Transpacific Dialogues–Asian/American Art of Collaboration
About
The two-day public symposium, Transpacific Dialogues: Asian/American Art of Collaboration, will explore the transformative potential of aesthetic inquiry on how we make collaborative art. It will feature invited artists, scholars, and curators actively involved in creating, researching, and curating collaborative projects across Asia and the United States. Participants are dedicated to transcending national and identity-based boundaries that often constrain collective action in socially engaged art. Additionally, the symposium will address museum practices, with curators from regional institutions discussing their collaborative approaches to curating and collecting Asian/American art amidst diverse interests and perspectives. SCHEDULE DAY 1 - Thursday, October 24, 2024, 2-5 pm 2:00-2:15 pm - Welcome remarks and Introduction 2:15-3:15 pm - Session 1 Community and Care 3:30-5:00 pm - Keynote Presentation Free. Registration for this in-person program is requested. SCHEDULE DAY 2 - Friday, October 25, 2024, 1-4:45 pm 1:00-2:10 pm - Session 2 Curators on Collaboration 2:15-3:15 pm - Session 3 Performance and Embodied Memories 3:30-4:45 pm - Roundtable with participants This event is sponsored by the Robert Turner Theatrical and Performance Design Fund, the Mr. and Mrs. Cho Fund, and Humanities Fund. We extend our gratitude to Katryn Livingston, Tina Egnoski, and Deborah Clemons. Session descriptions and speakers’ biographies below. Thursday, October 24, 2024, 2-5 pm 2:00-2:15 Welcome remarks and Introduction 2:15-3:15 Session 1 Community and Care Yeong Ran Kim is a Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Korean Studies in the Department of Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures at Emory University. Their research explores aesthetic practices by queer and trans artists and activists, forging new kinds of relationalities to survive and thrive against the logic of heteropatriarchal social codes and neoliberal modes of exchange. Their writings appear or are forthcoming in such journals as “Media, Culture & Society, Positions: Asia Critique,” “TDR: The Drama Review,” “Pacific Affairs,” and “Korea Journal.” They are currently working on a monograph, entitled “Queer Unmastery: A Cultural History of Performance, Aesthetics, and Social Movements in Global Korea,” which explores the vernacular use of media and digital technologies in the Korean queer community since the 1990s, with the end of the military regime of the Fifth Republic (1979-1987), and the burgeoning feminist and queer movements. “Thinking with the Pinks: Collaborative Aesthetics in the Creation of Queer Worlds” Korean queer independent cinema has played a pivotal role in articulating what it means to be "critically queer" within the post-authoritarian Korean society. This presentation explores the confluence of the global influx of queer culture and the enduring legacy of liberatory politics from the democratization movement, shaping the post-1990s history of Korean queer independent film. Drawing upon the works of 연분홍치마(Pinks), an independent documentary filmmakers’ collective, I examine the intertwined nature of filmmaking and social justice movements within Korean queer communities. Specifically, the focus is on their 2021 YouTube production titled “Ola-Papa,” a three-part sitcom series, and the behind-the-scenes production documentary. I posit that the collective imagination of queer kinship and relationships portrayed in "Ola-Papa" is intricately linked to the accompanying documentary, which illuminates the nuanced processes of its production. This includes actor training and discussions aimed at fostering an equitable labor environment, all of which collectively contribute to establishing the material conditions that shape this particular queer world. Through the analysis of this series, I explore how queer independent film serves as an important cultural reservoir for the preservation and transmission of vernacular knowledge on queerness in South Korea and as a space of collaboration to imagine queer relationalities. In so doing, I demonstrate that collaboration functions as both an aesthetic platform and a guiding principle in queer independent filmmaking, contributing to the creation of queer worlds beyond the rubrics of identity politics. Sky Cubacub (They/Them/Xey/Xem/Xyr) is a non-binary xenogender disabled Filipinx neuroqueer from Chicago, IL. They are the creator of Rebirth Garments, a line of wearables for trans, queer and disabled people of all sizes and ages, which started in summer 2014. Sky is the editor of the Radical Visibility Zine, a full color cut and paste style zine that celebrates disabled queer life, with an emphasis on joy. Xey started a free queercrip DIY fashion program and fashion incubator with the Chicago Public Library called Radical Fit which has a yearly summer celebration at Ping Tom Park in Chicago called Queer Radical Fair. They are currently creating the pilot for xyr online kids show, “Sky and The Rebirth Warriors”, which focuses on a different joyful access tool and disability justice principle every episode. Sky was named 2018 Chicagoan of the Year by the Chicago Tribune and is a 2019/2020 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist and a Disability Futures Fellow. Moderated by Sunhay You 3:30-5:00 Keynote Presentation siren eun young jung
Through this multidisciplinary gathering of artists, scholars, and curators, the symposium reimagines collaborative art making as a form of reparative worldmaking. Participants and audiences will explore how transpacific collaboration embodies the praxis of repair. Conceived during the Covid-19 outbreak and resonating profoundly in the face of escalating anti-Asian racism since the pandemic’s onset, the symposium examines how Asian and Asian American artists, navigating between Asia and North America, have organized and cultivated artistic spaces. These spaces foster new kinships and strengthen alliances, often independent of institutional support, aiming to mend racialized disconnections within and between North America and Asia.
