## A PRECARIOUS CONSTRUCT

## Trine Friis Sørensen

## ABSTRACT

This  article  turns  on  a  curatorial  project  that  Trine  Friis  Sørensen conducted in relation to the Danish Radio Archive (the DR Archive) by  commissioning  two  artists,  Kajsa  Dahlberg  and  Olof  Olsson, to  engage with the archive and produce artworks in relation to it. Focusing on the practice of commissioning rather than its outcome, the  article  proposes  to  consider  commissioning  as  a  curatorial mode of inquiry into the DR Archive and in turn asks why we commission, how the commission works and what kind of thinking the commission engenders. Drawing on Bruno Latour, Michel Foucault and in particular Jacques Derrida, this thinking with and through the practice of commissioning eventually prompts her to reinvigorate the obsolete notion of curatorial care .

## KEYWORDS

Curating, Commission, Archive, Practice-led research, Care, the Curatorial

When I first visited a remote part of Danish Radio Archive (henceforth the DR Archive) located in the Copenhagen-suburb Søborg, I  noticed a peculiar distribution of blue pieces of paper inserted between the approximately 180.000 shelved reel-to-reel tapes at intervals of ½ - 1 meter. The blue papers appeared to indicate a system of a sort, but there was no immediate explanation to be found.  As  it  turned  out,  the  blue  papers  were  indeed  a  system, an  ad-hoc  solution  conceived  in  the  midst  of  a  moving  process some years back, when this part of DR's reel-to-reel tape archive was  moved  from  the  old  Radio  House  on  Rosenørns  Allé  in Copenhagen to its current and more spacious location in Søborg. On Rosenørns Allé, the ordering of the tapes had been determined not only by technical numbers and shelf numbers, but also by the dimensions of the various shelving systems that occupied every available square meter of the basement under the old Radio House. The shelves of the new compact archiving system in Søborg were, however, much longer than the shelves on Rosenørns Allé, so in order to secure the order of the archive, the archivists came up with the idea of inserting these blue pieces of paper between the tapes to mark the point where one shelf ended and another began. These shelf  sections  -  demarcated  by  blue  papers  -  were  subsequently labelled with the corresponding shelf numbers. Accordingly, the main function of the blue pieces of paper is to map out the former architecture of the archive, which effectively is superimposed onto this new location.

What  we  have  here  -  this  conjunction  of  place  and  order  lends  itself  rather  emphatically  to  what  Jacques  Derrida  terms the topo-nomology of  the  archive,  that  is  to  say ,  the  intersection of the topological and the nomological, the place and the law; an indispensable principle of the archive according to Derrida. 1 The ordering of the archive is conditioned by its place - not only by the house in Søborg where it currently dwells but also, and crucially, by its previous domicile in Copenhagen. The structure of the DR Archive is, in other words, not one with itself but haunted, heimgesucht , by its former domicile. According to Derrida, the structure of the archive is spectral 2 - here it would appear to be so twice over.

Between  2010-14,  the  DR  Archive  was  the  subject  matter  of the research project LARM 3 of  which I was part, and my way of addressing  this  archive  was  to  commission  two  artists,  Kajsa Dahlberg (SE) and Olof Olsson (SE/NL/DK), to engage with the archive and produce artworks in relation to it. On account of my commission,  Dahlberg  produced  the  video  work Fifty  Minutes in  Half  an  Hour (2013),  which  was  part  of  her  solo  exhibition, This Time It's Political, at  the  Museum  of  Contemporary  Art  in Roskilde, Denmark, and Olsson produced the performance DR P3. 1963-2013. 50 Years of Danish State Authorised Pop Radio (2013), which he performed at a number of art and cultural institutions in Denmark and Sweden. 4 Both Dahlberg's exhibition and Olsson's performance tour were realised in early 2013 and curated by me. 5

While  Dahlberg's  exhibition  and  Olsson's  performance  tour mark the culmination of our engagement with the DR Archive, the focus of this article is not these final manifestations but rather the gesture that initiated the projects in the first place, namely, the act of commissioning and how it translates as a mode of inquiry. Because by commissioning Dahlberg and Olsson, I not only delegated the task  of  addressing  the  DR  Archive  to  them,  I  also  established a curatorial mode of inquiry into the archive. The purpose of this article is, in turn, to develop the act of commissioning as a mode of inquiry and propose how one might go about conducting research through curating  -  in  other  words,  how  the  practice  of  curating can  be  used  as  a  vehicle  for  thinking. 6 In  what  follows,  I  will address three fundamental questions concerning the commission as a curatorial mode of inquiry , namely , why we commission, how the commission works, and what kind of thinking the commission makes possible.

Despite its prevailing significance, the practice of commissioning has attracted very sparse critical attention over the years, and the few books on commissioning that I have come across do not address  what  it means to  commission. 7 As  I  will  argue  in  more detail shortly, it is my claim that a commission responds to a need , because by commissioning Dahlberg and Olsson I delegate a particular task to them, and in doing so I acknowledge and designate a need for a certain kind of work to be done. In the case of the DR Archive, this need is a need for interpretation, because if we indeed consider the DR Archive along the lines of Derrida's understanding of the archive - like the blue papers in Søborg would appear to encourage - there is certainly a need to be reckoned with, a need for work to be done. To Derrida, 8 an inheritance - in this case, the DR Archive - is never a given but always a task ; a task of assuming, interpreting and radically transforming this inheritance that - like the blue papers - references something that is no longer there. The reason why we commission is, in other words, because there is a need for it.

