Vijai Patchineelam
public mediation as an artistic practice, a one-year experiment

On March 27th this year, a one-day workshop was conducted for KIOSK’s staff in its office adjacent to its exhibition space. Those present were the press and communication officer Sara Plantefève-Castryck, production managers Thomas Peeters and Sam Van Ingelgem, director Simon Delobel, in the position of public mediation as artistic practice the artist Merzedes Sturm-Lie, and as etc.-artist myself, Vijai Maia Patchineelam. The workshop took place at the end of a one-year experiment with the implementation of the position of public mediation as artistic practice within KIOSK. Designed for an artist to join its staff, the position was developed in the context of an ongoing collaboration between KIOSK and me. This collaboration began back in 2021, when I was initially invited to a group exhibition by Simon. Instead of accepting the invitation, I made a counterproposal, which was to think together with Simon and the staff about how my research on embedding artists and their practice within art institutions could take place, with KIOSK being a case study. From then on, I joined the team as etc.-artist, a self-designed role. The implementation of the position of public mediation as artistic practice came two years later, when Simon proposed, as a further development for our ongoing collaboration, to have a second artist join KIOSK’s staff.

With public mediation as its main task, the position of public mediation as an artistic practice was imagined for an artist to undertake with the autonomy to interpret the assignment based on their practice and in relation to KIOSK’s needs. Through an open call at the end of 2023, the opening of the position was made public, followed by a pre-selection of applicants and ensuing interviews. About twenty-five applications were received, most of them sent by artists of varying levels of experience and a wide range of practices. The artist Merzedes Sturm-Lie was then selected and began her one-year position in February 2024.

The gathering in March was communicated as a team workshop; it was not planned as an evaluation moment, but rather looked to reflect on the process of the implementation of public mediation as an artistic practice as a means to probe a given structure. In this case, by influencing the dynamic between the different roles of its staff members and the different established ways of doing things that any institution, big or small, develops over time. Each role was indirectly asked to redefine its position in relation to the new one. An interesting note regarding definitions and redefinitions is the renaming of the position to public mediation as artistic practice proposed during a work meeting last autumn between Merzedes, Simon, and me. When first made public, the position was called artist as public mediator. During our meeting, Merzedes argued that the initial name was not in accordance with how she had interpreted the intention of the position in relation to what it looked to do to artistic practice and proposed the new name of the position. The claiming of what else artistic practice could potentially encompass. The widening of the definition as a result of artists undertaking tasks traditionally reserved for other workers within an institutional setting.

“It’s a movie— so, who’s moving whom?”

Structured around a film screening and an exercise, the workshop looked to stir a discussion on creative work realized by a group of people under a given structure, the roles at play, and the hierarchy in the decision-making process. To start the day, I proposed a screening of the film Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968) by William Greaves. An experimental film where the director instigates both the film’s cast and crew to actively challenge his authority and to come up with counter-proposals to his original proposal. By doing so, Greaves attempts to stir the individuals involved in the making of the film into questioning their assumed roles and tasks within the hierarchy of a film production. This results in a participatory democratic process where the debate of ideas, experience, and opinions is encouraged and not limited to certain positions. There are many other layers and complexities to this film, which I won’t get into in this text, but it is important to state that Greaves’ film has had a great influence on what to strive for in the experiment to embed artists and their practices inside art institutions. This was not the first time I have screened Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, having done so in different classroom settings over the years, and every time the film has never failed to generate a lively and fruitful discussion. For the context of the workshop, the screening was an oblique way to direct the gaze of the team to its own internal dynamics.

x,y,z

As for the second half of the workshop, I devised a simple exercise for the group that revolved around the interplay between image and language, and its interpretation. Printed on A4-sized paper with KIOSK’s letterhead, these exercises were designed as a form to be filled out individually, so that the results can be shared and put up for discussion between the group. In the exercise, the image depicts a glass immersed to its edge by the same water it partially contains. For each exercise, the different elements, such as the body of water, the glass, and the offset space created inside the glass by its weight, are specified by the letters X, Y, or Z. Below the image, a combination of three words is listed, such as “art institution”, “society”, and “contemporary art”, or “your work”, “your colleagues work” and “artwork”. The instructions then propose that one of the words is written next to one of the letters, thus labelling one of the elements of the image. The interpretation behind the choice made for each pairing, word-element, is made by the individual. One has to choose for themselves if “art institution” is better represented by a floating glass, or an undefined body of water, or better yet, the offset space inside the glass. And what would that mean in relation to the other possible pairings.

