Multicultural Art Institutions at the Crossroads: Institutional Art Archives

Institutional Art Archives: Part 1 of the "Multicultural Art Institutions at the Crossroads" series conceived by CREATURE and CFCCA.

About this event

With the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Art (CFCCA, Manchester), the Transcultural Exchange and Networks research strand of the Centre for Creative Arts, Cultures and Engagement (CREATURE) hosts "Multicultural Art Institutions at the Crossroads", a two part series of panel discussions with art/cultural policymakers, art practitioners and professionals, and academic researchers, seeking to unpack the challenges and expectations faced by multicultural art organisations.

Institutional Art Archives is one part of the set, which will articulate the role and challenges of institutional archives as an active agency for memory that expresses and sustains multicultural heritage through contemporary visual art.

Multicultural Art Institutions at the Crossroads is a project seeking to understand the ways in which cultural policy impact on the operation of creative labour, organisations and artistic production in the building of and sustaining multicultural heritage. How do multicultural art organisations express, build and maintain cultural heritage from their represented communities? Who are their stakeholders and what are the challenges in serving their, at times, conflicting motivations? What is the role of institutional archive in the build-up and extenuation of artistic expression of cultural heritage? Where do artists/creative labour situate in the developmental journey of these organisations against the backdrop of funding pressure, organisational survival, and the shifting political and socio-cultural landscape? A two part series of panel discussions is conducted to facilitate ideas and exchanges among practitioners, policymakers, academics, cultural mediators in search for a balance between social cohesion, and organisational and community growth through multicultural voices and artistic activities. Through dialogues and discussion, complexity arising from multicultural organisations and decisions from cultural policy are unpacked to review policy engagement in organisational development, resilience and shaping multicultural heritage.

Moderator: Professor Wessie Ling is a Professor of Transcultural Arts and Design at the School of Art, Architecture and design at London Met and the Director of CREATURE.

John Tain is Head of Research at Asia Art Archive, working with a team in Hong Kong, New Delhi, and Shanghai. Recent projects include the exhibition Crafting Communities (2020), and MAHASSA (Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, and South and Southeast Asia, 2019-2020), a collaboration with Dhaka Art Summit and Cornell University.

Dr. Alda Terracciano is Honorary Research Fellow and Co-leader of the Centre for Critical Heritage Studies at UCL and founding Chair of Future Histories archives. As an artist and director of Aldaterra Projects, she has explored the intersection between bodies, memories, urban space, and digital environments with culturally diverse communities nationally and internationally.

Marianna Tsionki is a curator, researcher and educator. Her research/practice examines curating as a critical practice and a discourse within cultural institutions; previous curatorial projects and writing have focused on issues of globalisation, digital infrastructures and networks, diaspora, migration and climate change. She is currently Senior Curator at CFCCA, Manchester and an Associate Lecturer at the Manchester School of Art.

Katie Waring is responsible for managing the Archive and Library at the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Art (CFCCA). She has been in post since 2016, and is currently documenting records relating to the Centre’s artist-in-residence programme, 2003-2010, funded by London Metropolitan University.

Leung Chi Wo is an artist, educator and co-founder of Para/Site in Hong Kong. He has been engaged in collaborative projects with Sara Wong besides his individual practice, which focuses mainly on the perception of history. Currently he is Associate Professor in the School of Creative Media, the City University of Hong Kong.

Image: Installation view Memory Collector 1----- The Unbearable Lightness of Text messages, (2006), Sophia Hao, Open Studio, 2006 Mar 2, Chinese Arts Centre, Manchester. Photography by the Chinese Arts Centre. Courtesy of the CFCCA Archive & Library, (GB3451/OC/D/2101/10).