It enables something to occur that goes beyond the realm of representation.

Interviewee: Nora Sternfeld

I’m interested in post-representative strategies, in other words, I’m exploring the question as to what can occur in museums or exhibitions that goes beyond representation, perhaps also goes against representation, or within the self-understanding of representation. I believe that representation is challenged where it is not clear in advance what should happen. And right there we’re moving in a realm of the possible. Just like our conversation now, which was not to be prepared in detail, and indeed could not anyway. I’m trying to get somewhere with you in this conversation, without knowing beforehand where we will end up. Most of what takes place on the exhibition circuit is representation. What can be done to leave behind representation and open up a space of possibility? The other thing is that we’re both asking ourselves: what can one do at all? Perhaps there’s not much one can do? What we can do at least is to shift the possible. I also wish to shift what is. But I feel that in exhibitions a great deal is set out in advance and rigidly classified. That’s why I want to work on jolting what has become rigid. That – so my belief – cannot occur if I simply set out something equally rigid on my own, but rather only when something emerges, out of working with others, in which the rigidly codified is jolted. In this process I always encounter my own rigidness, because I’m an actor in this field who pursues specific interests, careerisms and all that. I thus hope that encounters with others who are also seeking to agitate help me to cast off my rigid habits. All this can take place in a space of possibility: a shifting of what we imagine, of what we see, of what we can say, an intervention into what one may call the mighty hegemonic archive.