Seminar Ⅵ  - AS

Is a curator simply someone who makes exhibitions? What sort of procedures do you go through to create an exhibition without passing through the medium of artwork? These were some of the questions behind the seminar with AS, where I hoped to look at the process of research leading to an exhibition based on the study topics that the members of AS have consistently explored. This was an opportunity to think some more about the joys of contemplating what the viewer will see in the exhibition space, and it was also an occasion for thinking about one of AS’s larger themes, namely the intersections between Southeast Asian and Korean art.

- Yurmyurng Kim

This seminar was effective in distinguishing between whether the creation of an exhibition based on research can be seen as part of curatorial practice or whether it is an example of an exhibition centering on the artist. In that sense, the example of AS that we explored in the seminar seemed to reflect an attitude that originated from a stance of “composing” an exhibition rather than “making” one. I also saw that this was the effort of researchers/artists whose work relates to a research process, rather than artists whose activities are based on artwork. In particular, the focus seemed to be on the research process in terms of reexamining and reconfiguring existing concepts of “Asianness” based on the theme of “Southeast Asia,” and within that, the focal point of the work was an approach of visualizing the values that AS had selected and evoked. The question that this leaves us with is what strategy is needed to compose an exhibition with this as the artwork. I think that this represents an influence that research itself can exert in the context of contemporary art. How do you visualize the importance of research and its process in an exhibition where “research” represents a larger theme? What is an effective approach to composing it in such a way that it gives rise to interaction with the viewer—rather than simply conveying information—and explores different depths of imagination in everyone’s minds? To offer my own answer to that, I’m curious about an approach that creates holes in the exhibition composition to allow for “evaporation” in the research to make up what the researcher evaporates in the research process.

- Jinju Kim

As an example of creating an exhibition based on research, the research and curatorial collective AS (consisting of members Mun Hayn and Jo Hyunah) was invited to share the process behind their planning of the May 2024 exhibition Mistranslating Southeast Asia: the Seven Holes. That exhibition featured various texts that the two of them had selected, translated, and researched over a period of around one year studying Southeast Asian contemporary art history, along with data (a chronology) visualizing the information they had compiled based on those texts. As the title suggests, the members of AS undertake their research with an approach that leaves open the possibility for “mistranslation,” which is necessary when you’re approaching a subject as an other. This attitude originates from a perception of problems relating to language, skills, and more based on a history of colonization and modernization (such as limitations on accessibility that result from English assuming a dominant position). They also shared information in an open-source format on their website so that interested researchers, artists, planners, and others could read them freely after the exhibition was over. This showed what came across as a format of inviting other interested researchers to ponder the theme. The members’ flexible, receptive, and open stance was consistently evident in the exhibition’s format—which was closer in meaning to the sharing of a process than existing as a completed form of research—and in the fact that they have been pursuing research on Southeast Asia with longer-term goals. But while it does seem self-evident that research is an essential part of curatorial practice, can we view an exhibition that presents research as representing “curating” if curating is understood ultimately to be about creating an aesthetic experience through works of visual art? Can editorial and curatorial practice be distinguished in terms of the compiling, selection, categorizing, and editing of information on one hand and the realization of an exhibition-based aesthetic experience on the other? Those were some of the questions left at the end of the workshop.

- Jaemin Shin