Curatorial Culture
The independent curator who brought about a paradigm shift in curation, and an important trailblazer in the field, Harald Szeemann is also an actor and stage designer. In his renowned exhibition “Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (1969)”, Szeemann reworked curating into a linkage between different disciplines conveying a core concept. His background in theater suggests that the role of a curator involves elements of performing arts, thus being interdisciplinary from the very beginning. Curation, indeed, has always had elements of performativity.
The theme of this issue is “Curating Performativity.” It begins by discussing technicity, body, exhibition and performance, before going on to explore the intervention of performance in the research aspect of curatography. In this issue, “performative curating” does not refer to the production of performance works, but rather emphasizes a performative way of curating. “Curating Performativity” assembles the viewpoints of curators and researchers from Japan, Thailand and Taiwan to explore the connection between performance, installation, technology and curation in the context of contemporary art, and how artists and curators use the method of “performativity” to reframe the exhibition as an experiential environment undergoing relational transformation.
The first featured article “Choreographing Exhibitions: Curating Performativity in Taiwan” scrutinizes the shift toward performance in curatography. I use dance history to discuss how training approaches in different artistic disciplines influence the perspective from which interdisciplinary arts are appreciated. Through the concept of “performativity” proposed by performance theorist Judith Butler and the notion of “choreography” by dance scholar Susan L. Foster, I explore the possibility of using dance studies as a theoretical base for further research on performative curatography. Furthermore, I examine the context of and connections between contemporary performative curating in Europe and Taiwan. A number of exhibitions are studied in an attempt to understand the interrelationship through local social changes “in-between” Asia, and to propose a potential ‘localized performative curatography’ in Taiwan and Asia.
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Author
I-Wen Chang is an Assistant Professor at Taipei National University of the Arts. She received her PhD in Culture and Performance at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her areas of specialization include partner dance, Taiwanese theatrical dance, interdisciplinary and intercultural performance. I-Wen is the co-author of the book Pina Bausch: Dancing for the World (Taipei: National Performing Arts Center, 2007), Popular Dance Reader (Taipei: Dance Research Society Taiwan, 2019), and a performance critic for the Artist Magazine (Taipei) and Performing Arts Review Magazine (Taipei) since 2007.
