Dear Curator Curate Me | touring video programme

'Dear Curator Curate Me' is a nomadic artistic project which develops an international curatorial response to a selection of 15 artist videos. Cemeti Art House in Yogyakarta holds a roundtable discussion on the project, and presents Indonesian curators involved in the programme. The 15 videos have been selected by the project's lead artist Kristoffer Ardeña (b. Philippines, living and working in Spain) and are by artists from Spain, Finland, Korea, Denmark, Singapore, France, Philippines and elsewhere. He invites a curator to write a discourse based on these 15 videos. Next, he invites another curator to write another discourse based on the same 15 videos. This process is repeated again and again, thus, the number of curators and discourses increases. The only invariable factor is that they have to write about the same 15 videos. The website, www.dearcuratorcurateme.info acts as a platform to display the curatorial discourses. This provides easy access to the general public who wish to read it. The website is being developed and further information and the discourses will become available over time. 5 April: Cemeti Art House in Yogyakarta, Indonesia presents a roundtable discussion on Dear Curator Curate Me. This time around, the following curators are invited: Akiq AW, Grace Samboh, Mira Asriningtyas and Pitra Hutomo. Kristoffer Ardeña will be present during the discussion, as well as Alia Swastika (artistic director Ark Galerie and independent curator). The discussion will be moderated by Roy Voragen (Roma Arts, which coordinates Dear Curator Curate Me in Indonesia). Image: still from Elina Talvensaari (Finland) 2010 video How to Pick Berries. Savukoski is a municipality in northern Finland that has experienced a puzzling change. Some years ago the local berry company started collaborating with berry pickers from Thailand. The nearby villages saw the influx of people from Thailand trying to find an income picking wild berries in the swamps and forests and selling then to the berry company. How to Pick Berries depicts the strange change in people’s lives and identities caused by the global economy.