Episode 028: Shu-Wen Lin
Show Notes
On this week’s show we chat with time-based media conservator Shu-Wen Lin who has led an incredibly prolific career over the past five years or so, serving as the very first time based media conservator at numerous institutions, and working in museums in over four different countries – including Hong Kong, Taipei, Canada, and the USA. Prior to working as a time-based media conservator Shu-Wen also worked as an archivists for contemporary artists such as Sterling Ruby, and Cai Guo-Qiang. In our chat Shu-Wen shares some of the highlights of her work, not least of which a recent virtual symposium she co-organized to help build local time-based media conservation expertise and community in east and south-east Asia. Tune in to hear all of this and more!
Links from the conversation with Shu-Wen
> https://caiguoqiang.com
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_Ruby
> https://www.mplus.org.hk/en
> https://ago.ca
> Virtual symposium co-organized by Shu-Wen: https://event.culture.tw/TMOFA/portal/Registration/C0103MAction?useLanguage=en&actId=10049&request_locale=en
> Another interview with Shu-Wen: https://tmofa.tycg.gov.tw/ch/online-art/podcast/7
Join the conversation:
https://twitter.com/ArtObsolescence
https://www.instagram.com/artobsolescence/
Support artists
Art and Obsolescence is a non-profit podcast, sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and we are committed to equitably supporting artists that come on the show. Help support our work by making a tax deductible gift through NYFA here: https://www.artandobsolescence.com/donate
Transcript
[00:00:00] Ben: From Small Data Industries, this is Art and Obsolescence. I'm your host, Ben Fino-Radin and on this show. I chat with people that are shaping the past, present and future of art and technology. Welcome back friends this week on the show, we have a very special guest
[00:00:17] Shu-Wen: Hi, my name is Shu-Wen Lin and I'm a media conservator.
[00:00:22] Ben: That's right, we are speaking to another brilliant time-based media conservator. I was so keen to have Shu-Wen on the show as her career as a time-based media conservator over the past five years or so has been nothing short of prolific, Despite the fact that these positions are not exactly in abundance in museums, Shu-Wen has served as a time-based media conservator at four different institutions in four different countries in just five years. On top of all of that before joining the conservation field, Shu-Wen worked as an archivist in the studios of contemporary artists like Sterling Ruby and Cai Guo-Qiang. Before we dive in just a quick reminder that if you are enjoying the show, one of the biggest ways you can support what we're doing here is to share it with a friend. You can reshare clips on Twitter and Instagram, text it to a colleague, or, go ahead and blast it out to your whole email list, why not? Just kidding. Sort of. Either way however you choose to share the show, just know that it's very impactful and deeply appreciated. Now, without further delay, let's dive into this. Week's chat with Shu-Wen Lin.
[00:01:25] Shu-Wen: I was very interested in drawings as a kid, always. It really comforts. Me and I have a lot of sketch books as a kid and I draw a lot. In schools adults will say, you know, she's pretty good at, her hand skills and then when I learned about you can attend art school when you were 12 and I decided that I really want to do that. After entering the schools, I need to have three hours daily artistic practice, unlike other students in regular classes. For our specialized class we have sketch water color, ink, painting, and illustration. Each day minimum, will be at this three hours of different medium we'll be working with because in order to get to high school, In Taiwan if you want to specialize in art you need to take exams. At the national art exams subjects are, you know, sketch watercolor and ink painting. I asked my mom to take me to some of the extra classes outside of, elementary school classes in order learn how to take those exams to go to the, art school. When you need to take three hours, Of classes a day, you feel burned out so easily especially as a kid, you don't have that much patience I guess. And that is also a very exam habit, because if you want to go to college, then you need to take those national exams again. And all the students nationwide will need to take the exam on the same day with the same subjects. I remember the exam, I took for undergrad degree. It was a full day and half of the day will be in the morning. Three hours of sketch. And then I took watercolor. And there was like one and half hour and then another one and half hour for ink painting. And so you need to pack all your tools with you to go to the venue. And then each classroom will be filled, with, I don't know, 30 to 50 students all doing the exam at the same time. It's kind of surreal actually.
