Cold WarMark Teh

The earliest communist party in Asia was founded in 1914, taking root acrossIndonesia, China, Japan, India, Korea, Vietnam, and Malaya by 1930. In the Global
South, World War II never ended but morphed into a new series of anticolonial
wars for independence, emergencies, insurgencies and traumatic civil wars.

Across Southeast Asia, the legacies of communism remain fraught withcontestation and controversy, with diverse complexities embedded in eachspecific context. The region witnessed the 1965-66 mass killings of more thanhalf a million Partai Komunis Indonesia members, leftists and alleged
sympathisers, as well as the Cambodian genocide under the communist Khmer
Rouge which systematically executed 1.5 million people from 1975-79. Two of theworld’s handful of communist states are found in Laos and Vietnam today, but 30
years after the end of the Cold War, bans on communist organisations remain
enforced in the region.

The passing of time, the declassification of documents, and the emergence ofmore nuanced scholarship in political, historical and area studies have combined―

to decolonise readings of the Southeast Asian Cold War reframing it asconstituted by local forces drawing on outside powers for their own ideological,
material and contextual purposes, rather than merely acting as local allies inproxy theatres of conflict directed by the ‘big brothers’ of China, the Soviet Unionand the Unites States. Parallel to this development, artists have been excavating
the facts, effects and affects relating to the inconvenient histories and hystericalaftermath of the Cold War in Southeast Asia—recovering, reinterpreting anddocumenting the narratives of survivors, perpetrators, victims, secret agents andfamily members.

Sim Chi Yin, from One Day We’ll Understand performative reading, 2018
Source: https://www.eventbrite.sg/e/one-day-well-understand-performative-reading-by-simchi-yin-tickets-135966438277#Mark Teh, A Notional History, 2019
Documentary performance investigating the rewriting of history books in Malaysia andfeaturing interviews with exiled Communist Party of Malaya members from a never-completeddocumentary.

Related links
Books
1. Benedict Anderson, “Radicalism after Communism,” in The Spectre ofComparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World (London: Verso,1998). https://www.versobooks.com/books/573-the-spectre-of-comparisons
2. Dialogues with Chin Peng – New Light on the Malayan Communist Party, ed.
Karl Hack, C.C. Chin (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2004).
https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/products/dialogues-with-chin-peng
3. Antariksa, Tuan Tanah Kawin Muda: Hubungan Seni Rupa-Lekra 1950-1965[Tuan Tanah Kawin Muda: The Relation between Art and the Institute of

Related links

People’s Culture 1950-1965], (Yogyakarta: Yayasan Seni Cemeti, 2005)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5212860-tuan-tanah-kawin-mudaBooks

4. Tony Day & Maya H. T. Liem, Cultures at War: The Cold War and Cultural
Expression in Southeast Asia (New York: Cornell University Press, 2010).
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9120175-cultures-at-war

Videos
1. Dinh Q. Le, Light & Belief: Sketches of Life from the Vietnam War (2012).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bss-uuqTuX8
2. Dinh Q. Le, Vision in Darkness (2015). https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=E9O7YtV66xw
3. Amir Muhammad, Apa Khabar Orang Kampung? [Village People Radio Show]
trailer (2007). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVVcvTGLNUk
4. Tan Pin Pin, To Singapore, with Love trailer (2013).
https://www.tosingaporewithlove.com/
5. Lau Kek Huat, Absent without Leave trailer (2016).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fftTeD0B0Dc
6. Sim Chi Yin, One Day We’ll Understand, video documentation of performative
reading (2018). https://vimeo.com/269269952

7. Wah Nu & Tung Win Aun interview (2016). https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=WSmuKvARov0
8. Rithy Panh, S-21, The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3UoFMIooHk
9. Joshua Oppenheimer, The Act of Killing (2012).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tILiqotj7Y
10. Adrian Mulya, Supervivere (2016). https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=9PAFww_KYRw
11. Museum Bergerak 1965 [1965 Mobile Museum], organized by culturalcollectives in Yogyakarta (2015). https://engagemedia.org/2016/museumbergerak-1965-refusing-to-look-away/
12. Five Arts Centre, Emergency Festival catalogue (2008).
https://www.academia.edu/7880258/Emergency_Festival_and_Re_Search_Re_
Source_2008_
13. Mark Teh, Baling (2016), performance excerpts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM9xPqODkaI
14. Ho Tzu Nyen interview about The Nameless (2015) and The Name (2015).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ViTdyQQ5G0.
15. Ho Tzu Nyen interview about The Mysterious Lai Teck (2018).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojmd__IdvQc
16. Hsu Chia-Wei, Huay Mo Village (2012). https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=ShOmQVJYm6Q
17. Rithy Panh, The Missing Picture (2013) trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY7UmV0jtOk
18. The Propeller Group interview about AK-47’ vs. M16 (2015).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLff-KRck_8