ASEAN Manifesto
ASEAN
MANIFESTO
8 | 8 | 2021
Curatorial Statement
Five ‘founding fathers’ from five Southeast Asian countries adopted the ‘Bangkok Declaration’ on 8 August 1967. The momentous document marked the founding of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Since then, the international organisation has grown to ten member countries — Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam — forming a developing region that is now home to more than 600 million Southeast Asians. For a population so diverse and diasporic, what does it mean to live by a declaration penned and signed by a handful of individuals? (Read the 1967 ASEAN Declaration here.)
Through a mix of photography, prose poetry, and spoken word, Kristian Jeff Agustin (Philippines), Amy Matthewson (Canada/United Kingdom), Yen Ooi (United Kingdom/Malaysia), and Martin Vidanes (Philippines) re-adopt the ASEAN Declaration into today’s sociopolitical climate to challenge what is archaic and historic about ‘Southeast Asia’ as both an identity and a geopolitical bloc. Dubbed ‘ASEAN Manifesto’, the collaborative performance piece serves as a culmination of several months of paracuratorial experiments curated by Agustin and several other co-curators since 2020.
This new manifesto aims to push the boundaries of intergovernmental statutes and the Habermasian public sphere in the context of regionalism discourses. Can the ASEAN be a participatory process? What does community and identity building entail when it is replete with public participation? And ultimately, is the nature of our so-called ‘ASEAN-ness’ participatory enough or entirely imposed by institutions? With the pandemic serving as a backdrop, the curators imagined an ASEAN landscape that is more than the sum of its parts: more than its shared colonial past and the exotic gaze of the West, more than its postcolonial transition to non-interfering nations, and more than its tourism-driven economies and tech-savvy societies. These strands all lead to the contemporary understanding of what might the much touted ASEAN identity mean to its constituents, as well as their individual and collective participation in region-building.
ASEAN Manifesto launched on Sunday, 8 August 2021, to mark the occasion of ASEAN Day.
NOTE: This is a recording of the live-stream launch of ASEAN Manifesto, held on ‘ASEAN Day’, 8 August 2021 (Sunday, 5:00pm GMT+8 / 9:00am GMT). Hosted by Universe and Words on YouTube. (Cover photo: Adam Malik of Indonesia, Narciso Ramos of the Philippines, Abdul Razak of Malaysia, Tharat Khoman of Thailand, and Sinnathamby Rajaratnam of Singapore)
A Para-curatorial Experiment
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was formalised through a very important document called the ‘ASEAN Declaration’ (also known as the ‘Bangkok Declaration’), which was officially signed and adopted by the member states on 8 August 1967 in Bangkok, Thailand.
This para-curatorial experiment entailed revisiting/revising the original document and repurposing it as a contemporary manifesto, more than fifty years since the official declaration was first drafted by the five founding fathers of the ASEAN— Adam Malik (Indonesia), Narciso Ramos (Philippines), Abdul Razak (Malaysia), Tharat Khoman (Thailand), and Sinnathamby Rajaratnam (Singapore). Guided by images and imaginations of Southeast Asia, the project collaborators/co-curators went back to this old piece of writing and carefully selected the most crucial words in the very text to craft a manifesto for the public. Apart from offering a textual — both spoken and written — accompaniment and response to all the photographs featured in throughout the curatorial project ASEAN 20/20 Vision, this manifesto serves as a direct act of participation in the elite discourse of the ASEAN. When only political and business leaders of the region have the authority to enact and endorse policy documents like this, where do members of the public — ordinary Southeast Asian citizens — stand?
ASEAN MANIFESTO serves as the concluding piece of a series of para-curatorial experiments facilitated in Southeast Asia for the online exhibition MADE IN ASEAN, which launched on 15 November 2020. Lead curator Agustin hopes that this manifesto, a retrospective piece of performance art, can impact Southeast Asians’ ways of thinking about how regionalisation and regional organisations affect their very lives.
Can Such A Document Exist?
