Book Launch - Rebordering the Archipelago: Asia Pacific Exchanges

The efforts of oppressed peoples to survive in settler-colonial and postcolonial nations build on regional alliances that precede and exceed the colonial imaginary.

The late Tongan artist and scholar Epeli Hau’ofa proposed that the Pacific is best understood as a “sea of islands” — an oceanic continent, rather than small island states, sorted by Europeans into Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia (small, black, many). He notes that Pacific peoples have traversed the Pacific for hundreds of generations in tune with its winds and currents. Such critical interrogation of how taxonomies shape our intergenerational experience forms an important part of research methods in the arts today, with artists critiquing both extractive neo-colonial economies and isolating neoliberal aesthetics in their rethinking of borders.

This publication brings together dialogues and essays from the Rebordering the Archipelago, symposium presented by the Asia Pacific Artistic Research Network. The core of the publication are edited transcripts and presentations from four panels of artists and curators from across the Asia Pacific region:
Raqs Media Collective and Moonis Ahmad;
Léuli Eshrāghi and Victoria Hunt;
Yuki Kihara and Natalie King;
Helly Minarti and Tamarra, Ginoe Ojoy, Mark Teh, and Iriano Yedija Petrus Awom.

Introduced by Danny Butt and Kurniawan Adi Saputro, with essays on critical regionalism by Léuli Eshrāghi and Helly Minarti.