This webinar by Dr Miguel Escobar Varela is based on conversations with artists who hold a wide range of ideas on what wayang kontemporer should aspire to – both politically and aesthetically. The multifaceted landscape of contemporary wayang practice and discourse offers insight into the complex politics of contemporary artistic practice in Indonesia.
REGIONAL SOCIAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES PROGRAMME
Arts in Southeast Asia Seminar Series
About the Seminar
This seminar looks at how the nation-building process can be visually framed by foreign aesthetics. It looks specifically at the MoMA International Program which was established in 1952 in order to send American exhibitions around the world. As an inherently American nationalist project, the International Program sent a total of five different exhibitions to Southeast Asia from 1957 to 1984. These exhibitions Recent American Prints in Colour, the Family of Man, Classic American Film, The Photographer’s Eye and Visionary Architecture, were hosted by cultural institutions and grassroots communities.
I will focus on one exhibition, Visionary Architecture, which was presented alongside the exhibition Housing in Singapore in 1963. This exhibition came under the auspices of the National Library Board Singapore and was co-sponsored by the Housing & Development Board. With this exhibition I will examine how the International Program exhibitions were included in ‘local’ projects of nation-building. I will interrogate the impulse to ‘exhibit’ in projects of nation-building and address the empowered positions of local agents to mediate the international Cold War cultural landscape.
About the Speaker
Kathleen Ditzig is a researcher, as well as Assistant Curator and Manager in Curatorial and Programmes at the National Museum of Singapore. Her current research interests include the relationship between art, globalism, and power. Her art historical research addresses the relationship of Cold War globalism and the emergence of Southeast Asia as a cultural region. She received a scholarship from NHB and Curatorial Fellowship from the Centre of Curatorial Studies (CCS) to pursue her MA in Curatorial Studies from CCS, Bard College, which she received in 2015. She intends to pursue her PhD at NTU ADM from January 2018. She has published in academic journals such as Southeast of Now and Finance and Society and in art magazines such as Art Forum and Flash Art.
Registration
For registration, please fill in this form and email to iseasevents2@iseas.edu.sg by 28 September 2017.
REGIONAL SOCIAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES PROGRAMME
Arts in Southeast Asia Seminar Series
About the Seminar
In 1976, Indonesia’s President Suharto opened the exhibition A Hundred Years of Indonesian Art in what is now the Museum of Fine Arts and Ceramics, on the town square of the old city of Jakarta. At the time, Indonesia had no public national collection, and the exhibition brought together public and private collections for the first time since the colonial period. The exhibition is remarkable not just because of the masterpieces it displayed, but also because of its range. With some notable omissions, it covered the political spectrum of Indonesian artists. The exhibition was produced at a time when the Suharto’s New Order regime was still consolidating power. It came after the birth of the New Art Movement, Southeast Asia’s first Contemporary Art movement. Despite the air of optimism around the exhibition, it did not lead to public attention to modern art, and the National Gallery was only created twenty years afterwards. Why did the state not continue as a major patron of the arts in the intervening period, and what were the implications of this hiatus for the Indonesian art world?
About the Speaker
Dr Adrian Vickers holds a personal chair at the University of Sydney, and researches and publishes on the cultural history of Southeast Asia. His books include the highly popular Bali: A Paradise Created (new edition 2012),
A History of Modern Indonesia (new edition 2013) Balinese Art: Paintings and Drawings of Bali, 1800-2010 (2012), and co-authored with Julia Martínez The Pearl Frontier: Labor Mobility across the Australian-Indonesian maritime zone, 1870-1970 (2015), which won two book awards. Professor Vickers has taught subjects on Southeast Asian history and culture from first year to Honours and Masters levels. During the second half of 2017, he is a Visiting Fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore.
Registration
For registration, please fill in this form and email to iseasevents2@iseas.edu.sg by 13 September 2017.