600 Images Project. Thailand Exhibition.

I will travel to Tokyo tomorrow evening for this year's HPAIR (Harvard Project on Asian and International Relations) as a speaker in the workshop Visualizing Asia: Global Culture and National Narratives in Contemporary Art.

The visual arts function paradoxically in Asia: works are at once produced in accord with a series of global paradigms, and interpreted as manifestations of particular national social realities. This workshop will look at the systems of production, circulation, and valuation known collectively as ‘contemporary Asian art’ with an eye to how different kinds of institutions, spaces, displays, and markets for visual artifacts reflect broader cultural and geopolitical trends.

This is accomplished in different sessions throughout the 4 day conference of which contemporary art is only one component spanning politics, economics and social issues. I'm fortunate to be paired with a colleague that I've had the pleasure of working on a number of projects before in Thailand.

SESSION 6: 15:40-17:00, August 23, 2005 Alternative spaces, Independent projects Radically creative new art spaces have erupted across Asia in the past few years, not fitting neatly into established categories of display culture. This session looks at a few of them with an eye to the question: what can the art world at large learn from Asia?

Jeab Gaweewong, Curator. (Bangkok, Thailand)
Rich Streitmatter-Tran, Artist (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam)

As we each only have around 30 minutes to deliver our presentations. I intend to give a quick overview art production and spaces in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, including the developing Saigon Biennale projects. I hope to also share events and examples of cooperative arts projects along the Mekong region.