Erika Tan | Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London (original) (raw)

Papers by Erika Tan

This research explores a priori knowledge systems, encounters with the unexpected, and the inevit... more This research explores a priori knowledge systems, encounters with the unexpected, and the inevitable impossibilities of reconciling representation, experience and expectation. The specific concern is the notion of a structural impossibility in the encounter with the distant, foreign, or other - explored through the image of Mount Fuji as an exemplar, its iconic status always preceding any actual encounter with it. This work develops Tan’s research interests, combining visual anthropology with critical theory, in the field of transnational dislocations, ‘discoveries’, epistemologies of differentiation, and the methodologies of quotation and citation. The approach is extended through processes of ‘crowd sourcing’ (soliciting images via the internet) and the collation of numerous visual instances of the representation of the iconic site. The research articulates the oscillating position between Japan (represented by the collective imaginings in the plethora of images of Mount Fuji) as Barthes’s empty sign, and its loaded political/cultural signification; bringing doubt to the possibility of either manifestation. The resulting exhibition confronts the spectator with this plethora through diverse forms, including 9 video works, several hundred donated drawn images, composite light-box images, viewing mechanisms, and an LED sign text work. The critical position developed in the research is articulated and extended through the formal construction of the viewers’ experience. The research was pursued through a two-month residency in Yokohama at the invitation of /Slab, University of Sunderland and BankART, Yokohama - developed as an engagement with the issues surrounding the 150-year celebrations of Japan-UK diplomatic relations.

What happens to symbols of cultural dominance when the world-order shifts? Set in Saltram House, ... more What happens to symbols of cultural dominance when the world-order shifts? Set in Saltram House, an English country house (now National Trust property), the film takes place ‘some point in the not so distant future’, at a moment in time when China’s ascendance as a global power has given rise to an opportunity to re-visit history differently. Using a mixture of documentary and narrative film tropes, the cut and paste aesthetics of hip hop and chinoiserie; the history of Saltram House as we know it, under-goes a slippery transition in an attempt to remain relevant and shore-up its status as cultural capital. Sensing Obscurity I: The Manor House; English Literature; artefacts and the performativity of objects; contrapuntal readings; and looking inwards backwards. Duration: 28.31min Medium: 2-channel HDV projection, 4 track audio, looped Sensing Obscurity II: Chinese Chippendale Duration: 1.30min Medium: streamed video with bootleg DVD Sensing Obscurity III: After Chinoiserie Version I: 5 min text and audio work, produced in collaboration with Neil Rose. Version 2: 5.30min video.

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

Lecture for Accumulations, Sediments, Dispersals: Artworks in Transit. Accumulations, Sediments, ... more Lecture for Accumulations, Sediments, Dispersals: Artworks in Transit. Accumulations, Sediments, Dispersals: Artworks in Transit organized by Kristina Pia Hofer, Eva Kernbauer and Marietta Kesting This workshop addresses the mobility of artworks: the tensions between their movement across borders, nations, cultures and formats, as well as their mobilizing effects in aesthetic, political, social and economic realms. While post-mediality and digitalization suggest limitless fluidity across formats and geographies, effortless transmission and reception, these views are contested by postcolonial perspectives that call attention to the lingering unequal distribution of (material and immaterial) resources, and by the ongoing institutional and economical valorization of artworks as objects tied to their material substance.

Respects des Fonds explores the process, methodology and ethical concerns of introducing instabil... more Respects des Fonds explores the process, methodology and ethical concerns of introducing instability into the archives knowledge producing schema. Working with the Empire and Commonwealth Museums film archives to produce contemporary video works, Erika's practice and essay explores the inherent violence within archival practices and the making of new knowledge and meaning. The publication explored the ways in which the archive itself, or archival or found materials, have been central to the work of a number of artists whose practice deals with issues of history, identity or memory. Picture This commissioned essays and researched case studies on individual works drawing together a range of voices to reflect upon the role of the archive to contemporary film and video practice. Ghosting contained essays by Eddie Chambers, Amna Malik, Uriel Orlow, Lucy Reynolds and Erika Tan, and illustrated case studies on works of The Atlas Group, Ansuman Biswas, Matthew Buckingham, Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, Douglas Gordon, Johan Grimonprez, Susan Hiller, Patrick Keiller, Marcel Odenbach, Harold Offeh, Uriel Orlow and Ruth Maclennan, The Otolith Group, Erika Tan, Fiona Tan and Mark Wallinger. The term ‘Ghosting' exists as both a metaphor and a reference to technical terminology. The title alludes to the idea of an apparition, of articulating an authorial position in re-imagining or re-awakening ghosts of the past. In addition Ghosting is a term used to describe the appearance of an overlapping secondary image on a television or a display screen but also refers to the ‘ghost of acidification', the impact that the ravages of time has on nitrate film. The Ghosting initiative took place over a period of around three years during which substantial research, training, commissioning, debate and exhibition activity has taken place.

