The recently appointed founding director of the new Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Singapore, Ute Meta Bauer, came to Hanoi to deliver artist workshops and talks.
Ute has been a curator of exhibitions and presentations on contemporary art, film, video, and sound for over 25 years. Before taking this role she was the founding director of the Programme in Art, Culture, and Technology and director of the Visual Arts Programme at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA. In the last academic year she was Dean of Fine Art at the Royal College of Art, London and also co-director with Hou Hanru of the World Biennial Forum No. 1, Gwangju, South Korea.
Ute Meta Bauer is a huge voice and authority on contemporary art.
& Of Other Things spoke to her about her new role, questions around curatorial practice and about contemporary art in South East Asia.
● Interview by Sadie Christie ● Edited by Rose Arnold
&: What do you hope to achieve in Singapore over the next year at the CCA, and how do you hope to expand the contemporary art scene in Singapore and throughout this region?
Ute Meta Bauer: I think what’s happening at the moment, at the Singapore Biennale for example, focusing with 27 curators in South East Asia, is making an inventory of what the local condition is at the moment. To understand the differences and to see that there are similarities, disparities, and to have a dialogue across those countries. It’s also very important to support each other in the sense of deepening the discourse, the debate and even asking; “What is this fiction of ‘Asia’?” It’s such a vast and very diverse place. Where I see us coming in is to serve as a point of entry for curators and interested people who come from other art places in the world, to try to understand a bit more about it here. Of course we hope to stimulate the local art scene, there are some very good art schools, but I think what it is lacking is more critical discourse.
What we are trying to do with the CCA is to be an open platform. And hopefully, over the next few years be a laboratory to explore those questions, to allow different voices and to include many people in the constitution and the making of the CCA.
&: A contemporary artist here in Hanoi complained that the discourse on art here in Vietnam demands that artists speak about being Vietnamese, making it difficult to rise above that cliché and talk about other issues. How do you think Asian artists connect to a larger global market and is a display of non-western identity important to their practice?
Ute Meta Bauer: It’s a complex question. Of course specific histories and [cultural factors effect it]. And of course if you take the women I introduced in my lecture, I to some extent avoided mentioning that they are feminist. The question of identity is there [too], but I think it’s also important to focus on what’s in the work and not continuously put a label on it. For example, in Cambodia, — through the wars, and their colonial past — there is this kind of [thinking of oneself in the context of being a victim]. A young generation is kind of fed up with that, they want to move on, whereas for the generation before it has been such an important part of their lives. So I think you kind of have to live with it and respect it and debate it and from that come to another layer, to another step.
&: How is it that these artists rise above that? And from an international consumerist perspective, does it need to have this specific Asian quality to it in order to be recognized on a global level?
Ute Meta Bauer: If it becomes a repetition or a style then of course it becomes problematic. This is why we see the really key artists who are quite influential usually break away. If you take for example, On Kawara who started these quite intense drawings after Hiroshima, bloody bathrooms with deformed bodies. If you saw his Day paintings today you would not guess that they are by him. So as an artist he went through quite a development, he did not stay at one point. I think this is important because if something becomes successful or something gets branded, it is often repeated, like a product. That of course might be economically successful but I don’t think it’s intellectual or artistically successful. This is where critical debate comes in. Do you want to be an economically successful artist? Of course it has an economical base, often artists support their whole families in Asia. So you have that versus a more intellectual approach, do you break away and reinvent yourself all the time?
I think this is where art education comes in. In many South East Asian countries—Singapore has very good schools, but in other places —there is a gap still of an open and more intellectual driven art education. It’s a quite complex fabric and that makes it so interesting for me, there are no rapid answers.
&: You also held a workshop in Hanoi, targeting artists and curators on the essential aspects of artistic practice. What would you say in this time of rapid growth are some of the essential aspects for artists and curators in the South East Asian region?
Ute Meta Bauer: This workshop would not have happened if Tran Luong had not invited me. He said the question of curating had become important and it wasn’t that much the case nine years ago. The question then was much more about alternative spaces versus the museum. Today it’s really a question of curatorship, a fairly new question, so he wanted to have this discussion. The question is have the institutions changed? Is there a [different] access to curating in institutions depending on which country? What does curating really mean? In the past [curating] was often done by artists, not so much by art historians in South East Asia. So, with this new division of artists and curators versus institutions, what does that create in terms of a power structure?
&: The lecture at the Hanoi Goethe Institute discussed the use of theatricality and performative formats and their potential as critical practice. What kinds of ideas are afforded through these performance formats that perhaps other artistic formats don’t allow?
Ute Meta Bauer: I think this act of understanding that we live in a constructed world is crucial because it really helps you to see things differently. Historically of course theater did that and this is why for me it’s [relevant] to start with theatre. So it is to look into what curating can do. Can curating deconstruct something rather than creating a spectacle? Can curatorial practice help a society to see things differently, versus what they see in the everyday? So of course we have a discussion between art and life. But I think it’s also important to have art that reveals what constitutes our everyday condition, what constitutes life. For me it’s more like a theoretical tool, and I think it’s very important because theory is really an emancipative act. We always talk about art as something expressive but I think art is also something very analytical.
&: Finally, I was hoping you could give us a few up and coming artists that you are excited about throughout Asia. How about your top six?
Ute Meta Bauer: I think I would rather go by top 100! It’s not necessarily individual artists, but it’s these classes of intensity like San Art, in Ho Chi Minh City, or if you take SASA BASSAC Nature House in Phnom Pen, or, Dewan group who started the Jakarta Biennale, which was really interesting to me, and of course if you take Parasite which has been around longer in Hong Kong. One example is Nha San collective; it’s really inspiring what happens there in terms of sound experimentation.
Of course there are some key artists, but for people who are interested in the region, it’s not so much, oh this is the next up and coming artist, it’s much more, these are the centers where a lot of knowledge is accumulated, there are curators and artists who know a lot about their context. What is also fantastic, the artists in-region can travel here because it is affordable, they don’t need a visa, so there is a big potential of really opening up. It’s much more about getting people to come here and explore for themselves who [they think] the next six up and coming artists are.
It’s really the dynamic and the complexity on all levels that’s happening at the moment. So I hope this is not just [a discussion] about what is the next artwork to sell, but also to say, actually, it’s quite an interesting society and the society is maybe opening up more to appreciate art and not just see it as decoration for their walls.
