許芳慈

Hsu Fang-Tze is a lecturer at the Department of Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore (NUS). She is also a coordinator of the M.A. in Arts and Cultural Entrepreneurship.She holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from NUS. Her dissertation research was supported by the President’s Graduate Fellowship and the FASS Promising Graduate Scholar Award. Her research interests include the formation of visual modernity, Cold War aesthetics, memory, philosophies of technology, and the embodiment of artistic praxis in everyday life.

Apart from her academic work, she has also been a curator, and has worked with many artists and institutions in the last decade. From 2010 to 2012, she served as the digital manager for Asia Art Archive. She was appointed a curator for the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts from 2012 to 2013. Her most recent exhibitions including Art Histories of a Forever War: Modernism between Space and Home (2021-2022, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan), Fistful of Colours: Moments of Chinese Cosmopolitanism (2021-2022, NUS Museum, Singapore), and Wishful Images: When Microhistories Take Form (2020, NUS Museum, Singapore). In 2019, she presented Gendered Bodies in Southeast Asia in collaboration with Tessa Maria Guazon at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.

She is also an experienced editor and translator. Her editorial and translation work include the Chinese translation of SouthEastAsia: Spaces of the Curatorial (edited by Ute Meta Bauer and Brigitte Oetker, 2021). She also co-edited Voices of Photography, Issue 28: The Okinawa Issue (2020) with Machida Megumi. Her writings can be found in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Art Critique of Taiwan (ACT), and LEAP (China).

As a scholar and curator whose research, teaching and curatorial practice focus on cultural and historical justice, I am deeply committed to diversity, equality, and inclusion. Intellectually, my responsibilities are to raise awareness while articulating rights of co-existence in peace; pedagogically, my aims are to encourage self-actualisation while campaigning ways of empowerment; curatorially, my purposes are to advocate for those who were and still are muted by structural violence while exploring modes of reconciliation. As a curator working with both institutional and independent art organizations, my attention to the scalability of public pedagogical practice through art-spaces distinguishes me from my professional peers. I consider my formal training in Cultural Studies as, in part, a reflexive resource that enables me to engage cultural research with academic activism; and to serve as a natural bridge between academic work and curatorial practice. While my academic research involved a radical historicization of the Cold War through sound and media studies, preparation for the thesis allowed me to conceptualize and deploy my long-standing experience in curatorial as practice-based research. Inseparable from active engagement with artistic communities, my research commitments extend beyond the academic sphere.

• 2021/10-2022/2

  Art Histories of a Forever War: Modernism between Space and Home, in collaboration with Kathleen Elizabeth Ditzig Li Ying, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan

• 2021/9-2022/9

  Fistful of Colours: Moments of Chinese Cosmopolitanism, NUS Museum, Singapore, Singapore

• 2020/6-2022/6

  Wishful Images: When Microhistories Take Form, NUS Museum, Singapore, Singapore

• 2019/1-2019/3

  Gendered Bodies in Southeast Asia, in collaboration with Tessa Maria Guazon, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Manila, Philippines

• 2017/7-2017/10

  Manila: Hidden in Plain Sight, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Manila, Philippines

• 2016/10-2017/1

  Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition 2016 – Negative Horizon, in collaboration with LU Pei-Yi, Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei, Taiwan

• 2016/2-2016/5

  Working-Through: Vandy Rattana and His Ditched Footages, TheCube Project Space, Taipei, Taiwan

• 2013

  Artists’ General Assembly: The Langenbach Archive, Archive Researcher, Sculpture Square, Singapore, Singapore

• 2013/6-2013/9

  On Site: A Centennial Retrospective of Robert Capa, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan

• 2013-2019

  Ph.D, Cultural Studies in Asia, National University of Singapore, Singapore

• 2008-2010

  Master of Arts, Arts Administration and Policy with emphasis on exhibition study, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA

• 2007

  Bachelor of Arts, Department of History; minors: Department of Marketing and Department of Chinese Literature, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan

• 2022

  Board of Directors, Videotage, Hong Kong, China

• 2020-

  Lecturer, Department of Communications and New Media, Coordinator of Master of Arts and Cultural Entrepreneurship, National University of Singapore, Singapore

• 2021

  Jury, Singapore Shorts ’21, Asian Film Archive, Singapore

• 2020

  Jury, Asian Vision Competition, 12th Taiwan International Documentary Festival, Taiwan

• 2019/6

  Artistic Mentorship, Curators’ Intensive Taipei 19: International Conference and Workshops, Taiwan