Repatriating The Object With No Shadow is a 2 x 16mm projection work in which the subject of the ... more Repatriating The Object With No Shadow is a 2 x 16mm projection work in which the subject of the work is both its medium (representation ethnography), its movement (across platforms (digital and analogue)and its desire to return. The work was included in the exhibition 'Film in Space: An exhibition of film and expanded cinema selected by Guy Sherwin'. As a curatorial gesture Sherwin opens up the exhibition space to other practitioners, and as an extension of this gesture and one specifically aimed at over-turning the male dominance within the discourse of British Avant-garde film work, the artist Lucy Reynolds extended the invitation and platform of the exhibition to a series of newly commissioned film works from woman artists. Lucy Reynolds' contribution consisted of a film, 'Anthology'. She invited 17 other women artists and writers, who work at the point of convergence between text and image, to contribute short film loops to this collective artwork. Erika Tan's 'Repatriating The Object With No Shadow' was included in Reynolds' 'Anthology', along with Ami Clarke, Annabel Frearson, Lizzie Hughes, Sharon Kivland, Gil Lueng, Liliane Lijn, Hélène Martin, Annabel Nicolson, Sharon Morris, Sally O'Reilly, Clunie Reid, Lis Rhodes, Audrey Reynolds, Cherry Smyth, Anne Tallentire and Sarah Tripp. 'Anthology Live' was a presentation of some of their other explorations on the interplay of word and image in an evening of readings, screenings, music and performances, on 20 February 2013

'becoming' consisted of 6 DVD works shown on courtroom monitors with sound interspersed t... more 'becoming' consisted of 6 DVD works shown on courtroom monitors with sound interspersed throughout the space. The installation was an extension of an earlier single screen version titled 'Vent and Mimesis' (2003). The focus of these works is the construction and negotiation of personal identity within broader socio-political frameworks and reflects on the anxieties of globalisation, immigration and cultural differences in relation to notions of citizenship and ‘naturalisation’. The performative work involves the act of rehearsing, reciting and reconstructing pledges thereby engaging and extending the writings of Judith Butler, Jean Fisher and Jacques Derrida, and practices of Trinh, Fusco and Green. 'becoming' examines the processes of role-play and self-actualisation and explores the ambiguities of translation (Spivak, Sarat Maharaj), probing into the shifting values of the spoken word to expose its relative meanings, and the act of pledge-taking as a structure of ordering, having power and control over the individual. In these ways, becoming considers how a sense of self - the physical and private self, as well as the more public and nation-ed self - comes into being as both process and performance

