Workshop - Terms and Conditions of Art Writing and Publishing in Southeast Asia

SOUTHEAST OF NOW: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia and Afterall are pleased to announce an open call for participation (open to participants based in Southeast Asia) in a series of five weekly workshops - on the theme: Terms and Conditions of Art Writing and Publishing in Southeast Asia,

The workshops will be held online in November and December 2021.

Application deadline: 12 August

The goal of the workshops is to develop convivialities, facilitate peer learning, and experiment with diverse or new forms of art writing and publishing among researchers, artists and writers across the region.

The workshops are for participants based in Southeast Asia. They are addressed to those who are writing art criticism, art history and engaged in knowledge production about art more broadly – across both academic and industry publications as well as more casual and experimental platforms such as memes, games, manifestos, exhibitions, zines, video essays, interactive websites, crowd sourced archiving, podcasts, etc.

The workshops will offer you a supportive peer-learning environment to develop your research and writing practice. The programme will be designed according to your approaches and interests and those of the whole participating group. Each workshop will invite a ‘special guest’ to share knowledge, experience, and respond to your work. Southeast of Now and Afterall also offer a platform for potential publication of your work developed through these sessions.

The workshops also aim to develop and share resources on how to survive the often self-precaritising modes of academic and cultural labour and to imagine an ethos of solidarity within writing and publishing. As a cohort of journal editors, we would also like to discuss ‘elephant in the room’ issues such as access, privilege, hierarchy, accountability, politics of language, unconscious bias, discrimination and positive discrimination, censorship and self-censorship etc. 

We welcome participants with varying degrees of English language proficiency. To apply, please respond to the three questions on the application form and upload a 1–2 page CV and a sample of your writing or a portfolio, if applicable. Your answers will be our main reference to structure the workshops and invite relevant speakers.

- Basic communication skills in English are necessary.

- Writing/proposals can be submitted in English, or in one of the following languages: Khmer, Indonesian, Malay, Chinese, Filipino, Thai.

- Participation is free of charge.

For inquiries, please contact: writing.publishing.sea@gmail.com

Convened by Adeena Mey, Simon Soon, David Morris, Brigitta Isabella, Lyno Vuth, Eileen Ramirez and Thanavi Chotpradit; and supported by the British Academy’s Writing Workshops 2021 Programme, supported under the UK Government's Global Challenges Research Fund.