“To curate i s to take care o f .”

Curatorial portfolio of Yeung Yang with curatorial writings

Jun 2007 – May 2009

October Contemporary 2009 – Now, or Never 拾月當代 之 宜家唔做等幾時 October 2009

Curator ia l Sta tement

Without art, there would be no October Contemporary (OC), nor organizers, curators, or all of those that work for and with art. Large-scale art events are as trendy as the bashing of large-scale art events in our times. Known for being thematized, spectacularized, institutionalized, large-scale art events have been radically celebrated and criticized - the former for promotion, the latter in the name of anti- promotion.

As the only large-scale event solely devoted to the contemporary visual arts in Hong Kong, OC has its own doubts – Is there any scale for measuring its value? Is it timely, or outdated, when this recent and young history of the contemporary visual arts is as much about making history as the refusal to make history? Is OC what Hong Kong needs?

OC 2009 has very little viable answers to these questions. There is however one definite ‘No’ to a specific question: Is a world without art imaginable? No.

We believe art makes life inhabitable. We believe contemporary art makes art debatable.

But how? Let art – let art find the stamina to sustain itself, urgently but without haste. Now, or Never.

Our honour and privilege to present to you the contemporary arts that is ours.

Burdening Representat ions – his tor i ca l memory o f China from Hong Kong or June 4 th 20 th anniver sary photography exhib i t ion May – July 2009

Curatorial statement

There is no measure of weight until it is lifted.

Burdening Representations – historical memory of China from Hong Kong (thereafter Burdening Representations) is derived from the specific need to affirm the relevance of the June 4th massacre in Beijing in 1989 to contemporary life in Hong Kong and to continue to name the violence that has since evolved into many forms.

In a more general way, Burdening Representations is derived from the need to acknowledge the weight of historical facts by remembering, to keep this as a burden by choice, and to keep the burden from sinking into inertia. It is derived from the need to affirm life.

20th anniversary of the June 4th massacre in Beijing, 1989, is a grave matter that continues to exert weight on many – emotional, intellectual, political, ethical. Burdening Representations is the response of eleven photographers who, like many others, still care. On top of the burden of proof that many of them took upon themselves as documentary photographers in 1989, they have since extended the burden into the realm of truth - as makers of images, they find truth manifested not only as evidence, but also in stories and memories, intimacy and friendship.

Burdening Representations is as much s a collection of works about China and Hong Kong as a collection of ways of seeing China. Consider the timing of this exhibition in relation not just to 1989, but also to the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, celebrations compulsory. “China” is a proper name turned into a sign that carries gigantic histories and gigantic emotions, muting other histories and other emotions with its agility and eloquence.

Burdening Representations is a title indebted to photography historian John Tagg’s book, The Burden of Representation, which warrants another essay to discuss and debate. For the purpose of this writing here, I would like to register the relevance of his theory in understanding this exhibition – a specific way of presenting visual images that addresses the public as a set of ideas, the public culture of remembering and forgetting, and photography as a set of material practices, participating in producing meanings of China, hence participating in a certain cultural politics of representations of China. Burdening Representations marks how “China” comes into visuality – the apparatuses of producing and distributing images, of storing and transmitting images, making nationhood visible, to name a few examples. It is an intervention into the pretence of well-being that continues to organize our everyday life.

The exhibition is presented in three different venues. I have roughly arranged works that present everyday realities in Lumenvisum’s gallery. The next venue (L2-13) presents portraits, some anonymous, some significant others for the photographers. In the largest gallery (L3) are works that are more abstract, that take issue with China as an object of representation, at times embodied by the photographic moment, at times estranged. They also take issue with “China” as sign. The arrangement is not intended to be a categorization of types. Nor are these divisions mutually exclusive. Instead, they are telling of the way photographs may work with and against space.

The Chinese title of the exhibition is quite different from the English. A transliteration could be “Performing Impedance”. I chose this name to address the firm resistance in the photographic works against a power that is both oppressive from one centre and distributed. The name also addresses the power the photographic works also practice in challenging the former.

