An archaeological journey through the renowned Swiss curator's “Museum of Obsessions”.
Pretenzione Intenzione: Objects of Beauty and Bewildermentfrom the Archive of Harald Szeemann draws on a selection of objects in the estate of art historian and exhibition maker Harald Szeemann (1933–2005). These objects were part of what Szeemann called his Museum of Obsessions, a mind mirror that manifested itself through Szeemann's exhibitions as well as in the workspace and archive known as the Fabbrica Rosa in Ticino. There he gathered the numerous and diverse objects, including papers, sketches, photographs, books, exhibition catalogues, letters, works of art and ephemera. As
Pretenzione Intenzione—the phrase which gave this project its title comes from one of Szeemann's handwritten notes—suggests, a desire lies dormant in the objects that makes itself felt iIntuitively and intimates a purpose that attains only passing concretion in the telling of stories. Starting from this mysterious casualness, Hayat Erdoğan, Simone Lappert,
Raimundas Malašauskas, Michele Robecchi, Bohdan Stehlik, Una Szeemann, and
Michael Taussig have embarked on an archaeological journey. While the authors unearth, explore, describe, and reimagine the objects, Bohdan Stehlik captures their auratic presence through photography. Texts and photographs bear witness to the inspiring illegibility and secrecy of these objects, which meander somewhere between preciousness and ephemera, encouraging readers to let their own thoughts drift.
Harald Szeemann (1933–2005) is without doubt one of the most authoritative figures of contemporary
curatorial practice. He has played a considerable role in the development of exhibition curating since the 1960s, and almost all art-historical books refer to "When attitudes become form" (1969).
