New Media/New Asia: From Dominant to Residual Geographies of Emergent Video, Screen, and Media Arts

Abstract

This chapter examines the collaborative curation of “Asian”/“East Asian” video, media, and experimental screen arts, focusing on Japanese regional culture industry initiatives. It thereby charts the emergence of so-called new media art practices linked to the economic emergence and cultural transformation of a new region. Here, DeBoer problematizes dominant notions of the “new”—of new media and new Asia—by looking at how collaborative curatorial endeavors have relied on “residual” exhibition and production practices. The chapter’s analysis draws from Raymond Williams’s elaboration of “residual,” “emergent,” and “dominant” formations as it sheds light on how “continuity and discontinuity both play roles in the structuring of” a mediated region. As DeBoer underscores the contingencies that have constructed recent regional arts and technologies, the chapter interrogates the contradictory discourses and practices through which “Asia” has become a platform for linking new modes of production among the region’s media capitals.