I went to National Changhua University of Education and in my department it offers a pretty wide variety of classes to students including art education, art history, studio art, media art. I really took the time to take a lot of media classes, including video production, animation, illustrations, graphic designs, courses like that. I enjoy a lot, learning new tools and especially, as a freshman in college was so new to me. So, you know, a decade ago that you got a chance to learn those new and cool things. Our school offer student to take art education classes so they can be teachers for, high school or middle school students. a lot of the parents, mostly they feel being high school or middle school teachers will offer students more stable career and income. So I guess for me, I can convince my mom that, you don't need to worry about me finding a job. I was very lucky my school offer all those different classes for me to really dive in and explore different, fields disciplines, and see what fits my career or my personality. I actually work as an art educator for probably a year and half. While I was doing my undergrad, I was pretty sure that I don't want to be an art educator.
After my undergrad, I'm very interested in working on the preservation side in an institution, especially in a museum. But I wasn't sure, like what kind of role will that be and what kind of job title would that be? Arts and administration is an emerging new graduate degree in Taiwan at the time and the museum structure in Taiwan is a very different from the US. Most of the museum are state owned. There are some non-profit organizations, they have really rely on government fundings. And in order to go to museums in Taiwan to work you again, need to take national exams. Because they are state owned and their staff are public servant. So based on that, I feel the area I would like to study will be, arts and administration. I at the time feel this is, what can lead me to work for a museum. So I applied to a master degree of arts management and then I came to the US.
[00:07:33] Ben: Was that a hard decision to make in terms of like moving halfway around the world?
[00:07:39] Shu-Wen: I guess, I always want to study abroad, so on one side I was prepared because I always want to do that, but on the other side before that I've never been to the US. So it was actually my first time go to the US study in different language and learn about cultural shock. I remember before I left, I go on Wikipedia it says Buffalo is the second largest city in New York state. And in my mind I think the second biggest city will be pretty large. And when I landed, I realize it was so cold and you need a car to get everywhere. People often ask me, what's my first cultural shock. And to me, I told people that actually, it's a very basic thing that everyone asked me, how are you? And I really don't know how to respond to that. As a kid, when we learn English, that's the first lesson that you learn. There is a script that says, how are you? And you need to answer. I'm fine. Thank you. And you? I was thinking, that sounds so weird. Should I say that? But they asked me how am I, and that's an open question. Do you really want to know how I feel? And I was really struggling a lot that question. In Taiwan, when you meet and greet, your colleagues, your friends, you pretty much will not ask an open question. And a lot of people will probably start with just good morning or they will say, did you have breakfast? It's like a yes and no question.
When I was doing my first master's degree, I quickly realized it does not offer the, preservation training I was hoping to have, but luckily I got the internship opportunity at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center. Hallwalls, was founded in 1974 and it was a venue where a lot of young artists had their first solo exhibit. And when I was interning there, they started their finding aid database project where they have snipped through thousands of exhibition slides and photographs and publications and posters for this finding aid where visitors can get a chance to learn about those exhibitions and events in the past. And that led me to the archivist positions at artists' studios. So after that I worked for two contemporary artists. One is Cai Guo-Qiang he's based in New York and I work for Sterling Ruby he's based in Los Angeles. So when I worked at the artist studio, as their archivist I was responsible to help manage their art and non art collections and also help document and archive their creation process. Because of my undergrad degree at the Cai Guo-Qiang studio, I help the artists to create, computer renderings for the proposal he's trying to make for the upcoming exhibition. To me, it was a very interesting experience to participate the creation process from the very, very beginning. And also after the exhibition after they realized the project to really think about how to capture the tangible and intangible parts throughout the process.
