Curator walkthrough «Allegory of Elsewhere: Traces of Strangers»

   Elsewhere is anywhere but here. The harder question is what elsewhere looks like before you have ever been there, and what built that picture in your head. A morning spent walking an exhibition with its curator at EMASI Nam Long, where our perception of elsewhere is constructed on traces left by those who came before.

   Your guide is Vicky Do, curator of «Mạch Ngầm [counter-place]». The walkthrough visits the worlds of the individual artists while asking where you stand inside them, a position shaped by how artworks, texts and the exhibition space are set against one another.

   Threads running through the session:

• — an artist's world is lived several times over: when imagined, when created, when told, and when perceived
• — an allegory of a place, built through narrative or image, lets that place stand for meanings beyond itself
• — imagination guides us towards somewhere, while perception, emotion and private memory lead us astray

   «Mạch Ngầm [counter-place]» develops from an ongoing thesis conceived in the form of an Atlas. Taking the landscapes underlying the artworks as its point of departure, it draws on concepts from geography and geology to reconsider history and the human place within environments that have witnessed civilisations rise and fall. It is the first thesis presented as part of «Within and Beyond: a Taxonomy in Exhibition-making», a year-long educational and curatorial initiative launched by Vicky Do.

   Useful if you study or practise curating, if you are an art student, or simply if you want to understand why an exhibition is arranged the way it is. The session runs in Vietnamese and English.

   Places are limited and the morning is split into two one-hour groups, so pick your slot when you register. EMASI Nam Long sits in the Tân Thuận area, south of the centre.

   One morning here changes how you read the rest of the show.