Moderation(s) Reading Material

A Fictional Residency is the title of a collection of six short stories written by seven writers in four days at Spring in Hong Kong during the eponymous project in June 2013. Dutch novelist Oscar van den Boogaard and Hong Kong-based visual artist Nadim Abbas, writer-director Enoch Cheng, writer-journalist Doretta Lau, artist-architectural duo Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix of MAP Office, each wrote a short story exploring the role of fiction in their respective practices.

For The Social Contract, Spring Workshop and Witte de With invited five respondents -Betti-Sue Hertz (Director of visual arts at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco), Mia Jankowicz (Writer and independent curator, Cairo and London), Ruba Katrib (Curator at SculptureCenter, New York), Alana Kushnir (Indipendent curator, London), and Venus Lau (Curator and art writer, Hong Kong)- to reflect upon this project where visitors are asked to sign a legally binding Participation and Confidentiality Agreement in order to enter the gallery and view the exhibition. In doing so, the viewer becomes part of a temporary community of silent participants for a set period of days, agreeing not to disclose the contents of Spring’s gallery space in Hong Kong.

Bibliotheek (Library) is a list of books identified by all Moderation(s) participants to function both as a bibliography to the project, as well as a physical library installed both at Witte de With and Spring. All participants to Moderations(s) are invited to suggest books, creating an ever-expanding common library that can be replicated easily by any individual, community, or institution.