I don't know if you know about the two artists works I work for, but for Cai Guo-Qiang he made a lot of explosion events and gunpowder drawings. So when I was, working as his archivist, I need to document the explosion event and the making of gunpowder drawings. And so I need to use a lot of photographs and videos to capture those ephemeral moments. At the studio, he also has a big collection of legacy tape collection that capture his past ephemeral explosion event. And when I joined my supervisor, Karen, she already started to digitized and build a video archive for that collection. When I was working at the artist studios, . I was very interested in the role archives can be how they build their own narratives and also contemporary, super productive artists. They made a lot of works a year and have a lot of exhibitions. And I start to realize that I don't really have that training to do a more in-depth projects at the studio. So I decided that I need to go back to the school to get my degree at the MIAP program. Going to MIAP really helped me answer a lot of questions I have when we were trying to build that video archive and to identify and get a better understanding of the digitization process and to identify masters and get a better understanding of the production process. Looking back, I often think how can I improve my work after I g ain those trainings. And also at both artists' studios, I need to work with a lot of born digital materials. And at MIAP we have digital preservation class and we also have other trainings that help us to assess and understand the nature of the work in order to make a preservation plan or decide a strategy based on nature of the collection. And I think that was super helpful. So at our final semester, we have Bill Brand's film, preservation class at the class we each were given a project where some of the individuals or organizations brought their film to Bill and we help to put together and assess the condition of the film and try to draft a grant proposal.
For my project, I was given Trisha Brown dancing company's project and there was a collaborative performance between Trisha Robert Rauschenberg, and Laurie Anderson. Over course of, the semester, we aren't able to make too much progress in this project, but after that Bill and I were able to connect Trisha Brown's dancing company with Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and we had multiple meetings to understand a lot of changes that had made on the film elements. There are a lot of changes and was pretty different between what Trisha Brown dancing company and Robert Rauschenberg Foundation has in their archives. At that time, because Tate was hosting a large scale retrospective of Robert Rauschenberg's career, and that became a driving force for our project, so we are able to have a lot of conversation and collaborations between the two estates. It's very interesting. I can really relate to my past experience working at the artist studios and, think about when the artist is no longer there to answer your questions. And how can we dig out all those conversations and learn about the decision-making process in the past. So it was a super interesting project to me.
[00:16:31] Ben: Yeah. So after your internship with Bill this is when you begin your amazing tour of being a time-based media conservator at virtually every institution in the world. Because you're so prolific, I don't think that we have the time to go into detail with every single of the positions that you've held. So just for our listeners, you were a time-based media conservator at M+ in Hong Kong, then you were doing digital preservation research at the national library of medicine, then you were a time-based media conservator at the Smithsonian American art museum, then at the Taipei fine arts museum a visiting conservator, then time-based media conservator at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. Wow. Sh u-Wen that's incredible. I think you have a very unique perspective thinking about our field in the sense that you have worked in numerous different countries and numerous different institutions. I'm curious if that has given you any kind of unique perspective on the field or just on the work that you do.
