All tagged Landscape

Wounded Landscapes: Debris of War, Residual Vulnerability, and (Toxic) Intimacy in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia

Wounded Landscapes: Debris of War, Residual Vulnerability, and (Toxic) Intimacy in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia

Chairat Polmuk
Articles, Peer Reviewed

This paper investigates transnational ecologies of the vestiges of war in Southeast Asia, where a shared experience of vulnerability has become the very condition of everyday reality and aesthetic expression. Focusing on the legacies of the U.S. bombardment campaigns in Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand during the Second Indochina War, the author looks at how artists and filmmakers such as Allan Sekula (USA), Tada Hengsapkul (Thailand) Vandy Rattana (Cambodia), and Xaisongkham Induangchanthy (Laos), document the lingering effects—and affects—of Cold War atrocities through topographic aesthetics as a locus of “residual vulnerability”.

Heavenly Garden: Creating Intimacy, Developing Empathy

Heavenly Garden: Creating Intimacy, Developing Empathy

Ratu Saraswati
Articles, Reviews

The author, a performance artist, describes the impetus behind “Optik-Optik Kecil” (Tiny Optics), a participatory artwork of collecting morning dew. The performance was held in an area of land in Depok, a city close to Jakarta in West Java province. It was set at a specific time—weekend mornings during the holy month of Ramadan when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk. Participants canvassed the landscape collecting morning dew and, much like the practice of fasting, the performance itself aimed at cultivating people’s empathy. With dew as the materiality of hope and awareness, the artist hoped to make the participants’ realities intersect, even if briefly, within the space of the landscape.

2019 Fall Issue, Landscapes and Material Religion - Editorial

2019 Fall Issue, Landscapes and Material Religion - Editorial

Urmila Mohan
Editorials, Issues

Our Inaugural Issue on the theme of “Landscapes and Material Religion” deals with land and its representation as vital to life and identity. The Fall publications deal with ‘land’ and ‘scapes’ via a performance artwork in interior Java, Indonesia, the creation of a batik style called buketan in coastal Java, and the materializing of sacred landscapes in Pompeii, Italy.