Published on Saturday, November 7, 2020 by Agitator Co-operative

On Curating

by Gretchen Hasse, Agitator member and co-founder

I didn’t think much about curation for many years of my art practice. It was always something somebody else did, or something I wasn’t concerned about, because most of my work did not end up in curated spaces. Over the years, as I understand more about the power of art and art spaces, curating has taken on a new meaning for me.

In 2006, I taught animation and video production at several schools around Chicago. My students were creating interesting work, many of them for the first time; and I wanted to offer a way for them to show that work in a venue that wasn’t school-related. I thought it would be a way to show them that their work mattered, outside of its being a graded assignment, or job training.

I put together an ambitious screening series called Out of Context. It screened at Davenport’s Piano Bar, a Wicker Park Venue that mainly featured lounge singers. I had a contact there, so they were willing to work with me. I got sponsorship from an organization where I was doing video work, which allowed me to give some money to the projectionist and the VJ, both students of mine. The event included a live jazz band, led by one of my friends. I did some design work for the band in exchange for their performance.

The series consisted of four screenings over four weekends. Each evening, after showing about an hour of video and animated shorts, the VJ mixed clips from all the pieces, accompanied by the jazz band, for another hour or so. It was cool and bizarre, mixing up video and animation of widely differing styles and content. A lot of my students said it gave them new ideas for how to edit their work. Some regular bar patrons wandered into the back room and didn’t quite know what to make of it, but they stayed long enough to enjoy the band and finish their drinks.

The screenings included not only videos from all of my classes, but also some work from guest professionals as well. One of those guests was filmmaker Ben Byer, a young man with ALS. He had documented the progress of his experience with the disease, and how it affected his relationships with all of his loved ones. We only showed the trailer, because the film, Indestructible, was still in post-production; but the trailer was enough to educate the audience and start conversations. Ben was in the audience that night. He couldn’t really speak, but you could tell he was pleased. The VJ was careful with Ben’s footage, and the mix was respectful of those clips. A friend of mine, fresh from her first round of chemo and sporting a colorful scarf on her bald head, attended the screening too. I will never forget that both of them attended, despite its being very difficult for them to do so.

The series played throughout the month of June. I was out of the country for two of the evenings, traveling in Portugal and grading student work through a new site called Youtube. The VJ and the projectionist ran the show while I was gone. For this one series, I called in favors from nearly every aspect of my life. I made some mistakes; like I’m not sure I would be out of the country for half of a four week series again. Overall though, I think it was successful. I learned that I could make a new thing happen by using my existing resources in a new way. I learned that people took me and my ideas seriously.

In 2007, I took a job producing video for a website, and dedicated my creative energies toward that work for three years. When I abruptly lost that gig in 2010, I was heartbroken; I flailed about for a supportive community and creative direction. I found both of those in Gallery B1e, a small DIY storefront gallery in Rogers Park, a neighborhood that has always been full of activists and artists. At B1e, I helped design shows that included people with masters degrees, people who drew “for fun,” and people who liked the look of the place, walked in off the street, and ended up with something on the wall.

Gallery B1e had strong community support, and I sold a lot of work there. It was a very cobbled together operation, but I still learned how to mount shows, design promotion, and coordinate large groups of artists. In 2013 I put together Motion At Rest, a solo exhibit of my own video work, which featured stills, outdoor projections, and a dance performance in the window of the gallery. I grew to have more faith in my ability to put something together as a curator.

That gallery definitely had its issues, which could be a whole separate article. While I was there I learned, I grew, I met good friends, and in 2015 I moved on.

In 2017, I started talking about creating a new, cooperative gallery with Larry Kamphausen, who I had met through Gallery B1e. At that point I was eager to put energy into all kinds of new exhibits. Our discussions eventually became Agitator Gallery.

I know that the labels Introvert / Extrovert are pretty played out; but according to the traditional understanding of the words, I am an Introvert. It’s difficult for me to get up in front of a class. It’s difficult for me to call in favors and delegate tasks and make sure everything goes well; or at least it used to be. There are things I want to do, and over time I have come to understand that I need to challenge myself in order to do them. Curating is one of those things.

Two of the five Agitator shows I’ve curated have been open-call, group shows. I have very deliberately worked to open the calls to as many people as possible: veteran artists, emerging artists, people who don’t think of themselves as artists, but who might have something to say about the theme of the show. That is a tall order, but I think it can be a good approach for gallery whose mission is to provide a platform for under-represented artists. My experience at Gallery B1e made me very committed to this mission.

That said, when I did my first open call show, I wasn’t sure myself how everything would work out.

