The Stories We Tell

This podcast, which accompanies the video work The Mountain That Hid by Sim Chi Yin on TBA21 on st_age, is hosted by researcher and curator Kathleen Ditzig. Through the perspective of literature and the work of Tash Aw and Preeta Samarasan, it examines how poetic license and personal family stories can speak to uncomfortable political Cold War histories that are part of nation-building projects in Southeast Asia. Aw and Samarasan are two diasporic Malaysian writers, whose works have included familial and generational narratives to speak to the long reach of the region’s and Malaysia’s racial and political histories. Through their perspectives, this podcast touches on the necessary nuance of considering anti-colonial projects, the radicality of writing family histories, and the necessity of criticality in reviewing national histories and the gaps, erasures, and silences they leave in their wake. Credits: Contributors Tash Aw & Preeta Samarasan Conducted by Kathleen Ditzig Cover image: Sim Chi Yin

Om Podcasten

TBA21 on st_age is TBA21’s research and commissioning digital space. Based on long-term relationships of trust, it reaches out to bring a multiplicity of voices and contexts into conversation, supporting artist’s needs throughout both research and practice. TBA21 on st_age focuses on environmental and social contemporary artistic practices, and presents video, animation, sound, and text works, as well as projects specifically designed to be experienced online. These are accompanied by a series of contextual materials, which make both the work and the research behind it accessible to a broader audience. These materials include artist-curator conversations, editorial podcasts, research clusters, and calls to actions, as well as the backst_age series, which connects the different projects through conversations, video glossaries, and curated views. All featured works remain the property of the artists and authors.