Patricia Barbeito, Dean of Liberal Arts
Jung Joon Lee, Associate Professor, Theory and History of Art and Design
Yeong Ran Kim, Korea Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures, Emory University
“Thinking with the Pinks: Collaborative Aesthetics in the Creation of Queer Worlds”
Sky Cubacub, Artist, Rebirth Garments, Chicago
Moderated by Sunhay You, Assistant Professor, Literary Arts and Studies, RISD
siren eun young jung, Artist, Seoul
“The Impossible Collaborator: Collaboration as Commitment to Queer Community”
Moderated by RISD Graduate Students, Mitchell Poon and Daniela Ruiz Perez
Jheanelle Brown, Faculty, CalArts / Curator, Film at REDCAT
“Writing, Curating, and Teaching Along the Transpacific, with the Transatlantic”
Haely Chang, Jane and Raphael Bernstein Associate Curator of East Asian Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College
“From Expertise to Inclusion: Collaborative Acquisition of Asian American Art at the Hood Museum of Art”
Moderated by Wai Yee Chiong, Curator of Asian Art, RISD Museum
Jarod Lew, Artist, New Haven
Hieyoon Kim, Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies, Brown University
“A Leaf in the Forest: Embodying Aliveness of the Gwangju Uprising”
Moderated by Jung Joon Lee, Associate Professor, THAD, RISD
Patricia Barbeito, Dean of Liberal Arts, Rhode Island School of Design
Jung Joon Lee, Associate Professor of Art History, Rhode Island School of Design
Sunhay You is Assistant Professor, Literary Arts and Studies, RISD and a transnational feminist scholar who examines the political and ethical implications of Asian/American cultural formations and phenomena, especially as they articulate erotic desires and pleasures in the aftermath of colonial-imperial violence. She is currently working on a monograph tentatively titled ?The Uses of Revenge,? which examines how representations of vengeful Asian/American women track unexpected interethnic and interracial intimacies in the aftermath of US imperial interventions in Asia. Her research has been published in “American Literature,” “Post45 Contemporaries,” and in forthcoming publications.
Born in 1974 in Incheon, South Korea, siren eun young jung currently lives and works in Seoul. She studied visual arts and feminist theory at Ewha Womans University (BFA, MFA, and DFA) in South Korea and the University of Leeds (MA). She is interested in how the seething desires of anonymous individuals encounter events in the world and become resistance, history, and politics. She believes that, by ceaselessly reexamining feminist-queer methodology, artistic praxis that is simultaneously aesthetic and political is possible. Her representative works include the “Dongducheon Project” (2007-2009) and the “Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project” (2008-present), and she works across genres including art, film, and performance. She has received the 2013 Hermes Foundation Art Award, 2015 Sindoh Art Prize, and 2018 Korea Artist Prize and participated in the exhibition in the Korean Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. She also gives several lectures at Seoul Women's University, Sungkyunkwan University and Korea National University of Art.
