Texts

The Fight

A conversation between the artist Anne Wenzel, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam’s (former) director Deirdre Carasso and curator Selen Ansen.
This text is an edited and abridged version of the conversation that took place inside the boxing ring of Boxingschool de Jong on 3 December 2021. The text was published as part of Carte Blanche (Fuck The Dictator) in 2023


Selen (to Deirdre): I joined the project after being invited, as curator, by Anne Wenzel. So, for me, it's an opportunity to hear your version of the story, because you initiated the boxing match event. I'd like to ask you a few questions first to better grasp your initial thoughts and intentions. I'm really curious to know how this idea occurred to you; why did you think of boxing rather than, say, gardening or dancing with an artist, or playing music?

Deirdre: I was already boxing. I was trained by Hans de Jong and Bob van der Vlist at Boxingschool De Haan (the school has since been renamed Boxingschool de Jong, eds.). Then I found out that boxing is a source of inspiration for many artists and writers. It is also an important part of Schiedam’s social fabric. The museum had this mission to cocreate the museum with the people of Schiedam. With that in mind I asked Hans and Bob if we could collaborate on an event that would combine boxing, art history and city history. I was envisaging a boxing ring installed inside the chapel space of the museum (the entrance space used to be a chapel, eds.). As we were talking about initiating a weekend festival with lectures and boxing, the idea that I, too, would have to enter the boxing ring came up. So that is how it started.

Selen (to Deirdre): Who was to be your opponent?

Deirdre: I still had to find one – it could have been someone from the boxing club. But then I thought it would be nice to box against someone from the art world. And Anne was actually not the first person I asked. The first person I asked was Emily Ansenk, who at that time was the director of Kunsthal Rotterdam.

Selen: So you would be fighting with or against a colleague?

Deirdre: Well, for me it wasn't really “museum director fighting a colleague”. Emily was my first best friend from primary school. But she said no (laughter). Then I thought of you, Anne, but I don’t know why. I'm this intuitive kind of person. In my former job at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Anne had a small exhibition and I loved it. And her work was also part of the Schiedam collection. But we didn’t know each other personally.

Anne: I got a very short email from one of your colleagues. It said: “My director has a weird question for you”. And then we saw each other at Art Rotterdam and you asked me to box against you. Your reach was like this (Anne makes a long swing with her arm, eds.) and I thought “oh my god, this is going to be really tough” (laughter).

Deirdre (to Anne): The stupid thing was that I never thought about how strong you are. And, actually, it's so logical because you're a sculptor. You must be really strong.

Anne: I always liked to watch boxing matches. My grandmother used to watch boxing at night on television. It was the time of the famous fights with Mohamed Ali. I had this big romantic idea of boxing until I… until I lost touch with that.

Selen: It's the first time I hear about you losing touch with the romantic idea of boxing.

Anne: Yeah, I totally did. When I arrived at the boxing school and when we trained for the first time together, I immediately loved the place. It was the whole atmosphere in this old boxing school that was so beautiful. So, for me, that was the main reason for taking part. It was really this romantic notion of boxing, which I already had for years, that I rediscovered here. But it turned out to be very tough.

Deirdre: It's really difficult to actually punch someone.

Anne: That was something we really had to learn, not only physically, but also mentally. I remember some moments during the whole process, where I had to cross my mental borders. When I was training with Hans laying in the ropes pretending to be a victim, I wasn't interested in punching him anymore. Hans taught me that, at that point, you have to keep on beating in order to make points. That was the moment when all the things I have learned in my entire life, how to behave towards others, got ruined in just one hour (laughter). You can’t win a boxing match with collaboration. You have to over-rule.

Deirdre: I was scared of being punched, scared that I'd run out of the ring during the match. On the day of the match, I was walking down the street and people were encouraging me with “hey, good luck tonight!” They were making these boxing moves, and my only thought was “fuck, I’m so scared”.

Anne (to Deirdre): I think the mental journey we made is massive.

Selen: So, we have a boxing match with ancestral rules. One wins, one does not. In the case of this match, what would the winner get? What would the trophy be? I'd also like to ask what would have happened if Anne had lost and you, Deirdre, had won the match? Carte blanche was Anne’s idea, right?

Deirdre: Yes, it was.

