Understanding Recent Initiatives to “Institute” by
Contemporary Art Spaces
Rebecca Boswell
MA Thesis, Semester 1, 2020-2021
Supervisor: Prof. Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes
Museum Studies, University of Amsterdam
Student ID: 12791385
Abstract
This study examines recent examples of ‘instituting’ by contemporary art institutions within the Netherlands. The central questions which guide this research ask: How do today’s art institutional experiments address issues of social change?, and, in what ways and for whom are artists and art workers instituting differently? This study was inspired by the recent surge in instituting and instituent practices by artists and contemporary art institutions in countries such as the Netherlands. It is also a response to the current lack of analysis and critique on the part of writers and theorists about these recent developments in art. The two main cases of my analysis are Kunstinstituut Melly’s name change initiative (2017-2021), Rotterdam, and the artistic-collaboration ‘Sites for Unlearning (Art Organisation)’ (2013-2017/18) between Casco Art Institute and Annette Krauss, in Utrecht. These case studies are both multi-year initiatives within small to medium-scale art institutions involving institutional actors and artists, and engaging different constituency groups. I aim to report on the purpose, nature and approaches of these initiatives, and understand what outcomes they achieve for their constituencies and the institutions themselves. This study finds that current initiatives of instituting are informed by legacies of institutional critique and developments in the
curatorial, such as new institutionalism, as well as understandings of the institution as socially constructed and performed. Through analysis of individual case studies, my research also elaborates on various performative approaches deployed for art institutional change, as methods which engage constituents over the cause and direction for change, and – to varying degrees – involve them in the process itself.
Keywords: Contemporary Art Institutions, Social Change, Instituting, Institutional Critique,
Renaming, Decolonisation, New Institutionalism, Institutional Speech, Unlearning Institutional Habits
Table of Contents
Introduction 4
Case Studies 14
1: Kunstinstituut Melly, Name Change Initiative, 2017-2021, Rotterdam 18 Part I: The Role of Political Activism in Bringing About Institutional Change 18
Part II: The Renaming Process 24
2: Annette Krauss and Casco Art Institute, ‘Sites for Unlearning (Art Organisation)’, Utrecht,
2013-2017/18 37
Conclusion 52
Appendix 55
Introduction
In the context of social and political urgencies across the globe, artists and institutions are experimenting with ways that art can meet the social challenges of the present. Perspectives on how art institutions can best serve artists and the public represent an array of complex issues across representation and visibility, equal access and opportunity, labour conditions, decolonisation and climate action, to name only a few. Institutional reform and the trialling of new institutional models are important because they shape the context in which artists can continue to use the cultural sphere to challenge their social and political surroundings. Many share the belief that art plays an important role in society, yet national cultural policy
influences what institutions can achieve.1 In countries like the United Kingdom for instance,
public art institutions compete for limited funding, while at the same time working
increasingly to fill gaps in social services to their local communities, as recent decades of austerity have led to cuts in public infrastructure, welfare and local governance.2
Political struggles have long held an arena in art. The dematerialisation of art which began in the 1960s with conceptualism led to developments in art which challenged its system, such as institutional critique. The emergence of collaborative, post-studio, social practices (Bishop 2021, 8) also engaged audiences in new ways, activating further the borders between art and social movements. Significantly, alongside continuous developments, the institutional hosts of this arena - such as the kunsthall or contemporary art space - have also contributed to the politicisation of art. Critical perspectives of the agency of institutions, including by the institutions themselves (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 7), have emerged with the evolution of exhibition formats, with widening parameters of artistic, curatorial and research activities
1
Jeroen Boomgard (2006) has for example argued for the radicalisation of art’s autonomy as a way to free it from measures and criteria placed on it by public and private sectors.
2 This is an observation shared by a number of arts directors in the UK who were recently interviewed by Frieze magazine about how regional arts venues will be affected by post-Brexit government agendas focused on devolution and ‘levelling up’ (Anderson, Hundal, McAleese and Thurlow, 2021).
within the institution. This coincides with general developments in art which broadened the definitions of the artist,3 curator,4 ‘the curatorial’,5 and problematized the role of spectators.6
What are today’s visions for the art institution that meet wider demands for social change? In what ways and for whom should artists and art workers institute differently? This study will examine recent examples of ‘instituting’ by contemporary art institutions within the
Netherlands. The selected case studies are multi-year initiatives by small to mid-scale art institutions who engage notions of instituting in efforts to bring about organisational change; in dialogue with their constituencies and specific issues of their local contexts. I wish to understand what methods, formats and concepts are used, and also examine the dynamics of their exhibition – the ways by which the projects are made public. Then, I am interested in what social-political urgencies inform these initiatives. What outcomes do they achieve for their constituencies and for the institutions themselves? Finally, what can these projects communicate with regard to relationship between art and society today?
The definition of ‘instituting’ which I use for this study follows Simon Sheik and Athena Athanasiou’s use of the term, which sees the institution as something which is performed. Where ‘instituting’ describes an artistic project or institutional activity, the core intent is to bring about transformational change (Sheik 2017, 126). In the tradition of institutional critique and movements such as new institutionalism (outlined below), the activities of instituting or experimental institutional practice are performed by institutional subjects (whether directly belonging to, or in collaboration with the institution) in the field of contemporary art: such as curators, artists, researchers, educators and administrators. I also borrow from Andrea Fraser’s definition of institutional critique which describes self-questioning as a defining characteristic of the practice (2005, 105). Continuous self-examination and critique, as well as the close relationship between theory and practice are defining qualities of instituting.
3 Expanded notions of authorship in art were influenced by conceptual artists such as Joseph Beuys, who developed the concept of social sculpture in the 1970s, theorising that everything is art, that every aspect of life could be approached creatively and, as a result, everyone has the potential to be an artist.
4 Harald Szeemann’s 100 Days as an Event, Documenta 5 (1972) is often cited as a seminal exhibition where Szeemann introduced a non-static format of a busy programme of happenings and events organised around multiple centres, playing the role of exhibition-auteur.
5 Curator and researcher Caroline Rito defines the curatorial as an open-ended approach to programming and research. Distinct from curating, which she describes as a constitutive practice a part of the traditions of collecting and exhibiting in the museum, the curatorial is a disruptive mode of inquiry: allowing movements across disciplines, lateral connections, juxtaposition and unexpected arrangements of ideas, images, concepts and so on (2020, 26).
6 Art historian Claire Bishop (2012) has theorised the rise in collaborative practices in art in the 2000s coining the term ‘social practice’. She famously critiqued the political and emancipatory claims of ‘participatory art’ and problematized its politicisation of the role of the spectator.
