Symposium ‘It Begins With a Story: Artists, Writers, and Periodicals in Asia’

Join us for a three-day symposium organised by Asia Art Archive in collaboration with The Department of Fine Arts at The University of Hong Kong. The symposium aims to explore how periodicals have fostered conversations around art and emergent forms of visuality in twentieth-century Asia. Speakers will include Afterall Co-founder Charles Esche, National Gallery Singapore Curator Phoebe Scott and Beijing-based Independent Critic and Curator LI Xianting.

Symposium ‘It Begins With a Story: Artists, Writers, and Periodicals in Asia’ Thursday 11 January – Saturday 13 January 2017

Periodicals are exemplary for how they bring technologies of word, image, and print together with notions of aesthetics, practices of viewing, and circuits of dissemination. The adage “modernism began in the magazines” is certainly true for Asia, where print media has been instrumental in taking debates, discourses, and images of art to wide audiences.

Periodicals have been more than just platforms or sites for artistic experimentation and exhibition; they have themselves shaped and staged them. In so doing, periodicals have played a defining role in forming diverse publics for art in Asia.

The papers presented in the symposium explore periodicals in relation to emerging practices that cut across genres, new nomenclatures and aesthetic propositions, verbal and visual manifestos, the production of alternative publics and communities for art, and other topics. AAA presents a series of talks, discussions, and exhibitions leading up to the symposium.

All events are free and open to the public but registration is required. For more information please visit the symposium page here.