohl der kritischen Analyse als auch der Diskussion alternativer Handlungsfelder. Since the outsourcing of the state museums, a process, which began in 2000, economic criteria and considerations regarding commercial success have gained significance in the exhibition field and have had an impact on organisational forms, conditions of production and decision making processes. At the same time, a critical discourse has emerged in the 1990s outside the institutions, which, referring to Governmental Studies, examined in depth power relations and the processes of commodification, which are a result of the economisation of public institutions. Premised on these circumstances and perspectives the „New Institutionalism“ was developed, an approach, which pursues a change of the structures of institutions from inside. In economic science a new subject, the Critical Management Studies (CMS) are currently evolving and becoming a new field of academic inquiry, that, deriving from Critical Theory, questions and challenges the authority and significance of the mainstream of institutional thought and action, thus challenging dominant systems and proposing new and alternative developments.

In an interdisciplinary Seminar we would like to scrutinise these developments that are currently taking place in economics, political theory and the exhibition field, the connections between and examine its usage within institutions and society.

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moderation /chair Beatrice Jaschke (schnittpunkt, /ecm – Masterlehrgang für Ausstellungstheorie und Praxis an der Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien)

Nora Sternfeld (schnittpunkt, /ecm, Professor Curating and Mediating Art, Aalto University Helsinki) ort / location Österreichisches Museum für Volkskunde Gartenpalais Schönborn Laudongasse 15–19, 1080 Wien

The event is sponsored by the Austrian Federal Chancellery and in cooperation with the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art. anmeldung / registration Lectures and workshops are free for schnittpunkt members. Non-members wishing to participate can do so by becoming a member for 2014 (for a fee of € 50). We ask for registration in advance, as there are only a limited number of places due to the workshop-like character of the event; places will be allotted to those registering on a first-come, first-serve basis. Sign up lists for individual workshops will be available at the event itself. To register, please send an e-mail to anmeldung@schnitt.org .

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vorträge / lectures Tuesday, 9 December 2014, 16.00–20.00 16.00–16.15 Welcome Beatrice Jaschke (schnittpunkt, /ecm) 16.15–16.45 Thinking critical practice. Nora Sternfeld (schnittpunkt, /ecm,

Professor Curating and Mediating Art, Aalto University Helsinki)

16.45–17.15 Re-directing. Thinking the museum differently. Matthias Beitl (Volkskundemuseum Wien)

17.15–17.45 Pause / Break 17.45–18.15 Is there such a thing as critical management? Klaus Neundlinger

(Knowledge economist, 4dimensions Beratungs– & Forschungsinstitut)

18.15–20.00 Get Untracked. Stefano Harney (Professor Singapore Management University)

vorträge & workshops / lectures & workshops Wednesday, 10 December 2014, 10.00–19.00 10.00–10.20 The governance of pleasure. Valeria Graziano (Researcher

Queen Mary University of London) 10.20–10.40 Participatory Budgeting. Suzana Milevska (Art historian &

curator, Skopje)

10.40–11.00 Actualizing Institutional Critique. Strategies of Implementation. Luisa Ziaja (schnittpunkt, /ecm, curator 21er Haus, Vienna)

11.00–11.20 Pause / Break 11.20–11.40 Relationship building, institutional critique and institutional

practice. Martin Fritz (Consultant, publicist & curator, Vienna)

11.40–12.00 How to do things differently. Henna Harri (Lecturer CuMMA, Aalto University Helsinki)

12.00–12.20 Dividing in workshop groups 12.20–14.00 Mittagspause / Lunch

14.00–17.00 Five parallel workshops: 1 Designed Experiences: the political economy of constructing situations. Valeria Graziano 2 Participatory Budgeting. Suzana Milevska 3 Actualizing Institutional Critique. Strategies of Implementation. Luisa Ziaja 4 Relationship building, institutional critique and institutional practice. Martin Fritz 5 How to do things differently. Henna Harri

17.00–19.00 Presentations oft the workshops and wrap up

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Beatrice Jaschke (schnittpunkt, /ecm) Beatrice Jaschke is a freelance art educator, trainer and consultant. She is one of the directors of the ecm master’s program for exhibition theory and practice at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She studied art history in Vienna, Hamburg and Florence, and is a certified tourist guide. From 1997 to 2001, she was responsible for organizing trainings for curators at the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies Vienna. As a freelance culture and art educator, she established the art education department at the Leopold Museum, and the basis wien Infopool at Museumsquartier, Vienna. Until 2013, she was in charge of art education at Klosterneuburg Monastery. Thinking critical practice Nora Sternfeld (schnittpunkt, /ecm, Professor Curating and Mediating Art, Aalto University Helsinki)

