Sextons for Secular Churches

Slavoj Žižek, "The real artist is the curator, not the producer"

The impenetrability of current knowledge is more a matter of reflection than 'complexity': the current opacity and impenetrability (the fact that the final consequences of our actions remain completely uncertain) is not due to the fact that we are puppets to which a transcendent global Power (Fate, Historical Requirements, Market) pulls its strings...

On the contrary, its reason is 'not being able to find anyone in charge' [the inability to find an interlocutor], that it is not a force pulling the strings, that it is not the 'Other of the Other'; The basis for the dullness is precisely that contemporary society is thoroughly 'contemplative', that we lack a solid foundation of Nature or Tradition on which we can lean, that even our innermost impulses (sexual orientation, etc.) are increasingly treated as 'preferential'.

How a child is fed and educated, how sexual annealing is carried out, how to eat and what to eat, how to relax and have fun – all these areas are increasingly becoming a contemplative 'colony', that is, something that needs to be learned and decided.

Isn't the ultimate example of this work of reflection the important role played by the curator in contemporary art? His role is not limited to making choices. The curator defines (re)what contemporary art is through the choices he makes.

Currently, contemporary art exhibitions feature objects that (at least) have nothing to do with art according to a traditional approach. From time to time, even human excrement and dead animals can be exhibited. But why should they be considered art?

Because there we see the choices of the curator. Today, visitors to an exhibition are not directly observing the works of art. What they observe is what the curator understands by art; In short, the real artist is not the producer but the curator, his act of choosing.

The Tickled Subject (1997), p. 336

Turkish: Işık Barış Fidaner

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Slavoj Žižek, "The curator is like Jesus" (Google translated from Turkish)

It is uncanny that the role played by the curator in contemporary artistic activity is similar to that of Jesus: isn't it a kind of "disappearing intermediary" between the Artist-Creator ("God") and the public community ("believers")?

This recent role of curators is based on two interconnected processes:

1) The work of art has lost its innocence: The artist no longer leaves the interpretation of his work to others with spontaneous creativity.

References to future (theoretical) interpretations are already directly involved in artistic production, so that since the temporal cycle is closed, the artist's work is in a sense preemptive strike, negotiating with interpretations that are supposed to be the future, responding to them in advance.

These possible interpretations are embodied in the figure of the Curator; he himself becomes the subject of transmission of the artists. He is not content with collecting existing works, those works have already been created with the Curator in mind, the Curator is their ideal interpreter (there are even curators who personally order the works of art or employ artists for their own designs).

2) It is also evident that in today's large-scale exhibitions, the general audience does not have time to dive "slowly" into each work that fills enormous collections separately. The main issue here is not that the public cannot understand what is happening and that there is no need to explain it, but that it is no longer possible to directly experience the work in contemporary art with an intensity that will witness its own strong influence.

After all, for the general audience, the role played by the Curator is not the interpreter, but rather the ideal perceiver who can still take the time with "slow steps" and watch all the works passively. The public can thus assume the role of cultured intellectual audience, they have neither the time nor the ability to live the works passively in the fullest sense, they at best exchange witty theoretical interpretations or opinions, and leave the work of living the works directly to the Curator, the Subject of the Supposed Living.

On Faith (2001) p. 163.

Turkish: Işık Barış Fidaner