New Delhi - Asia Assemble

ASIA ASSEMBLE is a three-day gathering of artists, curators, academics and arts institutions from around Asia in New Delhi. Structured as a series of conversations, screenings and artist presentations, Asia Assemble seeks to understand the possibilities, modalities and urgencies of arts and cultural work around Asia in 2017.

In our individual, collective and organisational capacities we continue to understand and negotiate our local, national and continental conditions to respond to immediacies in a largely ambiguous Asia. Khoj enters this conversation from the perspective that Asia has never been purely self-delimited, but rather the product of interaction with other regions. New imaginations of Asia are not an affirmation of Asiacentrism but rather an attempt to overcome a logic dominated by egocentrism, exclusivity, and expansionism.

We ask: Where is the ‘silk’ in the New Silk Route? In an era of neoliberal govermentality, resurgent nationalism, and ‘democracy with Chinese characteristics’, can we find possibilities of coexistence and communication in other Asian structures? How do the arts, receiving funding sometimes from states, sometimes from regional bodies, from international organizations and multinational corporations, play into existing and emergent structurings?

Through conversations, Asia Assemble aims to provide a platform to share challenges, explore connections, discuss strategies and exchange ideas to collectively speculate on new frameworks for our times.

Asia Assemble is supported by Sher-gil Sundaram Arts Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan.