An exercise in role reversal
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02 November 2024
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A public talk with Susanna Chung and Jocelin Kee from Asia Art Archive (AAA)
What kinds of transformations does an archive undergo over the course of twenty-five years? How does an archive not only preserve materials, but continuously reactivate them within the present? What ethical, methodological, and communal questions emerge when histories are collected, organized, interpreted, and shared?
As part of Nguyễn Art Foundation’s ongoing Phụ Lục Project and its broader research into archival practices, public learning, and the afterlives of artistic communities in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, this public talk invites representatives from Asia Art Archive (AAA) to reflect on the evolving role of the archive today as a living, shifting structure shaped by relationships, labor, accessibility, and collective responsibility.
Founded in 2000, Asia Art Archive has become one of the most significant independent initiatives dedicated to documenting and making accessible recent art histories from Asia. Through research residencies, digitization projects, publications, exhibitions, educational initiatives, and community-centered programming, AAA has developed new ways of thinking about how archives can remain open, active, and socially embedded.
Beginning with a general introduction to AAA’s history and mission, this talk traced the organization’s evolution over the last twenty-five years, narrating the story of the choices and strategies that have sustained their work. Through specific case studies from across the region, Susanna Chung and Jocelin Kee discussed the different archival methodologies AAA has developed in response to varied local contexts, political realities, artistic practices, and forms of precarity. The presentation also speaks directly to questions currently emerging through Phụ Lục Project and NAF’s wider archival initiative, both of which attempt to rethink how archives may be activated through exhibition-making, education, research, and public participation.