In recent years, critique has become commonplace within the field of curatorial theory—a relatively new field. In the fancy bookstores at prestigious art institutions, we now find more and more publications that entail both self-reflection and economic critique. In some, the term curating, that is, the disdainful practice of making an exhibition, has been broadened to include the “curatorial” that seeks to describe the act of knowledge itself and push forward critical engagements with the conditions and processes of the generation, mediation and reflection of experience and knowledge. Despite this, it seems that these critiques have remained almost completely separate from the actual praxis of institutional production. Just as one critical turn has followed the next since the 1990s, institutions have been privatized, working conditions have become more precarious, and pressure to compete has increased as well. Everything has been attributed a measurable value. An outcome of expressing everything in numbers and ranking lists is that we are no longer able to work together, but rather against one another, as competitors. What promises do we let mobilize us in the name of neoliberal transformation? What values do we allow us to be persuaded to follow one turn follow after another? In what ways are measures of economizing culture and education rendered legitimate? How are discourses about social change within systems of competition transformed and sold to us as fairness and transparence? What role does the institutional division of work in intellectual and manual labor play—both in critical discourses and in taking uncritical action?

One goal of this event is to address and understand these contradictions, taking praxis as a starting point. By doing so, we aim to emphasize the productivity of thinking critique and praxis together again and to stifle attempts to keep critique and praxis separate for the benefit of stabilizing neoliberalism, and to discuss alternative forms of agency and organization.

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Nora Sternfeld is an educator and curator. She is professor for curating and mediating art at the Aalto University in Finland (cummastudies.wordpress.com) and co-director of /ecm — educating/curating/managing — Master Program in exhibition theory and practice at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (www.ecm.ac.at). She is co-founder and part of trafo. K, Office for Art Education and Critical Knowledge Production based in Vienna (w/Ines Garnitschnig, Renate Höllwart and Elke Smodics)(www. trafo-k.at). She is also part of schnittpunkt, an open, transnational network related to exhibition theory and practice based in Vienna (www.schnitt.org). Moreover she publishes on contemporary art, exhibition theory, education, politics of history and anti-racism. Re-directing. Thinking the museum differently Matthias Beitl (Volkskundemuseum Wien) In this article, I will focus on the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art and the context of the national museums as scientific establishments within the framework of a brief institutional biography. I am especially interested in cultural political aspects, logic of agency, and the personnel relations within "cultural corporations." These parameters form the backdrop for a form of agency found at the Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art that is situated between possibilities and necessities. Cynically, one might say: "No money makes you move." However, orienting oneself towards possibilities (as opposed to rigid conditions) is, above all, an inward social endeavor, a wage, a result of experiments, a feeling of freedom. Lastly, I will outline a project currently under development as a way of asking how far-reaching this idea can and should be, because - not least - what is at stake is a debate on role of the institution. Matthias Beitl was born in 1967 Vienna; studied European Ethnology / Cultural Science at University Vienna and export trade at Vienna University of Economics and Business; from 1996 working at Ethnographic Museum Schloss Kittsee; from 2003 curator Austrian Museum of Folk Life an Folk Art, Vienna; from 2006 deputy director; from 2013 director; 2007 to 2013 Boardmember ICME (International Committee for Museums of Ethnography); from 2014 Vice president Austrian Museumsassociation; culture projects within the company „fourcon”.

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Is there such a thing as critical management? Klaus Neundlinger (Knowledge economist, 4dimensions Beratungs– & Forschungsinstitut) As I happen to participate regularly in the biennial CMS conferences, I am entitled to define myself a critical management studies delegate. As I have been experiencing this field of research, the concept of CMS refers to a rather diverging international community of researchers and practitioners that try to survive in academia under the conditions of an ever more market oriented structuring and processing the agendas connected to teaching and researching activities. Hence, CMS refers to an academic practice consisting in the production of theoretical and empirical knowledge. In my contribution, I would like to address the question how a practice of critical management can look like and what kind of knowledge could it create in the context of museums and curatorial practices. Klaus Neundlinger works as a lecturer for applied ethics at the University of Vienna and directs the research activities of the consulting institute 4dimensions. He has carried out a research project on the topic of the new forms of labour (self-employed labour, knowledge work) and translated a series of monographs and collective volumes in the field of social sciences and humanities from Italian into German. Furthermore, he has been working as a teacher for German as a foreign language in diverse settings.

