Traduzione in italiano in basso
Charles Esche is Director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands. He has been appointed curator of the 31st São Paulo Biennial opening in 2014.
During our conversation he talks about his upcoming commitment in Brazil, but he mostly reflects on the present cultural and political situation in Europe. “Neoliberalism has produced a kind of cynicism which says: it does not really matter anymore what we do, what we say, what our ethics are as long as we can get away with a nice ten years position in a university or a nice position in a museum or whatever.”
What follows is a transcription of the video conversation (held via Skype on April 18th, 2013).
Tiziana Casapietra: Could you tell us something about the news you just posted on Facebook?
Charles Esche: There are two big things that have happened in the last ten days. One is that we received an award from the European Union for the Internationale Confederation as we are calling it (Ed. note: L’Internationale is a new European museum confederation which has been awarded €2.5 million by the European Union for the five-year program “The Uses of Art – The Legacy of 1848 and 1989” which will include exhibitions, symposia, publications, magazines, an online forum, an education platform and staff exchange). The second is that I was invited to curate the 2014 São Paulo Biennial. Both are tremendous opportunities I think, for Van Abbemuseum, for my colleagues and myself.
TC: Do you already have an idea about how you would like to approach the São Paulo Biennial? Do you already have a vision?
CE: Let me say that I have intuitions. First of all, I am going to do the reverse of what every curator of the São Paulo Biennale has done in the past. They have known more or less the Brazilian situation, and they have gone into that world to research what should be brought to São Paulo’s relevance. In a sense I am doing exactly the opposite. Obviously I do not know that world, but I know more or less the artists and the kind of work that I want to bring here. Of course I will do some research and there will be some new names and some new projects added; but in the 60, 70% of the cases, I will be working with people I have already worked with, people I trust and I admire. I will try from my outsider perspective to figure out what is going on here culturally – but also politically and socially and then reflect it back into the exhibition. To try and make an exhibition that is relevant to Brazil according to my and my collaborators’ point of view. And to bring artists from elsewhere that seem to add to that dialogue.
TC: In Europe we all refer to Brazil as one of the largest emerging and developing economy. How do you see it?
CE: There are two things to say – one about Europe, the other about Brazil. It seems to me that Europe is provincializing itself in certain ways. It is feeling very sorry for itself, feeling wounded, and this would be something interesting to analyze. On the other hand, Brazil still has huge challenges, for instance in terms of infrastructure and education. Certainly globalization has helped Brazil and produced a fairly large élite – we are talking about millions of people who are pretty well off, not to say extremely well off in some cases, and that are committed to the cultural field as well as to the capitalist field. And those people of course are making a difference.
There is also a very interesting politics of the left that relates to Lula and Chávez and to various things that are happening in South America. I am not sure whether those movements are not running out of energy now. I am not sure whether they are more a phenomenon of the last 10 years then they will be of the next ten. And therefore it’s an interesting moment for Brazil, it seems. What is the continuation of this political change, that was the first to reject the hard core neoliberal model and where is it now going to lead? And of course there are lots of people also in Brazil who like to go back to that hardcore neoliberal model. It is not that the battle is over, it is not that the battle is won.
To go back to Europe, I think that it is becoming incredibly cynical and there are many problems in the spirit of Europe. But the infrastructure still functions, the education system still, to a degree, functions. I am not sure whether there are possibilities in the way the Europeans want possibilities, that is to dominate the world, to control the world and feel that they are the most important. But there are still possibilities by being a part of the world and to contribute something useful. I do not think we should lose sight of that within the widespread cynicism that has been produced by neoliberalism. If you look at Italy, Berlusconi is a phenomenon of cynicism.
TC: We must remember that at the last elections, 30% percent of the Italian population voted for him again.
CE: Yes, but he is a phenomenon of a general cynicism. It is cynicism in the cultural elite as well. He is a phenomenon of all of us, he is not just a phenomenon of the 30%, sorry. Every Italian has to bear the responsibility for Berlusconi and for a cynical reaction to the situation of neoliberalism, and to the response to the changes after ’89, after the end of the ideological battle.