Some of the works are made originally for this exhibition. Many have never been exhibited before. Some were taken in 1989, others in 2009, and many in between. Specifically, Tse Mingchong’s works concern themselves with visuality as spatial relation between the camera and the object of representation; Alfred Ko’s works deal with sarcasm and parody; Vincent Yu’s works play with absurdity; Leon Suen works with the visual and cultural sign of “red”; Sin Wai Keung’s works participates in producing hysteria and wilderness; Bobby Yip’s works articulate the making of cultural identity; Raymond Chan’s works register boundaries inside out; Cheng Yat Yue’s works are committed to light and its many shades; Wong Kantai’s works reveal the dehumanizing force of state apparatuses; Karl Chiu’s works challenge our complacency in looking; Chan Muk Nam’s works affirm the photographic moment as one of intimacy. Each photographer takes issue with the 20th anniversary of June 4th, 1989 and China in different ways, but share a common concern for democratic and social change in China.

The yearning for freedom comes with youth as much as with age. With familiarity with life comes a steadiness and steadfastness of practice.

Profoundly privileged I am to present to you the photographers.

IPO – emot ional e conomies May – June 2009

Preface for exhibition catalogue

At every extreme lies an impasse that silently waits for invalidation.

On the one hand, the fact is that in Hong Kong, where IPO – emotional economies takes place, the stock market is routinized as everyday life on a mass scale. On the other hand, Hong Kong is increasingly whitewashed of other markets, the streetwise and wet kind, in the name of urban development. No nostalgia here, only parallel facts.

Facts are invincible, however misleading. They put things into a stop, a full stop. Stories tell truths. They move things on. They stretch.

IPO – emotional economies is an affirmation of a need to submit smoothness to awkwardness, a need to approach the obscene and absurd, and a need to make art that has no consequence. It confronts the inertia of thought without celebrating the insanity of art.

The act of inhabiting requires help, an architect once said. Here lies an offer.

Around sound art f e s t iva l April – May 2009

Curatorial statement

Around is about listening. It is almost a contradiction in terms to call a group of listening activities a festival, for festival connotes the joyful sounding of crowds in celebration. Around would like to propose a different kind of celebration – one that requires retreat. Retreat is the experience of a time of non-participation. “A time when what mattered was receiving, in all simplicity and in all honesty…a time when there was no need to express oneself, to prove something, to be one’s noisy intrusive self.” (Yasmina Reza, “Thirty Seconds of Silence”)

The name of Around is an extension of soundpocket. They both emphasize comportment and bearing, what lies around and makes them possible. The Chinese title of Around is ting zai (Putonghua) and ting joi (Cantonese). It means both “listen at” or “listen in”, and “listen to be”. When used as part of a phrase, ting joi designates the place and time of listening, for instance, “ting joi Lamma” means to listen in Lamma, and “ting joi 2009” means to listen in 2009. The broader meaning of “to be” is the human horizon against which all listening activities are experienced and understood. We invite you to listen to the many meanings the name whispers to you.

Artists of Around are chosen not because they are sound artists – in fact, many have never named themselves as such. Rather it is because they have or are making works in which sound is a determining rather than illustrative element or an unintentional effect, and where sound offers an interpretation of the world, not only a medium through which messages pass through.

Miki Yui works on the imagination of an island that is listened to. Jerome Joy explores the immersive qualities of sonic environments and how they change perception. Jason Lim works with tension. Donna Ong is interested in materiality and fluidity. Akio Suzuki is on a constant quest to reveal the relation between sound and space. All these works enter conversations with space as physical and imaginary places that tell stories about our world.

Other artists work with time. Simone Merli’s work brings the moon close to our terrestrial habit of living. Kawai Shiu and Hong Kong New Music Ensemble collaborate in literally playing and walking out a composition, revealing the acoustic qualities of traditional musical instruments in an open space. Yan Jun’s soundwalk deals with accidental encounters and abandonment. All these works imbue a fresh sense of shared time to forgotten or unnoticed places.

