What Should Docents Do?

The following review came from the March 2008 issue of Art in America. As docents, how do you respond to Sehgal's exhibition? Do you, like the "interpreters" mentioned in the article below, shy away from full engagement with visitors or do you welcome varied topics and conversation? And to take it one step further, what role should we be filling? Is engagement with the art as important as conveying the known themes and ideas of the exhibition? What do you think?

Art in America
Review of Exhibitions
New York

Tino Sehgal at Marian Goodman
Almost all the conditions of Tino Sehgal's performance This Situation sound just a little sophomoric. Half dozen youngish people hang around the gallery, engaged in an interminable, desultory discussion spurred by great-thinker sound bites spanning four centuries. When each new viewer enters the gallery, all the players pause, take a deep breath, and chant in slow unison, "welcome to this situation." Invariably, this greeting elicits a self-conscious smile in the newcomer, setting up a discomfort meant to linger. Nonetheless, the work was utterly engrossing.

Maybe it was its knife-edge balance between all too real and completely artificial. The rotating cast of "interpreters," drawn from a pool of 30 coaches by Sehgal, was versed in philosophy, though expertise and volubility varied widely. The memorized quotes, identified only by date, were prompts for wildly swerving digression. Topics ranged (when I was there) from the over-production of history in the Balkans to 16th century monasticism as a model for the kind of radicalism necessary to address global warming. Much felt spontaneous, and it was possible to watch personal as well as intellectual dynamics play out within the group. Exchanges were always collegial but not overly courteous. On the busiest of the three days I visited, a Saturday, the incessant arrival of viewers, and the ritual greetings that ensued, made the discussions disappointingly perfunctory. But on the others, it felt as if ideas were being truly weighed, and generated.

On the other hand, a not inconsiderable aspect of the piece was highly stylized. Deep communal intakes of breath precede breaks in the conversations, when interpreters turned to face the walls and then moved backward, slowly, to new positions in the room, sometimes changing places with each other. In face all of their movements were just slightly too slow to seem natural. Regularly, poses were struck that were clearly lifted from well known paintings, but it was hard to identify them or correlate them wit the time frame of the quote in play. Courbet, Manet, Watteau and possibly Millet seemed the relevant masters. (Much of this harks back to earlier works by Sehgal, a Berlin resident born in 1976 in London, who trained in the odd combination of dance and economics.)

At longish intervals (roughly a half-hour), the group paused to address viewers with the question, again recited slowly and with slightly exaggerated emphasis, "What do you think?" Taking the bait was not a completely satisfactory exercise. Questions were deflected (especially if they touched on the parameters of the performance), and the interpreters seemed eager to move back to their own discussion. It's possible that this teasing offer of participation, and the rejection that seemed to be its inevitable sequel, was part of the point, a comment on how art has become, as some critics see it, a service industry providing negotiable access to restricted circles of social prestige.

But more interesting by far was the substance of the discussions, when they had time to develop. The questions they took up, including how to put a frame around a situation, or a person's identity or field of knowledge, were much more nourishing than the insider talk that too often passes for theory in the art world.
-Nancy Princenthal