I had a dream, dreamt that I visited the doctor, and when it was my turn, I heard my name being called. But it was actually Julie waking me up for the first day of the symposium. We had thought that we were late, but thank God, Julie did not change her alarm to Bangkok time (an hour behind), so we managed to be on time for breakfast at New World Hotel from our previous dilapidated and dodgy hotel. I was introduced to Chaw (from Burma) and we had breakfast on the same table. The large bunch of us headed to The Queen’s Gallery which is about ten minutes’ walk from the lodge.

Political Context in Southeast Asia

Senator Kraisak Choonhaven and Lee Weng Choy, Josef Ng as facilitator

Josef started with the gliding of performance art between spaces in relation to the social and political reality in Southeast Asia in theory and practice. The process of productivity resulting in performativity and to him, ‘pollute a position’ is performance art.
Kraisak, a politician, focused on the state, culture and art. Having resided overseas for 26 years, he proposed that it is the responsibility of the state to support every art. Contemporary art being too radical threatens the state and thus, is too challenging to the Thais. The Queen’s gallery (1st art center in Thailand), being named in royalty, prevents active contemporary art participants. Contradictory situation in Thailand: nation, religion, monarchy, people. Protests in Thailand are often stirred up by the artists, but concrete changes took place when artists protested consistently for 4 years over issues of art and culture in Bangkok. He ended by saying that over the past four years, events in Thailand had indeed taken its toll.
Weng began with stating sharply, that Singapore has an impoverished public life compared to Thailand. Institution building in Singapore is blatantly weak. The test of the intellectual needs to be talked about in specificity and context. The art critic’s test is dealing with the local symptoms in which a universal crisis will be churned out from. If there is resistance to the death penalty, then it shows that there is resistance to the state’s power which represents the people. Singapore disguises repressions by its economic makeup? Therefore, he thinks that artists should have a vested interest to step up. He proposed that at this time, the public has not even attained the "mirror image" state, having no image of themselves, thereby the perversity in Singapore. The dialogue ended with arriving to a weak conclusion, while the other countries in SEA have an active public life to fight for their sense of justice to achieve safety, Singapore on the other end, has that sense of safety, but lacks public life to refine the sense of justice.