-000 Manifesto
Open Kitchen Negatives inspect the missing parellels - the “should-have,” “could-have,” and “would-haves” in contemporary art._
All decisions create parallels. In the times that we live in, options are at a historical level of abundancy. Each step we take is a thousand alternative steps that we didn’t.
Some of the most fascinating cases in the history of curatorial practices actually call upon the “missing parallels” - the alternatives, the other options, the plan B C Ds that were shot down and buried due to the curatorial decisions that were actually singled out and executed.
Sigmar Polka barricaded down his own retrospective in Düsseldorf in 1976, leaving paintings wrapped on the floor, as a form of “curation,” and made a sign at the entrance saying “Kunst macht frei.” (art makes one free) The institutions hated it at the time, but we all started to fall in love with this curation later on precisely because this act summoned the ghosts of the “missing parallels” - even providing a line of sight for us to peek into the blocked entrance to fancy how an actual exhibition might have been.
At the Venice Biennale 2003, Santiago Sierra blocked off the word “Spain” from the Spanish Pavilion facade. He hired security guards at the gate of the pavilion, only allowing those who carry a Spanish passport to go in. But when Spanish passport-holders entered, they would realize the show was actually just the construction debris from the previous Biennale. Here, how Sierra signified to the “missing parallels” is by not creating an actual one.
On an individual level, numerous artists and curators created works and proposals that weren’t realized, and somehow they cherish these unaccounted projects, with Hans Haacke and Marcel Broodthaers topping the list.
Open Kitchen Negatives emerges by digging down, bringing what had been buried to broad daylight.
_
[Revisiting Negatives via interviews]
Open Kitchen Negatives ask artists, curators, program-curators, and writers one question:
If there is one thing that you can change in a previous project of yours, what would it be?
Hans Haacke, Environment Transplant (proposal), 1969. © Hans Haacke/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
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