May 17, 2013

a working writer's compromise?



in order to give myself something to do (and to avoid post-graduation panic), i decided to apply for and take on a job as a korean "cultural reporter," specializing in art exhibitions. the work is fairly lightweight: around two articles a month, posted on a special section of the organization's website.
here's the catch(?), though. the organization is actually funded by the korean government, created to spread knowledge about korean culture in new york city. they organize a variety of events every month--celebrating children's day, traditional dance performances, film screenings, and art exhibitions in their own gallery space.
my first assignment? writing about their current exhibition.
if my two years at the mfa art criticism and writing program taught me anything, one thing  i took away from it is to see and think about art in a critical manner. of course, this doesn't mean i have to have a problem about everything, but rather to see and think very carefully, to take my time, to be attentive. seeing and thinking about art is a balancing act of allowing the work to appear, while also taking note of the inevitable appearance of my own cognitive associations. writing about art is another difficult process; i must stay respectful to my experience with the art (what it did to me, so to speak), what i believe the work to be doing vs. (or in conversation with) what i think the artist may have intended, and enact all of the above in what i deem an appropriate combination of all of the above.
so now, working for an organization with a clear agenda (shit-talking about korean culture is no-go, i assume), i find myself beginning this first assignment in a conflicted position. my first thought after viewing and thinking about the show: this thing is the worst show i've ever seen in my life.
everything about it is wrong. it is supposed to be part of an ongoing archival project, so material such as letters, sketches, posters are expected. but the resulting presentation appears more like salvaged garbage from a hoarder's den that had been haphazardly picked out without much consideration and thrown onto the wall. clearly they wanted to fit as much as possible in their small space, and most walls have the lazy clumped-together labels for the work--the kind that has outlines of the mounted work with numbers, then a list of titles and names underneath. this can be alright, but a bit tiring when a single wall contains about 20 different things, all about the same size. a good portion of them are also ripped out pages of mediocre articles, most in korean.
other things:
the wall text is all crooked,
there is an exhausting number of spelling mistakes and missing punctuation marks,
very few of the work in each time period (their "themes," beginning with the 1950s) had been actually created during that time, but in the 1980s or 1990s, some as late as 2009,
arbitrary use of the label "korean-american" (the hyphen, i also have a problem with) without defining what this is (as far as i know, only one artist was actually a u.s. citizen, and some did not even stick around for very long but returned to korea after a few years),
eurocentrically contextualizing text explaining each "theme" that not only has nothing to do with the actual work displayed, but also reduces the work of these poor artists to being "results" of their influence by american movements that were alive when they first entered the states.
and the list goes on.

so then how do i maintain my integrity as a writer? the only answer seems right now to be bullshitting: emphasizing some great aspect of the show that will take me a good deal of effort to find. or, just going the very dry, reporting route: this, this, and this are here. the end.
i have a feeling i'm going to produce some really shitty writing for this job.

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