News from the Asia Pacific Artistic Research Network (APARN) Special Interest Group of the Society for Artistic Research - January 2026

 

APARN2026 to be held in Singapore July 2026

The 2026 APARN meeting will be held in Singapore on 27-29 July at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Singapore, in conjunction with Arts & Design Practice Research Exchange (ADPRex). The theme is Who Speaks? Authorship, Authority, and Authenticity. A call for papers is currently live on the APARN website https://www.aparn.net with submissions due on 1st March 2026.

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APARN2025 celebrates largest APARN meeting to date

Hosted by Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, APARN2025 included over 150 presentations from 22 countries., making it the largest gathering yet for the network. Published proceedings from the event are available on the conference website at https://aparn2025.com/index.html

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Exhibition: Chapalang

A touring exhibition Chapalang, curated by APARN convenors Gunalan Nadarajan and Roopesh Sitharan will take place from 22 January 2026 to 1 February 2026 at Artspace @ Helutrans, Singapore. “Chapalang is a random and seemingly chaotic commingling of things haphazardly put together, and in this exhibition exemplifies cultural strategies and attitudes associated with 'making do'; making one's own the heterogeneity of technologies and things we inhabit. These creative reconfigurings and vernacular appropriations of technologies in Southeast Asia are gathered here to speculate on the radical potential of such cultural practices to unsettle and reimagine our relationship to the technological.”

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New Publication : Rebordering the Archipelago (Perimeter Editions 2025)

Launched at the Society for Artistic Research conference in Porto in 2025, this publication brings together panels, artist presentations and essays from the APARN 2020 event Rebordering the Archipelago. Featuring contributions from Raqs Media Collective, Moonis Ahmad, Léuli Eshrāghi, Victoria Hunt, Natalie King, Yuki Kihara, Helly Minarti, Tamarra,Yedija Awom, Ginoe and Mark Teh.

Published by Perimeter Editions, and edited by APARN convenors Danny Butt and Kurniawan Adi Saputro, the publication texts are in English and Bahasa Indonesia. Order from Perimeter, or in Europe from Idea Books.

 

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Climate/Coloniality residency with PRAKSIS Oslo.

Convenors Danny Butt and Kurniawan Adi Saputro, along with original APARN member Helly Minarti, developed a thematic residency on Climate / Coloniality with PRAKSIS Oslo. An open call received over 130 applications, and the 10 residents from Norway and beyond undertook an extensive program of fieldwork and dialogue over 5 weeks in August/September 2025. A publication is forthcoming.

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Next APARN meetup:

All members of the APARN SIG are invited to join the next online meeting, aligned with the 17th conference of the Society for Artistic Research, hosted by the University of Galway from 23 to 26 June 2026. Exact times for the session will be announced via the APARN Google group and via SAR program.

APARN SIG Google Group

A reminder that all people hailing from or working in the Asia Pacific region with an interest in artistic research are welcome to join the Special Interest Group by signing up for the Google Group at https://groups.google.com/g/ap-arn. The SIG has just added its 300th member and continues to grow, all members can use the group to share details on their own research activities.

Call to host APARN2027

The APARN convenors will be publishing an open call for hosts of the 2027 APARN meeting later in the year, with view to making an announcement by the time of APARN2026. All regional organisations connected to artistic research - University based or otherwise - will be welcome to submit proposals to host the event. Priority will be given to applications from countries that have not yet hosted APARN, and our hope is that the meeting can be an opportunity to positively influence conditions for artistic researchers in the host country. Please subscribe to the APARN Google Group to receive notice of the call.

Questions? Please contact one of the convenors below:

Kurniawan Adi Saputro
Indonesian Institute of the Arts Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
kurniawan.as@isi.ac.id

Danny Butt
Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne
butt@unimelb.edu.au

Pornrat Damrhung
Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok
Pornrat.D@chula.ac.th

Gunalan Nadarajan
Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design, University of Michigan
guna@umich.edu

Roopesh Sitharan
Multimedia University – MMU Cyberjaya
rs@mmu.edu.my