AHL Foundation Public Lecture Series 2014
In Collaboration with Korean Cultural Service NY
Inventing Traditions of Korean Art and Culture: Diplomatic Perspectives
Latitudinal Attitudes: Critical Practices in Curating Contemporary Art from South Korea
Lecturer: Young Min Moon, Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Date: Wednesday, November 19, 2014 | 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Place: Korean Cultural Service, 460 Park Avenue (57th Street), 6th Floor
Free admission; refreshments provided
Traditionally, area studies had been predicated upon the situation in which the “Other” was located at a remote distance. In the aftermath of 9/11, with the assumption that the other has infiltrated into the western territories, area studies seem to have become an Anachronism. Why, then, do curators insist on introducing the art of the “Other” as though it were an extension of area studies? Are we not continuing to see exhibitions devoted to contemporary “Chinese art,” for example? How can exhibitions of contemporary art from another culture be presented to the global audience in the current political climate of resurgence of nationalism?
This lecture introduces some of the recent curatorial works that juxtapose contemporary art from South Korea along with certain other counterparts, whether they are art by Korean Americans, Balkans, Vietnamese, or Korean expatriate artists working in relation to specific historical and meta-historical contexts. Rather than isolating, but rather pairing, doubling, or multiplying the constituencies of the exhibitions through latitudinal coordinates, the curators gain considerable freedom in making connections across geography, borders, histories, and nations. Latitudinal approach also extends to the Historically and politically oppressed memories among peoples. It entails organizing exhibitions that present the potentiality of communities that lack fixed identity, of communities that incessantly repeat deviations and transformations. By making such connections, the exhibitions aim to recuperate, connect, and sustain the hybridity and alterity that have been excluded in the artificial construction of ethnic-linguistic homogeneity.
