REGIONAL SOCIAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES PROGRAMME
ARTS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA SEMINAR SERIES
About the Seminar
Curator Jim Supangkat and other participants in the Southeast Asian art world have argued that writers, particularly Western art theorists and historians, have over-emphasised politics in the analysis of Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art. This paper explores the importance of the political dimension of contemporary Southeast Asian art, and asks whether it is over-stated, or whether the political, broadly defined, should be seen as the basis of what artists do. I will examine this question by exploring the role and historiography of LEKRA, the People’s Art Movement in Indonesia in the 1950s and 1960s. I will look at questions of Soviet and European influence on art, and the roles of social realism and socialism in delimiting the content of art. I will also explore the legacy of LEKRA in the depiction of social issues in Indonesian art of the late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries.
About the Speaker
Professor Adrian Vickers holds a personal chair in Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Sydney, where he is director of Asian Studies. His publications include Bali: A Paradise Created (1989, latest edition 2013, previously translated into German, Dutch, Japanese and Indonesia); A History of Modern Indonesia (2004, new edition 2012, translated into Chinese, Indonesian and Turkish); Balinese Art: Paintings and Drawing of Bali (2012), and, with Julia Martìnez, The Pearl Frontier: Labor Mobility across the Australian-Indonesian Maritime Zone (2015). The Pearl Frontier was 2016 winner of the Northern Territory Chief Minister’s History Book Award, winner of the Queensland Literary Awards 2016 USQ History Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2016 Ernest Scott History Prize of the Australian Historical Association. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge and the Cambridge University Joint Centre for History and Economics; Senior Visiting Fellow at the Asia Research Centre at the National University of Singapore; and a Visiting Fellow at the Royal Institute for Linguistics and Anthropology, Leiden.
Registration
To register, please fill in this form and email to <iseasevents2@iseas.edu.sg> by Tuesday, 25 October 2016.
REGIONAL SOCIAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES PROGRAMME
ARTS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA SEMINAR SERIES
About the Seminar
Throughout the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia from 1940 to 1945, approximately 300 Japanese and local artists were sent to the battlefront. This was part of the Japanese government’s policy of utilising the arts as a tool for the military campaign in the region. The collaboration between the army and these prominent Japanese and local artists gave birth to new art projects. This presentation will explore the role of Japanese artists and art policy in Indonesia and Singapore during the Japanese occupation from 1942-1945. It will examine the journey and works of Japanese artists employed in Indonesia and Singapore, such as Tsuguharu Fujita, Tsuruta Gorō, Saburō Miyamoto, Kenichi Nakamura, Kenichi, Koiso Ryōhei and Takashi Kōno among others. It will also address the decades-long debate over the discontinuities in art history caused by the Japanese occupation. Did occupation radically change the course of Indonesian and Singaporean art history and how much did Japanese artists assist to foster a “national art”?
About the Speaker
Mr Antariksa is an independent researcher and co-founder of KUNCI Cultural Studies Centre, a research collective focusing on critical knowledge production, research-action, and vernacular education. Mr Antariksa is the author of Tuan Tanah Kawin Muda: Hubungan LEKRA-Seni Rupa 1950-1965 [Tuan Tanah Kawin Muda: The relation between art and the Institute of People’s Culture 1950-1965] (CAF/IVAA, 2005). His primary research is on art and mobility of ideas in Japanese-occupied Southeast Asia. He is now working on his new book Art collectivism in Japanese-occupied Indonesia (Kyushu University Press, 2017). Mr Antariksa is an Artist-in-Residence in the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore Residencies Programme. He won the Global South fellowship at Le Collège d’études mondiales, Paris, under the supervision of Françoise Vergès and Mélanie Bouteloup, to engage in a research on the Japanese war artists (sensō sakusen kirokuga) in the Parisian art scene, 1914-1939.
Registration
To register, please fill in this form and email to iseasevents2@iseas.edu.sg by Tuesday, 27 September 2016.
Call for Papers
Regional Social and Cultural Studies Programme
Workshop on National Imaginations in Southeast Asian Art
The role of art in nation-building is not new. From French history paintings which glorified Napoleon’s reign to Soviet Socialist Realism, art has not only been yoked to the political objectives of the elite but also served as a narrator of nation. In this context, art has been deployed as sophisticated means to express political values and ideals seeking to capture the spirit and mentalities of successive periods.