There are also artists who conjure up other relations that sound is a vital part of. Mike Cooper improvises with cross-cultural sentiments. John Lee keeps looking for the sound to inhabit in. Kacey Wong works on low-tech sound sculptures. Jaffa Lam attends to the publicness and privacy in the activity of listening. Beatrix Pang is interested in interactivity and surprises.

Speakers for public talks in Around approach sound in different ways. Su Hei listens to sound in writings, Kawai Shiu tells stories of sounds in myths, and Patrick Shek recalls the evolution of acoustics and audio systems design in the history of Hong Kong’s public concert halls. Friends of the Earth attends to light pollution in our city, a concern arising from values Around shares. Workshops led by Anthony Yeung offer a listening experience of our immediate environment mediated by microphones and headphones. aco books presents a mini exhibition of books on cultures of listening. hulahoop gallery hosts an exhibition of sounding toys by open call. You will also find suggestions of other things to do during Around, regarding listening to others, listening to the wind.

This programme book is organized by the places where all of the above take place. The works presented may or may not have a title, largely because they are in-the-making. No rush – titles benefit from growing from the inside out.

I have also given priority to giving a sense of the artist as person, by including excerpts of some email conversations we have had over the past half a year or so. These conversations are informative on the artists’ approaches, concerns and interests, but more importantly, they tended to slip into my mailbox as warmers in the darkness of night. I thought not sharing them with you would have been an awful waste.

This approach I have chosen is different from the approach of articulating the significance of the artists’ works in this festival in relation to their past works (an emphasis on authorship), and in relation to art history (an emphasis on the institutional). In the process of conceiving this festival, I wasn’t looking for works that would suit some theme - Around is not a theme; it is a state of being, a manner of comportment. I am not after the school of thought that uses an artist’s life to “explain” her work. I see artists as the ones with whom we live, just as those many others with whom we live. This otherness in general remains a fundamental condition for the open ear.

Listening is about gathering and dispersal at the same time. Gently, take away your earphones. Put your palms around the back of your earflaps. Let’s start listening.

“When you are sensitive, the world opens.”

Felix Hess

I present to you all the contributory elements – the sky, the wind, the land, the places, the people. As long as we take care of them, sound will take care of itself.

The Table – tast ing food, tas t ing art

December 6, 2008

Curatorial statement

to hide, to seek

s e ek

Loic likes to build. I became aware of this during a conversation we had on a Taipei city cab, on the way to meeting a potential partner for The Table. He likes to build not slabs of concrete that feed the metropolis’ appetite, but structures that welcome the hands in their scale. What gets built at Chater Garden is extended from that conversation. I say anti-architecture; Loic says reverse architecture. Anyhow, The Table is arms at the instant before they embrace.

When The Table was first conceived more than a year ago, Loic and I have exchanged different sensibilities, about how contemporary art is produced and circulated, about tastes, about places. Is The Table “container art”, an empty shell (a standardized suitcase, a tag for instant identification, a literal container designed to contain, in both senses of the term), desiring to move on? I had doubts until artists (by that I mean ones who find flexible solutions to ideas at hand) gently knocked on our door.

We didn’t choose all of them at will; they chose us, for reasons from timeliness to supporting us when everything else is in flux. One reason among all remains prominent - the chance of placing their works for the first time in the outdoors, for their publicness and exposure to such uncompromising elements as rain and wind, and a different audience. From the handmade to the time-based, they all conjure welcoming allusions.

Collaboration is a trendy word in the art production scene these days. It seems to promise more resources and more faith, bigger voice and less work. Collaboration as such is a myth that requires another occasion to debunk. As I co-curate for the first time, I notice the origin of the word - to work with one’s enemy, and I surrender to Jacques Derrida’s insight - every origin is and of prostheses.

No collaboration is even. But it is also the experience of working collaboratively on the curatorial level that enabled me to change from idealizing collaboration as landing on consensus to recognizing it as sustaining defendable conflicts.

