What is Southeast Asia? More importantly, from whose perspective are we viewing it? These are the questions that artist Ho Tzu Nyen begins with in his practice which comprises videos, installations and performance works. Amidst his engagements with historical and theoretical texts and archives, he was especially conscious of Southeast Asia’s changing definitions and geographical scopes throughout history, which were initially established by powers outside the region. Until the 20th century, European travellers and geographers grouped Southeast Asia with parts of South Asia and referred to these areas with the collective term “East Indies”; it was also referred to as “Indochina,” because of its location between India and China. By the 20th century, with increasing colonisation and trade in the region, the terms changed again — “French Indochina” was used for the French colonies of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, “Dutch East Indies” for Indonesia, and “Malay Archipelago ” for the maritime areas of Southeast Asia including Brunei, East Malaysia, Timor-Leste , Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines. From China’s perspective, Southeast Asia was known as Nányáng (which translates to “the South Seas”). The term can be traced to the end of the Ming Dynasty in 1644, later rising to prominence in the 1860s following an expansion of the ethnic Chinese migrant population in the region. During World War II, this regional concept was strengthened by the Japanese occupation, which sought to integrate Southeast Asia within its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere from 1940 to 1945.¹ In the same period, “South East Asia” became a fixed entity with the establishment of the South East Asian Command by the UK from 1943 to 1946. “Southeast Asia,” as popularised today, was coined following the establishment of the US State Department Division of Southeast Asian Affairs in 1945. It became more entrenched after World War II, particularly in academia, stemming from the Southeast Asian “Area Studies” programmes that were established in the US, before gaining traction in anthropology and sociology.

“Southeast Asia” is a geographical, political and military term first attributed to the region not by Southeast Asians, but by others. The region itself has since adopted the term with the formation of the Association of Southeast Asia (ASA) in 1961, which later evolved into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967 at the initiative of its founding member states (excluding current member Timor-Leste).²  ASEAN’s formation strengthened the agency of the region, and forged and cemented this prevailing geopolitical imaginary. Today, the term still finds currency in the regional geopolitics of the present. Currently, membership has expanded to include 10 nation-states: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. However, the region’s long and complex colonial history means that its geopolitical scope continues to be redefined. Scholar Russell H. Fifield pointed out in 1983 that “the validity of Southeast Asia rests largely on past and present political perceptions of the areas as a region, perceptions well evidenced.³ 

Following this line of enquiry, Ho examines and approaches Southeast Asia as a region that continues to change, transform and morph through different social, historical, economical, and political times and agendas. In 2012, Ho released his landmark online, interactive work and ongoing research project The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia (hereafter referred to as The Critical Dictionary). The dictionary proposes a multitude of terms for each letter of the Latin alphabet, each with a concept, motif or biography that interconnects different aspects of Southeast Asia. The project centres on the question: What constitutes the unity of Southeast Asia—a region never unified by language, religion or political power? ⁴ Working with programmers to develop a set of algorithms, Ho created a platform for absorbing and annotating online audiovisual materials that continuously composes new combinations of the dictionary’s terms. This continuous process of reworking and reinterpreting the region emphasises the multiplicity of voices, understandings and perceptions of Southeast Asia across time: the experience of viewing The Critical Dictionary is always unique, with every encounter changing and transforming according to the algorithm. Ho describes it as “a shape-shifting work that reflects and interrogates the shape-shifting understandings and construct of Southeast Asia as a region.”⁵ 

Ho Tzu Nyen, 'CDOSEA (The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia)', 2017–ongoing. Algorithmically composed video, infinite loop, configurations variable. Installation view at 'Ho Tzu Nyen: Time & the Tiger', SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, 24 Nov 2023‒3 Mar 2024. Foreground: Ho Tzu Nyen, 'F for Fold (The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia)', 2021. Artist’s book. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

The Critical Dictionary came directly out of these reflections on what defines the region, and as “a move to displace this question [of what Southeast Asia is] from the academy into the arts.”⁶ In my interview with Ho, he recalled how the project started and developed:

