Alex Klein
Welcome to the I is for Institute Podcast. My name is Alex Klein, the Dorothy and Stephen R. Weber (CHE '60) Curator at ICA, the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In this series, you will hear from our colleagues working in contemporary arts organizations around the world about their individual perspectives on the work they are doing to shape and imagine different institutional models. At this critical moment when museums and their infrastructures are being reevaluated, these dialogues highlight pressing concerns for artists, art workers, arts institutions, and their publics. We invite you to follow these ongoing conversations and to access the archive at our website www.iisforinstitute.icaphila.org. In this episode, we begin with the importance of naming. I'm joined in conversation by Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Director of the Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam. We will revisit the external pressures and the internal decision process that led to the renaming of the organization, formerly known as the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art to Kunstinstituut Melly, and discuss the importance of language for inclusivity.
Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy
My name is Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy and I'm the director of the institution called Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam. I took the position of director in late 2017, and my tenure began in January 2018.
AK
Thank you so much for sitting down with us Sofía. It's such a pleasure to be in conversation with you. Can you introduce us to the organizational history of Kunstinstituut Melly and the context for its founding?
SHCC
So, we were founded in 1990. And it was an institution that was very different from any institution that was in the city of Rotterdam at that time. We were conceived by a group of cultural policymakers during the 1980s who really dreamed of having an institution presenting primarily international contemporary art in the city of Rotterdam. There was already a well-known international film festival, which is still running today, known as the IFFR (International Film Festival Rotterdam), and the city also hosted an international poetry festival. A number of policymakers had been doing research as to what type of institution could create or help create a contemporary art scene in the city of Rotterdam. And they found an empty building on the street called Witte de Withstraat in the center of Rotterdam. It was not fully empty, it was a 19th century four-story building, quite big for the scale of Rotterdam at that time, and it was partially abandoned. So, it was originally constructed as a women's school in the late 19th century, and by the 1980s, this building had been partially abandoned, so only the floors downstairs were occupied by a school and the floors upstairs were vacant. The city or the Stichting, the Art Foundation, felt that it was a perfect spot to occupy and create an art center there. And it was a perfect spot because it was right in the middle of two other points that were relevant in the city for them: One of them was the museum of the city called the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. And that was pretty much on the West, but on the same street. And on the East, also on the same street was their project for repositioning an already existing maritime museum and bringing it over to the city center. So that's how it is. Long story, but ultimately I think it's important to get a sense of the geography.
AK
This is wonderful because you're giving us a sense of how the organization fits within the local ecology. You mentioned that it was begun with the idea of creating an art scene. Has it always been devoted to an engagement with the contemporary? What was the founding mission?
SHCC
We were called the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art. That's how we were registered in the fall of 1989. The theory is not part of the name, it just is contemporary art. But ultimately, the institution was made to present contemporary art and theory. If you really think about that this is happening in 1989, the world is really changing at this time, right? I mean, not only is the Berlin Wall coming down and Europe is reorganizing itself. I mean, it's just a very different sense of the world by the start of 1990. And “theory” is really the buzzword of the 1980s. I mean, this is really for art, and for cultural studies at large, it's really when we see a rise of discursivity, not coming necessarily from, say, psychoanalysis or art history as it preceded that, but really moving on to the combination of a critical interpretation that is what we call today “intersectional.” There is not only a social art history being present, but also an exploration of visual culture at large and without a style and without a reconsideration through postmodernism, of the way images are working. Theory was also fundamental in the 1980s to be able to identify the critique that has to emerge between art and artifact. And because of that, between identity politics, so really, theory is not only part of the mission, but it's also a sign of the times in terms of what was the direction that the institution would be taking.
AK
That's also super interesting to think about how that kind of criticality is embedded within it. I always think of your organization as having a very critically minded program in that respect. A very reflective, theoretically driven exhibition program, or that there's debates that are literally coming out of the walls. And to that point, I'm really interested to hear about how your personal trajectory as a curator and a director might have led you to this organization? And thinking about some of your previous work. Can you give us a gloss on where you were coming from, and what led you to Rotterdam?
SHCC
I knew about the institution because when I was doing a master's degree at Bard College at the Center for Curatorial Studies, this is way back during the theory days (I was there 1998-1999 and graduating in 2000). During that period of time, we actually looked at and discussed the exhibitions that had been taking place at that institution at that time, as I said, called Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art. And among the exhibitions that we were analyzing at that time were the retrospectives they had been doing, that had really introduced, I would say, artists that were not necessarily part of the Western canon in art history that we were looking at, for example, in school. And that they were looking back at their work, many of them active during the 1960s and 1970s, and recontextualizing it so that we could understand what that work meant at that time. So we're talking here about Hélio Oiticica. The exhibition of David Lamelas had just happened as well, which again, repositioned him, gave a fresh reading of his work: as it was the case with one of Oiticica many years before. And ultimately, this is a time when we were studying when Catherine David’s Documenta had just taken place. And Catherine David had really emphasized the importance of discursivity, so her program of 100 Days - 100 Guests was one that we really had to pay attention to during school.
I was very invested in site-specificity. And I have to say that the whole narrative aspect of exhibition making, artistic intent, or what was called at that time, community engagement (now it's called public engagement)—I mean, all these terms change. And a lot of the relations that we have with audiences and with artists as it is with team members within an institution, change. But I've always insisted on maybe keeping the same terms so that we can understand the way in which those are redefined and expanded. My relationship with the institution was from afar, and always knowing that-- that it was relevant on a level of thinking through the exhibition formats-- whether they were site specific or theoretical. Catherine David had come to lecture with us as well at Bard College, and ultimately, she became the director of Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in 2002 just after Documenta. And so, again, the idea was to look at what curatorial tendencies were, and that was the place to go.
