Librarians-in-Residence: Public Programming
TOWARDS A SHARED LANGUAGE: MAGAZINE-MAKING AS RESPONSE
te editions, Moe Satt, Elaine Tam, Ye Wuji, and Can Yang
Asymmetry HQ, 102a Albion Drive, London E8 4LY
2–4.30PM, 5-6.30PM, 21.06.2025
We are thrilled to welcome Michael Guo and Coco Kechun Qin, Editors of te editions, from New York, for their first public presentation in London, as part of our 2025 Librarians-in-Residence programme. While te editions are a familiar presence at London’s book fairs, this programme offers a unique opportunity for a different encounter; one that moves inward, into the thinking, processes, and collaborations that shape the magazine’s distinct publishing practice. It is an invitation to dwell not only on the surfaces of printed matter, but alongside the trajectories, resonances, and relations that it sustains.
The programme will kick off with a presentation by Guo and Qin with te editions’ Art Director Can Yang, inviting our audience to peer into the conceptual and material life of the magazine. Together, they will unpack how visual and editorial strategies are developed in tandem and how rhythm, sequencing, and typography function not simply as aesthetics, but as ways of shaping reading and meaning for a publication. The presentation will be followed by a curated screening of short films by artists Moe Satt and Ye Wuji, long-time collaborators of the publication, whose contributions engage diasporic narratives through poetic visual and textual forms. Ye will join us in person to reflect on their published work, and on the dynamics of working across distance, language, and time, revealing the durational and dialogic nature of te editions’ publishing as a situated and relational practice.
Following the public programme, Elaine Tam, writer, curator, and Senior Editor at FIELDNOTES, will host a creative writing workshop, delving into shared affinities between the London-based, artist-run publishing project and te editions in its ways of working with, and speaking through artistic practices. Titled ‘Illegible’, the workshop explores translation, displacement, and the fragment and considers slippages in meaning as generative sites of poetic potential and a way of engaging with questions of diasporic belonging. Taking cues from writers and thinkers Qiu Miaojin, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and Sarat Maharaj, as well as our library, we explore techniques of redaction, over-writing and montage. Through a series of informal exercises, participants are encouraged to experiment with ideas of writing between and around.
As a workshop focused on process rather than outcomes, all levels of writing experience are welcome. The workshop has a limited capacity of twelve participants.
PROGRAMME SCHEDULE
2.00—3.00PM Presentation by te editions with Can Yang
3.00—3.15PM Break
3.15—4.15PM Screening programme with introduction by te editions
- Moe Satt, Hands around Zuid, 2025
- Ye Wuji, Something Misplaced, 2023
4.15—4.30PM Conversation between Ye Wuji and te editions
4.30—5.00PM Conclusion Public Programme
5.00—6.30PM Sign-up only: Creative writing workshop with Elaine Tam
FREE ENTRY, REGISTRATION HERE
(Please note that separate sign-ups are needed for the public programme and the workshop.)
ACCESS INFORMATION
The full programme takes place on the ground floor with step-free access in our multi-purpose programme space, with a fully accessible, all-gender bathroom. Please feel free to inquire with info@asymmetryart.org if you would like to discuss any access needs. Please kindly be advised that requests should be made one week in advance of the event, and we will try our best to make accommodations subject to availability.
BIOGRAPHY
te editions is a curatorial, editorial, and publishing collective operating in New York and Beijing, dedicated to exploring the intersection of art and the humanities. We examine historical and contemporary social landscapes through a diversified and microscopic lens, focusing on how cultures encounter, collapse, and transform each other within global cultural flows.
te editions is currently the 2025 Librarians-in-Residence at Asymmetry.
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FIELDNOTES is an artist-run publishing project based in Newham in east London. We produce an annual print journal alongside a public programme of workshops, mentoring opportunities, radio broadcasts, screenings and readings. Founded in 2020, FIELDNOTES aims to promote and support non-conforming creative practices that pioneer new cultural forms. We seek to challenge the systemic inequalities that limit opportunities in the arts by working with individuals and communities who may not find support elsewhere.
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Moe Satt is a Burmese visual and performance artist who uses his own body as a symbolic field for exploring self, identity, embodiment, and political resistance. He is part of a renowned generation of experimental contemporary Burmese artists who overcame government censorship and oppression to engage with conceptual artwork, the body, and identity. His works deal with hand gestures and movement. Moe addresses provocative social and political issues in military-ruled Myanmar. He founded the Beyond Pressure International Performance Art Festival in Yangon, Myanmar. He has participated in live arts festivals throughout Asia, Europe & US. His work has been featured in several group exhibitions, The Spirits of Maritime Crossing_Collateral event of the 60th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia: (2024), Documenta-15 (2022), Biennale Jogja XV (2019), ‘Political Acts: Pioneers of Performance Art in Southeast Asia’ in Melbourne (2017); CAFAM Biennale, Beijing (2013); and Busan Biennale (2012). His works have been collected by the Tate Modern, Singapore Art Museum, Kadist Foundation, and TBA21. He was a finalist for the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award for Emerging Asian Artists in 2015. He just finished an Artist in Residency at Rijksakademie (2022-2024).
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Elaine ML Tam is an itinerant writer, editor and curator from Hong Kong currently based in London. She collaborates with contemporary artists and thinkers to create new forms and forums for critical engagement. Her research interests include psychoanalysis, performance writing and feminist new materialisms. She is Head of Editorial at White Cube gallery, and Senior Editor at FIELDNOTES, an artist-run publishing project that supports non-conforming creative practices.
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Ye Wuji is an artist and a dutar apprentice based in London and southern China. He is interested in displacement, liminality, remainders, and “mobile society”. His research and practice are activated through bodily experience and may be metabolised into a sensuous and debatable form of social commentary. Since 2015, a major part of his practice has focused on the Tianshan Mountain region and its connections across Eurasia. On a Sunday in 2019, Wuji became a member of the Central Asia Plov Society and firmly believes that plov is the most delicious food in the world.
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Can Yang is a visual artist, graphic designer, and educator who works across media to explore how graphic design can act as a cultural and historical tool, using form and typography not only to communicate, but to question established norms within visual communication. Her work often engages with the intersections of experimental publishing and critical discourse, opening up new perspectives on authorship, narrative, and design ethics.
Her pedagogical approach is developed through Neobridge, a model that centres collaborative activities, open-ended dialogue, and critical making. She teaches at the Royal College of Art and the University of the Arts London, and previously taught at Kingston School of Art.