To Think with the Forest: The Forest Curriculum, a platform for indisciplinary research and mutual co-learning

The Forest Curriculum is an itinerant and nomadic platform for interdisciplinary research and mutual co-learning that works with artists, researchers, indigenous organisations, thinkers, musicians and activists. Thinking from the terrain of Zomia, the highlands of Southeast Asia, and drawing from the work of James C. Scott, the Forest Curriculum proposes an anarchist imagination of our futures. In this talk, co-directors Abhijan Toto and Pujita Guha share their practice of collective study and theorisation, and discuss the need for a located critique of the Anthropocene as a concept from a located position. They will discuss the need for a new, non-extractive model of knowledge production and circulation, and the necessity to rethink logistics and infrastructures, while also addressing the need to develop located frameworks for thinking through indigeneity, naturecultures and the disciplining of knowledges.

Hosted by Andy Butler, Program Curator at Westspace, Melbourne.

Abhijan Toto is an independent curator and researcher, who has previously worked with the Dhaka Art Summit, Bellas Artes Projects, Manila and Council, Paris. He is the recipient of the 2019 Lorenzo Bonaldi Prize at the GAMeC, Bergamo.

Pujita Guha is a curator, activist and scholar. She is a Chancellor’s Fellow and Ph.D student at University of California, Santa Barbara. Her previous research included work on the Anthropocenic imaginaries of Lav Diaz, and she has presented her work at Cornell University, LASALLE College of Arts, Singapore, Hanoi DocLab amongst others. Her academic-curatorial interests operate in the intersection of aesthetics, ecosophy and contemporary Asian art, and is currently developing her work around mediatic history of the Zomian forests. She has been published in Art Critique of Taiwan (along with Abhijan Toto), NANG, South Asia History and Culture, and has upcoming essays on numerous anthologies on South/South East Asian cinemas.

The Forest Curriculum (Bangkok/Yogyakarta/Manila/Seoul/Berlin/Santa Barbara) is an itinerant and nomadic platform for indisciplinary research and mutual co-learning, based in Southeast Asia, and operating internationally. Founded and co-directed by curators Abhijan Toto and Pujita Guha, and with Rosalia Namsai Engchuan, it works with artists, collectives, researchers, indigenous organizations and thinkers, musicians, and activists, to assemble a located critique of the Anthropocene via the naturecultures of Zomia, the forested belt that connects South and Southeast Asia. The Forest Curriculum organizes exhibitions, public programs, performances, video and multimedia projects, as well as an annual intensive in a different location around the region, which gathers practitioners from all over the world to engage in collective research and shared methodologies: The Forest And The School, Bangkok (2019); The Forest Is In The City Is In The Forest I, Manila (2020) and II, Online (2020-2021).

Form x Content is presented by Monash Art, Design & Architecture.
Programmed by Monash University Museum of Art.

^{Image: Soe Yu Nwe, Pink Serpent and Budding Serpent. In The Forest, Even The Air Breathes, 2020, installation view, GAMeC, Italy. Photo: Lorenzo Palmieri}