27 June 2024, THURSDAY
DocTalks x MoMA
Session 6
8 AM EST / 2 PM CET
(Please note this session is scheduled at an earlier time than our regular time and on a Thursday)
DocTalks x MoMA
Session 6
8 AM EST / 2 PM CET
(Please note this session is scheduled at an earlier time than our regular time and on a Thursday)
Stage 1: The search for shared materials ecologies to build Arts Collectives in Malaysia
CLARISSA LIM KYE LEE
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Respondent: Natalie Donat-Cattin, ETH Zurich
COEX@Kilang Besi, audience is sat atop chengal timber reclaimed
from a different malay vernacular houses
from a different malay vernacular houses
Malaysian arts collectives sit in between a globalized call to enter the international art world and attending to the public on the ground (Becker 2008). Often engaging in community arts practice, collectives tend to their neighbours by offering shared civic spaces, a limited resource in many urban contexts. Typically housed in underused as-found spaces, a design process begins by looking for affordable materials, crafts people, and collective building for their community arts practice. This paper begins by interrogating how do we build arts collectives with civic space function using shared material resources. By being generous with time and space, the arts collectives are a testament to exploring relational modes of shared materials and lands, also known as tanah. A theoretical framework developed by Jatiwangi Art Factory, tanah refers to the shared soil and lands around us, but also building with and in relationship social relations. Art collectives have been sharing whispers, gossip and developing forms of tanah where there is a material lack.
By developing a series of maps and interviews, this paper elucidates the first stage of any architectural project for an arts collective. To begin interrogating the sets of relationships between artisanal crafts people, material resources and a flexible timeframe, a relational material practice is necessary (Latour and Yaneva 2017). Tracing the human and non-human actors, this paper presents how tanah is practiced. By identifying how materials like hard timber are salvaged, given time to be crafted and treated by local artisans, before landing on site to prepare for construction, tanah elucidates a material ecology. By supplementing typical material procurement practices with placed-based networks of relations, arts collectives reinvigorate everyday commons of material cultures and develop a new stage 1 for many architectural projects.
By developing a series of maps and interviews, this paper elucidates the first stage of any architectural project for an arts collective. To begin interrogating the sets of relationships between artisanal crafts people, material resources and a flexible timeframe, a relational material practice is necessary (Latour and Yaneva 2017). Tracing the human and non-human actors, this paper presents how tanah is practiced. By identifying how materials like hard timber are salvaged, given time to be crafted and treated by local artisans, before landing on site to prepare for construction, tanah elucidates a material ecology. By supplementing typical material procurement practices with placed-based networks of relations, arts collectives reinvigorate everyday commons of material cultures and develop a new stage 1 for many architectural projects.