Critical Curatorial Practices in the 21st Century: Public Space, New Media and Geopolitics

Speakers：
Wen-Shu Lai | Professor/Director, Institute of Applied Arts, NYCU, Taiwan
Karin G. Oen-Lee | Senior Lecturer, Head of Art History, School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Shwetal Ashvin Patel | Ph.D. Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, UK

Moderator：
Joyce C.H. Liu | Professor/Director, International Center for Cultural Studies, NYCU, Taiwan

Discussants：
Tammy Ko Robinson | Associate Professor, Department of Applied Art, Hanyang University, S. Korea
Hwa-Jen Tsai | Assistant Professor, Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies, NYCU, Taiwan

Date & Time: 2024年4月29日 18:30-21:30 (Taipei time)
Venue：Online
Format：Online Forum
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Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81870341834……
Meeting ID: 818 7034 1834
Code: 998835
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*The lecture will be held in English.

Introduction:

In response to the profound transformations and complex challenges of the 21st century, what strategies can curatorial artists employ to tackle global and local issues? What are their perspectives on curatorial practices in this era? How can curatorial practices intervene in public spaces and question history? How can contemporary new media and virtual spaces serve as mediums for curation? How can curation serve educational purposes? Are museum spaces becoming restrictive, or do they still possess the power to shape community dynamics? Amidst the current global geopolitical changes, can curatorial practices also consider the limitations of artists’ identity politics? To delve into these questions, we have invited three cross-local curatorial artists to participate in this online forum, sharing their past artistic experiences and collectively contemplating the potential dimensions of critical curation in the 21st century. We have also invited art educators to join in discussing these issues.

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Speakers and topics：

Wen-Shu Lai | Interrogative Design as a social intervention and curational method

The Interrogative Design, initiated by Harvard University professor Krzysztof Wodiczko, is a method for investigating social or political issues, raising critical inquiries, instead of solving problems. Through entering public spaces, taking artistic actions, and using people or things as living metaphors to transform specific sites into metaphorical spaces. In other words, speakers, spaces, and tools serve as intermediary media to interact with participants or audiences and initiate dialogue through intermediary mechanisms. As a method or strategy, the interrogative design conveys information through cross-disciplinary integration such as multimedia projections, interactive installations or curation. The purpose is not to provide solutions but to raise or reveal problems behind the social or political phenomena. The praxis of Interrogative design could be seen as a curational method or approach, an attitude, a critical action, or a social intervention, thus bringing about the conditions of the invisible or the marginal voices to be seen or heard, and triggering follow-up and

Karin G. Oen-Lee ｜Polyphony in Practice

21st century curatorial practices raise questions of the polyphonic: how to include diverse modes of knowledge production and discursive practice while also preserving elements of the spatio-temporal exhibition experience that resist or defy discourse. Drawing from examples at museums, non-collecting contemporary art spaces, pop-up non-profit spaces, and (gasp) commercial galleries, I will share notes on a mode of exhibition making that incorporates para-curatorial elements on equal footing with research, programming, and collaborations with individuals and institutions. How can podcasts, publications, and educational programmes (short-form, long-form, informal, and formal) provide entry points for curatorial practitioners who have non-traditional backgrounds? And how can connoisseurship or object-based practices evolve alongside the diffuse notion of “experience” in exhibition-making? Beginning with a deep dive into four different curatorial projects involving ceramics in and ending with four curatorial projects related to new media practices, this presentation will showcase examples of the vexed issues of working in the conceptual space of the curatorial while simultaneously inhabiting the practical space of project management and coalition building in the virtual and material space of the global art world.

Shwetal A Patel, PhD ｜Soft Power & New Cold War/s

The recent expansion of BRICS (​​a grouping of the world economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) centring six additional countries to the geopolitical grouping, portents to a new era of rising soft-powers from West Asia, South & South East Asia, Latin America and Africa. For the better part of the European colonial project beginning in the 15th century, international cultural exchange was primarily choreographed and controlled by a small group of powerful countries. Arguably, a seismic shift began from the 1980s onwards as the US became the sole dominant global economic and military power. Today, as the cultural sector attempts to tackle the unprecedented challenges that demand collective multilateral efforts, the established norms of international cultural relations are undergoing yet another transformation in an age reminiscent of the Cold War (circa 1947 – 1991). This lecture-workshop provides students and practitioners with tools to investigate the aforementioned multi-polar geopolitical moment and provides an opportunity to think together about the limits of identity politics along with the application of ​​United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights within this paradigm shift. This epochal transition also mirrors the growing diversification of the art world, reshaped by the dynamic interplay of multiple soft-powers in an age of hyper financialisation and hyper connectivity. Given these complex and evolving scenarios, the lecture-workshop speculates on the ethical considerations for practitioners in the field.

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Bios ：

Wen-Shu Lai, an academic and artist, earned MA and MFA degrees in Art and Design, later achieving a Doctoral degree in Art Education from the University of Iowa. Her teaching tenure began at Angelo State University, Texas, where she taught Art from 2001 to 2004. Currently, Lai holds key roles at the National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. She is a professor and director at the Institute of Applied Arts, leads the Interrogative transArt Lab, and contributes significantly to the NYCU Sixth Fuel Factory team. Additionally, she engages as a researcher at the International Institute for Cultural Studies at NYCU. In her artistic pursuit, Lai focuses on ontological inquiries, exploring the essence of existence. She served as a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley in 2016. Her research interests span a wide artistic spectrum, encompassing Art Intervention, Cross-disciplinary Arts, Interrogative Design, Hermeneutic Theory, Phantom Narratives, and Artist’s Books. Lai’s diverse approach underscores her commitment to investigating the intersections of art, culture, and interpretation.

Web Site: https://wendylai.lab.nycu.edu.tw/

Karin G. Oen-Lee is a curator and art historian based in Singapore where she is Senior Lecturer and Head of Department, Art History, at Nanyang Technological University’s School of Humanities. She works on historical, modern, and contemporary creative practices related to the transcultural and the transmediatic. Recently, Karin was Deputy Director of Curatorial Programmes at NTU CCA Singapore and co-editor with Ute Meta Bauer and Tan Boon Hui of the 2022 book SEA: Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia. She previously served as associate curator of contemporary art at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco where her exhibition projects included teamLab: Continuity (2021), Haroon Mirza: The Night Journey (2018), and Koki Tanaka: Potters and Poets (2016). Prior to her time in San Francisco, Oen was a curator at the Crow Museum of Asian Art in Dallas. She received her BA from Stanford, MA from Christie’s New York, and PhD in the history, theory, and criticism of art and architecture from MIT, where her dissertation focused on experimental new media practices in early Reform Era China. She is a board member of The Institutum, a Singapore-based nonprofit dedicated to contemporary art education and outreach; and iPress, a non-profit publisher of books on architecture, urbanism, and social space founded in Boston in 1970.

Web Site: https://dr.ntu.edu.sg/cris/rp/rp01883

Shwetal Ashvin Patel is a writer and researcher practising at the intersection of visual art, exhibition-making and development studies. He works internationally–– primarily in Europe and South Asia–– and is a founding member of Kochi-Muziris Biennale in India, responsible for international partnerships and programmes. He holds a practice-based PhD from Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, where his thesis was titled ‘Biennale Practices: Making and Sustaining Visual Art Platforms’. He is a guest lecturer at Zürich University of the Arts, Royal College of Art, and Exeter University, besides being an editorial board member at OnCurating.org and a trustee at Milton Keynes Museum and Coventry Biennial. He lives between United Kingdom, Belgium and India.

Website: https://www.gazette-drouot.com/……/dr……/23794