Part 1

• On the socialities of collaboration in cross-professional visual media projects for the marginalised Jason Cabanes University of London Violet Valdez Ateneo de Manila University

  This article argues for the importance of attending to the socialities of collaboration at play when professionals from different fields draw on when they work together on visually oriented media projects for the marginalised. These refer to relational dynamics that shape the norms and practices about co-producing media content to which different professionals subscribe. It is particularly valuable to conceptualise from the bottom up how these socialities manifest in projects implemented in contexts such as the colonially inflected societies of the Southeast Asian region. Doing so brings to the fore the distinctive ways that they are often entangled with the still-persistent dynamics of coloniality. As an empirical anchor for developing a conception of these socialities of collaboration, we reflect on a cross-professional visual media project that was rolled out from 2012 to 2013 in the southern Philippines region of Mindanao. Funded by a consortium of Europe-based media organisations and media-related NGOs, it aimed to have Mindanao-based photojournalists and grassroots interest group members work together to create multimedia stories that would spotlight the often-unheard voices in the region, which has been problematically labelled as “the other Philippines”. The issues that arose from the socialities of collaboration that informed it underscore the urgency of imagining a possible world of co-production that confronts the colonial legacies that continue to haunt such endeavours.

• Visualizing Vernacularity: Colour, Culture, and Environment in the Stilt Settlements of Pulau Ketam Chua Hang (Nicsson) Chia New Era University College Scott McMaster Sunway University Yi Sheng Goh Sunway University

  Floating within the Malacca Straits, the stilt-settlements of Pulau Ketam serve as a visually assertive counter-narrative to Malaysia’s mainland-centric histories. The fishing communities have developed a distinctive aesthetic—a collection of vibrant wooden dwellings that contrast sharply with the surrounding mangroves. Following decades of outmigration, the island’s tourism surge in part due to the Pulau Ketam International Art Festival, leveraging the island’s vibrant colours to revitalize public interest. This study employs a visual-sensory ethnographic lens to decode the island’s “unregulated vibrancy” as a sophisticated mode of socio-political resistance. By pairing photographic analysis with immersive walking methodologies, the study documents a living spatial archive where livelihood and ecology converge.

  Our findings highlight a complex architectural syncretism: symmetrical Minnan layouts intersect with reinterpreted colonial hybridity, such as shaded verandas that manifest history, social structure, and cultural values. The “tidal visuality” is physically etched into the village through incremental stilt-raising—a material dialogue with the rising sea—and the utilization of drying platforms (cheng) that blur the line between domesticity and industry. We argue that the community’s kaleidoscopic palettes are not merely aesthetic, but unspoken assertions of identity. While generational shifts move from muted tones toward contemporary “Instagrammable” hues, these choices represent a living heritage rather than a static relic. This study frames Pulau Ketam as a space produced through embodied social relations, ultimately advocating for policy frameworks that move beyond monolithic heritage registries to recognize this niche community.

• Picturing ASEAN: Counter-visualising the imaginary of Southeast Asia through collaborative visual autoethnography Kristian Jeff Agustin De La Salle University

  Social marginalisation is a consequence not only of oppression but also of hegemony in that systemic visual rhetoric that perpetuates hegemonic imaginaries are instrumental in marginalising alternate imaginations and realities. Thus, this article proposes how the hegemonic notion of ‘Southeast Asia’ must be critically analysed and dismantled to reveal the reproduction of ‘Southeast Asian-ness’ as a marginalised region in the world stage. By conceptualising a decolonial notion of ‘region-ness’, this study offers a socially engaged approach to reconstructing and representing the region from the perspective of Southeast Asians – and against institutionally mediated imaginaries of Southeast Asian-ness. Recollecting the socially engaged photographic practices by participants from member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian (ASEAN) and the UK across two international projects, this essay offers a visual- ethnographic methodology that underscores the importance of image-based participatory practices in creating inclusive visual narratives through curatorial methods: archiving, gathering, film and image editing, storytelling, among others. The collaborative visualisation of the regional community as mediated by photographic media (including video) proves essential to the recurring process of collective imagination and what the author theorises as ‘visual identity-participation’. (Additional information: At the time of writing, the author was a Yang Ing Kuong Distinguished Professorial Chair in Photography at De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines).