It is true that in Europe we are witnessing the collapse of the post second war settlement, or the post-fascist period in Iberia or Greece. That settlement is closing down, failing, and people do not know what is going to happen afterwards. This consensual agreement made in Europe over the last sometimes 70 sometimes 40 years is cracking and that of course produces a huge degree of insecurity and therefore fear. I have a great deal of sympathy for how people feel. But at that point we also have to remember also that there are still possibilities in Europe.
TC: How are culture and contemporary art facing and representing this situation in Europe?
CE: Most of the world, whether it is political, economic, or cultural, is running around like headless chickens. In Europe, we have absolutely no orientation where we are going. There is no direction, no arrow, there is nothing which points to anywhere. But this is the situation that we created out of a shared cynicism about what might be possible, a cynicism which also existed on what used to be called the left that went along with the idea that “there is no alternative”. We created it out of an approach to criticality, which said: it does not really matter what you do as long as you have a critical position towards it. You can work with whoever you like, and your ethics can go out of the window.
All those things were produced by the intelligentsia of Europe as well as by the superrich class. So, of course the intelligentsia has no answer to the questions now being posed by the failure of capital because they partly produced its omnipotence in the first place. Neoliberalism has produced a kind of cynicism towards thinking of resistance which says: it does not really matter anymore what we do, it doesn’t really matter anymore what we say, it doesn’t really matter what our ethics are as long as we can sit comfortably in our little clubs and say how terrible the world around us.
I was part of this as well, but it is clear it was not effective. Any reasonable reaction to the state we are in must involve a huge self-critique therefore. And where is the self-critique of the artistic community in the face of the financial crisis? It is beginning to emerge, it’s starting and I am not hopeless. I am an optimist.
TC: How can we, in Europe, change the course of this stream? Do we have chances?
CE: How did we build socialism in the first place? There were people knocking on doors, there were people working on education initiatives, people thinking about the excluded, people thinking about mental illness, about poverty and working on the ground in micro communities trying to educate people to think about the world differently. We need to start establishing that there is a genuine alternative to neoliberalism, that we can change our value system, that social justice is not something to be cynical about. That’s the job of a cultural elite that wants to be engaged in emancipation struggles.
When I first went to the Netherlands, what I found was basically a decadent, lazy and unengaged artistic society. Artists and others that took their subsidies for granted, who even decided to be artists and curators because there were subsidies. That’s the world that I saw. And I was part of it, we were all part of it. But that has changed. Now we have to construct propositions about how the world can be otherwise and not just be critical about the world we have today. I can see this developing in certain initiatives, such as Casco in Utrecht and the work they are doing with domestic workers. This is an interesting example, but of course it is not sexy for the art market but it is important in showing what can be done. It will not appear in any meaningful way in an art fair but that is part of its strength. Why we have all these intellectuals talking at art fairs? They are just a decoration for the selling of products. When you work with domestic workers in Utrecht, not many super-rich people are drawn in it, but that seems to me where you are going to find optimism, at least more there than at the Frieze art fair.
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Charles Esche è direttore del Van Abbemuseum di Eindhoven, nei Paesi Bassi. È stato nominato curatore della 31ª Biennale di San Paolo del 2014.
Nel corso della nostra conversazione parla del suo imminente impegno in Brasile, ma soprattutto riflette sull’attuale situazione culturale e politica europea. “Il neoliberismo ha prodotto una forma di cinismo che dice: non importa più davvero quello che facciamo, non importa più davvero quello che diciamo, non importa quali siano i nostri principi etici, fintanto che riusciamo a garantirci una buona posizione per dieci anni in un’università, o un buon incarico in un museo, o qualsiasi altra cosa”.
Quella che segue è la trascrizione della conversazione video (realizzata via Skype il 18 aprile 2013).
Tiziana Casapietra: Potresti raccontarci qualcosa delle notizie che hai appena pubblicato su Facebook?
Charles Esche: Negli ultimi dieci giorni sono successe due cose importanti. La prima è che abbiamo ricevuto un finanziamento dall’Unione Europea per L’Internationale Confederation, come la chiamiamo noi (N.d.R.: L’Internationale è una nuova confederazione europea di musei che ha ottenuto un finanziamento di Nd2,5 milioni di euro dall’Unione Europea per il programma quinquennale The Uses of Art – The Legacy of 1848 and 1989, che comprenderà mostre, simposi, pubblicazioni, riviste, un forum online, una piattaforma educativa e scambi di personale. N.d.R.). La seconda è che sono stato invitato a curare la Biennale di San Paolo del 2014. Credo che entrambe rappresentino opportunità straordinarie, per il Van Abbemuseum, per i miei colleghi e per me.
