Howie Chen is a New York–based curator who is a cofounder of Dispatch, a curatorial production office and project space in the Lower East Side. With artist Mika Tajima, he founded New Humans, a noise band and moniker for collaborations with musicians, artists, and designers. Dispatch offers a model for curatorial production: an office for receiving and originating exhibitions, projects, and concepts treated as time-sensitive transmissions. He has curated exhibitions and programs at such venues as the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (MoMA) in Long Island City (New York). New Humans was included in the Whitney Biennial 2008—a collaboration with Vito Acconci and musician C. Spencer Yeh—and more recently at SFMOMA with collaborator Charles Atlas. Chen is currently researching the ways in which critical practice can direct new collective strategies and negotiating positions and assert new forms of artistic production.Seminar Readings
Luc Boltanski, "The Present Left and the Longing for Revolution," in: Daniel Birnbaum, and Isabelle Graw (eds.), Under Pressure: Pictures, Subjects, and the New Spirit of Capitalism. Berlin, New York: Sternberg Press, 2008, p. 66.
Sylvère Lotringer. "We, the Multitude." In: Paulo Virno. A Grammar of the Multitude. New York: Semiotext(e), 2004, p. 7-19.
DISPATCH. Brandon Stousy and Kai Althoof: Mirror Me. 2009 [DISPATCH PR .pdf]
DISPATCH. Indian Ocean. 2009 [DISPATCH PR .pdf]
