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MACC Curating the Contemporary 2013-14: Theory in Practice

‘Re-enacting Exhibitions ’ : A Case Study

Stephen Willats between Raven Row and the Whitechapel Gallery

Miriam La Rosa

“If you don’t want to repeat things,

you have to understand them”

McCarthy, 2006: 228

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse the current phenomenon of re-enactment of historical exhibitions from

the particular perspective of two shows on the British conceptual artist Stephen Willats, restaged in

2014 at Raven Row and the Whitechapel Gallery, in London.

After an introduction to the notion of ‘Re-enacting Exhibitions’ – which merges together a

theoretical approach and practical examples – the paper presents the two different typologies of

‘exhibition within exhibition’ and ‘exhibition of exhibition’. These are then elaborated through the

specific case study: i.e. analysis and comparison of the two shows in relation to their scope and

curatorial strategy. A further connection with two additional examples, i.e. Richard Hamilton at

Tate Modern and the ICA, in London – again mirroring the two suggested typologies of re-enactment

– is also employed to valorise the conclusions gained from the case study. The ultimate goal is to

consider different approaches towards ‘Re-enacting Exhibitions’, whilst discussing the eventual

reasoning behind the engagement with this practice for contemporary art institutions.

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1. Defying ‘Re-enacting Exhibitions’ through theory and practice

It looks like a sort of addictive behaviour, one that is becoming common in the most recent curatorial

practice: contemporary art institutions and their curators seem to be obsessed with the past. They

repeatedly engage with reconstructions, re-interpretations and/or re-propositions of historical shows

where the artworks are not the exclusive focus, but a part of a bigger whole: exhibitions that exhibit

themselves more than the content of their display. A renowned example in this regard is the restaging

of Harald Szeeman’s Live in Your Head. When Attitudes Become Form1 held by The Fondazione

Prada, in Venice, in occasion of the 2013 Biennale Il Palazzo Enciclopedico/The Encyclopaedic

Palace curated by Massimiliano Gioni. Hence, the 1969 show was faithfully reconstructed in its

entirety of walls, floors and artworks; in other words, the Kunsthalle twentieth-century rooms

literally occupied the frescoed spaces of Ca’Corner della Regina.

Whilst not ample literature exists on the topic, the article ‘Remembering Exhibitions’: from

point to line to web 2 by scholar Reesa Greenberg addresses the practices of ‘exhibitions of

exhibitions’– defined by Greenberg as “postmodernist exhibition practices” (Greenberg, 2009: 1) –

from the exclusive perspective of memory. Greenberg proposes to recognise ‘Remembering

Exhibitions’ as a proper exhibition genre, comprising of three different types: the replica, the riff

and the reprise. The replica “seeks to re-assemble as much of the art work displayed as possible, either

as originals or reproductions, in a stand-alone single exhibition or sequence of exhibitions that may

or may not employ the initial installation schema and may or may not be held in the original

location. […] All the original contents of an earlier exhibition are re-assembled in the same,

unchanged space, in the same arrangement as before”(Greenberg, 2009: 2). In most replicas though,

archival materials and documentation substitute the original work and/or they result in large-scale

homages or anniversary shows, aiming to promote research or emphasise particular historical

moments. The reprise is then a re-staging that happens within the realm of the Internet, by means of

websites containing some sort of extension of the original show, i.e. additional content, in the form of

documentation. In this case, information and memory’s preservation seem to be the main focus.

Nonetheless, the last typology, i.e. the riff, surpasses the function of lieux de memoire in favour of a

more stimulating proposition. According to Greenberg “the exhibition riff is self-reflective and

performative, drawing attention to exhibitions as entities that deserve attention”(Greenberg, 2009: 5).

In this regard, she offers the example of the 2005 jubilee Documenta3 curated by Michael Glasmeier

                                                                                                               1 Previous versions of the same show are: the 2004 How Latitudes Become Forms, at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the 2008 When Lives Become Form, at Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art, in Tokyo. Another reference to the 2 The article was published in 2009 in Tate Papers. Tate’s online Research Journal, Issue 12. 3 50 Jahre/Years. Documenta 1955-2005 was named as jubilee Documenta since it celebrated the 50 years anniversary of the exhibition.

