2018–20
Lecture and video installation with digital prints on backlit film mounted on LED-illuminated acrylic, wallpaper, books and magnetically levitated hand model
Considering 1997 Asian financial crisis against the economic “miracle” that preceded it, Asia the Unmiraculous is a lecture and video installation that seeks to diffuse the aura of a “miraculous” Asia by examining the entirely profane conditions—shot through by financial capitalism—that set the stage for one of the first large-scale crises of globalisation. Focusing on the relationship between race and financial capitalism, the project considers the conditions that made possible the “Asianisation” of the miracle and the crisis that followed. A key line of inquiry examines the ideological contestations between neoliberalism and the developmental state model that unfolded amidst the “miracle”, during which the invisible hand of the market was pitted against the interventionist hand of the state.
Drawing upon research undertaken over two years across Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia, the project extends to the renewed Asian futurisms of today. In this “return” of Asia to the future, the state reasserts itself through infrastructural and technological power, seen especially in the proliferation of smart cities across Asia and the construction of high-speed rail networks as part of China’s ongoing Belt and Road initiative.
The video installation features fourteen posters—in the style of real estate listings—that critically re-examine the Asian “miracle” and a wallpaper of an inverted photograph of the horizon captured from the Port of Piraeus, which has been operated by the Chinese state-owned shipping company, COSCO, since August 2016 when it acquired a majority stake in the port.
