Please join us for the presentation of Tables | Factories with author and artist Ho Rui An in conversation with Nut Srisuwan

Wednesday 7 September
from 6.30pm

Motto Berlin
Salitzer Str. 68 (im Hinterhof)
10997 Berlin

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Ho Rui An is an artist and writer working at the intersections of contemporary art, cinema, performance and theory. Working primarily across the mediums of lecture, essay and film, he probes into the ways by which images are produced, circulate and disappear within contexts of globalism and governance. He has presented projects at the Bangkok Art Biennale; Asian Art Biennial; Gwangju Biennale; Jakarta Biennale; Sharjah Biennial; Kochi-Muziris Biennale; Kunsthalle Wien; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore; and Para Site, Hong Kong. In 2019, he was awarded the International Film Critics’ (FIPRESCI) Prize at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Germany. In 2018, he was a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.

Nut Srisuwan is an independent researcher and curator based in Bangkok and Leipzig. His research examines the interrelations between subjects in transnational contexts, such as national identities, politics and migratory movements. As a co-founder of the artistic and curatorial collective “Charoen Contemporaries”, he also works together with other practitioners in finding new models for the art ecosystem in Thailand.

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Tables | Factories
Ho Rui An
Published by BANGKOK CITYCITY GALLERY

The process of preparing this book began with looking at photographs of large meeting tables around which Chinese and Singaporean public officials gathered during the many Chinese government study missions to Singapore throughout the 1990s. While such images might seem unremarkable today, the appearance of former revolutionaries of the Maoist era as sedentary technocrats marks the historic emergence of a distinct political imaginary in a time when “the economy” was displacing class struggle as the primary subject of governance in China.

It was at the table that these technocrats, having extricated themselves from the masses, devised the concept of the socialist market economy to frame the economic reforms that were launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1978. As they insisted on the compatibility of the market economy with the prevailing socialist social contract, the reformers articulated their turn towards the market as a decision informed not by the “invisible” manner through which the market allocates its resources, but by the assumed transparency of its information flows, which they believed would make visible what the party-state had been previously unable to see.

Yet, to the extent that this process of “seeking truth from facts”, as the reformers put it, is founded upon a set of separations—the party-state from the masses, information from ideology, the economic from the political—what ultimately underwrites the total visibility apparently provided by the table is the concealment of that which must not be allowed to appear as information in order for the logic of the market to obtain: the exploitation of labour.

It is on this basis that the factory can be construed as the table’s forgotten origin and impenetrable interior, and the gate that circumscribes the compound the limit of the market’s capacity for making things visible. Designed to spatially contain industrial labour and hide their exploitation from the public sphere, the factory gate is as close as the technocrat would get, as seen during the factory’s opening ceremony, to the world of labour under a capitalist mode of production. In thus proposing a convergence between tables and factories and examining their respective regimes of (in)visibility across the contexts of Singapore and Reform-era China, this collection of images and texts seeks to understand how the seemingly disparate worlds centred around these two objects in fact call forth each other to produce our deeply unsettled contemporary condition—one where the recognition that accrues to visibility has replaced freedom from exploitation as the most that the people can ever demand after the revolution’s untimely end.

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J. Carreyn
journal de Bertille

J. Adam, R. Bacourt, M. Bernard, B. Boros-Turquin, A. Bournazeau, M. Bremer, M. Dorchies, C. Farina, S. Fiorucci, V. Foucher, A. Gayet, J. Jennifer, O. Jones, C. Leconte, J. Lempert, G. Morandi, M. Ogier, B. Porcher, A.Pyvka, C. Raimondi, E. Spalletti, N. Sutter-Shudo, S. Toulouse, S. Verastegui, V. Villard

Printed with Risograph.

Handmade numbered edition of 16.

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Aren’t we all familiar with the deeply personal experience of waking up alone, in anguish and despair, from the depths of a nightmare? Whether it’s disordered sleeping, sleep paralysis or the more regular frightening dream, the night and its terrors have kept us occupied since the very beginning of humanity. For this issue of Simulacrum, we – together – delve into the furthest corners of our minds to discover the dark and disorienting meaning we might find there. But a nightmare is much more than something to be fearful of. The nightmare is entangled with our histories and can lead us to our deepest selves, by bringing up feelings which we don’t dare to feel in real life. It has provided many creators with inspiration for their art of many forms. As we will discover within this issue of Simulacrum, this personal aspect of the nightmare can lead to incredibly diverse approaches and interpretations that we hope will allow you to reconsider the meaning and feeling that nightmares can bring us.

Authors: Neža Kokol, Joyce Poot, Niels Noot, Jonas van Kappel, Jérémy Bernard, Kenneth Geurts, Denise van Rooij, Kim Mulder, Frank van der Wulp, Laure Vanrijckeghem, Sanne Kabalt.

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Is what is below the surface so fatal?

Becky posed this question in her piece, which speaks to a lot of what we’re trying to capture here in Drown, Good Drown.

In their own way, the writers expressed consciousness and subconsciousness immersed in empathy, stories with sentiment and hints of humor, sadness, and joy. These writings and drawings were made by us ArtCenter College of Design students in the summer of 2022.

Actually, Megan hates summer. As Megan says, “summer’s role is to forever choke and steal what life came after winter.”

She thinks June is okay.