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who, in order to present the eleven previous editions of the show, engaged with an alternative way to

reconstruction and created an exhibition with five chapters addressing different ways of

remembering Documenta: two paired exhibitions Discreet Energies and Archive in Motion, a map of

Documenta artworks in situ in the city of Kassel, a film programme and the conference Staging and

Criticism4 (Glasmeier, 2005).

In previous research5, it has been suggested to approach ‘exhibiting exhibitions’ from the side

of performance rather than memory, i.e. going beyond Reesa Greenberg’s notion of ‘Remembering

Exhibitions’ through the proposition of ‘Re-enacting Exhibitions’: a format that borrows Gilles

Deleuze’s classification of simulacra and the idea of historical re-enactment6 to contextualise the

relevance of exhibition’s re-constructions within a contemporary curatorial practice. In fact, the

performative function associated with the riff already leads towards a parallelism with the

philosophical concept of simulacra as developed by Deleuze in his 1983 Plato and the Simulacrum,

where simulacra are those opportunities by which accepted ideals or privileged positions can be

challenged and overturned, and new occasions for discussion arise (Deleuze, 1983)7. According to this

reading, re-exhibiting historical exhibition supersedes the function of place of memory to become an

actual re-enactment or, in other words, a new performance. This assumption refers to re-enactment as

the action of acting again and, likewise, to perform again. To a certain extent, in fact, each re-

performance is a different performance, due to the variation of crucial components such as context

and/or audience. Re-exhibiting exhibitions is therefore a form of re-enactment in itself in the sense

that, in the here and now of a new context, shows of this type perform, rather than just re-produce or

simulate. However, in the circumstance of this paper, a further differentiation needs to be made and

a new issue explored. According to the nature of the re-enactment and to the context in which the

latter is staged, ‘Re-enacting Exhibitions’ can be additionally classified in two main categories:

‘exhibition of exhibition’ and ‘exhibition within exhibition’. Both cases also imply reflecting upon

the notion of authorship: meaning the possible and/or eventual oscillation between old and new

author. Thus, in order to make this analysis clear, examples of current production might result

                                                                                                               4 The aspects presented by the five chapters were respectively: the archival, the art historical, the site-specific, the cinematic and the scientific. 5 La Rosa, M. (2014), ‘Re-enacting Exhibitions: an attempt to go beyond memory, in https://thecass.academia.edu/MiriamLaRosa. 6 “Precisely, the term ‘historical re-enactment’ names a scripted activity, generally of educational or entertainment purposes, in which participants follow a pre-planned plot to re-create a historical, often military, event. A particular form of ‘historical re-enactment’ is then ‘living history’: a performance that brings history to life in front of a public without following a prearranged script. Within the field of performance studies, cases of re-enactments are famous for their link to the specificity of a – new, alternative – place.” (La Rosa, 2014: 4) 7 A deeper contextualisation of the parallelism between re-enactment of historical exhibitions and simulacra can be found in La Rosa, M. (2014), ‘Re-enacting Exhibitions: an attempt to go beyond memory, in https://thecass.academia.edu/MiriamLaRosa.

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beneficial. On 12 February 2014, the ICA in London opened Richard Hamilton at the ICA: a

reconstruction of two installations built by Hamilton for the ICA’s previous location in Dover Street

(fig.1-2). Man, Machine and Motion (1955) included thirty open steel frames in which photographic

images were displayed in four themes: ‘Aquatic, Terrestrial, Aerial and Interplanetary’, whilst an

Exhibit (1957), organised around a modular system, was conceived with the intention to give visitors

the chance to generate their own configurations. Besides, the show was parallel to Tate Modern’s

retrospective on Richard Hamilton (13 February – 26 May 2014): a survey aiming to encompass the

full scope of the artist’s work and including installations’ reconstruction8 as well (fig.3-4). It explored

Hamilton’s relationship to design, painting, photography and television, with a particular emphasis

on his engagement and collaborations with other artists. (www.tate.org.uk, Accessed: 21 May, 2014).

