Other Asias:  Transnational Contemporary Art Currents

 'Should we train our imagination to allow 'Asia' to emerge as a continent?'
(Gayatri Spivak, 2008)


 
Other Asias is a transnational artists & writers platform that challenges contemporary navigations of "Asia" and the-world-at large via a collaborative curatorial practice.   Our organisation activates chains of exhibitions, film screenings, fictions, forums, interventions, performance, plays, walks and talks, historical revisions, reading circles, archives, taxonomies, political vocabularies, zines, public education and transnational circulation towards a post-West cultural horizon. 


Other Asias operates as open assemblage of artists, writers and designers - in a fluid space between an art movement, production company and creative think-tank .We seek to cultivate  alliances and counter-cartographies, opening up regions, potentialities, new configurations of memory, imagination and investigation.   We grew discontented with the ossification of official "cross-cultural" departments, institutionalised post-colonial studies and new internationalism,  embodied in the systematic mediocrity of the first Asian Arts Triennial (Manchester 2008). We sought an opposing space to the corporate/ NGO strategies of organisations like Asia House and the current superficial commercial booms of Eastern economies, bureaucratic state-sanctioned "celebrating diversity" initiatives. We were dismayed by the entrenched Eurocentrism of professional "critique" and artschool academia (in Europe and Asia).
 
 Before its formal organisation  Other Asias started as a conversation between friends on a bus that evolved in the Central Saint Martins library on Charing Cross road after a screening of Bangladeshi short films in East London. Its context was the plethora of regional survey shows from the dominant Asian economies, the crescendos around "crisis of Multiculturalism" in parliamentary rhethoric, the rise of Asian global power and decline of unipoplar West. Over time we collectively discussed bad "Human rights" arts, the shortcomings of BME public inclusion strategies and the NGOisation of third world subjects. We stole our name from a Gayatri Spivak book.
 
 Other Asias works as a grass roots networking organisation that aims to provide up-coming creatives a platform and portal for multi-poplar orbits of distribution and exchange. Every current is pregnant investigation, configuring a dynamic new team of visiting artists, curators, designers and thinkers from non-artworld disclipines - activating transformations across localities, communities and continents.
 
Other Asias is based in London (UK), Lahore (Pakistan) and Dhaka (Bangladesh) with a satellite network of links across the Asian continent. We are an independent, not-for-profit arts organisation, mostly run by an open collective of volunteers.

 

Upcoming Events

DIY Cultures 2016:  Dayfestival of zines, comics & activism

Supported by Arts Council England & Tower Hamlets council

For all programme updates see www.diycultures.tumblr.com

Twitter: @diyculturesfair #DIY2016
Facebook: /DIYCultures

Recent UK Events

Asia Elects: An Exhibition of performance, film, photography and propaganda design

Thursday 3rd -Sunday 6th October 2013

Curated by Helena Wee and Fuad Ali, with Hamja Ahsan

For a full programme of events CLICK HERE

URL: www.asiaelects.tumblr.com

Twitter: #AsiaElects @OtherAsias

Promotion / Crowdfunding video

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NEW ONLINE PROJECT :

Duriana Climate Delegation

Summary

The Subcontinent

At the 309th meeting on 10th August 1947, the UN Security Council decided to invite a representative from the Indian National Congress and All India Muslim League to participate with vote in the discussion of the subcontinent. Online News System -

Active current DEVELOPMENTIA