Southeast Asian nations emerged from a whirlwind of ideologies such as anti-colonialism, communism, and socialism, with the Cold War as backdrop. These postcolonial nations have produced iconic art works and discourses that have captured the aspirations and struggles of the day. Indeed the political transitions and shifting ideologies experienced by many societies in the region progressively changed the way modern art was produced and perceived in terms of styles, subject matter, iconography, idioms and genres.
Many young Southeast Asian nations sought a new artistic identity inspired by western idioms and genres. Suffice to say early concepts of ‘modernisms’ were not unanimously embraced as ‘national’. In Thailand in the late 1950s the second National Exhibition of Art was rejected by local critics for being “imitations of Western art”. Indeed, tension and conflict often accompanied the emergence of modern art. Some Indonesian artists, for example, emerged through the dispute over representations of the “Indonesian identity” between the so-called “pro-West” Bandung School and the “anti-West” Yogyakarta School. Furthermore, the position of the artists and art in the canon is under constant revaluation. So-called “proto-nationalist” or “nationalist” works such as Raden Saleh’s The Capture of Prince Diponegoro (1857) or Juan Luna’s Spoliarium (1884), for instance, may be argued to have been less concerned about creating a sense of local or indigenous identity than the artists’ own desire to create work in colonial idioms.
We seek to critically evaluate the ways in which Southeast Asian nations are imagined by artists and other cultural agents such as art critics, gallerists, collectors, independent curators or museums, and the state. This one-day workshop comes at a time when ‘national art’ is being redefined while more public and private institutions in the region are erected to re-imagine the narratives of nationhood. Whether through modern or contemporary art which interrogates the consequences of global capitalism, scholars are invited to explore how art is deployed either as a coalescing force for the imagination of the nation or a critical expression of its flaws and strains.
The workshop welcomes papers that explore, though not limited to, the following questions:
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How did ‘national art’ take socially shape in Southeast Asia?
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How was art used to build “national consciousness” by political programmes?
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How have iconic works of art captured national aspirations and the interests of the political elite?
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How do national art collections contribute to forge or undermine imaginations of the nation?
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What roles do cultural agents such as artists, art critics, curators, patrons and teachers from the region and beyond play in imagining the nation?
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How have institutions such as art academies, exhibitions and biennials, galleries, museums and the state framed ‘national art’ for the nation? What are the tensions and contradictions?
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How has contemporary art engaged with the consequences of neocapitalism in Southeast Asian societies?
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What is the impact of private collections and museums to the building of ‘national art’?
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How were western idioms and genres used to address ‘national art’, and is there a common Southeast Asian modern and national art specificity?
Submission and Deadlines
Please send your abstract (250 words) and brief biography (150 words) to the following address: helene_njoto@iseas.edu.sg.
Deadline for abstract submission is 31 Oct 2016. If your abstract is selected for the workshop you will have to submit your full-length paper by 9 January 2017.
Convenors: Dr Terence Chong and Dr Helene Njoto
REGIONAL SOCIAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES PROGRAMME
About the Seminar
My encounter with the poetic works of Teo Kah Leng (1909-2001), a former principal of the primary section of Montfort School in Serangoon, was the unexpected result of a two-year project on Francis P. Ng’s F.M.S.R. (1937), the first notable work of English poetry by a Singaporean writer. Through biographical research, I discovered that Ng, whose real name was ‘Teo Poh Leng’, was the younger brother of Kah Leng, also a poet. While Poh Leng wrote poetry throughout the 1930s until falling victim to Sook Ching, Kah Leng survived the Japanese Occupation and wrote actively in the 1950s-60s as British Malaya moved towards independence.
During the post-war decades, Malayan poetry matured at the University of Malaya. There students such as Wang Gungwu and Edwin Thumboo ‒ later credited as Singapore’s pioneer poets ‒ focused on the creation of a distinctively Malayan poetry inspired by Anglo-American Modernist writers. Meanwhile, outside the University’s poetry community, Teo, influenced by British Romanticists such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, produced an abundance of ballads and sonnets about Malaya’s natural environment, utilising rhymes and regular rhythms.
