Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr May Ee Wong, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

PROGRAM

ABSTRACT

‘Asia’ has been named the site of the civilisational future, while Southeast Asia is identified as the site of urban futures as a key region that is witnessing rapid urbanisation. Southeast Asian global cities such as Singapore and Kuala Lumpur function as capitals from which financial and technological futures are produced and exported as ‘urban innovation’; capitals such as Hanoi and Phnom Penh are projected as developing cities with potential for exponential economic and urban growth, while new future cities such as Nusantara in Indonesia, are being proposed to complement and replace existing cities faced with the risks of climate change. Supporting these technological enterprises of future-making are technical expressions of governance. These range from national policy visions that look to the future as a metaphorical “horizon of expectation” (Koselleck 1985), and those that spatially manifest the future through the articulation of citational geographies, the construction of aspirational megastructures and utopian (and dystopian) landscapes. Writers, artists and creative practitioners have produced speculative aesthetic futures as cultural forms of critiques and counter-fictions, experiments and visions, some in response to emergent geopolitical and technological urban-centred developments and broader ecological, political and social crises.

This roundtable seeks to initiate a conversation on the generation and articulation of contemporary Southeast Asian aesthetic urban futures between Jason Wee and Tita Salina, two Southeast Asian based artists whose creative works and practice demonstrate an involved engagement with the notion of ‘Asia’ as future and/or with the future(s) of Southeast Asian urban environments they engage with or are based/situated in. They are invited to introduce their work and discuss their perceptions of the various conditions underpinning the ‘urban future(s)’ of Southeast Asian cities, their thoughts on Southeast Asian speculative urbanisms and imaginaries, and on the notion of ‘Asia as Future’ and its possible critical and creative utilit(ies).

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Jason Wee is an artist and a writer working between art, architecture, poetry and photography. He founded and runs Grey Projects, an artists’ space, library and residency in Tiong Bahru. He is an editor for Softblow poetry journal. He is the author of three poetry collections, including the Singapore Literature Prize finalist An Epic of Durable Departures, a Singapore Literature Prize 2020 finalist, and In Short, Future Now (Sternberg Press, 2020). His art can be seen recently in ‘Curtains’, ParaSite Hong Kong, Other Futures Festival Amsterdam, his solo ‘Cruising’, Yavuz Gallery Singapore, the Asia Society Museum Triennial, the last Singapore Biennale and in the upcoming Kochi-Muziris Biennale. He is the artistic director of Textures Sing Lit Festival 2021-2023. In 2019, he curated Stories We Tell To Scare Ourselves With at Taipei MOCA. In 2015, he curated Singapur Unheimlich at ifa galerie Berlin, and in 2010, co-created The Future of Exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Singapore. Other curatorial projects include Beyond LKY (2010), Useful Fictions by Shubigi Rao (2013), Mirrors in the Dark by Lee Wen (2014), When You Get Closer To The Heart, You May Find Cracks by the Migrant Ecologies Project (NUS Museum, 2014). His artist-initiated projects include Tomorrow Is An Island (Villa Vassilieff, 2016), ART OPENINGS: The Expanded Field of Art Writing (CCA Singapore, 2018) and PostSuperFutureAsia (Taipei Contemporary Art Center 2017, Ilmin Museum, 2019). He was a 2005-2006 Studio Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. He studied at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and The New School.

Tita Salina is a self-taught artist based in Jakarta. Her initial work placed the imagination through performative intervention in the midst of the chaotic public space of megapolitan Jakarta, a city which faces the dilemma of uncontrolled urbanization and pollution. Currently, with partner artist Irwan Ahmett, she is working on a long-term project related to geopolitical turmoil in the Ring of Fire – Pacific Rim, the region most prone to natural disasters as well as traumatic consequences caused by persistent ideological violence. She sees her high mobility as her main vehicle to participate in residency programs, research, field study and exhibitions in these specific areas, which is paradoxical, as these are some of the most heavenly yet deadly beautiful places on earth. Tita wants to find answers about planetary anxieties in regard to human existence by means of the evolutionary perspective, and to produce knowledge through the arts related to injustice, humanity and ecology.

Daniel P.S. Goh is Associate Professor of Sociology, Associate Provost (Undergraduate Education) and Vice Dean Designate (Special Programmes) of NUS College, National University of Singapore. He specializes in comparative-historical sociology and studies state formation, race and multiculturalism, urbanisms, and religion. He has published 5 edited books and 60 journal articles and book chapters in these areas. Please visit www.danielpsgoh.com for the complete listing.

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this webinar has been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to aritm@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the webinar.