The article proceeds to unpack the politics of delegation and the  workings  of  the  commission,  the  latter  by  way  of  a  simple diagram that plots out the relations established by the commission between archive, commissioner, artists, and artworks. I will also propose how the act of commissioning can be considered a mode of inquiry, and this explication engenders me to revisit the notion of curatorial care . Doubling as a mode of inquiry, the practice of commissioning prompts three different manifestations of curatorial care, namely as an analytical gesture, as a research aspiration and  as  a  supplementary  structure  that  designates  the  intricate relationship between curator and artist. The kind of thinking that the commission makes possible is, in other words, one that reinvigorates the notion of curatorial care and, as I argue towards the end of the article, performs a specific conception of the curatorial.

## NEGOTIATING CURATORIAL RESEARCH

The  focus  of  this  article  hinges  on  recent  years'  interest  in  the relationship between curating and research; 9 an interest that has generated  the  notion  of the  curatorial ,  which,  as Simon Sheikh summarizes, 'is (…) not necessarily something that takes on the The DR Archive, The Radio House, Rosenørns Allé, Copenhagen Photo by Klavs Lund (May 2007)

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The DR Archive, Søborg Photo by Trine Friis Sørensen (January 2011)

form and eventual character of the exhibition, but something that employs the thinking involved in exhibition-making and researching.' 10 Accordingly,  for  the  purpose  of  this  inquiry  my  interest in curating is not as a means to an exhibitionary end; this article does not gravitate towards the exhibition or any other curatorial form that marks the culmination of a curatorial process. Rather, the linchpin of this article is the practice of commissioning and its capacity to perform a certain kind of inquiry. Curatorial research is not a new phenomenon in itself; in fact, research is among the core tasks of the traditional museum curator according to Nathalie Heinich  and  Michael  Pollak,  who  also  designate  the  tasks  of safeguarding  the  heritage,  enriching  collections  and  displaying art to the public as fundamental curatorial functions. 11 However, on account of the changes that both the role of the curator and research in the humanities has undergone, it seems pertinent to ask what curatorial research can be today.

The  curator  has,  famously,  transformed  from  a  discreet  behind-the-scenes  curator-as-carer 12 into  someone  who  occupies an auteur -like  role 13 -  particularly  when  it  comes  to  the  most distinct specimen of the curator since the 1990s: the independent curator. 14 As for research in the humanities, practice has, in recent decades, been seeping into academia's traditionally theory-based knowledge  production,  testifying  to  a  tentative  rehashing  of academia's epistemological tradition. There is of course nothing new  in  deriving  knowledge  from  practice.  Practical  knowledge informs an infinite number of activities and procedures in society, but historically the embodied, practical, situation-specific knowledge of the craftsman has been segregated from the theoretical, context-independent knowledge of the scientist. 15

What we are witnessing today is a negotiation of this divide between  embodied  and  conceptual  knowledge,  suggesting  that knowledge  originating  in  or  through  practice  may  be  put  to work beyond its particular context. Following the lead of Arjun Appadurai 16 by way of Mieke Bal, the task at hand is 'to develop a dialogic sensibility that makes it possible to learn mutually from contact with different modes of doing research.' 17 That is, to work the intensities and pursue the potentialities of these encounters perhaps  even  to  seek  generalizable  applications  for  knowledge generated through practice, in other words, to theorise. In recent decades, artistic research has become a prevalent and institutionalised  example  of  such  a  mould-breaking  activity  in  which  the artist through his or her practice establishes a particular kind of questioning and enables a particular form of knowledge production.

The aim of this article is to propose how a curatorial practice likewise can engender a certain form of knowledge production. To this end this article hinges on the notion of practice-led research, which designates research endeavours that seek to advance knowledge about or within practice. 18

## A COMMISSION IN NEED IS A COMMISSION INDEED

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), a commission concerns 'a particular task or duty' that someone is entrusted or charged with, and this particularity almost demands the kind of need  that  Gayatri  Chakravorty  Spivak  identifies  in  her  preface to  the  English  translation  of  Derrida's Of  Grammatology .  Here Spivak notes, ' Although we customarily say that the text is autonomous and self-sufficient, there would be no justification for our activity [of interpretation] if we did not feel that the text needed interpretation.' 19 Spivak is  talking  about  a  text,  but  might  this observation not also apply to other things, archives for example, and especially an archive that, as it turns out, is haunted by its former domicile? Neither autonomous nor self-sufficient, the DR Archive comes across as a vestigial structure in dire need of interpretation.

Now,  I  would  argue  that  all  art  commissions  regardless  of whether they concern archives, public spaces, exhibitions, public art collections or private ones respond to some sort of need and, furthermore, that they hinge on a presumption that the commissioned artwork can satisfy this need. Anne Pasternak has argued that most public art projects respond to a need, for example the need to uplift a public site, 20 which the artwork in turn is expected to fulfil. In fact, the Per cent for art programme, 21 which requires public sector bodies to devote a small percentage of construction budgets to art commissions, is in a certain sense an institutionalisation of this need. But an exhibition curator may also recognise a need for a new work by a specific artist in order to realise a curatorial concept, and an art collector might equally discern in his or her collection (or in that of an art institution) a need owing to aesthetic, art historical, or pecuniary reasons. This need translates as a motivation or a drive, as an impulse to pursue a particular goal - namely that of satisfying the need - but this goal is, crucially, one that the commissioner cannot achieve without the help of someone else. To this end, the act of commissioning testifies to an ability to identify a need, and to delegate the task of responding to this need to someone else, and in the case of the DR Archive - this chunk of cultural heritage - the need for interpretation is nothing short of a responsibility that we, as inheritors, must assume.