Written agreements like these are more than just policy documents, they serve as blueprints for societal advancement. Since the lived experience of people are more often than not governed by the letter of the law, it is not too fanciful to assume that power is only limited to those who are able to express it in black and white. And this power — even if it invokes consultative, elective, and representative processes — is hardly democratised. Is it, therefore, too far-fetched to see a document that is truly inclusive and participatory? In today’s world, we do have certain substitutes: from signature campaigns to social media threads. However, much like declarations and manifestos, these only act as mere arbiters of sociopolitical imaginations — two recent examples are (1)The Public Service Media and Public Service Internet Manifesto, which is ‘a collective work of communication scholars and practitioners that calls for the safeguarding of the existence, funding, and independence of public service media as well as the creation of a public service Internet’* as endorsed by the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR); and (2) Millennial Manifesto, which is intended by the Global Shapers Community (The Davos Lab – World Economic Forum) ‘to capture our vision for the future and the steps that our generation and the next generation must take to leave behind a world better than the one we inherited’.** Given these examples, perhaps what sets the ASEAN Manifesto apart from the others is how it calls attention to the imaginative and performative aspect of such a document. Whether it is taken seriously or not is, of course, an entirely different conversation. The important question is: can it exist? While for now, the ASEAN Manifesto merely serves as a thought-provoking performance piece, just imagine if it were officially endorsed, adopted, and ratified?
* quoted from the IAMCR website: https://iamcr.org/clearinghouse/psmimanifesto
** quoted from the World Economic Forum website: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/08/millennial-manifesto
Collaborators
(Click to view profile)
Kristian Jeff Agustin
Philippines
Originally from Manila, Philippines, Kristian has also lived in Singapore (during a stint at the Asia-Europe Foundation), in Hong Kong (for his PhD research at Hong Kong Baptist University School of Communication / Academy of Film), and in London (for his postgraduate studies at the University of Westminster). In 2023, he obtained his PhD degree at Manchester Metropolitan University - Manchester School of Art. His current and previous academic and professional affiliations include the following: International Communication Association (ICA), International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), Association of Southeast Asian Studies in the United Kingdom (ASEASUK), Nordic Summer University (NSU), Association for Cultural Studies (ACS), and Japan Association for Cultural Economics (JACE).
His creative practice includes exhibition design and information design (print/online media and websites), filmmaking and photography.
Dr Amy Matthewson
Canada / United Kingdom
Dr Amy Matthewson received her doctorate in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Her research explores race relations through visual and material culture, specifically China’s relationship with the global community in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She has a special interest in British and Chinese contact as well as the processes of ideology and epistemology.
Yen Ooi
Malaysia / United Kingdom
Yen Ooi is a writer-researcher whose works explore cultural storytelling and its effects on identity. She is currently working towards her PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London, specialising in the development of Chinese science fiction by diaspora writers and writers from Chinese-speaking nations. Her research delves into the critical inheritance of culture that permeates across the genre. Yen is narrative director and writer on Road to Guangdong, a narrative-style driving game. She is also author
of Sun: Queens of Earth (novel) and A Suspicious Collection of Short Stories and Poetry (collection). When she's not writing, Yen also lectures and is a mentor in marketing and publishing.
Martin Vidanes
Philippines
Martin Vidanes is a multimedia designer. Currently working at the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) Communications Department, he brings with him his seven years of experience in design and marketing from a variety of industries. He is well-versed in both print and digital work, but specialises in graphic and motion design as well as video editing. Prior to joining ASEF, Martin was employed by two multi-national companies over a span of five years. He also worked in the editing room of several award-winning independent Filipino films as an assistant editor or a colourist. As a consultant, he has worked on several projects with organisations such as the Bank of the Philippine Islands, Nickelodeon, The Asia Foundation, the Office of Chief Justice Artemio V. Panganiban (Ret.), and Accord, Inc. Martin is a graduate of the University of the Philippines-Diliman with a BA degree in Interdisciplinary Art Studies. Outside of work, Martin enjoys reading young adult fiction, and people.
