Since finishing the A to Z introduction to my blog posts, I have now moved onto Pantone colours to describe my mood, my hours, my time and what life has thrown at me. Today, it is Rose Dust Pantone 14-1307…
…a slightly milky looking and grey shade of pink, which represents really what the last few days and week or so has been like…a flower fading in the scorching sunlight and a fuzzy mind? Or does it represent the development of a new colour, a colour building up into an intense tone? I think it has been a little bit of both, as this week has been a week of research, a week of books, a week of reading, a week of developments and very positive happenings, as well as having an over-riding feeling of ummm, what am I doing? I’m like alphabet soup without the vowels sometimes.
After writing the last blog post I couldn’t get this concept out of my head…am I a “transcultural negotiator” of contemporary Chinese art? or merely a curator in the international realm? A PhD colleague Lorenzo responded to this saying “…or transcultural proxy? If artworks in some way already enact themselves the negotiation between the art piece and the “viewer”/”sensorer”, then can you be a proxy through which the negotiation occurs?” An interesting question…i like the use of proxy…”to act in place of another”…does and can this apply to my research? A question worth raising in interviews perhaps.
The China plans are slowly coming together, one little step at a time. This week it was injections, which made my left arm hurt for quite a few days, ouch! Also in the last blog post, I told you RJW and I had applied for the British Council’s ‘China-UK Connections through Culture’ design curators 10-day study tour. We found out last Tuesday that we were unsuccessful and as ever, I wanted to know why so asked for feedback…because if you don’t know what you’ve done wrong, you don’t know how you can improve, and apparently it wasn’t anything to do with the application (we scored quite highly for how it was composed) it was due to our lack of curated exhibitions. The coordinator of the tour has been amazing in putting us in touch with the Beijing and Shanghai based British Council contacts for people to speak to and contact regarding our research, as well as events we might be interested when we are out there. She even mentioned we might be able to meet up on the tour at some stage, so we haven’t really missed out on everything. Something can always come of nothing, and it definitely helps to think positively. The funny thing is the day after I fly into Shanghai, I have to attend the conference ‘Collecting Asian Contemporary Art: What, When and How?’ at ShContemporary 10 Asia Pacific Contemporary art fair. It is organised by Hou Hanru, one of my key interviewees, and my previous collegue Alexandra Munroe, the Senior Curator in Asian Art from the Solomon R. Guggenheim will be presenting! It will be nice to see a familiar face. I’m expecting to be very jetlagged!
This weekend, I to attend this event at the Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester – Asia Art Archive Presenting ‘Materials of the Future: Documenting Contemporary Chinese Art from 1980 – 1990’ – which shows the archiving project and program of the same name at the AAA in Hong Kong. I’m sadly just going to miss here and when I am out in HK completing fieldwork research. This project, which will be launched through the website www.china1980s.org in September 2010, is a collection of primary research materials including books, periodicals, newspapers, exhibition brochures, invitations, video recording, correspondence and other relevant documents regarding Chinese art from the 1980s. This sounds like a fantastic resource and very comprehensive. I’m sure i’ll be making use of it for my PhD studies.
I need to do a specific research post at some stage and tell you about what i’m reading, which currently includes works by Wu Hung, Hou Hanru and John Clark…and also fill you in on the two-day BIAD Summer School in Promoting your Research…lots of interesting perspectives to tell you about. Sorry this post is so short, its been a very busy week full of surprises so I’m unexpectedly off to London then onto Paris this weekend…I’ll write on my return…
Rachel Marsden's Words 
This all sounds fantastic. Sorry to hear that you were unsuccessful for the application – always disappointing when something doesn’t quite come off. I can totally empathise with the reading and doing…coupled with a feeling ‘what AM I doing…what does all of this mean and is this what I should be doing….how do all these bits come together’. It seems to come in cycles, doesn’t it – doubt, breakthrough, doubt, breakthrough, and on….and on…
Good luck with all of your trips 🙂