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This episode features a conversation on Beijing's urban soundscape with Colin Chinnery, an artist and curator based in China. Chinnery is a co-founder of Sound Art Museum in Beijing. This museum opened to the public in 2023, and it offers visitors a history of the city through sounds. Sound Art Museum is an immersive space, which also features natural soundscapes, languages, and music from around the world. In today’s episode, Colin discusses the importance of sound for knowing and understanding a city, while listening to different examples of recordings from old and new Beijing. Colin talks about his journey to create this 6000-square-meter space, his plans for the museum, and the value and significance of careful listening. 

The recording of Xin Fengxia singing "Liu Qiao’er" comes courtesy of the Chinese Database for Traditional Music. The song "On a Mound" by the band Xue Wei was provided by Colin Chinnery. All other audio clips and field recordings included in this episode are courtesy of Sound Art Museum. In addition to a short excerpt included in the conversation, the episode concludes with the full song《都塔尔弹唱》being performed on the dutar by Abdulla Majnun.

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This episode features Aarti Kawlra, Academic Director of the Humanities Across Borders program at IIAS, hosting discussion about indigo with three colleagues, scholars, and educators. Jody Benjamin is an Associate Professor of History at Howard University. His recent book is The Texture of Change: Dress, Self-Fashioning and History in Western Africa, 1700-1850 (Ohio University Press, New African History Series, 2024), which explores questions of state-making, social hierarchy, and self-making across parts of Mali, Senegal, and Guinea through the lens of textiles and dress in a context shaped by an emergent global capitalism, slavery, and colonialism. Min-Chin Chiang is an Associate Professor and the Chairperson of the Graduate Institute of Architecture and Cultural Heritage in Taipei National University of the Arts. Her work focuses on heritage craft, heritage education, and heritage dynamics in relation to community and colonialism. Finally, Jocelyne Vokouma is a researcher in the Department of Socioeconomics and Development Anthropology at the Institute of Social Studies (Institut des Sciences des Sociétés / INSS-CNRST) in Burkina Faso, where she specializes in the aesthetics of indigo in clothing.

Indigo occupies a haloed place as a color, a craft, and a hi(story) of global interactions. Viewed largely as a dye-yielding plant with a specific chemistry and exchange value as a commodity, in this podcast, the guests focus on indigo as a tool for African and Asian self-consciousness. Brought to you ahead of the Africa-Asia ConFest to be held next month (June 2025) in Dakar, this episode centers on indigo as a livelihood practice and techno-cultural knowhow, taking two specific examples, namely, indigo in Taiwan and indigo in Burkina Faso.

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In this episode, current IIAS Research Fellow Zhengfeng Wang hosts a conversation on transregional architectural history in the Asia-Pacific. She is joined by Amanda Achmadi, Paul Walker, and Soon-Tzu Speechley, all from the University of Melbourne. The three guests recently co-edited the volume Architectural Encounters in Asia Pacific: Built Traces of Intercolonial Trade, Industry and Labour, 1800s-1950s, published by Bloomsbury in 2024).

Amanda Achmadi is an Associate Professor in Architectural Design, specializing in Asian Architecture and Urbanism. Her work examines the intersections of architecture and identity politics across pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods, with a particular focus on Indonesia and the broader Southeast Asian region. Amanda was previously a Research Fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies in 2010. Paul Walker is a Professor of Architecture whose recent research delves into mid-20th-century architecture in Australia and New Zealand, contemporary museum architecture, and colonial museum buildings in Australia, New Zealand, and India. Finally, Soon-Tzu Speechley is a Lecturer in Urban and Cultural Heritage. His research interests include the reception of classical architecture in colonial Malaya, architectural networks within the British Empire, and Southeast Asian heritage.

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This episode features a conversation about contemporary Indonesian politics, with a special focus on the role of Islam. In October 2024, Prabowo Subianto was sworn in as the president of Indonesia. In the Presidential election back in February 2024, he had quite handily defeated his two competitors, Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo, with 59% of the popular vote. This 2024 election was the third time that Prabowo tried to become president, after he lost in 2014 and 2019 against Joko "Jokowi" Widodo. The political competitions between Jokowi and Prabowo on occasion turned quite ugly. Not infrequently, it was accusations that the other was the "wrong kind" of Muslim that made it ugly – with the effect that the two candidates always appeared like irreconcilable opponents. But when Jokowi could no longer compete in the 2024 elections after his second term was up, he surprised many spectators by endorsing none other than Prabowo as his successor as president. Prabowo, in turn, selected Jokowi’s son, Gibran Rakabuming, as his running mate. 