• 2019

  Nominator, HUGO BOSS ASIA ART, China

• 2019

  Nominator, Loop Barcelona Video Art Production Award 2019, Han Nefkens Foundation, in collaboration with the Fundació Joan Miró

• 2019/7-2021/7

  Curator, NUS Museum, Singapore

• 2018-

  Artistic Mentorship Program, Seminar in Taipei, organised by Pro Helvetia and Taipei Arts Festival, Taiwan

• 2018

  Advisory Committee, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan

• 2017-

  Advisory Committee, Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab, Taiwan

• 2017

  International Jury, ARKIPEL Penal Colony - 5th International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, Indonesia

• 2017

  Visiting Scholar, College of Fine Arts, University of the Philippines Diliman, Philippines

• 2017

  Resident Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, Philippines

• 2016

  International Jury, 5th Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition, Taiwan

• 2015-2016

  Research Fellow, The Institute of Regional Study in Okinawa University, Japan

• 2012-2013

  Curator, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan

• 2010-2012

  Digital Collection Manager, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong, China

• 2008/8-2010/6

  Gallery Assistant, Sullivan Galleries, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA

• 2007-2008

  Research Assistant, Department of Painting, Calligraphy, Rare Books and Historical Documents, National Palace Museum, Taiwan

• Articles in Journals and Books

• 2023

  ‘Exhibiting History in its Present tense: Curatorial Reflections on Art Histories of A Forever War: Modernism between Space and Home (2021)’, Cultural Politics 19: 2

• 2023

  ‘Between the Curatorial and Art Historiography: T.K. Sabapathy and His Pursuit of Southeast Asia Modern in Art’, in The Edinburgh Companion to Curatorial Futures, ed. by Bridget Crone and Bassam El Baroni (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press)

• 2022

  SouthEastAsia: Spaces of the Curatorial, Chinese version introduction and copy editor, ed. by Ute Meta Bauer and Brigitte Oetker, Taichung: National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

• 2022

  Art Histories of a Forever War: Modernism Between Space and Home’, co-author with Kathleen Ditzig, in Art Histories of a Forever War: Modernism Between Space and Home, exhibition catalogue (Taipei: Taipei Fine Arts Museum)

• 2020

  ‘For the Potential “History” of Ours: Writing alongside Okinawa Photography’s Criticality in Time’, Voices of Photography 28

• 2019

  ‘Giving Time: George Clark’s “Double Ghosts” and the Alter-Politics of Film’, 15th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival Catalogue

• 2019

  ‘Between not yet and never more: Wei Leng Tay’s fugitive Images’, Crossings: a solo exhibition by Wei Leng Tay, NUS Museum

• 2019

  ‘Listening to Indios’ Avant-garde: Reconceptualising Cold War in Asia through Kidlat Tahimik’s Mababangong Bangungot (1977)’, Art Critique of Taiwan 77

• 2019

  ‘Enunciating Third World in the Cold War Asia: Kidlat Tahimik’, in Renjian Thought Review, 10, a Special Third World Issue

• 2018

  ‘Penumbra Query Cinema: Preliminary Thoughts on the Gender Politics of Soundscape in Southeast Asian Experimental Cinema’, Art Critique of Taiwan 74

• 2018

  ‘Image Apparatus and Its Multidirectional Memory: Kao Chung-Li’s Slideshow Cinema – Armageddon Trilogy’, Voices of Photography 22

• 2017

  ‘Utterance of Silent Letter: Precarious Remembrance in Letter #69 by Lin Hsin-I’, ArteBA: Memoria Semestral de Arte Contemporáneos 4

• 2017

  ‘Muted Speech, Apa Khabar Orang Kampung, and To Singapore, with Love’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 90.1

• 2017

  ‘Forgetting – A Form of Death Ever Present Within Life’, in Oblivion: Che-Wei Chen Solo Exhibition, exhibition catalogue (Taipei: Taipei Fine Arts Museum)

• 2017

  ‘Video Eulogy: Reconsidering the Negative on the Horizon of Moving Image’, in The 5th Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition 2016 – Negative Horizon, exhibition catalogue (Taipei: Chew’s Culture Foundation)

• 2017

  ‘Monsoon Asia of Southeast Asia: Shifting Mandala(s) and Frames of Regional Consciousness’, Art Critique of Taiwan 70

• 2017

  ‘The Indecomposable Death and the Cold War Historiography: Fiona Amundsen and Vandy Rattana’s Documentary Images’, Voices of Photography 20