AK
And what were you doing right before you joined the Witte de With?
SHCC
I didn't really visit the institution until many, many years later. When they called me to say, "There's a position open for the directorship, would you be interested in applying.” At that time, I was in Venezuela. I had just organized a conference on the history of exhibitions, specifically in Latin America. And this was part of the Seminario Fundación Cisneros that was founded by the Fundación Colección Cisneros which is a privately owned nonprofit foundation. It's the foundation of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. I worked there just before I went to Rotterdam. I worked with her for seven years, and was in charge of doing research and acquisitions of contemporary art. And the type of research that I was conducting was primarily field research. From there, creating acquisitions for their collection of contemporary art, and also creating a number of educational programs, especially in Venezuela. The foundation had an office in Caracas, and in New York, which is where the second office was, and where I was based. There in New York, I worked at Art In General, a nonprofit space that was very important to me to learn how to really commission artworks that would bring emerging artists to the next level. Where they would be challenged and where the artworks would really be experimental or unconventional. So, I ended up at Art In General, actually, after having devoted much time to research and to working with artists that had created independent spaces throughout the Americas or independent initiatives that operated outside of institutions, very much like Art In General. I will mention that at Art In General, the important thing for me there was also to work with Holly Block, who eventually went to become the director of the Bronx Museum and transformed that institution as she did Art In General many years before. I would say that she herself was a school. I mean, there was Bard College, and then there was Holly Block. A lot of the good things that she brought to the arts have been a lesson to me in my practice.
AK
All of that is really interesting. And I think in different ways they all contribute to where you are now. It was very educational and informative for me because you see the names listed on the CV, but you don't always know the context for them. I have so many questions. For example, you mentioned the theory moment that the Witte de With grew out of, and I'd love to ruminate on what that means today. But maybe in order to do that, I'd love to ask you to share what the moment was like when you landed in Rotterdam for the first time. Because it was also a moment when the institution was considering a shift in its identity.
SHCC
Let's see positions like this one, they take time, you know, to become a director of an institution where there's a search committee and such, they take time. So, in fact, when I landed in Rotterdam in January of 2018, I flew on the first of January. And it had already been many months before that I had been interviewed and hired by the institution. When I was interviewed and selected to direct the institution, it had been early summer of 2017. And we had, on both sides, on my side and at the institution, we had pledged confidentiality about the appointment, not only because there was not a contract, but because the search committee had to go through the motions and inform on their side all those involved. And I had to also go through my motions and inform the founder of the Cisneros Foundation, which in fact, we had scheduled, but it took a couple of months to actually get the meeting.
So all this is to say is that between the invitation that they had given me that appointed me director, and my actual landing in Rotterdam, which was almost six months later or so, so many things happened. Amongst them, the fact that there was an open call sent out--if I'm correct, on June 14-- that was authored and eventually signed by a group of people that were against the institution. Namely, for being a place that in principle, at that time, was organizing exhibitions about decolonization and that didn't even look at themselves and even self-analyze or criticize that the name of the institution was bearing a colonial name that was associated with the very critique that was being done through the exhibitions. So that was, on the one hand, one of the triggers of the open letter. But the open letter, it continued on, to speak to the fact that it was not just the name, but the way in which the institution had convened a group of people to come and discuss that project on development, that they felt that they were only called not to be part of the exhibition as an audience or a participant, but only as an advisor. That each time that advice was appointed to your commission to Black people, people of color, and that these were not opportunities that, or the moments that they would be invited to work on a project, but just to advise on it. And they felt that that was a problem in most institutions that not only involved a kind of extractive modality that is associated with colonialism, but that also involved something that we have heard very much today called emotional labor. That it was not just an intellectual or political advice that they were taking, but that involving people of color to participate in such a way at institutions involves a very, very deepened model of colonial exertion and emotional labor, that were the primary things that had to be decolonized. That the ways in which institutions were working was a process itself that had to crumble.
AK
And how did the institution receive the critique?
SHCC
The letter was long, and that was sent out in June. Soon after the institution published an acknowledgement of its own name. It was a statement that is not signed, that was authored by the staff at that time, which was directed by Defne Ayas and who was working very closely with curator Natasha Hoare, and with other staff members, such as Yoeri Meesen, who was at that time in charge of education, and had been appointed also around that time as an adjunct director. And other people were involved, there were other guest curators, etc. So, it's unclear who were the many authors of that letter or if there was one. But ultimately, it's an author, and it's an institutional voice.
By the summer that acknowledgement really triggered a lot of articles in the press, to the extent that it became a national debate of whether or not our name should change. So, in the local council, which is where the representatives of different parties have been voted by the population, there was a debate of whether we should be removed from our public subsidy that was provided by the city, precisely because we were saying that we acknowledged our name and that it was a blind spot, that we were not in agreement with the colonial assertions. But ultimately, that was talking politically as if we were embarrassed of the history and as if that embarrassment--or that critique itself of the government its history, or the past history of the nation-- was something that would have meant to be removed from the funding. Meaning patriotism was being dealt there instead of public service, right?
AK
It's remarkable how quickly the critique of the art institution seeped out into the broader governmental structures, and deep societal connections to colonialism. It sounds like a very intense moment to be taking the helm of an institution. How did the community that penned the open letter respond to the news of your appointment?