Before introducing the case studies of my research I provide some background to institutional experiments in art. I will briefly elaborate on general political and economic challenges facing art institutions in Western Europe, before discussing institutional critique and new institutionalism as key developments behind today’s critically-engaged art
institution. Then, turning to recent interest in the art world for ideas of “instituting differently”,7 I briefly explore the connection between the institution and the individual through Cornelius Castoriadis’ theories of instituting and the imagination.
This research was inspired by the recent surge in instituting and instituent practices by artists and contemporary art institutions in countries such as the Netherlands. The two cases I have chosen can be regarded as trailblazers in this field, yet currently there is a lack of research and analysis into these emergent forms, and what contributions they are making to developments in contemporary art.
Pressures on the Present-Day Art Institution
Experiments with the institution model and exhibition frameworks have been driven in part by political and economic pressures on art institutions. In recent decades, new definitions of culture have been promoted by the economic system of neoliberalism implemented by nation-states across the West. Under the ‘neoliberal business of spectacle culture’ institutions have been encouraged to become financially independent from the state by implementing business structures and models, shifting to private-public ownership and finding new revenue streams (European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies, 2004).8 With the reduction of government funding for non-profit arts and cultural organisations state funding bodies in the UK, in the EU, and elsewhere have also set new funding requirements, demanding that institutions use corporate metrics of targeted delivery and achievement (Rito 2020, 50). The intervention of revenue-driven business logics into museum and exhibition programming (colloquially referred to as the ‘bums on seats model’) manifests as popular content and spectacle; such as the blockbuster show and similar tactics to draw high audience numbers. This has frustrated many in artistic and curatorial spheres who are against the economisation of art and the public sphere.9 The strengthening of administrative,
managerial, marketing and finance departments of museums, including with people without
7 A similar phrase, “instituting otherwise” is used by BAK, basis voor actuele kunst in Utrecht in their mission statement, to describe their testing of institutional models which aim to connect the politics and discourse of their public programming with the practice of the institution. See https://www.bakonline.org/over-ons/.
8 ‘New Public Management’ is a term introduced in countries like Australia and the UK in the 1980s to refer to the neoliberal turn to business-like models of management in the state-supported sector (Phillips 2020, 218). 9 Jan Verwoert (2007) has for instance argued against the idea that an artist or curator should know the public whom they address, that it is a logic that succumbs to the instrumentalising logic of strategic marketing, and interferes with the discourse on how culture is valued.
specialised training in art, and the general shrinking of curatorial and research departments, is also symptomatic of this corporatisation process (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 11).
In Europe, the gradual demise of social democracy has shifted the public’s relationship to the state, as well as notions of the public sphere. This has brought with it demands for new avenues to engage in politics, and alternative forms of politics beyond market and
managerial structures (Aikens 2016, 329). This has had impact upon museums and institutions of art, who, in the face of the many crises for democracy, have begun to
reassess the civic nature of the institution. From this context new models emerge which see the art institution move “beyond critique of the status quo” (Aikens 2016, 343) and towards becoming a space which is both used by and useful to emerging political subjects and issues.
Institutional Critique
Important precursors to recent initiatives to institute within contemporary art are found in both artistic and curatorial developments of the last 50 years. The auto-critical art institution – a forerunner to today’s practices of ‘instituting’ – can be understood in the context of institutional critique. The first phase of institutional critique in the 1960s and 1970s was led by artists who challenged the authority of the art institution and the legitimating powers of inclusion and exclusion it had over the construction of history (Steyerl 2006, par. 5). Artists challenged the neutrality of the museum’s display, ideologies of its programming and embeddedness in the market (Bryan-Wilson 2003, 97). The artist Hito Steyerl writes that at this time the authority and ideology of the museum derived, culturally, from its traditional function of the state, its collecting and exhibiting functions also survived as legacies of the colonial project (2006, par. 5).10 First wave institutional critique – whose feminist proponents
are quickly summoned with Linda Nochlin’s famous words, “Why Have There Been No Great Woman Artists?” – was thus a challenge to the institution on the basis of its assumed
authority as a democratic institution of the state that claimed to be representative of its public. Political activist groups in the U.S. also organised against the museum during the late 1960s around issues such as working conditions for art workers, the corporate nature of the museum system, as well as its economic ties to the military-industrial complex (Bryan-Wilson 2003, 101).
10 As Tony Bennett and others have theorised, the museum’s origins were colonial and its purpose was to serve the creation of a nation’s past, and its identity (through narrating history and a canon, creating patrimony, preserving its heritage, and so on).
During the so-called second wave, artists remained the proponents of institutional critique, yet this time, they challenged the institution on the basis of its role in the production of art (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 12-13). New definitions of art which emerged out of conceptualism released art from being object or image-related and constrained to the studio (Ibid.) and instead began to include the social structures which surrounded it. Subsequently, institutional critique looked to the institutional conditions of art, the “apparatus that distributes, presents, and collects art”, in its analysis (Fraser 2005, 103). Excluding
instances where museums censored certain artists and artworks early on in the movement, what followed was the general acceptance of institutional critique as an established method and genre. Observing this, critics of institutional critique have complained of its co-option and ‘institutionalisation’ (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 13). Conversely, others see this as a positive legacy of institutional critique; in that it introduced analytical tools and methods by which the structures, hierarchies and social functions of art could be continually examined, including by institutional workers themselves (Sheik 2006, par. 6). In this view, institutional critique remains a generative and critical apparatus in art.
A broader notion of the institution can also be found in the history of institutional critique. In her seminal article, “From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique” Andrea Fraser claims institutional critique made visible the institution as a broad set of relations and effects which infiltrates art’s production at every turn. Fraser argues that a notion of the ‘institution’ as extending far beyond the specific form of museums and galleries was already evident in the work of the first wave artists of institutional critique such as Hans Haacke, Marcel Broodthaers and Michael Buren. Pointing to specific examples from the site-specific interventions of this group she observes an enlargement of the concept of the institution of art to “the entire field of art as a social universe” (Fraser 2005, 103). This social field
includes sites of presentation beyond the traditional white cube, corporate offices, collectors’ homes, and public space where art is shown; sites where art is produced, such as the studio, and the office; sites of the production of art discourse: catalogues, art magazines, symposia lecture; even sites of education such as fine art and art history programmes (Ibid.). From this perspective, the ‘institution’ is not a clearly delineated object of critique but more a concentrated zone where a number of social and economic relationships become visible (Fraser 2005, 103). It is ‘the institution of art’ and at the same time, the process of art’s
(Caravan)11 by artist Michael Asher, first exhibited in 1977. According to Fraser, this work
revealed that the institutionalisation of art depends not on its display inside the recognisable frame of the white cube, but in the conceptual and perceptual frame of the viewer (Ibid.). Art thus becomes art when it engages the discourses and practices that acknowledge, value, evaluate, and consume it as art. As soon as something is perceived or declared as art, it becomes institutionalised, which is because it relies on the social; the perception of
members of the field of art to recognise it as such (Ibid.). While Modernism established self-reflexivity in art, it remained confined to the medium. Under the Conceptual movement, art became viewed as a system. Hence, ‘the institution of art’ was now no longer external to the work of art, but a crucial condition of its existence (Ibid.). Equally, the institution of art is internalised by all who participate in its structures – by way of the concepts and frameworks, and modes of perception that are used to interpret, understand, or perceive it as such (Ibid.). Fraser’s line of argument thus finds that the proponents of institutional critique understood they were not attacking the institution from the outside, but from within. The same can be applied for critical approaches to the institution which came after, that those who critiqued the institution also believed somehow in the agency of the institution itself.
