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'Us'?</title></head><body>
<div>dear sufern,</div>
<div>can you please circulate this on csaa-forum? many thanks,
audrey</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><b>Seminar by visiting scholar C. J.
W.-L. Wee</b></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><b>(Associate Professor of English,
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)</b></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><b><br></b></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><b>Imagining a Metropolitan East Asian
"Us"?</b></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><b>Notes on High and Mass
Culture</b></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><b><br></b></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font size="-1"><b>Tuesday 23 May, 2006
4.15-5.45</b></font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font
size="-1"><b><br></b></font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font size="-1"><b>ARTS CENTRE BUILDING
(Crn. Grattan & Swanston), UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE ROOM
218</b></font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font
size="-1"><b><br></b></font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font size="-1">How is a rapidly
developing region in which there are intra-regional flows of capital
and cultural products aesthetically<i> imagined</i> by those who live
within that region? The "East Asian Miracle" years of the
1980s-90s saw a new spatialized or cartographic imaginary emerging,
one in which Southeast Asia became regarded as no longer part of
Southern Asia but, instead, as part of a larger rapidly (and almost
clichéd idea of a) "globalizing East Asia." Is the epithet
"East Asian" an imaginary meaningful enough to apply to the
mass-cultural creations circulating in the region? The imaginative
process seems to imagine not only an urban but a<i> metropolitan</i>
East Asian "Us," though it must be problematized, given entrenched
regional politico-historical differences. However, the object of
analysis, while a material phenomenon, is also a<i>
de</i>-<i>objectified</i> impulse, displaying culture's evasiveness,
even as it is being invoked. The metropolitan modern-urban nexus also
has purchase in the high-cultural realm, in the visual arts primarily
and, to a lesser extent, in the regional theater scene. The
achievements (or otherwise) of East Asian states trying to create
"global cities" competitive with the Western metropole have a place
in the curatorial practices that have helped imagine into existence an
entity now called "Contemporary Asian Art."</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font size="-1">This presentation
reflects upon some of the connections/disconnections in the aesthetic
imaginings of a putative regional urban modernity. It takes into
account the presence of what I call the "global West" in the
region at large and the sort of metropolitan modernity that must
develop if "we" are to be a significant cultural counter-player to
the West<i> already</i> in our midst, even as increased regional
wealth means looking "inside" the imagined region for markets and
cultural validation becomes more possible.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font size="-1"
color="#000080"> </font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font size="-1"
color="#000080"> </font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font size="-1"><b>C. J. Wan-ling Wee</b>
is an associate professor of English at the Nanyang Technological
University, Singapore, and took his Ph.D. from the University of
Chicago. He was previously a Fellow in the Regional Social and
Cultural Studies programme at the Institute of Southeast Asian
Studies, Singapore, and is now in Australia as a Visiting Fellow at
the Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University. Wee is
the author of<i> Culture, Empire, and the Question of Being Modern</i>
(2003), the editor of<i> Local Cultures and the 'New Asia': The
State, Culture, and Capitalism in Southeast Asia</i> (2002) and the
co-editor of<i> Two Plays by Kuo Pao Kun</i> (2002). He is
completing a project presently titled<i> Revealing Distortion: Culture
and an 'Asian Modern' in Singapore.</i> Apart from the project he
will be working on at ANU, entitled 'Creating 'Asian' Art:
Modernity and Cultural Production in "Globalised" Singapore', he
is also currently co-editing a collection of essays that addresses the
development of cultural performance research tentatively titled<i>
Contesting Performance</i>.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font size="-1"><br></font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font size="-1"><b>Presented by Theatre
Studies, School of Creative Arts & Cultural Studies, Department of
English</b></font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font size="-1"><br></font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font size="-1">Inquiries: Peter
Eckersall eckersal@unimelb.edu.au, 8344 8627, Audrey Yue
aisy@unimelb.edu.au</font></blockquote>
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