Curating Contemporary Art (MA)
Ang Li
So remember the liquid ground is conceived as a programme of meditative and sensorial experiences across the digital, physical and spiritual realms. Responding to and expanding from the forgotten social histories and ecologies of Vauxhall in London, the programme has been inspired by the secret and suppressed River Effra, which flows underneath the area. The river acts as a way to re-imagine, navigate, feel and find ways in which we connect and synchronise with our surroundings.
The immersive programme features newly commissioned live sound streaming, moving images and performances, by Soundcamp Collective, Myriam Lefkowitz and Julie Laporte, Zoë Marden, Eduardo Navarro, Anna Nazo, Himali Singh Soin and Linda Stupart.
The programme also includes a Reading Room that acts as a circadian space for collective imagining and reflection on the body beyond authoritative representation, with contributions from Chus Martínez, Clay AD, Helga Schmid, Ignota, PaperWork Magazine and NXS.
So remember the liquid ground is curated by Benjamin Darby, Yoojin Kang, Akis Kokkinos, Angelina Li, Lenette Lua, Louise Nason as part of the MA Curating Contemporary Art Programme Graduate Projects 2020, Royal College of Art in partnership with Gasworks.
It is also generously supported by Vauxhall One.
A physical iteration of the project will be presented in Autumn 2020 in the wider area of Vauxhall.
Featured Image: Linda Stupart, Watershed, 2020, Video Still
Ang Li is a curator based in London, UK. Her practice gravitates towards interlinking of different kinds of bodies (of language, knowledge, objects, affect as well as virtual and corporeal bodies) as a way to generate sympoietic relations and un-named intimacies. Ang holds specific interests in experimental writing, speculative design, somatic and performative practices. Her current research revolves around debates concerning posthumanism, the increasing entanglement between nature and culture and the potential of incorporating metabolic thinking into curatorial practices.
In her dissertation, De-narrating Design, she reflects on design as a symptom of our contemporary existence and as an obligatory ethical mechanism. In order to unfold the relationship between exhibitive spaces and neo-positive ideologies, the act of exposure is explored as co-constructive moments of the self.
Her curatorial interests are reflected in the graduate project she co-curated titled So remember the liquid ground, an online programme of meditative and sensorial experiences developed in partnership with Gasworks. The programme seeks to approximate the distance between the observer and the observed and to ponder on the question how technology has reimagined the physical body -- as vessel, avatar, telepresence, and prothesis. As our inner and outer landscapes become increasingly pre-programmed, and our thoughts and attention tether to a technolgical operativity and logic, can we learn to trust our bodies again, and venture into moments where our bodies might become increasingly porous, unruly or leaky?
As part of her practice, Ang's tools of exploration include writing, editing, publishing, art direction and experimental exhibition formats. Prior to coming to the RCA, she has worked for both established and independent publishing houses, research and curatorial platforms. She holds a BA in Communication Design from Central Saint Martins, and an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art.
