The Gap Which Separates: Simultaneity, Disparity, and Audiovisual-Linking Technologies in “Southeast Asian Contemporary Art”

Abstract How have artists and curators working in “Southeast Asia” imagined the contemporaneity between this region and the rest of the world, and how has this imagining been affected by twenty-first-century advances in technology and globalization? This essay approaches these questions through a discussion of recent artistic and curatorial practices that engage with simultaneity. The essay proposes that simultaneity is an important and recurrent concern for artists and curators that has been underexplored within art historical and related discourses. The essay centers on a close reading of two projects, conceived fifteen years apart, that reflect the radical transformations of technologies that took place within that period. One project, Calling Cambodia (1998–99) by the Faculty of Plastic Arts at the Royal University of Fine Arts, Phnom Penh, proposed—yet, due to technological constraints, failed—to place Phnom Penh in live video contact with Fukuoka during a major art exhibition in the Japanese city, which was also the first instance of Cambodia's entrance into new Asian and global circuits of contemporary art. A second project, Leak Light Time Heat (2014) by collaborating artists Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien, addresses Manila's real-time service provision for United States customers through call centers.