The text below was presented by Norberto Roldan during “Contemporary Art and Activism in the Asia Pacific — A Regional View of First Nations-Asia Intersections” presented by Hyphenated Projects and Incinerator Gallery on December 9, 2020 as part of Hyphenated Biennial (Melbourne). Other guests include Jenna Lee, Biung Ismahasan, Greg Dvorak, and Michelle Antoinette (moderator).
BACOLOD
In 1980, under Ferdinand Marcos’ Martial Law, I moved from Manila to Bacolod City, the capital of Negros Occidental.
During a very turbulent period in our country’s political history, I decided to manage a sugar farm. I never imagined myself becoming a political activist, but having been exposed to the realities of a semi-feudal system prevailing in this sugar-producing province easily turned me into one. As a reluctant “sugar planter,” I was exposed to the “hacienda” life, a capital-intensive plantation system devoted solely to sugar cultivation. Hence, by its very nature as a monocrop economy, the farming system was never designed to be self-sufficient. I have witnessed how sugar workers had been exploited through unfair labor practices.
During this period, as the island was struggling with social unrest, the political upheaval against Ferdinand Marcos was gaining momentum nationwide. The insurgency being waged by the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army was at its peak. A revolution was unfolding in the countryside with many remote villages in Negros declared by the revolutionary movement as liberated zones. This was a particular period in our history when one was expected to take sides.
In 1983, following the assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino, the Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP) was organized in Manila and, shortly after, a chapter was formed in Bacolod. It became the umbrella organization of cultural workers and progressive artists working in theater, music, literature, and visual arts. CAP was at the forefront of protest actions in the province, leading a cultural movement not only against the Marcos dictatorship but also against a semi-feudal system that has persistently oppressed and exploited sugar workers for several generations. I became the vice chair of the CAP in Negros and that was how I became a cultural worker and an activist.
As members of a progressive organization identified with the Left, our activities were always under government scrutiny. Our task was to produce banners, murals, and literature for rallies and mass actions and we operated under constant threat of military harassment and detention. Under the dictatorship, activists, cultural workers, artists, journalists, academics, and intellectuals who were sympathetic to the plight of the poor and the oppressed were marked as enemies of the State. During the Marcos regime, thousands of these perceived enemies were either imprisoned, tortured, raped, or killed.
After the EDSA Revolution in 1986 which saw the exile of Marcos and the installation of Corazon Aquino as president of the Philippines, the CAP in Negros started to fall apart. Many artists believed in the democratic space promised by the Aquino presidency and thus decided to move towards less radical engagements. Members saw this as an opportunity to distance from CAP and to shed off a political stigma — that of being branded as mere propagandists of the Left — and pursue a practice in more legitimate institutional venues.
To keep the alliance intact with those who decided to leave CAP, I founded Black Artists of Asia (BAA) with comrades who were still committed to pursue art as a tool to bring about social change but outside the organizational influence of the national democratic movement. After putting in place a structure to hold BAA together, I then left the country for a two-year self-imposed exile and stayed in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia between 1987 and 1989.
SYDNEY
The initial activities of BAA centered on exhibitions aimed at bringing the real stories of the sugar workers in Negros to the attention of the world. Early on, BAA had sent exhibitions to Rotterdam in 1986 and to Tokyo in 1987, both facilitated by the Philippine international solidarity movement in the Netherlands and Japan. But, by far, the most ambitious project BAA has ever organized was the exhibition series “Images of the Continuing Struggle” in 1989 in Sydney. The main section of the exhibition was held at Artspace, the prints and photography section was held at Firstdraft, and some selected works were hung in La Lucha Continua (1989), a festival of progressive theater and films from third world countries, in Belvoir Street Theatre.