Get Untracked Stefano Harney (Professor Singapore Management University) In American slang, to get untracked is to improve, to start to flow, to get into your game, into your rhythm. It seems to have been popular in boxing in the 1920’s and 1930’s, and now circulates generally in sports discourse. Some have tried to say it is a corruption of ‘getting on track.’ Corrupted, wrong, improper, backwards, untracked. Amongst logistical populations, keeping track of yourself is imperative. Keeping an account of yourself as you move, work, play, live is a matter of productivity and security which have come to amount through finance to the same thing. To get untracked is to slip out of these logistical protocols and into a logisticality all your own, or all our own. To be seen but not watched, felt but not held, heard without listening, to be untracked. Sometimes the phrase is even rendered as ‘get back untracked.’ The fugitive refusal to account for oneself. To get back untracked, to pass through, to lose yourself. To get untracked or to get tracked, tracked by nanoparticle sprays, RFID, bin bugs, eye-scans, usernames, security doors, laser marking, and e-tattoos. To get untracked is to refuse logistics, and to refuse logistics, as Gilles Deleuze said of philosophy, should have something to do with the art of opposition and the opposition of art.

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Stefano Harney teaches strategy, logistics, and ethics at Singapore Management University. He holds a B.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. He is author with Fred Moten of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (Autonomedia) and of State Work: Public Administration and Mass Intellectuality (Duke). He is co-founder with Emma Dowling of Immeasure (www.ngoclinic.org) and with Tonika Maria Sealy of Grounds Provisions (www.gpcollective.net). His writings can be found at https://smu-sg.academia.edu/SHarney . Designed Experiences: the political economy of constructing situations Valeria Graziano (Researcher Queen Mary University of London) Designing Experiences:

In June 1957, Guy Debord together with other members of the Situationist International wrote the “Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International Situationist Tendency's Conditions of Organization and Action”, stating that

The very criterion of formal invention or innovation has lost its sense within the traditional framework of the arts‚ insufficient, fragmentary forms whose partial renovations are inevitably out-dated and therefore impossible. […] The situation is thus designed to be lived by its constructors. The role played by a passive or merely bit-part playing ‘public’ must constantly diminish, while that played by those who cannot be called actors, but rather, in a new sense of the term, ‘livers’ must steadily increase.

In 1970 Alvin Toffler first published the book Future Shock, which became an instant bestseller (over 6 million copies sold). In this book, which invented the world “‘prosumer” to describe the increasing conflation of consuming and productive activities, “situations” were first saluted as the primary raw resource of the coming post-industrial economy, de facto inaugurating the experiential approach to marketing that became prominent in the 2000s.

In this session we will consider the challenges and the politics of designing situations both in the context of critical practices and within mainstream marketing literature, to explore some of the ways in which collectively constructed situations impact our own practices, our subjectivities and the broader economies that implicate us. Valeria Graziano works as a writer, educator and organizer. With the collective Micropolitics Research Group (UK), she contributed to a number of militant research initiatives on the conditions of collective individuation and circulation of value in the creative sector. In recent years, she co-­curated Summer Drafts. ­

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Laboratories of Transversal Vivacity (2008­-2012), an experimental programme exploring pedagogies of anti­racism in the border region of Bolzano (IT). With colleagues at Queen Mary University (UK), she facilitated the practice exchange series Self.Organizing (2011) and School for Study (2013). She has contributed projects to the Vanabbemuseum (Eindhoven), MACBA (Barcelona), ModernaMuseet (Stockholm), In­Presentable Festival (Madrid), Steirischer Herbst (Graz), among others. Currently, Valeria is working at the Art and Design Research Institute, Middlesex University, and she is completing a PhD at Queen Mary University London. Her thesis investigates the histories of militant conviviality across artistic practices, militant organizing and collective learning vis­à­vis the gamification of sociability under capitalism.

Participatory Budgeting: Evaluating the Surplus Value of Participatory Labour Suzana Milevska (Art historian & curator, Skopje) Ever since the institutional critique started troubling the waters of the established “art world” and started calling for ever more participation of various audiences it was only a question of time when the participatory budget would eventually emerge in the list of expenditure items. While the main prospect and promise of participatory art is for that it focuses on invitation, inclusion and voluntary participation the systemic and institutional contradictions and ulterior hierarchies of participatory art frequently become apparent exactly through the troubled economy and ethics of participatory budgeting. Thus despite such a generous and democratic promise of participatory art the participatory budget becomes one of the manifold phenomena that reveals the complex and paradoxical nature of contemporary art under a capitalism in economic crisis. Participatory budgeting pushes for reimbursement of the expenses, remuneration of the spent time and eventual production fees of the participants. By covering the participation of the new players at the art scenes worldwide consisting of amateur artists and different non-professionals or professionals without proper academic art training (hoping for eventual newly established democratically balanced social relations with the audiences consisting of non-professionals and/or underprivileged and marginalised communities) the participatory art budget covers the mere attendance but also the partial or complete production of the art works by the participants who are not necessarily the artists. Different issues of crediting the participants, collective, shared and individual copy-rights to delegated performances and fees from further distributing of the works stemming out participatory art phenomenon additionally complicate the managing of participatory budget thus obviously calls for a critical discussion that goes far beyond the basic managerial skills, the production conditions and the materiality of the cognitive and invisible labour turned into commodity.

