mMK n AAA <br>HistoriCITY: Jaspar's notes on roundtable responses

Monday, September 24, 2007

Jaspar's notes on roundtable responses

HistoriCITY

As I said in my introduction before the roundtable, HistoriCITY is just a term I picked for grouping the three projects (art exhibition/reading groups/roundtable) I have with AAA under one umbrella for publicity purpose, and hence it was actually devised later than the whole project.
(sorry as well if I have the habit of not really taking seriously the publicity stuffs, which might actually be the only information the general public could get of the event. But while I allowed AAA to handle what to send out, I always posted the materials I prepared (most of these full version text of mine were considered not suitable for publicity purpose by our team) here in this blog of the project. And the link of this blog should have been included in the publicity stuffs all the while. So if you were getting AAA email, then all materials for the project should only be a click away.)

The whole project relation tie with CITY, should thus be treat as solely a word play on historicity, by revealing where this concern sprung up, that of Hong Kong, a very specific city. And I am still happy with it as it hints on more things under the present Hong Kong social context, but CITY was never intend to be the structuring view of the project. (I am sorry if it leads to directional misunderstanding, instead of more possible imagination as I believe. John Batten, for example, wrote us an email at a pretty late stage, suggesting us a whole list of different speakers (more concern with heritage preservation etc.), that we should included based on that intonation.)

Art Historical Writing in/on Hong Kong

If the whole project has really one focus/structuring perspective (of mine), then rather than trying to figure it out from the press release (which is a joint effort between me and AAA supporting team), I rather say it is the insistent usage of the term art historical writing (distinct from Art History) throughout the project. And this e.g., was definitely inspired by James Elkins' book Our Beautiful, Dry, and Distant Texts -- Art History as Writings. (Mentioning him in trying to explain how this project came about, and paying him the credit, I therefore think is instrumental and a necessary token of gratitude).

in/on, too, are consciously pick to divide up the huge subject, but the two are not really supposed to be read as therefore separate issues. But when we have to decide on the roundtable structure, it came in handy.

Even more unfortunately, the rounds of emails AAA send out has not included the session title, and so the speakers has perhaps not a clear idea the specific topic of their own session, so when part of the synopses came in, we discovered that a number of the speakers from the first session are responding to the methodological issue raised. This is however equally fine to me, or suit even more my original goal.

Originally, the roundtable has three sessions. But from the reading group experience, since there was not a great enthusiasm to discuss methodological issues (which is what I planned to cover most in the reading group), I decided to drop the separate session on methodology out and let it to be discussed in both sessions. (We do invite the panel speakers to come to our reading groups, unfortunately only a few of them did or could made it, so their actual interests were therefore not so well reflected in the structuring of the roundtable.)

But as I have responsed right the way before the roundtable on their synopses in the blog here, I have already tried to build up connection or possible dialogue e.g. between the Chinese writings of Lu Peng on the methodological issues of Art History and Frank's presentation on world art history. And that moment of shared understanding actually did occurred in Lu Peng comment on Frank's presentation that day.

Roundtable

For me, the rountable should be a discussion platform for the coming together of the three projects. Now it seems to be just a beginning. It owed to the unsuccessful execution of the art project, the reading group and the roundtable itself. But if it is really a beginning, then this is already worthy enough for me, despite things could always be better.

My model for the roundtable is the Art Criticism Panel discussion held by, again, James Elkins in Chicago, that I attended. There were some guest speakers talks on the day before, but the panel discussion was really organized as an open and quite free format for the speakers on stage to have spontaneous dialogue and discussion, rather than each having some separate time, giving their own speech or prepared materials. (Of course, Elkins as the moderator handled the flow of the discussion in an active manner. While our moderator for the first session, AAA researcher Wen Yau, wasn't there in most of our reading group sessions.)

more on how we decided on [the HC roundtable guest speakers list]
and my role as a [co-initiator /moderator] later,

but it is worthy to note, that while I actually do not feel it is necessary even to impose the speakers to have something prepared to say, I finally agreed with AAA to ask each speakers to prepare a five minutes short speech on their interested topic. For the presenter, I guess it is always more secure this way. Taking in the suggestion from Andrew Lam, we also invited them to lunch before the roundtable so they could gather together and have some more communication beforehand, but unfortunately only very few of them showed up.

Yet, despite of that, most speakers seemed to prefer to be far more well-prepared than we suggested them to, with some having their own powerpoint presentation or speech that lasted much more than fifteen minutes. But as I said at the beginning that day, the roundtable is actually setup for them, so I did not refrain them to talk if they want to, as long as everyone could have approx. the same length if they want to. And unfortunately, dialogue was thus at the expense of this lax policy of moderation of mine, particularly in the second session, with two speakers less, but also a shorter session.

Planted Questions for Speakers

Listed below, is my list of questions posed for the speakers (which I was only able to prepare in the morning before the roundtable, and despite it was attached onto every speaker's clipboard, I guess not much of the speakers read through it, as far as I recall, only Frank mentioned the first question posted in it. do note e.g. the way I put "art of/in Hong Kong" as distinct from "HK Art", which Frank also brought up in his speech that day.)

Art Historical Writing on HK

Are you satisfied with the existing historical writings on art of Hong Kong?
Or the present progress of art history writing on art of Hong Kong?
What are their most noteworthy contribution? What are their biggest problem/deficit?

What models are available for us to frame art in Hong Kong, or
stereotypes of Hong Kong Art still need to be deconstructed?
Historically speaking, is (art in) Hong Kong such a unique/universal case? that existing grander narratives (models or paradigm) do not fit? or that cliché works too well? which in turn reflection on art historical writing on Hong Kong might have something to contribute to the discipline?
East still meet West? Modernity still our unfinished project?

Has Hong Kong’s subjectivity emerged? Or decolonization leads to the looming of a “Hong Kong, China” perspective?

Art History in Hong Kong

Are you an art historian? How do you count yourself as one or not?
What is the essential relationship between art and history?
Do you have any reservation by calling/treating Art History as Art Historical Writing?
What’s is the difference between them in your mind?

Do you find art history as a discipline in Hong Kong striving or being disregarded? Why?

Is Hong Kong’s historical consciousness in the reawakening? And art history a part of it?
What is the largest obstacles for producing art historical research at present in Hong Kong?
Is it methodological or practical?

Art Historical Writing

What is the most significant reason we (the public) should attend to art history (in general) today?

Have you notice any methodological discussion of the discipline going on, locally or worldwide, that you think is worthwhile to introduce to the discussion today?

“Why Don’t Art Historians Attend Aesthetics Conferences?”
(What is the relationship between Art History and Aesthetics or Art Theory?)

What are the potentials, for an art historian to deal with contemporary art?
(What possible relationship is there between Art History and Art Criticism and Curating?)

What is the relation between Visual Culture / Visual Studies and Art History as you understand it?

What is, in your opinion, going to be the most significant development of the art history discipline ahead? Transdisciplinarity perhaps?

[more of my more specific response will be under the comment section of that specific entry.]

# posted by jaspar @ 2:27 PM