## THE POLITICS OF DELEGATION

In addition to designating what the commission entails, i.e. 'a particular task or duty,' the OED definition of the commission also specifies how this particular task or duty is assigned to someone, and that is in the form of entrusting or charging. It goes without saying that entrusting someone with a task is different from the act  of  charging;  entrusting  implies  confidence,  it  speaks  to  the importance of the task and suggests that the artist is particularly qualified to take on the task. Charging, on the other hand, is an order and in this capacity authoritative and decidedly restrictive; it instructs the artist to act in a prescribed manner and to execute a particular kind of work. As I will argue in the following, the art commission  would  appear  to  comprise  both  meanings,  because like  any  kind  of  collaboration,  the  commission  is  conditioned by  the  relative  positions  and  privileges  of  the  people  involved, making it a potentially complex negotiation of power relations. The commissioner surely operates from a position of authority by gatekeeping institutional and financial resources, but the realization of the commission relies entirely on the agency of the artist. Commissioning  is,  in  other  words,  also  a  matter  of  delegating authority and thus empowering the artist to respond to a need that the commissioner cannot manage single-handedly.

Historically, the authority of the commissioner was, however, practically  boundless:  for  many  centuries,  an  artist's  livelihood was entirely dependent on patronage, and artworks were primarily produced on commission. With the emergence of new social forms in the 19th century, the patronal relation gradually became less influential due to a growing art market and the introduction of a new group of intermediaries such as dealers,  agents  and  critics,  and later gallerists and curators. 22 The relation between commissioner and artist has, in other words, become less lopsided and more complex over the years. Unsurprisingly, to this day, the commissioner continues to hold considerable sway: Already the act of initiation gives  the  commissioner  the  upper  hand  -  I  approach  Dahlberg and Olsson - and I not only offer them an opportunity to work and show their work, but also access to an otherwise inaccessible archive, institutional frameworks, a research project, a budget and a fee, and my undivided curatorial attention. All of these things of course make up a desirable framework for an artist, but they also constitute a notable curatorial leverage.

I, on the other hand, also depend on the artists, first of all to accept the commissions and in a certain sense sanction the project, and second to realize the commissions. Unlike many commissioners, I did not ask Dahlberg and Olsson for a concept or sketch beforehand because their approaches and choices in relation to the DR Archive also was a key aspect of the project. Besides, research in an  archive  is  almost  by  definition  a  time-consuming  affair  and of course requires access to the archive, a privilege only granted to  LARM  researchers  and  students.  So,  in  order  to  access  the DR Archive, they would have to be formally associated with the project.  Bureaucratic dictates aside, I was not only interested in the  artworks that Dahlberg and Olsson would produce, but also in their processes with the DR Archive, the archival records they would seek out and the particular ways in which they would conduct these explorations. My commission of Dahlberg and Olsson was, in turn, based on their previous work as well as studio visits and preliminary conversations about the project, but nothing concrete as to the specific direction of their work with the DR Archive. In other words, in addition to charging them with a particular task, I also placed a great deal of trust in Dahlberg and Olsson, and by taking on the commissions, they came to condition my relation to the DR Archive and essentially define the project.

## THE WORKINGS OF THE COMMISSION

In addition to the power relations negotiated by the commissionerartist relationship, a host of context-related factors also condition the commission, for example the users and producers of the site in question, its physical conditions as well as political and regulatory issues, the budget, institutional procedures etc. While each of these factors may influence the commission in critical ways, I would like to focus my attention on the main components of the commission, namely DR Archive,  commissioner/curator,  artists  and  ensuing  artworks,  and particularly the constellation that they enter into on account of my commission. So, although the diagram below might appear to be a self-contained set of relations, it does of course not exist in a vacuum.

Now, just to be clear: In this diagram, I consider the commissioner and the curator to be one and the same person, because that is how things stand in my project. However, in the case of a public art commission these functions are often split between a board or a committee that selects and commissions the artist, and a curator who facilitates the artist's realisation of the commission. In such a case, the curator would in a certain sense also be commissioned to realise a specific task, which would require two interlinked diagrams. While such an explication exceeds the focus of this article, I would argue that the diagram has general usability beyond my commission of Dahlberg and Olsson.

Dahlberg / Olsson Commissioner / curator

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Diagram of the commission Let me explain the diagram: As I have just argued, the commission is conditioned by a need that I - the commissioner - identify in the DR Archive, a need that I, it would appear, am unable to satisfy on my own but that registers with me as a compulsion to act and settle this disturbance. I, in turn, commission Dahlberg and Olsson to engage with the DR Archive, and as I have already discussed, the politics of this assignment are intricate, to say the least. Due to  the  specificity  of  the  task,  my  act  of  commissioning  already instigates  the  relation  between  the  DR  Archive  and  the  artists, and they, in turn, actualise this relation through their engagement with the archive. The artworks at the bottom of the diagram are already  prefigured  by  Dahlberg  and  Olsson's  acceptance  of  the commission, which constitutes a promise to produce artworks and realise the commissions. The artists' relation to the artworks is, in turn, crucially a process of figuring something out and in doing so substantiating a pledge. To this end, the position of the artworks in  the  diagram  designates  both  the promise of  artworks  and  the artworks as actually realised in exhibition or performance tour.

