Asia Art Archive announces their new exhibition, “Countering Time”, which opens 27 September. Merve Ünsal uses her body to record a centuries-old sinkhole where human and geological time collapse. Simon Leung bends and folds the afterlives of a moment captured in a 1967 photograph from Hong Kong. Gala Porras-Kim traces recollections of lost works and archives. Lee Weng Choy uses personal annotations to mark time. Together, they counter strict chronologies, demonstrating how archives are sites of imagination instead of final resting places of historical records. For more posts about the exhibition and programmes this month, check out @asiaartarchive
Hours, Accidental and Arbitrary: A year of writing lonely
by Lee Weng Choy
Designed by Ruud Ruttens (@ruudruttens ), Ghent
Printed by AC Dominie, Singapore
April 2023
24pp., 100mm x 190mm, softcover
5 black & white images
Edition of 500
978-0-6453840-3-1
$16.50 AUD
“It was the first sunny Saturday after a winter of endless rains. I was reading my friend Weng’s reflections on time. Time passed. Time stood still. For moments I could hear his voice—clearer than ever (March 25, 2023).”
— Hans Sluga, William and Trudy Ausfahl Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley
“Hours is beautiful and lucid and precise, full of poetics and unexpected turns and connections, unsentimental, and deeply moving. It’s made me think and feel more than I have for many years about what it is to be.”
— Jo Kukathas, theatre-maker, director, actor, writer, and co-founder, The Instant Café Theatre Company, Kuala Lumpur
Photos @mary.macdougall
The Documentarian is a magazine created by a community of artists, thinkers, critics, observers, musicians, writers, researchers, and photographers, all of whom are fascinated by the many mediums through which documentation, archival and witness practices are created.
Read our conversation, link in bio https://www.academia.edu/49676274/Regarding_the_Reader_speaks_with_The_Documentarian
Artist Ho Rui An had a solo at A+ Works of Art in Kuala Lumpur last year. In 2013, he co-curated the exhibition, “The Artist, the Book and the Crowd”, at The Substation in Singapore. As part of that project, he spoke with me about the complex relations between literature, contemporary art practice and criticism in Singapore, and I happened to revisit our exchange just recently. While our text only indirectly address themes regarding the reader, I still thought it worth sharing. Check out the conversation here: https://www.academia.edu/49093932/The_Artist_the_Book_the_Crowd_and_the_Nation
An interview with tv/radio journalist and writer Sharaad Kuttan, which draws a comparison between reading about art and listening to the radio about culture. https://www.academia.edu/42475183/Regarding_the_Reader_Sharaad_Kuttan
The first part of the Regarding the Reader Instagram project presents a series of conversations with writers and editors on how they imagine or understand their readers. Check the link for an interview with Pauline Gan and Usha Chandradas of the Singapore-based online art magazine Pluralartmag.com about how they got started, who their readers are, and their social media “strategies”. https://www.academia.edu/37182889/Pauline_and_Usha_from_PluralArtMag_RtR_
(Bokor Mountain, Kampot, Cambodia) The first part of the Regarding the Reader Instagram project presents a series of conversations with writers and editors on how they imagine or understand their readers. My wager is that this is not the worst place to start when thinking about the reader. https://www.academia.edu/36788912/Kampot_Cambodia_Part_1_Regarding_the_Reader
My essay “Regarding the Reader” was published in 2015 in the journal Broadsheet. Since then, I’ve been wondering how to engage with social media on questions of who reads about art, what they read, how and why. So I started this Instagram project. I’m still unsure how it will eventually take shape, and at the moment, I’m talking with friends and exploring a few ideas, all of which will take some time to realise. Meanwhile you can read about my thoughts on the topic here: https://www.academia.edu/33348952/Regarding_the_Reader_Instagram_Project
Meanwhile, some books read and not yet read: this first sampling belies how unsystematic and erratic my own reading really is … “Regarding the Reader” aims to be a project about readers of artwriting. More eventually …
