History will say we were best friends

EVENT DESCRIPTION

PODIUM is delighted to present ‘History will say we were best friends’, a group presentation featuring works by artists with roots in East Asia, South Asia, and Latin America, including Srijon Chowdhury, Weera-it Ittiteerarak, Dae Uk Kim, Young-jun Tak, and Luis Xertu. Drawn from philosopher and historian Michel Foucault’s interview for the French magazine Gai Pied in April 1981, the exhibition explores the nuanced and experimental potential of male intimacies, proposing novel forms of friendship that foreground the collaborative and continual creation of new subjectivities and relationships.

Among the spectrum of human intimacies, friendship—with its global, timeless, and constant presence yet unique and complex in its presentation and definition—is one of the most scrutinised forms of relationships in addition to the heavy discipline and (self-)regulation of the body and sexuality. In ancient Greek and Roman times, writers and philosophers alike already documented and praised a man’s open affection for another man. From the Germanic comitatus, which was the bond of reciprocal obligation between the King and his knights, to Christian monasticism, where bishops, priests, and monks felt enlightened to have intimate friendships with one another based on Jesus Christ’s love for the Apostle John, the ideal male friendship throughout the Middle Ages in Europe was intertwined with local traditions of same-sex bonding. In contemporary Western society, men’s friendships also seem to be built and solidified through clubs, unions, and other structures of comradely groups. However, to imagine male friendships in such limited terms is to assume that shared identities and common aspirations will naturally dictate the terms of such relationships. Put differently, offering a one-dimensional definition of friendship to operationalise all male friendships deprives creativity and spontaneity.

Probing culturally specific vocabularies beyond the Western-centric strictures, one will discover manifold depictions of friendship that offer multiplicity, flexibility, and originality. In Chinese culture, these include Gwai1 Mat6 (閨蜜, a sworn best friend who you share secrets with, and will be your companion through thick and thin); Zi1 Gei2 (知己, a kindred spirit who shares a deep psychical connection and ‘gets’ you); and Dyun6 Zau6 (斷袖, literally means cut sleeve, a euphemism for two men in an intimate companionship); among others. This diverse imagination of male intimacy echoes French historian Michel Foucault’s understanding of friendship as a fertile ground for innovative relational dynamics, where it transcends conformity to foster collaborative, ambiguous, and experimental connections. In his interview for the French magazine Gai Pied in the 1980s, Foucault perceives friendship as a dual mechanism for localised resistance against societal normalisation while advocating for broader social activism that challenges the pervasive standardisation of relationships. This radical reimagining of friendship prioritises heterogeneity, allowing for an array of relational forms that disrupt established symbolic orders and engender new subjectivities. In this vein, the five artists in ’History will say we were best friends’ envision a landscape where relationships are liberated from rigid frameworks, encouraging a playful and creative re-evaluation of how individuals connect beyond the political correctness of identities and societal expectations.