What is South East Asia? Emancipatory modes of knowledge production in Ho Tzu Nyen’s Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia

Abstract

ABSTRACT With his on-going, and probably endless, series Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen questions today’s representations of South East Asia and attempts to embrace the region’s plurality, fluidity, complexity and intangibility from an artistic perspective. Based on academic research, the series embodies the artist’s effort to convert and transform the outcome of his research into multisensorial and empirical art forms. As such, the Critical Dictionary brings forth new creative possibilities and innovative epistemological languages that challenge today’s modes of knowledge production, and in particular a form of rational and scientific knowledge that dominates our society.