STOP WASTING MY TIME: Curating as an extension of artistic intervention and social practice, and part of artful leadership. The etymologies of curating include healing and care. So, make change. Because the game has changed. Get out of your comfort zones. Why the gallery/museum spaces haven’t been enough, and won’t be enough anymore. The cosiness, privilege, complacency and bulimic approach to public funding won’t do. Do your homework. Do the leg work. Please, surely you can do much more than trying desperately to map/apply ideas from another continental theorist or (western) art historical movement to now and using artists as your pawns. Leave your armchair/ivory tower and get down and dirty. Work with others. Come up with a striking proposal. Don’t waste your time, don’t waste other people’s time. Don’t be lazy. If you have a platform, use it, and use it to create platforms for others. Make art really work. Make art actually useful, beyond rhetoric. I am tired of empty gestures. And pay people, properly. This new slideshow was for a 18 June 2020 session in the MA/MFA Contemporary Curating, Manchester School of Art. Amid the summer of discontent.
Caption: Meridians (Kai Syng Tan 2012/2017. Digital drawing based on GPS of my runs, from Kaidie’s 1000 Day Trans-Run).