Daniel McClean leads two practices alongside one another: as a lawyer and as an independent curator. These two events lead him to collaborate with artists in the creation of contracts, as a lawyer on the one hand, setting limits and rules of a work of art vis-à-vis the right author, and secondly, as a producer of projects in which artists contracts define a creative context.
In 2008, Daniel McLean and Lisa Rosendahl initiated 'Offer and Exchange: Sites of Negotiation in Contemporary Art', a program which consisted on inviting artists to use legal contracts in relation to different contexts: that of the mall, collection of business, the fairgrounds, the public agency, private collection, the auction house, the magazine. In this context, Daniel McClean has worked with artists Carey Young, Santiago Sierra, Robert Barry / Stefan Bruggemann, Goldin Senneby and Superflex.
Through several case studies ', Daniel McClean will trace a history of artists' contracts, used in conceptual art and criticism of the institution, and will discuss how these two activities overlap and feed one of another.
This intervention was also conceived in relation to two projects being developed under the program Kadist: "The stage of the Sirens" by Etienne Chambaud and Vincent Norman (April 2010) and the exhibition of Goldin Senneby (June 2010) .
Headless (with « Fiction on auction ») - Goldin+Senneby - 2010
Transaction, performance
In
Fiction on Auction, the site of the auction is used to stage a fiction where the right to appear as character in
Looking for Headless is offered to the highest bidder: the name of the successful biddder as registered for the auction will form the name or identity of the character appearing in the novel.
Looking for Headless is written by the fictitious author K.D and tells the story of two artists Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby who collaborate with an author, John Barlow. Goldin and Senneby investigate an offshore company on the Bahamas called Headless Ltd whilst Barlow writes a docu-fictional murder-mystery, also called Headless, based on these investigations. The three protagonists become increasingly entangled in the world of offshore business, while speculating about the possible connections between Headless Ltd and the secret society known as Acéphale ( from the Greek term, acephalus, meaning headless) founded by George Bataille and his circle of friends connected to the College de Sociologie in Paris in the late 1930s.
Goldin and Senneby have created a series of exhibition projects in parallel with
Looking for Headless which examine elements of the novel, including the identity of Headless Ltd, and explore the juridical construction of off-shore financial centres as strategies of withdrawal from public visibility.
Fiction on Auction is the 4th project in
Offer and Exchange: Sites of Negotiation in Contemporary Art (2008-2010): a series of site specific commissions curated by Daniel McClean & Lisa Rosendahl.
