The late Tongan scholar Epeli Hau‘ofa wrote of the Pacific Ocean as a ‘Sea of Islands’. Rather than imagining a scattering of small, defined island states, he sketched a vast oceanic continent characterised by movement, exchange and cultural flow. It’s an idea that permeates Rebordering the Archipelago: Asia-Pacific Exchanges, the second book in the Postnational Art Histories series.

Growing out of the symposium of the same name – convened by the Asia Pacific Artistic Research Network (APARN) in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic – this collection of texts and images weaves an interconnected dialogue across the breadth of art practices, knowledges, research and scholarly work traversing the Asia-Pacific. Eschewing the definitive and conclusive, the essays, artworks and broad-ranging discussions that populate this book are points of embarkation.

The notion of ‘rebordering’, in this sense, is inherently generative and postnational in its bearings. While only scratching the surface of the Asia-Pacific’s activity, Rebordering the Archipelago reflects the diversity of practices and voices that resonate throughout the region. Refusing to conform to the Western academic paradigm and its flat global world of knowledge, this is a book that foregrounds both intergenerational knowledges from the past and new modes of listening, reading, sharing and resistance.

Edited by Danny Butt and Kurniawan Adi Saputro. Designed by Beaziyt Worcou. 

CoVA × Perimeter is a collaborative publishing program initiated by the Centre of Visual Art (2018–2023) at the University of Melbourne and independent publishing house Perimeter Editions. Foregrounding experimental and otherwise innovative discursive outputs from three key streams of enquiry – Postnational Art Histories, Feminism and Intersectionality, and Art + Science – the program spans research-in-progress, academic dialogues, artist responses, and essays, working to reframe scholarly research via a multiplicity of new perspectives and lenses. The Postnational Art Histories series seeks out transnational and lateral contacts and resonances between artists across borders, examining the intersections between Indigenous, migrant, diasporic, postcolonial, global, and transcultural studies that reflect the contours of the emerging post-Western world. This volume features a Bahasa Indonesia translation.

With contributions by: Raqs Media Collective, Moonis Ahmad, Léuli Eshrāghi, Victoria Hunt, Natalie King, Yuki Kihara, Helly Minarti, Tamarra,Yedija Awom, Ginoe and Mark Teh.  

Published by: Perimeter Editions x CoVA at the University of Melbourne
Format: 208 pages, 19.5 x 12.5 cm, cold glue bind, softcover