The two cases immediately pinpoint the above mentioned approaches towards ‘Re-enacting

Exhibitions’: ‘exhibition of exhibition’ (Richard Hamilton at the ICA) and ‘exhibition within

exhibition’ (Richard Hamilton at the Tate Modern). Both of them are faithful correspondents of

their originals9 and treat exhibitions as objects of arts rather than art’s mere containers. However,

they at the same time embody two different types of re-enactment: in the former case, the location of

the re-enactment is coincident with that of the original and the new curator becomes a sort of new

author. To a certain extent, the institution itself steps into the realm of authorship. On the contrary,

in the case of the latter, the original show is de-contextualised and re-contextualised in a new place

other than time; the notion of authorship is yet clearly linked to the artist, i.e. Richard Hamilton,

whilst the institution takes the role of an “official voice” in his regard.

Fig.1 Fig.2

                                                                                                               8 These were, for instance, the exhibition Growth and Form, organised by Hamilton at the ICA for the 1951 Festival of Britain, and reconstructed for the first time in Room 1, or This is Tomorrow, organised by architect and critic Theo Crosby in 1956 at Whitechapel Gallery. 9 In this context the term ‘original’ is meant as synonym of ‘previous’, ‘preceding’ (exhibition), rather than as contrary of ‘copy’.

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The aforementioned When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013 is then a sort of

hybrid typology. The exhibition was the result of a curatorial collaboration between Germano Celant,

Thomas Demand and Rem Khoolas, who intended to initiate an insightful discussion from three

different angles: the curatorial, the artistic and the architectural. Equally to both of Richard

Hamilton’s re-enactments, also in this occasion the exhibition became an object in itself: and even

further, a sort of ready-made10. Hence, despite the dis-location of the reconstruction – in relation to

its original model – as in the Tate Modern’s case, the notion of authorship played a similar role to

that discussed in the case of Richard Hamilton at the ICA: a new curator – three in this instance – as

new author(s). At this point, some spontaneous questions are raised: what are the implications of the

different forms of ‘Re-enacting Exhibitions’? And what is the reasoning behind the institutions’

choices in this regard? An in depth elaboration on this note and the problem of authorship is given

in the following section of this study, through the comparison of Stephen Willats’ re-enactments at

Raven Row and the Whitechapel Gallery in London.

Fig.3 Fig.4

                                                                                                               10 Here the term ‘readymade’ is not used in a literal way, meaning the fact that historical exhibitions already belong to the art’s realm – contrarily to the objects of the readymade-action that are daily life objects with no pre-existing artistic value. The exhibition is here referred to as a readymade on a metaphorical level, in relation to the change of context and, to some extent, of authorship.

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2. Comparative Analysis: Stephen Willats at Raven Row and the Whitechapel

Gallery

In March 2014 London has featured two simultaneous exhibitions on the British conceptual artist

Stephen Willats11. The shows, respectively on display at Raven Row (23 January/30 March) and the

Whitechapel Gallery (4 March/14 September), offer an interesting scenario for the discourse around

‘Re-enacting Exhibitions’12. The two institutions have in fact engaged with re-propositions of Willats’

historical exhibitions in a different yet thought-provoking manner. The ground of comparison lays

in the nature of the institutions – both of them non-profit, non-collecting and contemporary art

centred – whilst the scope is to analyse their specific positioning in relation to the practice of

exhibitions’ re-enactment.

Raven Row

Curated by Raven Row’s director Alex Sainsbury, Control. Stephen Willats. Work 1962-69 was meant

to be the first survey of works by Stephen Willats from the sixties, in respect of the institution’s

mission of showing artists “who have somehow escaped London's attention” (www.ravenrow.org,

Accessed: 19 January, 2014). Thus, the aim of the display was to highlight the generally overlooked

meaning of the body of works from Willats’ early practice and, in particular, the transdisciplinarity

of his role as artist, social scientist, engineer and designer (Sainsbury, 2014).

Fig.5 Fig.6

                                                                                                               11 Another show on Willats was also held at Victoria Miro from 13 March to 17 April 2014: a commercial gallery in Mayfair, London. 12 The fact that the two exhibitions have been displayed simultaneously is especially interesting in regard to the continuity of the artist’s practice. In fact, Raven Row’s show cover the period between 1962 and the end of the 1960’s – i.e. the exordium of Willats as an artist – while the Whitechapel Gallery’s display highlights Willats’ practice in social interaction, which became particularly predominant after that period.

