Shifting Grounds, New Horizons: Thinking and doing contemporary Southeast Asian art now

Description

Shifting Grounds, New Horizons: Thinking and doing contemporary Southeast Asian art now is a 2-day online symposium gathering key voices in the field of contemporary Southeast Asian art. The symposium is intended as a space for renewing knowledge and conversations around critical developments in art and curatorial practice, projects of art history and exhibition history, and the ever-shifting coordinates of contemporary Southeast Asian art itself – all within a context of the expanded artworlds for, and public engagement with, the region’s art over the last few decades. To this end, Shifting Grounds. New Horizons encourages thinking and discussion across historical and present-day contexts, as well as future trajectories of practice that are shaping the field.

The symposium will feature presentations by emerging and established artists, curators, art writers and scholars working in the field of contemporary Southeast Asian art. Alongside an opening keynote, it will comprise the following 6 key sessions over the two days:

• The Curatorial and Exhibition-Making
• Contemporary Practices of Art
• Revisiting the 1990s
• Shaping Knowledge
• Alternate Mappings
• Collective Ecologies and Methodologies

Convenors - Dr Michelle Antoinette, Monash University, and Dr Francis Maravillas, National Taipei University of Education.

Watch the recording

View all 7 sessions from the symposium.

Watch on Youtube

Program

Download full program (PDF, 3.86 MB)

DAY 1 Thursday 3 November

8.45am-3pm Taipei time / 11.45am-6pm Melbourne (AEDT)

Symposium welcome

Spiros Panigirakis, Head, Fine Art Department, Monash University, Melbourne
Lin Chi-Ming, Director of Critical and Curatorial Studies of Contemporary Art program, National Taipei University of Education

Introduction by Michelle Antoinette and Francis Maravillas

Keynote

Artist-Curator and Manifesto in Southeast Asia: Prefiguring Contemporary Reciprocities - Patrick Flores, Professor of Art Studies, University of Philippines and Curator, Vargas Museum, Manila

Discussant: David Teh, Associate Professor, National University of Singapore and Co-Curator 17th Istanbul Biennial 2022

Session 1: The Curatorial and Exhibition-Making

• Exhibition Making as a Member of the Community: On Generous Structure and a Jumbo Jar of Tea - Mira Asriningtyas, Independent curator, writer and co-founder of LIR space, Yogyakarta
• Compelling Coordinates: Curating Afro-Southeast Asia - Carlos Quijon Jr., Art historian, critic and curator, and fellow of the research platform ‘Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, South and Southeast Asia’ at the Getty Foundation
• A proposal for transcultural and transnational curating - Đỗ Tường Linh, Co-curator, Still Present! 12^th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art 2022

Moderator: Grace Samboh, Researcher, curator and writer attached to Hyphen — and affiliated to RUBANAH Underground Hub

Session 2: Contemporary Practices of Art

• Balai Bikin - Yee-I Lann, Artist, board member for Forever Sabah, and co-founding partner of KOTA-K Studio, Kota Kinabalu
• The Call of Fragility, 2022 - Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina, Jakarta-based artist duo
• BẾN - NGỌC THUỴ - KASSEL  - Nhà Sàn Collective, represented by co-founder and co-director Phương Linh Nguyễn

Moderator: Alia Swastika, Curator and Director, Jogja Biennale Foundation in Yogyakarta

General Discussion and Closing Remarks  - Led by Michelle Antoinette and Francis Maravillas

DAY 2  Friday 4 November

8.45am-3.30pm Taipei time / 11.45am-6.30pm Melbourne (AEDT)

Welcome and Introduction to Day 2

Michelle Antoinette and Francis Maravillas

Session 3: Revisiting the 1990s 

• Frolicking on Slippery Grounds during the Roaring 1990s and early 2000s - Apinan Poshyananda, Chief Executive and Artistic Director, Bangkok Art Biennale
• A footsoldier’s map of ‘Southeast Asian contemporary art’ in the 1990s - Beverley Yong, Co-Founder and Director, RogueArt, Kuala Lumpur
• Thirty Years: A Short Story about Australian/Asian Artistic Dialogues - Julie Ewington, Independent curator and writer, and Chair of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney

Moderator: Russell Storer, Head Curator of International Art, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Session 4: Shaping Knowledge 

• Year of doing Poor Digital Art History - Simon Soon, Senior Lecturer in Art History, Visual Art Studies Program, Universiti Malaya
• The City in Time: Ways of Thinking about Art and Urbanism in Vietnam and Cambodia - Pamela Nguyen Corey, Associate Professor, Art and Media Studies, Fulbright University Vietnam
• prep-room, curatorial: (re)claiming the “museum” in a university museum - Siddharta Perez, Curator, National University of Singapore Museum

Moderator: Adrian Vickers, Professor of Southeast Asian Studies, University of Sydney

Session 5: Alternate Mappings

• Renderings of Southeast Asia - Ho Tzu Nyen, Singapore-based artist and filmmaker, and co-curator for the 7th Asian Art Biennial, Taichung, 2019
• Roger Nelson, Assistant Professor, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Session 6: Collective Ecologies and Methodologies

• After ‘lumbung one’ - ruangrupa, Jakarta-based artist collective, and Artistic team of  Documenta fifteen (represented by Ade Darmawan, Farid Rakun, Indra Ameng, and Julia Sarisetiati TBC)

Moderators: Michelle Antoinette and Francis Maravillas

Closing Discussion: Reflections and Responses to the Symposium 

Led by Michelle Antoinette and Francis Maravillas

The symposium follows the publication of a special double issue on ‘Contemporary Art Worlds and Art Publics in Southeast Asia’ (2020) in the journal World Art, edited by Michelle Antoinette and Francis Maravillas.

Shifting Grounds. New Horizons is jointly hosted by the Art History & Theory program at Monash Art, Design and Architecture (MADA) in Melbourne, and the MA in Critical and Curatorial Studies of Contemporary Art programme (CCSCA) at the National Taipei University of Education, Taipei. It is supported by the Australian Research Council (DE170100455), CCSCA, and MADA.