In the Sunday Art Section of The Sydney Morning Herald on March 4, 1989, Christopher Allen wrote:
“The Filipino work at Artspace takes us far from the international contemporary art world and into one of those cultures of our region which are at once so familiar and so foreign to us. Of all the ASEAN nations, the Philippines have had the most extreme experience of colonialism. Four centuries of Spanish and, more recently, American rule have left the country Catholic and largely English-speaking. To a visitor passing through Manila, the country seems to exist in a cultural limbo between East and West. Politically, it represents an often brave attempt to run an American-style democracy on an unstable foundation of poverty, corruption, and gangsterism. The most hopeful sign that one finds as a casual visitor is a genuinely free and energetically critical press, perhaps unique among our neighbours in the region.
The art in this exhibition is also politically critical, coming from a group of artists in the central-southern island of Negros. And this is an art determined overwhelmingly by extrinsic factors — by part it is designed to play in a political struggle…”
Christopher Allen may as well have spoken about the present when he said, “Politically, [the Philippines] represents an often brave attempt to run an American-style democracy on an unstable foundation of poverty, corruption and gangsterism.” But the “genuinely free and energetically critical press” is no longer true. Duterte and his allies in Congress shut down the biggest broadcasting network in the Philippines last September and they continue to harass and intimidate the press that are critical of the administration.
BACK TO BACOLOD
I returned to the Philippines in late 1989 and, together with BAA, set into motion the launching of the first Visayas Islands Visual Arts Exhibition and Conference, or VIVA ExCon. The first VIVA ExCon was held in Bacolod in 1990. It was an attempt to bridge the islands by linking up art communities, to provide a venue for sharing knowledge, to discuss issues affecting the region, and to consolidate the Visayan art scene. It was created to address the specific urgencies of Visayan artists and cultural workers persisting in the shadows of Manila’s cultural imperialism.
During VIVA ExCon 2018, when I took up again the role of artistic director, VIVA ExCon asserted its basic role as a platform for political discourse and actions concerning the rural areas.
Much has been said about the success of VIVA ExCon as the longest-running, artist-led biennial in the country. Its modest claim of having “bridged” the islands in the Visayas has, over the years, been repeatedly affirmed. But as an artists’ initiative, it still has a long way to go as far as its social aspirations of contributing and uplifting the lives of people in the countryside.
The rural ecology has been rapidly changing. Prospects in agriculture and aquaculture are met with daunting challenges not only in the Visayas but throughout the rest of the Philippines. Unstable policies on land conversion from agricultural to industrial zones, sketchy implementation of real land reform, damages to agricultural crops due to natural calamities, and most of all, the ongoing killings of farmers, activists, and human rights advocates and the ongoing militarization of the countrysides are just the most formidable obstacles for the rural sector to develop into peaceful and more productive communities.
After 30 years since it started in Bacolod, the real work of VIVA ExCon has barely begun.
***
The CAP in Manila has taken up its role again as a leading force in the protest movement. In the urban centers, Respond and Break the Silence Against the Killings (RESBAK) has been actively involved in resisting extrajudicial killings brought about by Duterte’s drug war, while the Artist Alliance for Genuine Land Reform and Rural Development (SAKA) has allied with and is working closely with the peasant movement in facing the challenges of rural democratization in the Philippines.
On the other hand, with the underground movement and the New People’s Army gaining strength again in the rural areas, the Philippines is back to where it was in the ‘80s, perhaps in an even worse situation.
Norberto Roldan
December 10, 2020
All images except no. 10 are from Green Papaya Art Projects Archives:
1. Mural for a rally painted by CAP-Negros artists, 1986.
2. Public mural painted by Visayan artists and organized by CAP-Negros, 1987.
3. Poster for a concert organized by CAP-Negros, illustration by Charlie Co, design by Norberto Roldan, 1986.
4. Poster for a festival of people’s culture, illustration and design by Nunelucio Alvarado, 1984.
5. Poster for BAA exhibition in Japan, design by Norberto Roldan, 1987.
6. Poster for BAA exhibition in Bacolod, design by Norberto Roldan, 1988.
7. Flyer for a BAA exhibition in Artspace, Sydney, design by Norberto Roldan, 1989.
8. Flyer for a BAA exhibition in Firstdraft, Sydney, design by Norberto Roldan, 1989.
9. Poster for the first VIVA ExCon in Bacolod, design by Norberto Roldan, 1990.
10. Screenshot from the "Contemporary Art and Activism in the Asia Pacific" panel, top from left: Kirri (interpreter), Jenna Lee, and Michelle Antoinette; bottom from left: Greg Dvorak, Norberto Roldan, and Biung Ismahasan.