In this way, Fraser’s analysis contributes to current notions of the institution which shift the emphasis away from the institution itself and towards acts of ‘instituting’. According to Fraser institutional critique proved that there is no longer an ‘outside’ from which to critique the institution, and this is not only a perceptual mechanism but a condition of the pervasive effects of the market on art (2003, 100). Therefore, it is not a question of inside or outside, but how we learn from the “self-questioning […] that defines institutional critique as practice” (Fraser 2003, 105). In her view, the ultimate aim should not to escape or destroy the
institution, but to change it. “It’s not a question of being against the institution: We are the institution” she famously declares (Ibid.). The challenge which Fraser supplies is one which persists today, how do people perform the institution in order to change it, thinking through “what kind of institution we are, what kind of values we institutionalise, what forms of practice we reward, and what kind of rewards we aspire to” (Ibid.).
New Institutionalism
Against neoliberal developments, globalisation, and the demise of the social welfare state in Northern Europe, the 1990s and early 2000s saw a number of curators lean into questions
11 First shown in Skulptur Projekte Münster 1977, and scheduled by the same event every ten years since, the work consisted of a rented caravan which was parked in different parts of the city during the exhibition. As Fraser observes in her account, visitors could find out where the work would be located each week from the museum, but at the site itself there was no information provided connecting it to art or the exhibition (103).
about the role and function of the art institution (Lind 2013, 29). New institutionalism – a term introduced by Norwegian curator and critic Jonas Ekeberg12 – aimed to highlight a number of
these practices of curators predominately in Northwest Europe, such as Maria Lind, Jonas Ekeberg, Charles Esche and Søren Grammel, who, according to Ekeberg, were attempting to radically reorganise the art institution into more socially-engaged spaces (Cunnane 2014, 25). Many of the models and frameworks from this curatorial trend are now mainstream (often superficially chosen as museum design formats) however new institutionalism is an important development behind newer institutional experiments, as it marked a new critical awareness and politicisation of the institution, by the institution itself. For curator Charles Esche, a preference for the term ‘experimental institutionalism’ at this time emphasised the curatorial experiment within the institution (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 8). Esche was interested in the institution as a tool to investigate the democratic potential of art through community engagement; the idea that an art institution could ‘create’ or call upon a public through its activities (Esche 2013, 24-25).
Under this period of curatorial experimentation, the exhibition was conceptualised as a social project, an “active space between community center, laboratory and academy” (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 6). The institutional agents of new institutionalism were not only curators, but educational and administrative staff (Ibid.). As a variety of activities could thus take place within or alongside a project, and such events could be engaged at any or all stages of the process of exhibition making (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 5) methodologies were flexibly oriented towards conceiving the exhibition as a process (Lind 2013, 31). “The art institution […] functioned as a place of production, site of research and space for debate” the viewer
playing a more active role (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 6). The subsequent blurring of boundaries between the production, presentation, and the reception/criticism of an exhibition was then also accompanied by the mixing of traditional roles between artist, curator, and spectator (Ibid.). By facilitating these iterative, dynamic and process-based exhibition frameworks, curators were seen to taking a more involved, creative role in the production of art, a
phenomenon Paul O’Neill regarded as part of the ‘curatorial turn’ (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 12; O’Neill 2007, 15).
12 The term is rejected by some of the practitioners of the curatorial experiments Ekeberg identified in his writing, and it has not been canonised within academic discourse (Kolb & Flückiger). As Kolb & Flückiger propose Ekeberg’s ‘new institutionalism’ remains useful to give visibility to a collection of experimental practices within art institutions whose models and frameworks have today become mainstream. Alternatives also circulate, such as ‘experimental institutionalism’ by Charles Esche, or descriptions such as ‘experiments in new institutionality’ by Jorge Ribalta (Kolb & Flückiger).
The trialling of flexible institutional structures and formats can also be connected with the emergence of artistic methods that were participatory, process-oriented, and dialogical (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 12). For instance, curator Maria Lind argued that the practices of these artists proved that there were ways of working which were not reliant on the traditional white cube exhibition space, but there were a number of alternative ways an institution could provide framing to such work (Lind 2001, 235-257). Smaller, curatorially-led spaces in the field13 which had begun to take a more situated approach, were having a broader influence
on curatorial discourse, particularly through programmes which researched a local
institution’s relationship to the city, in a general movement that questioned the nature of the globalised art world (Ekeberg 2013, 21). Another contributing factor was the type of
curatorial approaches linked to the art biennale, with a host of independent curators bringing experimental modes of display into their new positions at traditional institutions (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 12).
These new experiments with the art institution were a part of a process of becoming more critical of the institution’s position in the cultural-political and social landscape (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 6). This ‘politicisation of the institution’ (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 9) is evident in the motivations of curators at the time in various ways, from new investigations into museums own institutional histories (Lind 2013, 30); the institution becoming a space for activism and showing solidarity to social struggles (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 9); to explorations in the democratic or emancipatory potential of art (Esche 2013, 24). Studies and scholarship on exhibition histories also became established at approximately the same time (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 11). The discourse on changing attitudes toward the institution was reflected in the range of exhibition and seminars on the topic of the institution as well (Ibid.). A new critical awareness – via self-examination and critique – was characteristic of this moment of institutional experimentation.
Some have described new institutionalism as the internalisation of institutional critique by the art institution (Kolb & Flückiger 2013, 13). While curators and administrators may have learned institutional critique from artists, one might question whether this internalisation or ‘co-option’ by the institution undoes institutional critique’s power as a form of criticality or resistance (Sheik 2006, par. 3). The commodification of artistic practices such as Dada and Fluxus which similarly criticised art and its institutions shared this same trajectory. However, this assessment relies on a belief that the artists of institutional critique were ‘pure’ in their critique (Sheik 2006, par. 3), owing to their somehow untainted position ‘outside’ of the
institution. Whereas as we have seen, artists who critiqued the institution were the first to announce themselves as implicated in art’s system; as having internalised institutional frameworks of art which assign value, legitimacy, currency, and so on in the production of the artwork.
