Control I'm Here: A Call for the Free Use of the Means of Producing Communication, in Curating and in General

Curating and the Educational Turn
Control I'm Here: A Call for the Free Use of the Means of Producing Communication, in Curating and in General

Jan Verwoet

Verwoet, Jan. "Control I'm Here: A Call For the Free Use of the Means of Producing Communication, in Curating and in General." Curating and the Educational Turn. Ed. Paul O'Neill and Mick Wilson. London: Open Editions, 2010. 23-31. Print.

Date: 11/11/2012

Verwoet is suggesting that the demands of institutions are unreasonable, specifically the demands and perimeters it puts on the roles of those working within/with institutions (artists, curator, commissioner). This is a call to action. Individuals working in this situation are the only ones who can redefine the institution and begin handling it in a different way, "with some soul." 

Key Quotes:

"Collective improvisation is exemplary in that it is the closest we may get to an experience of autonomy. This is to experience that the relation between what is possible and impossible in a given situation, among particular people, in not exhaustively governed by external standards (of Control), but also shaped by the immanent dynamics of that situation. The blind urge to satisfy external standards typically stifles those dynamics. The capacity to grasp and gradually shift the terms of possibility/impossibility from within the situation, on the other hand, constitutes the intelligence of an creative process attuned to the immanent logic of its own unfolding." (Pg. 30)