More info:
Contemporary Art and Activism in the Asia Pacific — A Regional View of First Nations-Asia Intersections
https://fb.watch/2hq5UT75Gx/
When Papaya turned 10 in 2010, it was difficult figuring out how we could commemorate such a milestone. Founded in 2000, Papaya has surely gone beyond the usual lifespan of an artists-run initiative and though short on cash, it had enough energy and motivation then to run for a number of years more. Certainly, that called for a big celebration. But with no extra money to spend on the event, we resigned to gather around a kitchen dinner and a few rounds of drinks.
Unexpectedly, the universe had other plans for us. We got invited to participate in "No Soul for Sale: Festival of Independents" from May 14 to 16, 2010 at the Tate Modern. The Papaya community practically funded our trip to London. As if that was not enough, Papaya was again invited to participate in "Night Festival: New World 2010" from July 16 to 17 in Singapore. With an entourage of 20 Manila-based artists and crew, we were given a space at the National Museum Singapore to mount performances and screenings for two nights. This time, our trip was generously funded by the Singapore government. We were dumbfounded by the turn of events.
2020 is now coming to an end. Since the beginning of this year, I have been attempting to come up with a meaningful way to celebrate Papaya’s 20 years. This will be its last full year after all. But tragedies like the global pandemic, the passing of loved ones, the fire that razed our space, and, very recently, the painful dis-association with a former Papaya colleague overtook any plan to take shape.
Though it may be late, this December, we were determined to celebrate. So, we invited artists and friends to design Papaya 20/20 commemorative posters. With 20 artists contributing, the complete series is still a work-in-progress. But before that is even completed, the universe just gave us another surprise.
We are grateful and humbled to announce that Green Papaya Art Projects made it to ArtReview's Power 100 for 2020.
“Global issues of political and climate justice, meanwhile, are the foundations of the work of collectives Forensic Architecture (14) and Feral Atlas (15). In a year in which the artworld’s established structures have proved to be less than stable, the collaborative, improvised and more rapidly responsive structures of the global south and areas outside of the traditional centres of artworld activity are also increasingly influential: be it the Dhaka Art Summit, founded and run by Nadia Samdani, Rajeeb Samdani & Diana Campbell Betancourt (41), Hungary’s anti-institutional OFF-Biennale, founded by Hajnalka Somogyi (96) or the Manila-based artist-run space Green Papaya Art Projects (99), which closes this year. And faced with the economic ravages of the pandemic on the precarious livelihoods of many artists, the list notes the commitment to supporting artists shown by individuals such as Matthew Burrows (37) in the UK, and Cosmin Costinas (38) in Hong Kong.” (from “Black Lives Matter Tops 2020 Edition of ArtReview’s Annual Power 100”)
Never in our wildest dreams could we have thought that we would make the list. It seems that the “Death is a Portal” campaign that we launched at the height of extreme lockdown in Metro Manila last May caught the eyes of the ArtReview Asia editors, and eventually, the Power 100 Jury. Papaya persisting in the shadows of bigger names and institutions over the last 20 years may have also been factored in.
On behalf of the Papaya Team, I would like to share this “power” with friends, artists, colleagues, benefactors, cultural institutions, and our community who supported us through the years. Let's use this to resist extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, illegal arrests, trumped-up charges, and many other human rights violations happening in our society today and to hold this government accountable for its negligence of its farmers, fishermen, and the poor during natural calamities and in the time of pandemic.
