Wu Mo The Archive as a Site of Experiment: A Conversation with Claire Hsu

nlike creating artworks, curating exhibitions and organizing art events, to work with an archive is to work outside of the sexiest Upart of the art world. In the traditional point of view, archival work, which involves the acts of collecting, categorizing and digitizing is mere mechanical labour. However, following “the archival turn” in contemporary art in recent years, the notion of “archive” is constantly being redefined and re-examined through curatorial and artistic practice. As Simone Osthoff insightfully states in Performing the Archive, these practices are producing an “ontological change . . . from the archive as a repository of documents to the archive as a dynamic and generative production tool.”1 It is evident that archive poses new challenges for all art institutions particularly for Art Archive (AAA), a non-profit organization that takes archive as the centerpiece of its mission.

Founded in in 2000, AAA has witnessed massive changes in both the local and regional art scene. After Claire Hsu, its Co-Founder and Executive Director, finished her master’s degree in Art History in London (Johnson Chang was also a co-founder and Jane DeBevoise has been Chair since 2003), she found it almost impossible to get systematically organized materials to support her research. In response to such lack, she decided to set up a free archive after she returned to Hong Kong. With the help of the local and regional art community, she collected materials ranging from books, exhibition catalogues and monographs, to ephemeral materials such as invitation cards and clippings manually cut out from print media, something unimaginable in the digital age.

After more than sixteen years of its development, AAA is a crucial part of Hong Kong art ecology.2 Although it started to address the urgent need to build an art archive, which is part of a much needed knowledge infrastructure in the region, its current approach and strategies are not limited to enabling research alone. Instead, by conducting diverse public programs, projects, and publications, AAA has gradually formed its methodology, which is to constantly engage and activate its archival collection. The key issue with respect to the new methodologies of activating the archive that AAA has developed in the past few years is the process of how it sets up and implements its content priorities within its own contexts.

AAA has identified five content priorities, which have evolved during the past decade and are reviewed annually: 1) exhibition histories, art

Vol. 16 No. 4 25 writing, and pedagogy, 2) complex geographies in Asia , 3) performance Exhibition documentation of First Choice, 1977, curated art, 4) innovation through tradition, and 5) women in art history. In its by art critic Nigel Cameron. Courtesy of the Ha family and institutional practice during the past sixteen years, AAA has focused on Asia Art Archive. these five priorities, which are manifested in a series of AAA’s archival collections and projects, such as Materials of the Future: Contemporary Chinese Art in the 1980s, The Ha Bik Chuen Archive3 and its propositions about the construction of Hong Kong art history, the Bibliography of Modern and Contemporary Art Writing of South Asia (in thirteen languages from India but some of which seep borders to Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka), The Baroda Archives, The Joan Lebold Cohen Archive, the Mapping Asia exhibition, the Sites of Construction symposium, and more.

In addition, community sharing Photograph of Joan Lebold Cohen interviewing Yuan and collaborative ways of Yunsheng, , 1979. Courtesy of Joan Lebold working are one of the main Cohen and Asia Art Archive. methodologies of AAA, which has worked with four hundred local schools/universities over the last eight years, providing courses and training to both teachers and students. For most of its existence, AAA has been fully aware of its position as a catalyst in the eco-system of large-scale public institutions, educational institutions, private foundations and the commercial galleries. It positions itself to play multiple roles while maintaining its independence.

However, maintaining independence in Hong Kong is extremely tough for a medium-scale non-profit organization. Despite the fact that Hong

26 Vol. 16 No. 4 Mapping Asia exhibition at Asia Art Archive library, 2014. Courtesy of Asia Art Archive.

Kong’s high rent prevents AAA’s physical expansion, it is also a challenge for AAA to avoid repeating what other similar organizations are doing. To some extent, the relatively slow pace of AAA’s improvements to its hardware and software as well as certain characteristics of AAA’s institutional practice raise many questions: How can AAA examine “Asia” through the archive? How does AAA balance its budget across the different regions it represents? How can AAA make its collection accessible to the global audiences?

AAA has acted much more like an experimental site for building hybrid models than just a library with document storage; in this respect, its institutional practice vividly resonates with Jacques Derrida’s viewpoint in Archive Fever: “the question of the archive . . . is a question of the future, the question of the future itself, the question of a response, of a promise and of a responsibility for tomorrow. The archive: if we want to know what this will have meant, we will only know in the times to come. Perhaps. Not tomorrow but in the times to come, later on or perhaps never.”4

Wu Mo: How does AAA balance the archive collection from different regions of Asia, and does it require different strategies and research methodologies?

Claire Hsu: As we are based in Hong Kong, which is a Special Administrative Region of China, it is easier to get funding for China and Hong Kong related projects. We are, however, constantly aware of the “Asia” in our name and of the importance of opening up multiple sites of entry into the recent history of art of the region, so we ensure that we allocate no more than 50-60% of our resources to Hong Kong and China. We want to make sure that this balance is reflected in our research, collections, and programs, as well as in the different members of our team located in Hong Kong, New , and New York.