It  goes without saying that as commissioner and curator, my relation  to  the  artworks  differs  from  that  of  the  artists.  Strictly speaking, it pertains to realising the artworks in Dahlberg's exhibition and Olsson's performance tour as well as to my interpretation of  them.  Because  no  matter  how  I  facilitate  the  conception  and production  of  the  artworks,  it  is,  of  course,  processed  through the  artists  (the  curator-artists-artworks  relation).  Our  respective processes  come  together  in  Dahlberg's  exhibition  and  Olsson's performance  tour,  but  how  we  get  there,  and  how  we  interpret these  realisations  are  inevitably  different  as  indicated  by  our different  relations  to  the  artworks  in  the  diagram.  The  relation between the artworks and the DR Archive is also forged by the act of  commissioning in the sense that the artworks respond to the need that the commission actualizes. The question is, of course, whether the artworks really are able to satisfy this need. Whether they truly can meet their supposed purpose and, once and for all, settle the matters that prompted the commission in the first place. Or might the commission promise too much? Do we, the artists and myself, really know what we are getting ourselves into when we commit ourselves to the DR Archive by way of the commission? Keeping in mind the inscrutable distribution of the DR archive, it would appear that we do not know what this thing called the DR Archive is, and therefore cannot truly understand what it demands of  us.  So  how  can  we  ever  make  good  on  our  promise? 23 I  will return to this question towards the end of the article.

Other  than  laying  out  the  positions  and  immediate  relations brought about by the commission, the diagram also brings to light a number of indirect relations owing to the commission. All positions are, as a consequence, also perspectives to engage through and to be  affected  by;  for  example,  the  artworks  provide  me  with  new points of entry to the DR Archive, just as the DR Archive for me becomes a gateway to the artists' work. The artists provide me with new perspectives on the DR Archive, and I, moreover, become a go-between in the artists' relation to the DR Archive - something that proved especially important as the matter of copyright turned out to be much more complicated than expected with regards to the DR Archive. When it comes to determining the relations that the act of commissioning puts in place, the diagram is, in other words, a very useful device - at least in principle.

## PRECARIOUS THINGS

Earlier, I speculated that the act of commissioning would appear to suggest that I, in the capacity of commissioner, am unable to handle the task of engaging with the DR Archive single-handedly. Rather than testifying to incapacity on my part, I would argue that we practically never take on any such problems on our own. Of course, not everyone resorts to literally asking someone else to join the inquiry, as I have done here, but do we not always gather around  a  problem  a  number  of  relevant  and  concerned  parties that can help identify and discuss the matter in question? Do we not negotiate, complicate and dispute our problems with others, regardless of whether they are present in the flesh or just virtually there, in the form of their writings? Assembling such inquisitive get-togethers  is  how  Bruno  Latour  proposes  that  we  deal  with matters that prove non-factual and uncertain, or matters of concern , 24 and taken together, the gathering and the matter of concern translate as an analytical gesture, or what Latour terms a thing .

Drawing  on  the  etymological  root  of  the  word  thing,  which designates archaic (and some modern) assemblies, Latour argues, 'the Ding designates both those who assemble because they are concerned as well as what causes their concerns and divisions.' 25 What I would like to do here is to consider the commission as an analytical gesture along the lines of Latour's thing. In addition to Latour's thing, there is, however, already another thing at work on these pages, namely Derrida's thing, an unnameable and undecidable thing,  which,  for  that  reason,  Derrida  also  refers  to  as  spectre, ghost or spirit. 26 Derrida' s thing is not a thing but some thing, and this  thing  haunts  us  and  demands  a  response.  Derrida's  thing  is a trace of something that once was - much like the DR Archive, as I demonstrated earlier. So, while I propose to consider the commission as an analytical gesture along the lines of Latour's thing, the matter of concern around which we gather, the DR Archive, is undeniably more of a Derridian thing.

To assemble is, according to Latour, the task of the critic, 27 a  task  that,  in  the  case  of  the  commission,  would  belong  to  the curator. I assemble by selecting and commissioning Dahlberg and Olsson to engage with a matter of concern - the DR Archive - that we, in turn, engage with in multifarious ways without necessarily being able to come to terms with it. 28 Conducting such inquiries is, however, a rather assiduous undertaking. Latour argues that the critic (or the curator in this case) is someone 'for whom, if something is constructed, then it means it is fragile and thus in great need of care and caution.' 29 Latour, however, does not elaborate any further on the functions of this care and caution, but since he has introduced the notion of a matter of concern - an altogether precarious construct - it would appear that there is a need for care. In the essay 'Personal Support: How to Care? ,' Jan Verwoert argues that  care  precisely  is  conditioned  by  a  need  on  the  part  of  the person, we care about, that is, 'the power to care comes to us from someone else ' 30 -or, as would be the case here, from something else.

