London, Asia, Art, Worlds
When I started with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in April, the London, Asia, Art, Worlds conference seemed so far away. I soon learned it wasn’t, but with the benefit that by the end of the programme, I felt I’d been with the Centre for far longer than three months.
London, Asia, Art, Worlds was a eight day conference taking place over a month, a culmination of a five-year research project investigating the entangled histories of London and Asian artworlds. Of course, most of the planning was long since completed thanks to the co-conveners, Hammad Nasar, Ming Tiampo and Sarah Turner, alongside my pre-(and post)-decessor Ella Fleming. This meant my focus was on coordinating the flow for our 40-odd contributors and over 600 guests.
Somehow, running online events from your bedroom can be as stressful sometimes as a ‘live’ experience. I guess there’s no hiding behind an open bar on a video call. Strangely enough, Greenwich came in handy, as the trickiest venture was calculating joining times across international time zones and British Summer Time. So thank you to the horologist, astronomers and general time nerds at RMG for the training!
The marathon-style conference sessions were on average four hours long each so I’ll avoid embedding, but if anything in particular piques your interest the recordings are all here.
As well as the academic papers, I was also very lucky to work alongside some amazing artists and curators to deliver commissioned work for the conference, including Sophia Balagamwala’s Whereabouts Unknown/Ata Pata Maloom Nahin, Annie Jael Kwan and the QueerAsias and Saba Khan, Taran ‘3D’ Singh and Shaheen Ahmed for Mapping Memory II.
On the penultimate night we hosted a special cabaret performance of Spell by QueerAsias artist Sam Reynolds. I spent weeks finding just the right platform to create a London, Asia cocktail hour. You can watch Sam’s mesmerising rendition, streamed via Airmeet below.
Perhaps my favourite conference adventure was working with our mysterious Zoom bomber, UnHistorian-TerrorArtist Mithu Sen. Mithu wanted to interrupt the repetitive Zoom format, being the glitch in the system, to jolt the audience back into considering the deeper narratives which allow a conference to align the history of a city with that of a continent. Mithu sent a package of eight video interventions which tested the limits of my digital creativity (two screens, good timing and minor panic) with the acting skills of the conveners who were the only ones in on the scheme.
I’m embedding one of my favourite ‘glitches’, (14.47 - 16.00) but I’d highly recommend checking out the full series of Be Beyond Being videos on the PMC Website.
I am with the Paul Mellon Centre for just a one year parental cover and it’s strange to think I’m already a third of the way through. I’m grateful to be given the scope to experiment and play, particular so early in the role. Huge thanks to the conveners for taking me along with them in this journey and to all the team at the Centre for their support and making me feel welcome so quickly, particularly to the PMC Dani Convey who showed me the ropes!