We have different methodologies for working on different collections. When a collection is proposed by a researcher at AAA, the proposal goes through an acquisition process during which we consider how it relates to our content priorities, builds upon or offers a different counter point to other research collections, the urgency and state of the material, the resources available, and, finally, whether these materials are already highly disseminated or likely to be worked on by another institution.

Vol. 16 No. 4 27 Ha Bik Chuen’s documentation of his sculptures and self- portrait, circa 2000s. Courtesy of the Ha family and Asia Art Archive. Opposite page, top: Billboard with political slogans, circa early 1980s. Courtesy of Joan Lebold Cohen and Asia Art Archive. Opposite page, middle: Sketching class at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, circa 1979. Courtesy of Joan Lebold Cohen and Asia Art Archive. Opposite page, bottom: and his work, New York, circa 1987. Courtesy of Joan Lebold Cohen and Asia Art Archive.

As for the different methodologies in bringing the collections into the public domain, let me give you some examples. Thanks to a three year grant from the Hong Kong Jockey Club, we moved the archive of Ha Bik Chuen, which covers forty years of Hong Kong exhibition history, to an industrial project space in Fotan. Instead of us deciding what framework we are going to use to deal with the archive, we are inviting scholars, artists, and educators to come in, work on the archive and help us to think through which areas of this archive should be priviledged (there are over five hundred boxes of material) and how it should be contextualized. The Ha Bik Chuen Archive is huge and occupies a 2,000-square-foot surface of shelves and boxes. We are not interested in just mindlessly digitizing everything, but, instead, want this to be an open and collaborative process among those who have a stake in this work.

Another example, for the Detail of a collage book constructed by Ha Bik Chuen. Joan Cohen Archive, (which Courtesy of the Ha family and Asia Art Archive. contains 16,500 slides of images documenting art and life in China and Asia from the 1970s to the 2000s. we used a very different process, which we refer to as “quick cataloging.” The idea behind this is to share this archive publicly as quickly as possible even though it means that any annotation may be sparse. This decision was based on its size, the nature of the material (in this case all slides), and the fact that it was already well catalogued.

Wu Mo: What kind of role do the researchers play in this process?

Claire Hsu: They are in many ways the brain trust of AAA and are responsible for developing projects, scoping and identifying new archives, working closely with the collections team in developing a framework for these archives once a decision to digitize them has been made, and then working closely with the programs team to circulate them and bring them to life. The Head of Research is in charge of overseeing the different strands of

28 Vol. 16 No. 4 Vol. 16 No. 4 29 research being undertaken at any one time, balancing the geographical and content priorities, and developing lines of enquiry that ensure we are asking the right questions of ourselves as well as shining new light on the field.

Wu Mo: What are AAA’s requirements for the artists/researchers in residence? How do they interact with AAA’s archive collection and how does an archive-centred approach inspire them?

Installation view of Walid Raad: Section 39_Index XXXVII: Traboulsi for Asia Art Archive’s 15 Invitations, Hong Kong, 2016. Photo: Kitmin Lee 2016. Courtesy of Asia Art Archive.

Claire Hsu: We began the artist residency program in 2009 as a way of probing the potential of the archive through creative practices. The artists we have invited over the years include Raqs Media Collective, Song Dong, Wong Wai Yin, Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Pak Sheung Chuen, Walid Raad, Shilpa Gupta, MAP Office, and Ho Tzu Nyen—artists whose practice we identified as having distinct resonances with what we do and the questions we are interested in. The parameters of the residencies are flexible, and while all of the artists invited have presented new works, all we ask for initially is that the process to be publicly shared in some way.

Currently, we have an exhibition in our library of work by artist, Ho Tzu Nyen, which was developed over a five-year residency. The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, Vol. 1: G for Ghost writers is an interactive Internet platform created in collaboration with Pad.ma, Yasuhiro Morinaga, and Bani Haykal. Starting with the question of what unites the region called Southeast Asia, Ho Tzu Nyen has created a “dictionary” comprised of narratives about shape-shifting and amorphous characters, ideas, and genres that are drawn from its own archive that has been culled by him from the Internet—it is an infinite film that keeps on producing new meanings and associations.

More recently, we have begun inviting scholars-in-residence as a way of, on the one hand, giving scholars an opportunity to further their own research, and, at the same time, helping us to think through our content priorities and how we are developing them. Our educator-in-residence is a more

30 Vol. 16 No. 4 recent program and part of an expansion of our commitment to working with educators to produce tools and resources for classrooms.

Wu Mo: Technically speaking, can AAA mobilize its archives with the aid of new media, the Internet, or the collaboration with other institutions? Have you ever tried any of this?