Now,  although  the  commission  might  appear  rather  sturdy judging by the diagram above, it is, as it happens, a fragile construction. By resorting to a diagram one is always in danger of oversimplifying a particular set of circumstances; in fact, this diagram is a simplification of the practice of commissioning, and in practice the relations of this constellation were not as assertive and resilient as they might appear on paper. We are, after all, dealing with a matter of concern here, and like most curatorial processes there were a number of challenges and issues to work through in order to realise the commissions. Practically everything I did throughout the processes with Dahlberg and Olsson translates as caring for the relations depicted in the diagram, for example, obtaining a three month residency in Copenhagen for Dahlberg, securing exhibition and performance venues, hosting the relation to the DR Archive and its archivist, discussing ideas and processes with the artists, negotiating  copyright  issues  for  Olsson's  performance,  fundraising,  installing  Dahlberg's  show,  accompanying  Olsson  on  his performance tour etc. All of these efforts were of course directed towards realizing the commissions and hereby responding to the archive's need for interpretation, which means that by tending to the realisation of the artworks, I was ultimately caring for a matter of  concern  beyond  the  artworks,  namely  the  DR  Archive. 31 Or, put  differently,  caring  for  Latour's  thing  and  hereby  facilitating the  realisation  of  the  commissions  also  translates  as  caring  for Derrida's thing. Now, the notion of care entered this discussion as a constitutive function of Latour's thing - an analytical gesture on which I am modelling the commission as a mode of inquiry - but this manoeuvre also poses an ineluctable problem. Because, when it comes to the curator-artist relationship, the notion of care and the  need  that  it  responds  to  are  profoundly  contested,  as  I  will outline in the following.

## REINVIGORATING CURATORIAL CARE

The  curator  is  both  etymologically  and  historically  linked  to a  notion  of  caring.  The  Latin cura designates  care,  solicitude, carefulness, thought and concern, 32 and the main function of the traditional curator was precisely to care for art objects in museum collections. The kind of curator that care is associated with was someone who worked 'with collections out of sight of the public' in contrast to today's curator, who occupies 'a more central position on a much broader stage.' 33 Heinich  and  Pollak  argue  that  this new position of the curator has emerged on account of a redistribution and redefinition of the traditional functions of the curator. What  used  to  be  the  lowest  ranking  function  of  the  traditional curator - that of displaying art to the public - has become the most prominent one. 34 In short, today exhibition making is the fulcrum of the curator's work, in turn making curatorial care - or at least a particular kind of curatorial care - obsolete.

It would, in other words, appear to be almost regressive to reclaim caring as a curatorial attribute; Charles Esche has even noted that we, in principle, ought to come up with a different name than curator. 35 But perhaps we should not disregard the etymological implications of the curator too hastily. To care for something or someone does not have to be a tedious custodial type of caring, it can also be an aspirational mode of inquisitiveness, as this passage from an interview with Michel Foucault testifies to:

Curiosity is  a  vice  that  has  been  stigmatised  in  turn  by  Christianity, by philosophy, and even by a certain conception of science. Curiosity, futility. The word, however, pleases me. To me it suggests something altogether different: it evokes 'concern'; it  evokes  the  care  one  takes  for  what  exists  and  could  exist; a  readiness  to  find  strange  and  singular  what  surrounds  us;

a  certain  relentlessness  to  break  up  the  familiarities  and  to regard otherwise the same things, a fervour to grasp what is happening and what passes; a casualness in regard to the traditional hierarchies of the important and the essential. 36

It  is  of  course  no  small  task  to  aspire  to  Foucault's  suggestions on this matter. He reinvigorates the obsolete etymological association  between  curiosity,  care  and  concern,  which  infuses the notion of care with an altogether different attitude. He speaks about  'the  care  one  takes  for  what  exists  and  could  exist,'  and 'a certain relentlessness to break up the familiarities and to regard otherwise the same thing.' 37 What we have here is, in other words, a passionate and persistent kind of care; one that seeks out new paths,  cultivates  possibilities,  and  reconfigures  what  we  already know - all of this with a certain measure of tenacity. It is indeed an  intriguing  attitude  that  Foucault  evokes,  one  that  desires  to 'know more, and better, and something else,' 38 as he recounts a little earlier in the same interview. As it happens, in the company of curiosity and concern, care becomes a truly desirable research attitude - not least when inquiring by way of practice, and a curatorial one at that. Foucault, it would seem, enables us to reconceptualise the curator-as-carer as someone who cares and cares to operate differently.

But one thing is attitude and research aspirations, another is the function of curatorial care in relation to the artist, who, according to  Boris  Buden,  would  appear  to  have  replaced  the  artwork  as the primary receiver of curatorial care. 39 This shift complicates matters  considerably  as  it  raises  the  somewhat  controversial question:  are  artists  really  in  need  of  a  curator's  care?  Do  we not,  rather,  consider  the  artistic  practice  as  self-sufficient?  My answers to both these questions are yes: yes, the artist is in need of a curator's care, and yes, the artistic practice is self-sufficient. But how can curatorial care both be needed and unnecessary at the same time? Neither Latour's analytical gesture nor Foucault's aspirational attitude can grasp this confounding modus operandi of  caring,  but  the  question  of  a  conditioning  need  is  also  noncontroversial in both these cases: Latour's matter of concern is intrinsically in need of perusal and analysis, and Foucault's inquisitive research attitude could be said to respond to a perpetual need of just about any field of study. So, in the case of the curator-artist relationship, my suggestion is this: might we consider the workings of curatorial care along the lines of how Derrida devises his confounding, double-edged concept of the supplement? 40 Not in order to designate every single curatorial action that I performed in relation to the artists but rather to identify the structural workings of this relationship.

