The 8th edition of the Asian Art Biennial at the National Museum of Taiwan in Taichung launched as the fourth wave of the COVID pandemic was starting to sweep the world. In October 2021, countries that only a few months earlier had come out of lockdowns, were already preparing to go back to restrictive measures, eventually leading to more closures. The Asian Art Biennial had no easy way of coming to life, being organised during the pandemic, and opening right in the midst of it.
Its title then seems particularly suited at representing the sentiment pervading these uncertain, solitary times, ushering in new, imaginative ways of thinking about the past, the present and the future to come post-COVID. Titled “Phantasmopolis”, AAB 2021’s main theme are “Asian futurism” and “Asian sci-fi culture”, through which it seeks to review Asia’ s past and present from the perspective of science fiction.
The newly coined Greek word “Phantasmopolis”, composed of “phantasma” (phantom) and “polis” (city-state), owes its inspiration to Phantasmagoria, a sci-fi novel written in English by Taiwanese architect Wang Da-Hong (1917-2018) during his time at Harvard University. The word “phantasmagoria” originally refers to the Gothic-inspired haunted house shows of the 17th and 18th century, constructed using the ‘magic lantern’, a rudimentary light projection technology known since the 16th century. Today, the word has come to be used to describe dream-like hallucinations, or “a sequence of real or imaginary images like that seen in a dream” (Oxford Dictionaries). In Wang’s novel, the phantasmagoria narrative is one of pure sci-fi and recounts the story of a prince cast adrift in outer space in 3069 AD. “Phantasmopolis” brings together works that create this sense of displacement in time and space, both familiar and unfamiliar, and present new imaginaries, investigating the past, present and the possible futures of Asian realities.
With 417 works by the 38 artists and artist groups, the exhibition intends to break stereotypes about Asia as presented in the popular, mainstream narratives of Hollywood sci-fi movies, while re-examining Asia’s metropolises, technologies, conflicts, gender issues and imagined futures through the viewpoint of its own artistic communities.
In his sci-fi series of animation, painting, dance and experimental novel works in AAB 2021, for example, China’s He Kunlin imagines the potential cultural issues and challenges to present belief-systems that might arise when planetary migration becomes possible (and perhaps a necessity) in the future. His imagination is rather a metaphor for the more complex trajectories of modern art history and contemporary geopolitical problems.
Korean artist Kim Ayoung also portrays a possible future, with the consequences of severe climate change. In At the Surisol Underwater Lab (2020), humanity has started depending on a new technology using micro algae to produce energy, after having abandoned fossil fuels. Ayoung weaves present issues in his sci-fi narratives, through Sohila, a former refugee from the civil war in Yemen. Now a researcher at the Surisol Underwater Lab in the territorial waters of Busan, she recalls memories of Covid-19 that plagued the world in 2020.
Taiwanese artist Lin Shu Kai’s mixed-media installation The Balcony City Civilization Series – Molding Island City Adventure Project (2021) connects his family history and his imaginations of future cities. Based in his father’s now closed factory, the project portrays its former glory while bringing forth the remnants of an excavated, imagined future. Through moulds, paintings and images, Lin creates the archaeological traces of a future civilisation, thus presenting the future as the ‘future past’.
Pad.ma, a collaborative footage archive of annotated video material from the region’s artists created by Indian collective CAMP and Berlin-based 0x2620 – Collaborative Archiving and Networked Distribution, have created a new online location for AAB 2021’s video art programme. Phantas.ma/polis showcases AAB 2021 participating artists’ videos, along with extended commentaries by the curator, artists and critics.
Within this programme, Vietnam-based artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s narrative film The Island (2017) depicts a dystopian future featuring different existential concerns between the last man and woman on earth.
The last man escaped forced repatriation to Vietnam from the island Pulau Bidong, Malaysia, the longest operating refugee camp after the Vietnam War. The last woman is a survivor of a fictional disaster, the last nuclear battle that wiped out all civilisation. The film is entirely shot on the island, and includes archival footage from its past capturing the artist’s familial history.
Looking at the political and economic impacts of water, New Delhi artist Vibha Galhotra also interweaves real and imagined narratives to catch a glimpse of a haunting, realistic future. Manthan (2015) references a legend from Hindu mythology in which gods and demons churn the ocean to extract the nectar of immortality. In the film’s speculative performance the ocean is represented by the waste of the severely polluted river Yamuna flowing through Delhi. In antithesis to the sacredness of the water referenced by traditional scriptures, the film’s grey riverscape shows a decayed and dying river hinting at the broader narrative of humanity’s apathy towards nature and the imminent ecological catastrophe.
Wading through the extensive imaginaries and possibilities of “Phantasmopolis”, Taiwanese independent curator Nobuo Takamori headed a transnational team of curators — Ho Yu-Kuan (Taiwan), Tessa Maria Guazon (Philippines), Anushka Rajedran (India) and Thanavi Chotpradit (Thailand) — who contributed their singular perspectives to create the interconnected layers of the biennale, including a video section, archives, special screening, forums and a publication of readers. In a brief conversation with Takamori, we uncover more on “Phantasmopolis”, some of the curator’s highlights, and how it was working on a biennale in pandemic times.
