The Community Curator Program revolves around two interconnected yet independent thematic strands: Plants, Animals, and Urban Memory and The Species Archive. Conceived as a curatorial experiment situated between artistic practice and the natural sciences, this initiative is not a speculative exercise confined to curatorial proposals, nor merely an art experiment staged within the museum. Rather, it seeks to establish concrete relationships with living beings, foster forms of interspecies collaboration, and enter into real ecological sites and conditions. Emphasizing both process and tangible outcomes, the program is envisioned as a practice-based mode of collective action.
To support the work of the Community Curators, we will invite curators, artists, and researchers from ecology, natural history, and anthropology to contribute through field research, lectures, reading materials, archival resources, and interdisciplinary forms of knowledge exchange.
Theme 01: Plants, Animals, and Urban Memory
“The way a society deals with its plants tells us a lot about itself.”
— Lois Weinberger
Under the mechanistic logic of modern urbanization, a collective unconscious of “denaturalization” has gradually emerged. Nature has been reduced to scenery—standardized, functionalized, and aestheticized—while the city itself increasingly becomes a mechanized space. In this process, people slowly lose touch with the ecological realities and environmental histories of urban life, and living worlds recede into traces and ruins.
Against this backdrop, we propose to trace urban memory through the narratives of plants and animals—to leap into a “vanished world”. By revisiting nonhuman species that have disappeared from the city and ecological landscapes that no longer exist, we may begin to hear a place speak again: through the fantastical journey of an otter, through the perspective of a bird, through stories embedded within more-than-human lives. These narratives open up new possibilities for perceiving the layered and plural realities of urban ecological life.
On one side of Hexin Island along the Zhonghe River in Chengdu, wild otters were frequently sighted during the 1950s. According to the local historical account Walking Along the Margins of History: Zhonghechang, a fisherman known as Yang Yaoba once specialized in training otters for fishing. After approximately half a year of training, these remarkably intelligent animals became highly skilled fishing companions and were affectionately referred to by local fishermen as “fishing cats.” Yet with the destruction of local ecosystems and intensified human hunting in the decades that followed, otters have now all but disappeared from the area.
The geographical focus of this curatorial research project on Plants, Animals, and Urban Memory will center on Chengdu, Sichuan.
Theme 02: The Species Archive
On a low hill west of Longquan Mountain, the landscape in 2001 was a mosaic of farmland, woodland, and scattered dwellings. By 2013, the area had become densely covered with trees and flourishing vegetation. As the surrounding environment continued to transform under rapid urban development, this site was eventually left behind as a residual wilderness beneath the city’s “grand landscape” projects. Today, it has been incorporated into the municipal Lùye Park, yet it continues to sustain bird species rarely found in ordinary urban parks, including the Fork-tailed Sunbird, the Chestnut-necklaced Partridge, and the Blue-winged Minla. Such “wild” terrains offer habitats and life narratives far richer than human imagination often allows.
At the moment when this wilderness once again permits human entry, the establishment of a Species Archive becomes a way of affirming a shared present between humans and nonhuman beings. Within and beyond living systems themselves, traces of knowledge, memory, and lived experience continue to persist and seek transmission.
In An Archive Without Archivists: Calling Out to You — The Rebirth of Humans and Elephants, Atsushi Matsumoto reflects on archival practice as something that should not remain confined to professional custodians alone. While building a visual archive around Hanako, an Asian elephant, Matsumoto reveals a dual perspective: “seeing humans through the elephant” and “seeing the elephant through humans.” Through this reciprocal gaze, the dynamic relationship between human culture and the natural world gradually emerges, raising a fundamental question: to whom does an archive truly belong?
Inspired by this inquiry, we hope that the Species Archive, beginning with Lùye Park, can become a platform for articulating situated stories of coexistence and survival. From its very inception, the archive will continue to grow as a living record—one through which ecological wisdom and more-than-human forms of knowledge may once again become perceptible.
Under this thematic framework, alongside the open call for Community Curators, we will also launch a parallel open call for Species Archivists.
Research Site & Project Implementation: Lùye Park (The “wilderness hillside” referenced above has now been incorporated into the municipal Lùye Park. Special thanks to the Urban Biodiversity Co-Learning Group for providing ecological survey materials and research support related to this area.)
Recruitment Details
Timeline
15th May, 2025 — 23rd May, 2025 (24:00)
Target Applicants
1. Community Curators: Not limited to professional curators or researchers. We welcome individuals who focus on cross-disciplinary collaboration between art and ecology, possess independent methods of exploration and research, and excel at working with the public.
2. Species Archivists: Individuals capable of sustained observation and recording of local species, with a background in botany or relevant knowledge of local flora and fauna.
Thematic Focus
Theme 1: Emphasizes research, field investigation, interviews, and textual writing. Candidates should be adept at uncovering subtle clues within the dynamic relationship between human culture and nature, leaning heavily toward the creative interpretation of archival documents.
Theme 2: Emphasizes public participation and the expression of local ecological narratives.
Quota
Community Curators: 4–5 curators per theme
Species Archivists: 5–8 archivists
Community Curator Task Package
1. Select an Issue & Complete a Curatorial Proposal: Choose one of the two major themes to engage in sustained, deep exchanges with the museum team, project mentors, and fellow curatorial group members. Work collectively to complete preliminary research, site visits, curatorial concepts, content production, execution schedules, and artwork production plans.
2. Complete the Spatial Design Layout: Develop and finalize the spatial layout based on the specific exhibition venue and content parameters.
3. Collaborate with the Public on Shared Content: Formulate mechanisms for public participation and community collaboration.
4. Final Presentation: Ensure the timely execution and presentation of the project outcomes within designated parameters.
Project Lifecycle: May 2025 — Jan 2026
