Refertilizing the ground for institutional critique via a simultaneously collaborative and critical framework where artists are both implicated and free from institutional contraint. Many of the projects acted upon the museum building or the staff directly.
Since the advent of institutional critique, a number of artists have gone so far as to make the relationship between the artists and the institution their main focus. The American critic Douglas Crimp argues that the institution has replaced the subject as the focal point for the critical-theoretical discourse of the last two decades. Some people claim that taking artists on board an institution disarms their critical potential in that they get contaminated and end up as accomplices when they interact too closely and intensely with the commissioner. Following the principle that you don't bite the hand that feeds you, they end up no longer using their teeth. While there is definitely a risk of 'disarming', the situation is more complex and there is not a strict dichotomy between the institutions and the artists. The idea of the so-called 'sputniks' at Kunstverein München is based on another, more collaborative approach. Although proximity can certainly be compromising, it can just as easily stimulate a kind of exchange which allows for the system to be challenged. When this is the case the challenge is carried out from a position that is simultaneously outside and inside, both implicated and distant. Or as the sputnik Carey Young has formulated it in relation to her own practice: "If a resistant ethos becomes hip, it will be marketed back to us as style: a sort of win-win proposition for those consumers who want to associate themselves with bettering the state of the world, but who don't want to think too hard. Right/wrong or inside/outside binaries seem ever more outmoded. To me, it is a question of credibility: a singular stance does not seem credible anymore. This is not to say that moral slippage is acceptable, but I don't make work which moralises, and my reference to my own identity as a business person within my works is intended to say this most clearly, in that what ever commercial process or system I expose or make projects within, I still reveal myself at the same time to be included within that mechanism. It is not oppositional in a traditional sense."
When I began working at Kunstverein München I had the opportunity to form a new team, including a curator and an assistant curator, in which everybody was invited to come with input. It is not a flat structure; neverthelesswe have to a large extent developed the program in collaboration. A Kunstverein is a type of institution typical for the German-speaking region. It is a membership organisation - Kunstverein München has around 1000 members - which is both private and public. Legally it is considered the same way as a private company but most funding comes from public sources, in our case the city of Munich. When we started our program at Kunstverein München in Spring 2002 we invited 16 people to be our sputniks for a period of three years. Together they form a sort of think tank for critical engagement with this institution of contemporary art. In Russian the word originally meant 'travelling companion' and that is precisely what our sputniks have been asked to be. They are artists, critics and curators who accompanyour activities and give us input into what an institution for contemporary art like the Kunstverein can, and also should, be.For our part, we are trying to take their comments, questions and criticism into accountwhen we run the institution. Each of them is also invited to realise something, a so-called sputnik project - a book, a series of talks, a new work, etc. - depending on the character of the work of each sputnik. We show our interest - but we don't want to pursue (monitor) the sputniks (throughout the process).
So how does it function on a practical level? All the sputniks were invited to Munich in February 2002 to get to know the institution, its team and to meet each other. All but two people attended. Thereafter the type of interaction has varied from close and regular to distant and rare. Beside mail rounds describing and discussing our current program and situation every three months, we have mostly been in touch with each sputnik on an individual basis, mainly for pragmatic, financial reasons. There was an informal dinner at the opening of the Venice Biennale when many of the sputniks happened to be in the city. While some of the sputniks have used their 'sputnikship' in order to develop projects that go beyond their usual practice, others have felt uncomfortable with the openness of the invitation. From the beginning one important aspect has been reciprocity: the invitation to interact is there and the sputniks who are interested in interacting can and should do so.
From Site Magazine Issue 9-10.2004
http://www.sitemagazine.net/eng/9.htm