It is a huge responsibility to place contemporary art in a public park, especially when Chater Garden is historically the point of gathering and departure for political protests and demonstrations. I find solace in the fact that dissent is of many kinds. The Table is about sensitivities and possibilities.

hide

As I write, I wonder about my desire for the French connection that began as a distant friendship, occasionally intimated, occasionally refreshed. She remains far. He is abject decoy sent from afar.

As I write, the exhibition Looking for Antonio Mak opens at the Museum of Art. At a certain corner, a certain line speaks, “To hide is to seek and be sought.” I stay.

Nocturne , Alfred Ko Solo Photography Exhibi t ion

April – June 2008

singularity – a curatorial footnote on Nocturne

This is a curatorial footnote to Nocturne. Like any other footnote, it presents itself as an extension to a text. Unlike any other footnote, it abides by not a written text, but an exhibition. Therefore, it remains a footnote of a curatorial nature by taking care of what it is derived from – the exhibition. This “curatorial” is different from the conventional “curatorial statement” that, among other things, functions to declare a position and an exhibition open. Nocturne needs nothing like that – it speaks for itself. It nevertheless makes itself available for threads (of ideas and obsessions, thoughts and emotions) to pass through so that its original intention of contributing to education may sustain. True education is not about circulating instructions, but giving the things and people in concern the broadest space to develop their own potential. It is in this sense of giving and receiving, this to-and-fro movement, that this footnote gives and keeps Nocturne company, just as Lumenvisum gives and keeps Nocturne company. I am not being polite, only honest.

1 obligation

One may try to begin by resisting the desire to focus on what Alfred Ko has been photographing, that is, in one sense, the desire to lay claim to the images. It is difficult, for in our times, the speed of machine automation renders the act of taking photographs one of instant possession rather than deep memory work. It is also difficult for the precision and power of Ko’s works – when the precision is powerful, we are anxious to tame.

When one manages to postpone this desire, however, tales begin to ebb and flow - how have Ko’s works arrived where they are now - technically, artistically, politically, intellectually? (The “personally” must remain his own.)

Ko wondered aloud one day, What would Susan Sontag have said if she were writing about the intense digitalization of photography today, the same condition from which Nocturne emerges? As Sontag takes issue with the violent processes of aestheticization in war photography, arguably an all-out critique of the documentary tradition of photography, Ko leaves the documentary and the artistic equally exposed, possible only when the singularity of photographic reality is caught in an introspective moment that cannot be shared. This moment is not privileged, but condemned. If Sontag is rightly concerned that photography has been employed as an instrument to naturalize the cruelty in “regarding the pain of others”, how is photography re-invented when it becomes a friend who witnesses the photographer regarding the pain of himself?

Do not call the works “collective memories”, for as Sontag says, “strictly speaking, there is no such thing as collective memory – part of the same family of spurious notions as collective guilt. But there is collective instruction.”i When after truths and not mere facts, photographs are more than what a society chooses to think: they are singular memories of the artist who has

chosen to expose them as he dies with them; that is, when the gravity of the moment “exhausts the author”ii, even he would fail to return.

If there is a history of photography that exposes a society of denial via visual means, a history that cannot be adequately named “documentary”, Ko’s works would quietly (for being modest) and reluctantly (for wishing otherwise) play a part. What else could an artist do in face of a world of ruins? To make it aesthetically comprehensible, or to self-impose muteness that anticipates?

With reference to the art of literature, W.G. Sebald says, “the construction of aesthetic or pseudo-aesthetic effects from the ruins of an annihilated world is a process depriving literature of its right to exist.” What the artist can do then, is not to offer answers or expects solutions, not to resolve, “but to reveal the conflict.”iii In a certain sense, the art of photography shares this plight: a claim on the right to exist for the singularity that testifies. All testimonies are precise in terms of their claim on truth. When does precision become boring? This is a question only the true artist would put to himself/ herself. When precision exhausts himself/ herself, one may begin again -modestly, honestly, slowly, rigorously.

