HCMC – ‘Encounter’ Presents David Teh

Thu 22 May 2014, 6.30 – 8.30 pm
Melbourne Theatre
RMIT, Saigon South Campus

From the organizer:

‘ENCOUNTER’ talk series welcomes Dr. David Teh from National University of Singapore, a curator, critic and theorist in visual culture with a public lecture on Thursday 22 May 2014.

What is an animate image?

This lecture is about the poetics of mediation. It proposes a theory of the ‘animate image’ – an image that moves, that breathes, that remembers. I begin by considering the encounter between contemporary art and an older, ‘traditional’ kind of image, at an animist festival in Thailand’s northeast. The encounter serves as an entry-point into some of the challenges I have faced as a curator and a theorist, doing research on contemporary visual art in Southeast Asia.

As producers, critics or students of visual culture, how do we make sense of a contemporary image that mobilizes all the powers of mechanical reproduction, yet without surrendering a much older valence, grounded in local attitudes and practices?

Artists and anthropologists offer us some answers, and I shall introduce several who have guided my own thinking. Along with better description of Southeast Asian art, their insights provide critical perspectives on how the ‘animate image’ is framed and assimilated under the would-be global rubric of ‘the contemporary’. With reference to some recent, large-scale international exhibitions, I will challenge popular curatorial assumptions about how artworks exercise their claims on the past.

David Teh works at the National University of Singapore in the fields of critical theory and visual culture. His research centres on contemporary art in Southeast Asia. From 2005-09, he was an independent critic and curator based in Bangkok, where his curatorial projects included Platform (The Queen’s Gallery and The Art Center, Chulalongkorn University, 2006) and The More Things Change… (5th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, 2008). David’s writings have appeared in LEAP magazine, Art Asia Pacific, artforum.com, Art & Australia and The Bangkok Post. His recent scholarly essays have been published in Third Text and Afterall Journal. David is also a director of Future Perfect, a new gallery and project platform in Singapore’s Gillman Barracks precinct.

The event is free of charge. Seats inside the auditorium are limited. Please arrange to come early for the best available position.

Language: English and Vietnamese translation will be provided