Framing the 1970s

If the contemporary is a practice located within horizontal-synchronic references to the present and social contexts, and the vertical-diachronic autonomy of artistic discourse as it unfolds over time, the 1970s might be a productive point from which to begin discussion. This article highlights the critical practices taking place in Southeast Asia during the 1970s, a time when the idea of a Southeast Asia was rising amidst prevailing discourses of international politics, in particular with Cold War ideologies and the project of decolonisation after World War II, which emphasised the rhetoric of the independent nation-state. Increased access to Euro-American artistic models and the eventual shift towards 'internationalism' in the 1950s and 1960s played an equally important role in this process, acting both as examples of what a universal, cross-national artistic idiom might look like, and as forms of expression subject to the objectives of the state. © 2011 Third Text.