The conference ‘Curating in Asia’ addressed the complex issue and phenomena of art curating in Asia. Questions such as how does art curating vary in different countries of Asia? What is the role of the curator when an infrastructure for art does not yet exist? In what way differ the roles of critics and artists when acting as a curator? Is art curating sometimes just another way of art making? There is a history of the topic, embodied for instance by the artist/curator Jim Supangkat, who is a member of the advisory board of the ZKM exhibition ‘The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds after 1989’, to which this conference was a part. He gave up early in his life the artist’s career in order to work as curator and to build up an Indonesian art scene. Or Dinh Q Le, who left the US after he had established a successful career as an artist in order to create an institutional art scene in Vietnam by co-founding San Art, the first not-for-profit gallery in Ho Chi Minh City.

Zoe Butt, Executive Director and Curator of San Art presented a paper at this conference entitled ‘The Horizontal Axes – Where artists employ curators as a critical part of their practice’, discussing San Art and its genesis and programming as case study.

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Program

All conference lectures are available via iTunes U.

Friday

11:00-11:30 Peter Weibel, Andrea Buddensieg, Michael Müller-Verweyen, Hans Belting: Introduction

11:30-12:15 Kitty Zijlmans: Framing Contemporary Art from Indonesia: Three Recent Exhibitions in the Netherlands

12:15-13:00 Oscar Hin-Kay Ho: Out of Necessities

13:00-15:00 Lunch Break

15:00-15:45 John Clark: Canon-Making and Curating in recent Asian Art

15:45-16:30 Zoe Butt: The Horizontal Axes — Where Artists Employ Curators as a Critical Part of Their Practice

16:30-17:15 Navin Rawanchaikul: Mission Navinland

17:15-19:00 Coffee Break

19:00-20:00 Raqs Media Collective: Timeliness

Saturday

11:00-11:45 Sara Giannini: Caochangdi Art Village Beijing: “Art, Harmony, Joy, Justice, Abundance, Peace”

11:45-12:30 Patrick Flores: Curatorial Circulations in Southeast Asia

12:30-13:15: Werner Kraus: Curating in Indonesia

13:15-14:00 Lunch Break

14:00-19:00 Moving Images from Indonesia