• Kinships of Care and the Medical-Social Struggles of HIV-Positive Children in Indonesia: Participatory visual methods Najmah Najmah Sriwijaya University (UNSRI)/Leiden Univerity/Kasestart University

  From 2017 to 2024, this study used participatory visual methods, such as drawings, collages, photos, poems, and mind mapping, to center the voices of HIV-positive mothers and their families as well as NGO workers in Palembang, South Sumatra Indonesia. The study revealed a Spectrum of Survival, showing that a child’s health is dictated as much by social safety as by clinical medicine. The spectrum ranges from the Power of Home, where inclusive kinships and radical support from spouses or partners create a sanctuary for successful treatment, to systemic failure, where poverty and isolation defeat even the fiercest family love. The study also identifies Chosen Families, where NGOs act as vital safety nets, and the Burden of Hiding, where the intersection of disability and cultural pressure to “save face” sidelines a child’s right to live. Ultimately, the paper argues that intergenerational survival requires replacing the restrictive mask of piety (sholeha) and a good mother with transparent, resource-supported kinship care to move families from a house of mourning to a sanctuary of hope.

Part 2

• A Life Imprisoned by Hope: Redrawing boundaries through visual storytelling in Mae La Refugee Camp Charlotte Hill Chiang Mai University

  This article develops a visual storytelling approach in Mae La refugee camp at the Thailand-Myanmar border in order to explore the implications of digital identification systems in the context of protracted displacement and to imagine alternative futures. Mae La is an in-between space: neither fully inside nor outside the nation-state. Engaging with the community through visual storytelling offers a critical methodological rupture within this borderland context, enabling refugees to articulate experiences and imaginaries that are often silenced within humanitarian infrastructures. Through collaborative visual practices involving drawing, conversation and narration, participants become co-producers of knowledge, illuminating visible the layered borders of waiting for resettlement, return to their homelands or simply the right to work. Visual storytelling functioned not only as a tool of expression but as an embodied space of meaning-making, unpacking tensions around recognition, dignity, and hope while reimagining identification beyond dominant institutional logics.

• Perspectives on Political Struggle, State Centralization, and the Sacred Dimension of Art among Local Isan Artists of Thailand Suthathip Khamratana Thammasat University Vanessa Moll Khon Kaen University Wanitcha Wannasook Khon Kaen University

  Restrictions on freedom of political expression in Thailand create traps; the more suppression exists, the more people want to defy it, and direct protest ultimately serves the interests of those in power when resistance is punished, sometimes fatally. Art in Khon Kaen, a large city in Northeast Thailand (Isan), the country’s most impoverished region, tests the limits of resistance. Through conversational analyses with local artists and site visits, we explore Isan artists’ mutual political agenda and highlight their practical tactics expressed through art: symbolic expression, nonviolence, intellectual confrontation, and Isan identity. The visual runs through three forms of art in five case studies. First, contemporary visual art redefines perspectives in Sound of Era and Isan Manifesto, a rewritten historical representation of Isan and a curatorial platform of counter-narratives against authoritarianism, respectively. Second, Isan’s traditional musical art of ‘Mor Lam’ is fused with the visual in Lum Sing Plod Aeg, performed at youth protests against military coups, and in Isan Odyssey, an independent film portraying Isan people’s history of political struggle. Finally, gastronomic culture becomes symbolic in the story of Dao Din Beer, a craft beer created by a group of local activists with a long history of resistance against exploitation. The Thai political and artistic landscape pushes artists toward conservativism. Conformist artistic expression is safe from legal constraints and more likely to receive government funding, yet we argue that the less support local artists receive from the state, the more their political struggle compels them to produce innovative and inspiring works. We found that when the streets have become deadly, art as a means of resistance becomes a tool for political survival. As one of our artist comrades articulated: “Our survival is their curse. Have them face us. Why should we die?”

Show Paper Abstracts

Abstract

Keywords

• Isan
• Karen refugees
• Philippines
• Thailand
• art
• biometrics
• borders
• children living with HIV
• collaboration
• coloniality
• digital ID
• drawing as method
• family
• hope
• in-between space
• marginalised communities
• mothers
• participatory action research
• participatory visual method
• political activism
• political resistance
• socialities
• survival
• visual media