Lisette Smits | Specters of the Nineties

Director Documentation flashback 2018-10-11

Lisette Smits, Director of finished Temporary Programme Master of Voice (2016-2018) curated the long-term programme covering the avant-garde titled Specters of the Nineties. The exhibition looked at the last decade of the 20th century through a selection of art works made in the period between 1989 and 2000. It was exhibited at Marres, centre for contemporary, Maastricht in November 2012.

In the wake of the recent dramatic decline of Dutch government support for the arts and contemporary art in particular, which culminated in the announcement in June 2011 of draconian cutbacks, some commentators in the Netherlands pointed out the alacrity with which artists and other art professionals have previously met political demands to prove their social and economic relevance. According to such critics, artists have made themselves vulnerable by succumbing, since the early 1990s, to the prevailing logic that art could either be a constructive trouble-shooter for social problems or become part of the “creative industries.” This is the language of a politics that had collapsed in the face of tenacious right-wing populism and intensified neoliberalism. In an essay published in conjunction with “Specters of the Nineties,” the artist and writer Hans-Christian Dany describes the...

The rest of Saskia van der Kroef's review of the exhibition for Art Forum is available for reading and purchase for $5.99 at: https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/201202/specters-of-the-nineties-30149

The most prominent characteristics of the 1990s, commonly known as the beginning of ‘The Information Age’, are without doubt the revolutionary development of digital technology the emergence of a global capitalism. The claim being made in the exhibition is that the artistic practices of the 1990s not only reflect these developments, but also testify of the way the digital revolution has altered the artistic practice itself—art of the 1990s being, in other words, both informed and formed by these changes.

The artistic practices of the 1990s often have been referred to as ‘social art’ and subsequently their value has been measured in social terms rather than artistic ones. Instead, Specters of the Nineties unfolds how the technological developments of the time have marked the production and dispersion of art, the notion of access and audience, the issue of authorship, and ultimately, the nature of artistic work and the aesthetics of the artefact itself. The artistic practices of the 1990s persistently seek to redefine the utilitarian relations of art in a new economic reality, which is why it could be argued that they truly are a part of a ‘classic’ avant-garde project.

Specters of the Nineties presents a selection of art works and practices that could be considered as anticipating on the social and political constellations of today and the position of art therein. What is the legacy of the artistic practices of the 1990s? Are they still haunting today’s art practices? Or have they, as a ‘social project’, dissolved in our social reality altogether?

The exhibition consists of an anthology of artistic practices and works, including sculpture, installation, painting, photography and video, made between 1989 and 2000. The exhibition also includes reconstructions, documents and archival material that, in a documentary style, represent the site specific, system specific, process based, one-time, or otherwise ephemeral character of the artistic practices of the 1990s.

Works by:Art Club 2000, Sadie Benning, Bernadette Corporation, Plamen Dejanov & Swetlana Heger, Jeremy Deller, Stephan Dillemuth and Hans-Christian Dany, Maria Eichhorn, Annika Eriksson, Andrea Fraser, Rainer Ganahl, Renée Green, Jens Haaning, Pierre Huyghe, Karen Kilimnik, Ben Kinmont, Job Koelewijn, Renée Kool, Aleksandra Mir, Regina Müller, N55, Marylène Negro-Klaus Scherübel, Laurie Parsons, Asier Pérez González, Dan Peterman, Hinrich Sachs, Joe Scanlan, Tilo Schulz, Superflex, Apolonija Sustersic, Barbara Visser, Carey Young.