SHCC
My arrival at the institution was heated. In September of 2017, my appointment was announced publicly. And at the same time it was announced that I would be in charge of the name change of the institution, which the board had just made public would take place at my arrival. January 2018 comes, and I have to say that there were a couple of things that I felt. One, I felt that I had to be part of the decision-making process of the name change, and that it was something that made me feel uncomfortable because I didn't participate in such an important decision that had an impact in my own role at the institution. I didn't want that to happen again and that I was not going to just suddenly give a name to the institution or make a decision in such an easy way or alone or with my team as it had been done to change it. So I said, number one, I don't want to feel again that I didn't participate in a decision. That means that I have to create a process in which stakeholders participate. And the way in which that has to happen means that I have to meet the stakeholders, and probably also to create new stakeholders, right? I mean, it's very obvious that the open letter was done by a group of people that were, you know, influential. And that they were not exactly part of our institution, but they were mobilized within the field of contemporary culture.
And the second thing that I felt: I felt that the institution was at odds with with so many different groups. On the one hand, it was at odds with a group that had declared we had to change our name because of the relationship with the colonial history. But at the same time, they were like, not exactly happy because they had also said you change your name, but you have to decolonize, you have to destructure yourself. And so, for them, it was not enough to change the name. And then for a number of our long standing audience, we were not necessarily being supported because they felt a) we should not change the name and b) the name meant other things that we had to recover and then c) we should not give ourselves so easily or ultimately we should not give ourselves at all to anyone that just demands; that we have to make those decisions on our own terms and with our own time.
So, I arrived at an institution that was also conflicted from within. Some staff were like the public: they agreed with the name change, others did not. But ultimately, they had not really participated in the decision-making process that was for making a name change that was publicly announced. And so, it was kind of a very particular moment. I'm not going to say it was a disaster, because that's not the truth. It was just, it was a time where the institution felt very alone. And, and that we were just an example of how polarized the city was as it pertains to politics. And I mean, I would say that, to some extent, it still is. And that's felt in many different parts of the world, and not just Rotterdam.
So, I arrived an institution that felt alone and that was divided: divided within the community, in terms of who was supporting a name change or not, and who was ambivalent, of course about it. And that was a sentiment that was within and outside the institution. Almost everyone had an opinion, whether they even knew that we existed. I mean, I think that there were more than 200 articles published in, you know, between August and January: locally, about who we were, what we were doing, why were we doing a name change. And people were only interested, not in what I could bring in terms of my professional experience or knowledge of specific art scenes expertise on specific areas of our contemporaneity or on specific regions. They really just wanted the name change. So no one even asked me, "Hey, how are you doing?" The first thing is like, "Hey, so what's the name going to be?" And I think that it was like that for two years and nine months. There was not a single day that passed by that people didn’t ask me what's the name going to be? And I think that until we made public the new name, which was on October 2, 2020, was a question left from the daily habit of having to respond that.
AK
And of course, on top of that, you had the pandemic and the global uprisings calling for racial justice soon thereafter. I can only imagine what a heightened moment it must have been for the institution and for you, in that early moment of your directorship. Can you give us some more insight into the controversy surrounding the name of the Witte de With, which literally means “white” in Dutch. My understanding is that the organization named itself after the street. But, the controversy is really centered on the name of the individual that the street was named after. And I think it really underscores how nothing is really neutral.
SHCC
That is correct. It was actually named in 1871. Our building was constructed in 1872/73/74. And it's very important to mention that this time, the 1870s in the Netherlands, as it happened in other parts of the world, were very important in terms of using cities as a way to write history. So in the 1870s, and some years before, and of course, you continue thereafter, this decade was where you had a surge of statues of 17th century figures that were associated with what was called, and has been renamed also in recent years as the “Dutch Golden Age”. This is the 17th century or the 1600s when the Netherlands had created the VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie), the East India Company, that for many different historians has been considered the real start of global capitalism. The VOC was a share-based company that had a fleet of ships that colonized and took over many different parts of the world, beginning with Asia via Africa. And of course, the station in Africa, the station in taking over Indonesia… I mean, I'm also calling these countries the names that we know them during our contemporaneity, they weren't known like that. So, pretty much taking over the power of the world at that time in the seventeenth century. This is the age also of Rembrandt, and many other important painters of the time and of scientists. So, the 1870s is when our street is named, when our building which was a school was constructed, and alsowhen many statues and cities in the country were named after people that were part of the VOC culture. Whether it was because they were the captains or the naval officers, or because they were important merchants, and painters, and scientists of the time.
AK
I want to go back to the question of the name change. But I want to connect it to what you brought up as one of the critiques of this kind of extractive labor that's often placed on people of color within institutions or to the side of institutions in kind of a performative advisory role. This is certainly not something that's unique to Europe, we definitely have that in the United States. It's something we talk about often, in fact. And I'm really curious to hear the way that you proceeded with the name change as being totally intrinsic to the work that you saw yourself doing when you landed in Rotterdam, and how you thought that there was an opportunity, potentially, for a structural change within the institution that might have been connected to the way that you went about the name change itself. Because I think there's so many conversations right now about whether it's even possible to truly decolonize institutions or to take them away from their violent colonial roots, as it were. And just how to really shift power within institutions, or how to take institutions that are used to speaking and teaching and asking them to learn and listen. So I'm really curious about all of those layers that were maybe at play for you as a new director coming into this maelstrom.
