Re: <nettime> Event: Chris Gilbert's resignation

[martha rosler <navva@earthlink.net>]

  [orig Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 12:41:10 -0400; it seems like this
   got caught in the spam filters? -- mod (tb)]

i am surprised at Brian Holmes for presenting this document this 
way, though I note that your wording, Brian, ultimates begs the 
question. A curator with an ethic of solidarity perhaps, but to many 
readers I've heard from (since this has been circulating for a 
week), this appears to be a case of someone stepping in front of the 
material they wish to put before the public and thereby, as they 
say, making himself (or his labels) the story.

Perhaps solidarity can be evoked and supported in the viewers by not 
predetermining quite so firmly the rhetorical turns that might 
accompany it. (Of course, what one discusses in house is different 
from what the viewer sees, and the document  in question is not part 
of an exhibition but a letter circulated out of an impasse...over a 
word.)

in solidarity
martha rosler

>Here is a tightly argued text, qualifying an important act,
>by a rare category of the human species: a curator with an
>ethics of solidarity. - BH
>
>
>Chris Gilbert - statement on resigning 5/21/06
>
>I made the decision to resign as Matrix Curator on April 28,
>but my struggles with the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film
>Archive over the content and approach of the projects in the
>exhibition cycle "Now-Time Venezuela: Media Along the Path
>of the Bolivarian Process"
>(http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibits/nowtime/index.html)
>go back quite a few months. In particular the museum
>administrators -- meaning the deputy directors and senior
>curator collaborating, of course, with the public relations
>and audience development staff -- have for some time been
>insisting that I take the idea of solidarity, revolutionary
>solidarity, out of the cycle. For some months, they have
>said they wanted "neutrality" and "balance" whereas I have
>always said that instead my approach is about commitment,
>support, and alignment -- in brief, taking sides with and
>promoting revolution.
>
>
>SNIP


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