Through the 1950s-60s, Teo’s poems gained a wide audience via his school’s annual and Young Malayans, a magazine for Malaya’s English-medium school teachers and pupils. The University’s poetry community, however, felt poems of this kind were too conventional and preferred to emphasise free verse. As a result, Teo’s contributions were marginalised.
Through textual and discourse analysis, I will demonstrate that Teo’s poems, although falling into oblivion during Malaya’s era of decolonisation, constituted a significant part of the post-war Malayan poetry.
About the Speaker
ERIKO OGIHARA-SCHUCK is a Lecturer in American Studies at TU Dortmund University, Germany. Dr Ogihara-Schuck is the co-editor of Finding Francis: A Poetic Adventure (Ethos Books, 2015) and the author of Miyazaki’s Animism Abroad: The Reception of Japanese Religious Themes by American and German Audiences (McFarland, USA, 2014). Her current major research interest is cultural relations between Singapore and the United States from the nineteenth century to the present. Aside from being a Visiting Fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, she is also a European Postdoc Fellow at the Eccles Centre for North American Studies at the British Library.
Registration
To register, please fill in this form and email to iseasevents2@iseas.edu.sg by Monday, 1 August 2016.
REGIONAL SOCIAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES PROGRAMME
About the Seminar
The National Gallery’s inaugural exhibition on Singapore art, SIAPA NAMA KAMU?, which opened in November 2015, pushes the beginnings of art in Singapore back to the nineteenth century. This seminar presentation builds on an essay I was invited to contribute to a forthcoming National Gallery publication. In my essay I argued that if the received view is that art in Singapore began with a group of artists who developed what in the National Gallery exhibition is periodised as “The Nanyang Reverie”, then what we have in the National Gallery is a revision of that received view. This seminar will probe further into the underlying assumption of the argument for extending the narrative of art in Singapore back to the nineteenth century. What unifies the rather disparate categories of natural history drawings, landscapes, historic photographs and portraits as nineteenth century art in Singapore? Were they “works of art” when they were produced in nineteenth century Singapore, or were they more commodities? When did they become appropriated as “works of art”?
About the Speaker
Kwa Chong Guan is an Associate Fellow with the Archaeology Unit of the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. He is also a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies where he works on a variety of regional security issues, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the History Department of the National University of Singapore. Kwa was a Director of the old National Museum and continues to serve on various advisory committees of the National Heritage Board today. He also serves on various advisory committees of the National Library Board. Among his publications is an edited volume, Early Southeast Asia viewed from India, An anthology of articles from the “Journal of the Greater India Society”, published as part of the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Series.
Registration
To register, please fill in this form and email to iseasevents2@iseas.edu.sg by Friday, 15 July 2016.
REGIONAL SOCIAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES PROGRAMME
ABOUT THE SEMINAR
It is commonly thought that meaningful contact between Asia and America did not begin until the 19th century, with the massive arrival of Chinese laborers for gold mining and railroad construction in California. Before that, however, the China trade between New England merchants and Canton merchants had thrived since the 18th century, before and after the American Revolution. But well before that, if we think of “America” hemispherically as “the Americas,” then we must go back to the mid-16th century to locate the beginning of sustained contact between Asia and America, in this case, between Manila on Luzon island in Las Filipinas and Acapulco on the Pacific coast of Mexico, then called New Spain. From 1565 to 1815, for 250 years, one to three galleon ships made the round trip trans-Pacific voyage without fail, carrying American silver (mined in Mexico and Peru) to Manila. There, the largely Hokkien traders and settlers in Manila’s Chinatown, called the Parián, acted as indispensable intermediaries in the trade of American silver for Chinese silk, porcelain, lacquer, ivory carvings, as well as spices and many other precious commodities from the larger Indian Ocean and Nanyang world. Chinese and other Asian goods were also trans-shipped from Mexico across the Atlantic to Spain and Europe. Without the critical role played by the Chinese in Manila, this first truly global trading system could not have happened. Because Spanish Manila was an extension of Mexico in the Americas, should we not consider the Parián in Manila as “America’s First Chinatown?”
