Sydney and Melbourne 2004

KNOWLEDGE + DIALOGUE + EXCHANGE – remapping cultural globalisms from the south Convened by NICHOLAS TSOUTAS Executive Director Artspace SAMANTHA COMTE Director Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces A conference initiative developed by NICHOLAS TSOUTAS THE EVENT A six-day conference for Res Artis members and delegates involving Australian & international speakers, lectures, workshops, exhibitions, commissioned performances, music & literary events. International conference speakers will be invited from Asia, Africa, South America & Australia to join with their Australian colleagues & Res Artis delegates to rethink the direction & flow of globalism from the critical position of the South. The Conference is constructed as a city-wide program across Sydney & Melbourne, the two largest capital cities in Australia. A key objective is to ensure that the culturally diverse international delegates & members of Res Artis artist-in-residency centres are exposed to the multidisciplinary infrastructure of Australian art & cultural organisations. The Conference program has been designed on the basis of cultural inclusivity, industry development, international networking & cultural exchange. The intention of the Conference is to generate discussion that is inclusive & participatory within a framework that privileges contributions at all levels & reduces the space between cultures & difference, as well as between speakers & audience participants. The Conference will be a discursive space for dialogue & engagement in the exchange of cultural knowledge & art. THE CONFERENCE The postcolonial space is a site where the experimental cultures of the periphery converge to define new modalities for cultural inclusion. The Conference functions as a set of dialogues between civilisations, in a project that begins with the assumption that the margins are redefining & transforming the worlds of the centre. The Conference will explore the new globalisms & mobility of the South through ways of shared living, representation & the experiencing of contemporaneousness in art, theory & cultural production. The South is now permanently visible, present & active in exceeding the borders that once operated as mechanisms of exclusion & limit. By focusing on Asia & the South Pacific rim the Conference will provide a space for the rigorous examination & analysis of the processes & contexts that differentiate the ideas of what we mean by the term periphery. The Conference will move beyond the closure & limits of current definitions that continue to divide & separate, whilst engaging with the possibilities of new convergent positions & space of shared cultural experience & knowledge. Global multiculturalism is a key logic of the cultures of the future. KNOWLEDGE + DIALOGUE + EXCHANGE – remapping cultural globalisms from the south – is a conference project about the remapping of global orders, histories & cultural production from the perspective of a critical matrix positioned geographically south & outside the dominant hegemonies of European & North American traditions. This conference is positioned at the very edge of the politics of difference. KNOWLEDGE + DIALOGUE + EXCHANGE – remapping cultural globalisms from the south – will focus on four key issues: CRISIS + CULTURAL COLLISIONS PROGRAM A Wednesday 11 August > Museum of Contemporary Art Following the crisis of 9/11 we now live in a permanent condition of change, seemingly in a permanent state of emergency as we rethink our relationship & obligations to the notions of democracy. Social, political & cultural paradigms are now subject to realignment & reevaluation requiring & creating new global interfaces, contexts & relationships. How will this new dynamic & complex global reorientation impact upon, inform & give meaning to the debates on cultural production, mobility & exchange? What are the new strategies in this global reshaping in the new post-terror spaces of national culture, immigration, cultural mobility & increasing displacement? Where are the new dissolved boundaries? & from which directions will global change be generated? > LU JIE China > IEN ANG Australia NEW WRITING, CRITICISM + THEORY PROGRAM B Thursday 12 August > Boomalli Aboriginal Artists’ Cooperative If we are to better comprehend & understand the contribution of contemporary art & artists in reshaping the cultural futures we need to open up new spaces for the critical engagement of the discursive diversity of contemporary art & cultural practices. A space in which to think & seriously analyse the complex networks of global knowledge circuits which inform the interpretation of cultural processes & upon which meaningful research depends. This session will focus on the languages, critical discourses & theoretical regimes emerging in the art & cultural practices of Asia, Africa, South America & Australia. How is this art perceived globally from within the multiple spaces of difference within the South as well as from the complexity of relations with the North? How is it written, contextualised & theorised? Who writes it? & what are the processes of dissemination & distribution & further, how is it contextualised in the hierarchies of signification? This thematic is concerned more with the writing & production of cultural theory in the postcolonial spaces in relation to the complex equations of social geopolitics & power of the new globalisms of the South than with the mechanical questions of documentation & archive. The intention is to examine these very processes of exchange & develop the strategies & means to better represent the vital codes of change that are being developed across the cultures of Asia, Africa, South America & Australia > LEE WENG CHOY Singapore > GHASSAN HAGE Australia NEW TECHNOLOGIES, INTERACTIVITY + DIGITAL FUTURES PROGRAM C Saturday 14 August > Asialink, Sidney Myer Centre, University of Melbourne This session will engage with & examine the new digital cartographies & electronic mappings t