I am interested in knowing more about the reasons behind the sci-fi theme for “Phantasmopolis”. Could you speak to this specific choice, how it relates to our contemporaneity and why it is relevant?
For more than a decade, Asian contemporary art has spent most of their energy to discuss the historical context of Asia. Especially in Southeast Asia, the diaspora, immigrants, post-colonialism, hidden historic narratives, the political paradox and the difficulties of modernity are the common themes of contemporary art.
However, after decades of searching back to the past, I’m also thinking what if Asian contemporary art looks forward to the future, what kind of future will we imagine? Of course, the artists from different traditions will use their different methodologies to search the possibilities of the future. The first thing I could guarantee is our futures will be represented by very different and diverse format. The second is, the future depicted by Asian contemporary artists will obviously be different from the “techno-orientalism” perspectives by Hollywood features.
How was working with a diverse curatorial team? What did each curator add to the conversation?
Each curator selected and invited the artists from their country or region to create a puzzle of the art scene of Asia. However, after considering the difficulties for co-working during the pandemic times, our divided our framework into different missions. I and another Taiwanese curator, Ho Yu Kuan, were mainly in charge of the installation and the physical exhibition itself, as we could intensely work on site. Filipina curator Tessa Maria Guazon worked on Filipinos artists and the archival project. Indian curator Anushka Rajendran curated the video art project within Asian Art Biennial 2021. She was also in charge of the online streaming platform created in collaboration with Indian/German online artists group Pad.ma (CAMP x 0X2620). Thai curator Thanavi Chotpradit mainly worked on organising our international forum and editing the reader of AAB 2021.
This is the kind of framework we were trying to experiment during this pandemic time, which allowed us to reach a balance between the quality of exhibition and also the problematic reality of travelling restrictions.
Are there particular highlights among the new commissions that are especially of interest in relation to AAB’s theme?
At the Surisol Underwater Lab (2020) by Korean artist Kim Ayoung depicts a post-apocalyptic scenario that the world faces after the Covid-19 pandemic. The survival minorities of the population live under the sea to generated a new kind of energy production system. DOTS (2021) is a new commissioned work made by Taiwanese artist Joyce Ho.
After the Covid-19 pandemic, the public spaces in Taiwan, including museums, started to be equipped with health check points to check the temperature, travel histories and their actual ID of visitors. These check points used a temporary structure as the pandemic came so suddenly and we also expected it to end very soon. However, our expectations didn’t come true. So, the concept of DOTS is to try to transform these facilities into a permanent version. Meanwhile, we adopt the system of passport/custom checkpoints in international ports/airports in the lobby of the museum, to make the visitor aware that the process of our daily ‘normal’ has already been changed.
The photographic series An Elegy for Ecology by Indian artist Sharbendu De, based in Dehli, is another perfect example of 2021 AAB’s concept. Sharbendu uses a cinematic perspective to create the photographic scene, which shows how middle-class inhabitants live in a near future dystopia where the planet’s resources, fresh air and water are lacking.
As I mentioned, the futurism in fact is based on the reality of Asia. The artists developed their versions of future; at the same time, the curatorial team also researched/searched for a version of the future from the past. For example, A Day after a Hundred Year is a 1933 Japanese animation by Ogino Shigeji. This animation depicted how the artist himself travelled to year 2032, and met his grandson there, after the artist had already died in a great war.
Finally, I am curious to know how it was to work on such a large scale exhibition and with a diverse curatorial team at these times of pandemic, restricted travel and lockdowns…
The NTMoFA (National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts) is a public museum under Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture. It started to organise the Asian Art Biennial since 2007, this year is the 8th edition of AAB. The Ministry of Culture and NTMoFA are the main sponsors of Asian Art Biennial. However, if we consider the scale and what we want to do, we can’t solely rely on public funding. Therefore, the curatorial team also worked hard on fundraising, especially as we needed to find the sponsors for some special projects, which did not existed under the original structure of AAB.
In Taiwan’s art circle, we always criticised the preparation time for a biennial is not sufficient, compared to other important biennials in Asia and the West. The ideal preparation time for a biennial should be 2 – 3 years, including the pre-curation research process. The principal framework here is 1 year, and most of the time even less than 1 year.
However, this negative management culture accidentally transformed into our advantage. The AAB 2021 might be the first biennial in Asia that could fully respond the situation of the pandemic, and fully adopt the conditions of the pandemic within its entire working circle. I was appointed as curator of AAB 2021 in December of 2020, which means the entire team already knew the situation of the pandemic since the very beginning of the work. So, honestly speaking, I can’t clearly describe how it affected or changed our work. But I could say, we are team that already worked in the situation of the pandemic, and we considered this new future as our normal condition since the very beginning.
C. A. Xuân Mai Ardia
“Phantasmopolis”, the 8th Asian Art Biennial, runs from 30 October 2021 to 6 March 2022 at the National Museum of Taiwan, Taichung.