LCV - Why Is Everybody Being So Nice?

2019
Exhibitions Abstract Sex. We don't have any clothes, only equipment
Exhibitions Get Rid of Yourself (Ancora Ancora Ancora)
Publications and writing We Have Never Been Post-Internet
Long-term projects The School of the End of Time
Lectures Attentiveness: How to Strike in the Economy of Presence
2018
Publications and writing Selected texts
Publications and writing The New Work Times
Lectures Ontology of trash
Exhibitions ABRACADABRA
Programmes Umlaut. Il public programme per le arti visive contemporanee
2017
Lectures Drop out of art school
Exhibitions Self-care While Smoking
Programmes Why Is Everybody Being So Nice?
Exhibitions Good Luck, See You After The Revolution
2016
Programmes Fansub Sessions
Exhibitions Dear Betty: Run Fast, Bite Hard!
2015
Long-term projects CLOG

I am an independent curator currently living in Italy. I gained education at De Appel, Amsterdam; CAMPO12, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino; graduated in Visual Arts and Theatre at IUAV, Venezia and pursued curatorial training at Artists Space, New York.

In my independent practice I develop research-based exhibitions and public programmes, often engaging in long-term collective projects with a hybrid form. My research is rooted in the attempt to initiate shared practices of knowledge production, articulate bodies of research and activate learning processes, expanding and experimenting with the traditional format of object-based exhibitions. My work as cultural producer ultimately aims at establishing cross-disciplinary dialogues that can be relevant to collectively shape the conditions of the contemporary, since I am firmly convinced that cultural institutions can develop the platforms in which it is possible to embody, historically and politically, these conditions. I see curatorial practice as an expanded field with porous boundaries, through which we can aim at transforming contemporary protocols of consumption in situated practices of autonomy.

My recent projects include: Get Rid of Yourself (Ancora Ancora Ancora), Fondazione Baruchello, Rome (2019); Abstract Sex. We don’t have any clothes, only equipment with Guido Costa for Artissima, Torino (2019); Abracadabra, 6th International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow (2018); Why Is Everybody Being So Nice?, De Appel and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2017); Good Luck, See You After the Revolution with Mira Asriningtyas and Shona Mei Findaly at Uva, Amsterdam (2017); Dear Betty: Run Fast, Bite Hard!, GAMeC, Bergamo (2016). In 2018 I founded the performative and educational platform The School of the End of Time with artists Ambra Pittoni and Paul-Flavien Enriquez-Sarano and in 2015 I co-founded CLOG, a research-driven space with a focus on contemporary art and culture, autonomous education experiments and self-production projects. Since 2017 I am a registered journalist, and my writings appeared in specialised magazines (such as Flashart Italia, Not – NERO on Theory, L’Officiel Art), artists books, and museum publications. I frequently embark in editorial projects, amongst which recently The New Work Times, commissioned by Maurizio Cattelan for the exhibition The Artist is Present, YUZ Museum, Shanghai.

Since 2018 I am responsible of the Young Curators Residency Programme by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, acting as a tutor and mediator for a selected number of international curators coming from prominent curatorial programmes worldwide and aiming to research the Italian art system. Since 2018 I am the curatorial consultant for the New Entries section for emerging galleries at Artissima, Internazionale d'Arte Contemporanea, Torino. I previously worked as assistant curator for the exhibition Tutttovero by Francesco Bonami, Castello di Rivoli and GAM, Torino (2015); assistant curator for the exhibition Shit and Die by Maurizio Cattelan, Myriam Ben Salah and Marta Papini (2014); collaborated with TOILETPAPER Magazine and Le Dictateur, Milano.

Download CV (last updated June 2019)

ph. Domenico Conte

Why Is Everybody Being So Nice?Investigating moments of friction between ethics and etiquette in the knowledge economy

De Appel, Amsterdam
April 11-14, 2017
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
June 18, 2017

Contributors: Apparatus 22,Johannes Büttner, Benedikte Bjerre, Charlotte Van Buylaere,Binna Choi, Laurie Cluitmans, Larisa David, Hendrik Folkerts, Erin Gleeson, Yolande van der Heide, Pablo Helguera, Gergő Horváth, Xenia Kalpaktsoglou, Brian Kuan Wood, Martina Mächler, Vera Mey, Nat Muller, Ambra Pittoni and Paul-Flavien Enriquez-Sarano, Haco de Ridder, Rabea Ridlhammmer, Anastasia Shin, Tijana Stepanovic,Jan Verwoert, Young Girl Reading Group, Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė, Laura Wiedijk