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Workshop description: This session was motivated by many recent initiatives of public protests and scandals that were followed even by withdrawals from participation at the later stages of projects’ development based exactly on ethical objections to non-consequential and non-righteousness of certain projects’ budgets and their distribution among different participants. Therefore the most usual target of such objections is that the budget has not been made transparent. However, ultimately these revolts questioned the hidden contradictions and existing hierarchies, monopolies and exploitations within the art system and the establishment of new and even more severe hierarchies.

The questions that we will discuss during the workshop still puzzle the art producers and managers tackle the bigger picture of the contradictory art scene, e.g. the production conditions, the gender or ethnic misbalanced distribution of fees and reimbursement, problematic corporate financial support of the art system and neo-liberal economy in general. The unpleasant questions who will ultimately benefit the most from certain participatory focused events (the participant vs. artist, the institution, the corporation, the state), who decides and how to valorise the range and the level of involvement of the invited and non-invited participants in the production and representation process and similar critics of hegemonic institutional power relations often target the art system in ethical way, but also in theoretical and critical way for claiming autonomy in the tradition of its bourgeois roots and for its profound involvement in neo-liberal and crypto-colonialist organisation of the global world

The workshop participants will be invited to research and discuss different contradictory aspects of several case studies (e.g. the Sydney Biennale 2014, the project “Enjoy Poverty” by Renzo Martens, Santiago Sierra’s projects or other projects by their own choice) where in their view the participatory budget reflected the content of the project in a successful way or its distribution was miscarried and created a negative response.

Key-terms: use value, exchange value, redistribution of surplus value, ulterior value, value-form.

Suzana Milevska is a theorist and curator of visual art and culture from Macedonia. Her interests include postcolonial critique of hegemonic power regimes of representation, feminist art and gender theory, participatory and collaborative art practices. She holds a PhD in visual culture from Goldsmiths College London where she taught from 2002-2004. In 2004 Milevska was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar at Library of Congress. She taught visual culture and gender at the Gender Studies Institute and history and theory of art at the Faculty of Fine Arts – University Ss. Cyril and Methodius of Skopje. In 2013 she was appointed the Endowed Professor for Central and South Eastern European Art Histories at the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna. In 2010 she published the book Gender Difference in the Balkans and she edited The Renaming Machine: The Book that summarised her long-term cross-disciplinary

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curatorial and research project. In 2012 Milevska received the ALICE Award for Political Curating and the Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory. Actualizing Institutional Critique. Strategies of Implementation Luisa Ziaja (schnittpunkt, /ecm, curator 21er Haus, Wien) “Just what is it that makes today’s institutions so different, so appealing?” a publication of the Whitechapel Gallery London entitled “A Manual for the 21st Century Art Institution” asked a couple of years ago. It took on the format of a room-by-room-guide including the reception, the archive, the bookshop and the café, in order to reflect the transformation of western institutions triggered by the critique they have been facing since the 1970s.

The idea of an infrastructure manual is one point of departure for this workshop: After a short overview of so-called New Institutionalism we will get to know and discuss different examples and formats of (collective) knowledge production and organization like the manual, the guide, the maxim, the manifesto or the constitution. Based on the input, our discussions and individual experiences we might come up with a Statement of Strategy that could enable us to act differently in institutional contexts. Luisa Ziaja is an art historian and Curator of Contemporary Art at the 21er Haus in Vienna. In her independent curatorial projects and writing she has focused on the intersections of contemporary art, politics of history, exhibition theory and practice informed by current socio-political questions.

