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The vision would involve greater openness to a broad reference system which would enable the understanding and reflecting of contemporary art production. The art world consists of a close network which is, on the one hand, determined by aesthetic boundaries based on art historical references, and on the other hand, that of a gatekeeper role, maintained by a few art institutions, museums, galleries, collectors, critics and sources of money.
How can one open the narrow discourse? What must happen to allow and reflect upon visual culture?
If you look at the last ten years of theory production, there was
sufficient discourse about visual culture, but acceptance is still
a long way away.
What happens, for instance, if you provide your wide museum space with the so-called African Exile Museum for a period of time, say half a year - a project which was initiated by Angolan artist/curator Fernando Alvim and the Cameroon/Swiss writer/curator Simon Njami: Your museum is occupied by African visual culture, curators and ideas. Ideas in transgression, and exchange of ideas.
Yet, as a host with which pattern you can approach and read & react & work with what you see and get. In a way, we are well trained by post-colonial debates and it seems similar to the term "post-modernism" - that it is something you have already finished with but haven't found clearly the next step. It is actually just the step of naming, which luckily never stops us from taking action of - from the approach and the moving, discussing, and just going.
Heike Munder
Zurich
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