The Study of
Curatorial Culture
Curatorial Culture
SPECIAL ISSUE
It’s Us, Not You: Curatorial Notes on the 6th Asia Triennial Manchester
It’s Us, Not You: Curatorial Notes on the 6th Asia Triennial Manchester
It’s Us, Not You: Curatorial Notes on the 6th Asia Triennial Manchester
This special issue presents the collective process behind the realization of the 6th Asia Triennial Manchester (ATM6)—from its initial curatorial conceptualization to exhibition-making, and, crucially, through a sustained reflection on curatorial responsibility. Beginning in March 2024, a group of curators and researchers—Henk Slager, Hongjohn Lin, Yusaku Imamura, Miya Yoshida, and Kalen Lee—initiated discussions on how ATM6 might be developed differently. We were collectively drawn to the idea of forming a curatorial assembly—not merely as a structural collaboration, but as a democratic process that could embody the politics of exhibition-making itself. Rather than assuming the conventional role of “curators,” we adopted the designation of convenors, a term that reflects both our democratic agenda and our political commitment to shared authorship. Throughout the year, the convenors met regularly—both online and in person—using shared documents to record curatorial reflections and gradually shape them into exhibitionary practice. A key moment in this unfolding process was the Curatorial Assembly held on 28 November 2024 in Manchester, hosted by Manchester Metropolitan University. The event brought together convenors, researchers, and representatives from local art institutions to explore potential partnerships and reflect critically on both the evolving curatorial framework and the broader historical trajectory of the Triennial.
Transvaluation and Trans-Asia
Across these conversations, the question of value emerged repeatedly—not only as a philosophical concern but as a contingent issue in contemporary curatorial practice. This was shaped in part by our geopolitical positioning within the Global South (especially in light of recent discussions following documenta fifteen), and in part by post-Marxist thought, which reminds us that value has long been constructed by those in power. Added to this is the pressing relevance of ecological critique, which reveals how value is often defined in anthropocentric terms. We also recognized the increasing urgency of what might be called Anthropocene conditions, further complicating how value is attributed and shared across human, animal, and non-human systems. In short, the imperative of living-togetherness calls forth a collective “we”—a united front of entangled beings that resists separability.
The concept that encapsulated these reflections is transvaluation. Our intention was to reclaim value from its reductive, quantifiable interpretation under neoliberal paradigms. Since the theory of value has oscillated politically—from right-wing economism to leftist critique—our task as convenors was to move beyond conventional frameworks. To transvalue is to transgress the very logic of value, and with it, the systemic structures it legitimizes.
For a triennial, Manchester is a profoundly apt site for such curatorial inquiry. As one of the historical cradles of capitalism and industrial modernity—and the city where Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels famously met—Manchester holds symbolic weight in any reconsideration of economic foundations. Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England remains a powerful document testifying to industrial violence, urban transformation, and social precarity.1 In this context, transvaluation becomes not only a theoretical intervention but also a site-specific curatorial vocation. ATM6 thus proposes to enact transvaluation through practical, exhibitionary experiments that encourage discursive, affective, and performative practices—speculating on alternative modes of value that exceed economic efficiency, functionality, and instrumental rationality.
Curating an Asian Triennial in Manchester indeed compels us to reconsider the entity of Asia itself. Rather than reproducing essentialist geographies or cultural homogeneity, ATM6 advocates for a “Trans-Asia” perspective. This curatorial approach treats Asia not as a fixed region but as a constructed, contested space—shaped by colonial legacies, Cold War imaginaries, and transnational market forces. “Trans-Asia,” then, becomes a method of thinking and curating—foregrounding diasporic movement, archipelagic imagination, and speculative solidarity. In this sense, Trans-Asia is itself a transvaluation of Asia: a plural, mobile, and incommensurable mode of geopolitical relation that goes beyond nationalist framings and offers alternative genealogies of diasporic identity and cultural resistance. Transvaluation, as a curatorial narrative, also demands a departure from the classical understanding of economy—from oikonomia (the management of the household)—toward a reimagining of both its symbolic and material orders. In this framework, the curatorial is not simply a platform for presentation, but a mode of critique—one that moves between discourse, affect, and exhibitionary performativity.
