[-empyre-] Apache Projects

[ellen pau]

Hi Tim, Renate, Aram and Nate,
Great to meet you all here.  Sorry that I can't make it last week because
of a numbers of urgent civic actions. I will tell you more below.
As Tim introduce me last week, I am working in Hong Kong mainly for
Videoatge and Microwave new media festival <http://www.microwavefest.net>.
 We are working on a number of projects, particularly on the upcoming
version of  Wikitopia <http://videotage.org.hk/wikitopia/>, that is
a biennial event about collaborative futures.  This year, beside the
curated unconference, performance, workshops, we will have an exhibition
that is developed like an open sources projects, such as soundcloud,
uncloud and github.
I am very happy to to join in the discussion about curating.  Curating in
Asia or particularly in Hong Kong is a growing hot topic, the city has a
number of significant projects / events over the last two years. For
Example : The mega project (~US$ 3 Billion project) The West Kowloon
Cultural District
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Kowloon_Cultural_District>; another
multi-million venture HKART12- (Art Basel bought 60% of Hong Kong Art
Fair<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/08e746e4-77e5-11e0-ab46-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1sLTbLoTF>);
the
opening of Run Run Shaw Creative Media
Centre<http://cmc.scm.cityu.edu.hk/en/>where the highly respected
Jeffrey Shaw is the dean of the School of
Creative media of City University <http://www.cityu.edu.hk/>. Two years ago
there was a small publication commissioned by Para/Site Art
Space<http://www.para-site.org.hk/>,
co-edited by Alvaro Rodriguez Fominaya
<http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/about/staff-profiles/curators/alvaro-rodriguez-fominaya>and
Michael Lee, and published by Para/Site, Studio
Bibliothèque<http://studiobibliotheque.blogspot.com/> and seed |
projects :" Who Cares? is an anthology that compiles 16 essays
on curating art in and of Asia. One of the themes addresses the politics of
care, commonly understood as the basic role of curators, with regards to
art and artists, across time and contexts. Another theme revolves around
markers of success in the realm of contemporary curating. A third recurring
theme deals with curating in the globalised art world of advanced travel
and communication technologies. A fourth theme reconsiders the audience as
active producers in a curated experience. Through a variety of perspectives
and literary styles, these texts constitute primary notes towards
‘curatorial criticism,’ a subfield of art criticism that identifies the new
in curating today."

I am more interested with the third and fourth themes. And that is probably
accounts for my interest with Microwave New Media Festival and Wikitopia.

Over the years, art practice in Hong Kong had changed a lot, starting from
the "Cultural Desert" to the flourishing (whether you like the art or not)
situation now. I observed that as the idea of collaborations between
authors and audience grows, some artists move on to an artivist works (such
as Leung Po <http://motat.blogspot.com/>, Wen
Yau<http://wenyau.net/whoswy.html>,
Liu Wai Tong <http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BB%96%E5%81%89%E6%A3%A0>, Ger
Choi <http://twitter.com/#%21/gergerger>, Complaints Choir of Hong
Kong<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js74bfiOd1I>and many many more)

In the last two weeks, because of the new Chief
Exective<http://www.news.gov.hk/en/categories/admin/html/2012/04/20120410_183552.shtml>
election
on 25th March, many believe the next government will exert more control
over freedom of speech and strident moral values.   Starting last week,
people from The keyboard
frontline<https://www.facebook.com/KeyboardFrontline> build
a petition against the copyright law that makes sharing online and
derivatives work a criminal offense
http://www.change.org/petitions/intellectual-property-department-of-hong-kong-withdraw-copyright-amendment-bill-2011

The second is the campaign " Our Representative is Invisible! The Cultural
Sector Demands the Expulsion of Timothy Fok Tsun-ting and the Return of Our
Voting Rights" <http://www.fac.org.hk/>

In an art world that is less market/ fair driven and even less academic
moderated, if we are thinking about the spectrum ranging from a formalist
fine art object made by a singular unit to the interactive or participatory
social actions / collaborative happenings, then we can find the art
projects in Hong Kong shifting more to the interactive social actions
reacting to a number of political, ecological and cultural issues.

