Report on APARN2024 symposium

[Danny Butt]

The 5th meeting of the Asia Pacific Artistic Research Network #APARN2024 — the first physical meeting outside of Indonesia — was hosted by The Faculty of Creative Media at Multimedia University in Cyberjaya, Malaysia, 12th-13th June 2024.

The event was a great success thanks to the efforts of Roopesh Sitharan, James Ly Toong Kwok and the MMU team. It was attended in person by a range of researchers primarily from Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, providing the opportunity for formal presentations and informal networking, particularly among graduate students. There were also valuable discussions on what the network can do to advocate for policy and organisational changes in the region (both at government and institutional levels) to support artistic research.

The symposium was hybrid in format, with a number of participants in the region and beyond joining via Teams, and a live stream was available on the new APARN YouTube. Selected presentations from the event will be developed for APARN’s channel on the Journal for Artistic Research.

During the event, the convenors group (Kurniawan, Danny, Gunalan, Roopesh) met to discuss the current position of the network and its future plans. Here are the key points.

1. Professor Pornrat (“Oui”) Damrhung and Lowell Skar from Chulalongkorn University are working to host the next APARN meeting in Bangkok in 2025. Oui has joined the APARN convenors group. APARN also has interest from groups in Singapore, India and Vietnam in hosting future meetings and discussion is ongoing.
2. The hybrid meeting format entailed many complexities and it was resolved that future meetings will be in two forms: the annual symposium will continue to take place with a host convenor in the region, and while it may allow remote audience participation, it will be designed for in-person presentations and participation. A second annual meeting will be held online, aligned with the Society for Artistic Research (SAR) conference and forum and be focussed on sharing activities and connections broadly across the network, including with those who cannot travel to the event. The next SAR conference is to be held in Porto 7-9 May 2025 and the call for papers is here.
3. The APARN channel at the Journal for Artistic Research also holds the potential to provide visibility for activities in the region, the question is just how to populate it. There was some discussion of an open call and prize to encourage people in the network to self-document their activities. Any ideas on this from members are welcome.
4. There was discussion about the administrative/organisational form of APARN - currently, APARN has no organisational status, it exists as a Special Interest Group of SAR, and every activity of the network is organised on a volunteer basis by one of the convenors, who are the people who organise the meetings. There is currently no capacity to formally incorporate as an organisation, and while this would bring independence and clarity, it would also locate the network in a particular nation-state which would bring its own administrative challenges. This will be an ongoing conversation among the convenors as the organisational structure develops but for now it is important to clarify to participants in the network that there is currently no budget or administrative capacity in APARN itself.

5. In the current model the symposium host temporarily assumes responsibility for APARN’s infrastructure (conference publishing on the channel, instagram, website) as part of their annual responsibilities, usually involving graduate students and staff from their institution. The network could look to formalise graduate student involvement across the network, building on the success of the 2021 online meetup.

There are a number of ways for members to participate in the APARN network:

1. Share your activities with other members in the APARN Google Group here;
2. Join the annual symposium and/or online meeting;
3. If you are interested in writing something for the APARN channel on the Journal for Artistic Research (whether or not associated with the annual events), please reach out to a convenor;

4. The convenors are also interested to talk with potential future hosts of the APARN symposium, or those keen to help in other ways, just get in touch.

COVID-19 arrived shortly after the network’s formation in 2019, but there was the sense at this meeting that there is enthusiasm at many levels for continuing the regional gathering in person, and the stellar work of Roopesh, James and MMU in organising #APARN2024 has been a clear step toward that future.

We look forward to continuing to work together!

Your APARN Convenors:

Kurniawan Adi Saputro, Danny Butt, Pornrat Damrhung, Gunalan Nadarajan, Roopesh Sitharan