Essays
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READBy positioning itself as belonging to the region, the pictorial periodical hoped to help its readers see and understand different aspects of Asia using photography, alongside text and illustrations.
Revisiting the First Decade of ‘Asia Magazine (1961-1998)’
This essay visits Asia Magazine, the Hong Kong-based pictorial weekly that sought to show Asia to Asians through photography, colour pages and free Sunday distribution across the region’s English newspapers – tracing its founding, Filipino photographic influence, and the visual culture it shaped.
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READIn the context of Vietnam, where ambiguity can act as a counteractive method to conceal intentions and suggest different perspectives on the same ideologies, beliefs, or traditions that we are brought up to follow, the medium of moving image becomes a vessel for artists who have to speak without vocalization, to convey through gestures, and to sing in metaphors. This ‘genre’ of ambiguity desists rigid interpretation that hinges entirely upon research practice.
Trespassing in Plain Sight: Ambiguity as a Generative Force
Through the practices of Hachul Le Do, Lêna Bùi, and Ngọc Nâu, the essay presents an insight into how contemporary artists in Vietnam have adapted moving images into a language that activates intentional ambiguity to subvert direct confrontation.
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READReading my friends’ and co-authors’ essays, I realised that when we are confined by a time and space that limits our bodies and minds, knowledge needs to make sense for the past, present, and emerging – not a distant, unlikely future. Kitchen knowledge reminded us of this urgency. Knowledge must function like food: we gather it and use it, or save it for later, but it is perishable.
Summoning in the Kitchen: The ‘lintas-batas’ politics of Gerwani women
Drawing on prison memoirs, Api Kartini, and Memasak Harapan – a collective anthology co-created by the group of author-friends – the essay recovers Gerwani’s vision of the kitchen as political and boundary-crossing by linking its history to today’s state food interventions to call for reclaiming cooking and care as forms of resistance.