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Textual communication in art: I write and you read me.
Mery Cuesta

I am pleased to inaugurate, as the monarchist rhetoric goes, the first issue of Hangar’s on-line magazine, and even more so with an article that is so suited to the act we're committing together this very moment: I write and you read me.
This text aims to develop, in a literary way, some notes that first emerged as doodles (diagrams, circles, and lines communicating with each other), and although these ideas could have been developed into the drawing of a mental map, Pilar Cruz and I have decided to turn them into a written text, seeing as we are all used to justified lines and tochiform paragraphs. A morphology that is, moreover, just right for tackling the issue of the role of printed textual communication that we, professionally involved actors in the field of contemporary art, read or write. That which is expressed verbally in any professional field is usually spontaneous and tendentious; what is written may appear to be less so because rhetoric can pile on the makeup. So let's apply the Clearasil, to see if we can clear things up.
 
The artist speaks: portfolios, juries and bureaucratisation

The artist’s inability to explain his/her work by his/herself, without resorting to the help of intermediaries, mainly, as the case may be, the critic, is often criticised. We all get annoyed when we run into artists who say they’re in the middle of an interesting, new personal project, and we eagerly ask them to tell us what it’s about, and the artists merely lace their narrative with interspersions such as, "Well, you know," “You know, it’s the Lacan thing" or "There’ll be two screens". In other words, they’re not even capable of inventing a consistent, explanatory (not to mention seductive) discourse about their own work. That is why critics, over the decades, have shifted their role to that of artists’ spokespeople, abandoning the role that is sorely needed, and which is the essence of their rank and role, that of proposing superimposed interpretations on the the artist’s own, and furthermore (and I'm defining my ideal critic here), broadening the outlook, and in so doing, intellectually propelling that proposal towards other fields. But the reality for the artist is that if you have a critic for a friend, you possess a treasure.
However, there are protocols in contemporary art that the artist can’t wriggle out of and has to speak: grants, contests and schemes, where you need to have a portfolio to convince a jury (whose total legitimacy goes unchallenged) that you’re worthy of an award. [1] A highly illusionary process, due to the secrecy and the amount of assumptions on which it is based. The trend is that the portfolios from which artists devise their raffle ticket respond nowadays to a series of parameters laid out by the institution itself. The aim is to make life easier for the jury. And so specific workshops are given where they teach you how to fill your portfolio and turn into advice on how to fill out the E300 form. [2]. This bureaucratisation of the artists’ discourse merely regulates their expression, aiming to squeeze it into the corset of economic necessity. An artist's portfolio should be as personal as a toilet bag.
 

 
 
The critic speaks: catalogues, articles and clichéd concepts

Let’s return to the notion of the model critic who provides reflective tools, superimposed on the artist’s own or on cultural phenomena. This figure should also be a researcher and experiment with language: art is an ideal arena for literary gymnastics. The critical ploughshare should cut through the top layer of interpretation, digging deep down into the substrate, so that we may feast on a more nutritional bread of knowledge. But -generally-speaking - we never get this.

Debate on the loss of critical potential in contemporary art has been going on for decades; servility, nepotism and cronyism are the aphonias afflicting the critical voice. But there is another disease besides these ones, subjective in their observation and elusive when it comes to pointing them out publicly. It's called crypticism. Art criticism, whether it be in catalogues or articles for the specialised press, does not want to relinquish the elite status conferred upon it by its own protocols and lexicon: hence the insistence on, what are to most people, encrypted formulae. This situation is deliberate, as reaching out to a wider readership, contains the side-effect that fellow professionals would stop reading out of pure boredom. It’s a real thorn in my side when someone, on seeing the effort put into a writing a text for a catalogue, says, "But who cares, nobody reads what’s written in those catalogues anyway!". It hurts because I know that person does have a point. And anyway, a small group of people do read that text: the people in question and the translator.
When it comes to the critic’s language and lexicon, a common pathology rears its head, that of the "clichéd concept". By way of explanation, please allow me to quote Unamuno, who, in 1907, dissected imaginary critic S. Antolín Paparrigópulos as follows:
"So that his businesses might be more successful he had immersed himself in foreign literature, and since this proved to be arduous task as he had no knack for foreign languages and learning them consumed the time he needed for higher studies, he resorted to a remarkable expedient learned from his teacher. (...) And once he had taken in the average opinion of the most reputed critics on this or that author, he would leaf through it in a jiffy to clear his conscience and be free to reformulate others’ judgements without diminishing the scrupulous integrity he had as a critic."[3].
The dynamics of leafing through something and the subsequent re-quoting of a quote, appropriating it in the process, is significantly whittling down knowledge, to the extent that the grains left in the sieve are clichéd concepts, hackneyed paradigms, but suspected of having no depth by those who use them, if not, why is it always Bachelard always poetics of space, Deleuze and Guattari desiring-machine, and Benjamin flaneur? The clichéd concepts don’t do us any good because they are not considered subject to review. Marc Augé’s non-places need to be delved into.
To conclude: you’ll adduce that, apart from catalogues and articles, we nowadays enjoy criticism in reading and diffusion formats that came into being along with the Internet. It is still afflicted by the aforementioned symptoms (to be honest, the clichéd concept is even more prevalent due to the the ctrl C-ctrl V), and yet: it allows counterpoints, feedback and challenges. Too bad that most of it comes in the form of anonymous insults.

