Illuminates how the city has shaped contemporary artistic practice in Southeast Asia

In The City in Time, Pamela N. Corey provides new ways of understanding contemporary artistic practices in a region that continues to linger in international perceptions as perpetually “postwar.” Focusing on art from the last two decades, Corey connects artistic developments with social transformations as reflected through the urban landscapes of Ho Chi Minh City and Phnom Penh. As she argues, artists’ engagements with urban space and form reveal ways of grasping multiple and layered senses and concepts of time, whether aligned with colonialism, postcolonial modernity, communism, or postsocialism.

The City in Time traces the process through which collective memory and aspiration are mapped onto landscape and built space to shed light on how these vibrant Southeast Asian cities shape artistic practices as the art simultaneously consolidates the city as image and imaginary. Featuring a dynamic array of creative productions that include staged and documentary photography, the moving image, and public performance and installation, The City in Time illustrates how artists from Vietnam and Cambodia have envisioned their rapidly changing worlds.

"Provides a new understanding of contemporary art as spatial practices in [Vietnam and Cambodia] . . . By focusing on how artists engage with their local environments, Corey not only evades the limitations of national identity but also situates Southeast Asian artists as active agents within the global contemporary artworld."

"The City in Time emits a new energy unleashed by studies of Southeast Asia’s hitherto underresearched postsocialist bloc . . . Though squarely art historical, Corey’s lucid account of art’s critical purchase on fast-changing cities will be of interest to those studying urban Asia in other disciplines. She moves with agility between discourses that normally are kept apart in academia but that address the same city-centered economy of appearances."

"A great gift for art historians . . . [Corey’s] convincing adoptions of the city—rather than the nation—as a scale of reference offers a significant new model for art historians of the region."

"This book invites a reflection on the affective shaping of our spatiotemporal experience of living in cities, thereby appealing to scholars in landscape studies as well as art researchers who will enjoy the original and eloquent critique of a very gratifying selection of artworks."

"It is valuable asset to any syllabus of Southeast Asian contemporary art history to inspire new writings."

"Corey’s masterful monograph will be a must-read not only for Documenta visitors but also for anyone interested in global contemporary art and South East Asia."