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The presentation comprised artworks and documentation materials, amongst which stood out

some features of Control: the magazine curated by Willats since 1965 and from which the exhibition

itself took its title. A highly historical representation with attention to detail and information, the

show wanted to inaugurate a new viewpoint on these works that the emphasis on the magazine

witnessed, due to its experimental character. According to researcher and curator Antony Hudek, in

fact, “Control is […] an essential link between Willats’ cybernetic and behavioural artworks from the

sixties and his social projects from the early seventies onwards” (Hudek, 2014: 33). The gallery’s

rooms hosted works on paper merging cybernetic modelling, architectural graphics and constructivist

geometries, together with more sculptural and interactive pieces. Yet, the key of the entire display

was the re-construction of the exhibition Stephen Willats. Visual Automatics and Visual

Transmitters displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford from 22 October to 16 November

1968, and restaged in this context in quite a faithful way (fig.5-6). On the basis of the previous

definition of ‘Re-enacting Exhibitions’, this can be recognised as a case of ‘exhibition within

exhibition’: the re-construction of a historical show within a major survey on an artist’s practice.

Hence, the original display was structured with the shape of a maze where rooms were generated by

means of black fabrics. These aimed to give autonomy and privacy to each work. The latter were a

series of kinetic machines such as Shift Box No. 1, Visual Field Automatic No. 1, ‘Visual Automatics’

nos. 1 to 5 and Visual Transmitters nos. 1 to 3. According to Raven Row though, the 1968’s show had

been misinterpreted. In fact, the critic considered it as poor kinetic art “jinxed by technical

deficiency”(Pethick, 2014: 78) and Willats himself then decided to move beyond, in favour of more

socially engaged art. On the contrary, the London re-enactment gave a different lecture on this

regard. At the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford Willats “presented constructions involving

movement and light – some wall-mounted, others large-scale environments – that were informed by

his interest in contemporary theories: about probability and prediction, behavioural science,

subliminal advertising, and colour in relation to motivation and learning” (www.ravenrow.org,

Accessed 19 may, 2014). The curatorial proposal at Raven Row found its raison d’etre in the

acknowledgement of these objects as experimental “stimuli for states of consciousness” (Sainsbury

2014: 15), therefore performing a new action towards Willats’ work. However, while walking

throughout the exhibition, these nowadays non-functioning machines appeared closer to old relicts

than phenomenological experiments of any sort; on one side highlighting the fragility and

ephemerality of the works and on the other side producing a feeling of nostalgia for a time full of

projections.

Thus, in the context of this study, the relevance of the re-enactment lays in Raven Row’s

determination to propose an alternative view towards part of the artist’s practice: a view that

furthermore wishes to establish a new authority regarding art history. As a case of ‘exhibition within

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exhibition’, Control. Stephen Willats. Work 1962-69 is comparable to Tate Modern’s retrospective on

Richard Hamilton; both institutions approach exhibitions as objects in themselves, purposely re-

contextualised to serve as art history’s milestones and contemporary art’s media. They re-enact

historical shows with the aim of focusing on ground-breaking readings: the collaborative practice of

Hamilton (in the case of Tate Modern) and the experimental nature of Willats’ first works (in the

case of Raven Row) – whether or not such readings are successful is then a questionable point. But

how does this relate to the previously mentioned notion of authorship and, eventually, how does this

differ to the other typology of ‘Re-enacting Exhibitions’ i.e. ‘exhibition of exhibition’? The second

part of this comparative study will help to elaborate on these queries.

Whitechapel Gallery

Stephen Willats: Concerning Our Present Way of Living is the Whitechapel Gallery’s current

archive exhibition, taking place 35 years after Willats’ solo show at the Gallery with the same title

(fig.7-8). Martin Rewcastle curated the 1979 presentation under the directorship of Nicolas Serota.

