Brenda Yeoh (National University of Singapore) gives the 12th Frank H. Golay Memorial Lecture.

The prevailing neoliberal labour migration regime in Asia is underpinned by principles of enforced transience: the overwhelming majority of migrants—particularly those seeking low skilled, low-waged work—are admitted into host nation-states on the basis of short-term, time-bound contracts, with little or no possibility of family reunification or permanent settlement at the destination. As families go transnational, ‘family times’ become inextricably intertwined with the ‘times of migration’ (Cwerner, 2001). In this context, for many migrant-sending families in Southeast Asian source countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines, parental migration as a strategy for migrating out of poverty or for socio-economic advancement requires the left-behind family to resiliently absorb the uncertainties of parental leaving and returning. Based on longitudinal research on Indonesian and Filipino rural households in migrant-sending villages, the presentation investigates the vital links between the time construct of seriality in migration on the one hand, and the temporal structure of family-based social reproduction on the other. By drawing attention to the co-existence of and contradictions between multiple temporalities in the lives of migrants and their families, a critical temporalities framework yields new insights for understanding the sustainability of transnational families in the liminal times of migration.

Brenda S.A. Yeoh FBA is Raffles Professor of Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Research Leader of the Asian Migration Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, NUS. Professor Yeoh made important contributions to the field of migration and transnationalism studies and was awarded the Vautrin Lud Prize for outstanding achievements in Geography in 2021. Her work is distinctly Asia-focused while also significant for theory-building more generally. She is widely recognised for her research leadership in three areas: migration-led diversification, cosmopolitanism and spatial politics; human aspiration, care migration and social reproduction among migrant households in Southeast Asia; migration infrastructures and transnational mobility of migrant workers at various skill levels. She has published widely on these topics and her recent books include Handbook of Asian Migrations (Routledge, 2018 with Gracia Liu-Farrer); Student Mobilities and International Education in Asia: Emotional Geographies of Knowledge Spaces (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019 with R.K. Sidhu and K.C. Ho) and Handbook of Transnationalism (Edward Elgar, 2022 with F.L. Collins).

Light reception to immediately follow in PSB West Pavilion.

Talk by Rakhee Balaram

Can Rabindranath Tagore be considered a "surrealist"? This paper questions the historiography concerning Tagore's art while simultaneously examining the cultural climate surrounding his 1930 exhibition in Paris. A contemporary re-evaluation of Rabindranath Tagore's work in this context opens up new questions about the historical avant-garde and its limits. In light of academic discussions about global modernism and following a landmark exhibition on international surrealism, a reconsideration of Tagore's art reveals it to be one marker in a larger relay of aesthetic practices happening within and outside of the West in the 1920s and 30s. The paper looks to South America and Japan to think about the genesis of Tagore's drawings and paintings which were exhibited in Paris in the wake of the celebrated African and Oceanic exhibition in 1930. Drawing on scientific, economic, and legal discourses, cross-cultural analysis, and popular culture, Tagore's erasures, drawings, and paintings offer revolutionary perspectives on current debates in the field.

Rakhee Balaram is an Assistant Professor of Global Art and Art History at the University at Albany, the State University of New York, where she specializes in modern and contemporary art. Her recent books include a co-edited volume on South Asian art history, 20th Century Indian Art: Modern, Post-Independence, Contemporary (Thames & Hudson, 2022), and a book on French artistic practices after May '68: Counterpractice: Psychoanalysis, Politics and the Art of French Feminism (Manchester University Press, 2022). Balaram previously taught at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is currently completing a book on two icons of modern Indian art — Amrita Sher-Gil and Rabindranath Tagore.

