While creativity remains a buzzword, and art making receives considerable attention, writing about the arts is less glamourous and gains little support.
Yet the work is crucial to the development of the arts and demands rigour and skill that are tough to advance. This session presents two books that engage with this work: Writing the Modern - a huge and diverse selection of essays from T.K. Sabapathy's corpus of art writing, compiled by the Singapore Art Museum; and Excavations, Interrogations, Krishen Jit & Contemporary Malaysian Theatre, an assemblage of writings that respond to Jit’s work vis a vis a conference held in 2015 to mark the 10th anniversary of his passing.
As pioneers in the arena of arts writing in the Southeast Asian region, Singaporean art historian T.K. Sabapathy and Malaysian theatre director and critic Krishen Jit exemplify an unusual commitment and belief in the value of arts writing, and their work has inspired countless writers, creators and arts practitioners for over 50 years. In this panel T.K. Sabapathy articulates his particular relationship with writing about the visual arts, and Charlene Rajendran, the main editor of the volume on Jit, reflects on how Jit's writing about theatre is informed by his relationships with performance and the people involved. The session is moderated by Carmen Nge, who worked with Sabapathy on a book about Malaysian artist and national art laureate Syed Ahmad Jamal, and also co-edited the book on Jit.