Although the exhibition was meant to be a survey on the artist’s work, it also included works from a

community project that Willats conducted in collaboration with three groups of East London’s local

workers: Working Within a Defined Context with the dock workers, The Place of Work with the

leather workers, and Sorting Out Other People’s Lives with a resident of the Ocean Estate. These

works were then displayed in the Lower Gallery and Gallery’s foyer, as well as at the Ocean Estate, at

Dame Colet House; and now find their collocation in the archive exhibition’s room of the Gallery, in

conjunction with additional documentation.

Fig.7 Fig.8

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As Willats stated in an interview conducted in January 2014 by the Whitechapel Gallery’s

archive curator Nayia Yiakoumaki, whilst Rewcastle and Serota were interested in showing Willats’

work of that time in comparison with his earlier production, he was primarily keen in “repositioning

the role of the Gallery in the community around it” (Yiakoumaki, 2014: 3). His project in fact

wanted to bring into the Gallery’s space the workers’ opinions and concerns, at the same time

questioning and/or establishing the role of art as a form of social responsibility. To a certain extent,

the 1978 show was one of the first forms of a participatory arts project in Britain. So, what is the

point of restaging, i.e. re-enacting it again in the present time and within the context of the Gallery’s

archive? In the same interview with the exhibition’s curator, Willats comments in this regards: “the

fact that this work took place then is of significance now because it posited a socially based

community practice which was pioneering in the sense that it was even at that stage at odds with

what was the happening in the art world. People didn’t like it too much at that time, […] we’ve moved

on, we’re now in the twenty-first century, but the art world is dominated by the art of the previous

century, we have a legacy hanging on here of what I call ‘last century thinking’” (Yiakoumaki, 2014:

9). Willats’ interpretation of the archival restaging is that of a benefit for contemporary artists’

practice, where the exhibition becomes both an example and a tool for those who want to engage with

community work. However, whilst this last argument finds its collocation within the institution’s

statement of purpose “to bring modern and contemporary art and ideas to local, national and

international audiences by providing a place for free-thinking, creativity and learning”

(www.whitechapelgallery.org, Accessed: 19 May, 2014), it also encourages the development of the

discussion around ‘Re-enacting Exhibitions”.

Similarly to Richard Hamilton at the ICA, the Whitechapel Gallery’s archival re-enactment

on Stephen Willats is a case of ‘exhibition of exhibition’: a show that belongs to the institution’s

history, that contributed to its evolution, and that is then re-proposed and re-contextualised in a

contemporary setting. The aim is to reflect upon the historical development of the Gallery itself,

within its artists’ driven mission. Unlike cases of ‘exhibition within exhibition’, the relationship

towards art history and its interpretation is hence less prominent. Definitely more evolutionary is the

approach to the galleries’ evolvement and action, in these instances operated through a self-reflective

practice. The exhibition is undoubtedly treated as an object with a highly discoursive connotation,

and able to move the reflection towards the history of exhibitions in themselves, rather than the

history of art. However, the most interesting question in this regard is, again, that of authorship.

Precisely: what is the implication of such a re-enactment? Do the Whitechapel Gallery or the ICA –

and their curators – attempt to re-establish a certain authorship towards the institutions’ previous

shows?

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On authorship

Authority is not necessarily synonym of authorship. This last notion, particularly significant for the

study on ‘Re-enacting Exhibitions’, also includes a crucial differentiation according to whether or

not the role of artist and curator are coincident. It is in fact necessary to make a distinction

concerning authorship’s oscillation between curator and artist. To a certain extent, one can argue that

in cases of ‘Re-enacting Exhibitions’ each “new curator” is a sort of “new author”, meaning the fact

that their voice takes a step forward in the interpretation of the original connotation of a work

and/or show. However, when the curator of the original installation and/or exhibition is also the

artist – i.e. Richard Hamilton – defining authorship becomes problematic.