This episode is hosted by Dr. Verena Meyer, an Assistant Professor of Islam in South and Southeast Asia at Leiden University. She is joined by three colleagues with expertise in Islam and politics in contemporary Indonesia: (1) Dr. Zainal Abidin, who teaches at at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta and also serves as Director of the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies; (2) Dr. Saskia Schäfer, Head of a Research Group about Secularity, Islam, and Democracy in Indonesia and Turkey at Humboldt University in Berlin; and (3) Dr. Taufiq Hanafi, postdoctoral researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) in Leiden. Welcome to the three of you, and thank you for joining us.

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This episode features a conversation with the team behind the exhibition Asian Bronze at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. The ambitious show celebrates 4000 years of bronze art and the central role of bronze in the traditions of Asia. Ranging from prehistoric objects to contemporary artworks, the exhibition includes pieces from India, China, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan, Nepal, and Korea. In this conversation, our four guests elaborate on the magnificence of this metal and its importance across widely different regions of the Asian continent. They discuss the complexities of planning and designing an exhibition of this scale and proportion, and they introduce some of their favorite objects and stories. William Southworth is Curator of Southeast Asian Art at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Ching-Ling Wang is Curator of East Asian Art at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Anna Slaczka is Curator of South Asian Art at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, and Sara Creange is Conservator Metals at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

Asian Bronze is on view at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam until 12 January 2025. It includes a book entitled Asian Bronze. 4000 Years of Beauty, as well as a symposium that will be held on 9 and 10 January 2025. Interested listeners can register for the symposium using the following link: https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/lectures-symposiums/symposium-asian-bronze

[The recording of bronze bells, a clip of which is played in this episode, was kindly provided by the Museum of East Asian Art, Koeln & Ludwig Foundation, Aachen.]

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On this episode, Laura Erber hosts a conversation with two distinguished historians from the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil: João José Reis and Fábio Baqueiro Figueiredo. These scholars represent two generations of researchers committed to reinterpreting and deepening our understanding of the complex relationships between Brazil and Africa.

João José Reis is one of Brazil’s foremost historians and a globally recognized authority on 19th-century slavery. Born in Salvador, his extensive research has focused on urban slavery, resistance movements, and the lives of former slaves in Brazil. Reis earned his History degree from the Catholic University of Salvador and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, where his groundbreaking thesis explored the Malê Revolt of 1835. A full professor at the Federal University of Bahia since 1979, he has also held visiting positions at Princeton and Harvard. Reis’ work has profoundly influenced the study of slavery and Afro-Brazilian history, making him a seminal figure in the field.

Professor Fábio Baqueiro Figueiredo is a leading scholar in African History, also at the Federal University of Bahia. His research is deeply rooted in the cultural and political dynamics of contemporary Africa, with a particular focus on Angola. Figueiredo has delved into the intricate relationships between culture and politics and the formation and transformation of social and political identities in the latter half of the 20th century. Figueiredo has also made significant contributions to the academic community as editors of the journal Afro-Ásia from 2018 to 2023. Notably, João José Reis earlier helped relaunch that journal in 1996 after some years of irregular publication during the military dictatorship.

Additionally, their work is closely tied to the Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais (Centre for Afro-Oriental Studies), a pioneering research center at the Federal University of Bahia. Established in 1959, the Center is dedicated to the study of African, Asian, and Afro-Brazilian cultures, fostering a deeper understanding of the historical and contemporary ties between Brazil and the broader Afro-Oriental world.

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Here at IIAS, the upcoming edition of our flagship publication The Newsletter (June 2024, #98) comes out next month, just in time for the ICAS 13 conference in Surabaya, Indonesia. This edition of The Newsletter is meant to engage in various ways with the conference theme, “Crossways of Knowledge.” The special Focus section of this issue presents a collection of articles by authors from the Indigenous Ta-u community of Lanyu Island off the coast of Taiwan. Echoing the theme of maritime connections so central to this iteration of ICAS 13, the authors of The Focus reflect on multiple dimensions of Ta-u life, including traditional practices like fishing and boat-building as well as contemporary challenges posed by tourism, migration, and ecological disruption. 

As a teaser for the Indigenous collection in the upcoming issue, we asked two authors – both members of the Ta-u community – to come on the podcast and give our audience a sense of the Ta-u language through its stories and poetry. In this episode, Syaman Lamuran gives a brief introduction before Syaman Rapongan, an elder of the community, offers two recitations: first, some ceremonial words spoken during the Summoning Flying Fish ritual; and second, a poem reflecting the importance of boats and fish to the Ta-u culture. Finally, Syaman Lamuran returns to reflect and translate these recitations into English. 

If you'd like to know more about traditional Ta-u culture and contemporary Ta-u lives, be sure to pick up Issue #98 of The Newsletter. In addition to Syaman Lamuran and Syaman Rapongan, we'd also like to thank Eric Clark, Annika Pissin, and Huei-Min Tsai, who co-edited the upcoming Focus section in collaboration with members of the Ta-u community.

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