Curators: Mira Asriningtyas, Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti, Mateo Chacon-Pino, Shona Mei Findaly, Kati Ilves, Fadwa Naamna

Why Is Everybody Being So Nice? is the final project of the six curators of De Appel Curatorial Programme 2017. It comprehends a four-day long programme of panel discussions, workshops, screenings, and performances, plus a sleepover and a power nap, taking place at De Appel and at Stedelijk museum. Through the analysis of four main case studies, the project investigates moments of friction between the ethical and behavioural codes of conduct in the art world – where, in the words of Martha Rosler, “Niceness” “speaks to a demand, in neoliberal terms, for the wholesale invention, performance, and perpetual grooming of a transactional self”.

Pablo Helguera, <i>This civil war has descended into such chaos that our only chance is to bring a curator to make a biennial about it </i>, 2017. Commissioned by De Appel Curatorial Programme 2017 for <i>Why Is Everybody Being So Nice?</i>

Pablo Helguera, This civil war has descended into such chaos that our only chance is to bring a curator to make a biennial about it , 2017. Commissioned by De Appel Curatorial Programme 2017 for Why Is Everybody Being So Nice?

Why Is Everybody Being So Nice?
Investigating moments of friction between ethics and etiquette in the knowledge economy

Why Is Everybody Being So Nice? sought to provoke reflection and a critical investigation into the grey areas between ethics and etiquette that are expected of cultural producers, or anyone working within the sector of knowledge-based, post-industrial economies. Cultural producers are often subject to a 24/7 workday – constantly shifting between underpaid professional labour and social self-promotion at V.I.P. previews, and are required to adhere to an unspoken set of moral rules and behavioural standards. Therefore, in an act of instrumentalisation of “political correctness”, the product of the cultural worker is expected to tick all the boxes that satisfy the politics of representation, comply with appropriate gender and racial quotas of an exhibition, and to readily accept an unpaid job under the premise of being exposed to new realms of opportunity in the ‘reputation economy’ of the art world.

Three case studies of recent occurrences in the contemporary art world were selected in order to provide horizons to think through and navigate the broader issues of precarious labour within the knowledge economy. These case studies drew on research trips to Athens, Bucharest, Cluj and Budapest that the De Appel Curatorial Programme embarked on at the end of 2016. These encounters revealed the tension between customary practices and anomalies of behavioural protocols imposed by biennales and recurring international exhibitions of differing kinds and scale. The immersion within these unfamiliar and stimulating conditions for a short and intense period of travel provoked inevitable self-reflection and negotiation of our own ethical positions within the politics of the contemporary art world. These shared experiences catalysed our impulse to take the opportunity of the final project as a means to extend, deepen and open up our discussions to a wider group of art professionals. Eventually, the daily programmes of Why Is Everybody Being So Nice? aimed to consider possible modes of resistance and counter strategies within the precarity of ethical and behavioural codes in the art world.

The first part of the project took place at De Appel, where it unfolded as a four-day-long programme of panel discussions, workshops, screenings, and performances. It ended with a collective sleepover, The Night of Exhaustion and Exuberance, which activated the practice of collective sleeping as a gesture of resistance and appropriation of space and time. Why Is Everybody Being So Nice? continued and concluded with The Power Nap, a collective snooze in the auditorium of the Stedelijk Museum, on the occasion of the launch of the online publication of the project.

Case Studies
(click on the case study to jump)

Case Study #1: The Art Blacklist
The Bucharest Biennale Blacklist (2014)

Case Study #2: The Parachuting Penomenon
documenta 14, Learning from Athens (2017)

Case Studies #3: How to politely say no to unpaid cognitive labour in the knowledge economy

Case Study #4: Exhaustion and Exuberance
OFF Biennale, Budapest (2015)

Installation view, <i> Self-care while smoking </i>, 2017. From left to right: Benni Bosetto, <i>Pissing Party</i>; Akram Suleimani, <i>All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights </i>; Raqs Media Collective, <i>Sleepwalkers Caravan (Prologue)</i>.