TC: Hai già un’idea di come vorresti affrontare la Biennale di San Paolo? Hai già una visione?
CE: Direi che ho delle intuizioni. Prima di tutto, farò l’opposto di quello che hanno fatto tutti i curatori della Biennale di San Paolo in passato. Più o meno conoscevano la situazione brasiliana e sono entrati in quel contesto per capire che cosa dovesse essere portato a San Paolo perché fosse rilevante. In un certo senso io sto facendo esattamente il contrario. Ovviamente non conosco quel mondo, ma conosco più o meno gli artisti e il tipo di lavoro che voglio portare qui. Naturalmente farò delle ricerche e si aggiungeranno nuovi nomi e nuovi progetti; ma nel sessanta, settanta per cento dei casi lavorerò con persone con cui ho già lavorato, persone di cui ho fiducia e che ammiro.
Cercherò, dalla mia prospettiva di esterno, di capire che cosa sta succedendo qui sul piano culturale — ma anche politico e sociale — e poi riflettere tutto questo nella mostra. Cercherò di fare una mostra che sia rilevante per il Brasile dal punto di vista mio e di quello dei miei collaboratori. E di portare artisti provenienti da altri contesti che mi sembrano poter contribuire a quel dialogo.
TC: In Europa tutti parlano del Brasile come di una delle maggiori economie emergenti e in crescita. Tu come lo vedi?
CE: Ci sono due cose da dire: una riguarda l’Europa, l’altra il Brasile.
Mi sembra che l’Europa, per certi aspetti, si stia provincializzando. Ha molta compassione di sé stessa, si sente ferita, e credo che questo sarebbe un aspetto interessante da analizzare.
Dall’altra parte, il Brasile ha ancora sfide enormi da affrontare, per esempio sul piano delle infrastrutture e dell’istruzione. Sicuramente la globalizzazione ha favorito il Brasile e ha prodotto un’élite piuttosto ampia — stiamo parlando di milioni di persone che vivono piuttosto bene, per non dire estremamente bene in alcuni casi — e che sono coinvolte tanto nel campo della cultura quanto in quello del capitalismo. E naturalmente queste persone stanno facendo la differenza.
C’è poi una politica della sinistra molto interessante, che ha a che fare con Lula, con Chávez e con diverse cose che stanno succedendo in Sud America. Non so se adesso questi movimenti stiano esaurendo la loro energia. Non so se siano più un fenomeno degli ultimi dieci anni che dei prossimi dieci. E quindi mi sembra che questo sia un momento interessante per il Brasile. Come prosegue questo cambiamento politico, che è stato il primo a respingere il nucleo più duro del modello neoliberista? Dove porterà?
Naturalmente ci sono anche molte persone, in Brasile, che vorrebbero tornare proprio a quel modello neoliberista più radicale. La battaglia non è finita, la battaglia non è vinta.
Per tornare all’Europa, penso che stia diventando incredibilmente cinica e che ci siano molti problemi nello spirito stesso dell’Europa. Ma le infrastrutture continuano a funzionare. Il sistema educativo continua ancora a funzionare, almeno in una certa misura. Non so se esistano ancora possibilità nel senso in cui gli europei intendono le possibilità, vale a dire dominare il mondo, controllare il mondo e sentirsi i più importanti. Ma esistono ancora possibilità di essere parte del mondo e dare un contributo utile. Credo che non dovremmo perdere di vista questo aspetto anche all’interno del cinismo diffuso che il neoliberismo ha prodotto. Se guardi all’Italia, Berlusconi è un fenomeno del cinismo.
TC: Bisogna ricordare che alle ultime elezioni il trenta per cento degli italiani ha votato di nuovo per lui.
CE: Sì, ma lui è il prodotto di un cinismo generale. È cinismo anche all’interno dell’élite culturale. Lui è un fenomeno che riguarda tutti noi, non è soltanto un fenomeno che riguarda quel trenta per cento, mi dispiace dirlo ma è così.