1 It is still striking to see how Manchester today retains many similarities to Engels’ description of the urban spaces in greater Manchester, such as Bury or the Deansgate neighborhood. Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, trans. Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1892) 45.
Curatorial Assembly, Convenors, and Research Jam
At the core of ATM6’s process is a commitment to shared responsibility. Most curatorial decisions were made collectively through the Curatorial Assembly, emphasizing a democratic and participatory approach to exhibition-making. This model insists on going public—not as spectacle, but as a strategic act to challenge and overturn normative systems of value, often consolidated in the figure of the “Master.” Grounded in self-reflexivity, this approach continually asks: What can a triennial do—and what should it not do? Equally: What must be done? These questions resist the instrumentalization of the biennial or triennial format, which too often risks becoming a vehicle for cultural tourism, economic accumulation, or institutional validation.
The Curatorial Assembly, held on 28 November 2024 and hosted by Manchester Metropolitan University, marked a turning point in the shaping of ATM6. The event opened with presentations by directors from local art organizations, who shared insights into their projects and public engagement initiatives, while exploring avenues for potential collaboration with ATM6. This was followed by contributions from the seven convenors—Anna Mallaband Bergqvist, Henk Slager, Hongjohn Lin, Yusaku Imamura, Miya Yoshida, Sarah James, and Wingki Lee—who each presented curatorial visions and artist proposals, centered on the concept of transvaluation. The Curatorial Assembly was conceived as an inclusive and fluid discursive space, bridging local and global, virtual and physical spheres—some participants joined remotely. Dialogue, in this context, was not supplementary but central: a transformative force capable of generating discursive practices that shape ATM6 as a curatorial experiment. The assembly facilitated a transfusion from the discursive to the performative—a bidirectional methodology that moves between discourse and performance, theory and action, thinking and making. Rooted in Manchester’s industrial past, this process reclaims knowledge production as a collective, egalitarian, and situated curatorial practice.
One of ATM6’s defining features is its educational turn, exemplified by the Research Jam—an event that brings together practice-led Ph.D. research and improvisational methods of knowledge-making. Drawing on the idea of “jamming” in music, the Research Jam follows a path of emancipatory learning, departing from institutionalized models of academic knowledge production. More than an academic exercise, it served as a curatorial experiment in pedagogical liberation. By moving beyond the reproduction of fixed academic norms, the Research Jam created a space where knowledge could be unlearned, reimagined, and revalued.
This performative and discursive session framed knowledge not as a product to be transferred but as something co-created—shared through collective thinking, improvisation, and embodied dialogue. It questioned the hierarchies of who is allowed to speak, know, and teach. The participating Ph.D. students included Angie Chia-Lin Lee, Emilie Aymei Wang, and Edwin Hsiang-Yu Cheng (Taipei National University of the Arts); Bing-Chi Wu, Nicola Lewis-Dixon, and Shuwen Wang (Manchester Metropolitan University); Marie Reichel (University of Applied Arts Vienna); Tim Pattison (participating online, Hong Kong Baptist University); Tyuki Imamura (Oxford University); and Yi-Ling Hung (participating online, HKU-University of the Arts Utrecht). This diverse and interdisciplinary group helped shape the Research Jam as a discursive and pedagogical experiment within ATM6—one that blurred boundaries between academic research and curatorial praxis, while reimagining knowledge as an open-ended, relational, and collective act. The production of knowledge was envisioned not as a linear process, but as an improvisational form, much like music—attuned to rhythm, dissonance, and collective playing- together.
