The 2017 round of simultaneous direct local elections (Pilkada) taking place on 15 February in Indonesia bore great significance for national politics. At stake was not only the Jakarta governorship, but also the presidency in 2019, as President Joko Widodo had shown that whoever wins the Jakarta election may have a shot at the presidency.
The seminar highlighted and discussed some results of a survey conducted by Merdeka Center for Opinion Research for ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute on respondents from the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak.
ISEAS is honoured to have Mr Ong Ye Kung, Minister for Education (Higher Education and Skills) and Second Minister for Defence launch “The Veil of Circumstance” by Jørgen Ørstrøm Møller, Visiting Senior Fellow, at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
This workshop aims to collect histories of travel, enchantment and wonder in Southeast Asia across the longue durée. In doing so, it brought together scholars whose work spans the geographic and temporal scope of societies, from the medieval era to the modern period, with a focus on ‘magical’ connections. The workshop argues, in trying to write a connected social and cultural history of the Bay of Bengal, it is essential that the histories of religious enchantment, religious history, mobile saints, missionaries, mediums, Gods, spirits and other travellers be collected as well.
Professor Amitav Acharya, The Boeing Company Chair in International Relations of the Schwarzman Scholars Program, Tsinghua University; and Distinguished Professor of International Relations, American University delivered a Lecture titled “ASEAN at 50: Reflections on Its Past, Present and Future” at the ASEAN Lecture Series organised by the ASEAN Studies Centre.
This workshop sought to critically evaluate the ways in which Southeast Asian nations are imagined by artists and other cultural agents such as art critics, gallerists, collectors, independent curators or museums, and the state. It comes at a time when ‘national art’ is being redefined while more public and private institutions in the region are erected to re-imagine the narratives of nationhood. Whether through modern or contemporary art which interrogates the consequences of global capitalism, scholars at this workshop explored how art is deployed either as a coalescing force for the imagination of the nation or a critical expression of its flaws and strains.
The seminar analysed why the interaction between capitalism, globalization, and technology no longer delivers high economic growth and featured the newly published book “The Veil of Circumstance – Technology, Values, Dehumanization and the Future of Economics and Politics” authored by Joergen Oerstroem Moeller.
This was the seventh seminar in the Arts in Southeast Asia Seminar Series. ISEAS warmly welcomed Dr Phoebe Scott, curator at the National Gallery Singapore (NGS) for a presentation titled “Colonials or Cosmopolitans? Vietnamese Artists in Paris in the 1930s-1940s”. More than 20 participants from local museums, universities, and the public attended the talk.