ESEA Futures is a key strand of Bloc Projects’ programme, co-presented in collaboration with Platform Asia.
Together, Bloc Projects and Platform Asia are continuing to develop this annual programme, which centres East and Southeast Asian diasporic artists, practices and perspectives. Through exhibitions, events and learning opportunities, ESEA Futures seeks to create space for ESEA imaginings, exchange and artistic enquiry.
This year’s programme includes an exhibition, a live performance and a screening:
- Other. Absence & Making Public — artist-researcher Florence To’s first solo exhibition in the UK. Taking the avian syrinx — the vocal organ through which birds produce sound — as a point of departure, the project brings together field observation, recordings and objects gathered during a research trip in Palestine. It considers movement and perception across human and more-than-human lives, asking what technical systems can detect and make visible, what they overlook, and how different forms of life encounter the same environments. Launching Fri 25 Sep, 6–8pm, free and open to all.
- Live performance of TYRYX — taking place within Other. Absence & Making Public. The performance is a live sonic activation of the exhibition’s wood-and-metal sculptures using synthesised control signals, with sounds drawing on elements of bird vocalisation. Sat 10 October, 5–6pm, as part of No Bounds Festival. Tickets available here.
- All & Nothing — a documentary exploring the life and work of the late conceptual artist Li Yuan-chia. The film traces his journey from wartime China to Taiwan, 1950s Milan and Bologna, and Swinging Sixties London, before the establishment of the L.Y.C. Museum & Gallery in rural Cumbria in 1971. It offers a portrait of Li as both artist and journeyman, reflecting on a life shaped by movement, experimentation and exchange. Tue 3 November, 6pm, as part of the Showroom’s Perspectives strand. Tickets available here.