SHCC
First of all, it's possible, it just takes time, a long time. And it presents a lot of challenges. So, first of all, I think that what was very clear to me because I've read that open letter many, many times, and what is very clear is that change has to happen not first and foremost at cultural institutions. I think that the most difficult change is the educational institutions. And that's really where a lot of things, a lot of the change has to happen. Otherwise, how do you expect people to help you or be part of transformation? And I think that most of the, you know, people, if we weren't taught, or if we were introduced much earlier in our lives to history written from the other side, or told from the other side, and not the side of power, the side of the master, you know, things would be very different. Our appreciation would be completely different, our sense of justice would be different.
What I'm trying to say is that art institutions, whether they're museums or non-collecting institutions, there's a lot of pressure for us to be the ones that change because we have been historically responsible for making things visible. Meaning, we are spaces that have taken up the presentation and value and heritage as their core business. And so of course, we are the ones that are most pressured. But if you think about it on a structural level, it is educational systems and educational policy, where most of the changes initially have to take place, in order for us to best transform the institutions that we have. I feel that because that hasn't happened, the emergence of NGOs, of nonprofits of independent initiatives, of more informal economies and cooperatives have taken so much prevalence. Meaning their work has been very, not only irrelevant, but it has been precisely what has made other institutions that are big and bulky to change. Because most of the independent initiatives don't even count on these big institutions to transform. And it's actually the case in most contexts.
And in the case of our institution, what was very clear to me was the first people that had to be convinced to transform and to change from within, and not just the name, was our staff. And I think that if that team did not have the conviction to change the name, then we were not going to be able to change the institution. You would say is that well, you can enter American style and fire everyone and you bring them on because you know that happens more often in countries where there's no strong labor laws. You can't do that in the Netherlands. It really meant that to transform beyond the symbolic nature of the name change, you had to first have the backing and have the will and the determination from the team. And so that meant creating a self-awareness, understanding and recognizing other talents and values that were being unspoken about or unidentified at the institution. And really creating a work culture where participation is much more, you know, palpable, and real. Meaning you feel more involved much more committed, whether it's because you're sharing the responsibility of a budget or of a name change.
So for me one and the other had the same importance. So on the one hand, it's kind of a disaster because it means that there's a lot of meetings, and they're exhausting, I would say, and people are not used to them or don't like them in general. But I think that that's actually an essential part. And of course, to feel that , people that is that don't want to be part of that eventually begin leaving. So I think that that's number one.
And the other thing that it was very important was also already from the get-go to bring in someone that would be hired, and would be someone that spoke Dutch, which is a native language in Rotterdam and the Netherlands, and that I didn't have on my own. And for that, it meant that I wanted to hire someone that was from the Netherlands, knowing Dutch, that I could work with and feel comfortable with, meaning that there was cultural difference, like I had. That this person also had that experience, even within their homeland. And that at the same time was much younger than me, because there's a lot of the nuances, that and the messages are coming from a much, much younger generation that is much more active in social media and all these other platforms that was relevant to know. So, I needed someone that would be better than me on the ground. That was Jessy Koeiman, the Curator of Collective Learning. And she's done a lot of things to bring a new audience to the institution.
And the two other positions that I created, eventually, when there was a financial possibility was a Research and Programs Manager, that was Vivian Ziherl. And at that time, someone called Melly Manager, which would manage the kind of operations of our ground floor gallery space, which is part of this initial change that I did. Which is: we're going to make it free of admission and we're not going to make exhibitions there. We're going to experiment with other forms of public engagement, which means we're going to create a gallery, bookshop, cafe social space, kind of nerdy space, but beautiful space where people can just, you know, if they're curious come in and not have to pay, and that it doesn't look like art. But just like a nice space to be at.
AK
I want to hear more how you feel that that has worked or what challenges you still face. But before we lose the thread, I want to connect it back to the process of the name change, and where you finally landed? And how this shift in maybe hospitality or learning, listening, conversation might have inflected the process of the name to be something more than symbolic?
SHCC
One thing is that, for me, first the name change took about three years to take place. I think that that's something that we should say there because that's been very debated in terms of like, “Oh, it took so long.”And I'm like, who says how long that it should take? Most institutions take about three years. It takes time if you want to make change. So year number one, the focus was really creating a new work culture by which collective learning would be the philosophy. That new work culture would entail also creating and experimenting with new forms of public engagement.
So in 2018, we created the space Melly, transforming our ground floor gallery into a free admission space where a number of events were taking place. Our priority was no longer just making exhibitions, but making exhibitions and live events that were artistic and educational. Of course, there were always public programs, but now we gave them a very different place. Even within our budget, we expanded the education team from two people, just to get a sense, we have five people right now. And the budgets from being sustainable 30 or 40,000 Euros budget a year: right now it's at 125,000 Euros a year just for that area. So in three years, that really exponentially expanded.
2019 was the year where we focused on really identifying who our stakeholders were going to be and who already existed. And we wanted to cultivate who our stakeholders were going to be and how some of the learnings of the first year would actually become publicly known. The first one was that we launched in 2018: aprogram with teenagers and young adults in Rotterdam that were interested in the arts, but that had not necessarily found an institution to depend on. We made an open call for Work-Learn program that was led, in this case by Jessy Koeiman our Curator of Collective Learning, and also at that time, Yoeri Meesen. They had a case study to rename the ground floor gallery to whatever name they felt appropriate. We felt that that naming would actually help us, or the way in which they developed the criteria, would help us think of ways in which that younger generation of Rotterdam was putting things that interested them or prioritized. They were the ones that named that ground floor space Melly.
