Artlands Panel: Cultural Heritage – Regional Identity and Collective Memory
As part of our "Regional // Regional" initiative, Asialink Arts has developed this panel session to present at Artlands to share insights and consider adapted approaches to the sharing of cultural heritage.
As part of our Regional // Regional initiative, Asialink Arts has developed this panel session to present at Artlands, the Regional Arts Australia national conference. The intent of the discussion is to share insights and consider adapted approaches to the sharing of cultural heritage.
Cultural Heritage: Regional Identity and Collective Memory
The discussion will explore how artistic and cultural expressions enable the sharing, protection and cultivation of cultural heritage. Conversations surrounding cultural sensitivity, cultural ownership and social responsibilities will shed light on approaches to authentic connections to community, history and collective memories are fostered. Challenges and transformations inspired by such responsible and authentic connection will also be covered to understand the relationship between cultural heritage, identity and memory in practice.
The panel invites speakers Kim Hak (Cambodian photography artist), Pip Kelly (Australian filmmaker, curator and Asialink alumni) and Mikaela Jade (Caborgal woman, Founder and CEO of Indigital), moderated by Dr Pippa Dickson (Director of Asialink Arts).
The session wraps up by questioning tensions that arise if aspects of heritage and cultural expression only serve the interests of a particular segment of the community or when it is seen as exploitative and or at risk of being misappropriated.
Kim Hak, Portrait of Nov Oeub, "Alive" Chapter II, Australia, 2015
Artlands
As Australia’s largest regional arts gathering for over two decades, Artlands is a strategic exchange that responds to emerging trends, discovers new ideas, considers adapted approaches and showcases artists as well as highlighting the creative and cultural sector across regional, rural and remote Australia.
In 2021, Artlands focuses on ‘The Space Between’, sparking conversations about practice through the intersection of people and place. The program explores contextual links between people, place and practice and considers a narrative of art as social change and emphasises the importance of cultural identity.
More on the Artlands speakers
Mikaela Jade is a Cabrogal Woman from the Dharug-speaking Nations of Sydney. She started her technology journey in 2012 with an idea that would help shape our nation – augmented and mixed reality production, and later, digital skills programs to leapfrog First Peoples’ into the Fourth Industrial Revolution. To drive this idea forward, Mikaela created Indigital in 2014.
On the journey so far she has partnered with several remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, Microsoft Australia and Telstra Purple to scale Indigital’s work nationally. Indigital’s flagship program is Indigital Schools. Indigital Schools is an Indigenous designed digital skills training program for primary and high schools students. It enables Indigenous and non-Indigenous kids to connect with and learn from Elders about cultural knowledge, history and language, while learning digital skills in cutting-edge technologies like augmented reality, animation and coding.
As Australia’s first Indigenous edutech company Indigital’s mission is to close the digital divide between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, by providing a meaningful pathway for Indigenous people into the digital economy and the creation of future technologies. She achieves this by ensuring Indigenous Peoples’ have access to developing cutting edge, safe, ethical, affordable, quality digital engagement that is appropriate to their social, cultural, environmental and economic needs.
Pip Kelly is a Western Australian curator, filmmaker and creative producer. Her award-winning films and exhibitions focus on history, truth-telling, photography and transformation. Pip is an Asialink arts management residency alumni who initiated Jorng Jam (to remember), a collaborative contemporary art project and historical exhibition series which remembers, reclaims and reinterprets Cambodian social history from before, during and after the Khmer Rouge era. Jorng Jam features the work of four Cambodian artists: Neang Kavich, Neak Sophal, Kong Vollak and Kim Hak and the rare historical photographs and objects of Cambodian and Australian families who survived Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchea.
www.jorngjam.com | www.pipkelly.com.au
Kim Hak was born two years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1981 and he grew up listening to his parent’s memories of that time. Now, he uses his art practice to raise awareness of this country’s past – to remember, reclaim and reinterpret Cambodian social history from before, during and after the Khmer Rouge era.
Hak’s work has explored a number of themes related to the cultural fabric of Cambodia, including survivor stories, the funeral of King Sihanouk, architectural documentation and also the wider changing landscape of his homeland. From January through March 2020 Hak spent time in Japan thanks to a Japan Foundation grant working on a new chapter. He collaborated with Cambodian immigrants, mainly residents of Kanagawa and Saitama, to create 40 new photographic works that form the fourth chapter of his ‘Alive’ series.
Hak has exhibited extensively throughout Asia, Oceania, Europe, Canada and the United States of America. His work has featured internationally at art and photography festivals and has been published in a number of prominent photography journals.