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Preview of Para Site International Conference and Workshops for Emerging Professionals: Interview with Tirdad Zolghadr
Since 2012, Hong Kong’s leading non-profit Para Site has been hosting the annual International Conference, a three-day event in its home city where cultural practitioners from around the world convene to discuss developments in contemporary art. For this year’s edition, on the occasion of Para Site’s 20th anniversary, the topic of the International Conference will reflect upon changes observed in the art scene of Hong Kong, as well as those abroad, within the last two decades.
Taking place in parallel with the conference is the second year of Para Site’s Workshops for Emerging Professionals program. Spanning nine days, from June 18–26, the series of workshops conducted by local and international tutors—most of whom are also speakers in the conference—will touch upon specific issues affecting Hong Kong’s cultural landscape and dissect various exhibitions in recent history, with the 12 selected participants slated to engage with such topics through group work and presentations.
Among the speakers at the International Conference and Workshops for Emerging Professionals is curator and writer Tirdad Zolghadr, who was most recently curator of the 5th Riwaq Biennale in Palestine (2014–16), as well as co-curator of the 2010 Taipei Biennial and 2005 Sharjah Biennial. In the leadup to Para Site’s upcoming events, Zolghadr discussed with ArtAsiaPacific via email the relevance of holding such art conferences today, where he thinks contemporary art is heading, and also gave a preview of his talk for the conference, which will delve into why he believes the terms “student” and “activism” are considered “charged,” and what that means in different localities.
What effects do you see arise from such events as the Para Site International Conference? What role do these forums play in the wider art community?
In terms of how they typically unfold, they mainly are appreciated by two separate constituencies: younger audiences who get a first impression, an initial idea, of contemporary art (this can have a huge impact); and the professional field, members of which use these events to keep in touch, update each other, form and reform alliances, etc.
With the theme of this year’s conference—to reflect on the past two decades as a nod to Para Site’s 20th anniversary—what do you think have been key moments or turning points in the art landscape? What cultural leanings are representative of our time now?
At the risk of sounding weirdly dramatic, what has happened most importantly is contemporary art’s consolidation as something that is part and parcel of the corridors of power. For better and for worse, art has asserted itself as a geo-cultural, financial and political player with a key role in terms of elite formation, internationally.
For the conference, you are a speaker of a panel titled “The 2010s: Booms and Crisis in the Age of the Art Fair.” Can you give a little preview of what your talk is about?
These days, “student activism” sounds like an oxymoron. Leading universities remain deeply conservative institutions; even increasingly so, as student fees and debts become ever more crippling. At the same time, the university-at-large is being democratized. BAs are a mass phenomenon, and the category of “student” no longer enjoys the auratic vanguard energy it once did. But even if the university is the last place you’d expect [to find] cutting-edge activism, it remains a force to be reckoned with. Funnily enough, contemporary art is subject to a similar twin process of stratification. This talk will address the contentious combination of two charged terms (“student” and “activism”) in order to dwell on the possibility of activism within the international field of contemporary art as we know it. This, in turn, will allow me to discuss specificities of location, and internationalist agendas, by means of examples from Oxford, Ramallah and possibly East Asia.
As a mentor for the Workshops for Emerging Professionals program, how do you plan to engage with its selected participants? What do you hope they will get out of their experience?
I plan to go into more detail using the talk as a point of departure. If that conversation can leave a halfway lasting impression, well, that’s already a lot!
Para Site’s Workshops for Emerging Professionals will take place in various locations around Hong Kong between June 18–26, and Para Site’s 2016 International Conference will be held on June 21–23, at Asia Society Hong Kong Center.
Sylvia Tsai is associate editor at ArtAsiaPacific.