AK
So in a sense, your community had already named you. I just want to go back and underscore the crucial point you're making about process. People so often expect immediate results. But in general I think we would all benefit from finding ways to slow down and focus on the internal work. So what happened after that?
SHCC
The space at that time, or the organization at that time, got much more funding support, and the amount of activities really intensified, really creating the new audiences from which we identified some that we would cultivate to become stakeholders of the institution. That year, we also designed the naming or specifically, the renaming process, which was to launch in the Spring of 2020. So by the end of 2019, the supervisory board accepted the plan of the renaming process, which involved a number of stages: the confirmation of an advisory board; a series of public forums where the public would participate in voicing their interest voicing their critiques; voicing their feedback; an online survey that would also capture some of the data that we were interested in capturing in terms of if there was a difference between the suggestions by a specific gender or ethnicity, you know, in their responses and such.And a series of programs that would be then celebrated in 2021 in January, with what we thought was going to be like a kermesse, like kind of celebratory fashion that would take over the street, and also the building and such. When January 2020 began, we had identified that year for the entire name change process, but also as the beginning of our Work-Learn program, a design process or new identity. That would also be with a younger group of people that would work with us through the renaming process for that year, so they could be informed, partake in it, and then launch the new name with a new identity. For that part, I teamed up with Wkshps, which is run (and they've worked actually with the ICA I think quite some time, or at least with the former chief curator, Ingrid Schaffner) because they're based in New York. Wkshps used to be Project Projects. And now they're based in Berlin, or at least Prem Krishnamurthy is. So I met in March, just around the lockdown, which was quite dramatic in New York at the time, meeting with them, to ask them to come to the Netherlands so that we could set up a partnership with an institution there that was educational or not. To create the design and engage a group of youngsters. And when the lockdown came, all our plans just fell through.
The third year wasn't as smooth as I would have thought. The pandemic had a huge impact. We couldn't develop the plans for the renaming process, as we had done so far. We had formed a working group that involved the already mentioned Vivian Ziherl and Jessy Koeiman, but also my partner in crime in terms of exhibition making, curator Rosa de Graaf. She had been an intern there at the institution since 2017, actually. So she had lived through the crisis of the project that had triggered the open letter which was Wendelien van Oldenborgh's and Lucy Cotter's Cinema Olanda. And another of the members of the working group was Jeroen Lavèn. And then there was a seat that was rotated through Wendy van Slagmaat-Bos, Paul van Gennip, line kramer, and so on and so forth in the last year or so. So with them we met again during the lockdown, we met on Zoom. I'm talking here about April/May 2020.
When it was close to June, I said, one of the things that's going to happen is that with the rise of the Black Lives Matter, we will be faced with a lot of critique. We will have to prepare in a different way to inform our public how we're going to launch the online forums instead of the public forums, how we're going to go about the name change, or renaming process. And to tell the truth is that it was the most difficult time of all. Not only could we not meet in person for such an important part of our work, but also the amount of critique that we received during June of 2020, as the Black Lives Matter movement really, really went global, it was intense. Our building was vandalized. So during that difficult time, we had already been prepared to announce the date of our name change. It's not a time for nuance. Identity politics is never about nuance. And so even if nuance has been an aesthetic strategy and a curatorial strategy that I have championed all along, I find it very powerful, in fact, to be able to hold on and say engage people through the body and the senses. To think through embodied knowledge as a kind of magnetic, kind of resonance-based thing really doesn't work when you deal with identity politics. It has to be very direct. And we changed strategy.
I said, put a banner up in the building that says when our name change is going to be. Make a website that's very easy to access. We just really changed the visuals and the ways in which we did it. I said, everyone works on Instagram, I just want a photograph. And even if we write reports on our Instagram, it's an image caption, it's not in the image itself. So just put a banner in the building, put the message there, take a photograph, and just post it on the media. I mean, we just really had to change strategy. But, all this was in planning. And it seemed like we were reacting to a series of attacks when in reality we had been planning them since May precisely because there were so many things that were going on in the world with a lockdown, with not being together, with how social media had already cancelled, since early May, so many people. That it was very evident that by the month of June we had to be ready to have things rolling, even if it was in a different format than the one that we wished. So it was not about postponing when the lockdown ended so that we could have these live public forums, but instead, really organizing ourselves so that we could deal with the media that we had at hand. Whether that was going to be Zoom, or a photograph. And that we adapted.
AK
I don't think any of us have enough distance to reflect on the events of the past couple of years. But I'm continuously amazed at how quickly we've all adapted to Zoom and the ways that grassroots organizers have harnessed the power of social media. I think it shows that things are actually more flexible than we like to believe. And that systems, and structures, and institutions can actually be responsive if we allow them to be. But I don't want to go off on too much of a tangent. I'd love to hear more about the forums and perhaps what else you learned from this moment.
