Open Contemporary was invited to be part of Taipei Biennial 2010, and created project Biennial Scope for Taipei Biennial. There are three stages to the project, first and second stages was completed along with the end of Taipei Biennial exhibition. The third stage is a publication project.
The first stage of project Biennial Scope started with a letter of agreement. It is a short letter that began with “To the Taipei Biennial artists”.
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To the Taipei Biennial artists
During the Biennial, Open Contemporary will have an open call for photographs as project Biennial Scope. The aim of the project is to invite audience of the Biennial to take photos. We will then compile their photos for publication, creating a Biennial visual publication for “audience” perspectives.
Participants need to enrol and sign agreement paper to receive a photography permit.
Our aim is, through these images, we can create more concrete character for “audience”, thus to discuss “what is the Biennial audience?”.
As it crosses copyright issues, we respectfully write this letter to enquire all Taipei Biennial artists.
Please reply your thoughts to the curators.
We look forward to all your supports.
Best,
Open Contemporary
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The project might have began before this short letter. In this short enquiring letter, the members of OCAC who joined the project has already formed an expectation and outline for the Scope project. The possibilities and measurement are forming about the relationships of museum and audience, speaking and silencing, to forbid and to intervene, political expectation and active political participation. More importantly, all these discussions construct Scope as a process of communication and negotiation. OCAC created a inter-related exchange between museum, artists, and audience members and photo enthusiasts. This also became part of project stage one, the progress and efforts to form more discussion and understanding in developing contemporary issues.
Thus we began with giving a short letter to the exhibiting artists, negotiating between OCAC, museum and curators. From the first audience participation form to the first photography permit to an audience member, we’re not just waiting for the first photograph of the exhibition from an audience member to be submitted; but in every single audience members who walked into the Biennial show, every shutter response in front of an artwork, every photo feedback after considered selection process, all speaks about communication and interaction with the society. This gives an opportunity and a process for clarification and seeing through all part of this Scope project: not only OCAC and each participants, but also the museum and its exhibition, artists and responders, artists and their imagined audience.
This goes to stage two, after much effort and expansion of the project, all photo enthusiasts in the Biennial audience, can walked through with light steps and mood focusing yet wandering through each exhibition spaces. Leaving with an exhausted shutter and satisfied lenses, audience members can finally speak with the Biennial with their photo explorations. Now these photos will exist more than in the new form medias like blog, plurk, twitter, etc., with friends comments and beautiful experiential exchanges. In stage three, we will form a publication with audience’s photo submission. Through the publication of “Broaden Horizons - third stage of Biennial Scope”, we re-adjust the experience and position of contemporary photography and its open community quality.
