Penang is a separate state of Malaysia and home to 1.7 million people. The old city was founded as a trading post of the English East India Company in the eighteenth century, in the area still known as Georgetown.
Penang
Projects
Project - Field Report
Simon Soon
Material - Reflection
Simon Soon
Material - Reflection
Simon Soon
Material - Reflection
Simon Soon
Team
Simon Soon
Field Director (Penang), Site and Space Senior Lecturer, University of Malaya
Simon Soon is Senior Lecturer at the Visual Art Program, Cultural Centre, University of Malaya, where he teaches the art histories of Southeast Asia. His broader areas of interest include comparative modernities in the art, the built environment, and art historiography. He also has a keen interest in the visual dimensions of arcane knowledge and its social histories. He has written on various topics related to 20th-century art across Asia and occasionally curates exhibitions, including Love Me in My Batik: Modern Batik Art from Malaysia and Beyond. He is also an editorial member of Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, and a team member of the Malaysia Design Archive, a repository, education and research platform on visual cultures of the 20th century.
Juno Ooi
PhD Candidate, English, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur
Juno Hoay-Fern Ooi is a PhD candidate in the English Department of the University of Malaya. Her doctoral thesis titled ‘L’informe in Literature: The Aesthetic Philosophy of Georges Bataille’ studies the position of l’informe as a concept embedded in Bataille’s system to understand the place of art and literature in Bataille’s philosophy, and subsequently argues how Bataillean formlessness as a process may operate in literature. Her other research interests include the manifestation of l’informe in architecture, whether through the negation of form and function, materials used, or subversion of power and original significance imbued to the structure. Her current position as a graduate research assistant for Little India(s) In Malaysia: Contested Identities And Heritage Tourism involves looking at cultural mapping efforts in Kuala Lumpur and Penang, specifically those by ArtsEd and ChowKitKita. Her hopes for Site and Space are to study the spatial and material aspects of Derridean hauntology by researching structures and art that were never completed, rebuilt, abandoned, or merely in planning but ultimately never constructed. She was awarded a B.A. in Philosophy with First Class honours from the University of London.
Lawrence Chua
Assistant Professor, Architectural History, Syracuse University, New York
Lawrence Chua is a historian of modern architecture and the urban built environment. He is an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture at Syracuse University and is currently a Marie S. Curie FCFP Junior Fellow at the Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies. His writing has appeared in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Fabrications: the journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand, the Journal of Urban History, TDSR, and Senses and Society. His current project examines Buddhist felicities and urban utopias in 20th-century Bangkok.
Raisa Kamila
Independent Researcher, Aceh, Indonesia
Raisa Kamila is an independent researcher currently based in her hometown of Banda Aceh, Indonesia. She recently graduated from the MA program in Colonial and Global History at Leiden University and obtained her bachelor degree from the Faculty of Philosophy at Gadjah Mada University. Her research interests lie in the social history of areas along the Straits of Malacca, particularly Aceh, from the late colonial until the Cold War period. Before returning to Aceh, Raisa had various internships and research commissions investigating a range of issues including indigenous land rights, wars of decolonisation and popular culture in Islamic society.
Napong Tao Rugkhapan
Lecturer, Urban Planning, Thammasat University, Thailand
Tao Rugkhapan received his AB in History of Art & Architecture and International Relations from Brown University. He went on to complete his MA at University College London and his PhD in Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. Prior to his doctorate, he practiced as an urban planner for the Department of Town & Country Planning in Thailand. His interest in historic city centres in Southeast Asia led to a comparative doctoral dissertation on the Chinatowns of Penang, Ho Chi Minh City and Bangkok. His current research interests fall into two areas: the technopolitics of urban planning and cross-national circulation of urban development models. The first line of inquiry investigates the knowledge politics of planning techniques, e.g. mapmaking, zoning, architectural guidelines, building codes. His second research area explores how imaginaries of successful urbanisms, e.g. best practices, case studies, exemplars, success stories, are mobilised from one place to another. Particular attention is paid to social conflicts and contentions that necessarily accompany such urban policy imaginaries.
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