the 2nd Gwangju Biennale International Curator Course Day2 After Noon

Okay, now I am back to write about the second half of yesterday. Here we go.
     Mellissa Kavaenagh started her presentation after our lunch. She talked about the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial Contemporary Art. She said they called APT6. Well, I would love to work in this kind of biennial or triennial art exhibitions, since they seem much more professional than my independent curating. The scale of the exhibition looks way bigger than what we have been talking about before.
     Pich Sopheap's work totally reminded me of a bamboo wife(zukbuin). And it was quite conceptual art in that sense when you think of a bamboo wife, however, the shape of buddah's or the arrangement of these works showed some different ideas rather than a conceptual art exhibition of using bamboo wives. It became more abstract and representative work to me when it realized in a space with the relation of other objects.
     Then it was me. I talked about my curator residency at the Guesthouse Project in Cork, Ireland and my future residency at Raumars in Rauma, Finland.

Of course, I talked about Ki Woun Shin, the Korean artist I invited to the Guesthouse Project and Zsolt Kozma, the Hungarian curator I invited and his Videospace as well. Also, I talked about the Ilhyun Museum Travel Grant which offered more reasons to go to Ireland, and I also mentioned several aritsts; Marianne Csaky, Roxana Manouchehri, Irene Murphy, and the Quiet Club.

     After me, Heaji Kim told us about her exhibitions at Vector Aritsts-Run Space. I remember seeing the advertisement about before, now I know it was by Heaji. She mentioned the area of Mulladong, where a lot of factories are located in as well as artstis' studios. I knew about this area before because a lot of people recommended me for getting an office here for curating, but since I used to work for a German company around this area in 2008, I didn't really go back that area again except when I had to do all the translations. It is quite interesting to look at some places with any personal memories. Anyway, her project is fantastic and the patron and sponsors she mentioned were also very interesting because they sounded very much just like us, art lovers.

     Xiaoyu Weng's presentation was about her fellowship program, which enables a graudating student to curate the first curating experience in a public institution with the 101 collection at Wattis. Xiaoyu's had some interesting works by Allen Ruppersberg, Mark Soo, Ron Terada and more artists. Ron Terada's work reminded me of Debbie Han's Terms of Beauty series.

     Xiaoyu's future work was about a theater intervention, and she already did several spot huntings as well as selecting artists for those places as well. I think it was quite nice plan but also she could find some reference from the curator Tang Fu Kuen's Singpore Pavillion for the 53rd Venice Biennale with the artist Ming Wong.

     Viviana Checchia started her presentation with the Zygmunt Bauman's book, Liquid Modernity. was one of her previous curatorial works which was reflecting of the mobility of contemporary art. She also played the sound art by Chiara Fumai which was voice acting of two people back and forth. And her future work had an interesting artwork which is a reproduced guestbook by Omar Mirza. At the end of her presentation, she requestioned the meaning of 'independent' when we say ourselves as an 'independent' curator. Are we really 'independent'? This question Viviana asked herself and us which we didn't have much time to discuss about was a fantastic topic I would like to keep in my mind for a long time.

     The final presenter of yesterday was Olga Zhitlina. She briefly introduced some official soviet paintings and non-comfortist paintings, for example, Aron Zistein's in 1986. These just enlightened me again. As a 'South' Korean, I never really thought about the Russian paintings rather than North Korean paintings. We all know the style of North Korean paintings and sculpture, because we always talk about those statues and paintings in communist society of North Korea in our studies in perhaps all the Korean art schools who want to talk about the relation between communism and art. However, funny enough, we never consider everywhere else is as a communist, but only North Korea. We wouldn't think Russians have two horns on their heads like the images of Nother Koreans which we used to learn at school in 80s.

     Olga talked about her future project , but Dan told her she must have been thinking about some artists who can participate in this show, otherwise, it will be an art project instead of curating. Well, this was a beginning of our long discussion. What do you think? Do you think about aritsts when you develop your ideas for any curating plan? Do you finish your curating plan and then you want to think about artists later on? Or sometimes you want to have some exhibition, but cannot even spell one artist name you want to include?

     In my case, I meet artists a lot. I already know about their work and we communicate a lot in several ways. Perhaps, most of the time in a form of friendship, we share a lot of ideas and curatorial and artistic problems we encounter in our professions, yet we still inspire each other so much through our relationship, which I define more like friendship, let say art friendship.I visit aritsts' studios a lot and enjoy questioning about what they do and their artwork. I sometimes bring my friend who has got nothing to do with art and ask some opinions about the artist's work. At the end of this, I have a lot artwork in my mind that I want to develop into an art exhibition with or through.

     Of course, my interest in languages, music, philosophy, psychology, and geography stay there, but it mixes when I try to shape a nice form of an exhibition, especially when I just imagine what if I can curate this or that..... And through the process, I can make my own statement which I would like to talk through a certain artwork or a certain form of art exhibition.

     Perhaps, your case can be different. Of course, everyone has their own way of eating fruit. Therefore, they must have their own way of thinking or planning an curating project. Then, how different is it?