To be needed and unnecessary at the same time does undeniably come across as conflicting attributes, but that is exactly how Derrida's supplement works. The concept is basically a combination of the two different meanings of a supplement, namely on the one hand  something  that  compensates  incompleteness,  and  on  the other hand something that adds to completeness. In combination, these  significations  are  however  far  from  simple.  Much  like  an appendix to a book, Derrida's supplement substitutes incompleteness  by  being  added  as  an  external  adjunct  to  something  that purportedly  already  is  complete  in  itself.  Derrida  writes,  'the supplement  supplements.  It  adds  only  to  replace.  It  intervenes  or insinuates itself in-the-place-of ; if it fills to the brim [ comble ], it is as if one fills [ comble ] a void.' 41 That is to say , there is an inadequacy , a lack or indeed a need that the supplement can compensate but, crucially, never fulfil, which means that the supplement in a certain sense replaces one deficiency with another. The supplement is, however, also and at the same time superfluous; it 'adds itself, it  is  a  surplus, a plenitude enriching another plenitude, the zenith [ le comble ] of presence,' as Derrida puts it. 42 In this sense, the supplement cannot add anything, because it is added to something that seemingly  is  self-sufficient  and  complete.  Or,  more  plainly  put, modelled on Derrida's supplement, my curatorial care is simultaneously too little and too much. When the supplement compensates incompleteness, it is always insufficient and leaves behind a new incompleteness - a new need for care, so to speak - and when it is added to something that (purportedly) is self-sufficient, it can add nothing but spills over and enriches the artists' practices from the outside. That these two meanings coincide in the concept of the supplement is indeed perplexing, and while one may become 'discreetly  vague  before  the  other'  or  even  effaced, 43 it  means that my curatorial care only will be added to the artists' practices as  an  exterior  presence  if  their  practices  have  an  insufficiency that  my  care  can  compensate.  Derrida's  supplement  truly  works in mysterious ways - even Derrida himself admits that it almost is inconceivable to reason. 44 Modelled on Derrida's supplement, my curatorial  care  forms  part  without  being  part  of  the  artists' practices, it belongs without belonging, and it is needed and unnecessary at one and the same time. That is to say, my curatorial care has the peculiar status of a much-needed spare part that at the same time is excessive and hence dispensable.

## FOR FUTURE REFERENCE

What we have here is, in other words, three different kinds of curatorial care that designate three key components of my commission of Dahlberg and Olsson. First, an assiduous analytical practice that tends to a matter of concern as per Latour by facilitating the realisation of the commissions, which means that my care ultimately is directed at something beyond the artwork, here the DR Archive. Second, an inquisitive research attitude that cultivates 'what exists and  could  exist' ,  as  Foucault  would  have  it  -  an  aspiration  that would  appear  to  be  especially  pivotal  when  endeavouring  to conduct research by way of practice - and finally, a supplementary curatorial  care  for  the  artist  modelled  on  Derrida's  supplement. A care that ties the artist and the curator together in a confounding relationship:  one  that  does  not  deny  that  an  artist's  practice  is self-sufficient, but maintains that it always is open to something other than itself, and, as it happens, affected by it.

The inscrutable  logic  of  Derrida's  supplement  also  offers  an answer to the question that I left hanging earlier about whether the  commissioned  artworks  indeed  can  satisfy  the  need  that they respond to, and the answer is, unsurprisingly , no - and here is why: no matter the ingeniousness of Dahlberg and Olsson's artworks they cannot possibly meet the archive's perpetual need for interpretation. As suspected earlier, the commission does indeed promise too much: We cannot be done with the archive because we cannot truly know it, but every act of interpretation inscribes itself  in  the  archive, 45 which means that the artworks transform the archive and, not least, its need for interpretation. At the same time, the archive, however, also defies such designation. There is, according to Derrida, a strong desire for archival self-sufficiency and synchrony, a compulsion to gather together and coordinate the archive as an ideal configuration notwithstanding that the archive inherently is incomplete. Derrida calls this illusion of an ordered unity consignation , 46 and up against this defining feature of the archive the artworks cannot add anything. There is, to paraphrase and simplify Derrida's own explanation, no void to be filled because it is already full, and for that reason the artworks are a surplus that certainly enriches the archive but strictly speaking are adjunctive and superfluous. The intended purpose of the commissioned artworks is, in other words, one that cannot be met. There will always be a new need to tend to, in fact, the commissioned artworks engender this new need, and that, I would argue, is also the case when art collections or public spaces occasion a commission. As should be  clear  by  now,  this  perplexing  inadequacy  of  the  commission does, however, not make it a futile endeavour, but on the contrary a most urgent one, especially in the case of an archive.

