In Conversation with Hsu Fang-Tze, curator of Wishful Images

As the NUS Museum reopens to public on 11 August, we take a look at an upcoming exhibition that has been in the works these past few months. Here, our upcoming exhibition titled Wishful Images: When Microhistories Take Form reconsiders the historical conjuncture between two less discussed historical narratives echoing the Lusaka Conference of the Non-Alignment Movement of the Cold War and Koza Riots of Okinawa, which both happened fifty years ago. 

Following NUS Museum’s exhibit Wartime Artists of Vietnam, the upcoming exhibit positions art and the moving image as sites of historical inquiry. The featured works disrupt the legitimacy assigned to well-known historical events, and consequently encourage reflection on the importance of personal historical memories in the formation of historical narratives.

We sat down with the curator Dr. Hsu Fang-Tze for a behind the scenes look at the exhibit, examining the notions of “wishful images” and drawing out microhistories from a backdrop of erasure, before finally locating the exhibition’s trajectory in present circumstances to ruminate on the human position in a network of knowledge formation and material agency.

The featured works span across a wide range of media, cultural influences, and time periods. How do the selected works interface with each other, especially with regards to the titular concept of ‘wishful images’?

The phrase ‘wishful images’ comes from the writing of Ernst Bloch, a German philosopher who bore witness to World War I, the First Reich, and World War II. He was affiliated with scholar circles within the Frankfurt School, particularly with Walter Benjamin. Bloch posited that people have an “anticipatory consciousness”, and wishful images provide them with a direction to march towards — where something is at once, both not yet there and in the process of becoming.

For someone like Bloch who experienced both World Wars where he witnessed such massive, man-made catastrophes, and was still able to engage with the subject of hope, I am deeply intrigued by Bloch’s intellectual commitment, especially reading his words alongside Benjamin’s tragic death.

That’s also why over the past five years, I have remained in conversation with all the artists featured in this exhibition by understanding their personal connection with their artistic medium in relation to the actualisation of image-making. Their works touch on very difficult histories, from Kao Chung-Li’s story of an outcast socialist intellectual from Taiwan, Nguyen Trinh Thi’s work on the construction of womanhood in a nationalist narrative, to Lucy Davis’ work on the logging industry in Southeast Asia, as well as Kuniyoshi Kazuo’s dedication to journalistic photography.

And of course you have Aya Rodriguez-Izumi, whose graceful intervention into her father’s artistic creations touches on a wartime history which was erased by both American and Japanese governance. Her collaboration with her parents in this particular project called Okinawa’s Tragedy: Echoes From the Last Battle of WWII helps us to reconsider the meaning of rehabilitating historical memory and the audibility of survivors’ accounts.

The notion of microhistories also encourages us to think of artistic agency in relation to the dominance of history—a kind of paternal and nationalistic relationship with our collective past. In this sense, a work of art shouldn’t be limited to being mere visual representation, but functions also as a powerful embodiment of history manifesting in the present. For instance, Kuniyoshi Kazuo insists on being known as a journalistic photographer. This identity represents a particular practice of witnessing and documenting historical events for the future. For me, those photos are not just documentary photographs: it also moves you with their everydayness. Not even to mention how much of a risk it was to be at these events in order to take these photographs. For Kuniyoshi, his strong faith for justice for the future is what motivates him.

The subject of his camera, in particular, the ones I selected for the exhibition, is of Koza, his hometown. Here, his works are incarnations of his struggles as a person who grew up in Koza. In his photographs, we witness acts of racial discrimination existing in the military base between white and African Americans, the difficult reality of the military camp economy, the sex industry, and so on. But we also witness people (regardless of race, ethnicity, and nationality) showing their solidarity for each other in the Koza Riots and in the memorial march of Martin Luther King. That’s the beauty of those photos, and it moves you.

This is what Georges Didi-Huberman called ‘documentary lyricism’, and it is a term I have come to prefer over ‘visualisation’ during the process of preparing for this exhibition. From the content of the individual artworks to the making of the exhibition and its presentation, I hope it offers a very corporeal and haptic viewing experience. I think that’s how all these artworks come together: it’s about the dialectical tension between what Julian Barnes refers to as the noise of time and the whisper of history.

The dominance of official narratives often means that many of these microhistories are largely disregarded or forgotten, and some of the stories you highlight here are not easily accessed or well documented. How did you begin this particular line of inquiry, and what were some of your major influences in the conceptualisation of Wishful Images?

The exhibition was a result of a curatorial residency in Okinawa that I was part of before I joined the NUS Museum. I was in Okinawa for three months, from May to August 2018. The whole purpose for the curatorial residency was to interview photographers, particularly photographers who lived through the transitional period during and after the American governance of Okinawa.

