The second issue of Field Notes continues to address AAA’s core questions, examining the manifestations of Asia, its methodologies, maps, networks, and geographies. This issue proposes the archive as a method to illustrate the way in which initiatives like AAA are taking the archive to counter, complicate, and reimagine systems in which narratives of modern and contemporary art are being produced, circulated, and understood.

How do archives of today respond to contemporary conditions through practice? What can an archive look like – what forms does it take (published anthologies, network of archives, physical archive, exhibition platform, online database)? Who are the people working in and defining the archive (curators, art historians, psychoanalysts, professional archivists, etc.)? How does an archive define its scope and does this evolve over time? What is the place of subjectivity within the construct of the archive?

This is the origin of our inquiry. We are curious about the actioning of the archive, the internal mechanics that determine what becomes factually present in reality. In approaching these questions from the perspective of “how” we were hoping to get closer to an understanding of “why”…