Everything Has Changed: Life Altering Healthcare Experiences in 21st Century USA premiered in September 2019. In 2018, thanks to the ACA, I was able to get two full knee replacements. This was a glorious conclusion to a long and very painful journey that was made infinitely worse by the US healthcare system. The ACA is far better than what we had before; but that was a pretty low bar to begin with, and I know many people have not been able to successfully navigate the ACA either. Almost a year after my own surgeries, I wanted to bring together other people who had experienced life-changing healthcare experiences. That show eventually featured well over twenty visual, sound, video, and performing artists. My own qualified happy medical ending was not the norm; most people were still struggling with health issues and a healthcare system that did not want to serve them.

Installation for Everything Has Changed became an impromptu group therapy session about access to healthcare, doctor experiences, and explaining chronic health issues to both loved ones and nosy strangers. The opening was packed. Several health care professionals attended, and were deeply moved. Every one of the participants personally thanked me for putting the show together. One artist in particular said that it had opened up new avenues of conversation in her politically divided family, many of whom had never attended an art opening.

One day during gallery hours, a man dropped by and said he was making the rounds of local galleries on his off hours from attending EXPO Chicago. He was a gallery owner from Berlin. I said, “This would be a very different show in your country.” He agreed, and we both sighed. It might have been that same day that a young woman came in and held up her phone to all the art, describing each piece out loud to whoever was on the other end of the FaceTime call. That person turned out to be a friend of mine who had work in the show. She was going through treatment for brain cancer in Wisconsin, and she couldn’t attend; but she wanted to see it. She and I and her friend with the phone had a nice conversation. Heavy, but nice.

Was it a difficult show to mount? Yes. Was it entirely worth it? Absolutely. That exhibit was collective storytelling, and it was important.

Curatorial lessons I took from Everything Has Changed included accessibility. I had made it a point for the gallery to build and install a simple wheelchair ramp for the opening, and I was very proud of myself for that. During the reception, I noticed that people found the stories associated with the work to be incredibly moving. Even though it was a hectic, social event, attendees moved from piece to piece, reading each story and looking closely at the work. Then I realized that not everyone could hold and read the exhibit program. How could we make this experience available to everyone? I bet we could do our own version of audio tours. I bet there are a lot of other things we need to think about for the next gallery opening too, but this is one thing that sticks in my mind as essential.

In October 2020, I mounted And Then: Stories About What Happens Next. It started out as a general storytelling exhibit. In early spring of 2020, I was thinking about collecting podcasts, comics, performance art, and other mediums through which we share the narratives that describe and shape our lives. Then in March, everything hit the fan. I had been planning to make the exhibit program into an actual book, with a spine, since that would be consistent with the theme. Eventually it became clear that a gallery exhibit would not be a good idea, and maybe the exhibit should only be a book, at least for now. Thinking about accessibility, I decided to also create an online gallery that included audio versions of the written work. I ran this idea by my friend Andrew Slater, a visually impaired sound artist whose group SOVISO had performed at Everything Has Changed. He loved the idea of personal readings of the written work, as opposed to the robotic voice of the text reader that visually impaired people depend on for most computer text. As the recordings arrived, I began to see how this direction enriches the experience for everyone. A personal reading by the author opens up whole new ways of understanding the work, and it brings back a little bit of the in-person experience we’re all missing right now. I wasn’t expecting to be so moved by the recordings. My effort at accessibility introduced new possibilities for all the work, and the entire audience.

I am still collecting those audio files. One advantage to a website is that you can update it indefinitely. After further consulting with Andrew Slater, I’m also starting to collect alt text descriptions of the images. The exhibit participants appreciate the guidance that Andrew sent me to pass on to them. We can go further with accessibility when we open Agitator’s new space; I’m excited to discover new ways to create a deeper experience for everyone.

And Then is still about storytelling, but now it is telling the story of our own future. That’s general, yet still heart-rendingly specific. It was very important to me that this show include a wide variety of voices. Since it’s a book and a website, untethered to gallery space limitations, I have room for many artists. The exhibit includes over forty artists, roughly twice the number that participated in Everything Has Changed. This time I distributed the call for entries more widely, and I specifically invited certain artists to submit work. I was more deliberate about seeking out BIPOC artists, and I am very happy with the results; but I can always do better. I even invited people who don’t necessarily make art. I know that my reach is still limited, no matter how far I cast my net; but I am learning more every time I do this.

I think I can now call myself, with some confidence, a Curator. Years ago, I never imagined how much this discipline could inform and expand my own art practice. It has, and immeasurably so.