Bamboo Curtain Studio, Taiwan
Bamboo Curtain Studio (BCS) is a non-profit organization in Taiwan founded in 1995. The goal of BCS is to encourage cross-cultural exchanges, national and international, by providing a platform that stimulate new ideas and possibilities. BCS welcomes artists, curators, researchers and creative workers from around the world for a residency. The Studio also aims to create an environment that lifts barriers by providing quality spaces, facilities, and services for on-site production and research. In addition, BCS works closely with local communities to bring awareness about the environment; the project of Art as Environment – A Cultural Action at the Plum Tree Creek has been awarded and recognized nationally and internationally.
Listen to the City, South-Korea
Listen to the City is an art-design-urbanism activism collective, consisting of 4 members but the members are flexibly changing. They’re also running a publisher and a design studio in Seoul, South-Korea. As current members; Park studied fine art and is doing her PhD on Sustainable Urban Planning. Kwon studied Architecture and graphic design, Jiro is a documentary film director. Beside them they have many collaborators. Listen to the City designs various direct actions, including books and exhibitions such as Seoul tours, General strike 2012 and Transition City. Listen to the City has been researching the Naeseong River since 2009 with Buddhist Nun Jiyul, who is working as a green activist. They’ve been organizing many cultural events with evictees in Seoul City, researching the laws, rights and policies on redevelopment. They often organize public debates and actions such as the Village Voice Maps, an attempt to save 100 years of streets.
Jatiwangi Art Factory, Indonesia
JaF programs are annual Village Video Festival (VVF), biannual Jatiwangi Residency Festival (JRF) and triannual Ceramic Music Festival (CMF). All of these programs invite art and cultural practitioners from various disciplines and countries to live, interact, work together with the villagers in order to feel the livelihood of Jatiwangi’s rural society. These people are invited to experiment, formulate and create something with the existing society that will later on be presented or tried out together.
Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC), Thailand
This large venue in the heart of Bangkok is the result of a long and persistent campaign of Thai artists advocating for an art center when there was none. Though BACC is now an established art venue, the rebellious spirit of its advocates still shines through its cutting-edge program of exhibitions and events. BACC often hosts shows in collaboration with Greenpeace and never shies away from environmental, political, and social topics. BACC sees itself as a centre of cultural diversity for a sustainable social development with its mission to 1) Act as a public space promoting both local and international arts and culture to the general public; 2) Support creative processes with an aim to nurture new ideas and knowledge; 3) Inspire imagination and promote arts and culture to the general public 4) Improve local arts and cultural management standards 5) Facilitate and create environment enabling arts and cultural involvement from all sectors.
BRACK, Singapore
Brack is a Singapore-based platform for socially-engaged artists in Southeast Asia. They are interested in practices of gathering, and in dialogical exchanges across mediums, disciplines, and communities. They seek to understand how socially-engaged art can activate a space, community, or society, and we experiment with these very activations—through audience engagement, writing, and working with artists. Right now they’re exploring practices of gathering, how to facilitate collective re-imagining of alternate worlds / futures, what ‘radical hospitality’ might entail, and how we can constructively engage with conflict and difference. Their work is socially-engaged, interdisciplinary, and experiential, and they seek to integrate critical self-reflexivity into all that they do.
Common Room, Bandung, Indonesia
Yayasan Mitra Ruang Kolektif – also known as Common Room Networks Foundation (Common Room) – is an open platform for creativity and innovation . This institution was started as a project led by Bandung Center for New Media Arts. After being initiated as a project that bridges dialogue and interaction to encourage multidisciplinary collaboration and connects numerous individuals, Common Room has managed to outreach diverse social and cultural backgrounds. Since the initial period of development, Common Room has been committed to maintaining space for freedom of expression and civic empowerment that utilized art, culture and ICT/media tools. Starting from 2013 Common Room has been actively engaged in a collaborative effort with Kasepuhan Ciptagelar indigenous community to develop urban-rural collaboration platforms that nurture creativity, artistic experimentation, critical making and social innovation both in local and international contexts.
Ayer_Ayer, Malaysia
Ayer Ayer engages communities about the natural environment through visual, experiential and participatory artworks on two fronts: awareness and tangible social impact. Data gained from collaborative efforts between artists and scientists are translated into art and design projects that foster social participation. In The Shore Debris Table project for instance, artist Ernest Goh removed microplastic fragments from shore debris collected from Punggol beach, Singapore and invited the public to co-create the artwork by joining him in picking out microplastics one piece at a time.
culture360.asef.org, Singapore
culture360.asef.org is a digital platform managed by the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) since 2008. It brings Asia and Europe closer by providing information, facilitating dialogue and stimulating reflection on the arts and culture of the two regions. The Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) promotes understanding, strengthens relationships, and facilitates cooperation among the people and institutions of Asia and Europe. ASEF enhances dialogue, enables exchanges and encourages collaboration across the thematic areas of governance, economy, sustainable development, public health, culture, and education. Culture360.asef.org brings Asia and Europe closer by providing information, facilitating dialogue and stimulating reflection on the arts and culture of the two regions and has been publishing a series of guides on Creative Responses to Sustainability in Europe and Asia since 2015.
