In 2006 AAA began locating, collecting and preserving a large body of important material from the 1970s to 1980s, which had been hard to track down and is in danger of being lost. At the same time, AAA has been conducting a series of in-depth professional interviews with key artists, critics and curators of the 1980s in an attempt to record this crucial period in the history of contemporary Chinese art.

Phase 1 of this project is scheduled to be finished by the end of 2009.

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Initiated by The Substation, the Comparative Contemporaries web anthologies project is a follow-up to the 'Comparative Contemporaries' conference held in Singapore in 2006. A website will be built and hosted by the AAA, and the project aims to develop an open-ended regional platform to further discuss and debate questions concerning key texts of contemporary art writing.

LEE Weng Choy, the Managing Editor of the Southeast Asia Series, has invited five editors each to select ten texts of contemporary art writing to be re-published on the website. Over time, new editors and new 'proto-anthologies' will be added to the website, and existing editors will expand their own anthologies. The Comparative Contemporaries Southeast Asia Web Anthology can serve as a model for other regions in Asia to be developed in the near future.

The website is scheduled to be launched in 2009.

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Since 2004, the AAA has been digitizing collections from individuals including artists, critics and researchers who do not want to part from their materials at that time. Other rare materials, particularly those in a fragile condition and requiring immediate conservation, or periodicals that have ceased publication, are also within the scope of our digitization project.

Highlights of digitization projects include:

SCAN Taipei

Ray Langenbach's video archive of performance art in Southeast Asia, c. 1988 to 2007

Roberto Chabet’s Archive – Covering Fifty Years of the Artist’s Materials

Mao Xuhui's personal archive (since 2004)

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At the beginning of 2009, AAA commissioned Mr. Akshaya Tankha as Project Researcher for a project on contemporary performance art practice in India. The purpose of the project is to conclude Khoj International Artists' Association's efforts on the development of performance art in India, by sorting, indexing and making available copies of the material at Khoj for the AAA.

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All You Want To Know About International Art Biennials is an online project that aims to chart and map the modes, development and diversities of international biennials and triennials world-wide, with the intention of highlighting those in which Asian artists have participated since the 1990s. Through the display of facts, statistics and documentation resources, this project intends to paint a comprehensive picture of the biennial phenomenon, and serve as a research tool.

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