What happens when we imagine an artwork not just for today, but for the next 100 years – and how can we dream differently about legacy, community and the futures we leave behind? Join artists Andy Field and Rosabel Tan in conversation with MIF Creative Director Low Kee Hong as they discuss An Inheritance – a new exhibition shaped by the dreams and hopes of primary school children today for children 100 years from now.
Presented as part of the Program Residensi Seniman Indonesia Baku Konek, a constellation of residencies across Indonesia led by ruangrupa and the Jakarta Biennale: a conversation between Ade Darmawan (ruangrupa), Che Kyongfa (Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo), Leonhard Bartolomeus (Curator, Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media) and Rosabel Tan (Writer and Researcher, Director of Satellites, Aotearoa). Hosted by Gudskul Ekosistem.
One of America’s foremost writers and public intellectuals, Viet Thanh Nguyen's remarkable debut novel The Sympathizer — a globally minded reimagining of the Vietnam War – won the Pulitzer Prize, sold over a million copies and received a major HBO adaptation. Its equally scorching sequel, The Committed, received similar critical acclaim, with The New Yorker describing Nguyen as “a voice that shakes the walls of the old literary comfort zone”. Making his AWF debut, he joins Rosabel Tan to discuss his acclaimed fiction and his recently published memoir, A Man of Two Faces.
A panel conversation with Aotearoa-based Chinese creatives Rosabel Tan, Bev Moon and Cindy Huang, who kōrero about their mahi, their Chineseness and how the two might intersect. Moderated by performer and theatre maker Alice Canton.
Commissioned by the Asia New Zealand Foundation and written by Rosabel Tan, New Waves offers unique insight into New Zealand’s changing relations with and in Asia through the arts and how those relations are changing the nature of what is happening here in New Zealand. As part of its launch, Rosabel Tan explores transnational collaboration and different cultural sector contexts with Kyu Choi (Seoul Performing Arts Festival), Natalie Hennedige (Singapore International Festival of the Arts), Sasapin Siriwanij (Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting) and River Lin (Taipei Arts Festival).
In her New York Times bestseller How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Jenny Odell confronted the ceaseless demands on our time and focus, dismantling the cult of efficiency. Fiercely intelligent and original, she offered both a critique of the forces vying for our engagement and an action plan for how to resist them. Her latest book, Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, takes a deep dive into the fundamental structure of our society and finds that the clock we live by is built for profit, not people. A subversive, compassionate and profound voice for our cultural moment in time, she presents her case for new ways to imagine life. Chaired by Rosabel Tan.
As limits on physical international travel and touring continue, artists are innovating and finding new ways to work, present, tour, and collaborate internationally. Hear from a panel of local and international artists who talk about their practice in the digital, hybrid, and remote collaboration spaces. Facilitated by Gabrielle Vincent (Artistic Director - Tauranga Arts Festival) with Ron Berry (Executive Director & Artistic Director – Fusebox Festival, USA), Julia Croft (Live Artist & Theatre Maker), Andy Field (Co-Director - Forest Fringe, UK), Ross McCormack (Choreographer - Muscle Mouth), and Rosabel Tan (Director - Satellites).
In 2018, Ling Ma’s debut, Severance, won a 2018 Kirkus Prize and was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of 2018 and shortlisted for the 2019 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Now in her first collection of short stories, Bliss Montage, her courtship with the bizarre finds footing in the all too real world of love and loneliness, home and belonging and the search for connections, set somewhere in a shimmering land between the possible and the improbable. From Chicago, she joins Aotearoa writer and creative producer Rosabel Tan to talk about craft, identity and the genre-bending nature of her work.
How to be a Bad Muslim is the elegant, debut non-fiction offering from award-winning New Zealand writer, poet and journalist Mohamed Hassan. It maps the personal and public experience of being Muslim through a lens of identity, Islamophobia, surveillance, migration and language. Hassan speaks authentically and piercingly on mental health, grief and loss, while weaving memories of an Egyptian immigrant fighting in this special conversation with Rosabel Tan.