During the residency I visited local archives to look up materials on the Koza Riots. I also interviewed more than 10 photographers, a majority of whom started their careers around the end of the 1960s to the early 1970s. In Japanese fine art contexts, when you call yourself a shashinga (写真家), it is very different from calling yourself an artist. Nowadays, you would call yourself an artist, not a photographer, as the term photographer implies a sense of technicity rather than artistry.

But in Japanese, shashinga means that you fulfil your artistic positioning in the art ecosystem by strictly working on photo-based mediums, and in a relatively intellectual manner.  And particularly in Okinawa after the 1970s, there emerges an interesting dynamic between local photographers and photographers associated with the Provoke circle.

For instance, Tomatsu Shomei relocated to Okinawa and Nakahira Takuma also spent a significant amount of time in Okinawa after the 1970s.  Meanwhile, with the ending of American governance in 1972 and the winding down of the Vietnam War, Okinawans were undergoing tremendous instability both politically and economically.

Of course, people were also very upset by the extraterritoriality of military personnel on the island. For me, the period between the 1960s and early 70s is a very critical historical conjuncture, and I was inspired by the social and art movements of the time.

I am also inspired by what the Koza Riots represent. When I joined the NUS Museum, I was asked to put together an exhibition. I immediately thought of the Koza Riots and its strong resonance between art and socio-politics. When I figured out the timeline, I realised this was also the time when Singapore attended the Lusaka Conference as an independent country, as a part of the Non-Aligned Movement.

During this conference, several third world countries came together to request a removal of military bases because they understood it as a sign of colonialism. So that’s the historical background I was interested in.

Focusing on the historical backdrop that the exhibition is pitched against, what is it about these particular historical moments in the Non-Aligned Movement, Koza Riots and other political dimensions which interest you?

The exhibition is not so much about the connection between the Non-Aligned Movement and the Koza Riots as it is an intersection between two events intertwined through shared histories of coloniality.

For me, it is an attempt to listen to the whisper of history. And that’s why the subtitle of the exhibition is “When Microhistories Take Form“. It seems impossible to make a connection between a massive, macro-scale event like the Non-Aligned Movement, and the Koza Riots which was a small local event. This is where the notion of microhistories proves useful: it allows us to think about why certain events were remembered, and why certain events were forcefully erased.

Through post-colonial analysis, we can establish several overlaps between the two historical events. However, I’m more concerned about the reverberances between the erasure of collective civil memory and the oblivion that comes with being a part of the global movement. That’s where history takes form. Artistic practices resemble the richness of that which is unearthed from the historical void.

Would you mind walking us through the curation process for Wishful Images? What were some difficulties in the research or planning stages which altered the shape of the exhibit?

COVID-19 immediately comes to mind. I was supposed to go back to Okinawa during the summer but was not able to travel. For me it was not so much about the logistical difficulties, but a strong wake-up call where I had to ask myself: what does it mean to make this exhibit in the midst of a new normal?

I always take challenges and difficulties as opportunities to understand the type of work we are doing here. Every step of this intensive preparation process has been altered by the new normal: artists cannot travel, artworks cannot be delivered, and I was not able to bring archival materials back from Okinawa. This made me dive into the core of the exhibit to reflect on the type of humans we have become, and how we are defined by our surroundings.

This process has forced me to think about how visual artworks position the human being in a network of material conditions. Taking Lucy Davis as an example, her work touches upon the teak trading history in Singapore vis-à-vis our national history. One of the historical objects she presents is two sets of Malay timber samples; it was first studied and compiled by the British government in the 18^th century. They surveyed the natural resources we have in Singapore, and by labelling this wood sample, they named and categorised it. In so doing, nature as a common good was rendered into a consumable object and therefore was able to circulate within the capitalist system for the good of its colonial masters.

The same happens to human beings. We are defined by pre-existing forms of knowledge and those labels let us be recognised by the existing system of neo-liberal governance. The violence of this differential principle can be found through the historical writings about Okinawa.

With the stereotypes and associations that come with being labelled Okinawan, we need to reconsider how the differential principle is exemplified through forms of racial profiling, and its insidious associations with the American base empire on a global scale, as well as the current Japanese governance of Okinawa after its colonial occupation preceding World War II.

This is something I’ve had the privilege of contemplating during COVID-19. Instead of “Love in the Time of Cholera”, together with all the parties involved, the exhibition process has morphed into a story of “Exhibition Making in the Time of COVID-19. I hope the lyricism of the exhibition is equally challenging as it is productive.

Wishful Images: When Microhistory Takes Form opens on 15 September at the NUS Museum, Lee Kong Chian Temporary Gallery. For more information please refer to Plan Your Visit.