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 ...

The third issue of Field Notes addresses the constant question of how AAA defines “Asia” but is in no way intended to survey or comprehensively cover any of the entry points in how to map Asia. Instead, it is to point to the entanglements between them and provide an additional space, along with AAA’s other projects, to construct reference points and connections across time, sites, and geographies. We realize that there is something about the positioning of Asia, Art, and Archive next to each other that presupposes a mapping process. Acknowledging both the value and limitations of the map as a ...

Published in 2012, the e-journal’s inaugural issue, with contributions from over 40 scholars, critics, curators, and artists, addresses a theme that is central not only to AAA, but is one of the most vexed topics in recent years: the notion of the “contemporary in art,” with specificity to the contexts of Asia. Acknowledging Hal Foster and Terry Smith’s “Questionnaire on ‘The Contemporary’” in the Fall 2009 issue of October, as well as writings by John Clark and Joan Kee amongst others, we invited curators, artists, critics, and academics from Asia to contribute their thoughts on the topic. As an archive of ...