Installation view, Self-care while smoking , 2017. From left to right: Benni Bosetto, Pissing Party; Akram Suleimani, All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights ; Raqs Media Collective, Sleepwalkers Caravan (Prologue).

Case Study #1: The Art Blacklist
The Bucharest Biennale Blacklist (2014)

Protocols of inclusion and exclusion operate at many different levels in the art world and, more broadly, in the knowledge economy. The politics that regulate access to the cultural system, its centres of knowledge production and spaces of value and wealth distribution are mostly unwritten: they are active in the realm where reputation is a coveted currency and the social pressure to be “nice” becomes a strategy for survival. On this slippery slope, the specific occurrence of “blacklisting”, based upon institutional policies, governmental undertaking or merely personal gossip-based recommendations, is a case study worthy of discussion. Every time a blacklist is leaked, it opens up a hole in the fence that divides what can be said from what cannot, revealing the fine line between personal opinion and formalised abuse of power. Which strategies can be developed to fend for autonomy when working in a social realm in which the practice of censorship, self-censorship and the praise of outspokenness co-exist? In addition, which modes of self-expression and ethically-approved critique can be employed as navigational tools for cultural professionals working within new and unfamiliar contexts?

The case study of the Bucharest Biennale (BB6) blacklist, leaked three years ago, will be a point of departure for the panel: the appointed curator, Nicolaus Schafhausen, received an email from the organisation with a list of artists, spaces, curators and academics that he was advised not to collaborate with for the biennale. What differences and similarities can we draw from a particularly circumscribed event in the art world like the BB6 case and other wider and recent government-related occurrences of blacklisting? Other examples to be touched upon could be the case of South Korean Cultural Minister’s arrest over a blacklist of nearly 10,000 cultural practitioners – who were disadvantaged of cultural subsidies for voicing criticism of impeached President Park Geun-Hye, or the instances of artists who were recently denied entry to the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The Art Blacklist Panel
Gergő Horváth (RO), Artist, Curator and former Director of Bucharest Biennale, Bucharest
Charlotte Van Buylaere (BE), Curator & Researcher, Antwerp and former Assistant Curator to the Bucharest Biennale 7, Bucharest
Apparatus 22 (RO), Art Collective, Bucharest / Brussels
Binna Choi (KR/NL), Director of CASCO – O ce for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht
Jan Verwoert (DE), Writer and Critic, Visiting Professor at University of the Arts, Berlin and Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam
Nat Muller (NL), Independent Curator and Writer, Amsterdam (moderator)

Larisa David, Fangless, 2017

Installation view, <i> Self-care while smoking </i>, 2017. Benni Bosetto, <i>Pissing Party</i> (detail), ink on wall, 2017.

Installation view, Self-care while smoking , 2017. Benni Bosetto, Pissing Party (detail), ink on wall, 2017.

Installation view, <i> Self-care while smoking </i>. Raqs Media Collective, <i>Sleepwalkers Caravan (Prologue)</i>, video, 11'04'', 2008; Akram Suleimani, <i>All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights </i> series of ashtrays in raw clay, 2017.

Installation view, Self-care while smoking . Raqs Media Collective, Sleepwalkers Caravan (Prologue), video, 11'04'', 2008; Akram Suleimani, All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights series of ashtrays in raw clay, 2017.

Giovanni Giaretta, The Nightshift>/i>, 2017 Video, 7’11’’ (excerpt)

Giulio Scalisi, Shipwrecked, 2017 Video, 17’28’’ (teaser)

Anastasia Shin, Actualised Shelf, audio, 5’20’’, 2017
Luca De Leva, AnnaMaria, audio, loop, 2015. Courtesy Collezione Fabio Agovino

Benni <3

Making of Pissing Party by Benni Bosetto, 2017

This project wouldn’t have been possible without the generosity of Marta Bono, Amos Cappuccio, Toni China, Federica Chinese, Fabio Di Camillo, Paul-Flavien Enriquez-Sarano, i ragazzi della porta accanto, Valentina Lacinio, Pablo Marchetti de la Fuente, Luca Morino, Giovanni Paolin, Paolo Peroni, Ambra Pittoni, Andrea Razzi, Erik Saglia, Beppe Tassone, Arianna Uda, Nadir Valente. Thank you!

Website built with the generous support of Bart van Kersavond and Luca Bogoni.