Issue 51

Lifepatch. Situated Assemblages of Un-Situated Things

Anthropologist and film-maker Rosalia Namsai Engchuan examines Lifepatch’s work at the intersections of community-oriented art, science and technology as well as their DIWO (Do It With Others) ethos and the Indonesian notion of gotong royong.

On the Persistence of the Non-modern

In this essay, philosopher Yuk Hui articulates an alternative route to the impasses of postmodern thought and exposes his critique of other attempts such as the various propositions to uncover national or regional alternative modernities. Most specifically, it is philosopher Enrique Dussel and his notion of the transmodern that are discussed at length, which, for Hui, like most postcolonial discourses, unconsciously undermine the question of technology.

The Imagination of Isolation: On Current Practices in Aotearoa

Curator Remco de Blaaij offers an overview of recent practices from Aotearoa. Reviewing the work of the performative research and action group founded by visual artist Rosanna Raymond SaVAge K’lub, projects of the Samoa House Library as well as the barkcloth pieces of Nikau Hindin, de Blaaij shows how these projects, often dwelling in isolation, constantly mediate with the outside to build local identity.

Under One or Several Flags

Curator and critic David Teh discusses the Ho Tzu Nyen’s investigations into Singapore and Southeast Asia in works including his opera Ten Thousand Tigers (2014) or his Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia (2012–ongoing).

The Supercut and the Irrecoverable Past: Ho Tzu Nyen’s The Nameless and The Name

Film scholar Jaimie Baron inscribes Ho Tzu Nyen’s The Name and The Nameless (2015) as part of the experimental cinema strategies of the found footage film and of the supercut.

Sensory Worlds. Rosalind Nashashibi’s Proxemic Lens

Curator and Afterall editor Nav Haq provides a panoramic account of Rosalind Nashashibi’s early practice. In her pieces from the beginning of the 2000s, the artist portrays individuals and their behaviour and interactions with other people or with objects in seemingly banal social and spatial settings.

Rosalind Nashashibi: Cold Open Day

Curator Mike Sperlinger considers how the various formal strategies used by Rosalind Nashashibi in works including Jack Straw’s Castle (2009), Carlos’ Vision (2011) or Vivian’s Garden (2017) to produce ‘frames’ that complicate the boundaries between the natural flow of daily life and rehearsed or staged behaviour and performativity.

Inaudible and Invisible Matters: Sound and Light in Christina Kubisch’s Sonic Practice

Art historian Anne Zeitz looks at artist and composer Christina Kubisch’s trajectory from the 1970s onwards. Zeitz carefully maps out the development of her experiments with the limits of aurality, questioning the materiality of architectural sites and their histories, in their capacity to modulate sonic, visual and tactile perception.

Experiences in the Vicinity of Christina Kubisch’s Auditory Art Object

Seth Ayyaz interrogates Christina Kubisch’s work for its potential to de-naturalise the ear and the practice of listening.

The Museum of Modern Art’s International Programme in Southeast Asia (1957–83): The Exhibitions Southeast Asians Appropriated

Based on thorough archival research, Kathleen Ditzig looks at the MoMA’s International Programme in Southeast Asia. Including seminal exhibitions such as ‘Visionary Architecture’ or ‘The Family of Man’.

Syria and/as the Planetary in Jumana Manna’s Wild Relatives

Curator Edwin Nasr analyses Palestinian artist Jumana Manna’s video Wild Relatives (2018), which retraces a transnational geography of extractivist dynamics between Syria and Norway.