[00:17:36] Shu-Wen: Definitely. I think, especially I work at institutions in different countries. A lot of time, you know, there is always a learning curve to learn about the museum structures there. And that was one of the reason I help put together a symposium to kind of, discuss those issues as everyone is, hoping and seeking for a more supporting network in Asia. For four days we have 18 speakers and we have invited speakers from east and south east Asia. And they are from the artists, estate, contemporary art center, museums, university galleries, a wild spectrum of arts institutions. And we are hoping that can be an opportunity for everyone to really talk about their challenges and their structures in their own country. Even though I am born and raised in Taiwan I feel I know so little about the museum structure in Taiwan and not to mention about other Asian country. For this symposium, Joy Blosser and I, we feel strongly that simply translating workflows and documentations and instructions. It's not really supporting the community because it does not address the linguistic and political landscape in Asia. So we are in this symposium providing translation support where we think English should not be a barrier and we encourage our speaker to use their first language to present. During the panel discussions, we also have oral interpreters providing Mandarin English, Korean, and Japanese translation to really support the discussion. For the first two days we have speakers talk more about censorship, how it affect their practice in their organizations. And it was very interesting for me to hear I kind of take it as granted that we have the full freedom sort of, not full but, you know, we have certain degree of freedom to build our practice. Where our colleagues in Asia, they are talking about how censorship is limiting their curatorial practice, their artist, artistic practice, and even when they are trying to build conservation approach, how challenging it can be. For example, one of the speaker Zoe Butt from Vietnam. She was talking about AC is not even a possible solution since there's only one museum who can have AC in the museum because it's the tourist spot, but most of the museum, they may only have AC 9-5 during office hours. And they don't even have stable electricity or in some of the museum, they only have one computer connected to internet. So they don't even have a database of their collection and that really got us thinking, how can we support our colleagues in Asia and I sang, it's very interesting that everyone is talking about a sustainable practice in a sense where they are thinking, how can we preserve the cultural heritage in a way that is not so heavily affected by the political environment. For most of the arts institutions in Asia, they receive fundings from the government, meaning that if the governments interest shift, then you are facing, the cut of your funding sources. So that was very interesting and it brought out a lot of conversations. And we also hear from our colleagues in Asia, how they are working with their museums and finding a workaround to address some of the challenges under the existing infrastructure. I think that is also super encouraging and I really admire their determination to find a way to work with the system to build that practice. Simply translating the practice without having the background knowledge and experience in the region it's really a colonial practice.
[00:22:57] Ben: That's such important work that you did through organizing that symposium. So you have been the very first time-based media conservator at quite a few institutions and that's a distinction I don't think anybody else in the field has, because these positions are not abundant. They're relatively hard to come by. But you have cornered the market so to speak. I would imagine, you have some unique perspective because you've been the very first time based media conservator at different institutions. I'm curious if there are any learnings there, stand out, things that you think would be important for somebody at a museum who might be thinking about creating that kind of role to think about
[00:23:39] Shu-Wen: I really would like to take the opportunity to thank and highlight the work my supervisors have done to, advocate for my position. Veronica Castillo, and Crystal, Pesme at M+ they spent so much time to build the time-based media working group and to advocate for the need of the position. As well as Maria Sullivan and Sherry Phillips at the Art Gallery of Ontario. They have been try for almost a decade to talk to the management to advocate for the need of the position. And that was the most challenging part to create a position where you need someone who, like them, sees the need and understand the challenges the institution is having in order to talk to various departments and talk to the management finding fundings. And I'm sure Ben, you know, because you work as a consultant for the Art Gallery of Ontario, to produce a report for them to really convinced the management, why we should create this new position. And I think that is so important and a lot of time you might not talk about that, that often how much time and energy they have been devoting in order to initiate this position. So I, think it's a real long process. And even after you have someone to come on board you still have to be patient to slowly have a conversation with your colleagues who have been helping from acquisition to exhibition at the institution to address the need of time-based media. For me, it's always like a learning process too and it's a collaborative process to hear everyone's need and to understand what can I do and what is feasible and sensible practice at the institution.
[00:25:54] Ben: So Shu-Wen, I'm curious, what is coming next for you?
[00:25:58] Shu-Wen: I will be starting for new position and I'm super excited to really build on my practice to work with a different institution to learn about different collection and work with the artist locally and internationally.
[00:26:15] Ben: So a new time-based media conservation position at a institution to be announced in the near future.
[00:26:23] Shu-Wen: Yes.
[00:26:25] Ben: Well Shu-Wen thank you so much for taking the time to sit down and chat. I really appreciate it.
[00:26:30] Shu-Wen: Thank you. Likewise.
[00:26:31] Ben: And as always thank you dear listener for joining me for this week's conversation. As always, you can find the show notes and full transcript at artandobsolescence.com, as well as clips and highlights on Twitter and Instagram, we are @artobsolescence. Have a great week my friends, my name is Ben Fino Radin, and this has been art and obsolescence.