How does writing gather people into publics? What forms does it take under pressure—of fatigue, restriction, or desire? What roles do para-institutions play in shaping what gets remembered or circulated?
‘Writing as Infrastructure: Open House’ invites audiences to an afternoon of conversations and performances that open up the collective explorations from the first eight days of the Workshops for Arts Professionals (12–19 July). Bringing together all fifteen participants and numerous facilitators—from Hong Kong and Mainland China, and across East, Southeast, and South Asia and beyond—the day offers a chance to connect, reflect, and extend the week’s inquiries.
2:00 pm
Who needs an editor?
Is there a divide between ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ editing? How do art writers—critics?—sustain themselves in an economy that undervalues words? Drawing on her bilingual editorial work across Qilu Criticism, ArtReview China, and LEAP, this conversation with Nie Xiaoyi reflects on editing as a situated, collective practice shaped by friendship, censorship, money, translation and day-to-day maintenance.
3:30 pm
Vernacular Language Playlist
A lecture and song-pad by Clara Balaguer that includes popular covers, obscure lyrics, improvised notes, theoretical samples, equivocally generated text-to-video, and one karaoke power ballad dedicated, with love, to the vernacular.
5:00 pm
Hyperpublishing: Publishing aliases and hierarchical evasiveness
Ahmad Makia will present and delve into different examples of how ideological subjectification and interpellation enable forms of plural authorship and spaces to resist the status-quo. Exploring dream narratives, gender identity conversion, pseudonyms and masquerading literature, the presentation will elaborate on hyperpublishing as a method encompassing mind-bodies, space, territory, and the ideological and production constraints of the time in which they are situated.