2 compulsion

When Ko offered me the opportunity to curate Nocturne, I immediately put mental quotation marks on the term “curate” – what is there to “curate” for an exhibition that knows itself inside out - the who, what, when, where, why, how. As I write now, the quotation marks have acquired different meanings. They mark where I feel daunted – by the artist and his intentions of acknowledging so much (friendship, history, education, art) in one stroke. Feeling daunted can be as paralyzing as it is inspiring. I am compelled to share with you the resulting goose-bumps.

Art responds to 14QKs

November – December 2007

Curatorial statement (abridged version)

[…] Instigator/ curator

In the many messages that I exchanged with artists, I referred to my role as instigator and not curator. I wanted to use the term instigator to emphasize the action-oriented nature of this exhibition. By action-oriented I mean it regards itself as having some degree of agency in affecting the direction of public events. I would also like to highlight the energy and chemistry that are already present in the discussions, which had become available for me for further instigation. I was trying to avoid the term curator because I would like to foreground the impression that the exhibition is outward looking, towards the “non-art” public, and not inward looking, towards the circle of art practitioners, an art space. The boundary of such a binary is of course fundamentally blurry, but on the level of action, I find it important to distinguish the two terms in a way that would highlight certain aspects of the exhibition without erasing the others. I would also like to emphasize the autonomy artists would have in this exhibition by avoiding calling myself the curator – I do not want the curatorial to be binding (although one could argue it never really does), but instigating. Insofar as words produce rather than merely refer to meanings, I made a choice I thought would serve the purpose.

Gradually, I realized this decision on names beclouded rather than clarified my role from some points of view - since my intention for the exhibition is clear, to say that this intention does not constitute a curatorial is in fact to be self-contradictory and to suggest that I am disclaiming responsibility for having proposed and produced such a curatorial. It is not my intention at all to disclaim responsibility for the curatorial, but due to my own preconceived ideas, I did not realize “instigator” could be a weaker term than a “curator” from certain specific points of view. I thought it was the other way round. I thank several artists and curators deeply for alerting me to this, and shaking up my footing. I also thank them for making me realize directly and indirectly, there is a lot artists expect from curators in particular situations, just as curators expect a lot from artists, and this expectation could be invested and distributed on various levels with different degrees, from artistic, administrative, to a certain form of solidarity that affirms both proximity and distance, identification and difference. Or perhaps I could also put it in a reverse way - artists and curators expect something very simple from each other, for the direction of expectation (if one could use this word at all) is in fact not towards each other, but towards and beyond a certain common belief. I still keep the term instigator after these moments of learning, and I do agree with the artists and curators that there is a curatorial to which this exhibition abides and vice versa. There is however a benefit of doubt that each gives the other, based on a trust that must be ensured and nurtured. I hope sharing here the thoughts here would contribute to the discussions about the role of the curator in terms of art, its immediate public and the wider public in the longer run.

2. What ar t can do

There are many ways to respond to the G.O.D. incident, other than to take a narrowly defined moral or political stance. I find in contemporary art the possibility of opening up the incident as an intersection of multiple issues, and an opportunity to question the perception commonly circulated in this society (one that is infuriating for the artists): that art is mere decoration or declaration. I find art an apt way of responding to the incident because of its excess: it could never be exhausted by cultural intelligibility - art is never/ always too little, never/ always too much, never/ always too late, never/ always too soon.

Art as cultural engagement and critique

In public, artistic and design practices are forms of cultural expression. They derive meanings from cultural contexts that already exist and produce meanings for them. These meanings are diverse, at times conflict with each other. When made public, debates and contestations about these meanings are important for enriching our cultural life. Such practices (not necessarily the persons engaging in these practices, for there could be such “interpreters” as art critics) are therefore, to some degree, embedded in and partly bearing the burden of discourse, ie. there is no way these practices could avoid being interpreted on multiple fronts and considered to be producing meanings for them. These formative processes must be viewed positively, although there may be meanings that one does not agree with and must be debated and contested.