Just yesterday, at around 3:30 a.m., AMIHAN-Cagayan organizer and cultural worker Amanda Echanis — daughter of slain Anakpawis partylist chairperson Randy Echanis — was illegally arrested along with her one-month-old son in Brgy. Carupian, Baggao, Cagayan after being accused of being a high-ranking member of the New People’s Army. She was charged with illegal possession of firearms, ammunition, and explosives. On the same day, around the same time, combined elements of military and police forcefully searched and planted firearms in the house of Anakpawis Cagayan Valley president Isabelo Adviento.
Green Papaya stands with the Concerned Artists of the Philippines against red-tagging and in demanding the immediate and unconditional release of Amanda Echanis.
Let us give POWER back to the people!
Norberto Roldan
December 3, 2020
Images:
1-2, screen shots from ArtReview website
10 selected posters from “Death Is a Portal” campaign
ArtReview Power 100
https://artreview.com/power-100/
ArtReview. “Black Lives Matter Tops 2020 Edition of ArtReview’s Annual Power 100.” (2 Dec 2020)
https://artreview.com/black-lives-matter-tops-2020-edition-of-artreviews-annual-power-100/
Marv Recinto. “ ‘The House Is Still Burning’: Censorship, Pandemic and Art in the Philippines.” (22 June 2020)
https://artreview.com/censorship-pandemic-covid-art-philippines-doloricon-green-papaya/
VIVA ExCon was many things: (1) at its forefront, it was a conference that meant to convene on art issues in the Visayas; (2) it was an exhibition that sprawled through various locations within Roxas City; (3) it was a host to a blur of events and performances that bridged together the experimental and the traditional; and (4) it was a generator of discussion between artists, curators, researchers, and academics through a series of public and private conversations delegates had the chance of overhearing.
The exhibition itself spiraled across different parts of the city, utilizing public basketball courts, museums, parks, and community centers as venues for artwork. Collaborating with a hundred Visayas-rooted artists, VIVA ExCon’s exhibition engaged not only with artists from the region, but more concretely with an already established community of residents whose daily routines involved such spaces.
Past the seriousness and formalities of running an exhibition-conference, Don’t Even Bring Water (Bisan Tubig Di Magbalon) was much more of an exciting celebration-reunion of a community of cultural workers across the Philippines and the Southeast Asian region. With an eccentric lineup of programs, VIVA ExCon paved the way for organic connection between delegates that when I think about that week spent in Capiz, I cannot immediately recall the details of each talk. Rather, I find myself remembering the times I spent on tricycles, making new friends, dancing to budots, and being chased by a dog.
—
There are many parts of me that don’t feel right weighing in on VIVA ExCon. As much as I can say I enjoyed listening in on the conversations, I am aware of my own distance from being born and raised in Manila, without a province, having only visited the Visayas a handful of times. It has always been clear to me that VIVA ExCon was not a project that asked for or wanted my opinion.
—
I tiptoe over applying my personal experience in the arts towards VIVA ExCon. For many reasons, it felt like it was never my place to raise comments, complain, or to add any input, always being careful about the thought of imposing the same soft power from the capital that the biennale continues to fight against. As a cultural worker based in Manila, VIVA ExCon made me feel hopeful. It reminded me of the potentials of community-driven archives, inter-island collaboration, and the decentralization of art centers. But I also stop myself from painting an idyllic image of VIVA ExCon, as I know that I will never truly understand what it means to Visayans through the number of iterations and locations it’s gone through.
Each day, the conference proper was packed with talk after talk, one often bleeding into the next. Some well-meaning, yet strange and unenthused presentations left lingering feelings of exhaustion. The length of some talks felt like a fever dream that left everybody in a haze when the day was done. Despite most discussions being fruitful, the formal conference’s open forum often drew out, leaving us all running in a loop, rewording the same questions, yet not being able to arrive at sufficient points.
Information shared during VIVA ExCon was a clear reminder of concrete barriers looking for resolve. Heated arguments during the conference questioned funding preferences, accessibility, and current news. With a biennale nearly thirty years in, it is concerning to see the same issues played out and shared by many of the delegates, perhaps evidencing that these problems have been consistent and unchanging since the festival’s beginning.
*****
The above text is a selection of excerpts from Arianna Mercado’s essay “Dig a Well” from the forthcoming VIVA ExCon Capiz 2018 publication.