At the beginning of this article, I briefly introduced a general notion of the curatorial 47 posed by Sheikh in order to indicate the direction of this inquiry. But, as it happens, the line of reasoning that this article has produced not only hinges on a general notion of the curatorial, it performs a rather specific one. Unlike most other  commentators, 48 Irit  Rogoff  decidedly  distinguishes  the curatorial from the activity of curating, something she has pointed out on several occasions. 49 The difference is fleshed out with particular clarity in a preface co-authored by Rogoff and Jean-Paul Martinon to the book The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating . Here,  Rogoff  and  Martinon  explain  that  in  contrast  to  curating, which can be said to deliver a promise of an exhibition, for example, and hence of redemption to come, 50 the curatorial opens up a space of theoretical reflection and speculation that upsets the process of fulfilling this promise. 51 They argue that the curatorial 'explores all that takes place on the stage set-up, both intentionally and unintentionally, by the curator and views it as an event of knowledge.' 52 The act of commissioning precisely takes place on such a stage set-up, and on the previous pages I have offered a way to open it up to thinking. This propensity towards the curatorial is not a covert denunciation of curating on my part - my practice as a curator is after all the impetus and driving force behind this article. But faced, as I am, with an archive, the finality of curating and the redemption that it offers seem to suggest that we can in fact come to terms with the archive and lay the past to rest, and that is not an option if we again look to Derrida. Locking the door and turning away from the archive would be detrimental; as Derrida puts it, 'we know better than ever today that the dead must be able to work.' 53 The curatorial, on the other hand, is an on-going activity that does not  seek  cessation  but  has  acknowledged  that  the  exhibition  or any other momentary coming together of knowledges merely is a stopover in a process, as Rogoff has noted, 54 or, if we stay with Derrida: that the meaning always is deferred. The notion of the curatorial would, in other words, appear to be a crucial perspective when addressing an archive through curating.

1. Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 3.
2. Ibid. 84.
3. Funded by The National Programme for Research Infrastructure, the interdisciplinary research project LARM developed a digital research infrastructure to facilitate researchers' access to the Danish radiophonic cultural heritage. The project also comprised a number of humanistic research projects into the DR Archive. For further information, see LARM, 'About LARM' LARM Audio Research Archive, accessed July 20, 2016, https://larm.sites.ku.dk/about-larm/. This article is based on my PhD thesis We Can (Not) Work It Out: A Curatorial Inquiry into the Danish Radio Archive (Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, 2015).
4. The performance premiered at Studio 4 at the DR Concert House in Copenhagen on January 10, 2013, and during the remainder of the month Olsson visited Viborg Kunsthal, Esbjerg Art Museum, Horsens Art Museum, Kunsthal Nord, Krognos Huset (SE), Sorø Art Museum, Krabbesholm Højskole and The Culture Yard, Elsinore.
5. For analyses of Olsson's performance and one of the works in Dahlberg's exhibition, see Trine Friis Sørensen, 'Historically Speaking - on Temporalities and Documents in a Performance by Olof Olsson,' in Maska - Performing Arts Journal 30, issue 172-174 (2015): 148-157, and Trine Friis Sørensen, 'Judith Shakespeare - Undead or Alive? On Kajsa Dahlberg's Artist Book A Room of One's Own / A Thousand Libraries, ' in Notes on Location 1,2, ed. Nanna Stjernholm Jepsen, Signe Kahr Sørensen, and Eller med a, (Copenhagen: Eller med a, 2016), 76-85.
6. Just to be clear, I differentiate between the specific act of commissioning and the broad and diverse activity of curating, which also includes commissioning. While my focus here is commissioning, it does, however, not make much sense to scrutinize it in isolation as I necessarily facilitate the commission of Dahlberg and Olsson through my curatorial practice.
7. Locating the Producers: Durational Approaches to Public Art , ed. Paul O'Neill and Claire Doherty (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2010) is concerned with durational processes in the context of public art commissions, and Louisa Buck and Daniel McClean, Commissioning Contemporary Art. A Handbook for Curators, Collectors, and Artists (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2012) provides a comprehensive introduction to the history and practices of commissioning, but none of the publications engage specifically with the implications of commissioning.
8. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx. The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (New York, London: Routledge, 2006), 67.
9. Cf. Curating Research , ed. Paul O'Neill and Mick Wilson (London and Amsterdam: Open Editions and de Appel, 2015).
10.  Simon Sheikh, 'Towards the Exhibition as Research,' in Curating Research, ed. Paul O'Neill and Mick Wilson, (London and Amsterdam: Open Editions and de Appel, 2015): 33-34.
11.  Nathalie Heinich and Michael Pollak, 'From Museum Curator to Exhibition Auteur,' in Thinking about Exhibitions , ed. Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson, and Sandy Nairne (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 235.
12.  Cf. Paul O'Neill, The Culture Of Curating And The Curating Of Culture(s) (Cambridge, MA; London: The MIT Press, 2012), 9.
13.  Cf. Heinich and Pollak, 'From Museum Curator to Exhibition Auteur.'
14.  Cf. Beatrice von Bismarck, 'Curatorial Criticality - On the Role of Freelance Curators in the Field of Contemporary Art,' Oncurating.org, no. 9 (2011): 19-23.
15.  Mikkel Bogh and Frederik Tygstrup, 'Working the Interface: New Encounters between Art and Academia,' in Investigação Em Arte E Design: Fendas No Método E Na Criação , ed. José Quaresma, Fernando Paulo Rosa Dias and Juan Carlos Ramos Guadix (Lisboa: Edição CIEBA, 2010), 103.
16.  Cf. Arjun Appadurai, 'Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination,' Public Culture 12, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 8-13.
17.  Mieke Bal, 'Research Practice: New Words on Cold Cases,' in What Is Research in the Visual Arts?: Obsession, Archive, Encounter, ed. Michael Ann Holly and Marquard Smith (Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2008), 209.
18.  According to Creativity and Cognition Studios (CCS) at University of Technology Sydney, practice-led research 'is concerned with the nature of practice and is directed towards generating new knowledge that has operational significance for that practice (…). Such research includes practice as an integral part of its method…' Cf. CCS, 'Differences between Practice-Based and PracticeLed Research', http://www.creativityandcognition. com/research/practice-based-research/differencesbetween-practice-based-and-practice-led-research/, accessed August 3, 2016.
19.  Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 'Translator's Preface,' in Of Grammatology , by Jacques Derrida (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2016), xcvii.
20.  Anne Pasternak, 'The Why: Foreword,' in Creative Time , ed. Ruth A. Peltason (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), 11.
21.  Buck and McClean, Commissioning Contemporary Art, 43-44.
22.  Cf. Buck and McClean, op.cit., 22, and Jonathan Harris, Art History: The Key Concepts (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 229.
23.  This rumination is in part based on Leonard Lawlor's account of the logic of the promise in Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Phenomenology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 217-221.
24.  Bruno Latour, 'From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik or How to Make Things Public,' in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy , ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Cambridge, MA and Karlsruhe: MIT Press and ZKM, 2005), 6.
25.  Ibid., 13.
26.  Derrida, Specters of Marx, 5.
27.  Bruno Latour, 'Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,' in Critical Inquiry 30, no. 2 (2004): 246.
28.  Latour, 'From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik,' 5.
29.  Latour, 'Why Has Critique Run out of Steam?': 246.

