The first seminar of DOOSAN Curator Workshop 2013 was presented by Heejin Kim, director of Art Space Pool, on June 26. The three Workshop participants sought to learn about Heejin Kim’s own curatorship, as well as case studies relating to Art Space Pool and Pool’s past and future directions.

1) To Survive as a Curator
As a curator, Heejin Kim focuses on expanding social consciousness, and with regard to scopic politics, she argues that art should progress by keeping pace with branches of learning such as the humanities, historical studies, philosophy, cultural anthropology, natural science, and so on. Her strategy as a curator centers on acquiring “immediate” things; here, the meaning of the word “immediate” is to produce a “response.” Additionally, her strategy addresses the story before the morphology; in other words, her own attitude. Kim noted that a good exhibition is one that might not form a conclusion right away, but when subsequently looked back on, can provide answers and be translated within a different context. In particular, she stressed that to become a long-lasting curator, one should organize an insightful exhibition that is able to reach into the topography of the viewer’s awareness.
 
2) Communication With an Artist and the Issue of Writing
Heejin Kim believes in analog communication in terms of communicating with an artist. She argued that if one hopes to inspire viewers and to obtain something beyond the capacity of art theory, one should be able to communicate with an artist via as many as five senses, or even via six senses; in other words, by every means possible. Communication is a basic skill for a curator. She emphasized that in the entire process of making an exhibition (that is, in the process of drawing inquiries, mediating, and forming a conclusion), the curator should become a mediator and facilitate in-depth communication, rather than broad communication.
In terms of a curator’s writing, Kim advised that a curator should be aware of what he or she is curating and should thus write an essay that begins its inquiry from the most basic of knowledge. She said that curatorship exists only if one can sense a curator’s singularity.

In other words, the survival of an exhibition’s individuality allows each of its components to exist. One should believe that although an essay is convoluted, a reader will read it if they wish to do so. Thus, rather than writing a plain essay, a curator should write an essay that reveals his or her sincerity.

3) Art Space Pool’s Recent Projects
Heejin Kim has recently organized a three-part project titled of Thinking>. Part 1 will be exhibited in Seoul, Part 2 in Lyon, and Part 3 in Bangkok. The project is presented in pursuit of three thematic inquires: Part 1 (Seoul) is “Are we culturally negotiating others within us?”; Part 2 (Lyon) is “Initiating a conversation with Lyon: Re-examining in a new light the signs that they feel are Asian”; and Part 3 (Bangkok) is “Encountering unfamiliar Asia.”
 
Last but not least, to the three Workshop participants hoping to curate an exhibition that leaves room for thinking, Heejin Kim advised them to curate an exhibition that allows for artists to do whatever they want; develops breakthrough methods through political imagination(s); and draws out new methods of imagining.