Besides the newspaper, the radio was a form of media also used to bring together national identity and to shape a sense of unity. Following Governor-General Kobayashi Seizō’s declaration of Taiwan as a base for the execution of the Southern Expansion Doctrine, multilingual radio broadcasts in Mandarin Chinese, English, Min dialect, Cantonese, Annam (Vietnamese), Siam (Thai), and Malay were transmitted from Taiwan to Southeast Asia. At the same time, the British Malaya Broadcasting Corporation (BMBC) came under colonial government control and was renamed the Malayan Broadcasting Corporation in 1940. Prior to World War II, “radio war” broadcasts released from Taiwan were transmitted all throughout Southern China, Indochina, and the Malay Archipelago.

On view in this subcategory, “The Radio”, are documents from Nusantara Archive 03: Au Sow Yee, Nusantara Archive 05: KUNCI Cultural Studies Center, and Nusantara Archive 07: The Broadcaster(s). Also presented are other historical materials, such as the propaganda film, Southward Expansion to Taiwan, and records from the research conducted by Indonesian research specialists during their residency, including their art practices that involve the radio and other media and how they interacted with the mechanisms of codification mentioned in Imagined Community – namely “the map” and “the museum”. At the same time, the project which simulates a radiobroadcast, “Nanyang Radio Station: Audio Tour for 228 Peace Memorial Park”, serves as a reminder of How we internalized the “others” of (from) Southeast Asia, from the past to present, into our daily experiences.

Cover Art: Esther Lin, “room 1,2, 3, 4 (intro) a” (2020)