Pip Adam and City Gallery Book Club return, with a twist. The world has been turned upside down by Covid-19. Planes are grounded, galleries are closed, social distancing has become the new norm, and staying in is the new going out. What are people reading and watching in the global pandemic? Tiger King. Yes, but in a counterintuitive move, many are turning to books and films about pandemics. In February, Penguin UK reports that sales of Albert Camus’s The Plague are up 150% on last year. The novel sold out on Amazon and went swiftly into reprint. The 2011 Steven Soderbergh movie Contagion has also soared in popularity. According to Warner Brothers, it was number 270 in its catalogue in December, but has now jumped to number two, outranked only by the Harry Potter movies. This special Coronavirus edition of Book Club will begin with a discussion of Camus's novel and Soderbergh's film, and move on to what experiencing a pandemic has been like. It's a Book Club built on the idea of reading the virus, in all its implied levels. With Rosabel Tan, John Summers, and Megan Dunn.
Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are, said the 19th-century French lawyer, politician and gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat Savarin. As travellers know well, food is an entrée to place, a pathway to understanding the culture, history, values and social structures of a country. Malaysian born Asian food expert Tony Tan joins NZ Masterchef champions Kasey and Karena Bird and Ima Cuisine’s Yael Shochat to reveal more of the places that inspire them, through the food tastes and smells that capture their imagination, in conversation with Rosabel Tan.
In a world where borders dominate conversations across continents comes the 20-strong essay collection The Good Immigrant USA, an exploration by writers of the experience of being other, through personal stories of living between cultures, languages and identities. It follows a UK edition, which was hailed by Zadie Smith as lively and vital. Join Alexander Chee, Elaine Castillo and Rosabel Tan in a conversation chaired by Noelle McCarthy to discuss immigration and belonging.
Five writers talk about an encounter with art that prompted an intense reaction, whether joy, anger, confusion, enlightenment or something else altogether. Hosted by Rosabel Tan with Sinéad Gleeson, Vanessa Crofskey, Mary Macpherson, and Megan Dunn.
Gregory Kan (Under Glass), Helen Rickerby (How to Live), Chen Chen (When I Grow Up I Want to Be A List of Further Possibilities), and Jane Arthur (Craven) join host Rosabel Tan for a revelatory event. Each poet has selected a poem from within their own collections and will lead us through the writing of them. Where were they when the idea was sparked? And has the poets’ relationship with their poems changed over time?
Rosabel Tan, Eric Ngan and Allan Xia discuss the triumphs and failures of making large-scale platforms that support our creative communities. Facilitated by Lynda Chanwai Earle.
Praised as ingenious by The New Yorker for its “technical artistry with an unfettered emotional directness”, Jenny Zhang’s debut short-story collection Sour Heart interrogates the immigrant experience in eight linked stories told from the perspective of a first-generation, Chinese-American girl living in New York, and was the first acquisition of Lena Dunham’s publishing imprint Lenny Books. It follows poetry, essays and the chapbook Hags, all of which have contributed to marking Zhang out as one of her generation’s most provocative voices. In conversation with Rosabel Tan.
Must-read book lists are ubiquitous, but what of the duds? Four writers who have taken several hits for the team make a case for writing that should be spurned for the sake of sanity and/or decency. Dredging up old grievances and possibly initiating new ones, Brannavan Gnanalingam, Roseanne Liang, Bill Manhire and Stephanie Johnson present a modest list of writing you should never read. Ever. Chaired by Rosabel Tan.
Four fans stake a claim on behalf of a writer to the title of Great Kiwi Classic author: literary biographer Rachel Barrowman (shortlisted for the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards) punts for Maurice Gee, Mary Paul for Robin Hyde, theatre critic John Smythe for Bruce Mason, and John Weir for James K Baxter. A follow-up discussion attempts to distil the essence of home-grown literary classics. Chaired by Rosabel Tan.
Critics occupy an uncomfortable position, often finding themselves in the firing line from all sides: too harsh, too fawning, not constructive enough. But just what is the job of a critic? What value do they add? And what makes a good or a bad critic? International Shakespeare critic Peter Holland and New Zealand art critic Wystan Curnow front up for a discussion with Rosabel Tan, editor of the NZ online magazine The Pantograph Punch, about the place of the critic in the cultural conversation.
