MY MUSEOLOGY

In the publications  Photography/Politics: One  (1979) and  Photography/Politics: Two  (1986), Jo Spence as part of Photography Workshop sought, through an expansive definition of the titular terms, to address interferences between photography and politics across the history of the medium. Through also focusing on the role of institutions, and particularly as financing entities, the editors and contributors demonstrate the multifarious ways that we are unconsciously subject to the camera’s and photography’s power. While our consciousness of this potential may be comparatively better understood in today’s photographically saturated and occasionally more sceptical cultures, pondering on the revelations of  Photography/Politics  proves nonetheless instructive. For instance, we learn that ways we are presented and present ourselves to the camera are often already determined by internalised modes of seeing, behaving and image-making through our exposure t...

Duchamp, Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg and Johns, these five artists embraced, revelled in, loved chance, yet the show devoted to their work, interrelationships and mutual influences is an explicitly scripted experience. Rather than curated, however, it is a mise-en-scène by Philippe Parreno, a noteworthy distinction. Curating is an indefinable business in today's theoretical universe, so it is hardly surprising, and, given the five artists' penchant for the aleatory, it is fitting that the guide should point out in this indirect way the instability of the term. This mise-en-scène is scripted, however, from the entrance-level beginning to first-floor development, where the sections of the gallery space are numbered 1 to 8 beginning with the area immediately to the left of the top of the stairs. That the artists were so committed to chance, however, does not preclude an ordered exhibition from being a worthwhile and appropriate forum for their work. Order enables participants ...