Reflections on the Human Condition - Api-fellowships.org

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SESSION I
Activities, which is located at the heart of Chinatown
in Bangkok, is passionate about this, putting together
a program of activities that reaches out to spheres
beyond the province of art. Corollarily, the project Art
Connection, a monthly bulletin of art events in Bangkok
distributed for free, is maintained by a group of young
artists and cultural workers.
The register of advocacy could become strident when
the social atmosphere warrants it, as in Bali where the
daring curator I Ngurah Suryawan writes:
The Bali of religion and magic is being sold and
sold. Art capitalism, with its orientation toward
money and economics, has become a god. Meanwhile,
the importance of creating a climate for and
dynamic and intelligent discourse about art has
not been noticed. All the players in Bali fine arts
world seem to be preoccupied with thinking about
their sales. This is the religion and magic of Bali.
(Santikarma: 2001, 61-62)
4. Search for the new
Curators discover talents as a matter of course, the
constantly replenishing the inventory of contemporary
art. Discourse in this respect affirms the significance of
whatever art or whoever artist is introduced to the art
world.
The Brand New series, in which Luckana Kunavichanayont
and Ark Fongsmuth are involved, seeks to give opportunities
for young Thai artists to find their place in the art world.
Alia Swastika’s controversial Omong Kosong for Cemeti
Art House likewise aspires to account for what artists in
Indonesia are doing and how they unravel new meanings of
contemporary art. The search for the new may end up
in everyday life, which may also become exotic and
alienate a local public that expects more heightened
expressions.
It is important also to discuss how these curators become
part of projects. Curators are not always the central
intelligence of these initiatives. While they may have
the advantage of elucidating concepts, they are usually
not in the position to complete projects on their own.
Curators take part in projects in different ways and fulfill
their functions within an array of tasks. For instance in
Indonesia, when art galleries wish to hold an exhibition
of artists, they ask a curator to make sense of artists they
have already chosen. Sometimes, curators are actually
just asked to write curatorial introductions in the catalogue,
and yet angle for the renown as curators. There are occasions
when curators merely choose artists and have very little
Ref lections on the Human Condition: Change, Conflict and Modernity
The Work of the 2004/2005 API Fellows
regard for the kind of works to be exhibited. It is also
not uncommon for them not to install the works or
have a hand in the exhibition design. The custodian of
the space or the artist takes a more active role in this
regard.
FUTURE OF CURATION
This research summary, cursory as it is, has endeavored
to discuss the history and practice of curation in
Southeast Asia with the aim of investigating its
complicity in the formation of contemporary art and its
discourse. Curation as an interventive mediation that
produces exhibitions, events, careers, and values and the
curator as an agent who actively selects and represents
these within the social world of art becomes a compass
that guides us as we navigate the vast realms of what is
only vaguely invoked as the contemporary. This paper
contends that the curator had emerged in cadence with
the shift from the modern to the contemporary.
How subjectivities are forged in encounters and contacts
facilitated by curation is integral to our understanding
of the theses of this research. But this lies beyond the
mission of the Fellowship and requires a different set of
methodologies to ferret out the ramifications.
While this contention raises a distinct spectrum of issues,
it invites us to reconsider the modernity of art when
it is held against the light of its own fulfillment in the
domain of the contemporary. The contemporary may
revise this modernity in the shadow of the failure of art
in the avant-garde, or may ordain its critical sufferance
as a requisite strategy of deliverance by virtue of its own
productive failure. But the contemporary, troubled as
it is by its modern history, sows its own seeds of termination
as can be viewed in current revelations of a post-artist,
post-exhibitionary, and perhaps post-curatorial context.
This is most evident in initiatives in Jakarta, Jogjakarta,
and Bandung that fuel themselves in varied ways. For
instance, ruangrupa in Jakarta is linked to Hivos, a
Dutch foundation, the Rijksakademie, and the RAIN
Artists’ Initiatives Network. In Jogjakarta, the Cemeti
Art Foundation is part of an agile network of
organizations around the world; Taring Padi, Ruang
Mes 56, and Kedai Kebun draw on ingenious resources
like personal contributions and in the case of the last
a restaurant. And in Bandung, 357/Eat is annexed to
a clothing store; By the Way stands next to a toy store
and manga library; Rumah Proses is an artist’s
collective; and If rents out a music studio for the city’s
aspiring musicians.
Before leaving Bangkok for Jakarta, a new space opened