Come Cannibalise Us Why Don’t You?

Presentation given expanding on ideas in Erika Tan's book Come Cannibalise Us, Why Don't You? / Sila Mengkanibalkan Kami MahuTak? (2014). SYMPOSIUM /3.15pm # exhibition histories # museology #indigenous # transnational # collections # display # knowledge production # minorhistories # postcolonial # rewriting # repatriation # +Southeast Asia Oscillating between these various thematic tags, the invited speakers will be contributing to and developing a discursive framework or context for contemporary art practices which critically engage with notions of the historical, museological and exhibitory practices - within/from/about Southeast Asia. Tan organised the symposium and accompanying book launch and SoutheastAsia+Networking event

The 'Forgotten' Weaver

Exhibited in the Diaspora Pavilion, Venice Biennale, May 10 to 26th Nov 2017. The ‘Forgotten’ Weaver is an installation which assembles together for the Diaspora Pavilion in Venice, two video works from an ongoing project designed to establish a presence for Halimah-The-Empire-Exhibition-Weaver-Who-Died-Whilst-Demonstrating-Her-Craft. Halimah Binti Abdullah lived and performed in the Malayan Pavilion during the Empire Exhibition (Wembley, 1924) until her untimely demise and removal to her final resting place in an unmarked grave in Woking, UK. For this project, Tan employs a variety of positioned voices and media to foster a spectral return of this minor historical figure. ​ The first video work, APA JIKA, The Mis-Placed Comma is a work in 3 parts commissioned by The National Gallery Singapore and filmed within its exhibitions spaces during the final stages of its transition from colonial period law courts to National Gallery. The video brings together a displaced, deconstructed and orphaned loom, a performer of ‘Malay’ dance, and a group of young Chinese female amateur debaters who deliberate on the legacy of Empire, the provenance of exhibition histories, notions of representation, indigeneity, the position of craft in relation to modernism, and the validity of archival returns. The work calls into question the place of the artist and that of grand exhibitions and uses the form of ‘debate’ to instigate a discussion around Halimah’s relevance in the postcolonial reframing of modernism. The work is supported by a structure which echoes that of an expanded loom, place of projection, or physical encasing (or trap). A second video work, Balik Kampong – a return by proxy, appears as separate interludes between the main video, acting like supplementary threads. Here a different approach to voicing Halimah takes place through a dialogue between both ‘artists’. Historical returns are seen as complex in their desires and methodologies, faulty and faltering, weaving together both past and present to challenge received narratives and produce space for discussion. The ‘Forgotten’ Weaver installation is supported by the National Arts Council Singapore, The Arts Council England and Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts. Design support for the structure: Harry Smithson. Strapping support: Chiara Bagtas

AIDS denialism

AIDS denialism is a growing issue in many parts the world. Through scholarly journal articles, book resources and other research tactics, further understanding how HIV/AIDS denialism is unethical can be distinguished. Discovering that AIDS is most prominent in South Africa explains why denialism is as critical as it is. However, the unethical aspect of AIDS denialism is in effect particularly amongst families. When a South African inhabitant realizes they have AIDS, they feel outcasted by their families due to shame. They fear as though they will be disowned because they have flaws that are unacceptable. These family values are significant because those who diagnosed or affected would rather be unaware of the disease to maintain social acceptance . However, the difference of ethics in society affects how AIDS denialism is perceived. In the United States, being unaware of AIDS diagnosis is considered a social faux pas. Thanks to advertisements, educational classes and overall social awareness, being conscience is implied to be important because of society’s openness with sexuality. As for South Africa’s social standards, lack of resources, poor government and unawareness impact the ethical value of AIDS because they have not been taught otherwise concerning the actual disease. Their knowledge about HIV/AIDS is limited; therefore they lack the understanding of the risks of the disease

Shot Through

Video: 16min, single channel DVD "In our dreamworld, is not China precisely this privileged site of space? In our traditional imagery, the Chinese culture is the most meticulous, the most rigidly ordered, the one most deaf to temporal events, most attached to the pure delineation of space; we think of it as a civilization of dikes and dams beneath the eternal face of the sky; we see it, spread and frozen, over the entire surface of a continent surrounded by walls." Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, 1973 Shot Through is part of a recent series of works on 'journeys'. These video works are a returning to the material and otherwise, of past and multiple journeys to China, taken by the artist, friends, family and others. Exercising an archaeological ambition, Tan carefully unearths, re-traces, and assembles a range of memories, thoughts, subjective interpretations and wild speculations that eventually become the means through which a personal psycho-geography of 'China' is developed. From the writings of Sontag, Derrida, Kristeva, Foucault and Barthes and from the memories and accounts of family members, the work seeks to look at the production of China, through and with difference, from a distance