• 2017

  ‘On Portrait Portrait A Speculative Improvisation regarding the Future Past’, Artco Monthly 292

• 2017

  ‘Cinema of Manifesting: Kidlat Tahimik’, Art Critique of Taiwan 69

• 2016

  ‘Historiography of Death: The Aesthetics of Oblivion and Memory Politics in Cold War Archipelago’, New Arts: Journal of China Academy of Art 37: 6

• 2016

  ‘Drafts for Intellectual Sensibility Relief: Critiquing “Discordant Harmony: Critical Reflections on the Imagination of Asia” ’, Artco Monthly 288

• 2016

  ‘Baling: A Theater that Disenchants History’, LEAP 165

• 2016

  ‘Cyborg as an Imagery for Historical Intervention: Roppongi Crossing 2016: My Body, Your Voice’, Artco Monthly 284

• 2016

  ‘Time-Lag and Incompletion: Okinawa’s End of War Present Progressive’, Artco Monthly 280

• 2015

  ‘If Bahasa Jiwa Bangsa’, Modern Art 177

• Conference Papers

• 2019

  ‘Audible Memory: Uses of Sound in the Postwar Okinawa Artists’ Films’, the 11th International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS), International Institute for Asia Studies, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands

• 2018

  ‘From Landscape to Soundscape: Experimental documentaries and their radical Acousmatic Thinking in Cold War Asia’, Shifting Undergrounds in East and Southeast Asia, co-organized by Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore and National Gallery Singapore, National Gallery Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

• 2017

  ‘Reclaiming Cold War Historiography and the Heterogeneous Filmic Selves’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Conference, Sungkonghoe University, Seoul, South Korea

• 2016

  ‘Reconciliation with Whom? Image-making by Cambodian Artists in the Aftermath of the Khmer Rouge’, Association for Asian Studies (AAS) in Asia Conference, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan

• 2015

  ‘Mute Speeches: Recent Documentaries on the Communist Insurgency in Malaysia and Singapore’, 8th EuroSEAS Conference, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

• 2015

  ‘On the Battlefield without Corpses: Situating Visual Modernity in the Light of Asianism from Gao Chong-Li’s My Mentor, Chen Ying-Zhen (2010)’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Conference, Airlangga University, Surabaya, Indonesia

• 2015

  ‘Unlocking the Waiting Room: A Postcolonial Reading of Kidlat Tahimik’s Perfumed Nightmare and Marlon E. Fuentes’ Bontoc Eulogy’, Asia and the Historical Imagination Workshop, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

• Translation (from English to Chinese)

• 2019

  Photography in Southeast Asia: A Survey, by Zhuang Wubin, co-translation, translated and edited by Hsu Fang-Tze, Taipei: VOP Publications

• 2019

  Geeta Kapur Reader: When was Modernism in Indian Art, by Geeta Kapur, co-translation, Shanghai: Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Press

• 2016

  ‘Social Realism: The Turns of a Term in the Philippines’, by Patrick Flore, Modern Art 180

• 2015

  ‘She and Her Mother’s Tongue: Touching on Amanda Heng’, by Adele Tan, Modern Art 179

• 2015

  ‘Unframing the Nation: The Moving Image and Its Parergon in Southeast Asia’, by David Teh, Modern Art 176

• 2014

  ‘Haunted Scenes: Painting and History in Phnom Penh’, by Ingrid Muan, Modern Art 175

• 2014

  ‘Framing the National Spirit: Viewing and Reviewing Painting under the Revolution’, by Nora Taylor, Modern Art 174

• 2014

  ‘Art without History? Southeast Asian Artists and Their Communities in the Face of Geography’, by Nora Taylor, Modern Art 172

• 2021

  Art Histories of a Forever War: Modernism between Space and Home, nominee of the 20th Taishin Arts Award, Taipei, Taiwan

• 2019

  ‘The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name’, Curatorial Research Grant, National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taipei, Taiwan

• 2018

  Nominee, Independent Vision Curatorial Award, ICI, New York, USA

• 2016

  Working-Through: Vandy Rattana and His Ditched Footages, nominee of the 15th Taishin Arts Award, Taipei, Taiwan

• 2014-2015

  Graduate Student Teaching Award, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

• 2013-2017

  The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Promising Scholar Award, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

• 2010

  MA/MS Fellowship Recipient (awarded to top student in research and writing-based practices), School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA

