Anthony Huberman
Residency period
29 January – 7 February 2018
About
Anthony Huberman (Switzerland/United States) is the Director and Chief Curator of The Wattis Institute in San Francisco and was the Founding Director of The Artist’s Institute in New York. Previous engagements include Chief Curator of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and Curator at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. He has curated solo exhibitions with artists including Henrik Olesen, Sam Lewett, Wang Bing and has developed long-term research projects with artists such as David Hammons and Joan Jonas amongst many others. He was co-curator of the Liverpool Biennale 2014 and has published numerous articles in art periodicals including ArtForum, Frieze, Flash Art, Afterall, and Mousse. He recently published the book Today We Should Be Thinking About (Koenig Books, 2016).
Focus
During the residency, Anthony Huberman will connect with local artists and institutions in Singapore. He will deliver a lecture that addresses concepts of tools, devices, and machines in relation to the exhibition MECHANISMS, he recently curated at CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, United States. Furthering his connection with the region, Huberman will also travel to the Philippines to participate in the Public Lecture Series 2018 at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), Manila.
Public programmes
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Pitted against criteria of efficiency and fast-paced consumption that inform most of contemporary art production, the curatorial practice of Anthony Huberman revolves around the idea of slowing down. In this lecture, Huberman will talk about tools—machines or devices—but also about the abstract system of standards and protocols that structure much of today’s economic and political administration and management. Tools are part of our technological present. They have become infrastructural: objects one cannot simply choose to stop using, shut down, or turn off. In this context, what can art do? What kind of a tool can it be? How can an artwork or an art institution contest or complicate a world that only seems to reward efficiency or productivity? Starting off with a single artwork, which introduces a single exhibition, Huberman will proceed to consider some institutional approaches that favour small scales, slowing down and, perhaps, even inefficiency.