If institutional critique by artists has long been an accepted part of art discourse, then why should we expect institutional subjects – educated in those same art histories and
frameworks which treat the museum as a constructed and loaded space (Bryan-Wilson 2003, 103) – to not make their own contribution, given the freedom to do so? Indeed, there is much that the contemporary art institution must defend under continuing neoliberal pressures to economise. And, as some argue, the simple fact that the museum has played the generous host to institutional critique over the decades may be because it predominately sees itself as a progressive and open-minded institution, as progressive as the political values advocated by art (Ibid). With the gradual integration of institutional critique and experimental curatorial approaches into the spaces of contemporary art we arrive at the situation today where there are many types of critical practitioners within institutions who are eager to interrogate their programmes and infrastructures. The self-reflexive art institution has shown itself to be a flexible site for many forms of social, practice and research-led critical enquiry and experimentation. In continued experiments to see what is possible, the institution is now regarded as a test site, a micro-site of society, where practitioners can stage prefigurative models for social change.
Castoriadis’ Theory of Instituting and the Imagination
The notion of the institution as something which is performed and therefore self-consciously created is best understood through the philosophy of Cornelius Castoriadis, whose analysis of the social-historical world sees acts of self-instituting as an essential feature of any society. For Castoriadis, institutions are not merely the organised bodies within society – government, military, schools or museums – but the ways in which society itself is
constituted through instituting and the imagination (Sheik 2017, 126). His broad definition includes all social norms, values, language and procedures by which people interpret, produce and reproduce their social-historical situation (Ibid.). For Castoriadis, the symbolic and constructed nature of society itself reveals its institutions as essentially imaginary, created through what he names ‘social imaginary significations’ and ‘instituted social imaginaries’ (Sheik 2017, 127). While institutions are imaginatively formed, there are very material effects for the type of social and political realities which they produce and reproduce (Ibid.) through what structures, rituals, beliefs are given the mandate to exert power over
people’s lives. Institutions are created through our social relations, and through the constant reproduction of their instituted social imaginaries, and these practices of instituting at the same time form our own subjectivity (Ibid.).
However, though individuals are themselves formed by the institutions of society (gender, race, class, and so on), Castoriadis locates the origins of possibility for change in ‘the radical imagination’.14 Through ‘the radical imagination’ a person has the capability to reach beyond
their social-historical situation – and the socially instituted realities which shape it – and dare to imagine alternative ways of being (Sheik 2017, 128). Radical and revolutionary change is thus the will of the radical imagination, requiring a complete break from past ways of doing. Art – through its ability to create new ideas and forms – is seen as a special conduit of the radical imagination in Castoriadis’ work, alongside philosophy, science and politics (Ibid.). If, following Castoriadis’ claims, the institution of society – is never complete (Sheik 2017, 129), then one can see why art institutions would be well suited to explore the imaginative
potential of instituting, which is for Castoriadis, what makes change possible. As legacies of institutional critique and movements such as new- and experimental- institutionalism reveal, the institutions of art are now engines of self-examination, consciously participating in their own symbolic construction, and increasingly called to expand their civic and social responsibilities. They ‘institute’ in a Castoriadian-like manner in the sense that they perform with the knowledge institutions are not static or stable, but are continuously communicated through praxis (Sheik 2017, 128). In examples where concepts of instituting directly come into play, self-instituting is directed towards the constructive possibilities of Castoriadis’ theory, that through creative acts of the imagination, we can envision possible alternatives, and innovating new forms, and new articulations in language and representation (Sheik 2017, 128-129).
14 Castoriadis’ use of the term ‘radical imagination’ joins others who have long-debated the unique role of the imagination in social and political change. Scholars Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish say among post-war Marxist thinkers Herbert Marcuse, Theodore Adorno, and Ernst Bloch, the notion of the radical imagination meant the “ability to imagine the world, life and social institutions not as they are but as they might otherwise be” (Haiven and Khasnabish 2010, 4). What distinguished the imagination from conventional thinking was its ability to speculate about the future, inviting the possibility of a different futures from the present one (Ibid.). The radical imagination is able support our struggle in the present by holding up an open, future space, one which “comes back” to “shake up” our thinking and work in the present (Ibid.). From their study of genealogies of the term, Haiven and Khasnabish also say the radical imagination is what helps us forge solidarity in the present with the experiences of other people, beyond various boundaries and divides (2014, 3-4).
Case Studies
Chapter 1: Kunstinstituut Melly, Name Change Initiative, 2017-2020, Rotterdam
For my second case study I have selected the 2017-2020 Name Change Initiative of
Kunstinstituut Melly (formerly Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art) in Rotterdam. The name change process that was begun in 2017 was a direct response to an Open Letter by local artists and activists criticising the institution for supporting large-scale artistic projects on decolonisation without addressing the colonial histories contained in their institutional namesake. The three-year process involved a number of activities: a large online survey, multiple public forums, an advisory committee and a website to document the process and make it publically available. The institute also foregrounded their intentions for the process to bring about deeper institutional change, introducing new methodologies named Collective Learning, and through new modes of public outreach (Hernández Chong Cuy 2018).
My analysis of this case study will be undertaken in two parts. In the first part which will look at the role of activism in bringing about institutional change, I analyse the decolonial critique of the Open Letter and the way ‘criticality’ – as a hallmark of the auto-critical art institution – is problematised. I consider how the activism performs criteria of ‘instituent practice’ as theorised by Gerald Raunig in his proposals for contemporary manifestations of institutional critique. I then reflect upon the activists’ ambivalence toward the art institution, using Athena Athanasiou’s proposition for being ‘with-within-against’ – a stance which carries the double-bind of needing to both defend and critique public institutions. In the second section of this chapter I discuss at length the subsequent name change initiative (2017-2021) of
Kunstinstituut Melly. Drawing from Sara Ahmed’s study of the language of diversity in institutional environments, I trace the visible discourse of ‘inclusion’ along this process, and how this is privileged over naming decolonial approaches that are in any case evident. Finally, I consider how the evolving process for the institution’s name change self-consciously engages in the production of institutional speech.