Thus, a first, spontaneous issue in this regard would be: what does make an artist the author

of an artwork? The notion of the author notoriously became questioned in the 20th century with

thinkers such as Roland Barthes who stated that: “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the

death of the author” (Barthes, 1977: 148). On a similar view was then Michel Foucault’s idea around

the concept of the author as a despot who restricts the freethinking of readers (Foucault, 1984). In

the particular context of art, the 1960’s signed the start of a tendency that gave substance to these

theories. According to scholar Sherri Irvin, the so-called appropriation artists “beginning with

Elaine Sturtevant, simply created copies of works by other artists, with little or no manipulation or

alteration, and presented these copies as their own works. The work of the appropriation artists,

which continues into the present13, might well be thought to support the idea that the author is

dead”(Irvin, 2005: 2). Appropriation in art is also nothing new: painters, for instance, have always re-

painted the work of their predecessors as well as contemporaries with the aim of studying their

practice, whilst affirming their personal one. In this respect, Gombrich observes: “The history of art

[…] may be described as the forging of master keys for opening the mysterious locks of our senses to

which only nature herself originally held the key […] Of course, once the door springs open, once the

key is shaped, it is easy to repeat the performance. The next person needs no special insight —no

more, that is, than is needed to copy his predecessor’s master key”(Gombrich, 1960: 359-360). Is this

always the case though? To some extent, one way for artists to establish their authorship status is to

innovate, i.e. to produce something different than what came before. But how does such a view relate

to the discussion conducted in this study? And how does the issue of authorship find its collocation

within a more contemporary artistic panorama, where notions, as that of copyright, are continuously

violated?14

                                                                                                               13 Think of, for instance, the practice of artists such as Oliver Laric or Daniel Silver, where appropriation is key to the works’ own definition and meaning. 14 In this regard, think of artists that work in the realm of the Internet such as Jon Rafman or pioneering Net.Art duo Eva and Franco Mattes, akas 0100101110101101.org.

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Moving the debate back to the phenomenon of ‘Re-enacting Exhibitions’ and to our case study,

one can formulate an answer to these questions by comparing the two re-enactments of Stephen

Willats at Raven Row and the Whitechapel Gallery with each other and, consequently, with Richard

Hamilton at Tate Modern and the ICA. In addition, such a comparison should be conducted from the

perspective of three different, yet not necessarily distinct, stakeholders: artist, curator, and

institution. In fact, in the case of ‘exhibition within exhibition’ the notion of authority is more

prominent than that of authorship. As already discussed, the institution’s purpose – in Raven Row as

well as in Tate Modern – is to challenge art historical interpretations rather than artist and/or

curator’s authorship. However, in the case of ‘exhibition of exhibition’ – the Whitechapel Gallery

and the ICA – the institution somehow acquires a new authorship concerning the discourse generated

by the previous exhibition; but the relationship between curators and authorship towards the artist’s

work changes according to whether or not the two roles are coincident. In other words: when the

artist is alive – such as in the case of Stephen Willats at the Whitechapel Gallery – the authorship of

the work still belongs to him/her; e.g. the interview to Willats contained in the exhibition catalogue

witnesses such a statement, ultimately resulting in a collaboration between the artist and the curator

of the re-enactment15. However, when the artist is no longer alive and (s)he was also the show’s own

curator – such as in the case of Richard Hamilton at the ICA – the new curatorial voice, either

consciously or unconsciously, concurs in establishing a new form of authorship towards the work, i.e.

the exhibition itself.

According to this view, ‘Re-enacting Exhibitions’ enters the field of appropriation and, more

generally, of contemporary art; a field where roles such as that of artist and curator are often

mingled and blurred, and the issue of authorship quickly put under interrogation. This furthermore

leads towards the consideration of the exhibition as a developing entity and an expanding field16,

with an always growing role and, why not, responsibility. Are, in fact, re-appropriating institutions

and their curators always aware of both risks and possibilities? This last point, yet owns the shape of

a question.

                                                                                                               15 On a similar note, Raven Row’s exhibition catalogue also includes an interview with the artist but its aim is to re-define one particular aspect of his practice, i.e. that of conceptual design, rather than the concept of the show. Again, authority towards art history is here predominant than towards exhibition’s history. 16 The concept of exhibitions as expanded field is formulated by Rosalind Krauss in her 1979 article Sculpture in the Expanded Field.

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3. Conclusions

The analysis of the case study: Stephen Willats between Raven Row and the Whitechapel Gallery,

has demonstrated how the two typologies of ‘Re-enacting Exhibitions’, i.e. ‘exhibition within

exhibition’ and ‘exhibition of exhibition’, differ from each other. In particular, and through the

parallelism with the displays at Tate Modern and the ICA, it has been established that their way of

re-enacting has dissimilar scopes and functions. These especially concern the role of authorship

within a threefold system comprising of artist, curator and institution. The three stakeholders in fact

operate one in relation with the other, sometime overlapping their practices, and consequently

concurring in the establishment of the author’s and/or authoritative position towards exhibitions.

