Further introducing terms that we think through, we would like to broaden our understanding of the terminology by thinking with invited guests. Mirela Baciak, curator at steirischer herbst festival, has been researching conditions of hospitality in curatorial contexts in the past years. She proposes this fascinating take on hospitality as a way to counter conventional understandings of the art visitor and institutions’ own relationship with them.
“Hospitality is most commonly understood through its spatial dimension as a situation in which someone enters the space of another person, which he or she defines as its own. Most of us first experience hospitality within the realm of our own home. However, interactions that take place under hospitality may go beyond the sphere of an individual's private life into spheres of social and political organization, such as institutions or even states. From the perspective of an individual, hospitality is about one's ethical relation to a stranger; the act of hospitality poses an exercise in self-othering. In this sense, hospitality is about the ability to see the other in oneself and accepting the other as s/he/they/it is.”
“In the context of art and its institutions, hospitality as a guiding curatorial principle has to comply with bureaucratic protocols, and the economic relations defined by contracts and invitations (even when 'everyone is invited'). Since an art institution is not a home, but a place by definition open to the public whereby crossing the threshold between what is mine and yours, is not the same as when a stranger enters one's private space.”
“Despite these obstacles, hospitality might be the process by which an art institution produces and manages its ethos, its boundaries, openings, and its identity. The sharing of physical space might be a prerequisite for the emergence of a mental space to practice hospitality as an ethical negotiation. If this could last longer than the limited duration of a usual public program, art institutions may one day transform into something entirely different.”
This idea of hospitality as a new framework for dealing with visitors and even the broader idea of “community” that art institutions struggle so much to define, is thought-provoking in our larger effort to think about a culture of care. Building on Baciak’s definition, hospitality entails both the recognition of the other as well as his/her/they wellbeing, comfort, safety, and joy. Can art Institutions becomes sites for repair and care? Can art visitors also become house guests in that they are not careless spectators and tourists, but reciprocate in the act of care provided by the host and its larger environment?