Kala Chaupal, India
Kala Chaupal is a catalyst for change in driving affirmative action at the grass root level by bridging the intersection between arts, cultural heritage, local economies & communities to achieve India’s policy goals of balanced, inclusive, sustainable development goals. The organisation interlinks arts, culture and ecology through creation of a sustainable arts, culture & heritage biosphere that can co -exist with the modern & contemporary Indian society. The Trust attempts to cross India’s diverse regions, creating a new series of narrations through a curated approach to invite a deeper understanding of India’s legacy in arts through a past and contemporary approach.
C-PLATFORM, China
C-PLATFORM is a non-profit culture and art research and curatorial organization supported by XIAMEN LUCITOPIA CULTURE CO., LTD, located in Xiamen, China. The organization is focusing on current trends and future concepts in the realm of mixed media. In addition to periodical research subjects and issues it has conducted a series of explorations and related practices. This has been achieved by launching and curating comprehensive research projects and activities which are interdisciplinary, inter-media and inter-sensory. It attempts to establish an interactive exchange platform that continuously releases creative energy and cultural transformation across the boundaries of content production and communication, public awareness and experience.
Land Art Mongolia
LAM 360° (Land Art Mongolia | acronym LAM) is a biennial art festival located in Mongolia. LAM focuses on Land Art as a form of spatial visualization of the relations between nature, culture and social policies. It strongly promotes freedom of expression in joining people and institutions from all sectors of Mongolian society by meshing their respective backgrounds and perspectives through collaboration and networking actions of regional and global scope.By doing so, the organisation would like to incite an advanced discourse on cultural and social policy which will take up environmental and social sustainability with a strong emphasis on the most vulnerable sectors of society in Mongolia (such as: nomadic people | ethnic minorities | non-commercial cultural organizations and youth) in the broader perspective of cultural transformation in Central Asia. LAM organises the ULAANBAATAR PUBLIC ART WEEK and is the host of the residence space in Murum in Khentii Aimag.
SAKA, Philippines
SAKA – Sama-samang Artista para sa Kilusang Agraryo (Artist Alliance for Genuine Land Reform and Rural Development) is an anti-feudal alliance of art and cultural workers that support and advance the peasant agenda of genuine agrarian reform, rural development, and food security. By establishing study groups, integrating with peasant communities, and building a network of peasant advocates, the group learns the fundamentals of the peasant struggle for land justice and helps develop creative communication materials for its advancement as part of a broader mass movement for national democracy. It also aims to recognize and critique the feudalism of the culture industry’s own system of patronage by engaging the feudalism entrenched in the peasant sector. SAKA was established in June 2017 to consolidate the active involvement of many art and cultural workers, cultural organizations and artist platforms in peasant campaigns and issues in the Philippines such as Hacienda Luisita, Kidapawan massacre, Lapanday landgrabs, tiempo muerto, and killing and political persecution of peasants and indigenous people. To date, the allliance brings together approximately 60-70 art and cultural workers to support the call for genuine agrarian reform, food security and social justice in the Philippines.
live.make.share, Vietnam
live.make.share is an artist-in-residence and exchange program, we welcome foreign artists and art managers to our living and working spaces in the region of Bac Ninh, one hour from Hanoi, Vietnam. The program is developed under the umbrella of Undecided Productions & in collaboration with Hien Van Ceramics, with a primary interest in sharing the specific heritage and culture of North Vietnam with our international and inter-regional visitors, and further solidifying these relations to facilitate mobility opportunities for Vietnam-based artists and art managers. The program focuses on three main objectives; creating an environment for conversation and reflection, assisting the production of artistic projects, and encouraging sustainable exchanges of knowledge.
Big Trees, Thailand
Big Trees Project is a movement of people, including many artists, that raise awareness about the value of big trees and green areas in Thailand. The people involved work with various organizations in campaigns for social change and nature preservation. Big Trees Project provides relevant information via social media, organizes activities and sets up pilot projects as examples for the society. Through their projects they demonstrate that preserving, rehabilitating, and developing green spaces and environment in a sustainable way can actually be done, often in creative ways. They help people realize that development can occur without destruction of nature. In 2010, Big Trees Project was founded by a group of ordinary people in collaboration with a large number of partner organizations. Partners include the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, the National Municipal League of Thailand, the Department of Landscape Architecture of Chulalongkorn University, Siam Commercial Bank, PTT Public Company Limited, Somdet Chaopraya Institute of Psychiatry, Green World Foundation, Sueb Nakhasathien Foundation, and many more.