SHCC
That was a very beautiful program, I would say. It didn't have the hundreds of audiences that we thought because it was not public, and because the forums were about creating a space for the participants that they felt safe in terms of saying whatever they wanted. So the scale of those events were much smaller, but we did them repeatedly so that there could be opportunities to participate. And then we learned that listening had happened, not just because of a number of trainings that we had gone through. Literally, we hired people to teach us how to think about everything from de-escalation, microaggressions, accessibility, ability, disability, abled bodies and unable bodies, and strategic listening for sure. But also, I think that the lockdown just taught us so much, right? Meaning that Spring for us, that March, April, May of 2020, was really a learning moment for many people. Right? It was about asking people how you're doing. And that was just a dumb question, but people don't necessarily ask that. So, I think to be concerned for the other and to really pay attention to what they're saying. To not leave people alone, to be aware that accessibility is something that most of the people that we work with had. But that not having accessibility was something that was emerging and being voiced not just right now because of an ethnic or racial or gender background, but because the entire world was now facing it, right? So, there was an understanding, kind of physical embodied understanding, that everyone learned from at that time. And a sense of urgency that the Black Lives Matter, movement really aced there that if you hear a demonstration with a banner, or reading a banner that says, "Say their name,” how could you not listen? And also, how can you not, not think of a renaming, of course, right?
I think that the movement, in general, taught us to listen: the Black Lives Matter movement and our times. I'm not a fan of cancel culture—which is also another way to learn how to listen—there’s a lot of things that are unsaid in these very immediate cancellations that for me means we now to have to listen. Let's reconsider again.Let's listen to the other parts, what was the context? Meaning for me those questions of: What is the context? Who is participating? From where are people speaking? That's what politics is. Anyhow, we listened a lot, we learned a lot. And the learning is that you don't have to agree with what people are saying. So, in fact, many people that supported our name change, in the end, don't believe it had to be done. Nor do they agree in the name that it was given. But they still support us. And I think that that's the important thing is that what you have to learn, or what we all have to learn, is to be able to listen. Which means that you're not always going to convince the other, you're just going to listen and allow for the difference to coexist with yours, right? It was very exciting. It's been exhausting, I have to say.
Of course, the design was going to be launched with the name change. But at that time in October we're like, who cares about the design? Just say the name now, and then we'll figure out the participants of our Work-Learn Program. Which, again, is a collective learning experience that is done through a project that is at the intersection of art and education. How do we also give time for certain experiments, that because of, of the political nature of our times, was not able to happen at once? So at this point, for me, deadlines are like something that can be applied in certain cases and at others its like, you just have to move them and move with the flow and not be stressed about it because, it's, you know, it's just we're living a lot of uncertainty right now, and you have to prioritize the well being of others instead of certain projects, right?
AK
What I hear you saying is that, due to all of these other forces, that it really actually brought you back to the question of the human and to the human exchange, as opposed to maybe a position that might have started a little more institutional or organizational in its approach. It really grounded you in the humanness of what you were doing, which I find very interesting and compelling. At least that's the way it sounds in the way that you're describing it, which is really powerful, actually.
SHCC
Yeah, I mean, I have to say is that, also is that we have been so critiqued. It is so exhausting. And it's a lot of work to, to change a name and to change oneself and to change the institution. And besides that, to continue programming. It's, it's just a lot. In the end, it has to be people that change institutions. It's not just…they’re not just these abstract things.
AK
You're also talking about changing a model that is extractive and asking other people to do the labor, or it sounds like what you're saying is that you actually needed to start with your own house. We haven't disclosed the name yet. Can you say what your name that you came to is? And maybe the significance of that name? Have you seen a shift since adopting the new name? I'm really curious to know what can a name do?
SHCC
In September, we did a public forum where we presented a shortlist of three names that we had drawn from the online survey, from staff workshops, from the public forums that we had done. The shortlist of those three names had been drafted by the working group:Haven, KAT, and Kin, as in kinship. And we took that shortlist to an advisory committee. And in the advisory committee we had former board members, some of which were artists; we had future board members, hopefully; we had artists that had exhibited, and artists that would be exhibiting in our new program. And we also had participants of our Work-Learn Program, that group that I was telling you was from 17 to 21 years old, learning with us through collective learning. That program still continues so we're now in the fourth year, right? And they all analyzed the names. The pros and the cons of those three short list of names. But then they said, "Where's Melly?" And we're like, "Excuse us?" And they're like, "Where is the name Melly?" And like, "Well, Melly is the name of the space downstairs, we're now looking for a name for the institution." So “KAT” is like a cat, but also stands for contemporary art and theory, and it works in Dutch, and it works in English. Then you have “Kin,” which is about kinship. And then “Haven” or Haven (translated as “port” or “harbor”) also works in Dutch and in English, and it's about the port city that we are, but it's also about space that we can create, for people to feel good and safe in this bold space.
I actually thought that everyone was going to vote for Haven because it would also allow us to continue addressing colonial history. We're a port because of the VOC of course, right? And I was like “Oh this is a way for us to continuously address our colonial history, there it has to be Haven and so on.” Everyone hated that name. KAT was a name that got the most votes. Still, everyone said that it had no personality, that it was like any other contemporary art center that had an acronym. And then I’m like I actually loved KAT, but then I loved Haven even more. And then Melly, I'm like “No, how can you name an institution so serious as ours, Melly?” And when I spoke to even my colleagues and my friends, they said the same to me. Then the ones in the Netherlands said, "Are you kidding me? Melly's great! Scale up.” they said.
It was not exactly easy in the end, but I’m like we’re going to go for KAT or for Haven. We then went on to do another public forum, which is like an open house in which we made the same program so many times in the same day, like Groundhog Day. I read the same speech four or five times because so many people signed up, and we could only have so many people because of social distancing. Same program repeated over a single day, in which we spoke about what we had learned from the renaming process, and what the options were, and the advice that was given. And in those public forums, the people also criticized that Melly wasn't there and that Melly should be the name. At those meetings, it was really a lot of our stakeholders: city representatives, artists that were showing with us, people that had participated in the forums, critics. You know, it was just the people that really care and then had gone through the process of going and looking and getting opinions, professors at the universities, et cetera.
