Research Seminar: 'Thinking by Curation, Thinking through the Visual'

Institutions such as museums and galleries inevitably operate within systems of classification, categorization, and the assignment of status—this is the nature of the art institution and what it must reproduce to sustain its discursive framework. These systems are typically supra-individual.

Since the 1970s, the field of art curation has provided more space for discussing and reflecting on the present and has begun to embody the potential of a public square. Consequently, we focus on the "artist," particularly viewing curation as an embodied paradigm of the researcher—where the research extends beyond merely the artist's style.

However, conventional institutional curation in the contemporary era has largely proven to be a failure, as notably evidenced by the last Documenta in Kassel. A crucial context has been lost here: the loss of curation's inherent foundational role of "measuring"—the need to clarify the role of others' lives and their social conditions.

Genuine curation is precisely an ethics capable of guiding institutional practice.

Curation is always intricately intertwined with the creative individual and the history of exhibitions, which is itself nested within the framework of intellectual history. Yet, intellectual history should not be confined by the disciplinary boundaries we have inherited. Where have the demarcations between literature, philosophy, art, political science, cultural studies, psychology, sociology, and other disciplines historically impeded the advancement of thought? To what extent are our potential dialogues hindered by these disciplinary barriers? Do these barriers cause us to turn a blind eye to much of reality, as they impose cognitive limitations and systematic amnesia?

Therefore, it is no longer sufficient to merely study contemporary art and learn how to curate excellent exhibitions. If we are to address the historical baggage borne by exhibitions—baggage that is not truly "historical" in a conventional sense—this issue is even more challenging within the Chinese context, given its elegant and resilient traditions, as well as its intense and productive present.

We must move beyond theories reliant on classical canons or knowledge descriptions confined to experience. Instead, we need the power to explore the state of human historical-social structures, to make visible the critical links, structural relationships, and internal dynamics within historical formations that are difficult to discern through mere political or economic observations of artists or artistic phenomena. We must think through the visual, and repeatedly, think through the visual.

Speaker

Xiao Liu

Head of the Department of Art Administration at the China Academy of Art and consultant for the West Bund Museum × Centre Pompidou collaboration project in Shanghai.