Rachael gave us a downpour of thoughts, an imagistic stream of consciousness straight to our souls, and Sophia spoke in a tender melodic tone provoking a sense of coziness and the tension of intimacy.

While Ibrahim imagined life undersea as a telepathic realm of shadow twins.

Along with Constant’s honesty and vulnerability, we also got to share his quiet but bold humor reflected in his story.

We almost named the publication Esther Williams because of Natalia’s misfit mermaid tale, which inspired us to be who we really are.

My story of reminiscing leads to the end of the book leaving softhearted fragrances of nostalgia.

Me. Cringe.

Drown, Good Drown, I think, is most importantly a collaboration. We’re all so different. You’ll see. But our different perspectives are reflected in drawings and stories. We mish and mash our creative minds for a submersive experience for the reader more than any of us could accomplish on our own.

So we invite you to pour yourself a cool water on the rocks, snorkel through our creative minds, and drown in the world of our stories.

Trust me; it will be a good drown.

– The Editor

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Type+Authorship is a multi-disciplinary class taught at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. We conjure, discuss, and immediately write our way into a book of collective thematic interest and function within an aggregate studio environment where we design and produce a publication.

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Futuros mejores condensa conversaciones, voces y proyectos a través de los cuales discutir e imaginar futuros espaciales más justos. Futuros que, desde las ruinas del presente, las violencias y exclusiones, imaginan alternativas capaces de vislumbrar nuevas posibilidades. Arquitecturas amables con otras especies y territorios, prácticas espaciales para la hospitalidad, mediadoras de memorias orales y microbianas, nuevos imaginarios para el aprendizaje, nuevas (y no tan nuevas) arquitecturas para el cuidado más allá de la vivienda y tecnologías domésticas al servicio del bien común para una producción espacial todavía por venir.

Autores: Husos Arquitecturas (Diego Barajas y Camilo García), Mariana Pestana, Isabel Gutiérrez Sánchez, Candela Morado, Anna Puigjaner, Superflux, Alejandro Galliano, La Escuela Nunca y los Otros Futuros, Studio Ossidiana.

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37 x 39 cm
Strap Length 65 cm
Black color with white logo

80% Recycled cotton, 20% Recycled polyester

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Printed on 115gsm grey recycling
paper (Blue Angel), Cover: 300gsm
grey recycling paper (Blue Angel)

1. Edition of 30 (signed, numbered)

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Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh is an ode to the infinite courage and resilience of the women of Shaheen Bagh, Delhi, who sat in protest for a 100 days and nights. A book of photographs, drawings, songs, letters and other material gathered as a record of the iconic protest, marks an extraordinary moment in the political and contemporary history of India.

In December 2019 a small group of Muslim women from the working-class neighbourhood of Shaheen Bagh, came out of their homes and sat down in protest, occupying a stretch of one of Delhi’s busiest highways. They were standing up against the Citizenship Amendment Act, which was designed to strip the Constitution of India of its right to religious equality. This peaceful sit-in began in December 2019 until the pandemic sent India into lockdown, and the state used this as an opportunity to destroy and dismantle all traces of the protest. This book serves as urgent and crucial evidence of a time that is systematically being erased from our collective memory.

From the women of Standing Rock and Black Lives Matter, The Dandi March and Chipko Movement, and those at the front lines of India’s non-violent protests, this book is an act of remembrance that preserves the powerful legacy of women at the forefront of historic revolutions.

Soft bound in undyed, hand-spun Kora cotton by Womenweave, Maheshwar

Edition of 800

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“Our curatorial approach strives for a different kind of collaborative model of resource use — in economic terms but also with regard to ideas, knowledge, programs and innovations.” – ruangrupa

The documenta fifteen will be curated by a collective for the first time in its history. Another first: the artistic directors come from Asia. ruangrupa is an association of nine friends who unconditionally combine art with their everyday lives as a practice of living and surviving together under the socioeconomic conditions of their native Indonesia. Fourteen other collectives, so-called lumbung members, have been invited to join ruangrupa in transforming Kassel into a new, sustainable ekosistem. Lumbung, the Indonesian term for a communal rice barn, is the starting point for all their activities and also this documenta.

In this volume of the book series Thoughts on Collective Practice ruangrupa talks about their beginnings, the harsh struggle for survival under the Suharto regime in Indonesia, the post-dictatorship euphoria, student protests, punk, and video culture. About their first art projects, maintaining solidary social relationships, the Indonesian tradition of sharing, and their unusual approach to resources.

The autobiographical conversations are supplemented by five exemplary glimpses into ruangrupa’s projects since 2003 and unpublished archival material.

The Collective Eye (TCE), founded 2012 in Montevideo, organizes exhibitions and symposia on collective practice in art. The collective has pursued a partnership with DISTANZ since 2021, publishing the book series Thoughts on Collective Practice as an extended collective between the publishing team and TCE. Their work aims to strengthen polynational dialogues between different collectives as well as between collectives and theorists. The volume of conversations with ruangrupa is the fourth installation in the series.

The Collective Eye: Dominique Lucien Garaudel, Heinz-Norbert Jocks, Emma Nilsson and Matthias Kliefoth (Eds.)

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2022
Digital dye sublimation print on jersey fabric
One Size – 2XL (width: 60 cm, lenght: 83 cm)

Edition of 25

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