Researcher and curator Christine M. Kaiser delivering her talk Situating Curatorial Discourses, 20 August 2021, at Hidden Space.

Christine M. Kaiser shared her research findings at Hidden Space shortly after completing her PhD on the specific situatedness of Shenzhen art spaces. Her findings reveal how the curatorial structures of discourses within these art spaces have been constructed, and enhances their importance and influence within the wider system.

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For her PhD, Christine's research topic was titled New Spaces of Shenzhen: An Analytical Examination of Curatorial Discourses in the Art Spaces of Shenzhen. The focus was on future systems of knowledge production and investigated the dense net of re-telling past histories, tracing current contemporary exhibition-making, and listening to cultural workers in today's Shenzhen. Curatorial decisions are embedded in such a dynamic situation and call for a more comprehensive discursive system. Christine argues for a curatorial approach which includes decolonial practice, scrutinising existing norms and critically engaging with a system of diverse epistemologies. 

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Christine is from Germany and was based in Shenzhen from 2014 to 2016 before moving to Hong Kong. Her academic background is in sociology, art and media studies, and curating. This foundation is strongly intertwined with her projects in the sphere of art, and the deepening entanglement can be traced through projects curating and conceptualising an applied dialogue with contemporary art through formats such as Critics Delight (202, Platform 3, Munich, Germany) to I might be wrong (2020, OnCurating Project Space, Zürich, Switzerland) and Curating the Digital Expanded, OnCurating Issue 56, August 2023 (Christine was an editor on this groundbreaking bilingual Chinese/English edition) to remaining actively engaged in strengthening the positioning of knowledge production in the curatorial field. Large-scale projects include her responsibilities across different roles for the German contribution to the Venice Biennale between 2007 and 2011, and China In Maps at HKUST in 2023.

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