[Commlist] Made in Asean - Online Exhibition

The online exhibition /*MADE IN ASEAN*/ 
<https://aseanvisionproject.com/>/,/which I curated as part of my PhD 
research, will officially run until 15 December 2020. But since it's an 
online collaborative effort, you can always visit 
https://aseanvisionproject.com <https://aseanvisionproject.com/> to view 
our completed activities and the virtual gallery of photographs.

On 12 and 13 December, we also have two Zoom sessions with our 
co-curators to give you another exhibition walk-through and Q&A. Zoom 
links will be posted on the website — https://aseanvisionproject.com 
<https://aseanvisionproject.com/> — only on the day of a live talk or 
exhibition activity.

For occasional updates and future collaborations, feel free to follow 
*@aseanvisionproject *on Facebook: 
https://www.facebook.com/aseanvisionproject 
<https://www.facebook.com/aseanvisionproject> and Instagram: 
https://www.instagram.com/aseanvisionproject/ 
<https://www.instagram.com/aseanvisionproject/>.

**

/Who /is Southeast Asia made of?

We must beg this question of /who/  instead of /what, /because decades 
after Southeast Asian countries’ colonial histories the search for a 
shared identity persists. In 1967 the Association of Southeast Asian 
Nations (ASEAN) was founded as a means of establishing mutual 
cooperation within the region and since then, it has grown from five 
post-war countries to ten independent member states. /One Vision, One 
Identity, One Community; /the ASEAN motto implies seeing, recognising, 
and belonging.

Fifteen participants from different ASEAN countries — Brunei Darussalam, 
Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, 
Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam — and the UK engaged in participatory 
photography to reflect on what it means to be Southeast Asian and an 
ASEAN member citizen in today’s world. The main challenge was to reflect 
on the various ways we might see, recognise, and belong to ‘ASEAN-ness’ 
using images of everyday life, nostalgia, and places — almost stripping 
the grand narrative of geopolitics down to what we can imagine with our 
very eyes and, by extension, what can be observed by our camera phones.

The view of a nameless street from one’s window; intertwining 
clotheslines stretched out from the kitchen back door; a cupboard 
overflowing with chopsticks, spoons, pots and pans; a handful of 
souvenirs and trinkets tucked away for several years; and memories of 
travel adventures and childhood games. The similarities are uncanny yet 
familiar to our imaginative eyes; the differences only reveal themselves 
when we speak of them.

While we remain indoors for still an uncertain period of time, we invite 
you to visit Southeast Asia by imagining with us. Choose any country, 
any destination, any place. Only, you will need more than your own eyes 
and senses to explore. This is why we are offering you ours.

*MADE IN ASEAN*  transforms our collective act of imagining into 
image-making. As the regional integration project /ASEAN Vision 2020 
/was envisioned to launch this year, our curatorial project offers the 
public an alternative means of reflecting on the ASEAN’s 
identity-building efforts in the last fifty years. Who makes the ASEAN? 
Who makes of the ASEAN? What do we make of the ASEAN? We can only 
imagine, for now.

This curatorial project presents an assemblage of photographs taken from 
various locations in Southeast Asia. Reminiscent of the online 
crowdsourcing of photographs started in 2011 by students in Thailand 
(eventually made recurrent by the ASEAN Youth Organization’s annual 
photography contests), MADE IN ASEAN is a challenge to view our 
imagination of Southeast Asia as a construct, a model, or a product. In 
other words, the choice to make is in our hands. The exhibition focuses 
on images that are typically excluded by the visual rhetoric of 
touristic snapshots and travel selfies, and yet left embedded in camera 
phones if not deleted. Hence, these images are not necessarily unseen 
and untaken. But for images as yet unphotographed due to the so-called 
‘unmaking’of the year 2020, this exhibition also opens a space for 
make-believe.

Curator Kristian Jeff Agustin’s /*Mesa sa Kwarto */is literally a desk 
in his room which serves as his only workspace while observing the 
Covid-19 pandemic lockdown in the Manila, Philippines since March 2020. 
He makes do with this /mesa /(desk) in his /kwarto /(room) to offer an 
expandable exhibition space with other participants upon entering a 
/Zoom Gallery. /

In */Anonymised Skies/*/, /co-curator Martin Vidanes (Philippines) 
invites residents and visitors of Southeast Asian nations to locate 
their specific co-ordinates while taking pictures of the sky. A 
panoramic glimpse of the big picture is thus almost made visible: that 
despite the borders, rifts, and seas within the geopolitics of the 
region, when looking up at the same sky, we are made one.

Co-curators Kerrine Goh and Andy Chan (Singapore) transform images into 
intersections in /*Crossworld Puzzle*. /The popular word game is remade 
into a visual play to trigger what we make of various photographs taken 
from places across Southeast Asia—snapshots of crowds, cuisines, cities, 
shops, and, souvenirs. Look at the clues scattered here and there; solve 
them pic by pic.


*MADE IN ASEAN runs from 15 November to 15 December 2020*, bookended by 
the 37^th ASEAN Summit1 
<https://outlook.office.com/mail/inbox/id/AAQkAGQyOWFmZmE3LWZmYWMtNDM1My05YTQxLWI2MmU3ZTVjMmU4NQAQAN4hiD5dfU1PuuFgznf9yAY%3D#_ftn1> hosted 
virtually in Ha Noi from (with Viet Nam as ASEAN Chair for 2020) and the 
23^rd anniversary of the ASEAN-wide adoption of the /ASEAN Vision 2020/2 
<https://outlook.office.com/mail/inbox/id/AAQkAGQyOWFmZmE3LWZmYWMtNDM1My05YTQxLWI2MmU3ZTVjMmU4NQAQAN4hiD5dfU1PuuFgznf9yAY%3D#_ftn2>statement 
in 1997. The online exhibition builds on the year-long participatory 
photography project led and curated by Kristian Jeff Agustin 
(Philippines), a PhD candidate at Manchester School of Art.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] 
<https://outlook.office.com/mail/inbox/id/AAQkAGQyOWFmZmE3LWZmYWMtNDM1My05YTQxLWI2MmU3ZTVjMmU4NQAQAN4hiD5dfU1PuuFgznf9yAY%3D#_ftnref1>12-15 
November 2020 (via the ASEAN Viet Nam 2020 official 
website:https://asean2020.vn <https://asean2020.vn/>)

[2] 
<https://outlook.office.com/mail/inbox/id/AAQkAGQyOWFmZmE3LWZmYWMtNDM1My05YTQxLWI2MmU3ZTVjMmU4NQAQAN4hiD5dfU1PuuFgznf9yAY%3D#_ftnref2>15 
December 1997, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 
(reference:https://asean.org/?static_post=asean-vision-2020 
<https://asean.org/?static_post=asean-vision-2020>)


<https://www.instagram.com/aseanvisionproject/>
	
Asean 2020 Vision (@aseanvisionproject) • Instagram photos and videos 
<https://www.instagram.com/aseanvisionproject/>
36 Followers, 274 Following, 135 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos 
from Asean 2020 Vision (@aseanvisionproject)
www.instagram.com


<https://www.facebook.com/aseanvisionproject>
	
ASEAN Vision Project <https://www.facebook.com/aseanvisionproject>
ASEAN Vision Project. 719 likes. An international curatorial 
collaboration, ‘MADE IN ASEAN’ presents images from an ongoing 
participatory photography project held in various Southeast Asian...
www.facebook.com

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