Chapter 2: Casco Art Institute
and Annette Krauss, ‘Sites for Unlearning (Art
Organisation)’, Utrecht
The second case study I have chosen is the 2017 collaborative research project between Casco Art Institute15 and Annette Krauss, ‘Sites for Unlearning (Art Organisation)’ (SfU). This
15 Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons is art organisation based in Utrecht, NL known for its critical and experimental approaches to institution-building, often presenting itself as a case study.
initiative was an example of an artist-researcher working closely with the institution, engaging all members of staff in a process-led, open-ended, collaborative study. In this project, a series of ‘unlearning exercises’ with Casco team members were used to expose and challenge the normative structures and practices of the small art organisation – the process of which was documented and later distributed as a publication. In this chapter I unpack unlearning as a critical tool to apply in an institutional setting, and a number of themes such as productivity and labour relations which much of the unlearning exercises were organised around. My analysis of SfU is supported by various concepts proposed by Irit Rogoff’s in her perspectives on art as a site for performative knowledge construction. Finally, reflecting on the potential for institutional transformation cited in the original aims of the project, I consider what were some of the long-term effects or ‘afterlives’ of SfU for the institution and its members.
Some Notes on an Additional Example: Jeanne van Heeswijk’s Exhibition ‘Trainings
for the Not-Yet’ at BAK, Utrecht
I wish to briefly offer some remarks on another example which could have been relevant to my study. Krauss and Casco Art Institute presented a collaborative case between an artist-researcher and a group of institutional workers. However, there are other artist-led examples which interrogate the institution via the temporary space of the exhibition. Jeanne van
Heeswijk’s exhibition ‘Trainings for the Not-Yet’ at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht (14 September 2019 – 12 January 2020) is one such example. Organised with a large number of collaborators from a variety of disciplines and social movements, this exhibition was convened as a series of community-to-community public trainings. The trainings and exchanges which were modest in scale and took place weekly, tackled a multitude of topics under umbrella themes of civic engagement, collectivity, and empowerment. In addition to this core programme of workshops was a community kitchen and several large-scale public meetings. This project intersected with larger, long-term programmatic inquiries at BAK, which has since 2000 been supporting art and research and testing institutional models under a political vision for art as a public sphere (BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, n.d.) ‘Trainings for the Not-Yet’ thus demonstrated possible ways for repurposing the art
institution in light of present-day social and political urgencies, and the civic responsibilities an art institution could take up to its diverse constituencies. This project engaged specific notions of the public sphere (as a place to self-educate, gather, organise and debate) in its aims. At this level, it seems Heeswijk’s project (supported by BAK’s politicised institutional goals) speaks to a shift in how art institutions might facilitate social change. Stephen
Wright’s ‘politics of usership’ for example, understands this to be a changing relationship between institutions and their publics through the emergence of a new political subjectivity – which he terms, the ‘user’ (Aitkins 2016, 332). Wright’s discussion of ‘1:1 scale practices’ (social art projects operating at life scale with the societal contexts they seek to intervene in) contributes to an argument that projects such as van Heeswijk’s are shaping the ideas around what it means to institute. The specific configuration of relationships between users/constituencies, artists, and the institution in ‘Trainings for the Not-Yet’ presents new challenges for the role, function, and civic nature of institutions. There are specific questions to be asked around the nature of this engagement due to its duration, with the majority of the activities happening within the space of the exhibition. However, perhaps van Heeswijk’s project can be provisionally interpreted here as prefiguratively staging a social and political reworking of how art institutions serve their artistic communities and their local
constituencies, and in what ways they choose to intervene in urgencies of the present. From this brief summary, ‘Training for the Not-Yet’ is an example of what type of artistic-project might also be covered by this Netherlands-based study on emergent instituting practices within contemporary art spaces.
Structure
The two main case studies I have introduced will be analysed individually with the intention to show different perspectives from which institutional change or instituting initiatives can be led. Kunstinstituut Melly’s name change is originally, and importantly, instigated by BIPOC artists and allies ‘outside’ the institution. This large institution subsequently leads a
substantive renaming initiative in consultation with its public and with input from new
constituencies. Casco’s project is a long-term and close collaboration between the team of a small art institution and artist Annette Krauss. Though operating at different scales, both cases engage a long-term process involving a diverse group of institutional actors, and both initiatives suggest institutional ‘self-work’ that is potentially transformative for the institution and its constituencies.
Methodology
My methodology uses critical analysis of the selected projects through formal analysis, review of archival material, organisational reports, related online commentary and literature review. In my research of Kunstinstituut Melly’s name change I was able to rely on extensive documentation of the multi-year process published by the institution as well as ample debate and commentary in mainstream and art journalism surrounding the events. Archival material
pertaining to ‘Site for Unlearning’ included audios and transcriptions of a number of the SfU gatherings. I also carried out original research in the form of a survey questionnaire to ten of the project’s original participants. The purpose of this was to solicit feedback on what
participants considered were the long-term effects on the project for the institution. Half of the people invited (5/10) partook in the questionnaire and their responses are included in the Appendix. These provide a range of retrospective perspectives from director, curator,
production and communication roles, as well as from former employees of the institution. In addition, personal communications with curator Staci Bu Shea during my time as Curatorial Intern at Casco (April-August 2020) gave further insight on the project and its legacy. I have indicated in the text where snippets of these conversations have been helpful.
1: Kunstinstituut Melly, Name Change Initiative, 2017-2021,
Rotterdam
In December of 2020 the art institution formally known as Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art announced the results of their 3-year name change initiative. From January 27, 2021 they would be known as Kunstinstituut Melly. As it is widely known, the catalyst for this change was the ‘Open Letter to Witte de With’ published in June 2017 by a group of cultural workers, artists and activists, and signed by hundreds more. On its own website which documents the name change, the institution acknowledges the necessity of the critique delivered by the Open Letter and the key role it had in leading the institution to change (FKA WdW Name Change 2017). This chapter is dedicated to Kunstinstituut Melly’s renaming, and will be broken into two sections. In the first part which will look at the role of activism in bringing about institutional change, I analyse the political nature of the Open Letter and the way ‘critique’ – as a hallmark of the auto-critical art institution – is
problematised. Following this, I discuss the activists’ critical ambivalence toward the institution, relating this to Athena Athanasiou’s theories of performing the institution in counter-institutional ways. In the second section of this chapter I discuss the subsequent name change initiative (2017-2021) of Kunstinstituut Melly. Drawing from Sara Ahmed’s study of the language of diversity in institutional environments, I examine the discourse of ‘inclusion’ and the production of institutional speech.
