September 14–30, 2021
The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea presents “What Do Museums Connect?: Museums in a Post-Pandemic World” through its symposium website from Tuesday, September 14 to Thursday, September 30. Designed in a non-face-to-face format considering the COVID-19 pandemic, the symposium will be available on the specially designed website that provides symposium information and the video presentations of ten international speakers with Korean/English subtitles.
Amid the changes that the pandemic has caused, the role of the art museum and its methods in playing a social role have once again become widely discussed topics worldwide. “What Do Museums Connect?: Museums in a Post-Pandemic World” not only introduces the broadening and variation of museums’ approach to mediation, but also offers the very way that museums envision the world and the orientation of experiences. The ten researchers, curators, critics, and other professionals invited to this symposium each reflect on a different perspective as they discuss ways of defining the new roles of museums that the changing times demand, along with the cultural, social, and technological contexts.
This symposium consists of two sections. The speakers in the first section, titled “Boundaries Dissolved: Other Variables,” share critical perspectives on the social and technological contexts of art museums today. The second section, titled “New Dimensions: Directions of Practice,” features different examples of experiments within the aforementioned social contexts. As a tie-in event for the symposium, a roundtable discussion will be broadcast live at 5pm on Thursday, September 30 (UCT+9hrs). It will also be accessible through the symposium website, where a Q&A session can be made available for online participants. After the symposium, the speakers’ papers are to be compiled into research collections for publication in both Korean and English.
Section 1 – Boundaries Dissolved: Other Variables
Questioning Technology Today
Lee Kwang-Suk (Associate Professor of Digital & Cultural Policy Dept., Seoul National University of Science & Technology)
Sad by Design: We Are Not Sick
Geert Lovink (Founding Director of the Institute of Network Cultures)
Museums and Technology: Opportunities and Challenges in Digital Space
Lev Manovich (Professor of Computer Science at Graduate Center, City University of New York)
De-Linking: ‘Global Art’ and the World System
Seo Dongjin (Professor of Intermedia Art at Kaywon University of Art & Design)
Beyond the Portal of Pandemic: What Does Art (Museum) (Dis/Re)Connect?
Kwak Yung Bin (Visiting Professor at Graduate School of Communication & Arts, Yonsei University)
Section 2 – New Dimensions: Directions of Practice
Future Art Ecosystems: Arts Technologies at Serpentine
Kay Watson (Head of Arts Technologies at Serpentine, UK)
Playing Together, Staying Together
Hong Leeji (Curator at National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea)
Museums in the Age of Experience
Sarah Kenderdine (Professor of Digital Museology at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Lausanne (EPFL), Director and Lead Curator EPFL Pavilions)
What Do Museums Connect?: People, Place & Data in a Post-Pandemic World
Rebecca Kahn (REWIRE Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Vienna)
How Does Art Deal with the Pandemic?: The Experience of C-LAB and Taiwan
Wu Dar-Kuen (Senior Curator at Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB))