Anne: For me, the boxing match was problematic – I had to think about it before accepting. I had serious problems with the fact that it was a kind of event. As an artist, I think that a museum that has several works of mine in its collection should ultimately ask me to do a proper exhibition, but instead I was being asked to do a boxing match.

Deirdre: It’s the first time I hear you talking about the event aspect. What are your issues with that?

Anne: I think the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam is an art museum. Art itself is extremely powerful. But instead of focusing on art, we have to organise boxing matches, we have to do a lot of other things which are not related at all to art. As artists we always feel that we have to fight if we want to realise an exhibition, because we are always in this extremely vulnerable position. As a director, you have the power, you have the money, you have the space. And I really want to enter that space, I want to realise the most beautiful show, the greatest works. I always have the feeling that I have to fight for the freedom of art, for making an exhibition – and with your invitation to fight against you in the ring, I finally was given the opportunity.

Deirdre: The way you put it, I don’t think it does justice to the kind of impact Stedelijk Museum Schiedam tries to have. The museum has realised, and still realises, art exhibitions in the traditional sense where the art is central. But if we want to build a true city museum, if we want the people to feel it is their museum, it is not enough to say, “come to the museum, there is art and we will tell and show you how beautiful it is”, or how important or urgent or whatever. So, if we want to really connect with the city we have to make the museum together with the people who live in it, and this can take many forms. It can be an exhibition, it can be a gardening event, it can be a boxing match. And with regard to the hierarchy that Anne raised previously, I can imagine it feels like that. For me, actually, it was really strange to be positioned in this case as “the museum director” because I went into this adventure with a different perspective, with the aim of collaboration.

Anne: But you are the museum director!

Deirdre: Yes, I am. And, of course as a director you have a certain kind of power. But it isn't true that the artist lacks power. A public museum, not a private museum, in a city like Schiedam has many stakeholders. This includes the artists, the public - we are a publicly funded museum - the city council, foundations and the media.

Anne: I never understood that, for instance, there is no artist on the museum's board. The board discusses which direction the museum should take; they all talk about artists without actually asking the artists their opinions or working with them. I think it is necessary that the artist is made part of the board, that s/he participates in decisions regarding the museum’s policy.

Deirdre: I think Anne is talking about art museums in general, but I think Stedelijk Museum Schiedam has a special place because it’s about art, it’s about history, but it’s as much about people. What we try to do as a museum actually aims to break down the walls of the museum by giving power to the people. Artists are very important, but the people of Schiedam are just as important. A lot of people in Schiedam don’t feel at home in an art museum, or in any museum for that matter.

Anne: But is it necessary? Because I don’t like football matches so I don’t go there.

Deirdre: That’s something else.

Anne: No, they also get subsidies from the government.

Deirdre: Not everyone has to visit museums, but unlike football clubs museums get annual funding. A museum like the one in Schiedam therefore has an obligation to be of interest for a substantial part of the town. What is important to the people who don’t feel at home right away in a museum is that you show them, in different ways, that it is also their museum. If you can box there, maybe you feel more at ease about visiting an exhibition. I remember we organized an iftar, and a man came up to me and said “I prayed here, so now this is also my space”. I think a museum can be used in many ways and the beautiful thing about Stedelijk Museum Schiedam is that you can enjoy it and experience it on many levels. Whether it is an art exhibition in the traditional sense, or a boxing match, it’s okay.

Selen: When Anne told me about the boxing match I thought: what is she talking about? Why is she accepting this? Then, when she explained that she accepted the challenge on political grounds, I understood. You have to be in this ring in order to further discuss or formulate a critical view about the situation. Now we're having this discussion in a ring again and I think it’s great to have contrasting voices and perspectives converging here. My little experience of boxing has taught me that a boxing ring is one of the rare places where what you fight against and what you fight for come together. You do both within the physical limits of a square space that is subjected to defined rules. And within the frame of these rules you connect with the other and with yourself. These two things – what you fight against and what you fight for – which are distinguished outside the ring or which we consider opposite merge here.

Anne: I fought for artistic freedom. With Carte Blanche I want to bring back the art in the museum. This is a rather complicated way to do it. I had to become trained in boxing for several months and now, some years later, I can finally enter the museum with my art.

Deirdre: For me, it was about collaborating with the city. It was about the chapel filled with people from Schiedam who normally don’t visit the museum, and who were visiting lectures about art history and boxing, about the city's history and boxing. I am a director who wants to organize an event for and with the city.

