Social Intervention and Artistic Production

Convener：Joyce C.H. Liu

How can art confront social challenges, participate in social action, and offer artistic responses? How can flexible, improvisational, and collectively collaborative spaces of dialogue be created to reflect on issues of conflict, justice, and decolonization? These reflections and actions regard the conditions of migrant workers, refugees, stateless persons, and other marginalized and vulnerable groups as critical issues that we collectively face amid the transformations of 21st-century Asia.

This research group asks how art can confront pressing social challenges, participate in social action, and offer creative, artistic responses. It explores how to create flexible, improvisational, and collectively collaborative spaces of dialogue in order to engage with questions of conflict, justice, and decolonisation.

These reflections and practices approach issues such as migrant labour, refugees, stateless persons, and other marginalized and vulnerable communities as shared concerns that we must collectively confront in the context of Asia’s transformations in the 21st century.

The research group brings together a graduate student-led online publishing collective (CJD), local NGOs, art activists, and human rights organizations. In alignment with the Center’s overarching research agenda—Conflict, Justice, and Decolonisation—the group actively engages with issues concerning the rights and conditions of migrant workers, refugees/stateless populations, and socially marginalized communities.

We encourage members to work according to the principles of artistic intervention and social action. Activities include organizing film festivals and exhibitions; producing documentaries, photo essays, and video essays; and publishing hand-drawn zines and digital zines. Through active engagement with civil society, the group seeks to disseminate its insights and outcomes, broaden public understanding and concern for these issues, and contribute to the cultivation of a more inclusive and supportive society.

Research Topics