A project curated by Erika Tan, with contributions by Larry Achiampong / Song-Ming Ang / Barby As... more A project curated by Erika Tan, with contributions by Larry Achiampong / Song-Ming Ang / Barby Asante / Chi Bagtas / Yason Banal / Libita Clayton & Benjamin One / Lizza May David / Kimathi Donkor / bani haykal / Annie Jael Kwan & Lynn Lu / Anthony Lam / susan pui san lok / Adam Patterson / Geetanjali Sayal & Juhi Saklani & Anshul Kapoor / Sunil Shah / Michael Taiwo / Tintin Wulia / Abbas Zahedi Sonic Soundings is conceived of as a form of intervention, or sonic counterpart to the 57th Venice Biennale. Initiated and curated by the artist Erika Tan, the metaphor of nautical or navigational charting where a sonic signal is released in anticipation of an echo is used to invite a series of responses from artists and curators to (re)map the Biennale through fluid encounters, borderless connections and archipelagic thinking. The project frames the National Pavilions and associated and unassociated projects as a constellation of islands, whose connections, both visible and under the radar, can be articulated as sonic soundings reverberating in the alleyways, canals, campi, palazzi and pavilions. Whether diasporic, anti-state, trans-national, interpersonal, or inter-galactic these sonic objects seeded across Venice, echo and reverberate, attempting interventions into art world spheres, gated routes, daily life, and the physicality and geography of Venice. The artists and curators involved come from a range of locations in Europe and Asia and their projects reflect both this and their diverse approach and relationships to Venice, the biennale, the current crisis in Europe over borders and citizenship, but also to the medium of sound. The works produced take form as sonic soundscapes, audio walking guides, narrative encounters, acoustic interventions, or reminders of the ability of sound to both permeate as well as articulate space, interpretive processes and redefine meaning and representation. The project is curated by Erika Tan, with design and technical support by Benjamin Chan & Malone Chen, and copy editing support by Sara Ng. The project is supported by Central Saint Martins UAL, and Creative Unions. Creative Unions is an initiative of Central Saint Martins and the other Colleges of University of the Arts London bringing together events, actions, and voices to demonstrate that creativity must operate across borders – geographical, social and disciplinary. Sonic Soundings / Venice Trajectories is a geo-locational sound tour and is experienced in Venice via ECHOES a free app downloaded onto listeners’ smart-phones

Tan was guest editor for 'And Now China?', a special print edition of the Ctrl+P journal,... more Tan was guest editor for 'And Now China?', a special print edition of the Ctrl+P journal, which critically responded to the celebratory rhetoric’s of ‘China Now’ and other celebratory markers of China's global ascent in 2008. As well as the introductory article 'Dialogical Skirmishes', Tan also interviewed Hans Ulrich Obrist

Halimah the Empire Exhibition Weaver is the overarching title for a series of ... more Halimah the Empire Exhibition Weaver is the overarching title for a series of outcomes and multi-component artworks that combine moving image works, installation structures, collected objects,artefacts and digitally reproduced textiles arising fro m the research project Halimah-the-Empire-Exhibition-weaver-who-died-whilst-performing-her-craft, which took place over a five-year period starting in 2014. The combined works relate the story of Halimah Binti Abdullah (the 'forgotten' weaver) and are used to bring to attention the forgotten, over-looked, marginalised, and eclipsed subjects of empire.

The event is free to students, staff, and members of the public, but booking is essential. https:... more The event is free to students, staff, and members of the public, but booking is essential. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ museological-mediums-and-cannibalisticmethods-symposium-book-launchtickets-20989452016 The events are supported by the BA Fine Art Programme, Central Saint Martins and hosted by Erika Tan in association w i t h t h e ' E x h i b i t i o n s : H i s t o r i e s , Practices'. In conjunction with the UK book launch of the artist's book Come Cannibalise Us, Why Don't You? / Sila Mengkanibalkan Kami MahuTak? (Erika Tan, 2014) an afternoon programme of talks and discussions will be held which brings together current projects and research that expand on ideas in the book.

Installation with moving image, digitally rendered textile, and a collection of black and white m... more Installation with moving image, digitally rendered textile, and a collection of black and white magic lantern slides. New commission for the Tate Britain / National Gallery Singapore iteration of 'Artist & Empire'

Panel 26 Curating Southeast Asia - Session 2: Repatriation Lecture summary: Apa Jika, The Mis-Pla... more Panel 26 Curating Southeast Asia - Session 2: Repatriation Lecture summary: Apa Jika, The Mis-Placed Comma “When men die, they enter into history. When statues die they enter into art. This botany of death is what we call culture.” (Statues Also Die, Resnais et al. 1953). Taking as a starting point the opening lines of the film Statues Also Die, the presentation uses the figure of a forgotten Malay weaver, Halimah Binti Abdullah, who participated in the 1924 Empire Exhibition in Wembley. A minor figure in the exhibition histories of Malaya, she exists as a series of footnotes, gaining historical attention only for the act of a premature or untimely death, in London and away from home. Her remains are located in an unmarked grave in Brockwood, Woking. The product of her labour may potentially be amongst the collections held at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and an incomplete textile on an incomplete loom may hold the record to her last creative act. The presentation explores Halimah’s status as both object and subject, and the possible forms of repatriation that might occur in the re-use and re- visiting of a minor historical figure, through the appropriating acts of an artist today. Apa Jika, The Mis-Placed Comma is a film commission for the National Gallery Singapore. Initiated as part of the Gallery’s inaugural launch in 2015, the work seeks a symbolic ‘repatriation’ of Halimah, (and of weaving and pre-colonial cultural production) attempting to insert her into the discourses of modernity that have so far excluded her. Finding a ‘home’ for Halimah, or a mechanism to re-home her becomes the focus of the art work and The National Gallery Singapore becomes a strategic site in which to do this. The question as to her status as exhibition object (statue/art) or historic subject (men/history) returns us to the quote above and questions the repatriation endeavour

