Artists as Researchers
RUANG// Launches New Southeast Asian Art Journal
Bringing together writers from across the region, the publication examines how artists investigate the systems shaping our technological and environmental futures.
Image: Robert Zhao Renhui, Thermal image of a herd of deer in the field, still from The Owl, The Travellers and The Cement Drain, 2024. Courtesy of the artist, Singapore Art Museum, ShanghART Gallery.
Independent curatorial platform RUANG// has officially launched RUANG// Journal, a new publication dedicated to critical writing on contemporary art in Southeast Asia, marking an important step in expanding discourse around artistic research in the region. As governments, scientists, and policymakers continue to model the environmental and technological forces shaping the future, artists across Southeast Asia have long been engaging with these transformations from within their lived environments. The newly launched journal brings these practices into focus, positioning contemporary artistic practice as a critical form of inquiry into the infrastructures, ecologies, and knowledge systems shaping the region today.
Across the issue, contributors discuss the work of 25 contemporary artists, including Marwa Arsanios, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Yuki Kihara, Lisa Reihana, Brett Graham, Mata Aho Collective, Michel Tuffery, Yee I-Lann, and Robert Zhao Renhui. Their practices range from environmental fieldwork and speculative media experiments to investigations into industrial infrastructures, surveillance technologies, and Indigenous ecological knowledge.
The launch comes at a moment when global institutions are increasingly grappling with the complexity of technological and ecological systems. In February 2026, an international research consortium announced a major scientific effort to map the human exposome, the cumulative environmental exposures shaping human life. While initiatives such as UNESCO’s Futures Literacy programmes seek to help societies navigate uncertain futures.
Within Southeast Asia, these global dynamics unfold in particularly visible ways. The region manufactures much of the world’s electronic infrastructure while also confronting the environmental consequences of industrial development. Rapid urbanization and smart city technologies emerge alongside fragile coastal ecologies, while historical extraction routes continue to shape contemporary logistical networks.
For many artists working in the region, these conditions are not abstract topics but lived environments that shape everyday life and creative practice.
“In Southeast Asia, artists are often working directly within the environments they seek to understand from industrial infrastructures and digital networks to forests, coastlines, and urban systems. Their practices reveal how technological and ecological conditions are experienced on the ground. RUANG// Journal was created to support writing that takes these artistic inquiries seriously as forms of knowledge” said Natasha Doroshenko Murray, Founder of RUANG// & Editor-in-Chief of RUANG// Journal.
The essays in the inaugural issue reflect this breadth of approaches. Some contributors examine artistic practices grounded in environmental observation and fieldwork, while others focus on projects engaging technological infrastructures, labour systems, and forms of surveillance through experimental media and speculative narratives.
Contributors to the first issue include Yu Ke Dong, Annabelle Tan Kai Lin, Kenneth Wong See Huat, Elena Wise, Jaron Lua Jie Long, Wenceslaus Mendes, Chiara Serpani, and Victoria Hertel & Isa Pengskul.
Published free of charge and without advertising, the first edition reflects RUANG//'s commitment to expanding access to critical writing while supporting the development of curatorial discourse across Southeast Asia. By bringing together emerging and established writers, the journal aims to contribute to a growing intellectual infrastructure for contemporary art in the region.
About RUANG//
RUANG// is an independent non-profit curatorial and research platform based in Indonesia. Founded by curator, writer and IKT Member, Natasha Doroshenko Murray, the initiative develops exhibitions, research projects and publications exploring the intersections of technology, ecology and indigenous systems of knowledge in contemporary art across Southeast Asia.