FASS Staff Profile

DR DAVID TEH
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
DEPARTMENT of ENGLISH, LINGUISTICS & THEATRE STUDIES

Appointment:
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
Office:
AS5/03-03
Email:
elldt@nus.edu.sg
Tel:
65166044
Fax:
Homepage:
http://profile.nus.edu.sg/fass/elldt/
Tabs

Brief Introduction

B.A. (Hons) University of Sydney (1999); Ph.D. University of Sydney (2005)

My research to date has primarily concerned the visual cultures of Southeast Asia with emphasis on video and other non-traditional media in contemporary art. Having made two books on contemporary art in Thailand, my attention has more recently turned to the uncertain boundaries between 'modern' and 'contemporary' art in the larger terrain of Asia and the Pacific. I am preparing a new cycle of research exploring transdisciplinary art histories of these regions, and the place of regionalism itself in those histories. I am also a practising curator. My most recent exhibition project was the 17th Istanbul Biennial (2022), which I co-curated with Amar Kanwar and Ute Meta Bauer.   


Teaching Areas

- Critical Theory
- Worldliness in Modern and Contemporary Art and Literature
- Visual Culture and its Histories (Art, Media, Screen Culture)
 


Graduate Supervision

I am currently co-supervising a PhD thesis entitled 'Ku’er: Queer(ing) Post-Mao Performances' by Goh Wei Hao, a candidate in the university's joint degree programme with King's College, London.

 

 


Current Research

The main thread in my research is what I call the currencies of contemporaneity, the values and discourses that qualify art as 'contemporary' in a given time and place. Pursuing the histories of contemporary art in Asia has led me to focus on a second strand, namely, the place of worldliness and internationalism in those histories. Recent publications have focused on the function of the curator and the formation and impact of regionalisms. I am interested in regional histories of international exhibition-making (including biennales and other spectacles), the challenges it has posed to national, iconographical modes of art history, and the haunting of contemporary art by the aesthetics and technologies of the Cold War. 


Research Interests

- Asian modern and contemporary art 
- Art history and theory
- Curatorship and exhibition histories


Publications

CHAPTERS IN BOOKS

  • - ‘Unframing the Nation: the moving image and its parergon in Southeast Asia’ in Nakamura, Krischer and Perkins (eds), Asian Art and Anthropology (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).
    - ‘The Video Agenda in Southeast Asia, or, Digital, So Not Digital’, in Geert Lovink and Rachel Somers Miles (eds), Video Vortex Reader II (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2011).

ARTICLES IN JOURNALS

  • - 'Under one or several flags', AFTERALL, #51, Spring-Summer 2021.
    - 'Regionality and Contemporaneity', World Art, Vol. 10 No. 2-3, 2020; 351-370.
    - ‘Travelling Without Moving: historicizing Thai contemporary art’, Third Text, #120, Vol.26, No.5, September 2012; 567-583.
    - ‘Who Cares a Lot? ruangrupa as curatorship’, AFTERALL #30, Summer 2012.
    - ‘Itinerant Cinema: the Social Surrealism of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’, Third Text, #112, Vol.25, No.5, September 2011; 595-609.
    - ‘A moving image that can remember its past lives…’, PUBLIC, #44, Fall, 2011.
    - ‘lae laew kwam kleaun wai mai prakot’ (published in Thai; trans. Warisa Kittikhunseri), Aan Journal, Vol.3, No.2, 2011; 142-161.

SHORTER ARTICLES/COMMENTS IN JOURNAL

  • CRITICISM
    - ‘Recalibrating Media: theses on video and media art in Southeast Asia’ (republication, abridged), LEAP, April 2014.
    - ‘Partial Recall: Art HK and Global Art, Year Zero’, LEAP, August 2011.
    - ‘Art of Domestication: Arin Rungjang’, Contemporary Visual Art + Culture Broadsheet, Vol. 40.1, 2011. 

BOOK REVIEWS

  • - ‘Modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art: an anthology’ (review), Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol.44, No.2, June 2013.

CONFERENCE PAPERS

  • - ‘Currencies of the Contemporary: biennales and the international in Southeast Asia’ at World Biennal Forum No. 2, Auditorio Ibirapuera, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 26-30 November, 2014
    - ‘The step not beyond: obstacles to exhibition history’ at The Future Curatorial What Not and Study What? Conundrum, Centre for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, U.S.A., 6-8 November, 2014
    - ‘La Fausse Monnaie: tradition as false currency’ at Tradition (Un)Realised Symposium, Arko Art Center, Seoul, South Korea, 26-27 September, 2014
    - ‘Baramee: performing withdrawal in Thai contemporary art’ at Performance Studies International #20: Avant-garde, Tradition, Community at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, Shanghai PRC, 4-8 July, 2014
    - ‘Many Centres: problems, theories and models of the preter-national' (invited speaker) at EQUATOR Symposium, Universitas Duta Wacana and Taman Budaya Yogyakarta, Indonesia, November 2013
    - ‘THE PRETERNATIONAL: the contemporary and its treacherous vocabularies’ (invited speaker) at Para/site International Conference, Asia Society Hong Kong, April 2013
    - ‘Where Monsoons Meet: Curatorial Currents in Southeast Asia’ (invited speaker) at The Artist as Curator, AFTERALL symposium, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (University of the Arts, London), U.K., November 2012
    - ‘Baramee: the ethics of withdrawal in Thai contemporary art’ at The Politics of Criticism in Thailand: Arts and Aan, Southeast Asia Studies Programme, Cornell University, October 2012
    - ‘New/Media/Art in Thailand: expanded history for an expanded field', at RE:WIRE Media Art Histories, Liverpool John Moores University, U.K., September 2011

OTHERS

  • CATALOGUE ESSAYS
    - 'Charisma and Withdrawal in Thai Contemporary Art', in Active Withdrawal: Weak Institutionalism and the Institutionalization of Art Practice (ed. Biljana Ciric and Nikita Yingqian Cai; in Chinese), catalogue essay for Alternatives to Ritual at Times Museum of Art, Guangdong, forthcoming. 
    - ‘Hoong khao blachot maa’, catalogue essay for FEAST: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art (ed. Stephanie Smith), SMART Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2013.
    - ‘Charles Lim’s Informatic Naturalism: notes on SEA STATE 2’, catalogue essay for Charles Lim solo exhibition at Future Perfect, Singapore, December 2012.
    - ‘Heman Chong: Calendars, 2020-2096’, catalogue essay for Heman Chong’s solo exhibition, Calendars, 2020-2096 at NUS Museum, December 2011.

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