2021 > Switzerland > Directed by Ramon & Silvan ZŸrcher
With Henrietta Confucius, Liliane Amuat, Ursina Lardi
Lisa is moving out. Mara is left behind. As boxes are shifted and cupboards built, abysses begin to open up and an emotional roller coaster is set in motion. A tragicomic catastrophe film that meanders between a study of everyday life, a fairy-tale and a psychological portrait of a brittle world. Winner of the Encounters Award for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival. Subtitled. More at the-girl-and-the-spider.com/
1 hr 38 min

2021 > Switzerland > Directed by Ramon & Silvan Zürcher

With Henrietta Confucius, Liliane Amuat, Ursina Lardi

Lisa is moving out. Mara is left behind. As boxes are shifted and cupboards built, abysses begin to open up and an emotional roller coaster is set in motion. A tragicomic catastrophe film that meanders between a study of everyday life, a fairy-tale and a psychological portrait of a brittle world. Winner of the Encounters Award for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival. Subtitled. More at https://the-girl-and-the-spider.com/

1 hr 38 min

2021 > Rwanda, United States, France, Canada > Directed by Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman
With Cheryl Isheja, Elvis Ngabo, Bertrand "Kaya Free" Ninteretse
A boisterous and idiosyncratic vision of Afrofuturist techno-revolution, in a tale of labor organization, intersexuality and cyberfeminism. From the mind of actress and playwright Anisia Uzeyman, and her husband, poet and rapper Saul Williams comes a queer sci-fi musical about hacking computers, gender, and reality itself that is as politically astute as it is artistically invigorating. Cosponsored by the Institute for African Development. Subtitled. More at www.kinolorber.com/film/view/id/5188
1 hr 45 min

2021 > France > Directed by Audrey Diwan
With Anamaria Vartolomei, Kacey Mottet Klein, Luˆna Bajrami
The autobiographical drama of writer Annie Ernaux, who pursued an illegal abortion in 1960s France. A mixture of heartfelt coming-of-age narrative and crucial social critique that feels tragically pertinent to our current events. Subtitled. More at www.ifcfilms.com/films/happening
1 hr 40 min

Talk by Seuty Sabur

Both an Asian Development Bank (ADB) report (2016) and a World Bank report (2014) have spoken of the possibility of Bangladesh becoming an upper-middle-income country by 2021. From 1990 to 2010, the size of the middle classes expanded from 9% to 20%. Yet, despite this newfound interest in the middle class, questions about its composition, the practices, and aspirations of its constituents are hardly ever raised. The political implications of such questions are also never acknowledged, let alone debated. My longitudinal research attempts to make a section of this class tangible. In this essay, I explore the material conditions under which these gendered-class consolidations were possible during successive colonial and postcolonial periods. Through memoirs, genealogies, intergenerational family histories, and archives, I attempt to locate my interlocutors and their class position across space and time. Their intergenerational narratives reveal how their spatial mobilities (birth, marriage, work, and retirement) are entwined with the accumulations of various capitals and how that collided with Dhaka's urban formations as a metropolitan city.

Seuty Sabur is currently an associate professor of anthropology at BRAC University. She obtained her PhD in sociology from the National University of Singapore and her MA in cultural dynamics from Hiroshima University, Japan. Seuty Sabur teaches a range of undergraduate courses, including critical social theory, methodology, gender, class, kinship, and family. For the past few years, her core research interest has been the ‘Metropolitan Middle Class of Bangladesh’. As an activist and academic based in Bangladesh, she has been drawn to multiple recent social movements. She has been writing on the women’s movement, the Shahbag uprising, the gendered construction of the nation, and the culpability of left and liberal forces. Her research has been published in reputed journals such as ‘Fieldsights’ by the Society for Cultural Anthropology, ‘Journal of South Asian Development,’ ‘South Asia Chronicles’ and ‘South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies.’ She has authored numerous op-eds for international and national newspapers and portals. She is currently working on her upcoming book “Marriage and Friendship: Social Networks of the Bangladeshi Affluent ‘Middle Class”.

2021 > Italy > Directed by Michelangelo Frammartino
With Paolo Cossi, Jacopo Elia, Denise Trombin, Nicola Lanza
The extraordinary adventure of the young members of the Piedmont Speleological Group who, having already explored all the caves of Northern Italy, changed course and went South to explore other caves unknown to man. Another work of nearly wordless beauty that touches on the mystical from the visionary director of Le Quattro Volte, Michelangelo Frammartino's Il Buco is "a masterful work of sound and sight." (Hollywood Reporter) Winner of a Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. Subtitled. More at grasshopperfilm.com/film/il-buco
1 hr 33 min