Independent Curator

Manray Hsu is an independent curator and art writer based in Taipei and Berlin. His recent major exhibitions include"2000 Taipei Biennial: The Sky Is the Limit" (co-curated with Jerome Sans, Taipei Fine Arts Museum); "How Big Is the World?" (2002, O.K Center for Contemporary Art, Linz, Austria; "Wayward Economy" (2005,co-curated with Maren Richter, Taipei); "2006 Liverpool Biennial"(co-consulted/curated with Gerardo Mosquera); "Naked Life" (2006,co-curated with Maren Richter, Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art); "2008 Taipei Biennial" (co-curated with Vasif Kortun, Taipei Fine Arts Museum). 

Day 3: Sunday 5th October, Session 4: Cross-cultural public networks

2008 Taipei Biennial - A case study

Urban screens have become a kind of meta-architecture. Through their ubiquity and fluidity, these screens, especially the large ones, constantly redefine the spatial relationships of the urban environment. They are new defining architectures of architecture. The 2008 Taipei Biennial utilized some of these screens as part of its venue for showing video-based works. On the one hand, this presents both an opportunity for more unpredictable encounters between art and urban space users, and offers challenges for the recontextualization of these works. On the other, it also poses the question of whether art is able to destabilize a public space generated and maintained by these meta-architectures, to add ambiguities to the certainty of information, of the social dream of the capitalist society. Aside from these curatorial and artistic aspects, my presentation will also touch on practical and technical aspects such as the technology of display, timing and encountering.