The institution speaks: press releases and information leaflets as antithesis

Textual communication issued by art institutions try to have a purely informative aspect. The press releases clearly display a list of, what we call, technical details, alongside a lexical and morally irreproachable description so the news will spread like wildfire. Press releases are necessary instruments and are normally well articulated for the dissemination of cultural activities. The information sheet is another matter, flyers printed in black and white on A4 paper at the entrance to the exhibition space with the salutary intention of making the content more digestible. What would have happened to all those castaways without the lifeline of the information sheet, providing such support in a sea of incomprehensible forms and messages? We’ve run into another device for interpreting the artistic content. Like a didactic tool or an orientation guide, the information sheet is acceptable, that is to say, it’s part of the effort of diffusing culture incorporated in the idiosyncrasies of cultural institutions themselves. But the information sheet often takes on a far too generous role ... for the artists, seeing as, more often than we would like, the art on offer is unable to speak for itself, and we need that interpretation board, provided at the entrance, to decipher the codes. Once it’s been read, ah yes, now I get it. We shouldn’t be at the mercy of photocopied sheets, and abandon, not only interpretation and perception, but the feeling and emotion that an artistic proposal exudes.
So you see, both forms of the institution’s textual communication are antithetical to one another: while the press release takes off like an iceberg, the information sheet does without paternal warmth.

The above comments also apply to the vinyl wall panel, as some organisms and institutions prefer to spend more money on a good vinyl, whether it be in anticipation of a lot visitors or to avoid the embarrassment of seeing crumpled sheets.

The journalist speaks: reheated information and entertainment

The press release is sent to the journalist, who - in the case of not being a specialist in art and culture - just reproduces it,  and in the case of being a specialist, just reheats it. Replace the indicative with the subjunctive, stick in a subordinate, and Bob’s your uncle. What seems like a joke, is unfortunately true even if it is a more finely-tuned practice amongst the mass media, who find themselves midway between the imposition of criteria and promotion. Art reviews in newspapers and magazines with a wide circulation are aseptic. Overwhelmed by the weight of visibility, they put significance and profitability of the space on a page before the ideas laid out in a text. Hence: a) a none too complacent review could unleash Olympus’ wrath, and consequently b) the reviews are mostly favourable. We occasionally hear dissonant voices in the mainstream press, but this usually by enfants terribles and dinosaurs, two interesting myths of the journalistic world to be analysed on another occasion.
 

Also, to emphasise the frequent sensationalist approach from the mainstream media usually applied to contemporary art: the television news likes to highlight artistic proposals from the most spectacular and shocking standpoint. These reports and news items that almost always come with a humorous comment have a highly toxic social potential because they insist on the paradigm of enlightened and/or fraudster artist reinforcing the divide between the public and contemporary art. A couple of smiles at the after dinner-party discussion at the expense of artists who are too expensive.
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This overview of textual communication in art has mostly referred to printed material, the specifics of the developments in this area on the Internet, only mentioned in passing here, have yet to be analysed, as they do however present a definitive break with the dialectical limits assumed up to now: I write, you read me .... and reply.
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[1] Self-quotation: please see the text written on this issue by Jorge Luís Marzo and myself entitled 'Sobre los jurados artísticos: la conveniencia de publicitar sus deliberaciones'_ Available at: www.merycuesta.com/pdf/jurados.pdf

[2] Which, by the way, is for unemployment benefit.

[3] Miguel de Unamuno: 'Niebla', Ed Cátedra, 1985.