As a researcher and lecturer of modern & contemporary Asian art, one frequently considers the making of art, history, and its future – including in relation to the world and world-making, as well as in the recent claims that are being made producing a global history of contemporary art that further draws attention to a consciousness of local art histories. In this seminar, I hope to share some initial reflections on the parameters of my research project on ‘This Art of Mankind – Making the World in Modern and Contemporary Indonesian Art'.

 

I will examine issues of historicity and contemporaneity that arise in the production of discourses of contemporary art in relation to the world. As the world of contemporary art is crossing an important junction, there is an urgent need to foster an art historical awareness capable of producing a real, alternative future for contemporary art in places such as Indonesia. For contemporary art to confront the essential unpredictability of its future, the proposition of contemporaneity, as ‘art to come’, will essentially need to transcend any type of historical validation; or historicity.

 

I will also refer to a recently completed essay which draws on the need to provide renewed attention to the actual practices of art in relation to culture, society, politics and experiences of everyday life; to the ‘eventful truthfulness’ of art-making. And I will focus on the Jakarta-based artists’ collective ruangrupa, which between December 2010 and January 2011 celebrated its tenth anniversary under the theme ‘Expanding the Space and the Public’ (Merentang ruang dan publik).

 

Thomas J. Berghuis is a lecturer in Asian Art at the Department of Art History & Film Studies and Deputy Director of the Australian Centre of Asian Art & Archaeology at the University of Sydney. During the past ten years he has worked extensively in the field of modern and contemporary Chinese art with special focus on the development of experimental art in China over the past thirty years. Starting in 2006 he has also been travelling regularly to Indonesia, where he has been working with the contemporary art scene, particularly across Java, and is currently co-editing a book on Siasat: Expanding the Space and the Public with the artist collective ruangrupa in Jakarta (forthcoming, 2011).