Utopia
Events:
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- Thursday 26 January 2012 INDIA ART FAIR, International Speakers’ Forum, New Delhi - Friday 27 January 2012, screening at the Video Lounge, INDIA ART FAIR |
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Watch Video from Intimate Publics Forum: new models for art engagement, creativity and politics in the Asia Pacific region (part of Melbourne Festival 2011) - Tuesday 18 October 2011 FORUM - Thurs 13 Oct - Sat 5 Nov 2011 EXHIBITION - Read Review: "Hoarding privacy among the teeming hordes", Robert Nelson, The Age (online). |
About
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Utopia@Asialink is is a roving, multilateral platform for regional engagement that is flexible, responsive and generative. Utopia is a network of cities that converse and collaborate including Melbourne, Tokyo, Singapore, Seoul and New Delhi. Left: Raqs Media Collective. Utopia is a Hearing Aid, 2003. Exhibited at 'Utopia Station', curated by Molly Nesbit, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Rirkrit Tiravanija, Venice Biennale 2003. Courtesy of Frith Street Gallery, London Utopia is a Hearing Aid emerges from an understanding that the possibility of another world is actually always latent within the materiality of this one. One has only to listen to the sounds of it stirring to make it manifest. This requires the cultivation of a hermeneutics of listening, of listening very carefully. Of paying attention to the things that are being said, not only aloud, but also in whispers, not only in proclamations and manifestos, but also in forms of disguised and coded speech, and not only in reasonable discursive forms but also in acts of parrhesic, fearless speech. It calls for fearless and attentive listening. |
Utopia Partners
- Mr Yusaku Imamura, Director of Tokyo Wonder Site & representing Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Tokyo
- Mr Tan Boon Hui, Director of Singapore Art Museum, Singapore
- Ms Sunjung Kim, independent curator, Artistic Director of Media City Seoul 2010 & Co-Artistic Director of 2012 Gwangju Biennale, Seoul
- Ms Deeksha Nath, curator and writer, New Delhi
- Ms Lesley Alway, Director, Arts Asialink, University of Melbourne, Melbourne
- Ms Natalie King, Director, Utopia @ Asialink, University of Melbourne, Melbourne
Background
Utopia was first proposed during Sun Walking: Australia-Japan Visual Arts Partnerships Program 2005-9. This strategic initiative culminated in key recommendations from forums in Sydney and Tokyo resulting in the Utopia project - a cross regional biennial mobile multi-layer visual arts program. To date, Utopia has secured development funding from Arts Victoria, Australia Council and DFAT. |
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Left: Seung Woo Back, "Signboard", 150x183cm, digital print, 2011. © the artist |
Utopia as Cultural Insurgency
After extensive regional consultation (New Delhi, Singapore, Hong Kong…), Utopia has evolved to become an agile and experimental model that participates in existing activities such as biennales, art fairs and conferences. Inspired by Manifesta, Utopia was originally formulated as a major biennale that changes its destination. Concerns about establishing a new and expensive infrastructure given the number of biennales in the region led Utopia to restructure its model and utilize existing infrastructure. Utopia seeks to be an alternative model of encounter between communities, cities and geographies that is founded on collegiality, reciprocity and capacity building. As such, Utopia is an incubator for cross-cultural ideas, thinking and working methodologies. |
Left: Natalie King, Director of Utopia, Mr Yusaku Imamura, Director of Tokyo Wonder Site and Mr Khairuddin Bin Hori, Curator, Singapore Art Museum, June 2010, Singapore. |
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Back: Yusaku Imamura, Director of Tokyo Wonder Site; Tan Boon Hui, Director of Singapore Art Museum Front: Professor Rajeev Lochan, Director of National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; Natalie King, Director of Utopia @ Asialink, New Delhi, September 2010. |
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Left to Right: Natalie King, Director of Utopia @ Asialink; Neha Kirpal, Director of India Art Fair; Yusaku Imamura, Director of Tokyo Wonder Site; Amrita Kaur, Fair Manager, India Art Fair; Tan Boon Hui, Director of Singapore Art Museum, New Delhi, September 2010. |
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Left to Right: Khairuddin Bin Hori, Senior Curator of Singapore Art Museum; Natalie King, Director of Utopia @ Asialink; Lesley Alway, Director Asialink Arts; Tan Boon Hui, Director of Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, January 2011. |
In the Media
| 27 October 2011: |
"Utopia’s latest venture: exploring concepts of visual art", Dione Joseph, Melbourne City Newspaper, Vol 2, Issue 15. [pdf] |
| 26 October 2011: |
"Hoarding privacy among the teeming hordes", Robert Nelson, The Age (online). Curated by Utopia @ Asialink, Intimate Publics is an exhibition of video projections that delve into the revelatory world of intimacy within public spaces. |
Future Opportunities
• Utopia is presenting a free public forum, pop up video exhibition and special issue of Broadsheet magazine as part of Melbourne Festival 2011• Utopia is in the process of formulating a long term alliance with the Melbourne Festival on the delivery of the international Visual Arts Program
• Utopia @ KIAF (Korean International Art Fair), 22-26 September 2011. Utopia presented a paper at KIAF outlining concepts behind this new regional initiative.
• Utopia @ India Art Fair. Utopia is delivering a session at the International Speakers’ Forum for India Art Fair, 25-29 January 2012 and contributing artworks to the Video Lounge.
• Utopia is participating in Res Artis: Worldwide Network of Artist Residencies conference in Tokyo, October 2012
• Utopia has been invited onto editorial board of a special Australia/India issue of Art Monthly magazine, October 2012
The development phase of Utopia has been supported by Australia Council, Arts Victoria and The Australia International Cultural Council (an initiative of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade).
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