‘BEACON – a pamphlet series in ten issues’ focuses on how the commitment of artists’ to wider social movements informs contemporary artistic practice. The series will feature texts by artists whose practices engage with language and visual arts.
HONG-KAI WANG
Based in Taipei, Taiwan, her research based practice confronts the politics of knowledge lost in colonial and diasporic encounters. Through experimental modes of sonic sociality, her multidisciplinary work seeks to conceive of other time-spaces at the intersection of lived experience, power and ‘listening’. Wang’s work critically interweaves the production of desire, histories of labor and economies of cohabitation. She has presented projects at Asia Art Biennial 2019; Theater Commons Tokyo 2019; Sculpture Center New York; documenta 14; Taipei Biennial 2016; Liquid Architecture; and the Museum of Modern Art.
BILL DIETZ
Bill Dietz is a composer and writer, born in Arizona. His artistic and theoretical work centers on reception, specifically on listening – its histories, forms, and performance. The work is often presented in festivals, museums, and academic journals, but also in apartment buildings, magazines, and on public streets. In 2013 he co-founded Ear│Wave│Event with Woody Sullender. He has published two books of listening scores – one on his “Tutorial Diversions” series, meant to be performed at home; and the other, made up of “concert pieces,” based on historical and contemporary audience behavior and staging. With Amy Cimini, he co-edited, “Maryanne Amacher: Selected Writings and Interviews” (2020). A theoretical book, “Universal Receptivity,” co-authored with Kerstin Stakemeier, was released in 2021. Since 2012, he is co-chair of the Music/Sound Department in Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts.
ÖVÜL Ö. DURMUSOGLU
Övül Ö. Durmusoglu is an independent curator, educator and writer, currently guest professor and program co-leader in the Graduate School, UdK Berlin and visiting professor in the HBK Braunschweig. Focused on the intersectional narratives around contemporary political subjectivities, she acts between singular languages and collective energies, worldly immersions and historical cosmologies. Övül has recently co-curated 3rd AUTOSTRADA BIENNALE in Kosovo, 12th Survival Kit Festival in Riga, Latvia and “Die Balkone: Life, Art, Pandemic and Proximity” in Berlin (2020-21) with Joanna Warsza. In the past, she was curator at Steirischer Herbst; co-curated different sections of 10th, 13th and 14th Istanbul Biennials; and organised Public Programs for dOCUMENTA (13), among others. She is engaged with CA2M Madrid, Kunsthalle Wien and Martin Gropius Bau for her future projects.
HU SHU-WEN
Shuwen Hu is a writer based in Taipei, Taiwan. Her works includes a collection of short stories Sorrowful Allure is the Childhood, and the novel The Sun’s Blood is Black. From 2018 to 2020, she co-published with fellow novelists a collection of experimental short stories L’abécédaire de la littérature: A-Z. She edited and co-authored The Undeliverable Last Letters (2015), which records the wills, and letters of the White Terror political prisoners. In addition, with Tung Wei-Ge, she co-edited Let the Past Be the Present (4 volumes), and Souls & Ashes: Collection of Taiwan White Terror Prose (5 volumes). She is currently working on two projects, respectively focused on “aesthetically deconstructing the #metoo movement” and “reconstructing the White Terror in Taiwan.”
胡淑雯,著有短篇小說《哀豔是童年》、長篇小說《太陽的血是黑的》,主編並合著《無法送達的遺書》,記錄白色恐怖政治犯的遺書與家書。2018-2020與小說同業出版短篇小說實驗集《字母會》,已出版A到Z共26冊。另與童偉格主編《讓過去成為此刻:台灣白色恐怖小說選》共四冊、《靈魂與灰燼:台灣白色恐怖散文選》共五冊。目前正從事「美學的角度解構metoo的限制」與「重構台灣白色恐怖」的創作計劃
DARLA MIGAN
Darla Migan, Ph.D. is an art critic and philosopher based in New York City. Her research takes up an interdisciplinary approach to the study of ethics and aesthetics wherein to do philosophy also means learning from artists. She has been invited to participate in discussions with artists at UCLA, the Städelschule, and Parsons; written gallery essays in support of emerging artists in Berlin and New York; lectured on the distribution and circulation of images in post-internet aesthetics at the American Society for Aesthetics; and published reviews of group shows as well as solo exhibitions by Faith Ringgold and Akeem Smith. Currently, she is a fellow in Critical Studies at the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Darla’s criticism on contemporary art and its market can be read in Art in America, Artnet News, ARTNews, The Brooklyn Rail, CulturedMag, Spike Art Magazine, Sugarcane Magazine, and Texte zur Kunst.