Gihak ArtLab
2021 Keynote Lecture Vol.2
Culture Lab on Display –– A Work Report from an In-house Curator
YU Wei has been focusing on various forms of cultural practices in Taiwan’s contemporary art and non-mainstream culture, such as sound, body, and image. In recent years, his curatorial and research interests have often explored historical cultural archives through artistic commissions and curating with themes. In the past, as an independent curator, he co-curated “Broken Spectre” with ET@T, and as a researcher, he participated in projects like “ALTERing NATIVism: Sound Cultures in Post-War Taiwan” and “View–Point: A Retrospective Exhibition of Li Yuan-chia.” Since 2018, he became the researcher and curator of C-LAB (Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab). He has curated “City Flip-Flop: Stained” and “Yao Jui Chung – Republic of Cynic,” and continues to delve into the possibility of interlacing cultural archives and contemporary art.
The role of curator in Taiwanese art scene is still quite vague in its positioning and specialization. Although a small number of large organizations have a more detailed division of labor in the work of exhibition programming, the role of curators or content planning, in most cases, still has to cover many aspects such as art administration and executive production. Many institutions also have directors concurrently serving as curators. In particular, the “in-house curators” in the public institutions are often considered by the general public to be prone to the red tape of institutional administration, which consumes creativity, leading the curators to rarely making statements on behalf of themselves in the public domain. However, some people think that the in-house curators have a better chance of proposing more comprehensive, in-depth and continuous discussions on their issues of concern, because they have relatively stable resources, funds, and hardware facilities.
We are honored to invite YU Wei, who has played a role in research and curating since the establishment of C-LAB, to share with us his experience as an in-house curator, and the reality and challenges encountered in C-LAB, a new-found organization named “Culture Lab.”
◇ Event Date: Jun3 26, 2021 15:00-17:00
◇ Event Venue: This is an online event.
◇ FB Event Page: https://reurl.cc/Q95Dnq
YU Wei
YU Wei is a curator and researcher of Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-Lab). Yu obtained his PhD in Humanities and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck (London Consortium), University of London, with a research focus on Taiwan’s contemporary art and visual culture since the 1980s. He has served as the editor-in-chief and correspondent for ARTCO magazine, and the UK research coordinator of View–Point: A Retrospective Exhibition of Li Yuan-chia (2014) organised by Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM). He curated Shoot the Pianist: the Noise Scene in Taipei 1990-1995 at Peltz Gallery (2015) and co-curated Broken Spectre at TFAM (2017) with ET@T. His recent curatorial projects at C-LAB include Re: A Morning in Taipei (2019), Yao Jui Chung – Republic of Cynic (2020) and Signals: CREATORS 2020–21 (2021); also the co-curatorial projects, The Alternative Guide of Time (2018), City Flip-Flop: Stained (2019) and the 7th Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition (2020–21).