The dictionary project is a way for me to think about what is the “form” [of Southeast Asia]? What is the shape of such a mysterious object? And what can we do with it? What can we create? What kinds of propositions or speculations can we produce from this unstable, mysterious object? And what form of composition? Does it have an end? Composition is the aesthetic question in the sense of how we compose an image and how we compose a region. This aesthetic question for me is also political and ethical at the same time because inevitably we deal with life, the coexistence of life, difference of life, heterogeneities and different cultures.⁷ 

The artist’s use of the dictionary as a medium also strongly resonates with the numerous notions of belonging to this region and their many interpretations across time and place. The purpose of a dictionary is to list words and their meanings, typically in alphabetical order, in a specific language. It also includes equivalent words and meanings in different languages as well as their origins, usages, and pronunciations. The dictionary often evokes a sense of authority and objectivity, traits that Ho aims to challenge and reconfigure through The Critical Dictionary. He shared:

Dictionaries immediately evoke authority through [providing] precise definitions… Rather than avoid that, I decided to take that on but, at the same time, do something strange and I will say almost slightly perverse. So instead of just being a dictionary it is a critical dictionary. It is pre-phase by the critic and the word critical. And to be critical about something means that you already have a position. You are not claiming to be objective… my main intention in taking on the dictionary is to adopt this frame of authority and subvert it in a certain way from the inside.⁸ 

Ho Tzu Nyen, 'F for Fold (The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia)', 2021. Artist’s book. Installation view at 'Ho Tzu Nyen: Time & the Tiger', SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, 24 Nov 2023‒3 Mar 2024. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

The Critical Dictionary comprises 26 terms following the 26 letters in the Latin alphabet. Each letter proposes a term that openly “defines” specific social, historical, geographical, environmental and political traits of Southeast Asia through the artist’s lens, referencing research he has conducted over the years. For example, the entry for the letter “T”—which is “t for tiger, theodolite,” responds to how Singapore, where the artist was born and is currently based in, used to be full of tigers. However, the tiger population in Singapore began to drastically decline with British colonisation, and the species eventually became extinct in the area. This past also reveals the irony of Singapore being known as “the Lion City”—from the Sanskrit words “Sinha” (lion) and “Pura”(city)—when lions are not native to the country. This forgotten past, embodied by the tiger, invites viewers to rethink histories of colonisation from both human and non-human perspectives. The second noun in the entry, “theodolite,” is a colonial instrument used for road surveying. Here, Ho specifically refers to a print by German artist and illustrator Heinrich Leutemann titled Interrupted Road Surveying in Singapore from circa 1865, which is currently in the collection of National Gallery Singapore. This print shows an image of a road survey that was conducted in 1835 by George Coleman, who was then Singapore’s Superintendent of Public Works. The artist was particularly drawn to this print as it demonstrates the tensions and consequences of Singapore’s colonial history. In a 2018 interview for the Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama, Japan, the artist explained that:

Tigers in the Malay cosmology are seen as vehicles, or mediums for ancestral spirits. And they can protect you but also punish you if you break a taboo. So the relationship is at best, an ambiguous one. But with the coming of the British, this relationship was ruptured. Nature is separated from human culture, becoming something that humans want to dominate, control or destroy. During the survey mission, Coleman and his entourage encountered a tiger. This tiger, instead of attacking humans, destroyed the instrument for triangulation called the theodolite. We can find so many possible narratives in this—the tiger as a force of wild, indigenous nature, and the British survey mission as the colonial dream of imposing order in space.⁹ 

This specific reference to the colonial history of Singapore demonstrates the critical lens and the artist’s position in creating The Critical Dictionary.

Ho Tzu Nyen, 'One or Several Tigers', 2017. Synchronised double-channel HD projection, automated screen, shadow puppets, 10-channel sound, show control system, 33 min 33 sec. Installation view for the exhibition 'Ho Tzu Nyen: Time & the Tiger', SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, 24 Nov 2023‒3 Mar 2024. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

Presenting the work as an audio-visual dictionary that continuously recomposes footage associated with related terms from the internet also further emphasises the artist’s intention to challenge the traditional dictionary’s seemingly objective character. There is always a different experience (be it visual, audio or moving image) when viewing The Critical Dictionary that ultimately resists a single definition or understanding for each of the terms. The work highlights the shapeshifting quality of Southeast Asia as an entity that continues to transform across place, time, culture and localities.