Whilst Raven Row engaged with re-enactment on the basis of an art historical re-discussion

and according to its mission of superseding clichés around art history’s criticism, the Whitechapel

Gallery chose an institution-centred approach; archive-driven and discoursive towards the present.

What was the most successful? There is no need to define it: whether institutions and curators decide

to engage with one or the other type of re-enactment, depends on their ambitions. Meaning: the type

of legacy they want to leave. One might furthermore argue that a more interesting point is that

related to the risk for both formats to become only fashionable tools in the hands of institutions and

curators with a passion for auto-reference. As curator Jens Hoffmann already stated: “The danger is

not high, however, as there are only a handful of iconic exhibitions that have sufficient mass appeal”

(Hoffmann, 2013, in: www.canadianart.ca, Accessed: 21 May, 2014). Besides, not everybody can easily

become a new author and immediately be recognised as such. This requires a pre-existent connection

to the original and/or a very original approach towards its meaning. In the first section of this study,

it has been mentioned the existence of a third, hybrid form of ‘Re-enacting Exhibitions’: a form that

matches together aspects of both re-location and new authorship, i.e. the case of When Attitudes

Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013. The latter, in fact, does not only suggest a new reading of

history – that of exhibition, in this instance – but it establishes a new, triple (collaborative)

authorship from the perspective of an artist, an architect and a curator. Hence, the all-in-one author

seems to suggest that the innovative interpretation is not really pointed towards the past or the

present, rather, towards the future. Contemporary art is not only the art of objects as artworks, but it

is also the (growing) art of objects as exhibitions. As such, they often include the intersecting of

function of and collaboration between artist, curator and institution.

Thus, overturning Tom McCarthy’s quote from the 2006 novel Remainder, “if you don’t want

to repeat things, you have to understand them” (McCarthy, 2006: 228); but if you want to change

them, you can try to re-enact them.

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References

Literature

- Barthes, R., (1977) ‘The Death of the Author’, trans. Stephen Heath, in Image, Music, Text,

New York: Hill and Wang, p.148.

- Deleuze, G., (1983), ‘Plato and the Simulacrum’ translated by Krauss, R., in October, n.27,

(winter 1983) pp.45-56.

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18 May, 2014).

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(Accessed: 18 May, 2014).

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May, 2014).

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Images

-­‐ Fig.1: Richard Hamilton Installation view of Man, Machine and Motion at the ICA, Dover

Street, 1955. ©ICA.

-­‐ Fig.2: Install shot of Man, Machine and Motion, Richard Hamilton at the ICA, 12 Feb 2014

– 6 Apr 2014. Photograph by Mark Blower.

-­‐ Fig.3: Richard Hamilton, Installation shot of 'Group Two' from the exhibition This Is

Tomorrow, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London 1956. © Whitechapel Gallery.

-­‐ Fig. 4: Richard Hamilton, Installation shot from the exhibition This Is Tomorrow, Tate

Modern, 13 February – 26 May 2014. © Tate Modern.

-­‐ Fig.5: Stephen Willats: Control Stephen Willats Work 1962 - 69, ‘Visual Automatic Nos 4 &.

Visual Automatic Nos 4 & 5’, 1965. Photograph by Marcus J. Leith.

-­‐ Fig.6: Stephen Willats: Control Stephen Willats Work 1962 - 69, ‘Visual Transmitter No. 1,

1965–66’, Private collection, London. Photograph by Marcus J. Leith.

-­‐ Fig.7: One of the Display Boards from the Stephen Willats’ project work ‘Inside An Ocean’,

that took place on the Ocean Estate during the exhibition Concerning Our Present Way of

Living, Whitechapel Gallery, 1979. Archive of the Artist.

-­‐ Fig.8: Stephen Willats: Concerning Our Present Way of Living at Whitechapel Gallery,

London, March 4 – September 14, 2014. Photograph by Patrick Lears.