Public Programming
SUMMER PROGRAMME IV: (RE)PRODUCTIVE SUBJECTS: COLLECTIVITY AND ECONOMY
Asymmetry, 102a Albion Drive, London E8 4LY
3-5PM, 15.07.2023
Talks by artist Ho Rui An and researcher Di Liu, followed by a conversation moderated by our Curatorial Fellow at Whitechapel Gallery Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung.
Ho Rui An will share his ongoing research into the textile mill as a site where industrial and social (re)production took place concurrently through a gendered division of labour, as exclusively male teams of technicians repaired and recalibrated imported foreign machines, while a feminised workforce of machine operators raised their young children on the factory floors. Ho will also examine how occupation, place of origin, and class served as the bases for mass mobilisation in the factory amidst the turbulent transitions of 20th century China.
Di Liu will explore the much talked about notion of 'lumbung' (Indonesian for 'rice barn'), this time from a historical and anthropological perspective in the context of rice economies in Asia. Liu will discuss lumbung as both an economic and social practice, encompassing nursery, communal garden, communal kitchen, and a variety of collectives featured at documenta fifteen and beyond.
FREE ENTRY, TICKET HERE
BIOGRAPHY
Ho Rui An is an artist and writer working in the intersections of contemporary art, cinema, performance and theory. Using lectures, essays, and films, his research examines systems of governance in a global age. He has presented projects at the Bangkok Art Biennale, Asian Art Biennial, Gwangju Biennale, Jakarta Biennale, Sharjah Biennial, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Kunsthalle Wien, Singapore Art Museum, Van Abbemuseum, and Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media. In 2019, he was awarded the International Film Critics’ (FIPRESCI) Prize at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany. In 2018, he was a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.
Di Liu is a researcher and writer based between Hong Kong and Cambridge, UK. She is a project member of the lumbung artist collective BOLOHO and a co-founder of the lumbung publisher Reading Room, which were both presented at documenta fifteen. Her research interests include collective practices, discourses on Asia in artistic production, and the metamorphosis of transregional material culture. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.