Back to the context of this exhibition as an art exhibition, I find art productive of meanings, framing issues in particular ways, thereby enriching cultural life, by doing the followings:

1. complicating the issues; 2. complicating them by revealing them; 3. revealing them by asking such questions as the 14 QKs and others like:

i/ Who has the right to determine how and what aspects of our culture could be appropriated? What else is cultural appropriation besides being a matter of rights? ii/ What mechanisms of power are at work that prevent us from asking such questions as these ones?

4. attempting to engage the issues from specific points of view, eg. practices of design, art, education, and their learning etc. It is in these senses, therefore, that contemporary art is also conducting a certain critique of society by being part of it. It always does less and more than taking a narrowly defined political stance – it reveals.

Does the necessity of critique suggest crisis? In her examination of the relation between critique and political time, Wendy Brown points to the etymological connection between crisis and critique. She says, “The crisis that incites critique and that critique engages itself signals a rupture of temporal continuity, which is at the same time a rupture in a political imaginary, a rupture in a collective self-understanding dependent on the continuity of certain practices.” (Edgework, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005:7.) This relation, she further argues, is closely connected to political time. In late modernity, political time presents itself as speed, which Sheldon Wolin as quoted by Brown argues against and urges resistance, because democratic time, the time for the presence of differences and the attempt to negotiate them, is necessarily slow. […]

Art as comportment towards the world

To close, I share with you this beautiful quotation from Leszek Kolakowski (The Presence of Myth, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989: 32):

“…art is a way of forgiving the world for its evil and chaos. Forgiveness does not in any way mean an accord with evil or a decision not to stand up to it. Neither does it signify a justification of evil…Art may also forgive the world its evil when it tightens its grip on a stone and lifts it. Forgiveness has another meaning. Art organizes the perception of evil and chaos and absorbs them into an understanding of life in such a way that the presence of evil and chaos becomes the possibility of my initiative towards the world which carries its own good and evil.”

It is for this comportment towards the world, I propose, that art is dangerous. Art is dangerous not because it is doing anything heroic, sacrificial, or risking its own destruction, but because it can carry so much, so little, that always threaten existing orders by being different.

It is difficult to exhaust the meaning of any situation by attack and defence. This exhibition is a meaning-production exercise that seeks for itself (in multiplicity, disidentification and difference) a defensible position through contestation. Perhaps human beings are condemned not to be able to create ex nihilo (out of nothing) – the privilege of God (not G.O.D.), or the beyond. Yet, do we let ourselves be stopped? […]

in midair , sound works hong kong 2007

June – July 2007

Curatorial statement

i n m i d a i r derives its title from the artists- specifically from Su-Mei Tse’s air-conditioned solo exhibition presented in the 2003 50th Venice Biennale and Felix Hess’ book Light as Air (edited by Bernd Schulz), and generally, from the way all the artists concern themselves with giving shape and breathing room to sound.

The works are placed as they are now out of intention and exigency (I have elaborated on this in the June 07 issue of Arts Link , Hong Kong Arts Center). As you walk from one to the other, letting the previous work resonate within you while seeking the next, you find the walk itself sound-full. This is nothing mystical, only arresting.

The works are interested in listening and what it means to listen. This is to be distinguished from other sound works that may be interested in producing sound, translating sound, transmitting sound, destroying sound, canonizing sound... These concerns are not mutually exclusive, but attending to each with a different weight would have constituted very different works. In the artists’ hands, sound becomes penetrating, but not invasive. The works entrust sound not in its amplification but in tones and colors that would recall listening as a way of comportment towards the everyday fleeting world.

in midair has not burdened itself with establishing a category of ‘sound artist’. The works are made by multi-media artists, sound engineers, sound designers, and composers. They are in plural because one person could be several at the same time, as anyone else in life. For each of them, sound adheres to different histories and cultures. This event believes there are such things as sound works that conjure up an aesthetic experience, the sources of which the works abide by. in midair does not argue for the priority of sound.

‘The poorest linguistic category is the adjective,’ for ‘the man who furnishes himself or is furnished with an adjective is sometimes wounded, sometimes pleased, but always constituted.’ (Roland Barthes, The Responsibility of Forms, 1982)

I present to you the artists.

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