Many words are walked in the world. Many worlds are made. Many worlds make us. […] In the world of the powerful there is room only for the big and their helpers. In the world we want, everybody fits. The world we want is a world in which many worlds fit.
— ‘Fourth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle’
Quoted by Marisol de la Cadena and Mario Blaser, A World of Many Worlds, 2018
Asia Forum and Asymmetry Art Foundation are excited to co-present ‘A World of Many Worlds’, a One-Day Assembly on Global Asias, as part of the official Collateral Events of the 60th edition of La Biennale di Venezia. The one-day assembly will take place on Saturday, 20 April 2024 on the first public day during opening week at the historic cultural institution Fondazione Querini Stampalia. ‘A World of Many Worlds’ is realised with the support of Asymmetry Art Foundation and Bagri Foundation.
‘A World of Many Worlds’ responds to the Biennale’s theme Foreigners Everywhere, to consider what it means to acknowledge the existence of multiple worlds rather than just multiple subjects, and what it might mean to put them in relation. The conversation asks us to imagine a multiplicity of social geographies, political positions, cosmologies, aesthetic perspectives, and temporal locations, while seeing them not as incommensurable, not as universal, but as pluriversal. By doing so, we reject false notions of universalism that centre the West and merely include other narratives, politics, and modes of expression. The flowing streams of our voices are instead multiple, connecting geographies and articulating new intra-related modes of being and knowing.
Courtesy of the Artist and Blindspot Gallery.
These flows issue from and through Asias. Not an Asia spectacularised for global consumption, but an introspective constellation of Global Asias that looks deeply at its difficult histories of colonisation, genocide, environmental devastation, displacement, diaspora, dispossession, and war, and seeks to imagine new worlds into being through a multiplicity of positions, connections, diasporas, and solidarities. ‘A World of Many Worlds’ offers a portal into different temporalities, allowing a glimpse into hopeful transformation, surprise, and joyful encounters.
“Since its launch (co-presented with the Bagri Foundation) in 2022 in Venice, a site of historical and ongoing convergences, Asia Forum has focused on amplifying Asian voices and exploring the rich and intricate entanglements, and hopeful practices of Global Asias. We are excited to work with Asymmetry Art Foundation to bring together our shared expertise and experiences to conjure multiple worlds of Asia – to discover new critical possibilities and imaginaries, while fostering new conversations and friendships. ” – Annie Jael Kwan
“As an organisation promoting curatorial practices rooted in Chinese and Sinophone cultures, it is paramount for us to contextualise our expertise to join and contribute to a global knowledge network. Through our collaboration with Asia Forum we are proud to jointly create an invaluable space of nuanced discourse and experimentation to respond to the theme of this year’s biennale by foregrounding different modalities and temporalities of a multitude of Asias, and their connectivities and solidarities.” – Michèle Ruo Yi Landolt
Full programme of the day:
10:00 Registration
10:45 Welcome
11:00 Opening invocation
‘Blowing a feather’ performance by Yao Qingmei
11:20 Conversation 1: Histories, mobilities, and intimacies in diaspora (moderated by Ming Tiampo and Nick Yu)
Isaac Chong Wai, Rachel Dedman, Sandra Gamarra Heshiki, Hammad Nasar, Yasufumi Nakamori, Vidha Saumya
13:00 Screening programme
Lap-See Lam & Wingyee Wu, Mother’s Tongue (2018, 17’42”)
Subash Thebe Limbu, Ladhamba Tayem; Future Continuous (2023, 14’50”)
Kang Seung Lee, The Heart of a Hand (2023, 13’13”)
14:00 Conversation 2: Eco-cosmologies and climate/social/racial justice (moderated by Annie Jael Kwan and John Tain)
Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina, Yuko Mohri, Amol K.Patil, Sakiya (Sahar Qawasmi & Nida Sinnokrot), Mark Salvatus and Trevor Yeung
16:00 Garden performance followed by aperitivo
PEARLS by Joshua Serafin, performed by Lukresia Quismundo
Courtesy of the Artist.
‘A World of Many Worlds’ is co-organised by Annie Jael Kwan, Michèle Ruo Yi Landolt, Hammad Nasar, John Tain, Ming Tiampo, and Nick Yu.
Annie Jael Kwan 