This talk centers around examples of community practices manifested through art-making and artist- initiated activities. What does an evolving, transformative collaboration between artists and society look like? The talk proposes the ways artists align their art-making with their civic agency, and hopes for the communities they feel responsible towards. It questions the idea of artistic interventions – that perhaps such activities are but forms of social accountability. “Propositions around art societies, societies by art” presents Siddharta Perez’s preliminary hunches on the work done by Patani Artspace and DAKOgamay.

Sidd will also facilitate a followed-up workshop “WHAT YOU PAY ATTENTION TO GROWS: A workshop on facilitating (art) and trusting the people” on Saturday 27 Oct, 9am-12pm at Sa Sa Art Projects. Artists and practitioners who are interested in community practice are encouraged to attend.

WHAT YOU PAY ATTENTION TO GROWS is a talk and workshop with Siddharta Perez, whose current Phnom Penh research trip is around topics of revisiting histories that are re-performed for new contemporary perspectives. She is a curator at NUS Museum, focusing on developing exhibitions and programs around the museum’s South & Southeast Asian Collection. Currently, she is also facilitating the prep-room project “Of Place and A Paradox” with Patani Artspace and Zulfadhli Hilmi. In 2016, she staged a moving image exhibition speculating on substitutions of scenography and histories in the Philippines and Vietnam during the American wars in the Pacific titled “Double Vision.” This was enacted into another exhibition titled “Unsettled Assignments” with Vuth Lyno for the Singapore International Festival of the Arts 2017.