So when we went to the board meeting, I took the advice from the committee, from the working group, and also from the last public forum with stakeholders. And I said, the most difficult part in this process has been to build and to keep our stakeholders: to build new stakeholders, to identify and nurture that, and to keep the ones that the institution has had. They are more important than our name. And if they feel—these are the people that really care, that are really informed, that want to see this institution develop—and if they're saying that the best name is Melly because it represents an openness that the institution has gone through, then that is our name. I'm not willing to let down our stakeholders for the preference that I have of a name of Haven. We're called Kunstinstituut Melly, and I feel very proud about it.
AK
Where does the name Melly come from in the first place?
SHCC
The name of Melly downstairs had been drawn from an artwork by Ken Lum that has been there since 1990, our foundational year. It's a billboard artwork of a photograph that shows an Asian woman that says “Melly Shum Hates Her Job.” The Asian woman is young, you could see that she's in her early 20s. She's sitting in an office environment with a blazer, and she has glasses and she's smiling. And the text next to the image says, "Melly Shum Hates Her Job." And the text is very expressive. So the word “hates" is in red and with yellow around it as if there's a fire coming out of it. So it really doesn't make sense that the word hates is next to a photograph of such a beautiful, smiley, charming woman because you would never relate both of them: this woman with the word hatred. The group of the Work-Learn Program, I have to say that we always used call them the youngsters—but then they told us that they didn't want to be called the youngsters because they were emerging professionals—they made a great interpretation of that work. They said that many of them had grown up, they were born after the 1990s. They said that they had grown up with that image, and that for them that was the city. It was in the city center, it was an iconic image they would never forget. One of them said, "The first time that I came here, my mom bought me a postcard that said, 'Melly Shum Hates Her Job' about the artwork." They talked about feeling identified with that image because many of them are from an immigrant background, just as clearly this Asian woman seems to be. And then they also said, "Oh, it's a proto-meme.” Meaning they talked about the way in which this image is like a meme because it’s image and text that have clearly no relation, but they match very well. And when they said proto-meme, I'm like, this is amazing. It is true, Ken Lum was making proto-memes in the 1980s.
My feeling was, okay, if you really want to name it that way, which was when they were studying, I said, you have to go to the archives and find out who this Melly Shum is and what the artist was thinking. Because we don't want to find ourselves in the same problem: then we name a space with the personal name of someone that does not abide by our beliefs, that we do not enjoy their thinking. So do research on Ken Lum, do research on Melly Shum. Is this a real person? A fictional person? A name? A pseudonym? and such. So the first phase, of course, was our exhibition archives. And there were a number of documents that were essential. One of the participants of the Work-Learn program was Stijn Kemper, he stayed with us doing a fellowship and doing this research, making an exhibition (we worked on it together). And also, eventually I contacted Ken Lum as well to say “We're going ahead with this. They are very inspired by an artist statement that you sent as you were planning your exhibition here that talked about your own grandparents’ life. That they had immigrated from China to Canada, and worked on the railroads construction, and that they hated their job, as many immigrants do. But that they knew that they had to do it to offer a better opportunity for the generations to come.” And so that was the key moving story for them, as well. That Melly was not only an iconic figure in the neighborhood, but that also, the artistic intent behind the artwork recognized immigrants and immigrant labor and was an essential aspect of the decision.
Also, it is the subject of our era. Whether it's immigration because it's forced,or because you're a political exile or a refugee,or immigration because you're a professional, or because you fell in love. In this world that's so connected with transportation, you're able to move. Immigration is the subject of our times. So, Melly seemed to be the name that was appropriate not only for them but for all of us at the institution that believe in the importance of addressing and looking at arts and culture through the lens of movement, and specifically a people's movement in diaspora.
AK
I feel like we should almost be having this conversation again in like six months or a year, to see how this gets put into real action and practice. I'm curious to hear what you might say the new feeling has been with this name change. I think I read somewhere that the old name was reflective of the location and not the vocation; that there was a way in which the name change was about actually being in tune with the true ethos of the institution. We began our conversation by reflecting on the founding moments and mission of Melly, and I'd love to hear a little bit about how you think its new name either connects with this true mission or vocation of the institution, or whether it actually signals a shift. And, maybe also to connect that to the fact that your organization purposefully shifts directorships every three to six years. And that's literally baked into the DNA of your organization, this idea of constant change and self-reflection. And here you spent the first half of your tenure embedded in this process. How is this question of the vocation of the organization with the name maybe attached to a question of a new foundation that you're potentially building?
SHCC
First of all, you pointed something that's very important for my institution, which is the will to change. So it instituted from the start that the director should change every six years. You would think that it's like, "Oh, how weird,” and so on. I think it's excellent. Because it really refreshes an institution, but also because you create a different knowledge base just even in terms of the artistic research and curatorial research you develop. So it's not just about the whole transformation of the institution, but also saying, "Let's check out this perspective now in a focused way for six years." And whether it's thematic or geographic or a question of medium, the approaches have been really very different for each of the directors. I mean, the idea of putting Kunstinstituut Melly was really to reflect that vocation and not the location that Melly’s placed there. Of course, the billboard was initially placed throughout the entire city.