The 'Forgotten' Weaver / Amsterdam in UnAuthorised Medium

Installation The 'Forgotten' Weaver / Amsterdam shown as part of a group show. Artists: Korakrit Arunanondchai, Noel Ed De Leon, Ho Rui An, Vong Phaophanit & Claire Oboussier, Amy Lee Sanford, Sim Chi Yin, Erika Tan, Sung Tieu, Tuan Mami, Vandy Rattana, Boedi Widjaja, Sau Bin Yap. When collective memory has been fractured by decades of ruptures, there are ‘ghosts’ in the archive. UnAuthorised Medium brings together artworks by internationally established and emerging artists, who have deep connections to Southeast Asia while also working extensively across the globe. The artists resist prescribing the frame of ‘Southeast Asia’ as homogenous, activating local histories, communities and knowledge that have been erasured and ruptured as a result of international and civil conflict, genocides, colonisation, ecological disasters, globalised development and international capitalism. The exhibition appropriates its title from áp vong, a Vietnamese ritual of invoking the ‘dead’. Visitors improvise a ceremony where the ‘dead’ are called up to resolve questions of inheritance and to locate lost, loved ones. The exhibition references this liminal evoking of those lost, suspended or forgotten. Where there are holes in our memories, we search for signs and reconstruct stories. The featured artists evoke the ‘ghosts’ – ‘glitches’ in the archive, interrogating our systems of knowledge by reclaiming the states of absences and slippages within categorical and extractive archival systems. They stir up these vivid apparitions and shadows through a range of artistic approaches. In doing so, they recuperate more nuanced accounts of subjective agency, and make apparent the form and act of construction. Just as the áp vong does not utilise a professional medium, but having entered the ‘ghost room’, possession is channelled randomly via someone whose desire activates the process, the exhibition borrows this sense of wilful transformation. UnAuthorised Medium poses an invitation for visitors of the exhibition to become ‘mediums’ too – with the agency of interpretative mobility across. Symposium: Sunday 16 September, 12:00 – 16:4

Misplaced Commas and Cannibalistic Tendencies: Necessary Contingencies in Archival Practice

Confronted with the slippery medium of film, in the form of inaccessible 16mm, Super 8 or fuzzy VHS tapes and the limitations of time, an index that supplies more questions than answers and an archivist whose methodology demands a ring-fencing of research to geographical or temporal articulation – What will the archive give up? What will I take away with me? What will this produce? To speak of archival practices is to acknowledge the role of contingency and indeterminacy within the structuring of archives and the meaning or value placed on the archival object. This presentation will focus on my personal encounters with the archival, both specific and in principle. Key Note: Misplaced Commas and Cannibalistic Tendencies, in Symposium Reframing the Archive: The Reuse of Film and Photographic Images in Postcolonial Southeast Asia, SOAS, Londo

Erika Tan, Halimah-the-Empire-Exhibition-weaver-who-died-whilst-performing-her-craft

Unfolding over a period of three weeks is a special project by London based, Artist-in-Residence Erika Tan (Singapore). Focusing on the forgotten historical figure of Halimah the Malay weaver, Tan will revive her through a series of footnotes and instigate a process of collective labour towards the understanding that history is an effort built by many. Halimah lived and worked with 19 other Malayans in the 1924 Empire Exhibition in London essentially engaging not only in the production of woven material but also symbolically reproducing Britain’s capital (its colonial subjects). During the day Halimah demonstrated her craft and sold products on one side of the Malayan Pavilion and at night lived behind the displays, cooking, eating and performing everyday life. This project seeks to liberate Halimah from her textual existence and re-insert her into a contemporary dialogue around nation, art and value – or place, labour, capital. The Lab will be used in a triad of layers – as an exhibition space, a film studio and the site of a live “broadcast” debate with debaters, Meiyi Chan, Annabel Tan, Loh An Lin, Abigail Wong, Sara Ng and Geetha Creffield. They will be joined by filmmakers Lor Huiyun and Jolinna Ang

The 'Forgotten' Weaver at Diaspora Pavilion, Venice 2018

Developed The 'Forgotten' Weaver installation for the Diaspora Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale. More information on the work can be found on UALRO at http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/13310/ http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/13300/ http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/13308/ http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/11408