Renan Laru-an
Renan Laru-an is a researcher, curator, and the artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin. He creates exhibitionary, public, and research programs that study ‘insufficient’ and ‘subtracted’ images or subjects at the juncture of development and integration projects.
A founding member of the Philippine Contemporary Art Network (PCAN), a recently initiated public institution for contemporary art housed at the University of the Philippines Vargas Museum, he serves as the Public Engagement and Artistic Formation Coordinator since 2017. Laru-an has (co-)curated festivals and biennials including the 2nd Biennale Matter of Art, Prague (2022); the 6th Singapore Biennale, Singapore (2019); the 8th OK.Video—Indonesia Media Arts Festival, Jakarta (2017); and the 1st Lucban Assembly, Quezon (2015). Other exhibitions are Sourcebook: Mandy El-Sayegh and Helena Hunter, LUX, London (2022); But Ears Have No Lids: Maayan Amir and Ruti Sela, PCAN, Manila (2021); Motions of this Kind, SOAS, London (2019); A Tripoli Agreement, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah (2018); The Artist and the Social Dreamer, Forecast Festival, Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt, Berlin (2017); From Bandung to Berlin: If all of the moons aligned, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin (2016); among others.
Renan is editor of the anthology Writing Presently (PCAN, 2019), and with titre provisoire, he co-edited Turning Points: Coincidences in Prepositions (2022) for the Harun Farocki Institut’s Rosa Mercedes Journal. Ongoing project is Promising Arrivals, Violent Departures, a theoretical study on the formation of the artistic, the curatorial, and visual cultures in the exhibitionary heritage and practices of non-metropolitan Mindanao, the southernmost region of the Philippines.
Laru-an’s scholarship has been supported by the Foundation for Arts Initiatives, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, and other fellowships. He was Curatorial Advisor to the 58th Carnegie International.
Between 2012 and 2015, Renan directed the now-offline, multidisciplinary and virtual organization DiscLab | Research and Criticism.
Born and grew up in Sultan Kudarat, he lives in Berlin.
Renan@DAI
In October 2017 Renan Laru-an was a guest tutor during a DAI Confluence in Cologne upon the invitation of the COOP Curating Positions: Practising Organisation Under Present Conditions.
As of 2023 Renan Laru-an as the director of DAI's educational COOP partner SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin, is involved in our COOP study group trajectory.
28 November 2023 Renan Laru-an will act as respondent to our Kitchen at PAF in St. Erme.