Exhibitions and projects include Sigmund Freud and the Play on the Burden of Representation. An Installation by Joseph Kosuth (2014, 21er Haus, Vienna, w/ Joseph Kosuth, Mario Codognato), meeting points 7: Ten Thousand Wiles and a Hundred Thousand Tricks (2014, 21er Haus,Vienna, w/ WHW), Christian Mayer - Musis et Mulis (2013, Belvedere, Vienna), re: ex-post. Critical Knowledge and the Post-Yugoslavian Condition (2010, Open Space, Vienna), Recollecting. Looted Art and Restitution (2008/09, MAK, Vienna, w/ Alexandra Reininghaus), Have The Cake And Eat It, Too. Institutional Critique as Instituent Practice (2008, Kunsthalle Exnergasse Vienna, w/ Charlotte Martinz-Turek), De-Revolution (2006, Galerie IG Bildende Kunst Vienna, w/ Berthold Molden), Hidden Hi/stories. Remapping Mozart, a project for Wiener Mozartjahr 2006 (diverse spaces, w/ Ljubomir Bratic, Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur, Lisl Ponger, Nora Sternfeld), Monument for the Defeat (2005/06, public space, w/ Martin Krenn, Charlotte Martinz-Turek, Nora Sternfeld). Since 2006 she has been co-director of the postgraduate program in exhibition theory and practice /ecm at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. She has been a lecturer at Zurich University of the Arts (2013); Technical University Vienna (2008/09); the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (2004/05) and the Vienna Art

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School (2004–06). She is on the board of schnittpunkt – exhibition theory & practice, and regularly publishes in catalogues, anthologies and magazines on contemporary art, curatorial practice and exhibition theory.

Relationship building, institutional critique and institutional practice Martin Fritz (Consultant, publicist & curator, Vienna)

The point of departure here are the discussions around the “Statement of Demands” that the “Art Workers Coalition” presented to MoMA in 1969, along with a selection of current texts from the art field (W.A.G.E, Liberate TATE, etc.). This workshop is interested in discussing the demands that the participants have for contemporary institutions and in thinking about how these can become an integral part of praxis.

Martin Fritz is a curator, consultant and publicist based in Vienna. As a publicist and as a contractor working for art institutions and artists, he focused on conceptual, structural and organizational questions, local art, urban and cultural development and cultural politics. In 2011, Martin Fritz curated the exhibition “Beziehungsarbeit – Art and Institution” at the Vienna Künstlerhaus. In summer of 2013, he published an essay on sixty decades of the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts (original title: “60 Jahrzehnte Internationale Sommerakademie für bildende Kunst in Salzburg”). His current research project deals with “The use of museums in the Imperial Palace Vienna in the 20th Century.”

Martin Fritz began his work as an organizer, curator and project manager in the fields of visual art, theater and film. For instance, Martin Fritz was the head of production for “Sparverein der Unzertrennlichen,” manager of projects for the Festwochen, including “Der zerbrochene Spiegel” and “Expanded Art,” and executive director of the Kunstraum Wien. From 1996 to 2002, Martin Fritz was Director of Operations und Director of Program Planning for the reopening of the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, executive director of the art project "In Between" at the Expo 2000 in Hannover, and the general coordinator of the European art biennial "Manifesta 4" in Frankfurt am Main. From 2001 to 2007, Martin Fritz was the treasurer of the Board of the Manifesta and oversaw the “Festival der Regionen,” an event focused on local art and culture outside of urban centers from 2004 to 2009 (www.martinfritz.net).

How to do things differently

Henna Harri (Lecturer CuMMA, Aalto University Helsinki) What are the conditions of production in cultural institutions nowadays, and the values they share, and breed? How has the intensified knowledge production, managerialism, and strive for ever better productivity affected the institutions, the work, and the producers? How to address the existing gap between theory

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and practice in curating? And what could be the possible future(s) of art and organizing?

Curating, Managing and Mediating Art (CuMMA) Masters’ Programme at the Aalto University has strived to map and understand the logics that neoliberal transformations in society have brought about in the art world and its institutions. We are working since 2012 on a curriculum on Critical Management in Curating that combines the tools of institutional critique in contemporary art and critical management studies to address the gap between theory and practice in curating.

In the workshop I will present some of the debates we had in Helsinki and hope to discuss about possible directions for the future of critical management in curating. I propose to look into curatorial production processes in relation to institutional structures and practices in order to share and gain a better understanding of what specifies the meeting zone, the surface, where the individual curatorial agency and the institutional practicalities, spaces and values meet. How are the division of labour and working conditions formed in artistic and curatorial practices? Where do we find ruptures, frictions, needs of negotiation? And what are agencies and strategies for curators and institutions to navigate this ground? Henna Harri is working as a lecturer in Curating, Managing and Mediating Art Major in the Department of Art at Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture in Helsinki and Espoo. Her background is in art education and in organizing, coordinating and managing within various organizations in Finnish art field after her graduation from the University of Lapland in 1998. Henna Harri’s interests lie in-between mediating, the curatorial, and the organizing: how work is divided, substances are treated and situated, and meanings created in organizational structures or more informal communities within the arts sector.