Call for applications to third edition

Shanghai Curators Lab (SCL) is a platform for in-depth research and redefinition of the implications for today’s explosively expanded knowledge, information, and technology in order to nurture young cultural producers in an era of complex crisis. Curators here are not only visual arts exhibition makers in the narrow sense of the past, but also comprehensive researchers for discourses such as architecture, design, big data, writing, ideas, as well as climate justice, food, and health that play important roles in the quality of human life.

Shanghai Curators Lab 3 (SCL3) is organized by the College of Architecture and Urban Planning (CAUP) at Tongji University, co-organized by Tongji Architectural Design (Group), and supported by Shanghai Horizon Art Foundation, with the duration from September 21 to October 19, 2023.

Theme: Urban Regeneration through Art and Architecture

Shanghai Curators Lab was founded in 2018 and held two editions before a suspension due to the pandemic. Resuming in 2023, Shanghai Curators Lab 3 will be dedicated to discussing and presenting how art, architecture, and design nourish and regenerate the city, and bring qualitative change to the lives of citizens. This lab, which studies and reconstructs the aesthetic amalgam of the city and its residents, is open to early-career practitioners and researchers with various backgrounds who are interested in visual culture and urban regeneration.

As an intensive residency program, SCL3 conducts informative lectures, discursive forums and interactive site visits by involving 25 experts from multi-disciplinary fields. These include artists, architects, designers, poets, philosophers, urban planners, curators, gallery management and auction experts, marketing and PR specialists, big data innovators, AI coordinators, ecologists, NGO operators, cultural foundation managers, and citizens of Shanghai. During SCL3, participating curators are expected to submit and present their project proposals in groups with the theme of ‘Urban Regeneration through Art and Architecture’. And the selected proposal will be realized with support in the following year. SCL3’s research partners include Rockbund Art Museum and Shanghai Urban Space Art Season (SUSAS).

The lead professors for 2023 Shanghai Curator Lab 3 are internationally renowned scholars and curators, Prof. Yongwoo Lee from Tongji University, China, joined by Professor Ute Meta Bauer from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Previous lead professors of SCL include Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (Director, Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Turin) in 2018, and Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath (curator duo Art Reoriented, now Directors of Hamburger Bahnhof) in 2019.

Yongwoo Lee founded the Shanghai Project, a platform of ideas and practices to prepare alternatives to challenges and crises that are rapidly approaching humans, such as the climate crisis, the Anthropocene, human extinction, and artificial intelligence, and served as artistic director in 2016 and 2017. He was the founding artistic director of the Gwangju Biennale and the president of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation. He served as the director of the Shanghai Himalayas Museum and president of the International Biennial Association. He was a professor at the Shanghai University, Korea University, a distinguished professor at the Tokyo University of Arts, and is now a professor at the Tongji University.

Ute Meta Bauer was the co-curator for the Documenta11 in 2002, co-curator for the US Pavilion in 2015 and the Singapore Pavilion in 2022 at the Venice Biennale. She co-curated the 17th Istanbul Biennale with Amar Kanwar and David Teh and she is currently the Artistic Director of the 2024 Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale. Prior she served as founding director of the MIT Programme in Art, Culture and Technology, as Dean of the Royal College of Art. She is the Founding Director of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art and a professor at the School of Art, Design and Media at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Curators under the age of 30 who are interested in participating SCL3 should submit their self-introduction letter, motivation for participation, and resume by e-mail before July 31. The finalists will be notified by August 20. SCL provides accommodation for participating curators and grants tuition. Flights from home countries to Shanghai, meals, other living costs, and visa applications are to be borne by participating curators.

For application and enquiry: shanghaicuratorslab@gmail.com

About College of Architecture and Urban Planning (CAUP), Tongji University
Being one of China’s most influential educational institutions with the most extensive programs among its peers, and the largest body of postgraduate students in the world, CAUP is recognized as an international academic center of global impact. CAUP is one of the first colleges in China to initiate programs of architecture, urban planning, historic building preservation, landscape studies, and industrial design, and still keeps its leading role in multi-disciplines.