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Centre for Narrative Research, UEL‘To Think is To Experiment,’ 18 May 2011
Siyanda Ndlovu Memorial Lecture
Linda Sandino
“Both sides of the story”: narrative identity and the curatorial imagination
Curating Fashion at the V&A
Photos © Victoria and Albert Museum
Narrative Identity
The narrative constructs the
identity of the character, what
can be called his or her
narrative identity, in
constructing that of the story
told. It is the identity of the
story that makes the identity
of the character’. (Ricoeur,
Onself as Another, 1992, p.
147).Photo © Victoria and Albert Museum
The meaning problem
Problem of coming ‘to terms with the meaning problem, or shall
we say quest for meaning: the meaning or significance that we
give to our lives, to our being in the world. The question arises
again and again in the life of each individual in a particular, in fact,
unique, way and it hence requires a patient and ongoing
examination of the multifarious forms and practices in which
individuals make sense of their lives. (RFM p.217).
J. Brockmeier (2009) ‘Reaching for Meaning: Human
Agency and the Narrative Imagination’. Theory and
Psychology, vo. 19 (2), pp.213-233.
Radical Fashion, 2001
Photos © Victoria and Albert Museum
Radical
• originally ‘the humour or moisture once thought to be
present in all living organisms as a necessary condition of
their vitality,’ and it continues to denote a fundamental
quality ‘advocating thorough or far-reaching change’ (OED,
2008).
Narratives of curatorial identity
…you could say I didn’t [pause] stand up for what I started, but you could also say that I was pragmatic and I realised that actually you do need to balance the programme between very radical events and displays and slightly more accessible events and displays. So the pragmatic side of me thinks that actually you’ve done very well with the exhibitions that I did after that, but another part of me thinks that we could have been really bold […] but actually the Museum has many different audiences, so I feel very sort of Libran about it. I can see both sides of the story.
“I still felt it wasn’t me”
I didn’t like taking on an
existing exhibition… I like
generating new things.
Though having said that, it
did teach me a lot about
Italian fashion: I did really
understand the couture
and the, the couture
system, but I still felt it
wasn’t me.
Photo © Victoria and Albert Museum
‘Narrative imagination’
A form and practice of human agency, making it possible to explore ‘action possibilities’ in the past, in the present and in the future.
Narrative is the means by which this form of agency is made manifest (‘agentive discourse’). Contd/
Agentive discourse
‘Subjectivity, intentions, agency, participation, decision-
making, action possibilties, reasons for action […] all belong
to what Rom Harré (1995) has described as “agentive
discourse”. For Harré being an agent and discursively
presenting oneself as an agent are one and the same.’
(RFM, p.224).
Imagining “The possibilities”
‘Satellites of Fashion’ [1999] to V&A ‘Radical Fashion’
[2001] was ‘one of the sort of most creative periods I’ve
had really and I think I partially realised it at the time
because I seemed to have a sort of bubbling over of ideas. I
seemed to be unable to, to sort of contain my sort of
excitement at being here and the possibilities [..]there was
a wonderful opportunity which I saw and wanted to make
the absolute most of…
“I was thwarted… quite rightly”
… and I thought that we could do a wonderful exhibition
which was composed almost entirely of images, of
monitors, of holograms. I remember going along with this
idea and [Senior V&A staff] saying to me that I was
completely mad, that it was absolutely unheard of to have
an exhibition at the V&A without objects in […] So, so, sort
of – I was thwarted by this, and probably quite rightly so. I
don’t think probably we could have – I don’t think we had
the technology at the time to do this[…]
Curatorial imagination: “Ahead of myself”
I could actually see it and I can still see it now. And I think
had it been a few years further on, had the people working
had greater faith or greater imagination, then it might have
been agreed, but I think looking back on it, I’m glad it
became Radical Fashion because I don’t think people were
ready for exhibitions without objects in them: they are
now… the technology would have struggled and it would
probably have been very difficult to achieve. I still think it
was brilliant and I mean I think I knew even that even I was
ahead of myself in some way.’
Identification: life imitates art
What I particularly liked about fashion at that time, as I discovered it, was that it was completely [pause] – the ambition for fashion from people like Alexander McQueen and Japanese fashion designers, Margiela and Gaultier and Westwood and all the designers that I found so exciting, was that they, they seemed to be completely brave about how they approached the discipline. And it had all the wonderful craft, the skills of the atelier and it had functions to an extent, but those were not seen as constraints on creativity but almost as vehicles of creativity, and I think that’s what I found so exciting…
Creative Identity
• ‘I like generating new things’.
• ‘I felt I was my own brand really’.
• ‘I didn’t want to say what we were going to have in the
exhibition until the last possible minute.’
• ‘…the Museum trying to mould me into something I
wasn’t.’
Identity and meaning: artist and curator
”Bruner discusses the ‘problem of the Self’ as a problem of
cultural meaning construction. He suggests focusing “upon
the meanings in terms of which Self is defined both by the
individual and by the culture in which he or she
participates’. (Acts of Meaning, 1990, p.116-7 cited in RFM).
Choice between the bureaucratic culture of the Museum and
the creative freedom of the artist.
“Something that’s in me”
I did a display in Buckingham Palace, last year I think, with
a group of people from the department and it was for one
evening only, and they were all amazed at the amount of
focused attention and time I gave the actual display. I
mean I wouldn’t rest until I felt everything was as close to
perfect as it could be. And so when we put in the
installation, they were sort of basically, you know, going to
go and I said, “Well, no, we’ve only just started.” And they
said, “But the objects are in place.” And I said, “No, no this
is where the work begins.” contd/
contd/
I think I spent another sort of two hours moving things a
millimetre or moving a collar, and I think it’s that sort of
incredible attention to detail that, that I know I see and
other people don’t; and I know that it’s vital to the absolute
quality of a finished display, and I think it’s something
that’s in me anyway, a kind of perfectionism […] contd/
contd/
it’s that sort of [pause] that incredibly calm space you’re in just before you finish something where it’s nearly perfect but there’s another invisible level only you see, and I, when I’m that state of mind […] then I become oblivious to everything that’s happening around me. It’s as if I go into this sort of great calm space where I […] - I can see, I can see molecules almost of the display and I know the molecules are not perfectly aligned, that they can be even better; and if I have to rush that last stage or, or stop before I’m ready, I’m very unhappy, and I think it’s that, that sort of precision, forensic precision that, that turns things that are great into the sublime.
“The deal”
I’ve just begun working on the redisplay of Gallery 40,
that’s what I’m going to be doing for the next year. I’m just
going to ignore the problems of the cases and the lighting
and just compensate by choosing objects that look good
whatever the lighting and by having a really clear narrative
and doing something hopefully quite innovative and fresh
and arresting […]; and in a way, I think that that’s actually
the deal, that’s part of the challenge and I’ll make it
amazing.
Narrative Identity and imagination
1. Function of narrative: concordance discordant synthesisNarrative identity is ‘constitutive of self-constancy, can include change, mutability, within the cohesion of one lifetime.’ (Ricoeur, time and Narrative, vol. 3 1988, p.246).
2. Narrative imagination: ‘what makes narrative such a flexible form and vehicle of imagination is its capacity to tap into multiple frameworks of meaning that draw on both real [the Museum] and fictive [the Artist] scenarios of agency’. (RFM, p.227).