Blue Skes: Afro-Asian Diasporas Chapter 1 - Rujunko Pugh & Marie-Therese Png
24 Sep 2020
Rujunko Pugh & Marie-Therese Png hold a Blue Skies Conversation between their respective locations in Sydney, Australia and Oxford, UK about Afro-Asian perspectives, reflecting on this historic period of COVID-19 and BLM. They open with a discussion of their family histories as Afro-Asian diaspora and proceed to reflect on structural and institutional failings brought to global consciousness by COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd, and growing calls for Black-Asian solidarity – as well as historic legacies of solidarity. In this conversation, Rujunko and Marie-Therese recount their personal and geopolitical orientations regarding militarism, colonialism, and imperialism, and discuss together how they process confluences of political histories through practice – Rujunko through her critical artistic practice, and Marie-Therese through her work in technology policy/research/organising. Theories of multiplicity, and the Rujunko’s creation of an Afro-Asian code then shape how the discussants imagine futures informed by Afro-Asian identity, closing with a reflection on a collective question of what our intergenerational inheritance is.