In the artist’s practice, The Critical Dictionary also serves as a starting point for Ho to develop other artworks. The Critical Dictionary thus becomes a generative entity that allows for new works and interpretations to arise. For example, the entry from The Critical Dictionary, “T for tiger, theodolite,” informed the creation of Ho’s video and theatrical installations One or Several Tigers (2017) and 2 or 3 Tigers (2015). There is also the entry “l for legibility, lai teck.,” Lai Teck was the Secretary-General of the Malayan Communist Party from 1939 to 1947, a figure who is further explored in Ho’s film installations The Name (2016) and The Nameless (2016). Ho further builds on The Critical Dictionary with his 2021 work F for Fold, which takes the form of an expandable dictionary/artist book that includes all the 26 terms originally presented in The Critical Dictionary.

Another notable work is Ho’s 2019 virtual reality installation titled R for Resonance, which visualises the sound, production and movement of gongs across Southeast Asia. Ho conducted extensive research on the making of gongs across Southeast Asia and the attendant technologies that transform liquid bronze or brass into a solid form. The fluid and molten qualities of the bronze from which gongs are made reflect on acts of transformation and metamorphosis. In R for Resonance, Ho extends the making of gongs to the concept of cosmotechnics. Cosmotechnics, a concept developed and introduced by Hong Kong philosopher and university professor Yuk Hui, refers to the unification of the cosmos and the moral through technical activities such as craft-making or art-making. Hui proposes that the concept interrogates the different kinds of moralities associated with craft and artmaking and explores how these associations vary from one culture to another according to different dynamics.¹⁰ This concept positions technology within multiple cosmoses, and can also be applied to how we would interpret Southeast Asia as a region that continues to evolve across time. In the case of gong-making, each gong creates a unique sound because it was produced differently, using material, techniques, and technologies that are localised. However, when visualising gongs across Southeast Asia being struck at the same time, the composition of collective sound that is produced blurs the individuality and “locality” of the sound coming from each gong.¹¹ The merging of sound and vibrations, each bouncing off and overlapping one another, also continues to transform across space and time. There is a resonance at play here when, for a moment in time, the region of Southeast Asia is experienced as a unified entity.

The unity of Southeast Asia as imagined and interpreted through the term “resonance” responds to the artist’s initial question in developing The Critical Dictionary: what constitutes the unity of Southeast Asia—a region never unified by language, religion or political power? Here, the artist reflects on and acknowledges the paradox of Southeast Asia: the region constantly wants to be “defined” vis-a-vis political entities such as ASEAN, was historically defined by colonial powers outside of the region, but ultimately resists a single definition and understanding because of its diversity and multiplicity of cultures, languages, religions, ethnicities and political systems. This paradox of the region is precisely what is emphasised by The Critical Dictionary through its algorithmic and regenerative use of audiovisual materials associated with relevant terms. It does not propose a singular or cohesive understanding of Southeast Asia and rather draws attention to its shapeshifting qualities. Ho explains:

Southeast Asia is a region that is not really a region at the same time because it is not unified by a religion, language or political system. That’s part of the paradox. But there’s also something really beautiful [about this], that it is not something which is essentialise.^12,13,14 

This intention to embrace the complexity and diversity of Southeast Asia also illustrates how this sense of belonging to the region is always changing. The Critical Dictionary invites viewers to experience the region as a chance encounter as seen in the continuous recomposition of audiovisual materials. Interpreting the work—and by extension the region—as a form of encounter illustrates the openness of Southeast Asia to various understandings, cultures, languages, religions, ethnicities, and politics from within and outside the region. The artist describes,

It is not like to be Southeast Asian means you have to be of a certain ethnicity or skin colour, or that you must speak one specific language. It doesn’t essentialise or reduce to these types of criteria but rather is something that is perpetually open to the outside … I would also like to think that there is a kind of traditional hospitality to Southeast Asian cultures, which is that it kind of welcomes the outside. This opening to the outside enriches the so-called insight and it also frees us from this reductive, essentialised, [and] identitarian politics which, unfortunately, has a certain resurgence in our world. ¹⁵ 

