The lecture begins by introducing a series of art festivals held in northern Thailand in the 1990s, and a book about the festivals called Artist to Artist, which the speaker co-edited (with David Morris) for Afterall’s Exhibition Histories series in 2018. This transnational artist-initiated platform, and others like it, were key sites for the emergence of what we now call ‘contemporary art.’ But in the history of the contemporary, what exactly should be remembered? Artists, art works, or something else? The talk outlines the research and motivations behind the book, and explores aspects of the festivals that make them compelling for us today, including their performativity, their politics, and their engagements with everyday public life.

About Curator:

David Teh is a writer, curator and Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore, specializing in Southeast Asian contemporary art. His curatorial projects have included Returns (12th Gwangju Biennale, 2018), Misfits: Pages from a Loose-leaf Modernity (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2017), Transmission (Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok, 2014), Video Vortex #7 (Yogyakarta, 2011), and Unreal Asia (55. Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, 2009). Teh’s essays have appeared in Third Text, Afterall, Artforum International, Theory Culture & Society, and ARTMargins. His book Thai Art: Currencies of the Contemporary was published by the MIT Press in 2017, and he was co-editor (with David Morris) of Artist-to-Artist: Independent Art Festivals in Chiang Mai 1992-98 (2018), for Afterall’s Exhibition Histories series.