*****
Arianna Mercado is a curator and writer based between London and Manila. She is the co-founder of Kiat Kiat Projects, a nomadic curatorial initiative with a focus on alternative exhibition formats. Mercado is the recipient of the 2017 Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prize for Art Criticism and has worked on projects with Calle Wright, the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design Manila, and the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Her writing has been published through Ctrl+P Journal of Contemporary Art, the Philippine Star, and the Artling Artzine. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Images:
1. Joee&I and Capiz National High School marching band performance at the Paseo Cathedral for the Opening Salvo of VIVA ExCon 2018. Photo by Kiko Nuñez.
2. Participants of VIVA ExCon 2018 gathering at The Wayfarer Bar and Restaurant after the conference. Photo by Arianna Mercado.
3. Video still of the “Circuits of Support, Networks of Exchange,” conference documentation.
4. “Waskanay: Hiligaynon rap battle” at the turtle stage of Tatsuo Inagaki's community project “Balay Sugilanon.” Photo courtesy of Maru Alayon.
5. Rastaninja (Budoy Kilat) performing at the Civic Center Facade. One of the songs in his setlist was “Psycho Killer” Budots version. Photo by Kiko Nuñez.
6. Arianna Mercado looking through “Steward Telescope” by Alvin Bueno Jr., Al Berdugo, Rolan Bulaclac, James Balahay, and Lorenzo Ignacio at the People’s Park (Baybay). Photo by Dominic Zinampan.
7. Arianna Mercado with Neo Maestro and Mariah Reodica on Touki Roldan’s pickup truck. Photo by Yuji de Torres.
8. One of the “X” murals at the Public Plaza. Photo by Kiko Nuñez.
9. From left to right: Yuji de Torres, Eya Beldia, Arianna Mercado, and Joaquin Roldan unwinding on the swing set at the Espacio Verde Resort during the VIVA ExCon 2018 closing performances. Photo by Dominic Zinampan.
10. From left to right: Emen Batocabe, Mariah Reodica, Joaquin Roldan, and Touki Roldan at Rob’s Place, a local food establishment, a few hours before their flight out of Roxas City. Photo by Arianna Mercado.
Since it is VIVA ExCon season (16), I cannot help but recall our situation several months before launching VIVA ExCon 15 in Roxas City on November 8, 2018. Here’s one incident that refuses to die in my memory.
During a meeting with our partners from Roxas — Annie Villaruz (director of the Gerry Roxas Training and Convention Center) and Cheche del Rosario (director of The Water Tank Museum) — in Papaya’s office in Quezon City, Annie suggested that we invite Greg Atienza to seek his professional help in finding big corporate sponsors. Since we were desperately looking for funds, I readily said yes; Greg, after all, had a sterling career in advertising since the ‘80s and became a marketing guru. As a personal friend of Tony del Rosario, the former governor of Capiz who was a major supporter of VIVA ExCon, Greg was instrumental in launching the successful TRIAKSYON, the first Capiz international triathlon in Roxas, in 2017.
Greg, who resides in Alabang, made the effort to drive all the way to Quezon City to hear and learn about VIVA ExCon. If only for that, I was already grateful, but at the same time hopeful for him to eventually bring in a major corporate sponsor.
Greg patiently sat through the meeting, trying to understand the nuances of an artists-led festival. But what caught me unprepared was his question: “What footprints will the festival leave behind after the exhibitions have been packed-up and the corporate banners rolled-down?” I started to mumble how art and cultural activities are slow burning processes, their impacts might most likely be abstract in the beginning and will require time and distance for the beneficiaries — the art community and the public — to understand and evaluate, and even later, appreciate much better. But Greg wanted to hear something concrete and tangible, something like a piece of sculpture or a marker that a prospective corporate sponsor could spend for and maybe leave its logo on. That was something I was not ready to promise him as I honestly did not know then how that works. A few months after that meeting, Annie informed me that Greg won’t be able to help VIVA ExCon. I could only blame myself as perhaps I failed to convince him.
A few days ago, after watching the Capiz Report aired during the first day of the V-Con for VIVA ExCon 2020 / DASUN Recalibrated, I told myself without hesitation, “Finally, I see the footprints of VIVA ExCon.” Undeniably, Marika Constantino’s co-learning and co-creation space KANTINA; Shane Martinez, Hazel Fegarido, and Maru Alayon’s EyeCan Creatives; 036 project composed of Jason Rufino, Kalayn, and Mark Omega; and the activities in The Water Tank Museum (which has turned into a relief center since the start of the pandemic) under Cheche have all become remarkable footprints.
On the third day of V-Con in Bacolod last Sunday, we saw the same footprints in Bantayan Island as well. DAKOgamay was invited to be VIVA ExCon’s Island Coordinators for Bantayan Island. With Jake Atienza as Island-Coordinator, they saw it as an opportunity to engage Bantayan’s arts community and formed a core group with April Villacampa, Roberth Fuentes, Mary Alinney (Khokhoi) Villacastin, Delio Quiamco Delgado, Kent John Almohallas Batiancila, and Malaysia-national Rini Hashim who interned for VIVA this year.
By now, Facebook and Instagram posts about how the group of artists have organized the exhibition “Panlantawon” must have circulated around. An offsite component of VIVA ExCon DASUN put up in Byay Hubahib during the conference in November, “Panlantawon” is a long-term program (to run until July 2021) meant to consolidate their community by making the program a hub for dialogue, experimentation, and establishing connections locally and with other islands. My conversations with siblings Jake Atienza and Martha Atienza of DAKOgamay reinforced our shared belief in community building and self-organization.
With the absence of a proper infrastructure and governmental/institutional support system, and the near impossibility of getting corporate sponsorships (a reality in small places like Roxas and Bantayan), artists are learning to cope by self-organizing and building stronger communities. The absence of galleries, especially commercial ones, should not deter the development of a socially-responsive contemporary art practice. More than galleries and museums, the community is a far more important “infrastructure” that needs to be nurtured.
Over the last decade, there have been various discussions on self-organization as a theory, a method, or a political action. This has become visibly apparent in the programs of independent spaces and initiatives located in cities and localities with underdeveloped economies in Southeast Asia. These activities which come from an emergent infrastructure (i.e. the communities) have given rise to a series of interrelated topics and fields of study such as environmental hazards, labor issues, alternative education, open source programming, rural regeneration, and cultural democracy. Artists need not be preoccupied with producing "art" alone but use art as a process to produce something the larger community needs. The bottom line is, artists should practice in the service of society. If their presence brings no positive impact on communities, then what is there to come together for?
You, and your communities, are the footprints of VIVA ExCon. If only the meeting with Greg happened today.
Norberto Roldan
November 19, 2020
Images:
1. KANTINA series of artist talks: Leiff Antonino, Jorg Manalo, Kalayn Calvez, Hazel Fegarido, Shane Martinez, Jason Rufino. Photo courtesy of KANTINA.
2. KANTINA Pressed Flower Craft workshop facilitated by Lissa Boluso for the "Looking for Another Family" exhibition at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul, Korea. Photo courtesy of KANTINA.
3. Online round table discussion of artists and curators from the "Looking for Another Family" exhibition at the MMCA Seoul. This included Katherine Nuñez from 98B COLLABoratory, Gabriel Villegas from HUB | Make Lab, and Marika Constantino from KANTINA. Photo courtesy of KANTINA.
4-5. “Pamulong” project at the Ang Panublion Museum initiated by 036 project. Photo courtesy of Ang Panublion.
6. EyeCan Webinar DAGOSO with Liby Limoso’s talk on Panay Sugidanon. Photo courtesy of Shane Martinez.
7. Crops for Creatives project of Ang Panublion / The Water Tank Museum. Photo courtesy of Ang Panublion.
8. Bantayanons attend VIVA ExCon’s conference, a chance to meet artists, friends from Bantayan and our neighboring islands. Photo courtesy of DAKOgamay.