I just feel that there's two things we have to bear in mind right now. And again, they have been further amplified by the pandemic. One is that an institution like ours that really has focused on presenting work and ideas that are important or happening abroad, internationally, to bring them locally, you have to make sense of them for that local audience. Meaning, they have to be relevant for that audience that makes up your local environment. And I think that at times, we delegate that to so-called "education," meaning that as long as the students get brought in, and we engage with the teachers. But ultimately, the idea that you identify programming, artists, ideas, theories, that are relevant locally, but are also meaningful internationally, that means that you have to find or create a shared language. So that there's an embrace from those immediate physical neighbors that you have, and not just from the so-called mainstream global art circuit that is going from place to place or exhibiting, which is what happens, the same artists all the time.
The second thing is not just a matter of relevance, and language, and how it can be meaningful on many different fronts to many different communities. But also, for us, one of the things that was very much learned in the first couple of years was that we really had to cultivate not only artist relationships for the ones that we work with, or the sponsors, the funders that we have, but that we really had to care about our community, that audience that was there, and hence the questions around hospitality. And the questions creating other strategies for public engagement. Meaning, they are the ones ultimately that will say, or make of your institution, what makes it important, right? Meaning they're the ones that are going to help you build the future changes that you want to make, but if they don't come then who are you working for? So, we began writing what is now our policy for the next coming years. My tenure is now three years and a half.
So, our focus right now for both management and artistic vision is the politics of care. And this is how we scale up in a way the experiments of public engagement to the entire building, the ones that we were trying out in Melly downstairs and live events, workshops, different audiences: how much do you know how?How much more you want to know?How much time you want to spend? Can you spend time? All these questions that relate to both the duration and the type of activities that we were doing are now happening in other ways through our programming. So as part of that, we have created one entire floor now on our third floor, which is four times the size of the space downstairs called Melly. We have created a cross between a community center and a wellness center. It's all created with artists installations, so the artists have created the rooms where the activities take place. And all these activities are to do with trainings and forums, activities that relate to caring for oneself, the environment, and our community. All of them right now, the year-long framing device for the program is mental health. And so we're looking at mental health from the place of the visual arts, not just because it's the makers that suffered this, but it's because there is a question of mental health that is social. So we're moving away from the medical definition of that, and instead bringing it to the social as it pertains to stress, the body, breathing, paying attention, and also questions that are intersectional, that have to do with learning or working, and the impact that gender, race and ethnicity, and class have for opportunities to be created.
Right now, there are programs again every weekend, meaning we just opened a couple of days ago. So if the lockdown remains east as it is now, we will continue welcoming small groups of people per gallery or per installation within our building. But also, hopefully more and more people can come once the pandemic continues getting mitigated by the several vaccination procedures and lockdowns and other measures that have been taking place. So we are doing exhibitions, the first few are solos, and they relate to identity, and of course renaming and decolonizing. And the coming exhibitions will focus also on specific regions where the VOC had a significant presence such as the Caribbean. So my love for Latin America and the Caribbean still remains in place. But right now, seen through the lens of the Transatlantic or the Black Atlantic, as some academics and historians have called it. So a lot of focus on the points of encounter between cultures and again, with the movement of people to different cultures. And let's hope that the many encounters that happened within our spaces, the top floor is right now called 84 steps—so it's the 84 steps that it takes you to get from the downstairs space, Melly, to the upstairs. And it's called that way also, because a lot of our new audiences were just staying Melly and enjoying the program there and really never going upstairs to check out the exhibitions.
AK
It's so appropriate that you're housed in a former school.
SHCC
I love that you say that, because we've of course done a whole research about the school. And a lot of the name change process, the underlying structure is done specifically by positioning ourselves sites-specifically, that we are still a school. That it was not only built as a school and that the school left, but that we just changed pedagogy; that our exhibitions are the classrooms. And so the art is our teachers. I think that all this research, and again, the inspiration of art about theory and site specificity, and to really study the place that you're exhibiting at and engage the audiences that are within your vicinity, even if they're not audiences yet. That those are the lessons learned from site-specificity and from institutional critique, and from art theory and the discussions of the foundational years. So we're really bringing back a lot of the learnings of that time that we have forgotten because we speak about other processes that are important, but some of them that are not. And there's a lot to think about art historically when we look at our institution, I would say.
AK
Please join us for our next episode, which will be co-hosted with Tausif Noor, former Spiegel-Wilks Curatorial Fellow. We will be sitting down with Lulani Arquette, President and CEO of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (the NACF) and Flint Jamison, co-founder of Yale Union, both in Portland, Oregon. They will share the poignant story of the relationship forged through Yale Union’s decision to dissolve as an organization and to transfer its building and land over to the NACF and the complexities and new possibilities created by these actions. In the meantime, we look forward to welcoming you in person at ICA. Please visit our website, www.icaphila.org. For more information about our upcoming exhibitions and programs. I'd like to thank Jason Moran for the original music, and my colleagues at ICA who helped make this podcast possible. James E Britt Jr, former DAJ Director of Public Engagement, Derek Rigby, Audio Visual Coordinator, Natalie Sandstrom, former Program Coordinator, Jill Katz, Director of Marketing and Communications, Ali Mohsen, Digital Content Editor and Olive Martin, Social Media Coordinator. As well as collaborators former Spiegel-Wilks Curatorial Fellows, Tausif Noor and Gee Wesley. Thank you for listening.