Ogni italiano deve assumersi la responsabilità di Berlusconi e della risposta cinica alla situazione prodotta dal neoliberismo, e alla risposta che è stata data ai cambiamenti avvenuti dopo l’89, dopo la fine dello scontro ideologico.
È vero che in Europa stiamo assistendo al crollo dell’assetto costruito dopo la Seconda guerra mondiale, o del periodo postfascista nella Penisola Iberica o in Grecia. Quell’assetto si sta chiudendo, sta fallendo, e le persone non sanno che cosa succederà dopo.
Quel patto condiviso che in Europa ha retto, a seconda dei casi, per settant’anni oppure per quarant’anni, oggi si sta incrinando. E questo produce, naturalmente, un enorme senso di insicurezza e quindi paura.
Capisco molto bene come si sentono le persone. Ma a questo punto dobbiamo ricordarci che in Europa esistono ancora delle possibilità.
TC: In che modo la cultura e l’arte contemporanea stanno affrontando e rappresentando questa situazione in Europa?
CE: Gran parte del mondo, che si tratti della politica, dell’economia o della cultura, corre in giro come un pollo senza testa. In Europa non abbiamo assolutamente alcun orientamento su dove stiamo andando. Non c’è una direzione, non c’è un’indicazione, niente che indichi una direzione. Ma questa è la situazione che abbiamo creato noi, a partire da un cinismo condiviso nei confronti di ciò che poteva essere possibile; un cinismo che esisteva anche in quella che una volta si chiamava la sinistra, e che ha finito per aderire all’idea che “non c’è alternativa”.
L’abbiamo costruita a partire da un certo modo di intendere il senso critico, che diceva: in fondo non importa davvero quello che fai, purché tu mantenga una posizione critica nei suoi confronti. Puoi lavorare con chiunque tu voglia e far uscire dalla finestra i tuoi principi etici.
Tutte queste cose sono state prodotte tanto dall’intellighenzia europea quanto dalla classe sociale dei super-ricchi. Perciò è ovvio che l’intellighenzia non abbia una risposta alle domande poste dai fallimenti prodotti dal capitale, perché in parte è stata proprio lei la prima a contribuire alla sua onnipotenza.
Il neoliberismo ha prodotto una forma di cinismo verso il pensiero della resistenza, un cinismo che dice: non importa più davvero quello che facciamo, non importa più davvero quello che diciamo, non importa quali siano i nostri principi etici, fintanto che possiamo stare comodamente seduti nei nostri piccoli club a dire quanto sia terribile il mondo che ci circonda.
Anch’io ho fatto parte di tutto questo. Ma è evidente che non ha funzionato.
Qualunque risposta sensata alla situazione in cui ci troviamo deve passare attraverso una profonda autocritica. E dov’è l’autocritica della comunità artistica di fronte alla crisi finanziaria? Sta cominciando a emergere, sta iniziando. E io non sono senza speranza. Sono un ottimista.
TC: Come possiamo, in Europa, cambiare la direzione di questo processo? Abbiamo ancora delle possibilità?
CE: Come abbiamo costruito il socialismo, all’inizio? C’erano persone che bussavano alle porte. C’erano persone che lavoravano a iniziative educative, persone che si occupavano degli esclusi, che riflettevano sulla malattia mentale, sulla povertà, e lavoravano sul campo, nelle micro-comunità, cercando di aiutare le persone a pensare il mondo in modo diverso.
Dobbiamo ricominciare a far capire che esiste un’alternativa reale al neoliberismo. Che possiamo cambiare il nostro sistema di valori. Che la giustizia sociale non è qualcosa da trattare con cinismo. Questo è il compito di un’élite culturale che voglia impegnarsi nelle lotte per l’emancipazione.
Quando sono arrivato per la prima volta nei Paesi Bassi, quello che ho trovato era, sostanzialmente, una comunità artistica decadente, pigra e disimpegnata. Artisti ed altri che davano i sussidi pubblici per scontato; persone che avevano perfino deciso di diventare artisti o curatori perché c’erano i sussidi. Questo è il mondo che ho visto.
E anch’io ne facevo parte. Ne facevamo parte tutti.