9. In the foreground is Delio Quaiamco Delgado’s “Bantoi: Subiran kag Isla” (2020), a series of works featuring imagined worlds using driftwood. In the background are Pedro Ilusorio’s wood-carved goggles sold locally and used by fishermen who fish out in Bantayan’s once-rich marine waters. Photo courtesy of DAKOgamay.
10. April Villacampa runs “Pulong Bantayanon,” a Facebook page where she shares the artwork of Bantayanon artists. Beyond this, it is a way for Villacampa to explore her interest in the connections between Bantayan’s people, tradition, and culture, bound by Bantayanon’s language. Photo courtesy of DAKOgamay.
Bisan Tubig Di Magbalon (Don't Even Bring Water) was the theme of VIVA ExCon Capiz 2018 exhibition curated by Green Papaya. The Hiligaynon text is a line from the popular Visayan folk ballad Dandansoy. The song expresses a girl’s desire to return to her island of birth and wishing her loved one from another island will follow her. The Visayas is an archipelago comprising many islands.
The curatorial team, who were mostly based in Quezon City, flew to Roxas in early October of 2018 to oversee preparations for the biennial which opened in the city several weeks later on November 8.
Working in different sites as the exhibitions were multi-located, the team would usually regroup during lunch time. In one of those lunches, we found ourselves in Nestas, a popular fast food restaurant that has been around since the ‘80s. Nestas is always filled with employees from business establishments, the City Hall, and Provincial Capitol nearby.
While queuing for my food, what caught my eyes and ears was a cool senior citizen dressed smartly, wearing a fedora hat and dark glasses, playing keyboards in one corner. I was stunned when I heard him playing Dandansoy! Coincidence or serendipity? That encounter led to him being invited to perform in one of the programs during VIVA ExCon’s opening night. Of course, he played Dandansoy during his set at the “turtle stage” that was part of “Balay Sugilanon,” a community project coordinated by Tatsuo Inagaki.
His name was Alfredo Clavel, or Tioy Alping to many of his fans. Mr. Clavel passed away recently at the age of 89 from COVID-19. During his younger days, he was a fishpond operator. He would often hang out with other senior citizens in Paseo, a shaded pathway between the City Hall and the cathedral in front of the public plaza, jamming with other local musicians. He had been playing keyboards at Nestas for almost 20 years before the pandemic struck last March.
We are deeply honored by Mr. Clavel’s participation in VIVA ExCon Capiz 2018. Rest in peace, Tioy Alping!
Norberto Roldan
November 5, 2020
*“Going Home to Payaw” is another line from the song Dandansoy.
Images:
1. Mr. Clavel hanging out with fellow senior citizen, visual artist and violin player Mike Cartujano at Paseo. Mr. Cartujano was featured in VIVA ExCon's exhibition “Pagtahud” curated by Marika Constantino at the Water Tank Museum Annex. Courtesy of Norberto Roldan.
2-3. Mr. Clavel performing at the turtle stage of Tatsuo Inagaki's community project “Balay Sugilanon” during the opening night of VIVA ExCon 2018. Photo by Kiko Nuñez.
Reimagining the Rural: VIVA ExCon’s Commitment to Social Change
Much has been said about the success of VIVA ExCon as the longest-running biennial in the country. Its modest claim of having “bridged” the islands in the Visayas has over the years been repeatedly affirmed. But as an artists’ initiative, it still has a long way to go as far as its social aspirations of contributing and uplifting the lives of people in the rural areas in terms of cultural and knowledge production.
The rural scenery is rapidly changing. Prospects in agriculture and aquaculture are met with daunting challenges not only in Capiz but also in other rural areas in the Visayas. Unstable policies on land conversion from agricultural to industrial zones, non-implementation of real land reform in the sugar lands, damages to agricultural crops due to natural calamities, and most of all, the ongoing killings of farmers, activists, human rights advocates, and militarization in the countrysides, are just the most formidable obstacles for the rural sector to develop into modern communities.