• 2008-2010

  SAIC International Student Scholarship, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA

• 2009

  Dissertation Research Project Grant, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA

• Invited Talk

• 2022

  ‘Ecologies of History’, International Forum, Impossible Dreams, Collateral Event of the 59th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy

• 2019

  ‘Modern Poetry: Chang Chao-Tang in conversation with Hsu Fang-Tze’, We Started Something: Collectivism in Art in Asia: A Symposium, Awakenings: Art in Society in Asia 1960s-1990s, National Gallery Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

• 2019

  ‘Decolonizing Nature: A Thought Experiment with Three Female Artistic Practitioners’, Okinawa Photography History Project Seminar, INTERFACE-Shomei Tomatsu Lab, Naha, Japan

• 2019

  ‘Listening to the Clock of Seeing, or Saying Don’t without Language’, SUNSHOWER Symposium: Dialogue with Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia, SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now Exhibition, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

• 2018

  ‘Thoughts that Breathe: Re-Historicising Nusantara via Multi-species Storytelling’, Symposium, Post-Nature─A Museum as an Ecosystem, Taipei Biennial, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan

• 2018

  History in Acousmatic Listening: Reconsidering the Phonic Public in the Postwar Japan and the Philippines’, Gwangju Biennale 2018: ‘Archive Lounge Program: Extreme Noise’, Gwangju, South Korea

• 2018

  ‘When Dead Labor Speaks with a Gendered Accent: Nguyễn Trinh Thi, John Torres, and Their Found Footage’, Southeast Asian Cinemas Research Network Symposium: ‘Archives, Activism, Aesthetics’, Glasgow Short Film Festival, Scotland, UK

• 2017/12/17

  ‘Historiography of Death: Audiovisuality of the First Island Chain’, A Pluralistic Utopia: Bio-politics and the Search for an Inhuman Alternative, Spring Dialogue, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

• 2017

  ‘The Acousmêtre of the First Island Chain: (De-)Cold War in Asia and the Acoustical Unconscious’, Camera in Action: Asia Moving Image Forum, Goethe-Institut China, Beijing, China

• 2017

  ‘When Dead Labor Speaks: Subjectivity, Subjugation, and Meta-Cinema’, Keynote Speech, ARKIPEL Penal Colony - 5th International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, Jakarta, Indonesia

• 2016

  ‘In conversation with Woomin Hyun’, Index for Diversity: Ethnography-based Art Practice in Asia-Pacific─2016 International Conference on Art Practice (ICAP), Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo, Japan

• 2016

  ‘Towards the Possibility of a Germinating Cinema: Avant-Garde Filmmakers from Okinawa, Taiwan, and the Philippines’, Dialogues Between Images and Histories, co-organized by Spring Foundation, Ray Art Center, and Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China

• 2016

  ‘The Artist as Critic: Historicizing the development of cinema language in Taiwan through the work of Kao Chong-Li’, Forum Keynote, ARKIPEL social/kapital - 4th International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, Kineforum, Jakarta, Indonesia

• 2016

  ‘A Critique on the Discourse of Art and Sociopolitical Intervention in Taiwan’, Keynote Speech, Annual Conference of the Cultural Studies Association, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan

• 2015

  ‘Violent Neoliberalism: The Meaning of Artistic Images in the Post Khmer Rouge Cambodia’, International Conference ‘Southeast Asia and Taiwan: Modernity and Postcolonial Manifestations in Visual Art’, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei, Taiwan

• 2015

  ‘Nexus of Borders: Locating Video Art within the Politics of Screen Culture under the Soft Authoritarianism’, Conference ‘Video Art in Asia: Histories, Aesthetics, and Theories’, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei, Taiwan

• Symposium Convener/Project Researcher

• 2017/12

  Symposium Convener, ‘Reality in its Double Bind: Emotional Signifiers in the Undercurrents of History’, ILHAM Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

• 2013

  FIELDS: An Itinerant Inquiry across the Kingdom of Cambodia, Project Researcher, organized by SA SA BASSAC (Phnom Penh, Cambodia) and ST PAUL St Gallery (Auckland, New Zealand), Cambodia

• Conference Discussant

• 2019

  ‘Embodied Experiences in Southeast Asia and Japan’, the 11th International Convention of Asia Scholars (IIAS), International Institute for Asia Studies, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands

• 2019

  ‘Grassroots Experiences of the Malayan War’, ‘Reconceptualizing the Cold War: On-the-Ground-Experience in Asia’ Workshop, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore