[artinfo] Para-curatorial symposium

[e-flux]

The 6th Para-curatorial symposium

In the Name of "Archive":
Re-imagining History as Contemporary Art Practice

Modern theorists have long challenged archive as an objective and 
impartial system to generate the absolute knowledge. As pointed out 
by Hal Foster in his seminal essay "An Archival Impulse," artists 
since the 1970s have attempted to recuperate archive as a volatile 
process imbued with multi-layered temporalities, subjectivities, and 
enactments. However, the discussions on such practices have primarily 
been focused on the projects initiated from the European and North 
American context. In recent years, artists and curators in Asia have 
taken active steps to expand archive beyond a repository of documents 
and turn it into a dynamic and generative tool for alternative 
knowledge. Pan Yuliang: A Journey to Silence, the current exhibition 
at Guangdong Times Museum is one of the latest experiments which 
seeks to give life to historical archives collected from 
institutional and personal networks through artistic and curatorial 
mediation.

In the Name of "Archive": Re-imagining History as Contemporary Art 
Practice, the 6th Para-curatorial symposium co-curated by Nikita 
Yingqian Cai and Mia Yu, sheds lights on the history-inspired and 
archive-driven projects by contemporary artists and curators. How is 
archive redefined through contemporary art and exhibitions? How could 
archive manifest different meanings in various Asian cultural 
configurations? Is it possible to recuperate the spatiality and the 
materiality of archive in the Internet age? Does archive allow for 
the opening of an imaginative and fictive space? How to render 
documentation with affective value? How to connect historical or 
history-inspired research to contemporary art and evoke critical 
responses to the present? What are the possible ways to relate 
subjectivities to multiple modes of historicities and temporalities? 
The symposium provides a multi-format forum that includes curatorial 
talks, performative lectures, film screenings and a workshop. By 
bringing experienced curators and artists in conversation with the 
younger generation, the symposium hopes to not only reflect on the 
recent projects, but also facilitate the formation of future 
practices.

Curated by: Nikita Yingqian Cai, Mia Yu

Coordinated by: Li Xiaotian

Guangdong Times Museum
Times Rose Garden III
Huang Bian Bei Road, Bai Yun Avenue North
510095 Guangzhou
China
<http://www.timesmuseum.org/>www.timesmuseum.org