Art Sonje Center will host a symposium of on November 22th.

ASEAN-ROK Art&Culture Joint Project 2022:
The Critical Dictionary of Ho Tzu Nyen_Contemporaneity and Regionality

In The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia (2017~present) by Ho Tzu Nyen, an algorithmic editing system is a key player. It weaves together a rich tapestry of texts, music and found footage, generated by the term Southeast Asia that pertains to an alphabetized list of concepts. Every loop produces different permutations that open up endless possibilities of reconfiguring Southeast Asia. This disturbs the geopolitically driven concept of Southeast Asia as a homogeneous entity. Inspired by Ho’s artistic strategy of deconstructing Southeast Asia, this symposium attempts to produce loop variables to reimagine Southeast Asia and its regionalism. With its soft power, South Korea, as a major destination for labor migration in Southeast Asia over the last two decades, attempts to reconstruct strategic partnerships with Asean countries. This symposium aims to contribute to the ongoing process of interdisciplinary and comparative knowledge production in Southeast Asia.

As time is the main protagonist of Ho’s wide range of practice, from film and video, to theatrical performances, this symposium proposes rethinking time and reimagining Southeast Asia and its regionalism. Inspired by Ho’s artistic research for his new work on the colonial synchronization of time under the deceptive slogan of “Great Prosperity of East Asia” under the Japanese imperial system, this symposium poses the following questions: how does the notion of contemporaneity operate across the complex spheres of desires and power that constitute a particular regionality? Can we rearticulate Southeast Asia by deconstructing the complex temporal structures inherent in contemporaneity? In reimagining a new regionalization of Southeast Asia, how can we reinvent the notion of contemporaneity and our understanding of time?