Paper short abstract:

Growing interest among curators in incorporating scientific knowledge about the visual brain into their working practice has prompted me to explore together with art practitioners their views on the art-brain interface in research-intensive milieus.

Paper long abstract:

Growing interest among curators in incorporating advanced knowledge about the visual brain in curatorship praxis inspired me to explore together with contemporary art practitioners working in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore their views on the art-brain interface. What is going on in those experimental art spaces springing up in the bio-corridors of Southeast Asia remains an under researched subject in the anthropological scholarship of biosocialities. Art-interested science and society scholars, too, have paid little attention to how the art-science interface is playing out in Southeast Asia's contemporary artworld. Focused on the cultural niches forming at the intersection of artistic and scientific knowledge in research intensive environments, the paper throws light on these relatively unexplored emerging knowledge circuitries in the global bioeconomy that dislodge the art/science divide. Despite being, for the most part, absent from the ars and techné literature, these "new art worlds" offer a glimpse of artistic and curatorial approaches that are experimental and targeting audiences beyond the stereotyped "art connoisseurs" and "art aficionados".