Monday, May 19, 2014

Dear Curator Curate Me: postscript - questions raised during the roundtable discussion at Cemeti Art House

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The discussion on Dear Curator Curate Me (a travelling
--> project by the nomadic visual artist Kristoffer Ardeña) at Selasar Sunaryo Art Space, Bandung, Indonesia, 19 May 2013, with curators Rizki Lazuardi and Chabib Duta Hapsoro, focused on the artist-curator relationships. The discussion at Cemeti Art House in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, on the other hand, focused on the curatorial text. For Yogyakarta,  --> the following curators were invited: Mira Asriningtyas, Pitra Hutomo and Grace Samboh.

Here are some of the questions that arose during the discussion at Cemeti Art House (5 April 2014):

1.     Why ask curators to include all the 15 videos?
2.     Why can’t curators select videos she or he wants to curate?
3.     Why can’t curators add more videos in the selection? Curators felt like they were given an assignment instead of a challenge.
4.     Is Kristoffer Ardeña acting as a meta-curator? How is Dear Curator Curate Me an artistic project?
5.     Are different models possible to express curatorial intentions? Is it possible to make a video as a curatorial discourse instead of writing a text?
6.     A researcher in the audience posed an interesting point on the dilemma and difficulties of gathering data from past exhibitions, if curators would opt to make non-text-based curatorial discourses, how would this facilitate research on these exhibitions in the future?
7.     What are the functions of texts within curatorial practices?
8.     What are the relationships between the curator and the artist(s)/artworks/exhibitions to the curatorial text? How to engage with artists and their art as a curator?
9.     Who reads curatorial essays? Who is our audience? Is there enough of a critical mass?
10.  What are the relationships between the curator and the public in relation to the curatorial text?
11.  Should curators write curatorial texts that are readily understandable by the general public?
12.  Is there such a thing as a curatorial art writing style?