We find guerrilla farming @Hong Kong Film Cultural
Centre<http://www.hkfcc.org/news.php?action=detail&i=24>,
beer making at Woofer Ten <https://www.facebook.com/wooferten/info>, karaoke
or picnic or other social participatory projects are popular than
exhibitions type of art events.

In the coming Wikitopia, I am curating people to collaborate and work
together in an open sources framework exploring the idea of social coding,
sharing (such as* un*cloud as tactical media ) and mix skills (such as
Audrino crosses over with vertical farming).

I am interested in this type of events because this makes the communities
less passive and less consumer-ic.

Sometime the artist in these projects will use relational aesthetics to be
the theory of their art making but I think the role of the curator, the
artist and the social activist are also merging. I think if we believe that
we are doing art and art is to inspire, to be creative, to make changes
then like an electron, I would call these people active agents.

I am happy to be in the this space and learn so much form you.
Thanks again for the invitation.

best,
Ellen Pau
(852) 90206183
Videotage
Microwave
Inter-Act Arts
ellenpau at facebook.com







On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 5:50 AM, Nate Hitchcock <
natehitchcock at apacheprojects.com> wrote:

> Hello room,
>
> Thank you to Renate and Tim for the intro. and invite. It is really
> great to have this opportunity to present and join in the discussion.
> A little about me. I am somewhat based in Weehawken, New Jersey and
> previously based in Chicago (SAIC) where I started making shows.
> My personal website has some links to past exhibitions I organized:
> natehitchcock.com (scroll straight down). I begin studies this May at
> Danube University's Media Art Histories program.
> Apache Projects is what I am working on right now: Apacheprojects.com.
> It is an open-source exhibition site located in Mother Neff State Park
> in Moody, Texas. It is a Tonkawa burial cave discovered by the C.C.C.
> during the construction of the park in the 1930s. Here is the park's
> official history of the cave (it is written on a plaque posted on the
> path to the cave): http://apacheprojects.com/info.html.
> Right now I am working with artists who are interested in making solo
> shows inside the cave. The artists are all interested in moving new
> media, net.art etc. ideology from screens into other forms or away
> from screens in altogether.
>
> Here are some things that interest me..
> Studying in Chicago gave me a possibly different approach to making
> exhibitions that involves little to no money. For those of you who may
> not be familiar, Chicago has a huge amount of artist run temporary
> spaces, usually taking form in someones living room or empty bedroom.
> The first show I made in 2008 took place at Normal Projects
> (http://normalprojects.info/) in a kitchen where I hung 2d works on a
> fridge. The living room displayed 2d works or works on screens curated
> by the woman who lived in the apartment.
> I find that new media work etc, despite the cost of equipment, is very
> conducive to this type of exhibition making. Also, cost wise I have
> found it relatively easy to find equipment for free.
> Through my interest in this type of practice and work I've found that
> not only is new media cheaper to display, but also more mobile.. which
> brings me to another interest of mine that may be more relative to
> discussions of curatorial practices and strategies..
> How mobile is new media/net.art/screen based work? I know there is a
> lot of talk about format shifting recently and making sculptures from
> an internet oriented perspective but each time we load a work onto a
> machine in a different context can the meaning of the work change as
> well? It seems to me that this type of work is very conducive to
> alternative spaces. If this is true, how much curatorial freedom do we
> have in choosing the locations, and in that case, what makes a show a
> show even?
> Some very good responses to these questions so far are Aram Barthol's
> Speed Show and Rafael Rozendaal's BYOB because they highlight the
> mobility and reproducible nature of these types of works and instead
> of doing what might be obvious; taking control away from the artists
> since everything is accessible they relinquish the control of the
> curator for the benefit of the artist (somewhat).
>
> Looking forward,
>
> Nate
>
>
>
> --
>
> Director
> Apache Projects
> Tel. 1 432.242.2056
> ApacheProjects.com
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20120419/77f23add/attachment.htm>