By emphasising the multiplicity and potentialities of Southeast Asia, The Critical Dictionary becomes a generative entity that started with a series of existential questions about the region and its formation. The work also addresses the dilemma faced by many Southeast Asians about belonging to the region. It can be argued that people from within the region rarely refer to themselves as “Southeast Asians” but rather as Indonesian, Malay, Filipino, Vietnamese, and so on. As such, The Critical Dictionary further reflects on what it means to belong to the region by proposing terms that co-exist within the shared geographical, political, cultural, social and historical experiences of Southeast Asia according to its people. While national frameworks and identities continue to inform contemporary art practice within Southeast Asia, as seen in the development of contemporary art museums, galleries, artist-run initiatives and art histories in each country, many artists such as Ho have sought to challenge set geographical understandings of place, nationality and belonging, and are thus interpreting the region through transnational and transcultural lenses. By reimagining and even dismantling the defined geopolitical borders of Southeast Asia and its nation-states, Ho also seeks to disintegrate colonial and postcolonial narratives of the region, reconfiguring them to express precolonial histories, present conditions and future potentialities. As art historian Michelle Antoinette summarises, “the geography of Southeast Asia is reconfigured as an assemblage of multiple and interconnected spaces, ever-changing and ever-renewable in its possibilities.”¹⁶  The Critical Dictionary admits space for different identifications, possibilities, and degrees of belonging to the region to happen simultaneously.

Ho Tzu Nyen, 'T for Time', 2023–ongoing. Two-channel synchronised HD video, eight-channel sound, voile screen, scrim walls, real-time algorithmic editing and compositing system. Generative, 60 min cycles. Installation view at 'Ho Tzu Nyen: Time & the Tiger', SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, 24 Nov 2023‒3 Mar 2024. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

When asked whether he will be introducing new terms to The Critical Dictionary, the artist affirms that he is very open to this and acknowledges that there are already quite a few terms that are in development. This can be seen in his most recent video installation T for Time (2024) which is described by the artist as “a collection of temporalities that are different in scales and in natures.” The work examines the origins of Greenwich Mean Time, timekeeping traditions in the East and West, and how time is explained by quantum physics and cosmology. It was commissioned by the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), Art Sonje Center Seoul, M+, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo and Sharjah Art Foundation, illustrating inter-regional interests in the artist’s work and the fluidity of time across these places. The concept and ideas behind the making of T for Time were developed after Ho’s research in Japan, and how when Japan occupied Southeast Asia between 1941 and 1945, one of their goals was to have Southeast Asian countries standardise their local times and align them with Japanese time, evincing time as a valuable tool for asserting power and authority. Although the term “time” is not officially included in The Critical Dictionary, it demonstrates how open and transformative the dictionary is to various forces and expositions of Southeast Asia across place and time.

The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia is a starting point and an invitation to reflect on our shared belonging and connections to the region then, now and into the future.

*Parts of this essay have been adapted from Bianca Winataputri, “The Persistence of a Regional Imaginary: Contemporary Southeast Asian Art Then and Now” (PhD thesis, Monash University, 2024).

Author Bio
Bianca Winataputri is a curator, writer, researcher, and podcast host based in Indonesia and Australia. She has a Ph.D. in Art History and Theory from Monash Art, Design, and Architecture (MADA) and her research focuses on contemporary Southeast Asian art and exhibitions. She is currently a lecturer at the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (MADA) at Monash University and Editor of Disclaimer, Liquid Architecture’s online journal. Bianca previously served as the Public Programs Coordinator at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) and Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Australia. She was also recently International Researcher in Residence at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul, South Korea in 2024. Her recent projects include Talking Contemporary podcast launched in 2021, the Sang Gunung Menyerahkan Jejaknya ke Laut exhibition at Cush Cush Gallery, Bali, in 2023, and the Who am I: Chinese-Indonesian Art Practice Post-1998 exhibition at MADA Intermission Gallery, Melbourne, in 2019.

