Author Description

'Place. Labour. Capital.' connects cultural production and artistic research to broader political and social concerns engaging readers with contemporary debates in Southeast Asia and beyond. The title of the publication refers to the framework employed at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore in its first cycle of activities (2013-2016). Singapore, as the worlds second largest trading port and the economic epicentre for the region of Southeast Asia, served as an important point of departure to examine the intersections between locality and the global world, labour and flows of capital. 'Place. Labour. Capital.' serves equally as a rear-view mirror that enables an art institution to review the parameters of its own position in times of a globalised art world and knowledge-production economies. This extensive publication reminds us that institution building remains enormously significant as a means of opening up new spaces, claims, communities, dialogues, publics, and trajectories for critical artistic practice. (Felicity D. Scott, Associate Professor Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, New York). Unfolding across four broad sections of The Making of an Institution, The Geopolitical and the Biophysical,Incidental Scripts, and Incomplete Urbanism, this publication reads as an exhibition.