These educational experiments resonated strongly with contributions from Manchester’s key art institutions during the Curatorial Assembly. Directors and curators—Sook-Kyung Lee (Whitworth Art Gallery), Xiaomei Zhu and Jo-Lene Ong (esea contemporary), and Helen Wewiora (Castlefield Gallery)—welcomed ATM6’s approach and offered support for future public interventions, such as expanded research jams and collaborative art projects. These potential partnerships align with the institutions’ current thematic interests—ranging from Manchester’s industrial and textile history to wider global issues that include socioeconomic, ecological, and political entanglements. All of these are made visible through the curatorial lens of transvaluation.
ATM6 Special Issue
Alongside the curatorial notes authored by each convenor, this issue includes two significant contributions that deepen the discursive field of ATM6. Ming Turner’s essay—The Politics of Identity, Diversity, and Cosmopolitanism: Asia Triennial Manchester—offers a critical genealogy of ATM through the lens of close observation. Writing as a long-time interlocutor of the Triennial, Turner traces the shifting curatorial ethos of ATM across past editions, analyzing how identity politics, cultural diversity, and institutional structure have evolved within the exhibition’s trajectory. On the other hand, Chen Taisung’s contribution provides a theoretical supplement to the curatorial framework of transvaluation. He critiques the commodification of art, exploring how artworks—especially those engaging with affect—can unsettle their own exchange-based logic. By drawing connections between ATM6 and the landmark 1993 exhibition Business Art–Art Business curated by Frans Haks at the Groninger Museum, Chen situates transvaluation in art historical references that consider art’s shifting relationship to value, economy, and commodity fetishism.
Both the invited essays and those written by us, the convenors, serve to contextualize ATM6’s critical ambition: to displace dominant regimes of value by reimagining how art can operate within—and against—systems of measurement, consensus, and visibility. Within this framework, transvaluation emerges as both a curatorial strategy and an educational method—one capable of suspending social hierarchies and dissolving oppositional binaries. It offers a means of moving beyond predetermined political, ethical, or aesthetic prescriptions, toward new relational formations between artists, curators, audiences, and communities. The phrase “It’s us, not you” signals a reflexive turn: an attempt to expose the often-neutralized assumptions embedded in exhibition-making and to critically examine the structures that shape who we are, and how we are entangled within broader societal and ecological relations. This ethical stance enacts a form of transvalued art—a curatorial and artistic practice that simultaneously reconfigures art’s aesthetic, economic, and social dimensions. It seeks to shift the boundaries between art and life, redistributing the relationships of production that determine how art is fabricated, circulated, experienced, and shared.
1 It is still striking to see how Manchester today retains many similarities to Engels’ description of the urban spaces in greater Manchester, such as Bury or the Deansgate neighborhood. Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, trans. Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1892) 45.
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Author
Hongjohn Lin is an artist, writer and curator. Graduated from New York University in Arts and Humanities with Ph.D. He has participated in exhibitions including Taipei Biennial(2004), the Asia Triennial Manchester 2008, the Rotterdam Film Festival 2008, and the 2012 Taipei Biennial, Guangzhou Triennial (2015), and China Asia Biennial (2014). Lin was curator of the Taiwan Pavilion Atopia, Venice Biennial 2007, co-curator of 2010 Taipei Biennial (with Tirdad Zolghadr), and numerous curatorial projects such as Taizhong’s The Good Place (2002) and Live Ammo (2012). Lin is serving as Professor at the Taipei National University of the Arts. For the past 10 years, he has been working on project based on George Psalmanazar, A fake Taiwanese in the early Enlightenment. He is interested in transdisciplinary arts, politics of aesthetics, and curating. His writings can be found in Artco magazine, Yishu magazine, international journals, and publications of Art as a Thinking Process (2010), Artistic Research (2012), Experimental Aesthetic(2014), Altering Archive: The Politics of Memory in Sinophone Cinemas and Image Culture (2017). He wrote the Introductions for Chinese edition of Art Power (Boris Groys) and Artificial Hells (Clair Bishop) . His books in Chinese include Poetics of Curating (2018), Beyond the Boundary: Interdisciplinary Arts in Taiwan, Writings on Locality, Curating Subjects: Practices of Contemporary Exhibitions.
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