1 – 2 August 2024  |  NAFA Campus 3, Studio Theatre and Online

ARTS & DESIGN PRACTICE RESEARCH EXCHANGE
PRECARIOUS ART: HOW DO WE MAKE ART IN A WORLD ON FIRE?

The Arts & Design Practice Research Exchange (ADPRex) is Southeast Asia’s first annual conference dedicated to practice research. ADPRex positions Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Singapore as the leading centre of arts and design practice research in this region, where artists and thinkers come together to share ideas and insights at the apex of arts and design practice and innovative thinking. This year, ADPRex is delighted to be partnering with NAFA’s Southeast Asian Arts Forum.

ADPRex 2024, ‘Precarious Art: How Do We Make Art in a World on Fire?’, will be in a hybrid format—both in person and online. The past two decades have been characterised by worldwide states of disruption. We have seen financial instability, international conflicts, democracy in crisis, culture wars, the rise of populism, a global pandemic, and the deepening climate emergency. In the face of such events, artmaking can feel insignificant, and artists may struggle to use their art to respond to and interrogate such events. Mirroring global events on a personal level, artists often experience financial and emotional instability in their own personal lives, again providing obstacles to creation. The concepts of ‘precariousness’ and ‘precarity’ speak to this moment, where there is uncertainty and insecurity responding to global disruptions and localised instability in work, sexuality, and gender identity.

At ADPRex this year, artists and researchers come together to discuss the ways in which they respond to, explore, and offer insights into precarity, precariousness, and vulnerability through their artmaking and research. They will explore how imagination and hope can play a part in an investigation of these issues through practice research.