The Anecdote

Kuala Lumpur-based art critic Lee Weng-Choy and University of Chicago historian Mark Philip Bradley are working on parallel projects that explore the conditions of contemporary art practice in Southeast Asia. Here they discuss how Walter Benjamin’s notion of the anecdote and the recent archival turn by visual artists together offer generative questions for their own thought and writing

Islanded: Contemporary Art from New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan (touring exhibition)

Islanded: Contemporary Art from New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan featured work by contemporary artists from three islands in the Asia-Pacific region: New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan. Co-curated by Adam Art Gallery Director, Sophie McIntyre, Artistic Co-Director of the Substation, Lee Weng Choy and Director of The Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, Eugene Tan, the exhibition critically reflected on the histories and the geo-cultural anxieties of these postcolonial societies, to explore how “island-ness” and being ‘on the edge’ plays a role in these countries’ imaginings and (re)inventions of themselves. While reflecting upon the differences and uniqueness of New Zealand , Singapore and Taiwan as islands, this exhibition also revealed certain shared concerns and anxieties. The artists’ works explore a range of issues relating to history, collective memory, migration, mapping and the construction of national identity. Artists featured included: Stella Brennan, Regan Gentry, Amanda Heng, Ho Tzu Nyen, Richard Killeen, Charles Lim, Ani O’Neill, Tan Kai Syng, Tsai Kuang Yu, Wu Mali and Yao Jui Chung. A substantial catalogue was produced in conjunction with the exhibition Islanded: Contemporary Art from New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan. Published by the Adam Art Gallery, it includes essays by the exhibition curators Sophie McIntyre, Lee Weng Choy and Eugene Tan

Where I'm Calling From: A Roundtable on Location and Region

Poses a series of questions to roundtable discussion participants Australian National University art researcher Michelle Antoinette; UK born and NZ based art writer Jon Bywater; Philipino art curator Joselina Cruz; Australian art lecturer Sophie McIntyre; University of Auckland teaching fellow Nina Tonga; Singaporean art curator Joyce Toh; and Columbian born and Singapore based art curator and gallery manager Viviana Mejía. Discusses their notions of location, region and sub-region, the public imaginary, curating, contested terrain, and idea of cities taking on an islandlike status in their own countrie

Phage N15 protelomerase resolves its tos recognition site into hairpin telomeres within mammalian cells

Phage N15 protelomerase (TelN) cleaves double-stranded circular DNA containing a telomerase-occupancy-site (tos) and rejoins the resulting linear-ends to form closed-hairpin-telomeres in Escherichia coli (E. coli). ContinuedTelN expression is essential to support resolution of the linear structure. In mammalian cells, no enzyme withTelN-like activities has been found. In this work, we show that phage TelN, expressed transiently and stably in human and mouse cells, recapitulates its native activities in these exogenous environments. We found TelN to accurately resolve tos-DNA in vitro and in vivo within human and mouse cells into linear DNA-containing terminal telomeres that are resistant to RecBCD degradation, a hallmark of protelomerase processing. In stable cells, TelN activity was detectable for at least 60 days, which suggests the possibility of limited silencing of its expression.Correspondingly, linear plasmid containing a 100 kb human β-globin gene expressed for at least 120 h in non-β-globin-expressing mouse cells with TelN presence. Our results demonstrate TelN is able to cut and heal DNA ashairpin-telomeres within mammalian cells, providing a tool for creating novel structures by DNA resolution in these hosts. The TelN protelomerase may be useful for exploring novel technologies for genome interrogationand chromosome engineering