Part I: The Role of Political Activism in Bringing About Institutional Change
Critique as Instituent Practice: the Open Letter to Witte de With
The central critique of the Open Letter was that Witte de With16 could not claim to carry out
critical work in its field while bearing the name of a Dutch coloniser (Martina et al. 2017). The institution’s name referred to its location on Witte de Withstraat (locally known as ‘whiter than white street’ in English) which was named after a 17th century Dutch naval officer of the
VOC and WIC, Witte Corneliszoon de With (FKA WdW Name Change 2021). When the Letter was published the institution was about to launch a large project with decolonial and intersectional themes. Cinema Olanda: Platform – an extension of artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh’s and curator Lucy Cotter’s presentation at the 57th Venice Biennale – was promoted as a project aimed at giving visibility to underserved aspects of the Netherland’s
16 For the purposes of clarity when discussing the Open Letter I will use the former name of the institution in its shortened form Witte de With as that was the name the letter addressed, and what the institution was commonly called at the time.
post-colonial history (Ibid.). The Open Letter claimed that the institution’s so-called ‘criticality’ on issues such as decolonialism was severely contradicted by the colonial and racist origins of their name. It argued that by retaining the name Witte de With the institution was silencing the violent histories of slavery which this naval officer was a part. Furthermore, by failing to trouble the name, the authors argued, the institution continued to ascribe the name Witte de With with cultural capital, promoting the racial capitalist economy of Witte de Withstraat, developed as Rotterdam’s ‘hip’ art and cultural quarter. The problem of the name was first aired by participants and programmers involved in the planning for Cinema Olanda (FKA WdW Name Change 2021). This was, according to then-Director Defne Ayas, the first time the question the name had been raised (Martina et al. 2017). In the months following, project participants became frustrated by the lack of real engagement over the matter, and this led to the resignation of cultural critic Egbert Alejandro Martina from the project, and the co-writing of the Letter with other artists and activists (FKA WdW Name Change 2021). By calling out Witte de With’s claims to criticality – which as we have discussed of the legacies of institutional critique, are now regarded as a mainstay of institutional practice – the Open Letter sharply questioned the role of critique in today’s art institution. If third wave institutional critique has been defined by its incorporation into the art institution, by curators and directors who deploy its methods of spatial and political criticism into their gallery architectures and programming (Sheik 2009, 30), the Open Letter expressed deep disillusionment with the matter-of-factness by which critique is practiced by the contemporary institution. The authors wrote that Witte de With – like many of its
contemporaries – had embraced the artistic and intellectual work of people of colour in its programmes. The institution appeared to welcome institutional critique by new voices, yet it found it difficult to move beyond this performative embrace. “White art institutions […] are ‘excited’ to engage with feminist, queer, Black, intersectional and decolonial perspectives as long as these critical interventions are framed as discourses and stripped of their radical potential and praxes,” they argued (Martina et al. 2017, par. 8). What was the rationale for championing black perspectives publically, at the front end of the institution, the authors questioned, if none of it was able to influence its core? It seems, the institutional critique the institution was so accustomed to performing as its own, the natural authority by with it exercised the contemporary museum’s role of “critiquing the status quo” (Aikens 2016, 343) had resulted in the non-transformative and uncritical “co-option” (Martina et al. 2017, 13) of decoloniality as just another string to its bow.
In their view, the art institution’s “incorporation of Blackness” took place in the name of ‘criticality’ and ‘diversity’, yet such notions remained unchallenged as white liberal values
(Martina et al. 2017, 9). The authors claimed Witte de With’s approach to difference relied upon notions of inclusion, an idea which the Sara Ahmed has elsewhere described as a ‘technology of governance’ wherein those who are invited to be included also must be willing to consent to the terms of inclusion (2012, 163). Including the other as a guest within
institutional frameworks, rather than allowing genuine exchange or transformation, produced a tokenistic, accumulative, consumptive relation to blackness, the activists argued (Martina et al. 2017, par. 9-10). It also demonstrated a failure to move beyond the white subject position (Ibid.). What this problematic relationship signified overall was a complex desire on behalf of white art institutions to be affirmed by black criticality (Martina et al. 2017, par. 9). Conversely, the effects of this power-relation undermined the objectives of decoloniality and the antiracist struggle with which the host institution sought to align. The authors described this dynamic as destructive to the cause: “cultural institutions are becoming increasingly adept at using the critical language and concepts developed by Black and non-Black people of colour to fortify and maintain their own position of power” (Martina et al. 2017, par. 13). In their concluding paragraphs the activists of the Open Letter assert that for institutional critique to become meaningful again it must be connected with radical political perspectives (Martina et al. 2017, 13). Not only this, but the art institution must relinquish their desire to manage and co-opt said critique. In their words, “It is not for Witte de With to establish when or under which terms its praxis and existence are questioned” (Martina et al. 2017, par. 12). Finally, for the institution’s claims to ‘diversity’ and ‘criticality’ to regain credibility the authors insist these be met with “decisive radical action”, beginning with the removal of its racist name (Martina et al. 2017, par. 11).
What of the institutional critique exhibited by the Open Letter itself? I would argue the Open Letter aligns with the more transformative potential of instituent practice, as theorised by German philosopher and art theorist Gerald Raunig (2006). Rejecting the philosophical view which positions art in an autonomous realm, Raunig claims that the best examples of
contemporary institutional critique align with political practices and social movements (2006, par. 16). Rather than remain limited to boundaries and categories of the field of art, he argues that institutional critique should progress, along with art production, in a transversal manner; with changes in society, and by connecting with forms of social critique beyond the field (Raunig 2006, par. 1). Indeed, the impact of the Open Letter owed in part to its strong ties to the wider decolonial movement in the Netherlands and internationally. When it was first shared online the Letter gained hundreds of signatures, among them key figures of the art world and decolonial studies (FKA WdW Name Change 2017). The authors were careful to connect the problem of Witte de With’s name to the larger cultural issue, what they judged was the widespread failure of cultural institutions in the Netherlands to come to terms with
their racist heritage17 (Martina et al. 2017, par. 2). To this point they added that, despite claiming progressive positions within the culture sector, “Contemporary art institutions are no less entangled with the extractive colonial economy” than other institutions (for instance, the museum) to emerge from these foundations (Martina et al. 2017, par. 7).
Raunig’s theory of the potential for institutional critique to become instituent practice also invokes notions of exodus and flight. I would argue that the Open Letter drew influence and strength from staging an exit from what its authors deemed the performative critical space of the institution. In the sequence of events, it wasn’t until Martina’s departure from Cinema
Olanda and the publicising of the issue with a wider political arena (which caught the
attention of national and international media) that the institution was moved to respond in a fundamental way.18 Drawing on Foucault’s work on the arts of governing19 Raunig describes
escaping the arts of governing as a positive form of exit which does not accept the
conditions of governance in which the problem has arisen (Raunig 2006, par. 6). Rather than opting for one of the given alternatives within the confines of the Cinema Olanda project Martina and his group chose to push the question of the name, which the institution was slow to reckon with, out into public discourse where it could gain greater momentum. The important thing was to tie the issue to its wider political context. By doing so the activists refused the terms of dialogue which were initially offered to them, in the role of guest, and successfully reconfigured the context and the terms of engagement by which the issue could be worked out. This reinvention of the terms of engagement which redefines prescribed power relations is how Raunig interprets exodus as an instituent practice. Such a betrayal or act of flight has the potential to ‘transform the arts of governing’ and can therefore be linked to constituent power, re-organising, re-inventing and instituting (2006, par. 9-16). The
success of the the Open Letter was revealed three months later, when the institution publicly
17 The cultural reluctance of mainstream society in the Netherlands to come to terms with the violence of its colonial history has been written about by Afro-Surinamese Dutch scholar Gloria Wekker. Her concept of ‘white innocence’ encompasses this social trait (among others) which contribute to what she sees as a central paradox within Dutch national culture: the passionate denial of racial discrimination and colonial violence which coexists with widespread racism and xenophobia (Wekker, 2016).
