A Roundtable on ROUNDTABLE: The 9th Gwangju Biennale
Wednesday 6 June, 18:30–20
Wednesday 6 June, 18:30-20

Tate Modern
Starr Auditorium
Bankside
London SE1 9TG
United Kingdom

T +44 (0)20 7887 8888

ROUNDTABLE: The 9th Gwangju Biennale, described as an open-ended series of collaborations, will continue its evolving conversation with a talk at the Tate Modern on 6 June, chaired by Lorenzo Fusi, curator of the International Exhibition at the 2012 Liverpool Biennial. Titled A Roundtable on ROUNDTABLE: The 9th Gwangju Biennale, the panel features four of the six Co-Artistic Directors of the 9th Gwangju Biennale—Sunjung Kim, Mami Kataoka, Carol Yinghua Lu, Nancy Adajania—and the President of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation, Dr. Yongwoo Lee.

While it operates simultaneously on many levels, one thing is quite clear: ROUNDTABLE: the 9th Gwangju Biennale, is not about unanimity. ROUNDTABLE invites us to consider diverse forms of collectives within historic and contemporary contexts, the tension between belonging and anonymity, and the affects that temporality, spatiality, and mobility have on the individual and the collective.

Curated by a team of six Co-Artistic Directors—Nancy Adajania, Wassan Al-Khudhairi, Mami Kataoka, Sunjung Kim, Carol Yinghua Lu, and Alia Swastika—ROUNDTABLE is expressed through six interrelated sub-themes: Logging In and Out of Collectivity; Re-visiting History; Transient Encounters; Intimacy, Autonomy and Anonymity; Back to the Individual Experience; and Impact of Mobility on Space and Time.

Historically, the roundtable is associated with the political summit, where various agendas are brought together for group consideration. It could also evoke the traditional Korean image of the roundtable, the duriban, around which people eat communally. Beyond metaphor, ROUNDTABLE simultaneously describes the working relationship of the 2012 Gwangju Biennale’s six Co-Artistic Directors, the conversational interaction of its six sub-themes, and its non-linear structure. By design, these sub-themes circle around one another, overlapping, and at times taking oppositional views on the role of the individual or of the collective.The act of curation is thus a synthesis—a series of collisions that leads to transformation and cross-contamination.

ROUNDTABLE will feature over 93 artists, artist groups, and temporary collectives from 43 countries. Expanding beyond the 8,100 square meter Gwangju Biennale Hall to select locations across the city, the exhibition runs from 7 September to 11 November 2012 and will present 43 new commissions and 15 residencies, including many process-based installations and performance works. Conceived of as an evolving project, ROUNDTABLE includes a series of workstations and e-journals in the build-up to and during the main exhibition, aimed at engaging with a global audience.