Contesting British Chinese Culture, 2018

In Contesting British Chinese Culture, ed. Dr Diana Yeh and Dr Ashley Thorpe, published by Palgra... more In Contesting British Chinese Culture, ed. Dr Diana Yeh and Dr Ashley Thorpe, published by Palgrave (2018) including contributions from Dr. Susan Pui San Lok, Dr Katie Hill etc. 2018 From the publishers website: This is the first text to address British Chinese culture. It explores British Chinese cultural politics in terms of national and international debates on the Chinese diaspora, race, multiculture, identity and belonging, and transnational ‘Chineseness’. Collectively, the essays look at how notions of ‘British Chinese culture’ have been constructed and challenged in the visual arts, theatre and performance, and film, since the mid-1980s. They contest British Chinese invisibility, showing how practice is not only heterogeneous, but is forged through shifting historical and political contexts; continued racialization, the currency of Orientalist stereotypes and the possibility of their subversion; the policies of institutions and their funding strategies; and dynamic relationships with transnationalisms. The book brings a fresh perspective that makes both an empirical and theoretical contribution to the study of race and cultural production, whilst critically interrogating the very notion of British Chineseness.

And Now China? A Survey Dialogical Skirmishes Erika Tan A year ago, the editors of this issue att... more And Now China? A Survey Dialogical Skirmishes Erika Tan A year ago, the editors of this issue attended a roundtable discussion entitled Europe: Land of the Setting Sun? held at the then newly opened Louis T. Blouin Institute in London. Scholars and curators of contemporary Chinese art at TATE Liverpool and Battersea Power Station "discussed the extent of artistic interaction between Chinese and European artists, the role of the Chinese diaspora, the new geography of art and the question of a shift in cultural power eastwards in the wake of this art's much publicised market boom coinciding with an increase in institutional attention." A comment/question arose from the floor locating the global currency of contemporary Chinese art within a New World Order premised upon an era of global capitalism. With China looming as a world leader with tremendous influence over international financial markets, contemporary Chinese art, now a commodity fetish, is being made instrumental to a new hegemonic order being built by global network capital based on power that is structured by cultural capital and access to information produced by the new information technologies. In light of China-as-hegemonic force, it has become crucial to uphold the idea of the production of culture as site of struggle over power and meaning: as site of discursive formations and closures by dominant forces and by cultural producers marginalized and excluded precisely because of their project to resist, contest, evade capture and assimilation by such dominant forces. Oppositional-meaning making is now the lot and responsibility and perhaps a fatal space of those who continue to be consigned to the margins. But while no new epistemic change has occurred, independent voices are much more difficult to sustain with China on everyone's horizon. With Chinese artists arrogating the language of resistance coined during the advent of post-colonialism, exclusion is now effected by a double-silencing. Rejecting assimilation or eluding capture means devising a whole new language of resistance. How is this language to be shaped? Who will now speak from the margins when margins and centres are already a too-appropriated site? The editors approached artists, curators, writers, scholars, critics and cultural administrators to respond to these questions which resulted in a survey of current cultural politics with regard to art being made instrumental to a new hegemonic order. Their critical responses are published here in Ctrl+P's March 2008 issue. In addition, Sonya Dyer and Marian Pastor Roces were commissioned to write essays. Ken Lum's Homage to Chen Zhen, a work originally published in the hybrid journal point d'ironie, is reproduced here albeit laid out differently for the purpose of Ctrl+P. Lee Wen's performance More China than You is featured. And Erika Tan, guest editor, writes an overview of the contributions. All these have been made possible by a partnership with the Chelsea Programme, Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, London which is undertaking a series of programs in response to the UK based China Now initiative. One of these projects is the mounting of the exhibition Three Degrees of Separation at Chelsea Future Space. A printed version of Ctrl+P No.11 is being distributed together with the exhibition catalogue. This year, China hosts the Olympics. The event, as with any other major international event will