Anne (to Deirdre): You talk more about culture than art although art is a constitutive part of this museum. I worked with the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam before you came, with the previous director Diana Wind. Back then it was really an art-driven museum. For me it was a big shock when suddenly the museum turned towards culture. You were, for me, the symbol of this new direction and that helped me to step into the boxing ring and fight. I am really into collaboration, so it's very artificial for me to over-rule. I am able to fight if necessary, but I hate it.

Deirdre: I know, and everything you say is correct. The only thing I would like to add is that the museum still takes art seriously. And I hope, now that you are making this Carte Blanche project with the museum, that you are respected as an artist and that you have freedom as an artist because that is also what the museum is about. I’m looking forward to your Carte Blanche – I’m really curious to see how it will differ from an exhibition and what you will do if you have really carte blanche and you’re not hindered by the museum.

Selen: Did you know that the term “carte blanche” has military and political roots? I did a bit of research, and it most probably comes from the French “charte blanche”. It used to designate a blank sheet of paper signed by a monarch at the bottom. The recipient of this sheet of paper could fill it up as they pleased and anything stated on it would become legitimate and legal. That could be for instance acquiring a territory. Whoever was given carte blanche would be granted unrestricted power without fear of prosecution.

Anne (to Deirdre): I’m quite sure that the Carte Blanche I work on is 100% a reaction to your vision. When I am in the museum I find, for example, the didactic texts on the walls so simplistic! I really always feel that the museum doesn’t take me seriously. Come on! I’m not stupid! I really don’t feel welcome when I read these texts.

Deirdre: Stedelijk Museum Schiedam is a publicly funded museum. It serves many different people, which means that if you write really difficult texts about art, a lot of people won’t understand.

Selen: I also have problems with the simplification of things and the formatting of discourses. I work as a curator in a private institution and in a different cultural context, but I’m well aware that a public museum like Stedelijk Museum Schiedam has different obligations. In the past I was an academic and taught philosophy at a university. So I've often been faced with those “people don’t understand” types of comments. From my point of view, there is no such thing as people not understanding. It’s about providing experiences rather than knowledge, about being able to share experiences.

Deirdre: Writing about art in a clear way is quite difficult, I have to say. I'm familiar with a lot of texts about art – and even if you’re trained as an art historian as I am, you might not understand what the authors are saying. It can be intimidating and I´m sure that isn´t the goal.

Anne: I don’t think that it is necessary to understand everything. We can compare it to boxing. When we started with boxing, we didn’t know anything. We started knowing a bit more during our boxing match. The same is true with art. It’s not necessary that we understand everything right away – it’s good if we need more time.

Selen: Anne, when we did the exhibition in Istanbul (exhibition Not All That Falls has Wings, Arter, 2016, eds.) and also during our recent discussions you said something like “in my art I try to not show the effort”. I think this is an interesting point within the context of the Carte Blanche project. As we’ve said, the outcome of the boxing match, Carte Blanche, is not a regular exhibition – it is rather a process. From the beginning of this process, there is a lot of sweat involved. I suppose it will be also interesting if we manifest the genealogy of this process. The public who will come and see your works in Schiedam...

Anne: ...won’t see the sweat anymore.

Selen: They won’t see it, but they will hear or read about it. There is effort involved from the very beginning of this process, however in a whole different way. I’m not talking about the effort required by the production of the artworks, but about the effort to display your sculptures at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, enable them to go public in this place. It is a shift of perspective.

Anne: Yes, but I still think that, in the end, all the effort won’t be seen by the public. Some people may have watched the boxing match, but they haven’t seen us struggling with things during all these months. You can compare it very much with the moment you have a work in a museum: it’s there, however all the months of work preceding remain invisible to the public. In the same way, when we entered the ring, the public watching us fight didn’t witness all the struggles and problems, that’s just gone. From our point of view it’s a massive amount of time, but for the public it’s only a few minutes.

Selen: Then I am thinking that since it is impossible to restore passed moments, our effort from now on will also be to reintroduce the temporality of the process, to make the duration perceptible to the public.

Anne: This effort might also be the reason why I gave up on the romantic notion of watching boxing, because I now know about all the sweating that precedes the fight.