Sounding Difference - The Gate Collection by Irit Rogoff and Deepa Naik

...There were questions regarding cultural difference that asked whether a museum really is an institution of representation, meant to represent those outside its systems and privileged audiences. If it is not, then maybe those “outsiders” are not outside at all, but can be recognized as already here and part of us, but only if we listen—really listen to ourselves, as in Sounding Difference (Irit Rogoff, Deepa Naik)... Irit Rogoff: Turning


Irit Rogoff, Deepa Naik, Sounding Difference, 2006 © Van Abbemuseum

"Lecture presentation by Deepa Naik on Sounding Difference - The Gate collection, 2006.
This lecture prepares you for a collective DAI visit to Academy. Learning from the Museum in the van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven on Friday 27.

Deepa Naik was born in 1976 in London.
She is an educator, artist, curatorial assistant at the Art Gallery of Ontario and curatorial assistant to Irit Rogoff at the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmith's College, Londen.
She is also a friend of DAI-alumnus Tracey Prehay and contributed a text to Prehay's DAI-graduation publication.

Responsible for one of the current projects in Academy. Learning from the Museum Irit Rogoff and Deepa Naik are working with the collection of the Gate Foundation (a Dutch state funded library and collection of videoworks by artists who are of other, non-European, cultural heritages). Sounding Difference is an installation and film project that initially decanted the entire Gate Collection from the crates it has been housed in during the transfer to the museum.

Deepa Naik will elaborate on questions on how to actualise its contents without reverting to outmoded practices of 'representing the other'." (© www.dutchartinstitute.nl)

Bio - Irit Rogoff


My practice is one of both academic research as well as in the practices of curating and organizing.

GeoCultures
I am interested in untangling the seemingly naturalized relations of subjects and places, in the constitution of sites and spaces that can not be cohered under the proper names on nations, regions, identities or identities and in the cultural and artistic practices that have emerged from mobilities, dislocations and states of extreme and prolonged conflict and the terroristic as the undermine the certainties of belonging, stability and emplacement.

Two books “Terra Infirma – Geography’s Visual Culture” (2001) and “Unbounded – Limits’ Possibilities” (2010) have dealt with such issues as has a major curatorial project “De-Regulation - with the work of Kutlug Ataman “ an exhibition project (Antwerp 2006, Herzilya 2007, Berlin 2010) accompanied by symposia, book and international summer school in ‘Relational Geographies’ Berlin 2010 and funded by the Bundeskuturstiftung. In addition I directed a major AHRC research Center on “Translating the Image – Cross Cultural Contemporary Arts” 2000-2005 with several research fellows (Isaac Julian, Janice Cheddie,) PH.D researchers, conferences and a book “TransCoding” (2010)

Participation and Education

Another aspect of my research is to do with ‘the participatory turn’ in contemporary art and in interventionist and educational practices. My forthcoming book Looking Away – Participating Singularities, Ontological Communities (2011) builds on work I published and curated in recent years and which asks the question on what does it mean to take part in culture beyond the roles that culture allots us for that kind of involvement. Curatorial project linked to this research thematic include “ Academy – Learning and Teaching “ (Vanabbemuseum NL 2006) and “Summit – Non Aligned Initiatives in Education Culture” (Berlin 2007)

Curating and Organising

ACADEMY – a curatorial project generated by the Siemens Fund in collaboration with Hamburger Kunstverein, MUKHA, Anterwerp, Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, Goldsmiths College, Dept. of Visual Cultures. A series of exhibitions and symposia between 2005 - 2007. I served as curator of the Vanabbe exhibition “Learning from the museum” and editor of the book A.C.A.D.E.M.Y 2006.

Collaborative grant, BundeskulturStiftung, (German Federal Cultural Fund), for ‘Summit – Non Aligned Initiatives in Education Culture’, Berlin 2007: http://summit.kein.org/node/520

Curator of ‘De-Regulation - with the work of Kutlug Ataman’ MuHka , Antwerp, MCA Herzylia, KW Berlin 2006-8. http://www.de-regulation.org/node
(© Goldsmiths, University of London)