'When was Asian Art, History?' - Collective Approaches to Contemporary Art, With Case Studies in China and Indonesia

In this lecture, Dr Thomas Berghuis will share his current research on 'collective approaches to contemporary art' as they can be witnessed in collective practices and experiences of contemporary art – linking art, politics and the aesthetics of everyday life and causing the potential democratization of contemporary art through 'experimentation' and 'play'. The lecture will draw on two case studies, connecting collective approaches to contemporary art in China and Indonesia. It will be argued that these collective initiatives do not only bring a radical change to thinking about art as an autonomous sphere of practice that is separate from the world of politics, culture, and society. Instead they provide the means with which to reconsider the actual folding of artistic autonomy and heteronomy. Collective approaches to contemporary art thus constitute the event, agency, and object of contemporary art to be part of a collective network of exchanges. As these collective exchanges are continuous and ongoing, they concern both the historicity and futurity of contemporary art.

About the Speaker

Dr Thomas Berghuis is a Lecturer in Asian Art at the University of Sydney and a former Faculty Member and Consultant Lecturer for the Sotheby's Institute of Arts in Singapore (2008-2010). In 2010 Berghuis became the Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Asian Art & Archaeology (ACAAA) and a Committee Member of the newly founded China Studies Center (CSC) with the University of Sydney, leading a research group on Cultural Policy and Heritage in China. In 2012 Berghuis will become a Member of the future Sydney Southeast Asian Studies Center; following his work on Southeast Asian Art, with specific focus on modern and contemporary art in Indonesia.

Berghuis is co-sharing the position of Chief Investigator – with Professor Mark Ledbury of the Power Institute at the University of Sydney – to work on a research project on Connecting Art Histories in Southeast Asia that is supported by the Getty Foundation. Next to his studies Berghuis is also working as a Curator of contemporary art, including, more recently for Edge of Elsewhere – a three year exhibition project with the Sydney Festival exploring the contact between art and community engagement across the Asia-Pacific (2010-2012).

Berghuis is the author of Performance Art in China (Hong Kong: Timezone 8, 2006), which has been praised internationally for drawing well-needed attention to what was often still considered an unknown subject in Chinese contemporary art.