“The Impossible Collaborator: Collaboration as Commitment to Queer Community”
This talk will discuss the relationships, affects, and conflicts siren eun young jung encountered with various collaborators during the process of her long-term research project, Yeoseong Gukgeuk Project (2008-present), and how learning from these collaborations has influenced her subsequent work, as well as her commitment to the community in which her practice is situated. Collaboration is indispensable in the contemporary art scene, especially for research-based artists, but the presence of collaborators is often instrumentalized and overshadowed by the absolute authority and stature of the artist. It is not easy to distance oneself from the absolute myth of the “artist” because the long-standing conventions of modernity have always relied on the artist's uniqueness and genius, and even in moments when collaborators are given greater weight, the artist is often privileged as the “only one” who knows and conveys the voice of the other. Despite this crisis of othering/objectification against collaborators facing contemporary artists, she emphasizes that it is the real “work” of the artist to actively participate in the historicization and discourse of the unheard, unwritten, and unrecorded, and that this is an important task in constructing and sustaining a community.
Moderated by RISD Graduate Students, Mitchell Poon and Daniela Ruiz Perez
Friday, October 25, 2024, 1-4:45 pm
1:00-1:10 Welcome remarks
1:10-2:10 Session 2 Curators on Collaboration
Jheanelle Brown is a film curator/programmer, educator, and writer based in Los Angeles whose curatorial practice creates frameworks to explore the boundlessness of Black life in experimental and non-fiction film and video. She is interested in the space between fugitivity and futurity and elevating an ethic of care, with special interest in the sonic in film, political film and media, and Caribbean film/video. Jheanelle is a programmer for Los Angeles Filmforum. Her exhibitions and programs have been presented at Art + Practice, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the National Museum for African American History and Culture, REDCAT, 18th Street Arts Center, Project Row Houses, amongst others. Jheanelle recently contributed an essay to “Bangtan Remixed: A Critical BTS Reader” about Blackness and hip hop in the context of Youtube reactions and Black K-pop fans.
“Writing, Curating, and Teaching Along the Transpacific, with the Transatlantic”
How does one navigate the multilayered resonances and tensions of Blackness’ spectral presence in Asian diasporic frameworks in the West, particularly, the United States? How does this operate in our current climate, one that is anti-Black, anti-indigenous, anti-Palestinian? This presentation considers the parallel practices of teaching, writing, and curating in the context of Transpacific and Transatlantic engagement. Pedagogy, writing, and curatorial frameworks become a jumping off point for generative approaches to history, music, cultural production, media studies, art exhibition/film presentation. This presentation’s case studies are situated in Los Angeles, Afro-Caribbean and Korean diasporas, and the African American communities.
Haely Chang is a Jane and Raphael Bernstein Associate Curator of Asian Art at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College. Prior to her role at the Hood, Dr. Chang held fellowships at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Art, and Philadelphia Museum of Art. As a scholar of Korean and Japanese modern art, Haely received her Ph.D. in the History of Art at the University of Michigan, where her dissertation examined how the expansion of photography in early twentieth-century Korea catalyzed new approaches to traditional concepts of painting. Her research has been published in “Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts,” “Ocula,” “Trans Asia Photography,” and “Third Text.” Dr. Chang’s current project investigates how Japanese settler artists in colonial Korea engaged with the country’s newly shaping matrix of materiality and visuality.
“From Expertise to Inclusion: Collaborative Acquisition of Asian American Art at the Hood Museum of Art”
This presentation examines the collaborative process of acquiring Asian American art at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, through case studies of recent acquisitions. The Hood Museum acquires Asian American art through multilateral discussions between curators specializing in Asian, American, and Native American art. The conversation begins with an exchange of knowledge, drawing on each curator’s specialized background to evaluate the provenance, authenticity, and significance of the artwork. However, relying solely on such knowledge-based discussions entails the ironic risk of perpetuating the violence of racial classification in Asian American art, particularly when each curator’s expertise is employed to verify the degree of "Asian-ness" or "American-ness" expressed within the artwork. To address this, the curators at the Hood Museum use the Collection Development Plan (CDP) as a guiding framework for all acquisitions including Asian American Art. The CDP enables curators to assess the value of an acquisition in alignment with the museum’s educational mission and commitment to diversity, thus broadening the scope of the discussion beyond knowledge exchange. By providing clear strategic goals for acquisitions, the CDP also creates opportunities for various stakeholders, including students and fellows, to become active proposers and participants in the acquisition of Asian American Art.