Claire Hsu: The sheer act of putting archives online doesn’t mean they will automatically be activated or used. While we believe in sharing this knowledge with everyone, we are fully aware that use of the archives is predominately limited to professionals (scholars, researchers, curators, writers, artists, and educators) in the field.

Our website is essential to what we do, and our mission is to make knowledge on art freely accessible. Social media is a powerful way to further disseminate and communicate our work. In fact, recently we launched our new website with much improved functions and tools, as well as a new editorial platform. In June 2017, we will launch a semi- Chinese version of the site.

However, more is needed to make this knowledge living and sustainable, and that is where collaboration is crucial. Whenever possible we look to collaborate with like-minded institutions. An example of this is a three- year collaboration we have with the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art in London entitled London, Asia, which explores London as an underexplored site for the histories of art from Asia.

Another example is a collaboration with the University of Hong Kong where we are working with their fourth year B.A. students in art history to co-design and lead a research-led course on teaching Hong Kong art history with AAA as one of the classrooms.

At the end of the day our work is about making accessible, catalyzing, and bringing together communities who have a stake in what we do. It can be a slow process but the rewards at the end are worth it, and already we are seeing that the recent history of art from Asia is being taught and studied in a more inclusive way.

Wu Mo: As the founder and executive director of AAA, what is the biggest challenge in running and maintaining this non-profit art organization in Hong Kong? And, in your point of view, what are the current limitations of AAA’s institutional practice, or in which aspects can be further improved?

Claire Hsu: We have run out of space in our current premises, and we pay a high rent, so a permanent home is very much on our agenda. Real estate is a big challenge in Hong Kong. It is essential for us to own our home for the longevity of the organization. We have multiple plans we are working on at the moment. The board shares this vision and is committed to making this happen, which is crucial.

Vol. 16 No. 4 31 Fundraising is always a constant challenge for any independent art non- profit, be it a small space or a large museum. The great thing about being independent is that we are not owned by one major shareholder, so to speak, but receive funding from many sources. That being said, the flip side is that we are not allocated a large chunk of government money so we have to work hard to raise money for operations and programs annually, as well as build an endowment for our long term sustainability. We cannot fall asleep at the wheel!

Last year we went through a vigorous strategic process with external consultants and developed a three year plan based on this. The fact is, we have been doing lots of different things, we have limited resources, and there are many different institutions that are now being built and will open in the next couple of years. The landscape has changed dramatically. So the most important thing is for us to clearly hone in our resources to make sure we have the most positive impact on the field, and not to repeat what others are doing. At the same time, we have to be able to deliver and share the archival collections we are working on in the most efficient and thoughtful way possible, constantly asking questions that others may not be, and looking at ways to reach out to communities who can best directly benefit from our work.

Wu Mo: When you initiated AAA in 2000, were there any other institutions that you can cite as your reference or inspiration?

Claire Hsu: Not really. I hope that doesn’t sound presumptuous. When I started AAA (with Johnson Chang), I was only twenty-four years old, and I knew what a library was. My inspiration was ignited from a chance visit to Yuanmingyuan artist village in Beijing in 1993 when I was studying there. A whole new world opened before my eyes and this was something that had to be shared. But like many things in life, the significance of certain decisions only make themselves visible with the passing of time. The great thing about the archive is its ability to take many forms. It has been an enriching journey with many incredible companions along the way and it’s not ending here.

Notes

1. Simone Osthoff, Performing the Archive (New York: Atropos Press, 2009), 1. 2. AAA’s impact reaches beyond Hong Kong. There are also sites in and New York, and each month there are 20,000 users and researchers accessing the website from around the world. AAA’s website is also widely used by professors in their classroom. 3. See the introduction on AAA’s website: "The Ha Bik Chuen Archive presents one window into Hong Kong’s art history: through exhibition history, circulation of artistic practices and reading materials, and international exchange. Primarily known as a sculptor and printmaker, artist Ha Bik Chuen (1925–2009) had parallel practices of photographing exhibitions he attended, and collecting materials including illustrated magazines and artist portraits, in part for the construction of book collages. Asia Art Archive began an initial pilot project to map, assess, and selectively digitize Ha Bik Chuen’s archive by invitation of the Ha family in 2013. Made available to a wider audience for the first time, the archive consists of a continuously growing selection of Ha Bik Chuen’s collage books, exhibition documentation, and exhibition catalogues. Due to the vast volume of his archive, materials digitized and shared on this platform are prioritized by their rarity and relevance to AAA’s ongoing lines of inquiry such as exhibition histories, alongside other AAA projects and programs such as the Hong Kong Art History Research Project, Sites of Construction, Hong Kong Conversations, and the 2015 exhibition Excessive Enthusiasm: Ha Bik Chuen and the Archive as Practice." 4. Jacques Derrida and Eric Prenowitz, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression,” Diacritics, 25, no. 2 (Summer 1995), 27.

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