Asia Forum – Fall Digital Gathering
Asia Forum is pleased to invite you to an exciting digital gathering on 3 November 2021, 12 Noon GMT. Following the last Spring event, this fall the Asian Forum welcomes artists and curators from Asia and its diaspora to respond to pressing contemporary events. With a focus on the mainstream adoption of digital currency and the surge of non-fungible token assets, amidst ongoing climate change urgencies, this gathering seeks to bridge global concerns of exchange and flow across questions of value, social relations and ecological anxieties. Please join artists Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina, Ho Rui An, and Lawrence Lek in exploring diverse notions of “liquidity” via their presentations, followed by moderated conversations with the council members, Annie Jael Kwan, Hammad Nasar, John Tain, and Ming Tiampo, and the public.
The event is live-streamed digitally via the Asia Forum’s exclusive media partner ArtReview.
The Asia Forum for the Contemporary Art of Global Asias.
The Asia Forum for the Contemporary Art of Global Asias is a new itinerant platform envisioned for discourse surrounding experimental art practices and research that produce hopeful new worlds beyond the North Atlantic. The Asia Forum in 2021/22 is proudly presented by the Bagri Foundation as digital gatherings this spring and fall, and an inaugural, in person, one-day programme at the historic Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice, on 23 April 2022.
The still-unfolding events of the past year have resulted in a fundamental reconfiguring of timelines and work practices. These changes provide an opportunity to imagine with artists, curators, researchers, and activists, new contemporary practices and engage a public eager for discourse on urgent issues of climate, democracy, anti-racism, and creative agency for addressing global anxieties through the lens and engine of ‘Asia/s’.
Through its peripatetic digital and live manifestations, live-streamed via ArtReview in 2021 and 2022, the Asia Forum aims at nurturing a community among diverse artists, curators, thinkers, producers and audiences interested and invested in the arts of global Asias.
Conceived by Annie Jael Kwan, the Asia Forum works with a council of international curators and researchers, Hammad Nasar, John Tain, and Ming Tiampo, in a sustained dialogue with contributors to navigate the key themes that have arisen in relation to contemporary artistic practices of Global Asias.
Read more about the project here.
Guest Speakers biographies
Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina are self-taught artist duo based in Jakarta. Their initial work is to place the imagination through performative intervention in the midst of chaotic public space of megapolitan Jakarta, which faces the dilemma of uncontrolled urbanization and pollution. The development of networks in art and activist circles has encouraged their artistic practice to progress toward the more profound and deeper circumstances. They are currently working on a long-term project related to geopolitical turmoil in the Ring of Fire – Pacific Rim, the most prone region to natural disasters as well as traumatic consequences which is caused by the persistent ideological violence. They see their high mobility as the main vehicle to participate in residency programs, research, field study and exhibitions especially in specific areas, which are paradoxical such as some heavenly yet deadly beautiful places on earth. Irwan and Tita wanted to find answers about planetary anxieties in regard to human existence by means of evolutionary perspective and to produce knowledge through arts related to injustice, humanity and ecology.
Ho Rui An is an artist and writer working in the intersections of contemporary art, cinema, performance and theory. Working primarily across the mediums of lecture, essay and film, he probes into the ways by which images are produced, circulate and disappear within contexts of globalism and governance. He has presented projects at the Bangkok Art Biennale (2020), Asian Art Biennial (2019), Gwangju Biennale (2018), Jakarta Biennale (2017), Sharjah Biennial (2017), Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2014), Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Kunsthalle Wien, Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and Para Site, Hong Kong. In 2019, he was awarded the International Film Critics’ (FIPRESCI) Prize at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany. In 2018, he was a fellow of the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm.
Lawrence Lek is a London-based artist, filmmaker, and musician. Drawing from a background in architecture and electronic music, he creates fictional versions of real places, reimagined after alternative geopolitical movements and future technological conflicts. His characters are caught between human and machine worlds: digital nomads, AI satellites, and online superstars, all searching for autonomy under alien conditions of existence. Recent projects include the video essay Sinofuturism (1839-2046 AD) (2016), the AI-coming-of-age story Geomancer (2017), the open-world game 2065 (2018), and Nøtel, an ongoing audio-visual collaboration with Kode9 (2016-). His feature film AIDOL (2019) was presented at International Film Festival Rotterdam and transmediale 2020 and at the British Art Show 9 (2021). Lek composes soundtracks and conducts live audio-visual performances, often incorporating playthroughs of his virtual worlds. Soundtrack releases include Temple OST (The Vinyl Factory) and AIDOL OST (Hyperdub). His work has been exhibited widely and he is represented by Sadie Coles HQ.
