Organized by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Malaysia and curated by the INXO Arts and Culture Foundation, Tea Philo (哲學茶席) invited Taiwanese independent curator Nobuo Takamori (高森信男) to give a talk online in English under the theme of "Phantasmapolis: Toward Asian Arts Futurism (未至之城：邁向亞洲藝術未來主義)."
Based on the introduction of 2021 Asian Art Biennial: Phantasmapolis, which is organized by the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and co-curated by the speaker, the talk concentrated on the discussion of how participating artists from Southeast Asia reflect their imagination for this topic, and what "future" means to Southeast Asian societies and cultures.
2021 AAB Phantasmapolis is a project that aims to evoke the hidden context of futurism in Taiwanese and Asian art histories. According to Nobuo Takamori, Phantasmopolis is a newly coined Greek word comprising "phantasma" (phantom) and "polis" (city-state). This word owes its inspiration to Phantasmagoria, a sci-fi novel written in English by architect Wang Da-Hong.
Nobuo Takamori currently serves as an assistant professor at the Taipei National University of the Arts and is dedicated to cross-cultural studies and contemporary arts in Asia. The exhibitions he previously curated revolved around several issues such as minorities, interdisciplinarity, historical memories, endemism, including "The Return of Ghosts (鬼魂的迴返)" of the Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition (2014) and "The Secret South: From Cold War Perspective to Global South in Museum Collection (秘密南方：典藏作品中的冷戰視角及全球南方)" of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2020).
The talk was hosted by renowned Malaysian artist-curator Yap Sau-Bin (葉紹斌) and conducted in English. For more information, please visit Tea Philo's Facebook page.