Archipelagic Affects

‘Archipelagic Affects’ explores how art residencies nurture effective spaces to study the tangible and intangible cultural, historical and geopolitical connections between different island countries. Conceived by Yornel J. Martínez Elías, researcher Emily Shin-Jie Lee, and in collaboration with Taiwanese novelist Huang Chong-Kai, Archipelagic Affects interweaves visual and textual materials created in different time-spaces. Together, they form a shared travelogue that documents how cultures and worlds cross paths through an art residency experience.

Reflecting on how words connect worlds, and how publishing practices generate new content and correlations, the booklet highlights the importance of art residencies in creating new confluences and solidarity networks to sustain cultural production and dissemination within and beyond national boundaries. If we consider an art residency as an island where a group of strangers from different backgrounds temporarily inhabit, how can these unfamiliar strangers make their time together meaningful, and perhaps further create an archipelago of solidarity beyond geographical boundaries after leaving the island?