Ma oggi le cose sono cambiate. Adesso dobbiamo costruire delle proposte su come il mondo possa essere diverso, e non limitarci a essere critici nei confronti del mondo che abbiamo oggi.
Vedo che questo sta prendendo forma in alcune iniziative, per esempio con Casco, a Utrecht, e nel lavoro che stanno facendo insieme ai collaboratori domestici. È un esempio interessante. Certo, non è qualcosa di sexy per il mercato dell’arte, ma è importante perché mostra quello che si può fare.
Non troverà spazio, in nessun modo significativo, in una fiera d’arte. Ma proprio questo è parte della sua forza.
Perché abbiamo tutti questi intellettuali che parlano alle fiere d’arte? Sono semplicemente una decorazione per la vendita dei prodotti.
Quando lavori con i collaboratori domestici a Utrecht, non attiri molti super-ricchi. Ma è proprio lì, mi sembra, che si possa trovare l’ottimismo. Almeno, più lì che alla fiera d’arte Frieze.
© Radicate
Charles Esche is Director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands. He has been appointed curator of the 31st São Paulo Biennial opening in 2014.
During our conversation he talks about his upcoming commitment in Brazil, but he mostly reflects on the present cultural and political situation in Europe. “Neoliberalism has produced a kind of cynicism which says: it does not really matter anymore what we do, what we say, what our ethics are as long as we can get away with a nice ten years position in a university or a nice position in a museum or whatever.”
What follows is a transcription of the video conversation (held via Skype on April 18th, 2013).
Tiziana Casapietra: Could you tell us something about the news you just posted on Facebook?
Charles Esche: There are two big things that have happened in the last ten days. One is that we received an award from the European Union for the Internationale Confederation as we are calling it (Internationale is a new European museum confederation which has been awarded €2.5 million by the European Union for the five-year program “The Uses of Art – The Legacy of 1848 and 1989” which will include exhibitions, symposia, publications, magazines, an online forum, an education platform and staff exchange. Ed.). The second is that I was invited to curate the 2014 São Paulo Biennial. Both are tremendous opportunities I think, for Van Abbemuseum, for my colleagues and myself.
TC: Do you already have an idea about how you would like to approach the São Paulo Biennial? Do you already have a vision?
CE: Let me say that I have intuitions. First of all, I am going to do the reverse of what every curator of the São Paulo Biennale has done in the past. They have known more or less the Brazilian situation, and they have gone into that world to research what should be brought to São Paulo’s relevance. In a sense I am doing exactly the opposite. Obviously I do not know that world, but I know more or less the artists and the kind of work that I want to bring here. Of course I will do some research and there will be some new names and some new projects added; but in the 60, 70% of the cases, I will be working with people I have already worked with, people I trust and I admire. I will try from my outsider perspective to figure out what is going on here culturally – but also politically and socially and then reflect it back into the exhibition. To try and make an exhibition that is relevant to Brazil according to my and my collaborators’ point of view. And to bring artists from elsewhere that seem to add to that dialogue.
TC: In Europe we all refer to Brazil as one of the largest emerging and developing economy. How do you see it?
CE: There are two things to say – one about Europe, the other about Brazil. It seems to me that Europe is provincializing itself in certain ways. It is feeling very sorry for itself, feeling wounded, and this would be something interesting to analyze. On the other hand, Brazil still has huge challenges, for instance in terms of infrastructure and education. Certainly globalization has helped Brazil and produced a fairly large elite – we are talking about millions of people who are pretty well off, not to say extremely well off in some cases, and that are committed to the cultural field as well as to the capitalist field. And those people of course are making a difference. There is also a very interesting politics of the left that relates to Lula and Chávez and to various things that are happening in South America. I am not sure whether those movements are not running out of energy now. I am not sure whether they are more a phenomenon of the last 10 years then they will be of the next ten. And therefore it’s an interesting moment for Brazil, it seems. What is the continuation of this political change, that was the first to reject the hard core neoliberal model and where is it now going to lead? And of course there are lots of people also in Brazil who like to go back to that hardcore neoliberal model. It is not that the battle is over, it is not that the battle is won.