Endnotes
¹ The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was a pan-Asian union that the Empire of Japan aimed to establish to expand its territory, economy and military power. During the World War II period, it covered Japan, China and parts of Southeast Asia, exerting its influence by enforcing the slogan “Asia for Asians.”
² Timor Leste achieved independence from Indonesia in 2002. In 2022, the country was considered for accession as a member of ASEAN. At the time of writing, Timor Leste is not a member of ASEAN. The recent change of government with the accession of Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão in August 2023 has also shifted the directions of the membership process.
³ Russell H. Fifield, “Southeast Asia as a Regional Concept,” Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 11, no. 2 (1983): 1.
⁴ Ho Tzu Nyen, “About,” The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, accessed July 1, 2022, https://cdosea.org/#about/a
⁵ Ho Tzu Nyen, interview by Bianca Winataputri, July 18, 2022.
⁶ Ibid.
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ Ho Tzu Nyen and Bianca Winataputri, “Ho Tzu Nyen – The Paradox of Southeast Asia and The Critical Dictionary,” February 22, 2023, in Talking Contemporary, podcast, episode 11. https://talkingcontemporary.com/podcast/hotzunyen.
⁹ Ken Takiguchi, “Ho Tzu Nyen – Mapping, Tigers and Theatricality: Narrating Fluid History through Media,” Asia Hundreds, Japan Foundation Asia Center, August 21 2008, accessed January 8, 2023, https://asiawa.jpf.go.jp/en/culture/features/f-ah-tpam-ho-tzu-nyen/.
¹⁰ Yuk Hui, “Cosmotechnics as Cosmopolitics”, e-flux issue 86, November 2017, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/86/161887/cosmotechnics-as-cosmopolitics/.
¹¹ In 2022, Ho also noted: “As a mental exercise, if we collected gongs from every part of Southeast Asia and we strike all these gongs at the same time, the sound that comes out from every individual gong is different because of the metallurgical contents of the gongs into the making of the gongs are different.” Ho Tzu Nyen, interview by the author.
¹⁴ Ho Tzu Nyen and Bianca Winataputri, “Ho Tzu Nyen – The Paradox of Southeast Asia and The Critical Dictionary,” February 22, 2023, in Talking Contemporary, podcast, episode 11. https://talkingcontemporary.com/podcast/hotzunyen.
¹⁵ Ho Tzu Nyen and Bianca Winataputri, “Ho Tzu Nyen – The Paradox of Southeast Asia and The Critical Dictionary,” February 22, 2023, in Talking Contemporary, podcast, episode 11. https://talkingcontemporary.com/podcast/hotzunyen.
¹⁶ Michelle Antoinette, Reworlding Art History: Encounters with Contemporary Southeast Asian Art after 1990 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 92.

References
- Antoinette, Michelle. Reworlding Art History: Encounters with Contemporary Southeast Asian Art after 1990. Leiden: Brill, 2015.
- Fifield, Russell H. “Southeast Asia as a Regional Concept.” Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 11, no. 2 (1983): 1–13.
- Ho, Tzu Nyen. “About.” The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia. Accessed July 1, 2022. https://cdosea.org/#about/a.
- Ho, Tzu Nyen and Bianca Winataputri, “Ho Tzu Nyen—The Paradox of Southeast Asia and The Critical Dictionary.” Talking Contemporary. Produced by Bianca Winataputri. February 22, 2023. Podcast. MP3 audio. Episode 11. 38:35. https://talkingcontemporary.com/podcast/hotzunyen.
- Ho, Tzu Nyen. Interview by Bianca Winataputri. July 18, 2022.
- Takiguchi, Ken. “Ho Tzu Nyen—Mapping, Tigers and Theatricality: Narrating Fluid History through Media.” Asia Hundreds, Japan Foundation Asia Center, August 21, 2008. Accessed January 8, 2023. https://asiawa.jpf.go.jp/en/culture/features/f-ah-tpam-ho-tzu-nyen/.
- Yuk Hui. “Cosmotechnics as Cosmopolitics.” e-flux 86, November 2017. Accessed February 8, 2022. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/86/161887/cosmotechnics-as-cosmopolitics/.