SAR Special Interest Group Call for Participation: Asia Pacific Artistic Research Network

The development of artistic research has had a strong focus in Europe and the former British colonies, reflecting the critical restructuring of educational institutions and research policymaking in the wake of extensive debates on art’s role in knowledge production. Throughout the Asia Pacific region, initiatives to support artistic research have been sporadic, and not always well networked across disciplines and national contexts. For this reason, the Asia Pacific Artistic Research Network (APARN) has been formed to:

• Map artistic research initiatives and activities in the Asia Pacific region
• Provide a regional framework for practical collaboration between individuals and institutions
• Develop an understanding of local cultural dynamics influencing artistic research activities in the Asia Pacific region

We invite interested artistic researchers working in or from the Asia Pacific region to join the Special Interest Group. To join, please subscribe to APARN’s Google Group at https://groups.google.com/g/ap-arn

We will be having a meeting of group members live and via Zoom at SAR23 in Trondheim - details will be posted in the APARN Google Group. 

APARN SIG Members’ Meeting at SAR2023, Trondheim, Norway: 19th April 2023 - 1000-1200 CEST (GMT +1). 

There will also be a public presentation (in-person only) to SAR23 during the Special Interest Group session 1300-14:30.

Our annual regional meeting will be hosted by ISI Yogyakarta in July, details are below.

We look forward to welcoming you to APARN!

Convenors:

Kurniawan Adi Saputro - Indonesian Institute of the Arts Yogyakarta, Indonesia <kurniawan.as@isi.ac.id>
Danny Butt - University of Melbourne, Australia <butt@unimelb.edu.au>
Gunalan Nadarajan - University of Michigan, United States <guna@umich.edu>

—----------

#APARN2023 “The Matter of Art”

Meeting in Yogyakarta, Indonesia Friday 7th July 2023

Hosted by Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta https://isi.ac.id/

Art results from and results in matter. As art comprehends and works its material, it can transform solid marble into soft and transparent silk, or a disturbance in the air into melodic streams of experience. In the age of artificial intelligence, there has been a tendency to obscure the value of matter and sometimes conceive it as a burden, even as technological culture has fostered interest in a “new materialism”; although as Sara Ahmed reminds, feminist analysis has always been concerned with materiality. 

In the posthuman sphere, mastery of the human body and artistic medium give way to the seemingly autonomous techniques of the machine where matter as material figures and therefore is configured differently. However, by dwelling in and intimately wrestling with material when producing creative works, artists find a unique perspective on the nature of the world and the cultures of the self. In the Asia Pacific region specifically, many communities have not policed the distinction between nature and culture as tightly as in Europe, and the damage wrought by climate change and extractive industries is therefore not only a harm to the natural world but also to the social body.

In this sense, the arts also need to matter - if art has significance for our human world, it can open our senses to the state of the planet, how it changes and how we can bring change. Therefore, access to artistic pleasure, intrigue and awe genuinely matter. These experiences hold value regardless of external validation by economic or public institutions, or the immediate practicalities of the everyday. 

APARN2023 invites artists and artistic researchers to share the matter of their practice and why it matters to them and others. Proposals are sought for presentations of 20 minutes in length, and creative formats are welcomed. Please send an abstract of 250 words and a short biography, or any questions about the event, to <aparn@aparn.net> by 30th April 2023.