
The Project
Bodies of Knowledge is a digital zine publication that aims to critically archive and highlight significant media art pieces created by Asian Canadian media artists.
This publication includes three components:
(i) a curated selection of media artworks;
(ii) critical commentary written by Asian Canadian media researchers, curators, and community writers; and
(iii) primary narratives including oral stories, photographs, paraphernalia and correspondence, collected from the Asian Canadian community.
We seek to address gaps in critical engagement with artwork from the Asian diasporic community, trace relational contexts of creation and nurture interdisciplinary dialogue. Bodies of Knowledge is scheduled to be publicly released at the start of 2022 along with programmed community activations.
Any questions and inquiries can be directed toward hello.tacla@gmail.com!
Call for Community Writers!
We are looking for community writers from the Asian community who are interested in responding critically to the work of media artists that will be featured in this publication. We welcome writers especially in the early stages of their portfolio-building to apply!
- Writers are expected to produce a piece of criticism in either (text, audio / visual or mixed media formats) in response to an artist featured in the publication.
- Writers will be required to dialogue with their selected artist, and respond to the larger thematic questions the Bodies of Knowledge publication is exploring at.
- If selecting audio or visual formats, please note that writers are expected to have all equipment needed to complete their criticism piece. We are currently not able to provide support in equipment or production.
We are able to pay a $250 honorarium per piece, roughly calculated to be $0.25/word for 1000 words! We advise all writers to thoughtfully scale their work to the size of this honorarium.
Applications are due end of day June 30th. We will accept late submissions up to 6 a.m. for you night owls!
This gallery allows you to preview the entirety of the application form.
A note that not all artists featured in Bodies of Knowledge have been listed on page 2 of the application. Artists not listed here have already been assigned writers.
Contextual Points of Departure
The impetus behind the Bodies Of Knowledge project is to give more life and attention to the work being done by artists in our communities.
As art is created, it often moves beyond the grasp of the community contexts which it might draw from. This, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. However, as current models of critical engagement meant to draw art into communal conversation often represent and centre a limited set of perspectives. As communities who play a big role in nurturing the possibilities of those art forms lose access and are not engaged any further, these repeating exclusions, over time, reinforce the consumption, appreciation and circulation of art in set pathways.
In thinking through digital archival, we hope to be creative and caring in our methods, in direct protest of the extractive pathways that the art industries often tread when it comes to exhibiting and taking up art. Whether it be discourse, presentation or even value, the communal relations from which the work arises are often disappeared by the time the art piece is literally white boxed.
Bodies of Knowledge connects the creation of critical theory to TACLA’s principles of community-engaged contexts.
- What would it mean to collect and value communal stories and voices that inform and engage the impact and performance of media arts work?
- What does it mean to present those stories, contexts, subtexts alongside more conventional forms of critical theory?
- How can we present them through innovative digital formats in an open and accessible way?
TACLA Staff Ideation – Making Bodies of Knowledge




The language of sea matter, header banner also by Özge Dilan Arslan.


This publication is supported by the
