At first encounter, French curator Corinne Diserens appears more like a historian. There’s nothing flamboyant or kooky about the Sorbonne graduate’s demeanor. Rather, poised and bookish, she chooses to state firmly her position in matters that she’s most passionate about. She livens up when talking about the importance of archival research and how artistic creation, like the telling of history, should provide a multiplicity of narratives.
Diserens, who currently serves as director of the Ecole de Recherche Graphique in Brussels, previously worked as a curator at various museums and art institutions across Europe and has led numerous archival research and restoration programs. She was recently appointed guest curator for the tenth Taipei Biennial, which opens at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) in September.
It’s not coincidental that the biennial will be held at the same time as a retrospective exhibition of the past nine biennials at TFAM. In fact, the biennial will be steeped in concepts such as memory and archives that are normally associated with the field of history. For Diserens, the relationship between past and present is not so much that it’s inextricably linked. Rather, artists, historians and performers have a responsibility to keep the past alive in the present.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum
“Documents belong to the past but they are also present today, so we can let them sleep, or we can interact with them,” Diserens tells me when we meet at TFAM.
She prefers to employ artist Peter Friedl’s notion of “anti-archival gestures” which posits that archives are not meant to be locked away in a musty basement but actively engaged with.
Though it’s still early on in the curatorial process, Diserens mentions that the co-curators are looking for artists whose work engages with Taiwan’s complicated, tortured history on a critical and personal level, but that also has global resonance.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum
“A good artist will have the capacity to transgress nationality, but also be aware of the context they are operating in,” she says.
BREAKING BUREAUCRACY
Diserens admits to not having an in-depth knowledge of Taiwan’s art scene, but from what she’s gleaned, there needs to be more dialogue between Taiwanese artists and artists from elsewhere. This is changing gradually, however, as young artists participate in exchange programs and artist residencies.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Fine Arts Museum
She hesitates to use the term “local” as every artist to her is an international artist. While they may create artwork that will be hung on the walls of a museum that claims to represent its country’s national history and identity, ultimately, the work will also be viewed by people from other countries who may have a different interpretation of it.
“Artists don’t want to be labeled, they don’t want to be constrained by preconceived notions,” says Diserens.
Though her notion of art and identity is fluid, Diserens understands the need for public institutions, especially museums, to promote some idea of a common heritage — it makes life simpler for some people if everything is neatly categorized. As Diserens describes, these institutions are like “pillars of society” in the sense that they reinforce the social and civic relationship between those in positions of authority and everyone else.
Having worked at public institutions for decades — including a stint at a museum in Spain in the aftermath of the Franco regime — Diserens is well aware of the restraints that are placed on artists by the institutions they operate in and how this constricts her own job as a curator.
“Bureaucracy has a bad habit,” she says. “It’s to grow.”
ART’S AUDIENCE
Systemic as she is in her combing of the archives, Diserens says the act of codifying, naming and indexing is mystifying. She sees bureaucratic language and processes as impeding artistic creation and imagination.
When visiting museums and galleries, for instance, she finds herself constantly questioning why certain works are chosen to be exhibited and why others are not.
“One question to ask is, ‘what is not there,’ in order to understand what is there,” Diserens says.
Institutions choose certain pieces of artwork to be put on display because they best represent the image they wish to put forth to the public, and in the process, subverting alternative narratives. It thus becomes a challenge for artists to express themselves within the confines of what’s accepted.
However, an artist creating remarkable work in isolation isn’t exactly ideal either, as art is an interactive process that requires not just an audience, but constant dialogue as well.
“There is no work of art if there is no viewer,” Diserens says. “The painting will exist, but what’s the point if no one is viewing it?”
EMANCIPATION AND EPHEMERALITY
Diserens believes there are ways around this, some of which she plans to employ at the biennial. Most notably, the biennial will encompass a mixture of visual arts, dance, performance, music and cinema, along with seminars and workshops, all in the hope that this trans-disciplinary approach will give rise to multiple perspectives.
For Diserens, one of the most exciting collaborations will be between artists and performers, as she sees performance as helping viewers interpret a piece of artwork in a way that’s more freeing and liberating than if they were to simply stare at a painting or sculpture.
“It’s to emancipate ourselves from the institutional format,” she adds.
At the same time, she recognizes the irony of performance being ephemeral. Once the dance is over, the art is gone, possibly forever. The performers can certainly re-enact it, but it would not be completely identical.
However, Diserens also sees ephemerality as part of the beauty that is art. She compares this to the late German-born American artist Eva Hesse’s sculptures. Hesse often worked with materials such as latex and found objects that deteriorated easily. After her death in 1970, restorers were unsure of how to proceed with the preservation of her artwork, wondering how it would impact the integrity of the original material and questioning if Hesse actually wanted her work to last.
It’ll be intriguing to see how the artworks exhibited at the biennial will thread the themes of national and international, past and present, permanence and ephemerality. The Taipei Biennial opens on Sept. 10 at TFAM.
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