Convened by Dr Gan Sheuo Hui (LASALLE)
Co-Organised by Department of Japanese Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, NUS
Advisors Chris Shaw, Head, Puttnam School of Film & Animation, LASALLE and Assoc Prof Lim Beng Choo, Head, Department of Japanese Studies, NUS
This symposium is the third in an annual series alternating between single-day and multi-day formats, developed jointly by the Puttnam School of Film & Animation at LASALLE College of the Arts, University of the Arts Singapore and Department of Japanese Studies at NUS.
Across two and a half days, the 2026 edition asks how contemporary animation in Asia gets selected, programmed and made visible, and who decides it. Following earlier symposiums on animation as form (2024) and as practice rooted in observation and the touch of the hand (2025), this year the focus turns to the systems that carry work from being made to being seen: studios, festivals and classrooms, from those who make the work to those who shape its movement through them.
The symposium gathers artists, festival programmers and scholars from across Asia, alongside students from LASALLE and NUS. Audiences are invited not only to watch but to participate in the act of seeing animation, the question the symposium opens.
Day 1 takes place at NUS and opens with practitioner-researchers: creative artists who also teach, programme and write. Wang Chi-Sui, programme director of the Taichung Animation Film Festival and professor at TNUA, brings perspectives on contemporary Taiwanese animation. Thanut Rujitanont, founder of Graphy Animation in Thailand and PhD candidate at Griffith Film School, presents his practice and research on contemporary Thai animation. Joint student presentations from NUS and LASALLE share research-in-progress. Sessions at NUS are research-focused, with film excerpts to illustrate.
From Day 2 onwards, the symposium moves to LASALLE, and the programme turns to practice and curatorial voices, anchored by director Sung Hsin-yin (On Happiness Road), whose training in Kyoto and recognition at the Tokyo Anime Award situate her practice within a Japanese animation lineage while speaking from a distinctly cross-regional position. Zhu Yantong, festival director of the Feinaki Beijing Animation Week, presents a curated programme of contemporary Chinese works. Narita Hyoe, Executive Chairman of the Niigata International Animation Film Festival, and Hojo Masato, CEO of Eurospace (an independent movie theatre in Tokyo), bring a programme of award-winning shorts from NIAFF and a conversation on building cultural-community space through festival and theatre. The day closes with Kuwa from the Most Trash Animation Festival, whose name states its argument: a curatorial selection of compelling works the mainstream festival has overlooked or refused.
Day 3 begins with 听见 / What We Heard, a closing day designed around slow listening. Year 2 LASALLE students host visiting guests in small groups for lunch near campus at venues of their choosing: kopitiams, picnic spots, places that locate the symposium in Singapore. Each group has ninety minutes of relaxed conversation with one guest, and their reflections inform the semester’s research and creative work.
The symposium closes with a screening of Liu Jian’s Art College 1994, a film about young art students wondering what their futures might look like, followed by a recorded message from the director and closing remarks from the convener and our partners at NUS and LASALLE. The closing returns to the question the symposium opened with: who gets seen, and how the act of slow seeing might make the making matter even more.
Organised by
