“Ghar Pe/At Home in the Margins of Contemporary Art,” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art Vol. 13, No. 2 (March/April 2014): 53-61. (original) (raw)
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Creative Commons, licence CC BY-4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ _______________________________________________________________ This special issue of the journal Estudo Prévio is the result of presentations, ideas and exchanges that took place during the 2018 conference "Art, Materiality and Representation" organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute in collaboration with the British Museum and the Department of Anthropology at SOAS in London. Though the organising institutions and the venues where historically loaded sites of anthropological legacy, the event attracted researchers, practitioners and activists from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplinary traditions: visual and performing artists, designers, museologists, curators, art historians, architects, urbanists, as well as anthropologists and those locating themselves in transitioning, often undefined domains. It was in this eclectic milieu that, together with the contributors to this issue, we discussed, among other things, the implications of making art with and for communities, and what this entails in terms of practice, ethics, participation and identity politics. Artists have engaged with communities since ancient times in both consensual and conflicting ways. Indeed, art has represented, moulded and reinvented communities through artworks that still puzzle contemporary observers (see Wong on this issue). Conversely, artistic works have been "socialised" in different epochs depending on the specific social, cultural and historical context in which they were situated. That is, forms and strategies of community engagement also depended on what Rànciere defines the "regime of the arts" in which artistic works were produced
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estudoprévio: revista do centro de estudos de arquitectura,cidade e território da Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa, 2019
This special issue of the journal Estudo Prévio is the result of presentations, ideas and exchanges that took place during the 2018 conference "Art, Materiality and Representation" organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute in collaboration with the British Museum and the Department of Anthropology at SOAS in London. Though the organising institutions and the venues where historically loaded sites of anthropological legacy, the event attracted researchers, practitioners and activists from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplinary traditions: visual and performing artists, designers, museologists, curators, art historians, architects, urbanists, as well as anthropologists and those locating themselves in transitioning, often undefined domains.
On February 25, 2012, far from the institutional ambits of the contemporary art world '. Source: Photograph by Neville Sukhia, courtesy SNEHA, Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action Mumbai. contemporary art. My aim will be to probe the ways in which projects such as Char Pe bring to the surface fissures within recent conceptualizations of the contemporary while disrupting the discursive hold of artistic autonomy in current critical engage ments with community-based collaborative art projects .
Art Reader 1, 2019
The paper is the revised, written version of a talk the author delivered for a seminar series by ART READER, a research project fully funded by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council with a book publication as its ultimate deliverable. This piece is bi-lingual, originally written in English and translated by the editorial team. Speaking from the author's subject positions as a media culture historian, an art educator with a Critical Theory orientation, and as an artist who cares about grounding, she tactical location is the moving images and all connected tissues and networks, institutional and techno, specific knowledge domains, existential instincts, and personal callings, aspirations and desires, doubts and questions of survival, and the dialectical relations of these different planes and moments. She draws from Bernard Stiegler’s concept of “pharmakon” and “general organology” to establish my tactical practice in moving image. An organological approach offers an expansive map showing moving images occupying the interstitial – between epochs, generations, between dream and awakening, representation and knowledge, control and enlightenment, and between consumerist marketing activities and artistic creation, which is supposed to be a realm of progressive thinking. Moving image is “pharmakon” – its drugs as much as cures. In this sense, the author is not just a stake-holder in art, but also a (re-)grounder who seeks change and transformation. What kind of re-grounding? Re-defining ontological questions of art; ensuring a dialogical model; re-enlivening our sensual, cognitive-perceptual experience; re-activating the audience; opening up the meaning of art; engaging critically with the question of why preserving the autonomy of art is important and what that means... the author uses accessible examples from my practice to illustrate my self-examination.
Art Readers on Art -- Hong Kong 1, 2019
Moving image practices is my tactical location. That is me speaking as a media cultural historian, an art educator with a Critical Theory orientation, and as an experimental artist who cares about pushing boundaries. This is also the point of departure from which I build a divergent network of relations – to connect personal callings, aspirations and desires, doubts and questions of survival with the institutional and techno, to bring together different domains of knowledge and the dialectical relations of these different planes and moments. This map of connectivity is affinitive with the concept of “general organology” （普遍器官學）that Bernard Stiegler develops from medical biology and the study of musical instruments. To advance my argument for critical, experimental practices, an “organological” approach shows moving images occupying the interstitial – between epochs, generations, between dream and awakening, representation and knowledge, control and enlightenment, and between consumerist marketing activities and artistic creation, which is supposed to be a realm of progressive thinking. Following from this, moving images, no matter how problematic or subject to the capitalist logic, is precisely where critical response or experimental action for change should begin. In this sense, I do not want to remain a mere stake-holder in art but, if possible, also someone who seeks change and transformation, a role that analytic philosopher Amie Thomasson calls a “grounder of a name’s reference.” What kind of re-grounding do I attempt? Refreshing the kind of ontological questions to ask of art; ensuring a dialogical model; re-enlivening our sensual, cognitive-perceptual experience; re-activating the audience; opening up the meaning of art; engaging critically with the question of why preserving the autonomy of art is important and what that means... This essay will use several accessible examples from my practice to illustrate this thoughts.
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Communities around the world struggle with weakening social bonds and political, racial, ethnic, economic, and cultural divides. This article argues the arts can be a means of raising public consciousness regarding such concerns by catalyzing conscious, thoughtful dialogue among individuals and groups possessing diverse values and beliefs. Change can only occur when people become aware of and actively reflect on the ontological and epistemic-scale norms and values that so often underpin their divisions, and the arts can help them do precisely that. We examine the dynamics of participatory performing arts and mural-making in diverse contexts to contend that the dialogic character of community art-making can be valuable for practitioners and scholars in a variety of efforts in international community development. We conclude by sharing lessons that we believe will aid artists and practitioners in devising more inclusive and participatory approaches to their international community cha...
The Production of Differential Spaces through Participatory Art in Hong Kong 2000-2019
2020
Since the preservation campaigns at Lee Tung Street, the Star Ferry Pier, and the Queen’s Pier that erupted in the early to mid-2000s, Hong Kong participatory art has undertaken an increasingly proactive role in local spatial movements, which marks the organizational and strategical evolvements of this artistic category that differentiate it from earlier public and community art. While research initiatives after 2010 have identified regional geospatial politics as one major concern for local participatory art today, existing studies tend to take a contextual approach with main emphases on why art becomes involved in urban spatial struggles while rarely proceeding to investigate what strategies or modes of spatial practices have emerged from relevant projects and what implications they have on the material-social spaces of the city. This hesitation to forward an interpretive evaluation of the focused phenomenon stems from the absence of epistemological concreteness in participatory art theories and criticisms, which necessitates the introduction of new analytical tools in research on the subject. To answer the pending questions, this research employs Henry Lefebvre’s theories of the social production of space to examine three representative projects selected from a preliminary survey of local participatory art programs/groups which involve spatial practices. In exploring the contents, strategies, and socio-spatial implications of these cases, it presents three models of spatially oriented participatory art. On this basis, a cross-case analysis is conducted to explore how participatory art in general offers counterforces against the neoliberalist social-material and aesthetic reprogramming of the city while laying the social foundation for the anticipated production of differential spaces. As more urban renewal and land resumption plans are anticipated to storm through the city in the coming decades, this research hopes to provide for practitioners, researchers, and local communities the discursive and conceptual tools to understand the role of art in preceding and future spatial contestations.