18 Ahmed has talked about the ‘stickiness’ of racism, about how within institutional life, those who identify racism are quickly viewed as the problem, rather than the racism itself (2012, 152-154): “To use the language of racism is to risk not being heard” she says (2012, 156). From this perspective then also it makes sense that it might have taken an exit from these direct conversations with the institution for the critique to be properly heard, forcing the institution to make a meaningful response.
19 The ‘arts of governing’ refers to the dual process of both governing and being governed (Raunig 2009). It builds upon Foucault’s well-known concept of ‘governmentality’ whereby power and governance are produced through the active consent and willingness of people participate in their own governance (Huff 2020). Foucault attributes the spread of this form of governance and control to Western Europe in the 16th century whence he claims governmentalisation expanded beyond the state to impact all areas of life, including the self (Raunig 2009). It is from these origins Foucault understands the practice of critique to have emerged, observable in an attitudinal shift from the desire ‘not to be governed’ to ‘not to be governed like that’ (Ibid.).
announced their plans for a large-scale name change initiative whose methods they said would be made transparent and accountable to the public (FKA WdW Name Change 2021). If the Open Letter successfully mobilised institutional critique by connecting criticisms of Witte de With to the larger site of struggle, it also revealed another feature of instituent practice as theorised by Raunig – that is, that it did not assume a false distance from institutions in its critique (2006, par. 16). While the Open Letter aimed a number of powerful criticisms at the institution, it did not call for its dismantling. Rather, through their specific demands the authors made it clear that institutional change, rather than closure, was the outcome wished for. The position of the activists in their critique cannot therefore be
negatively characterised as anti-institutional, in fact, it could be argued that the relevancy of their critique derived from its reverse – from their position of relative intimacy with the institution, as were the close-door planning discussions for Cinema Olanda.
Productive Ambivalence, or Refusing to Be at Home in Institutions
The relational position of the activists to the institution can be interpreted using Greek scholar Athena Athanasiou’s (2016) concept of ‘ambivalent positionality’. For Athanasiou, a deep ambivalence toward the institution and our subjectivisation by the institution in all its forms underlies contemporary forms of resistance (2016, 681). This ambivalence, she argues, is the result of a complex and contradictory relationship to institutions that the modern subject endures from birth. Drawing upon Butler’s recent work on the assembly, Athanasiou invokes Butler’s notion of bodily vulnerability: the reliance of bodies upon enduring social relations and institutions for their survival and flourishing (Athanasiou 2016, 680-681; Butler 2015, 148). In complicated ways the contemporary body is reliant on historically specific and enabling conditions which have become an irreplaceable part of its existence and flourishing (Athanasiou 2016, 680). The vulnerability of the body is a fact which implicates us all in institutionalised webs of unequal distribution of power, resources, affects and of institutional access and support (Athanasiou 2016, 681). There is, therefore, a double bind: although we depend on institutions for our survival, institutions are also what exposes us to structural violence, unequal treatment and unequal access to resources – and are processes negatively inflected by the perceptions of class, race, gender, citizenship, and so on (Ibid.). The body’s reliance upon institutions is reflected in the Open Letter’s discourse. It is not enough to simply replace the name, the institution must engage with the historical processes and conditions with which inequality is systemically reproduced, and work to recognise and undo these influences upon its existing institutional structures.
In reference to this reliance upon institutions, Athanasiou points to what Butler terms ‘infrastructural good’ or the ‘infrastructural condition(s) for politics’ (2016, 681-682; Butler 2015, 127). In an era of neoliberal management and entrepreneurial belief in the regulatory powers of the market, public institutions are increasingly viewed as unviable and
unaffordable by dominant market standards (Athanasiou 2016, 682). Therefore, the need to defend public institutions from neoliberal reform means protecting the opportunity and conditions for future democratically-led transformation (Ibid.). “In losing a public institution, we also lose the possibility of collective mobilization in response to what interminably remains to be resisted, reinvented, reformed, and re-instituted,” Athanasiou claims (Ibid.). Activists who critique what they see as structural problems in public institutions in the manner of the Open Letter, but stop short of calling for closure, inherently understand this dilemma. They know that the relative autonomy of these surviving public institutions which remain to be defended are as Butler describes, the infrastructural condition(s) for politics (Athanasiou 2016, 684).
The inherent ambivalence of the activists in their calls for institutional reform provide an example of a ‘with-within-against’ stance toward the institution (Athanasiou 2016, 683). Athanasiou’s term for this performative position includes both proximity and distance: its task is to both defend and disrupt (2016, 683-684). She argues that whilst we must defend
institutions from neoliberal closure, but we also must retain our right to critique them,
resisting and delegitimising the ‘normalising violence’ with which institutions – or institutional affects – compromise and negate many forms of life (Ibid.). The performative politics of the
with-within-against attitude requires creativity, Athanasiou suggests. This “uncanny
occupation” of institutions, or “not being at home” within institutions as she articulates it undoes common binary notions of working inside or ‘outside’ of institutions (Athanasiou 2016, 682-684). Instead, with this type of defence we exercise the ability “to imagine and enact alternative institutions that do not reinstate the injustices and normativities of past and present” (Athanasiou 2016, 684). Athanasiou believes that an ambivalent mode of engaging with institutions – a refusing to be at home in institutions – can be enabling in the fight against neoliberal injustices. In her view, taking a ‘disrupt-defend’ approach means
consciously recasting institutions as “infinite and indeterminate sites of conflict” (Ibid.). As we have seen, the Open Letter powerfully illustrates the institution as a site of struggle. Firstly, by exposing the contradictions in Witte de With’s comfortable claims to criticality, and the problematic instrumentalisation of Black perspectives in the institutionalised practice of critique within the art institution. And secondly, by situating the problem of the name within a larger site of conflict and injustice in the Netherlands. By redefining the institution as a site of struggle in this way, Athanasiou claims we can work to expose normative practices and
beliefs and decentre them, resisting their continued institutionalisation (2016, 684). Adopting a with-within-against position the authors of the Open Letter also make specific demands on the institution: “What will Witte de With do institutionalise the process of decolonisation after Cinema Olanda: Platform is over (…)”, and, “How will it take responsibility for its (non-)actions?” (Martina et al. 2017, par. 11). Beyond the fundamental necessity to acknowledge and address the name, the authors advise that the institution takes into view the larger political and economic value systems which assign value to Witte de With; works to ‘undo’ the institutional structures which have led to this situation; and is accountable and
transparent towards audiences and participants for how it will be working to change its institutional structures (Martina et al. 2017, par. 12).