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Evelyn Hu-DeHart is Professor of History, American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Brown University, USA. During AY 2014-15, she is Visiting Professor in the History Programme of HSS. She received her B.A. from Stanford University and her PhD in Latin American and Caribbean history from the University of Texas at Austin. She has written and edited more than 10 books and over 60 articles, in English, Spanish and Chinese, on three main topics: Indigenous peoples of the US-Mexico borderlands; the Chinese and other Asian diasporas in Latin America and the Caribbean; race and ethnicity in the Americas. Her most recent publication is on Latino politics in the U.S., and she has a forthcoming translation of collected works in Chinese from Zhejiang U. Press. While at NTU, she is interested in sharing research interests and scholarship with scholars in Singapore and the rest of Asia; most of all, she hopes to learn about new methods and perspectives, and to delve into new historical archives and materials. At Brown, she is a founder and co-director of the long-term research project on “Asia-Pacific in the Making of the Americas,” and with her alma mater Stanford University, she is a founder and principal investigator of the Chinese Railroad Workers of North American Project. Both research projects involve international collaborators from Asia and Latin America, and include strong Public Humanities as well as Digital Humanities components. Please check out our websites:
http://web.stanford.edu/group/chineserailroad/cgi-bin/wordpress/ and http://www.brown.edu/conference/asia-pacific/home.
REGISTRATION
For registration, please fill in this form and email to iseasevents2@iseas.edu.sg by 1 April 2016.
REGIONAL SOCIAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES PROGRAMME
ABOUT THE SEMINAR
This seminar explores notions of trauma and associated therapy in order to reflect upon the devastating rise of ISIS in the Middle East, and how it can be addressed. Reflecting on the traumatizing conditions of modern Middle East, and their role in the production of traumatizing ideologies, the seminar looks at extremists tendencies, such as ISIS, that actually weaponize trauma. The seminar will also consider therapies that can be developed in order to address trauma, both as a phenomenon, and as a deliberate methodology. The seminar concludes with pedagogical considerations on how to integrate extremism-prevention therapies into national educational programmes, with view to peaceful and compassionate co-living.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Aref Ali Nayed is the Ambassador of Libya to the United Arab Emirates and is the Founder and Director of Kalam Research & Media (KRM) and Chairman of the Libya Institute for Advanced Studies (LIAS). During the Libyan revolution he was also the Chief Operations Manager of the Libya Stabilization Team. Dr Aref has taught and lectured Islamic Theology, Logic, and Spirituality at the restored Uthman Pasha Madrasa in Tripoli, Libya. He is Senior Advisor to the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme; Fellow of the Royal Aal Al-Bayt Institute in Jordan; Visiting Professor at Fatih Sultan Mehmet University in Istanbul; and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Templeton Foundation. He was Professor at the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies (Rome), and the International Institute for Islamic Thought and Civilization (Malaysia). He previously headed an Information Technology company based in the UAE and Libya. He received his BSc in Engineering, MA in the Philosophy of Science, and a PhD in Hermeneutics from the University of Guelph (Canada). He also studied at the University of Toronto and the Pontifical Gregorian University. He has been involved in various Inter-Faith initiatives since 1987, including the seminal “A Common Word” process, which was one of the most important inter-faith initiated by Muslims.
His published works include Vatican Engagements: A Muslim Theologian’s Journey in Muslim-Catholic Dialogue (KRM, 2016); Operational Hermeneutics: Interpretation as the Engagement of Operational Artifacts (KRM, 2011); co-authored with Jeff Mitscherling and Tanya Ditommaso, The Author’s Intention (Lexington Books, 2004); ISIS in Libya: Winning the Propaganda War (KRM, 2015); Overcoming ISIS Libya: A Disaster Recovery Plan (KRM, 2015); Libya: From Revolutionary Legitimacy to Constitutional Legitimacy (KRM, 2014); Beyond Fascism (KRM, 2013); Growing Ecologies of Peace, Compassion and Blessing: A Muslim Response to ‘A Muscat Manifesto’ (KRM, 2010); and Duties of Proximity: Towards a Theology of Neighborliness (KRM, 2010).
