Asia to Asia
Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . Last Sunday, I attended a Meeting Point organized under the aegis of Mekong Cultural Hub , a global organization that aims to empower diverse cultural practitioners to bring their visions for an inclusive, sustainable Mekong Region to life. The Meeting Point was organized by Singaporean Grace Hong in her home in Astoria, Queens, and in that relaxed setting it introduced to one another a group of 7 people—an art critic, two administrators, two film editors, a poet (me), and a friend. Grace herself writes on art and manages public communications for a gallery in the city. Between all of us, we had ties to Cambodia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Singapore, and the US. I had visited Cambodia and Vietnam as a tourist not so long ago, but knew little about the contemporary arts around the Mekong, so the 4 short films shown to us were revelatory. In their different ways and locations, the artists in the films depl...