journal RECAP | Curatorial Intensive & Overseas Field Trip

Heman Chong, NUS Museum, Curatorial-Intensive

  
"[W]e not only saw the art jungle as a whole working eco-system, but also, the micro-organisms of art practice were highlighted and magnified where we once might have been too green to appreciate." 
Euginia Tan, 8 August 2014

Centre for Contemporary Art, Curatorial-Intensive

"I found myself wondering about activism and liabilities of the curatorial particularly the local context. Within the sovereignty of practice, are curators sitting in a pivotal position to resolve such issues?"
Melvin Tan, 11 August 2014, Thoughts around the institutional prerogative: Part 1

[By: Cheng Jia Yun]

       "UNPICKING THE SEAMS OF A SUPER ARTY MUSEUM

@WeAreBUSYBodies couldn’t help

pulling on loose threads and

looser laurels,

pulling out the rug from

under all that media"

     Kenneth Loe, 23 July 2014,      
     Luxuriating in the Algorhythmic / Luxuriating in the Acceleration

[By: Cheng Jia Yun]

 "[O]ur Public Symposium (complete with packed hall) were rife with questions and new methodologies, rumblings of our fertile home ground, potent reminders to go design our own 'deh lee vehs' and generate our own start and finish lines."
Cheng Jia Yun, 13 August 2014,  Reflections: Curating Lab 2014

Para Site, North Point [By: Bernice Ong]

"[I]t becomes increasingly clear to me that the curation of anything has to allow for an open-endedness framed by certain topical guiding lines...It is a game we play as we attempt to list the rules abiding by our own logic, but also almost hoping that someone will hack our gem of a system to throw up new possibilities." 
Bernice Ong, 21 July 2014, Questions we can ask

Ying Qing & Raksha, Asia Art Archive

"One needs to remind oneself that beyond curating for the audience, the artist or the institution, one also needs to curate for himself or herself. One also needs to know (or rather admit) what he or she doesn’t know and wants to know from an exhibition."
Wong Yeang Cherng, 18 August 2014,  
Honestly Speaking: Controlling Art’s Enigma

Cosmin Costinas, Para Site, Po Yan St
[By: Selene Yap]

"While artists and curators have the autonomy in the staging of art as a non-frontal way of bringing subjects into question, this knowledge of and power over any given domain is both facilitated by and productive of various forms of enclosure. In propositioning content, we run the risk of asserting a truth-value onto the subaltern."

Selene Yap, 29 July 2014, On Exhibition-making and Its Dilemmas

Ten Million Rooms of Yearning.
Sex in Hong Kong, Para Site [By: Raksha Mahtani]

 "Exhibition happens everywhere. We must be exhibitionists at heart. We change our names to fit the fetish of every future lover; we perform all selves."
Raksha Mahtani, 31 July 2014, 
Curating as Violence, Exhibition as Trauma

Spring Workshop on @nusmuseum [By: Samantha Yap]

"I started seeing how diverse the role of a curator was, a curator who in our contemporary age, dovetailed as many other things too (writers, project manager, administrative extraordinaire, master emailer, etcetera). In the job of the curator, as with many other things in the art world, singularity does not quite exist."
Samantha Yap, 4 August 2014, CLARITY/UNCERTAINTY

Hong Kong Is Our Museum, OpenUU [By: Chua Ying Qing]

  

"post-art pre-museum

post-seeing pre-viewing  
re:presentation HOW"

Chua Ying Qing, 6 August 2014,  

hong kong in hypertext

Spring Workshop [By Luca Lum]

"Hong Kong shakes you awake with its surprising turns and its unceasing rhythms. Every sense in my mind and body is like a hypersensitive needle on a scale, tremblingly registering each new stimuli. Moments are full-bodied, deep and vivid. I absorb everything."
Luca Lum, 20 August 2014,  ISLE2ISLE / A TALE OF TWO CITIES

phase 1b. Overseas Field Trip

Immediately after a rigorous introduction to the programme the week before, Curating Lab participants were whisked off to Hong Kong on 16 June 2014 for a 5-day Overseas Field Trip.

Aiming to provide exposure to international curatorial practices, the trip involved visits to independent art spaces such as Spring Workshop, Para Site, Pekin Fine Arts and William Lim's collection at openUU as well as talks by curators and industry practitioners of wide-ranging practice such as Mimi Brown, founder of Spring Workshop, Para Site curators Cosmin Costinas and Lim Qinyi, and Pauline Yao and Aric Chen, both curators at M+.

Extending on their efforts during the Curatorial-Intensive, they also had the opportunity to conduct an afternoon of exhibition research at Asia Art Archive, following introductions and discussions with Claire Hsu, Chantal Wong and Hammad Nasar.

Programme facilitators Heman Chong, Max Andrews and Mariana Canepa Luna as well as programme mentor and NUS Museum assistant curator Kenneth Tay were also on hand to constantly engage participants in intense discussions and critical reflection.

"I am most appreciative that the programme highlighted the curatorial strategies and trends local to Hong Kong...it has offered me substantial insight into the problems, challenges, and most definitely, the tailored solutions to curating spaces within a land scarce country, much like Singapore."
Wong Yeang Cherng, participant

 "It was very valuable to have heard from a range of voices and seen different typologies of institutions, how they are programmed, funded and run on a daily basis and also in the long-term."
Max Andrews and Mariana Canepa Luna, programme facilitators

Overseas Field Trip | in photos
 

Throughout the trip, participants and facilitators reflected on their experiences and continued their reflections and discussions on-the-go through social media; follow their conversations here:

in pictures I Regional Field Trip. 10-12 September 2012

Bandung, Indonesia.

with Aminudin TH Siregar, Rizky A Zaelani, Tisna Sanjaya, Agung Hujatnikajennong, Jim Supangkat, Platform 3 Board.

phase 2. Regional Field Trip

 PROGRAMME         

________

Dates

10-12 September 2012 (3 days, 2 nights)

Concept

Organised during the internship period, the Regional Field Trip aims to expose participants to international curatorial practice, provide international networking opportunities and allow participants to put into context curatorial practices in Singapore with the Southeast Asian region. The field trip programme will be co-organised between NUS Museum and the Soemardja Gallery, Institut Teknologi Bandung.

The field trip will include visits to the Soemardja Gallery, Platform 3 and Selasar Sunaryo Art Space. Presentations and discussion sessions have been planned with figures in the Bandung and Indonesian art scene such as Aminudin TH Siregar, Rizki A. Zaelani, Agung Hujatnikajennong and Jim Supangkat. 

Aminudin TH Siregar  I   "Bandung School and Indonesian Modern Art"
Rizki A. Zaelani  I   "Problems of Curating in the Indonesian Art Scene"
Agung Hujatnikajennong  I   "Curatorial Strategies in Selasar Sunaryo Art Space"
Jim Supangkat  I   "Contemporary Art in Indonesia"

Participating Institution

Soemardja Gallery, as the oldest university gallery in Indonesia, serves as an educational complement to Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB)'s Department of Fine Art and as a cultural resource for the institute and art communities in Bandung. The gallery is a place for contemporary art exhibitions and serves as a platform for students to learn and study the management of exhibitions and art programmes through curatorial and volunteer projects.

Location

Bandung, Indonesia
Itinerary to include visits to Soemardja Gallery, Platform 3, Selasar Sunaryo Art Space. 

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