The 2024 Asian Art Biennial opens with a two-day public program of talks, performances, ceremonies, and shared moments of reflection.

Throughout the program, we will navigate the terrains of displacement, dystopias, and speculative futures, exposing the pervasive and absurd logics that shape how we live, work, and connect today. By proposing alternative imaginaries and reimagining rituals, the artists offer ways of experiencing time that challenge linearity, instead embracing layered, coexisting realities. These entangled acts—both conceptual and material—create openings in the present, where unexpected solidarities and tangible possibilities begin to surface, suggesting new forms of collective existence that resist oppressive systems.

The forum features conversations with participating artists, moderated by the Biennial's curatorial team.

November 16, 2024
Session 1 Data, record, memory: Scriptwriting and artistic practice
Panel conversation with Emre Hüner, Kirill Savchenkov, Maiko Jinushi
Moderated by Asli Seven
As literary forms evolve alongside data-driven technologies of information, how do the organic, mechanical, and digital ways of scriptwriting define contemporary artistic practices aimed at recording, simulating, and modifying past utopianisms and dystopian futurities?

Session 2 It's Not Me, It's You: Is it Time to Break Up With Capitalism?
Panel conversation with Ary Jimged Sendy, Yoshinori Niwa, Gary Zhexi Zhang
Moderated by Merv Espina
Or, how do artists take advantage of art and cultural economies to expose the limits of capitalist logic, and make visible the intricacies and intimacies of otherwise invisible domestic and supply chain labour?

Session 3 Rewriting Time: Echoes of Other Worlds
Panel conversation with Andrius Arutiunian, Nefeli Papadimouli, Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Moderated by Anne Davidian and Fang Yen Hsiang
Haunted by alternate states, dreams, and invisible worlds, the three artists unravel hallucinated sonic and visual threads, exploring how time is experienced through the reinvention of contemporary rituals.

Session 4 Performance: Dream Coat
Nefeli Papadimouli
Exploring the potential for ephemeral communities, ten performers envision a gathering in a meta-verse linking different dream spaces, inspired by the circular movements of dervishes and celebrating the solar cycle and circadian rhythms.

November 17, 2024
Session 5 Landscaping the Margins, Memory, and Rehabilitation
Panel conversation with Cetus Kuo Chin-Yun, Milay Mavaliw, Trương Quế Chi & Nguyễn Phương Linh
Moderated by Fang Yen Hsiang
Through their unique methodologies of landscaping, artists traverse history, borders, ethnicities, and individuals, confronting personal and collective trauma, emotional connections, healing and resilience within life stories, while weaving together the neglected and invisible threads of affect.

Session 6 Performance: Dream Coat
Nefeli Papadimouli
Exploring the potential for ephemeral communities, ten performers envision a gathering in a meta-verse linking different dream spaces, inspired by the circular movements of dervishes and celebrating the solar cycle and circadian rhythms.

Session 7 Remembering Trees, Speaking of Soil
Panel conversation with Sharon Chin and Wang Yu-Song
Moderated by Haeju Kim
How do the stories of humans, nature, and materials intertwine? While Sharon Chin questions the industry affecting the nature and community of her town, Wang Yu Song examines soil microorganisms, making the invisible visible. Through these two perspectives, the discussion explores material flows and their impact on life's balance.

Session 8 Conversation with the curators of the 2024 Asian Art Biennial
With Fang Yen Hsiang, Anne Davidian, Merv Espina, Haeju Kim, Asli Seven

Session 9 Performance: What Will This Circle Bring This Time?
Natalia Papaeva
Inspired by the Buryat meditative ritual of goroo, the circumambulation of a temple or stupa, and the proverb that a Buryat woman is first heard, then seen because of the four kilograms of gold and silver jewelry she wears, the artist's performance transforms the act of walking into a process of accumulation: gathering sound before falling into silence.

Session 10 Who is Afraid of Ideologies?
Collective Conversation with Marwa Arsanios, Wu Ke-Wei and Tsai Yu-Jou (artists and writers, Kuanntian Studio), Hu Yu-Chi (director, Duzitou Rice Nursery), Chen Hung-Wei (director, Pu Shi Jing Dao Farm), Hsu Yu-Chao (associate researcher, Ecological Soil and Water Conservation Research Center, National Cheng Kung University)
Moderated by Anne Davidian & Tsai Ming-Jiun (deputy director, Asia University Museum of Modern Art)
A new chapter in Marwa Arsanios' multifaceted research into communal property, this public conversation—convened by the artist and members of Kuanntian Studio—invites the audience to dismantle possessive imaginaries and explore alternative ways of living in harmony with nature.

 Program
 (Sat.) November 16, 2024/ Auditorium, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts
 

     (Sun.) November 17, 2024/ Auditorium, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

November 16-17, 2024 / Auditorium, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

November 16-17, 2024 / Auditorium, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts