Critics Live!: A post-show response to The Journey
Date: 29 May 2021, Saturday
Time: 8pm (GMT+8)
Panelists: Ben Valentine (US), Kathy Rowland (SG), Michael HB Raditya (ID), Sharmilla Ganesan (MY)
Ben Valentine (US)
Ben Valentine is a freelance writer and curator. Ben has written and spoken on art and culture for SXSW, Salon, SFAQ, the Los Angeles Review of Books, YBCA, ACLU, de Young Museum, and the Museum of the Moving Image, to name a few. Previously, Ben worked as a staff writer for several years with Hyperallergic and San Francisco Arts Quarterly. Recently, he has been working to expand the possibility of visual arts crossing the borders of performing arts and contemporary arts. Engaging in collaboration projection mapping works with diverse artists or visual installations with a playwriter. It is also worth mentioning, he is well versed in working with research-based creations and providing professional directorial skills for site-specific art projects. In these types of projects, he focuses on placing the projects in common every-day locations, as opposed to housing it in theatres and museums.
Kathy Rowland (SG)
Kathy Rowland is the Managing Director of ArtsEquator.com. She is an editor, writer, researcher and producer. Her articles on the politics of culture have appeared in publications in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, the US and South Korea. Kathy edited and wrote the Introduction to Staging History: Selected Plays from Five Arts Centre 1984 – 2014 (2015), Huzir Sulaiman: Collected Plays 1998 – 2012 (2013) and Krishen Jit: An Uncommon Position, Selected Writings (2003). She has an BA in Literature from University Malaya, and an MA (Research) from the English Department, NUS, where she researched arts policy and arts practice in Malaysia.Her role as critic has fueled her activism, which cuts across issues of cultural labor, systemic dysfunctions, and institutional crises. She is contributing writer for CNN Philippines, and is teacher of multimedia arts at the College of St. Benilde-School of Design and the Arts. She maintains the review website gaslight.online, the opinion page disquiet.ph, and has been writing at ww.katrinasantiago.com since 2008. She is founder of PAGASA-People for Accountable Governance and Sustainable Action, which seeks to build a new civil society for the urgencies of the present.
Michael HB Raditya (ID)
Michael HB Raditya is a researcher, critic and writer from Yogyakarta who is a frequent contributor to Tribun Newspaper, Teraseni.id, Salihara.com, Gelaran.id, ArtsEquator, Tempo Newspaper, etc. He is the author of Merangkai Ingatan Mencipta Peristiwa: Sejumlah Kritik Seni Pertunjukan (Collecting Memory Creating Moment: Performing Arts Critics) (2018) and Babat Alas Dangdut Anyar (The New Path of New Dangdut) (2020). He edited 14 books about culture, performing arts, dance, and music.
Sharmilla Ganesan (MY)
Sharmilla Ganesan is a radio presenter, culture critic, and writer from Kuala Lumpur. At BFM89.9, she hosts The Evening Edition (current affairs), Everyone’s A Critic (arts), By the Book (literature), and Popcorn Culture (film and popular culture). Previously, she was with The Star newspaper for over a decade, and has in-depth experience covering and commenting on Malaysian arts and culture. Her articles have been published in, among others, The Atlantic, South China Morning Post, NewNaratif, and ArtsEquator.
ABOUT Critics Live!
Critics Live! is a critics-led programme series created by ArtsEquator to give arts audiences an insight into how critics formulate their responses to performances. Through Critics Live!, critics will share their experiences watching the show either in-venue or digitally, and discuss how the artists’ choices shape these respectively. Critics Live! is open to public.