Generating production : infrastructures of technology and the politics of productivity in Asia

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (SMA) in the Netherlands jointly publish MMCA Studies × Stedelijk Studies: Generating Production, as the result of a year-long collaborative research and publishing project. This partnership between two public museums from Asia and Europe has explored experimental modes of knowledge production and circulation. The thematic issue developed by the jointly selected Editorial Fellow, Sooyoung Leam, is published in collaboration by MMCA Studies and Stedelijk Studies, in print and online formats respectively.

Marking the inaugural international joint publishing of the MMCA Studies and Stedelijk Studies, this special issue opens the two museums’ research and publishing initiatives to the next generation of scholars, thereby expanding and enriching the broader academic ecosystem. By fostering institutional dialogue between Asia and Europe, it also seeks to extend the reach and resonance of this scholarship worldwide.

This initiative is part of the Editorial Fellowship, a special program of the SMA’s online-based research journal Stedelijk Studies. Over an intensive eighteen-month period—from June 2024 to November 2025—the two museums collaborated closely, grounding their editorial vision in artistic research methodologies, process-oriented scholarship, and the value of mutual learning. In October 2024, Sooyoung Leam, a Seoul-based independent curator and art historian, was selected as the Editorial Fellow. Centered on the Fellow’s proposed theme, “Generating Production: Infrastructures of Technology and the Politics of Productivity in Asia,” the two institutions supported her in deepening the overall structure of the special issue, inviting contributors, and developing the final content.

The structure of this special issue was honed through preliminary “Working Group” discussions that took place over five months, from January to May 2025. Convened by the Editorial Fellow, the group brought together emerging art practitioners from Korea: Eugene Hannah Park (curator and member of the contemporary art collective AFSAR), Shin Jinyoung (director of apprat/us), Yi Moon-seok (manager of the MMCA Residency Goyang ), and Jeon Youjin (director of Woman Open Tech Lab). Together, they probed the theme while also sharing diverse ideas and perspectives on the processes of producing books and knowledge.

Anchored in the geopolitical and historical specificities of Asia, MMCA Studies × Stedelijk Studies critically examines contemporary art and technology phenomena through the lenses of generation and production. The publication delves into the impact of generative AI technologies on art and museum institutions, aspects of art and labor within Asia’s technological environment where industrialization and deindustrialization are simultaneously in progress, and alternative understandings of technology through low-tech and handcraft-based practices.

Notably, Singaporean artist Ho Rui An offers an acute diagnosis of how the technological infrastructure built across Asia during the Cold War to establish national identities has paradoxically evolved into today’s cross-border information circulation systems, such as the internet and cloud platforms. Museology scholar Park Sohyun examines the ideology of state-led modernization embedded in museums through Korean Pavilion exhibitions at international expositions in the 1960s and 1970s, grounded in Korea’s developmentalist ideals.

To commemorate the publication of this journal, the two museums have organized a public program reflecting on this joint publication project. Entitled In Borrowed Tongues: Editors’ Notes on Art, Asia, and AI, the event will take place on November 23, 2025, at the Stedelijk Museum Auditorium. The discussion will feature Sooyoung Leam, Charl Landvreugd (Head of Research and Curatorial Practice, SMA), and Tiffany Yeon Chae (Curator, MMCA), who will introduce the contents of the volume and share reflections from their eighteen-month collaboration—particularly on the spirit of “learning from one another.” The event will also provide an opportunity for sustained exchange with curators, researchers, and artists based in the Netherlands.

This project holds significance as an occasion of co-publishing Asian contemporary art discourse with a major European institution and as a joint initiative supporting the next generation of editors and researchers while underscoring the practical role of museums in knowledge production. It is our hope that such endeavors will continue to foster diverse collaborations across regions and generations in the art world through research and publishing.

Contributors include: Ho Rui An, Yi Moon-Seok, Nagata Kosuke, Unmake Lab, Koh Achim, Cheon Hyundeuk, Jeon Youjin, Kathleen Ditzig, Ryan Ho, Park Sohyun, Lee Sooyon, Shin Jinyoung, Sooyoung Leam, Afsar, Mi You, Charl Landvreugd.