[Talk] Making Public: The Ha Bik Chuen Archive in Hong Kong | Peatixtag:peatix.com,2011:12018-11-20T12:56:11+08:00PeatixNUS Museum[Talk] Making Public: The Ha Bik Chuen Archive in Hong Kongtag:peatix.com,2018:event-4501642018-10-23T19:00:00SGT2018-10-23T19:00:00SGTTalk | Making Public: The Ha Bik Chuen Archive in Hong KongTuesday, 23 October 20187pmS T Lee Atrium, NUS Museum This presentation introduces the ongoing project by the Asia Art Archive (AAA) on the personal archive of the late Hong Kong-based artist Ha Bik Chuen (1925-2009). Against the backdrop of Ha's archival aspiration, AAA organises and shares his materials posthumously to collectively produce new knowledge and construct new projections of Hong Kong’s cultural history in the 1960s-1990s. Ha Bik Chuen’s archival practice first started off as a private activity, as a tool for self-learning in making art, and a means through which he processed the world of print media. Since 2014, AAA has been selectively digitising Ha’s archive, which consists of over 50 years’ worth of exhibition documentation photography, as well as illustrated magazines and artist portraits Ha collected for the construction of book collages. This presentation focuses on the transformation of archival intention, and explores the negotiations around a personal collection and the succeeding caretaker's institutional interests and responsibility. Making Public is programmed around the conversations of para-institutional agency towards consolidating photographic archives in the NUS Museum’s exhibition Rediscovering Forgotten Thai Masters of Photography.About the speaker Michelle Wong is Researcher at Asia Art Archive, where her research focuses on histories of exchange and circulation through exhibitions and periodicals. Based in Hong Kong, her current projects include the Ha Bik Chuen Archive Project. She leads the undergraduate course developed in collaboration with Fine Arts Department, The University of Hong Kong, and “London, Asia”, a collaborative project with Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. She independently runs the collective project Sightlines with artist Wei Leng Tay, which investigates the tension between individuals and circumstances, ideas of seeing, and relationships that mark recent lived experiences. Image : Spread from one of Ha Bik Chuen’s modified books titled London Interiors, circa 2001. Courtesy of the Ha family and Asia Art Archive.