Para Site is proud to present the 2015 edition of its International Conference, a three-day major gathering in Hong Kong of practitioners from around the world, discussing developments in contemporary art exhibition making, the roles and responsibilities these formats have imagined for themselves in the context of today’s world. Together with this year’s conference, Para Site is launching a new educational programme, a week-long series of workshops conceived for a group of emerging professionals from across the region and the world.

Building on the tradition of Para Site’s annual international conferences as a space for debating issues of relevance for our field and its artistic and intellectual tools for engagement with the world, this year’s edition asks some fundamental questions about current positions taken by exhibitions. It looks at the various roles that exhibitions are ascribed, proposing four distinct, though sometimes overlapping, modes of conceiving exhibitions.

Speakers at the conference include: Magali Arriola (art critic and independent curator, Mexico City), Osei Bonsu (independent curator and writer, London), Clara Cheung (curator and artist, co-founder of C&G Artpartment, Hong Kong), Freya Chou (Curator of Education and Public Programmes at Para Site), Cosmin Costinas (Executive Director/Curator at Para Site), Diedrich Diederichsen (author, music journalist, and cultural critic, Berlin), Iris Dressler (Co-director of the Wuerttembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart), Hendrik Folkerts (Curator of documenta 14, Kassel), Mariam Ghani (artist, filmmaker, writer, and teacher, New York), Chitti Kasemkitvatana (artist and independent curator, Bangkok), Abdellah Karroum (Director at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha), Vasif Kortun (Director of Research and Programs at SALT, Istanbul), Anders Kreuger (Curator at M HKA, the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp), Brian Kuan Wood (writer and editor of e-flux journal, New York), Christina Li (curator and writer, Director at Spring Workshop, Hong Kong/Amsterdam), Raimundas Malašauskas(writer and curator, member of the faculty of 2016 Liverpool Biennial, Brussels), Simon Soon (writer and curator, Kuala Lumpur), Vuth Lyno(artist, curator, researcher, and artistic director for Sa Sa Art Projects, Phnom Penh), Xiaoyu Weng (The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Associate Curator of Chinese Art at the Solomon. R. Guggenheim Museum, New York), Chantal Wong (Head of Strategy and Special Projects at Asia Art Archive and co-founder of Things That Can Happen, Hong Kong), and Yeung Yang (curator, writer, and founder and executive director of soundpocket, Hong Kong).