[curatorial.net] Valerie again

Tue Apr 17 14:26:04 BST 2007

Dear everyone,

after I have sent a long list of diverse links, I was asked to explain them, my research topic and their connection to Sergio's seminar further.
I will try to do so with this mail. I must warn you all that it is a rather long email...

In the first session of Sergio's Seminar ("Curating the Other/ The curator as a tourist") we discussed terms such as periphery and centre, as well as the phenomena of major exhibitions showing non-western contemporary art. All participants chose one area of interest to research until the next meeting.

Originally I started off looking at the New Zealand art scene, since I have spent some time there. I was interested how the western society of New Zealand deals with being on a geographical periphery and therefore closer to non-western cultures. I won't go into great depth about my findings though.

>From the exhibition TRANSINDONESIA: SCOPING CULTURE IN CONTEMPORARY INDONESIAN ART
18 December 2004 - 27 February 2005 at the Govett Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth (www.govettbrewster.com), my research shifted from NZ to South East Asia.

Therefore I looked at the obvious things: Asia-Pacific Triennial, Singapore Biennial, other Singapore Art Festivals, and then at Singapore's policies/funding for the arts http://www.nac.gov.sg/   
It was interesting to see what was going on there, who were the curators, sponsors and places, as well as what are the government's roles and why is everyone doing what they are doing?!

Further it interested me what organizations try to "connect" the West and SEAsia. A few are as followed: http://asiasociety.org (USA_Asia)
Asia Europe Cultural Exchange   http://www.asef.org/
http://universes-in-universe.de/english.htm
These organizations are interested in exchanging art and culture across the East and West.

An international curators workshop (Multi-faceted Curator – The facet of Multi-culturalism) which I thought connected with what we were doing can be found on the following link: 
http://www.culture-asef.org/english/txt/2006/curator_workshop 

>From this workshop and my google search about curators such as Rifky Effendy (an Indonesian curator, who also co-curated the "Transindonesia" exhibition), I found a few SEAsian contemporary Art websites. These websites were very interesting since they were from local artists and curators and seem to look "in" more than "out".

www.rama9art.org    Thai contemporary Art, mostly shown in Bangkok       
http://www.karbonjournal.org       Online Journal about Indonesian contemporary art
www.ruangrupa.org  artists’ initiative founded in early 2000 by a group of Jakarta based artists, a non-profit organization which focuses on supporting the development of art in the cultural context through research, study and documentation, along with intensive cooperation with the artists through exhibitions, artist residency programme, art project and workshop.
http://contempartnow.wordpress.com/  An information weblog on Indonesian contemporary art today
http://icurator.wordpress.com/        more Indonesian contemporary art

And here is a selection of articles (mostly from Indonesian artists/curators) which I found and seemed very relevant for Indonesian & SEAsian issues regarding being successful/remaining e.g. "Indonesian" in the (mostly western funded) art scene.
http://www.karbonjournal.org/content/?p=102&language=en  by Agung Kurniawan
http://www.apexart.org/conference/effendy.htm  Indonesian Contemporary Art and the Development of Art Infrastructure:   Influences, Appropriations, and Tensions by Rifky Effendy
http://www.serve.com/inside//edit64/dwi.htm  	Text: „Naked truth“ by M Dwi Marianto

This link is rather odd, but very informative. I assume that one or more Indonesian artists created this blog-like website explaining who is who in the contemporary art scene of Indonesia:
http://www.geocities.com/rainforestwind/clickaways4.htm

The impression I got from the Indonesian contemporary art scene was very positive. I found that there were many artists and curators with plenty of initiative to put interesting things on. 
Overall, I got the impression that the Indonesians were reflecting themselves and their situation very deeply and that they were very independent from the west.

This impression changed a bit when I found that some events I found (e.g. the curating workshop) were sponsored by Western groups, and when I read deeper into some critical texts. Many Indonesians noticed and criticized the influences of the west and their money on the Indonesian contemporary art scene.

Looking at the definition of Culture by the Indonesian Government:  (http://www.budpar.go.id/page.php?ic=622&id=2657)
"Culture is learned as a child, and as children we each learned from those around us a particular set of rule, beliefs, priorities and expectations that moulded our world into a meaningful whole. Culture consist of language, technology, social organization, economy, knowledge, religion and art."
...and finding out that they are not sponsoring the contemporary art, makes it understandable that some Indonesian artists feel even more vulnerable to western influences. 

>From these findings Sergio encouraged me(pushed me)to think about the question: How to curate an exhibition about South East Asia? And since I felt that this was the wrong question to ask (considering of how many individual islands SEAsia consists and of all those different and complex cultures!), I replied that I would not curate such an exhibition. I thought it would make more sense for me to look at "other" and "own"/"self" and the questions in which way the "other" is also part of the "own".

>From this point I started to look at the following links, which are connected with Jean-Huber Martin's "Magicien de la Terre" exhibition of 1989:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0425/is_1_64/ai_n13807674
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_10_88/ai_66306836

http://www1.uol.com.br/bienal/23bienal/universa/iuao.htm

http://www.apexart.org/exhibitions/martin.htm

http://www.iniva.org/archive/resource/1545

By Friday I hope to have wrapped up all this research and thoughts into a useful presentation, leading to further interesting discussions, questions and ideas.

See you Friday,
Valerie

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