REGISTRATION
For registration, please fill in this form and email to iseasevents2@iseas.edu.sg by 27 March 2016.
REGIONAL SOCIAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES PROGRAMME
ABOUT THE SEMINAR
Naypyitaw has been Myanmar’s capital for the past decade. Carved out of scrubland and paddy fields, and built on a grandiose scale, the city has proved hard for most people to love. Even now that the National League for Democracy has power, Naypyitaw is commonly dismissed as a bizarre addition to the Myanmar landscape. In this presentation, Dr Nicholas Farrelly will offer an up-close appraisal of the city and its people. His analysis of Naypyitaw’s purpose and politics draws on substantial, long-term field research. Dr Farrelly has taken the time to understand the many dimensions of the city and will sketch out how its evolving role fits the trajectory of Myanmar’s reforms. Through a better understanding of Naypyitaw, other aspects of Myanmar’s rapidly changing political, economic and cultural environment can also be explained.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dr Nicholas Farrelly is a Fellow in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University, where he is also Director of the Myanmar Research Centre. After graduating from the ANU with First Class Honours and the University Medal, he completed Masters and Doctoral theses at the University of Oxford where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In 2006, Nicholas co-founded New Mandala, a prominent website on Southeast Asian affairs. He currently holds an Australian Research Council fellowship for a major study of political change in Myanmar, especially in Naypyitaw. Nicholas also writes a weekly newspaper column for The Myanmar Times.
REGISTRATION
For registration, please fill in this form and email to iseasevents2@iseas.edu.sg by Tuesday, 1 March 2016.
REGIONAL SOCIAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES
ABOUT THE WORKSHOP
Scholars have recently raised concerns over Southeast Asian Muslims becoming more conservative and radicalised, while others have noted the impact of Islamic influence and politics on multicultural societies in the region. While Southeast Asian Muslims have had a history of integrating local traditions with Islamic doctrines, the dakwah movement (referred to as Islamic resurgence) in 1970s, the increased ‘Arabisation’ of Muslim society, as well as visions of a caliphate in the Middle East, have change the complexion of Muslim communities and their relationship with other communities.
The Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS) Programme at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute presents the workshop on Islamic Developments in Southeast Asia. This one-day workshop will focus on Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. It brings together scholars who will speak on themes such as civil society, politics and the ulama in Malaysia; law and education in Malaysia; Middle Eastern influence on Islamic institutions in Indonesia; and Middle East influence on Singapore Islamic institutions.
The workshop’s aim is to explore issues such as the contemporary networks and flows of students, teachers, and literature from the Middle East to Southeast Asia, and within the region; understand the evolving nature of Shariah courts, bureaucracies and civil service; and the emergence and presence of Islamic culture/politics in contemporary society as well as the reaction from both Muslim and non-Muslim communities.
ABOUT THE PROGRAMME
As attached here.
REGISTRATION
Attendance is free of charge but registration is required. Please register early as seats are limited.
To register, please complete and email this form to iseasevents2@iseas.edu.sg by 11 Nov 2015.
As attached here.
REGISTRATION
Attendance is free of charge but registration is required. Please register early as seats are limited.
To register, please complete and email this form to iseasevents2@iseas.edu.sg by 11 Nov 2015.
REGIONAL AND SOCIAL CULTURAL STUDIES
ABOUT THE SEMINAR
Malay magic and divination manuscripts contain a variety of images that are very important for our understanding of Malay art, but yet have been little studied. This paper will identify some of the imagery contained in the manuscripts, trace their sources and place them within the Malay as well as a broader Asian artistic and cultural context. The research undertaken has found that the imagery includes the survival of pre-Islamic iconography that shares much in common with other cultures in the region.
This seminar will be followed by Dr Farouk Yahya’s book launch.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER/AUTHOR
Farouk Yahya, Ph.D. (2013), School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, is Senior Teaching Fellow at that university. He was Assistant Curator of the exhibition The Arts of Southeast Asia from the SOAS Collections (2014-16) in the Brunei Gallery, SOAS.
REGISTRATION
To register, please complete this reply form and return it by fax: 6775-6264 or email: iseasevents2@iseas.edu.sg by 16 October 2015.