This symposium builds on the Biennale’s title Every Step in the Right Direction to explore ways of confronting and re-working the world through contemporary art. Art has long provided a condition to investigate the circumstances of our times. However, its ability to bring people together has become more uncertain in the face of changing global politics, especially as different interests appropriate art as a means to advance ideological interests. Evermore, art is a common, though contested, space to discover opportunities and address predicaments.

This symposium takes shape as a streaming platform consisting of filmed lectures, written texts and live-audience panels allowing for real-time audience engagement. It brings together artists, curators, critics, historians, advocates and cultural workers who have sought more active roles in engaging with urgent social conditions, and whose work cannot be narrowly framed within systems of presentation, validation and circulation in the art world. With the ethical imperatives of art and action in mind, this symposium will examine how action and rightfulness can enable us to move in the right direction, together.

Panel 1: The Geopoetic and the Ethical (2-4pm, GMT+8)
Panel with Bart De Baere, Franciska Zólyom, Mi You and Serubiri Moses
Moderated by June Yap
Prompted by the Biennale’s aspiration to re-world through form and to inspire thoughtful sympathy for urgent action, speakers engage with the potential of places to give rise to transformation within and beyond themselves. More crucially, this panel will examine how these transformations become a form of resistance against hegemonic social formation.

Panel 2: The Promise of Action and Rightfulness (4-6pm, GMT+8)
The Promise of Action and Rightfulness:
Panel with Elia Nurvista, Bojana Piškur, Khairullah Rahim and Sidd Perez
Moderated by Goh Sze Ying
With the Biennale’s faith in patience and action, speakers explore the notion of rightfulness through their work, where rightfulness is animated by time as well as agency both individual and communal. Across various disciplines, the speakers address the assurance of action in relation to their work on history, cultural memory and present anxieties.

For more information and to register click HERE.