Asia Art Archive and Para Site are pleased to present “Parallel, Alternative, or Historically Particular? – Roundtable on Archiving Artist-run Spaces”.
Like Space Traffic: Symposium of International Artist Spaces in 2001, this round table is part of an ongoing and shared enquiry into the contextual framework of how artist-run spaces are being archived and historicized between Para Site and Asia Art Archive. This roundtable posits to see artist-run spaces as occasional temporal entities that rise amid urgencies and demands ranging from a need for autonomy to a lack of physical exhibition and studio space.
Through dialogue and conversation, this roundtable will address issues around the urgency of archiving artist-run spaces, what is being archived, and what gets lost in projects of narrativising and archiving, as well as implications of these archiving projects on how artist-run spaces are being historicised. The discussion will span various contexts from specific strategies to common challenges. It will be an opportunity to share ideas and approaches among practitioners.
Core discussants will include practitioners from the region currently working with Asia Art Archive to archive artist-run space projects, as well as a number of local practitioners/artist-space founders and members from the Asia Art Archive’s research team.
Alongside the roundtable, Asia Art Archive will showcase a variety of publications in its library on the topic, inviting a closer examination of the diverse approaches to archiving artist-run spaces in Asia. The event will also mark the soft launch of the digitised archival collections of two pioneering alternative art spaces in Vietnam – Salon Natasha (Hanoi) and Blue Space Contemporary Arts Center (Ho Chi Minh City) – on Asia Art Archive’s digital platform.
Moderator: Linda Lai, Artist and Associate Professor, School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong .
Core discussants: Ringo Bunoan, Zoe Butt, Janet Chan, Choi Yan-chi, Cosmin Costinas, Claire Hsu, Natasha Kraevskaia, Leung Chi-wo, Qinyi Lim, Hammad Nasar, Ellen Pau, Nora Taylor, Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran.