All Over the Place
Oh, hello. General inflation, fuel and food shortages in Sri Lanka, the children of dictators back in power in the Philippines, endless lockdowns in China, crackdowns in Hong Kong, cryptocurrency meltdowns, religious killings in India, Canadians supporting religious killings in India, Israeli jets terrorising Lebanon’s skies, the ffiff taking a medieval approach to women’s rights... You’d be forgiven if you’re thinking it’s all gone to shit. Oh yeah, and Artreview Asia hasn’t even mentioned the war in Ukraine.
Given the problematics of coming to terms with our messy, fucked-up present, this issue of Artreview Asia looks at art as a means of exploring both the past and the future in order, hopefully, to get a firmer grasp on the bit in between, the jam in the sandwich – the now. It does that not because it’s entirely escapist or because it’s shitting its pants, but because looking at, say, the development of collective practices in Indonesia, or readings of and responses to Partition in India, or speculating about the evolution of ffff in Singapore are all ways of looking at our present from a dierent angle, or with a sideways glance. Along the way, traditions and cultures are used, exploited, adapted and rediscovered. And sometimes even respected and honoured. In a way this issue – which also looks to diasporic culture, the use and abuse of tradition in Japanese animé and how to live with others – is precisely about how you assemble things that are fragmented, contradictory and paradoxical into something meaningful, useful and purposeful. While being conscious of its evident flaws. Artreview Asia