Butler’s ‘infrastructural good’ and Athanasiou’s performative with-within-against stance are useful notions as they point towards the many ways institutions are a part of the distribution of resources and power. These concepts help one to reframe and nuance one’s
understanding of the institution beyond being a dominant, hegemonic entity which must be resisted at all times. A more nuanced view of the struggle sees the institution as
representative of a vast number of instituted practices, structures, forces, behaviours, norms and temporalities (Athanasiou 2016, 681), of which we collectively can influence towards instituting differently. These arguments for performative politics thus share the position of theories of self-instituting, such as Castoriadis’, which show that our actions are
institutionally-inflected, including our emancipatory political methods and ways of acting collectively (Ibid.).
So how did Witte de With Art Institute respond to calls to change the name and institute differently? The second part of this chapter will look at what the new values the institution adopted in their subsequent name change initiative and what specific language and activities reflected this.
Part II: The Renaming Process
Institutional Language of Inclusivity
In official reports of the name change initiative, the term inclusion is frequently at the centre of descriptions of the “institutional transformation” (Kunstinstituut Melly 2020, Report #12) which the name change process is said to represent. Inclusivity as a guiding principle or set
of values is prioritised firstly in the criteria20 for the name change which seeks to redress the fact that, “the current name impinges upon the institution’s pursuit of inclusivity, which is vital to the relevance and contribution of cultural practice in general” (Hernández Chong Cuy 2018). Inclusivity also governs the public outreach activities and staff hires between 2017-2019; is an obvious theme of the public consultation of 2020; it is also highlighted in institutional commitments surrounding the new name itself.
The terms ‘inclusion’ and ‘diversity’ are common to the public sector and have come to be thought of as progressive ideals of a contemporary multicultural society (Tiel 2020, 5). For instance, a brief look at the “Equality, Diversity and Inclusion” policy page (accessed 30 January 2021) on the website of the British Council and it is clear that the word inclusion is often used interchangeably with diversity and among other terms such as equal
opportunities, equal access, and equity. In the Netherlands’ context, the stated goal of the 2019 Diversity & Inclusion Code (D&I Code) for the cultural sector is to achieve better representation across ‘all forms of identity categories, such as ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, level of education, age, and disability’ (Tiel 2020, 4). However, as even the D&I Code acknowledges, the terms are difficult to define, and as art historian Catherijne Tiel argues in an article for Platform BK, the definition for inclusion the Code nonetheless provides is vague: “[Inclusion] refers to how you deal with differences and similarities. […] the extent to which makers, producers, workers, and audience members of all identities – visible or not – can be themselves and feel safe and respected” (Ibid.). In Sara Ahmed’s (2012) work on the language of diversity she studies the uses of such terms within institutional life. Ahmed reports on the way in which diversity has been taken up by managerial discourse and policy; it is seen as a human resource which adds value to an organisation, it is a value which is measured and is connected with performance culture, as well as the marketing of an organisation’s image or brand (2012, 53). The embrace of diversity as a managerial mode is certainly evident in the Netherlands culture sector as mentioned. The D&I Code describes a variety of business benefits for organisations who ‘do’ inclusivity: from attracting talent, to greater employee satisfaction, to access to new markets (Tiel 2020, 3). As an organisation who receives public funding, Kunstinstituut Melly, like most art institutions of a similar type, must comply with systems of measurement and policy such as the D&I Code in order to receive financial support. The institution’s embrace of inclusion can thus be seen at least in part as an act of compliance, by naming inclusivity as a function
20 The first criterion given for the name change was the premise that the old name expressed the institution’s location but not it’s vocation, and therefore the new name should include its function to present contemporary art and theory (Hernández Chong Cuy 2019).
of the name change it performs to categories and measures of the dominant economic model. However, at the same time, the slippery, open and vague definitions of diversity and inclusion within official discourse may allow institutions some creative agency and space space to incorporate more radical approaches. Sara Ahmed’s study of diversity work in institutional settings, for instance, reveals diversity to be a broad term open to different interpretations and applications. ‘Diversity’, Ahmed reports, is interpreted by its specific context, and can thereby function as an “empty container” that can mean anything (2012, 80). Flexibility she subsequently argues, can be an advantage, meaning diversity – like inclusion – can be usefully defined in ways in which practitioners wish to use it, positively enabling them to do important work (Ibid.).
Diversity and Inclusion as Official Discourse versus Decoloniality
What are the common pitfalls of diversity and inclusion as an institutional discourse? While Ahmed reminds us that we shouldn’t disregard the fact that historically, state and public policy on equity has had progressive ends for under-represented groups in the workforce, she warns of the negative ways in which diversity work is reproduced by organisations, arguing that the central problem is in its ability to leave systemic issues of inequality
unaddressed (2012, 85). Ahmed quotes education researchers Rosemary Deem and Jenny Ozga: “The word ‘diversity’ invokes difference but does not necessarily evoke commitment to action or redistributive justice” (2012, 53). When it fails, the practice of diversity is about including ‘the diverse other’ or those that ‘look different’ and does nothing to redistribute power or decentre the naturalised privilege of whiteness (white people in director positions for instance) (Ahmed 2012, 65; Tiel 2020, 5). Rather, it does the opposite. By attaching ‘use’ to bodies identified as other, Ahmed says we attribute diversity to a body as if this body has
particular visible qualities to contribute; gender and race as the most common examples
(Ahmed 2012 84; Tiel 2020, 5). Applied in this way, diversity is an additive which is there to reinforce and strengthen the invisible norm of whiteness.
Decoloniality, on the other hand, is a perspective which drives to the heart of the inequality problem. In a report commissioned by the University of Amsterdam, Gloria Wekker and colleagues recommend incorporating decolonial frameworks into diversity practice. They claim that decolonial approaches enable understandings of how the dynamics of power relations, social exclusion and discrimination (along lines of race, gender, geographical and economic inequality) are tied to ongoing legacies of colonial histories (2016, 10).
Decoloniality, Wekker et al. state, helps us to conceive of the role of institutions such as universities and museums as modern day colonial institutions; structures designed to
