Master Dialogues

21.5.2019 / 5.30 pm / Lecture

“Making the Invisible Visible”

by Keiko Sei [Bangkok, THA]

Introduction: Sabine Gebhardt Fink

Room: Forum 1

This lecture and the workshop (see below) consider the invisible

labour of artists and those teaching and organizing art whereby

conversations, discussions, collaborations, and exchanges take

place in an ephemeral “invisible space” meaning that these efforts

are not always perceptible in the end results presented to

the public.

Keiko Sei, writer, curator, and media activist, investigates

the circumstances of contemporary totalitarian societies in

which the social order and its citizens, existing under extreme

conditions, often make invisible problems of the world visible

for the first time. In her lecture, Sei, who often works anonymously,

will describe the process whereby she set up a film

school in Burma (Myanmar) starting in 2002 and where addressing

any contemporary topics didn’t exist for decades in lower

and higher education Sei not only explores the background and

history of this development, but also considers this experience

in relation to the larger problem of negotiating different cultures

and realities in our world of today.

MAY 22–23, 2019, 9:30 AM–5:00 PM

22. & 23.5.2019 / 9.30 am - 5.00 pm / Workshop and Concluding Public Discussion

“Invisible Studio” by Jerome Ming [Pretoria, ZAF]

and Varsha Nair [Baroda, IND]

With guests:

Linda Cassens Stoian, Lena Eriksson, and Sabine Gebhardt Fink

Room: Forum 1 and Common Studio Space

As a practical demonstration, this workshop and concluding

public discussion serve as a bridge to the topics addressed in

Keiko Sei’s lecture (see above) and exemplify in practice the invisible

labour of artists and those teaching and organizing art.

Participants have the opportunity to experience and interact in

an ephemeral “invisible space” in which conversations, discussions,

collaborations, and exchanges can take place that are not

always perceptible in the end results presented to the public.

Jerome Ming and Varsha Nair will conduct this workshop

in collaboration. Both are interested in dialogical processes through

which people/things are brought together. Although a

framework is set up in advance, the eventual outcomes are not

predetermined.

As an introduction to the workshop, Ming and Nair will

present their own exchange about the planning of the workshop,

which began as emails in September 2018 and which not

only entailed sharing ideas, but also making actual artworks.

This introduction aims to make the process of planning visible

by presenting the contexts, stories, and socio-political realities

of their own environments. Participants will be invited to consider

the “invisible studio/space” and work singly or in pairs/

groups to make unseen aspects relating to their own environment

visible.