Alain Zedrick Camiling
Conference Report. November 2023
My participation in this year’s CIMAM Conference has facilitated further self-reflexivity in terms of gestures and interests that I persistently pursue, aside from establishing new connections that could spark potential collaborations in the future and sharing wonderful ideas with diverse professionals and practitioners. It was both meaningful and insightful.
As someone who develops his practice around audience development and is interested in knowledge production and circulation, the topics of the conference have dissected key issues, perspectives, and concerns that shape co-creation in the arts, culture, and creative industries sector that point to collaborative social and pedagogical interventions. These were also clear reminders that co-creation is shaped by networks and networked relationships that we constantly deal with in the work that we do. The conference also paved the way for establishing new connections with individuals, who either work independently or with an institution, through varied gestures and disciplines. It was refreshing to mingle and exchange insights with people whose practice includes the social and the pedagogical. What made me happiest was seeing other practitioners who are also engaging with academic institutions as I can relate to how they constantly attempt to balance teaching, practice, and research, which I believe complement each other perfectly.
It was also extremely inspiring to find out that some of the Board Members were also delegates, during the first day of the conference. It was my first time attending CIMAM’s Annual Conference this year, and I look forward to attending regularly. I am beyond grateful for this opportunity to participate in the Conference and its tours, most especially for the substantial exchanges (aside from the fun times!) with both established and emerging curatorial professionals from diverse parts of the world – including Board Members who have shared their time to converse (and party!) with all of us. All this would not have been possible without the generous and equitable support of CIMAM and the Getty Foundation through its Travel Grant Program. I’d like to thank both CIMAM and Museo Moderno teams for taking care of us by all means possible!
Bio
Alain Zedrick Camiling is an educator, curator, and writer based in Manila. He currently serves as Chair of De La Salle- College of Saint Benilde Manila’s BA Arts Management Program where he led the program’s nomenclature and curricular revisions leading to BA Creative Industries Management effective August 2023 and co-authored its curriculum in 2018. Between 2020 and 2021, he served as adjunct lecturer and researcher for University of the Philippines Baguio’s BA Fine Arts Program. In 2018, he pioneered Bank of the Philippine Islands’ Arts Education program through BPI Foundation, managing its art collection and museums in Manila, Cebu, and Zamboanga, curating a workshops series which ran in Lucban, Lucena, and Tacloban, and coordinated Images of Nation: National Artists in the BPI Art Collection (2019) at the Ayala Museum. He concurrently serves as Curator / Consultant for Museo Pambata (Children’s Museum) where he focuses on its recuratorial.
As curator, Camiling engages across local and international cultural and creative industries sector with projects focusing on audience development through art education, contemporary art, cultural heritage, and collections management. Among his recent curatorial projects include sole Philippine exhibition entry for Prague Quadrennial of Performance Space and Design (2023) in Czech Republic as Co-curator; forthcoming Visayas Islands Visual Arts Exhibition and Conference in November 2023 as curator for J. Navarro Elizalde special project; the Philippine Embassy’s Kinabuhi: Suyam and Ompo of the Agusan-Manobo (2022) in Rabat, Morocco as Curator; The Manila’Bang Show (2021 and 2022) in Muntinlupa City as Artistic Director and Curator for Public Programs; National Commission for Culture and the Arts’ Ang Ating Mga Kayaman sa Bakuran (2022) as Curator; Ibagiw: Alimuom Contemporary Visual Arts Exhibition (2021) in Baguio City as Deputy Curator; Japan Foundation and Baguio Art Lab’s bcc: in search of cures | correspondence art in the pandemic (2021) as Co-curator; the Bangladesh Embassy in Manila’s Shades and Sounds of Bangladesh Exhibition (2017) as Curator, among many others. He also served as Research Assistant for the University Collection Mapping Project of the University of the Philippines Diliman in 2018.