Moderated by Wai Yee Chiong
Wai Yee Chiong is the Curator of Asian art at the RISD Museum. She has held curatorial, research, and teaching positions at the Harvard Art Museums, Princeton University (where she received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History), Gakushūin University in Tokyo, and the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art in London. At RISD, she has organized and collaborated on a variety of exhibitions including “Being and Believing in the Natural World” (2022), “Take Care!” (2022), and the “Art from the 1900s to the present.” Additionally, she has developed and grown the Asian collection by bringing in important acquisitions of under-represented works such as Japanese erotica and collaborating with the RISD Art Circle to purchase works. Most recently, she published an essay on the history of RISD Museum’s Japanese collection, focusing on the institution’s commitment to pedagogy throughout the years.
2:15-3:15 Session 3 Performance and Embodied Memories
Jarod Lew, is an artist who draws on photography to explore intergenerational encounters with diasporic loss, displacement, and postmemory. Through this exploration, my work contends with the performativity of race and its instability as a locus of meaning. His project, "Please Take Off Your Shoes" was shortlisted for the Aperture Portfolio Prize in 2021, and was exhibited in a group exhibition at SFMOMA titled "Kinship: Photography and Connection in 2023." His other project, "In Between You and Your Shadow," examines his relationship with his mother, who was the fiancé of Vincent Chin--the subject of a hate-crime that brought national attention to matters of Asian American civil rights. His works are held in public and private collections including the Cantor Art Center, Detroit Institute of Arts, Kadist, San Francisco, Harvard Art Museum, University of Michigan Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Lew’s work has been written about in Aperture, Artforum, Elephant Magazine, and Aesthetica Magazine. Lew graduated with an MFA in photography at the Yale School of Art.
Hieyoon Kim is Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies, Brown University and a scholar of dissident culture and media with a focus on Korea. Her first book, ”Celluloid Democracy: Cinema and Politics in Cold War South Korea” (UC Press, 2023), examines how Korean filmmakers, distributors, and exhibitors reshaped cinema in radically empowering ways amid political turbulence from liberation through the decades of military rule (1945–1987). Her articles have appeared in the ”Journal of Asian Studies,’ ”Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television,” ”Journal of Cinema and Media Studies,” “Feminist Media Histories, and Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory.” She is currently working on her second book titled “Hereness in Twenty-First Century Audiovisual Media: The 1980 Gwangju Uprising Made Present.”
“A Leaf in the Forest: Embodying Aliveness of the Gwangju Uprising”
Is it possible to represent state violence without instrumentalizing the suffering of those who died, survived, and witnessed terror? Can art create new ways of engaging with the past that might transform us? These questions are of interest to scholars interrogating the practices and politics of representation. Questions of how to confront past state violence are also important for our current moment, as we witness the revival of authoritarian and military power in many countries. My work’s focus on the Gwangju Uprising in South Korea and contemporary young Asian and Latin American artists’ response to it is relevant to other instances of state violence as they reverberate in the present.
This presentation focuses specifically on one such response from two South Korean women artists: the multimedia artist Park Hwayeon and the dancer Kim Yŏnu. Combining video, dance, and in-depth interviews, their collaborative project titled A Leaf in the Forest (2021) produces a space of intimacy and solidarity that yields a non-familial and non-linear transmission of complex memories of Gwangju. Through a close reading of their work, I reveal how they think-with and move-with affects to attune to the bodily expression of feelings and create more complex forms of community that are not reducible to the national.
Moderated by Jung Joon Lee
Jung Joon Lee is an Associate Professor of art history at Rhode Island School of Design. Lee’s research explores the intersections of art and politics, transoceanic intimacies, decoloniality, and gender and sexuality. Lee’s new book, “Shooting for Change: Korean Photography after the War” (Duke University Press, 2024) treats Korea’s transnational militarism as a lens through which to examine how photography makes meaning and shapes history. Lee was a 2022-23 Society for the Humanities Fellow at Cornell University and visiting scholar at Yonsei University’s Graduate School of Communication and Arts in 2022. Lee is currently working on a monograph project exploring photography and art exhibitions as spaces of transoceanic collaboration, kinship making, and repair.
3:30-4:30 Roundtable with participants
4:30-4:45 Closing remarks