Stephen Armstrong
Founding Creative Director, Asia TOPA

At the time of writing, the pandemic is far from over. Even before it began, economic disparities and geopolitical turbulence frequently worked to keep artists apart. As the world faces the deepening crisis of global warming and how to reduce the hefty carbon footprint of international travel, new ways of creatively connecting, personally sharing and culturally exchanging will – and must – become choices we make with defiant enthusiasm.

Some Virtual LAB artists have become deeply immersed in the digital, sourcing ‘the digital spiritual’ and coming to understand that it is a fully creative dimension like any other artistic medium. For others, the chance of working in and through the virtual has offered vital and dynamic options at critical stages of the collaborative process – not merely a diminished alternative to IRL.

What every participating artist and project in the Virtual LAB shares is the unique and unprecedented global and local experience of creating together in isolation – a life experience no less shared by future audiences.  What has always been clear, but never clearer than during the pandemic, has been the need for our region’s people to continue to connect at the most fundamental level.

Good fortune is rarely shared with equanimity and our hearts have beat fast on many occasions learning of the daily anxieties and extreme challenges experienced by our friends and colleagues over this period. Thanks to the generosity of the LAB artists, we have continued to connect and find solace in the inexorable drive of the imagination.

Our thanks go to the artists – as ever – and our many partners for enabling us to remain in intimate acts of exchange and creation across the vast distances of the Asia-Pacific.