In the current climate of drastic change, how can curating serve again as an effective method for knowledge production and cultural rumination, and meanwhile become a cutting-edge praxis which stimulates cultural creativity? Besides, what crucial issues does curating touch upon as it is confronted not only with the alterations in contemporary people’s spiritual realm and perceptual mechanism but also with the strikes of disasters and variances be they natural or anthropogenic? Organized by Taipei Fine Arts Museum in collaboration with TheCube Project Space under the theme of Evolving Landscape — Contemporary Curating in the Age of ‘Crisi-tunity’, the International Conference of the Curators’ Intensive Taipei 24 (CIT24) seeks to address the aforementioned urgent issues, outline again the momentum that curating should have, and examine the evolving landscape of curatorial praxis at the turn of times.
In 2019, when “contemporary curating” as a profession had been developing in Taiwan for around 20 years, Taipei Fine Arts Museum and National Culture and Arts Foundation co-organized the Curators’ Intensive Taipei 19 — International Conference and Workshops to explore the curatorial history and methodology in geographical relations as well as the societal functions and roles of curators based on Asian cultural and historical contexts. In 2020, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic ushered the whole world in a state of emergency. Dynamic changes and tensions arose among previous social relationships. As a part of civilization, art production was not spared such an unprecedented challenge.
In retrospect, people seem to be able to regard the pandemic’s massive impact as a cycle of radical replacement of the old with the new, thereby reacquainting themselves with others, things, and the world. However, the accelerating world manifests itself in the complex fluctuations in nature, culture, ecology, politics, technology, and even the emergence and extinction of different species in the environment, which is currently redefined and examined as fresh momentum through curating in the post-globalization era.
“Upon misfortune, it is good fortune that rests; and around good fortune, it is misfortune that lurks.” This quote from Laozi (Daodejing) implies that every crisis has a silver lining. To continue the context of the CIT19, the International Conference of the CIT24 comprises three main axes of discussion: how curating, as a method, (1) contemplates the present and the future; (2) responds to the paradigm shifts of creation and display caused by technological revolutions; and (3) revisits the approaches of cultural and artistic praxis in geopolitics. The three axes are not so much discrete themes as the bifurcation and intersection of discussions under general observation.
The International Conference of the CIT24 invites seven keynote speakers from different regions of the world to share their brilliant insights and observations about the evolution of art institutions, regional perspectives, and curatorial ideas in the contemporary scene. Taiwan’s art professionals are afforded the opportunity to meet with these keynote speakers at the conference, so that they can build cross-regional dialogues and exchange networks, and meanwhile promote and deepen local curatorial education.
International Conference of the Curators’ Intensive Taipei 24
Moderator | Jun-Jieh Wang (Director, Taipei Fine Arts Museum)
Respondent | Hsiang-Ling Lai (Director, New Taipei City Art Museum)
The international proliferation of biennials in recent years has resulted in criticism and debate as to the relevance of this model for exhibition-making. These discussions often overlook the important specificity of place that underlies the planning and conception of most contemporary biennials. A biennial can and should feel a part of the place in which it is realized – reflecting its people, culture, concerns, and geography. In this presentation, I...
Moderator | Feng-Rong Hsieh (Senior Curator, New Taipei City Art Museum)
Respondent | Chia-Jung Yeh (Director, Hong-gah Museum)
The global nature of a pandemic reveals the intricacies of our relations, especially the significance of that which previously appeared distant or conveniently overlooked. As exhibitions and travel resume their pre-pandemic schedules, we are left to ask if we have fundamentally changed after its wide-reaching disruption, even if just by a little. After all, it is from little and cumulative movements that great shifts occur. The challenge of climate change...
Moderator | Wei-Tzu Chuang (Curator, Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab)
Respondent | Eva Lin (Artist Director, mt.project)
The concept of “island chain” was formulated by former U.S. Secretary of State SecState John Foster Dulles in 1951 during the Cold War, referring to West Pacific islands. It is a geographical concept with political and military implications. As a part of the island chain, Taiwan is located at the junction of land and sea, where continental history and Austronesian history converge to create diverse, complex vocabulary and where aesthetics...
Moderator | Hsu Shih-Yu (Independent Curator)
Respondent | Lu Pei-Yi (Director, MA in Critical and Curatorial Studies of Contemporary Art, National Taipei University of Education )
Cultural events are always resemblances of how different communities work together and strengthen their collective identity through local art forms and knowledge. How does curatorial practice could go further to create “social spaces” for artists and communities with different backgrounds? In the age of digital media where connection is easily mediated through technological devices, to connect and to imagine a way of being together and sharing become a significant political...
Panelists | Hoor AI Qasimi (Director, Sharjah Art Foundation), June Yap (Director, Curatorial and Research, Singapore Art Museum), Cheng-Yi Chien (Chief Curator, Exhibition Department, Taipei Fine Arts Museum), Alia Swastika (Director, Biennale Jogja Foundation), Hsiang-Ling Lai (Director, New Taipei City Art Museum), Chia-Jung Yeh (Director, Hong-gah Museum), Yi-Hua Lin (Artist Director, mt.project), Pei-Yi Lu (Director, MA in Critical and Curatorial Studies of Contemporary Art, National Taipei University of Education). Moderator...
Moderator | Li-Chun Lee (Assistant Professor, Department of Arts and Design, National Tsing Hua University)
Respondent | Yu-Chuan Tseng (Professor, Graduate Institute of Art and Technology, National Tsing Hua University)
And why are there so few media art works in contemporary art exhibitions? Media arts, namely art forms that engage the capacities and affordances of recent and emerging technologies, are still largely missing in contemporary art exhibitions and spaces. In an age of rapid proliferation, consumerized adoption and normalization of media technologies coupled with what can be characterized as an institutionalized neglect of media arts in museums and art spaces...
Moderator | Yi-Hsin Lai (Director, Taichung Museum of Art)
Respondent｜Jau-Lan Guo (Associate Professor, Graduate of Fine Art, Taipei National University of the Arts)
For the 154-year-old Metropolitan Museum of Art, “modern and contemporary art” has always been at the core of its existential query. Though the encyclopedic museum began to collect and display “art of the present” in the early 20th century, and the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art has been established since 1967, contemporary art at The Met has often been treated with intense scrutiny. As the Modern and Contemporary Wing...
Moderator｜Vivian Ting (Independent Curator)
Respondent｜Manray Hsu (Independent Curator)
* Sabih Ahmed is unable to attend the event in person. The speech will be delivered through a pre-recorded video.
The history of curating has to be rewritten, abandoning its etymological and museological moorings. The presentation questions the foundational principles of modern museum practices since their emergence in the 17th and 18th centuries into their neoliberal avatar, locating them in regimes of what Achille Mbembe describes as necropolitics (a subjugation of life to the power and technologies of death). Drawing on case studies and theoretical frameworks offered by artists, curators...
Panelists | Gunalan Nadarajan (Dean Emeritus and Professor, Stamps School of Art and Design, University of Michigan), Lesley Ma (Ming Chu Hsu and Daniel Xu Curator, Modern and Contemporary, The Met, New York), Sabih Ahmed (Director, Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai), Yu-Chuan Tseng (Professor, Graduate Institute of Art and Technology, National Tsing Hua University), Jau-Lan Guo (Associate Professor, Graduate of Fine Art, Taipei National University of the Arts), Manray Hsu (Independent...