be watched, scrutinized, celebrated and monitored for a multiplicity of factors, codes and significances. Less than a few months away, already we wait with baited breath for the spectacle of the decade. The pivotal/defining moment when China gets to parade its 'arrival' onto the world stage, this Olympics will signal to the world that it is no longer just a spectator or a nominal participant/contestant, but a true contender in shaping the future for all of us. was not just about an axis between Europe or America and China or as Lee Weng Choy puts it, about a "tired West and an emergent Asia," but how new cartographies of power and influence are impacting globally. The effect of a growing/rising Chinese art market can be seen not only in places like New York and London but also in Asia as for example in Bangkok and Singapore where Chinese art is increasingly sold by galleries and collected by public institutions. And what about the effects on overseas Chinese artists-the Diaspora? What place do they have? Are there possibilities for maintaining distance and difference or is it about a realigning of associations and engagements? Lee Wen's recent performance in Vital 07, a Chinese live-art festival in Manchester engages with these issues head on. More China Than You hits at the very heart of the challenges and compromises taken by those outside China, especially the Chinese Diaspora where an awkward positioning, marginalization, and new anxiety for allegiance are heightened in the face of the world's mass consumption of China. In Ken Lum's Homage to Chen Zhen the diasporic subject, untethered from 'home' enters a reflexive space where he or she necessarily considers the possibility of having agency amidst hegemonic structures that produce discourses that co-opt, limit and define precisely one's subjectivity. In Thomas J. Berghuis' response, a description of the sycophantic nature of the world's desire to embrace China is made which belies an underbelly of profound disease with China's new found wealth and power. Although as he points out, from history we may have something to learn and yet the precedents of Sino-British/European relations seem forgotten in our own hurry to establish our terms of and access to trade with China. From another perspective Ken Lum alerts us to the riskiness of language and of asking such questions: this anxious misreading feeds into the possible resurrection of latent xenophobias and the further development of binary and exclusive positionings. The problematics of inequality is raised in the conversation between Neferti X. Tadiar and Jonathan Beller. They argue that even if cultural practices are rapidly being subsumed by capital, this does not produce a unified, homogenised and equal playing field of culture, but produces and reproduces disparities. Further, Andrew Maerkle observes that behind the hype and grand gestures, the unequal and still limited distribution of Chinese art is accompanied by limited expenditure on Chinese art, which remains a fraction of the European and American art business as a whole. Whilst the status of China's current art production in the global art world/ market certainly does carry weight, how exactly is this weight measured-in quantity and sales prices or in its spheres of influence?; and what place within China's own developing and localized art arenas? Ken Lum traces the fledgling developments within China back to 1989 and an emergence of a 'first generation' of artists. The Chinese government's perception of contemporary art has changed from initial wariness, to one of tolerance and growing recognition of its economic potential. Berghuis further suggests that the capitalization on such cultural events are now equally about projecting an image to the outside world as they are about fuelling the patriotism and national pride amongst the Chinese populace and the overseas Chinese. However, these audiences or markets do not necessarily follow the same tastes. This dualism is seen historically in the creation of Chinese goods for different markets. Export art made for consumption by 17th century Europeans excited by chinoiserie for example, is now echoed in the consumption (both locally in China and globally) of internationally recognized contemporary Chinese cultural endeavors. The rise of a particular type of Chinese art might just be, suggests Oscar Ho Hing-kay, China's response to meeting the needs of a new form of Orientalism in the West. This points to another aspect of Chinese contemporary art, that is, its history as a product of Western discourse. Katy Deepwell reminds us of the hegemony of the art world where discrepant, fragmented, contradictory and often personal subjective bias in the telling and re-telling of contemporary Chinese art history create "trading impressions" depending on who the narrator is of these events and their already located

Contesting British Chinese Culture, 2018