:::::::::::::::::::::::::: Anto Lloveras: RESEARCH

Showing posts with label RESEARCH. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 23, 2026

CyborgText

Socioplastics advances its investigations when it ceases to behave as a mere disciplinary label and becomes an epistemological architecture capable of organising bodies, materials, spaces, images, institutions, bibliographies, platforms and cultural memories within a single operative field. Its force lies in refusing to separate art, urbanism, pedagogy, archive and technology; instead, it makes them function as strata of one conceptual infrastructure, where social reality appears as plastic matter that can be stabilised, deformed, indexed, cited and redistributed. CyborgText names this mutation: a text no longer addressed solely to the human reader or the classical academic archive, but also to search engines, DOI repositories, bibliographic systems, algorithmic platforms and semantic retrieval models. In this sense, CamelTags —SonicTerrain, MaterialDecay, PublicSpeech, DurationalPractice, SystemPressure, LinguisticProvocation— operate as linguistic prostheses: they condense theory, method and archive into recognisable, portable and reusable units. The case of LAPIEZA-LAB and Anto Lloveras’s sequence of works demonstrates how an artistic practice may become a research field: from urban interventions, relational objects and critical pedagogies to distributed archives, indexable essays and conceptual nodes, the work ceases to be an isolated object and becomes a system of public legibility. Thus, Socioplastics does not merely study how form acquires social power; it designs the conditions through which knowledge circulates, resists disappearance and produces cultural consequence. Its conclusion is unequivocal: research no longer consists in accumulating documents, but in constructing a landscape where every concept, work, citation, platform and material residue acts as living infrastructure for thought.

Plural Histories of Asian Art Archive * A public research archive mapping contemporary Asian art through collections, events, shortlists, and transregional cultural memory.

Asia Art Archive’s Collections constitute a decisive research infrastructure for the study of contemporary art in and beyond Asia, resisting any singular, nation-bound account of artistic modernity. Through its searchable catalogue, Event Database, Browse function, and curated Shortlists, AAA converts archival accumulation into a dynamic instrument of historical reorientation, foregrounding exhibitions, artists, publications, organisations, ephemera, and research materials that might otherwise remain dispersed or institutionally invisible. Its significance lies in treating art history not as a closed chronology, but as a field of relations: between cities, movements, pedagogies, political contexts, and informal cultural networks. The Event Database is especially revealing, since it frames exhibitions and happenings as evidentiary structures through which artistic discourse becomes geographically and conceptually traceable. Meanwhile, Shortlists offer interpretative pathways through the archive, allowing invited contributors to transform collection fragments into thematic constellations. As a case study, AAA’s model demonstrates how a public archive can exceed preservation by actively producing scholarship, enabling researchers to reconstruct overlooked genealogies of Asian contemporary practice across Hong Kong, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and wider international circuits. Its broader achievement is methodological: it makes the archive not merely a storehouse, but a site of activation, comparison, and critical encounter. In doing so, Asia Art Archive affirms that the histories of contemporary art are multiple, unfinished, and dependent upon infrastructures capable of sustaining access, context, and intellectual plurality. Asia Art Archive (2026) Collections Overview. Available at: https://aaa.org.hk/en/collections/overview

Monday, August 11, 2025

Rethinking Progress Through Wellbeing

In a pivotal gathering that transcended conventional metrics of national prosperity, the Wellbeing and Public Policy Conference convened a diverse spectrum of international academics, governmental strategists, and policy analysts to deliberate how the evolving science of wellbeing could reshape the architecture of public governance. Prompted by the influential Stiglitz Report, which challenged the sufficiency of GDP as a proxy for societal progress, the event hosted 45 in-depth papers traversing philosophical frameworks, measurement techniques, empirical insights, and practical policy applications. Central to the discourse were four keynote contributions: Andrew Clark dissected the Easterlin paradox, exploring how income comparisons distort the relationship between wealth and happiness; Robert Cummins advanced the controversial set-point theory, suggesting individual wellbeing maintains a stable baseline; Paul Frijters interrogated the resilience of happiness in response to life’s adversities, offering evidence for psychological recovery and second chances; and Robert MacCulloch linked affective states to macroeconomic decisions, illustrating how emotions like contentment and anxiety can influence fiscal policy. A rich tapestry of presentations examined pressing themes such as children’s wellbeing, intergenerational poverty, gendered impacts of labor participation, and regional deprivation, while also showcasing progressive frameworks like Gross National Happiness and the Oxfam Humankind Index as viable alternatives to monolithic economic indicators. Scholars underscored the inadequacy of one-dimensional statistics and called for multidimensional, culturally sensitive indicators capable of capturing lived realities and informing equitable resource distribution. Particularly urgent was the call to integrate the perspectives of children, disabled populations, and marginalized groups, often excluded from standard wellbeing metrics. Operationally, institutions like the New Zealand and Australian Treasuries unveiled emerging wellbeing frameworks designed to embed subjective wellbeing into decision-making processes, marking a shift toward proactive, human-centered policy. The conference crystallized a growing consensus: that wellbeing should not be a secondary outcome of economic activity, but rather the explicit goal of modern governance. In conclusion, the event catalyzed a broader movement toward embedding empathy, equity, and evidence at the core of public policy, advancing a paradigm in which human flourishing supplants profit as the ultimate measure of progress.