Curating Lab 2014–Curatorial Intensive

Alongside artist, curator and writer Heman Chong, Latitudes led the first phase of Curating Lab 2014, a ten-days Curatorial Intensive during which eleven recent graduates engaged with the practice of exhibition making through lectures, workshops, and tutorials concluding with a symposium and a field trip to Hong Kong (16–20 June).

Curating Lab 2014 focussed on contemporary art and curatorial practices that engage with the exhibition as a site of knowledge production; one that is multifarious, relational and participatory, providing scopes for intents and slippages, open to interpretative articulations and re-articulations, subjected to varying contexts of exhibition-making and to the very audiences that perform and shapes its production. 

The week-long curatorial-intensive concluded with the public symposium ‘When does an exhibition begin and end?’, convened by Chong and Latitudes. The event counted with the participation of Shabbir Hussain Mustafa (Curator, National Gallery Singapore), Charles Lim (artist); Anca Rujoiu and Vera Mey (Curators, Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore) and artist Shubigi Rao.

‘When Does an Exhibition Begin and End?’ consisted of two complimentary sessions that reflected on an exhibition's capacity to articulate its own making and incorporate its own history. In the same way that the Internet has untethered television from fixed schedules and newspapers from print deadlines, the symposium pondered on how the exhibition and today's art institutions are undergoing similar transformations. Should exhibitions embrace or resist becoming more like broadcasting or live-publishing?

Following on the Curatorial Intensive week, a field trip to Hong Kong (16–20 June) exposed participants to international curatorial practices and situated their curatorial processes within the region. Participants visited a range of private and public institutions such as Spring Workshop, Asia Art Archive, Para/Site and M+ Museum, amongst others.