Forget about it! Decolonise yourself!

Archive Gathering:
Forget about it! Decolonise yourself! 
Convened by Gahee Park

12.00 - 12.40 Sharing of an ongoing research by Gahee Park
13.00 - 14.00 Exchanging thoughts with lunch
14.00 - Exhibition viewing of Patricia Kaersenhout’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Too?
* There are limited seats available. Please RSVP via reservations [​at​] deappel.nl by 27th October. 

Forget about it! Decolonise yourself! is an event for sharing the ongoing frustration, doubts, affection, and ever-growing thoughts within the process of a research conducted by Gahee Park, Curatorial Research Fellow at De Appel. 

“My research delves into how, throughout their exhibition histories, Dutch institutions have been coping with the colonial past and residue ‘coloniality’ in an attempt to decolonise themselves. There are certainly different approaches and attitudes towards understanding the colonial past and the persistence of coloniality in contemporary Dutch society. These diverse curatorial/institutional practices seem to create different temporalities and different decolonial horizons. Taking up specific exhibitions, projects, debates as case studies, I attempt to show different ways of understanding decoloniality as a method. These case studies will be discussed using terms, such as inclusion, commons, sense of presence, unlearning, decolonial aesthetics, etc., found in the texts of the selected exhibitions/projects, archival documents, and personal dialogues to raise further questions: [Be[com]ing Dutch, Propositions for Non-Fascist Living, etc.]”

This interim presentation Forget about it! Decolonise yourself! is part of my ongoing research into the local context of the Netherlands as an exercise of unlearning. Therefore, I intend to forget about things that previously occupied me and wish to provoke or inspire the thoughtful reconsideration of the selected words using the perspective of decoloniality as I understand it. And it asks you to be part of this exercise as well.” – Gahee Park

The presentation will take place at the De Appel Archive for an hour and the casual discussion and sharing of thoughts will be followed with lunch. There are limited seats available. Please RSVP via reservations [​at​] deappel.nl by 27th October.” 

Gahee Park (1985, South Korea) is a curator based in Seoul and currently at De Appel as a Curatorial Research Fellow. Regarding the exhibition as a medium, her interest lies in the performative aspect of curating in which the event of knowledge can occur. Recently, she is trying to test the possibilities for the coexistence of multiple art histories by researching and re-contextualising past exhibitions. Previously, she worked as Curator at Seoul Museum of Art between 2013 and 2017. Last year, she joined the Busan Biennale 2018 Divided We Stand as Guest Curator. She also translated Self-organised - Open Editions: London, 2013 - into Korean together with her colleagues Hyo JEON and Eunbi JO.