Below is a transcript of my presentation at the Public Art Inside Out Symposium co-organised by Getty Conservation Institute and Museo delle Culture di Milano (Mudec) on 8th May, 2024 in Milan.
What are the forms of holding us together?
Who are we?
And how should we stay with each other?
According to Professor Irit Rogoff, the curatorial is about inhabiting a process.
We are within it, not outside of it,
and we live out its conditions but we don’t violate it.
It is a non-confrontational movement between things.
According to German theatre theorist Max Herrmann,
the original meaning of theatre was derived from the fact that it was a social game
played by all for all.
A game in which everyone is a player – participants and spectators.’
In this context, I tried to expand the concept further
by including the project team as players,
incorporating the lens of performativity into my curatorial practice,
therefore reimagining and reshaping the forms
that hold us together, step by step
In this presentation, I will share the curatorial approaches I experimented
behind a very small-scale public art project
I curated in March of this year
and I would call some of them as performative curatorial approach
The project, called ‘From Here to There,’
took place in the Riverside Gardens and a gallery space in London.
Echoing the transient nature of the River Thames
and the evolving communities in Wandsworth,
the project collaborated with an artist, a documentor and the public
The project has two phases:
The first phase occurred in March,
featuring an art experience by artist Chensy Guan,
engaging the public to explore how to navigate life changes,
and at the same time featuring the creation process of datagrapher Amir Bech,
documenting Chensy’s art experience for creating Amir’s archival artwork.
The upcoming second phase, scheduled for June,
will exhibit Amir’s archival artwork about Chensy’s art experience.
to explore how to perceive our memories transformed by changes.
Project documentation may often be viewed as an avenue
for extending a project’s reach,
facilitating its further development.
And I wondered:
How should the relationship between project documentation and art experience be more balanced?
And I also wondered if project documentation itself could also serve as a core aspect of the project?
In the first phase,
by specifically positioning the event of showcasing and participating
in the art experience and making process of the archival artwork,
the first phase formed a mini stage of two collaborators
While Chensy was engaging with the participants in the art experience,
the public also witnessed that Amir
conducted sound recording
and 3D scanning for the participants on the same stage.
The first phase shifted the focus from exhibiting finished artworks to
showcasing the art-making processes of the two collaborators.
By staging both the artist and datagrapher in action,
the project not only invited the public to view and engage
with the making process of the two collaborators,
but also highlighted the equal significance of both the artist and datagrapher.
And in the second phase,
there will be a display of Amir’s archival artwork about Chensy’s art experience,
the documentation itself will further transcend its traditional supportive role
and become a core element within the project.
Apart from that,
during the artist’s art experience and the datagrapher’s artwork creation,
The public and I also played a role in this theatre
to reshape the forms of relationships
During the artist’s art experience,
she hosted some stretching workshops with the public
to interact with the yoga ball, opening up conversations on navigating life changes.
To resonate with the project’s concept
and the bodily movement of the art experience,
I created a scene of change, an improvisational theatre
during the day of the art experience and archival artwork creation.
I engaged with local residents who happened to be passing by,
encouraging them to pause,
deviate from their daily routines, and participate in our art experience.
This spontaneous involvement mirrored the project concept – transience & changes
When I interacted with the public
my invitation script to the public underwent multiple revisions
until it resonated with the majority of the people.
During the invitation process,
I choreographed my movements to involve local residents
from diverse backgrounds, with different ages, ethnicities, and genders.
As a result, I acted as a tangible and conceptual bridge
between the public and the art experience.
The artist and the public informed me on bridging the gap between the art experience & the public
I engaged the public with different ages, ethnicities, and genders physically
And then the public became part of the artist’s art experiences and Amir’s archival artwork
After the completion of the first phase,
the second phase is a display of the archival artwork by the datagrapher
The artwork will later be circulated online as an expanded form of project documentation
How would the project stay with the public through the archival artwork?
These are the drafts of the archival artwork, still images of the video work by Amir.
Can you see Amir, the datagrapher, in the video too?
It also mentions the notion of transience, the public engagement,
And the site specificity, often seeing runners passing by, a transient location
The archival artwork aims to maintain ongoing dialogue with the public
to reflect on the notion of transience when they watch the ‘project documentation’
Therefore, Amir’s artwork will further inform the dissemination of my project
and inform the public after the project completion
This is my small scale public art project.
And the forms of holding us together
The people, communities and stakeholders
To conclude, curating is a dynamic process
that involves conceptual and physical engagement
with project concepts, collaborators, and the public.
By adopting a performativity perspective into curating,
it not only heightens our awareness of the audience,
becoming more mindful to our actions and behaviours,
But also gives us space to reimagine and possibly reshape the conditions
fostering more equitable connections with collaborators and the public
Video documentation of the public art project ‘From Here to There’