Programme - The Asian Conference on Arts & Humanities (ACAH)

Reclaiming the Future in Tech, Media and Communities

Keynote Presentation: Bradley J. Hamm

A central issue in the 21st century is the extraordinary role of big technology companies in global and local communities, media and journalism, the economy and the daily lives of adults and children.

Yet we are still at the early stages of understanding the full impact of changes over the past decade related to core concerns about privacy, health, security, ethics, regulation, accountability, monopolies, taxes and much more.

This talk will examine how similar challenges may have been addressed in past technology waves and what may be needed – in fairly short time – to address today’s major concerns. Leaders and experts in the arts and humanities can play an important role in these efforts to both protect and improve communities for the future.

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The Great Wall Story: How I Have Discovered it

Keynote Presentation: William Lindesay

Between the late fourth century BC to 1644 AD, at least 16 border-defence systems were intermittently built (or inherited and operated) by rulers of Chinese dynasties – all of them functioning as fortifications against nomadic cavalry from the north. These are known as “Great Walls of China”. Chinese chroniclers wrote a great library about their empires, including a history of each dynasty, but shy of rough work on imperial frontiers they seldom reference “Great Walls”. Today, their remnants comprise the largest system of related ancient ruins in the world, yet in spite of the urgent need to conserve these monuments, their academic study and field research is ignored by university faculties – because “Great Wall Studies” transcends many fields.

By reviewing a series of personal Great Wall explorations, field-research foci, discoveries, advocacy and archive projects carried out and achieved in China between 1987 and 2017, as a geographer, author and film-maker, I will show how diverse, personal, unconventional – and “foreign” – approaches have made significant contributions to the surprisingly narrow, Sino-centric and limited corpus of Great Wall knowledge, as well as popular understanding.

“The Great Wall”, the most famous building in the world, a bucket-list must-see, remains the least-known and most superficially protected of UNESCO world heritages, as continuing damage to it by nature and man shows. I hold that a better future for its protection, and rational, economic, educational and inspirational uses, rests with the development of “Great Wall Studies” as an integrated course at university level.

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Museum Cultivates Aesthetic Sensibility

Keynote Presentation: Yutaka Mino

I have long been an advocate of museums placing emphasis on cultivating aesthetic sensibility in people of all ages, especially children. Museums have an important mission: “provide opportunities for children to interact with genuine articles.” I always hope to bring as many children as possible to those museums, to let them experience real objects. Aesthetic sensibility will be the most positive driving force for the society which is facing difficulties. I believe that aesthetic sensibility stimulates imagination, furthermore it enriches our lives and makes our society more prosperous, in the future.

When a region enjoys economic prosperity and social stability, consequently, cultural activities and artistic practice prevail. Now, our time is marked by political and economic instability, and I think it is about time we changed our way of thinking, to have a reverse view, and start to look at art itself as a source of energy to vitalise our economy and living environment. In other words, when a region flourishes in art and culture, it could achieve economic success.

Professor Galbraith, a world famous economist, suggested that what we should expand on in the future is not GNP (Gross National Product), but GNE (Gross National Enjoyment).

Image | The Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art in Kobe, Japan

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IAFOR Documentary Photography Award & Panel

Featured Panel Presentation: Ezra Acayan, Bradley J. Hamm & Joseph Haldane

The IAFOR Documentary Photography Award was launched by The International Academic Forum (IAFOR) in 2015 as an international photography award that seeks to promote and assist in the professional development of emerging documentary photographers and photojournalists.

As an organisation, IAFOR’s mission is to promote international exchange, facilitate intercultural awareness, encourage interdisciplinary discussion, and generate and share new knowledge. In keeping with this mission, in appreciation of the great value of photography as a medium that can be shared across borders of language, culture and nation, and to influence and inform our academic work and programmes, the IAFOR Documentary Photography Award was launched as a competition that would help underline the importance of the organisation’s aims, and would promote and recognise best practice and excellence.

Now in its fifth year, the award has already been widely recognised by those in the industry and has been supported by World Press Photo, British Journal of Photography, Metro Imaging, MediaStorm, Think Tank Photo, University of the Arts London, RMIT University, The Centre for Documentary Practice, and the Medill School of Journalism.

This session will include a screening of the most recent (2018) award winners selection, and will be followed by a discussion on the importance and relevance of documentary photography and photojournalism with the 2018 Grand Prize Winner, Ezra Acayan, an internationally published, award-winning photojournalist from the Philippines, and Bradley J. Hamm, former dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, USA.

Featured Image | From the series "Duterte's War on Drugs is Not Over" by Ezra Acayan

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Running a Fringe Festival: The Adelaide Experience

Featured Presentation: Heather Croall

Adelaide Fringe is Australia's largest arts festival. In 2019, we will be 60 years old and it has grown incrementally over the decades to become the biggest ticket-selling arts festival in Australia.

The Adelaide Fringe is a not-for-profit, open-access festival; there are no curator handpicking shows. Anyone who wants to be a part of the Adelaide Fringe, can! The Fringe provides a way for artists across all disciplines to share their work with the world. The Fringe runs for 31 days and nights each year and literally transforms the whole of the city of Adelaide into a festival playground for the month.

Adelaide Fringe is a wonderful blueprint for how a Fringe festival can offer cultural transformation to a city. In this presentation, Heather Croall will talk about the mechanics behind the running of such an enormous, city-wide festival.

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Image courtesy of Michael Coghlan (Flickr) - cropped.

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