From Clay Animism to Bandung Aesthetic: The Art of Sayeda Massak, Samira Hosny, Yehya Bu Seri', Bodour Girgis

Foreword

Natural Causes: The Deaths and Afterlives of Art at the Digital Precipice

Southeast Asian Artist: To Be Or Not To Be. Abstracted Notes, Speculations and Dreams of Reset

Like Professor Caroline S. Hau, I find resonance in the questioning, and also see it as nuanced by the inescapable infrastructures of my origins, such as being a Filipino and a Philippine-passport-carrying art practitioner, who is automatically contained within the Southeast Asian grouping. By proclaiming an art practice, I contemplate my location and position, and look at a selection of ways by which the region, particularly the Philippines, has managed being managed under this geographical identifier.

Participatory Propulsions: New Tendencies in Philippine Protest/Revolutionary Art

This essay investigates alignments between contemporary art practices and the aims of the National Democratic movement in the Philippines. We will begin with the context of the Philippines and the National Democratic movement, identifying key early examples of artistic experimentation and protest/revolutionary art (with particular reference to the work of the Kaisahan artists’ organisation and David Medalla’s activities in the 1970s); followed by case studies of contemporary art practices engaging with National Democratic activism (with reference to SAKA, Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien, and Renz Lee). In articulating these contemporary practices in this way we aim to sketch out a reading of the broadening forms of political commitment and revolutionary art in the Philippines; and to locate potential ‘powerful weapons for uniting and educating the people and for attacking and destroying the enemy’ within an expanded field of contemporary art.