Terms and Conditions of Writing and Publishing Art in Southeast Asia
The goal of these workshops is to develop convivialities, facilitate peer learning, and experiment with diverse or new forms of art writing and publishing among researchers, artists and writers across the region. The workshops are addressed to those who are writing art criticism, art history and engaged in knowledge production about art more broadly – across both academic and industry publications as well as more informal and experimental platforms. The workshops will offer a supportive peer-learning environment to develop research and writing practice.
The workshops are co-facilitated by Thanavi Chotpradit, Brigitta Isabella, Adeena Mey, David Morris, Eileen Ramirez, Simon Soon and Vuth Lyno, with Wing Chan. Supported by the British Academy’s Writing Workshops 2021 Programme, supported under the UK Government’s Global Challenges Research Fund.
The workshop participants are: Danielle Khleang, Meta Moeng, Dương Mạnh Hùng, Van Do, Ace Le, Phoo Myat Thwe, Diana Nway Htwe, Beverly Yong, Yusra Zulkifli, Lim Sheau Yun, Dini Adanurani, Akmalia Rizqita ‘Chita’, Ibrahim Soetomo, Dominic Zinampan, Lyra Garcellano, Lara Acuin, Vincent Ardidon, Roma Estrada, Prapan Jangkitchai, Ariane Kupferman-Sutthavong, Nuttamon Pramsumran, Nguyễn Thành Minh Tâm and Tengku Intan Maimunah.
Workshops participants have been selected by open call; the programme is designed so that there are elements that all applicants can take part in. We will also welcome a number of distinguished guest speakers, to be announced. For more details, please contact writing.publishing.sea@gmail.com.
he core workshops will take place weekly at 4pm (UTC+7) Jakarta/Yogyakarta/Phnom Penh/Bangkok/Ho Chi Minh City, 5pm Kuala Lumpur/Manila, 3.30pm Yangon, 9am London and last for two hours.
5 November: Introduction: Bringing things to the table
Hosted by Adeena Mey and David Morris / Afterall, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London
This session introduces the programme and contexts and definitions of art histories in Southeast Asia. It introduces practical details of the workshops, the facilitators, and is a chance for participants to briefly introduce themselves and start to get to know each other.
11 November: Sharing research
Hosted by Vuth Lyno / Sa Sa Art Projects
This session is an occasion for participants to introduce their research, learn about their peers’ work, and build connections among participants, via a ‘virtual cocktail party’ methodology. It will support participants in focussing their research and identifying questions.
18 November: Neighbourly shapes of time
Hosted by Simon Soon / University of Malaya
This session prospects critical practices of art historiography, and aims to cultivate participants’ curiosity in neighbouring contexts and facilitate critical reflection on their research questions. It will engage practices of writing and reviewing, canonisation within different contexts, and how this connects with other sociopolitical agendas (nationalism, coloniality, museums, the art market). In doing so, it hopes to move beyond the reductive binary of formalist/contextual art history in search for more imaginative methods of accounting the sensory experience of art.
25 November: Terms and conditions of archives/sources
Hosted by Thanavi Chotpradit / Silpakorn University & Southeast of Now
This session surveys the spectrum of art historical resources in Southeast Asia, addressing the politics of the archive and critical tools for engagement. It will collectively identify different sources and approaches from within participant contexts (which may include oral history, autoethnography, artistic practices, etc).
2 December: Feedback Session on Asynchronous Work Phase
This session will be an opportunity to collectively reflect and develop on the thematics of previous sessions and get feedback on your personal project.
9 December: Mapping ecologies of art writing and publishing in the region
Hosted by Eileen Ramirez / University of the Philippines & Southeast of Now
The purpose of the session is to scan the participants’ work contexts, make out the shape-shifting in form and structures that play into the recent past and ongoing conversations on art, engage publishing and networking, and discuss how arts-driven impulses are staging transmedia discourse on art and attendant fields.
16 December: Feedback Session on Asynchronous Work Phase
This session will be an opportunity to further develop writing work-in-progress and reflect based on peer feedback on your personal project.
23 December: Terms and conditions of text workers / ‘Survival Kit’ for proposal writing
Hosted by Brigitta Isabella / KUNCI Study Forum and Collective & Southeast of Now
The purpose of the session is to examine questions of precarious labour in academia and in para-academic contexts, discuss possible means of solidarity-based networking and of advocacy for improving the condition of art labour, and to address its economic landscape as well as question our position within it. It will also engage strategies for writing funding applications in an academic context via supportive peer learning.