To go back to Europe, I think that it is becoming incredibly cynical and there are many problems in the spirit of Europe. But the infrastructure still functions, the education system still, to a degree, functions. I am not sure whether there are possibilities in the way the Europeans want possibilities, that is to dominate the world, to control the world and feel that they are the most important. But there are still possibilities by being a part of the world and to contribute something useful. I do not think we should lose sight of that within the widespread cynicism that has been produced by neoliberalism. If you look at Italy, Berlusconi is a phenomenon of cynicism.
TC: We must remember that at the last elections, 30% percent of the Italian population voted for him again.
CE: Yes, but he is a phenomenon of a general cynicism. It is cynicism in the cultural elite as well. He is a phenomenon of all of us, he is not just a phenomenon of the 30%, sorry. Every Italian has to bear the responsibility for Berlusconi and for a cynical reaction to the situation of neoliberalism, and to the response to the changes after ’89, after the end of the ideological battle. It is true that in Europe we are witnessing the collapse of the post second war settlement, or the post-fascist period in Iberia or Greece. That settlement is closing down, failing, and people do not know what is going to happen afterwards. This consensual agreement made in Europe over the last sometimes 70 sometimes 40 years is cracking and that of course produces a huge degree of insecurity and therefore fear. I have a great deal of sympathy for how people feel. But at that point we also have to remember also that there are still possibilities in Europe.
TC: How are culture and contemporary art facing and representing this situation in Europe?
CE: Most of the world, whether it is political, economic, or cultural, is running around like headless chickens. In Europe, we have absolutely no orientation where we are going. There is no direction, no arrow, there is nothing which points to anywhere. But this is the situation that we created out of a shared cynicism about what might be possible, a cynicism which also existed on what used to be called the left that went along with the idea that ‘there is no alternative’. We created it out of an approach to criticality, which said: it does not really matter what you do as long as you have a critical position towards it. You can work with whoever you like, and your ethics can go out of the window.
All those things were produced by the intelligentsia of Europe as well as by the superrich class. So, of course the intelligentsia has no answer to the questions now being posed by the failure of capital because they partly produced its omnipotence in the first place. Neoliberalism has produced a kind of cynicism towards thinking of resistance which says: it does not really matter anymore what we do, it doesn’t really matter anymore what we say, it doesn’t really matter what our ethics are as long as we can sit comfortably in our little clubs and say how terrible the world around us. I was part of this as well, but it is clear it was not effective. Any reasonable reaction to the state we are in must involve a huge self-critique therefore. And where is the self-critique of the artistic community in the face of the financial crisis? It is beginning to emerge, it’s starting and I am not hopeless. I am an optimist.
TC: How can we, in Europe, change the course of this stream? Do we have chances?
CE: How did we build socialism in the first place? There were people knocking on doors, there were people working on education initiatives, people thinking about the excluded, people thinking about mental illness, about poverty and working on the ground in micro communities trying to educate people to think about the world differently. We need to start establishing that there is a genuine alternative to neoliberalism, that we can change our value system, that social justice is not something to be cynical about. That’s the job of a cultural elite that wants to be engaged in emancipation struggles.
When I first went to the Netherlands, what I found was basically a decadent, lazy and unengaged artistic society. Artists and others that took their subsidies for granted, who even decided to be artists and curators because there were subsidies. That’s the world that I saw. And I was part of it, we were all part of it. But that has changed. Now we have to construct propositions about how the world can be otherwise and not just be critical about the world we have today. I can see this developing in certain initiatives, such as Casco in Utrecht and the work they are doing with domestic workers. This is an interesting example, but of course it is not sexy for the art market but it is important in showing what can be done. It will not appear in any meaningful way in an art fair but that is part of its strength. Why we have all these intellectuals talking at art fairs? They are just a decoration for the selling of products. When you work with domestic workers in Utrecht, not many super-rich people are drawn in it, but that seems to me where you are going to find optimism, at least more there than at the Frieze art fair.
© Radicate
Una conversazione con Charles Esche, Direttore del Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Paesi Bassi, e Curatore della 31esima Biennale di San Paolo 2014
In questa conversazione Charles Esche parla del suo prossimo impegno in Brasile e riflette principalmente sull’attuale situazione politica e culturale in Europa. Charles Esche è direttore del Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Paesi Bassi, ed è stato nominato curatore della 31esima Biennale di San Paolo che sarà inaugurata nel 2014.
© Radicate