Devised for KIOSK, the exercise not only encouraged a reflection on roles, but also the different ideals and beliefs that are held in the arts. Ideals and beliefs that are often thought to be shared, through discussions, we see the different ways people understand and identify themselves with them. With each individual having their own way of relating to what and how they were taught through their education and professional experience. One curious remark that came at the tail end of our workshop was that the staff members didn’t recall the last time they all sat down together to talk about art. Some argued it was the first time that they did.

Another reflection that was shared with me by Simon, a day after the workshop in a separate meeting, which I found relevant to this experiment, as it also related to a comment made previously by artist Ricardo Basbaum during my PhD defense, was a question of mediation and its outcome, intended or not. Basbaum argued in the form of a question to me that an artwork exhibited in an institution today is so heavily mediated by different institutional practices, such as the curatorial, educational, and so on, that it runs the risk of making the artwork ineffective to a degree. As for the reflection by Simon, he wondered how to avoid the efforts towards mediation of creating yet another layer of content on top of the curatorial programming. At times, it could become overwhelming to the public, the amount of information needed to be digested.

public mediation as artistic practice

In the role of public mediation as an artistic practice, Merzedes initiated several events that commented and complemented the main program. For the introduction of her practice to KIOSK and KASK, Merzedes gave the lecture titled 'Unexpected Risk Failure', a title also used for a section on KIOSK’s website that published letters addressed to Simon. These letters, sporadically written, contained reflections on her new position.

Some of the events organized by Merzedes over the course of 2024 were the parallel event whorephobia to Marijke De Roover's exhibition Cum as Your Madness. whorephobia consisted of lectures by Melanie Weill, CLAP!, and Marianne Chargois that discussed the intricate parallels between whorephobia, pornography, art, and politics. The Fantastic Voyage Book Club, where reading sessions of the book The Outsider (1956) were realized in relation Danny Devos’ exhibition Fantastic Voyage through the Body of an Artist. For Sidsel Meineche Hansen exhibition WAX, Merzedes organized a parallel program consisting of two events. In preparation for the exhibition, the screening of Maintenancer (2018) and Baby Jesus (2023), with commentary by Sinziana Ravini and a conversation with the artists. For the opening of WAX, Merzedes organized a conversation between Laurent de Sutter and Josefine Wikström on concepts of excitation, horror, and pornography.

Concluding her time with KIOSK, Merzedes curated the exhibition UNBEAT! with Yoshio Nakajima. In addition, a program consisting of a series of lectures and performances by Yoshio Nakajima, Chika Fukushima, Bram Borloo, Ndaku ya La vie est, Stefan Wouters, Martin Schibli, Nick Defour, and Merzedes herself, as well as the launch of a new edition of the magazine De Nadruk.

Vijai Maia Patchineelam

etc.-artist at KIOSK

Summer 2025

1°/ It’s good to note that Merzedes Sturm-Lie and I were not employed as the other staff members of KIOSK, but worked on a freelance basis. For the one-year position of public mediation as artistic practice, a budget was set for 60-70 work days with the daily fee of 300-350 EUR. In addition to that, an autonomous production budget of 6,000 EUR was set aside to be managed by the artist. Other members of KIOSK are employed part-time, with varying percentages, by KASK Ghent, the art academy in which KIOSK is situated.

2°/ etc.-artist is a concept borrowed from artist and professor Ricardo Basbaum. The idea of embedding artists, and their practices, inside art institutions was developed as part of the doctoral research, The Artist Job Description, a Practice Led Research for the Employment of the Artist, as an Artist, inside Art Institutions (2016-2022), at Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and the University of Antwerp.

3°/ For the open call on KIOSK’s website, please follow the link: https://kiosk.art/artist-as-mediator

4°/ Quote taken from one of the last scenes of the film Symbiopsychotaxi plasm: Take One (1968) when the director, cast and film crew are approached by a homeless artist, who posed this question after being told a film was being shot by one of the crew members.

5°/ I had proposed, as part of an event for KIOSK in collaboration with KASK Cinema, some years before, but it did not take place. The wish to have the film screened still lingers as part of a discussion regarding my collaboration with KIOSK.

6°/ There are two texts written on Symbiopsychotaxiplasm that analyze Greaves’ approach that I have found helpful. They are “Come On, Alice, Stop Acting!” Scriptedness and the Radical Method by Shonni Enelow, and In a (Not So) Silent Way: Listening Past Black Visuality in Symbiopsychotaxiplasm by Charles “Chip” P. Linscott.

7°/ Initially developed for KIOSK, the exercise was later adapted and proposed in two different settings, first for an online workshop to the Emerging Artists Grantees at FICA, New Delhi, and later in the context of the workshop Working conditions for artistic practice at AEP, Rupert, Vilnius.

8°/ For Basbaum’s question and more related to my PhD defense, please follow the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt0gXMZdnFQ