30.  Jan Verwoert, 'Personal Support: How to Care?' in Support Structures , ed. Celine Condorelli (Berlin and New York: Sternberg Press, 2009), 165.
31.  Simon Sheikh has made a similar suggestion in a recent article in which he suggests that we must 'expand our notion of care' and consider a curator's care as 'a taking care of the world.' That is, a care that goes beyond the traditional stomping ground of the curator and tends to the world at large. Cf. Simon Sheikh, 'Curation and Futurity,' in The Curatorial Conundrum: What to Study? What to Research? What to Practice? , ed. Paul O'Neill, Mick Wilson, and Lucy Steeds (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press), 157.
32.  Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879) http://www.perseus. tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0059.
33.  O'Neill, The Culture Of Curating, 9.
34.  Heinich and Pollak, 'From Museum Curator to Exhibition Auteur,' 235. In a recent article, Helena Reckitt highlights a new curatorial skill that has proven indispensible for the curator of late, namely that of 'deploying affective labour in order to maintain social relations', which she identifies as a redefinition of curatorial care. Helena Reckitt, 'Support Acts: Curating, Caring and Social Reproduction,' in Journal of Curatorial Studies 5, no. 1 (2016): 8.
35.  Charles Esche, 'Beti Zerovc Interviews Charles Esche,' in Modest Proposals , ed. Serkan Ozkaya (Istanbul: Baglam Publishing, 2005), 57.
36.  Michel Foucault, 'The Masked Philosopher,' in Foucault Live: Collected Interviews, 1961-1984, ed. Sylvère Lotringer, trans. Lysa Hochroth and John Johnston (New York: Semiotext(e), 1996), 305.
37.  Ibid.
38.  Ibid.
39.  Boris Buden, 'The Wine Was Very Good: On the Task of the Curator,' MJ: Manifesta Journal: Journal of Contemporary Curatorship 10 (2010),: 7.
40.  Boris Groys has made a similar suggestion stating that 'curating acts like a supplement or a 'pharmacon' (in Derrida's usage).' Developing his argument, Groys, however, pursues the notion of the pharmacon and the word curator's etymological tie to curing. Boris Groys, 'On the Curatorship,' in Art Power (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 46.
41.  Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology , trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), 157.
42.  Ibid.
43.  Ibid., 158.
44.  Ibid., 171.
45.  Derrida, Archive Fever , 67.
46.  Ibid. , 3.
47.  Sheikh, 'Towards the Exhibition as Research,' 33-34.
48.  Cf. Maria Lind, 'The Curatorial,' in Selected Maria Lind Writing , ed. Brian Kuan Wood (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010), 63-66; Maria Lind, 'Performing the Curatorial: An Introduction,' in Performing the Curatorial: Within and Beyond Art, ed. Maria Lind (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012), 9-20; Curating Research , ed. O'Neill and Wilson, 11-23; and Beatrice von Bismarck, 'Curating/Curatorial: A Conversation between Irit Rogoff and Beatrice von Bismarck,' in Cultures of the Curatorial , ed. Jörn Schafaff, Thomas Weski, and Beatrice von Bismarck (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012), 22-38.
49.  Cf. Irit Rogoff, 'Smuggling - An Embodied Criticality [ sic ],' Transversal , August 2006. Accessed October 31 2016. http://eipcp.net/dlfiles/rogoff-smuggling, and Irit Rogoff, 'Curating/Curatorial: A Conversation between Irit Rogoff and Beatrice von Bismarck,' 22-38. In 2006, Rogoff and Jean-Paul Martinon founded the PhD research program Curatorial/Knowledge, which pivots on Rogoff's distinction between curating and the curatorial, see http://ck.kein.org/.
50.  Jean-Paul Martinon and Irit Rogoff, 'Preface,' in The Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating , ed. Jean-Paul Martinon (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), ix.
51.  Ibid., ix-x.
52.  Ibid., ix.
53.  Derrida, Specters of Marx, 120.
54.  Rogoff, 'Curating/Curatorial,' 27.