According to the Department of Agriculture, the average age of the Filipino farmer today is 57. Even if he lives and works until 70, our agricultural sector will be in dire need of new and younger farmers 15 years from now. Sadly, the younger generation does not find farming to be rewarding. Those who graduate from high school and college would rather move to urban centers to find work in the industrial, commercial, and corporate sectors. This migration to bigger cities by younger people further contributes to the slowing down of rural economies.
Grounded on social relevance, an important aspect of VIVA ExCon’s vision is to address economic and socio-cultural issues in rural provinces. Local government units are encouraged to shift their paradigm on rural development agenda to integrate arts and culture as a strategic and vital component. An arts festival for example, while may be slanted towards tourism, offers new avenues for context-sensitive and culture-smart interaction between sectors in the locality. An arts festival could be harnessed as a tool for human and material development. It can help build and increase social capital and strengthen community cooperation.
VIVA ExCon Capiz 2018 aims to provide a platform to showcase and discuss relevant issues and concerns on contemporary cultural production set against a rural backdrop. Such engagement hopes to become a springboard for new collaborations and reciprocal exchanges among local and international art communities with the support of local government units. With this, VIVA ExCon reimagines the rural as a wellspring of fresh ideas and a source of inspiration for social innovations.
Curatorial Team
Reprinted from VIVA ExCon Capiz 2018 Program
(updated version)
Images from VIVA ExCon Capiz 2018 exhibition “Bisan Tubig Di Magbalon (Don’t Even Bring Water)” by Norberto Roldan:
1-2. “Kinahang-ean bunyagan (needs watering)” installation by Kuh del Rosario.
3-4. Salvaged fishing boat being hauled to the exhibition venue.
5-6. “D Stryker: After Yolanda” installation by Diokno Pasilan in collaboration with Santiago Alvarez and Omel Artates.
7-10. “Habal-habal” installation by SKYLAB (Jonard Villarde, Ania Shane Martinez, Mercy Audencia, and Santiago Alvarez).
Our June 11 TBT anecdote spoke about Manuel Chaves (“Manny” to friends) and how he helped define the trajectory and enriched the programming of Green Papaya as Executive Director from 2001 until his departure in 2005.
What was not mentioned in that TBT edition was his closeness to some members of the Black Artists in Asia (BAA) and his interest and familiarity with the art scene of Bacolod, the sugar capital of the Philippines, during a period of political unrest and social upheaval.
I believe one of his most memorable and notable contributions to Visayan contemporary art discourse is contained in a study we drafted together. “A General Scenario for a Negros Biennale,” commissioned by Carlos “Charlie” O. Cojuangco, was our analysis of BAA and VIVA ExCon containing our recommendations on how to proceed with an envisioned biennale in Pontevedra.
At the time, Charlie Cojuangco was the 4th District Representative of Negros Occidental. Pontevedra, a municipality about an hour’s drive south of Bacolod, was his home base. It was also where he was planning to build the Cojuangco Art Center (COC) amidst the vast sugar plantation owned by his family.
Manny passed away last Wednesday (October 14). In honor of his memory, we are posting below the paper mentioned above.
Norberto Roldan
October 22, 2020
*****
A GENERAL SCENARIO FOR A NEGROS BIENNALE
DRAFTED BY GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS
Background
At the close of the 1998 VIVA ExCon 4 in Cebu, BAA presented a position paper proposing for Bacolod to once again host the biennial regional art festival with the expressed intention to reconfigure it into a full-blown art biennale. Bacolod lost the bid to Tacloban — in hindsight, a blessing in disguise since BAA was then organizationally ill-equipped to implement the mammoth undertaking.
Flash forward to 2001: Charlie O. Cojuangco set into motion the establishment of the Cojuangco Art Center (CAC) in Pontevedra. Envisioned to be a leading contemporary art museum not only in the Visayas but in the general national picture, the CAC initially embarked on a vigorous acquisitions program. To date, it is in the thick of cataloguing a collection of over 500 art works, a good number of which are major pieces produced by leading young Filipino artists within the past 20 years. Needless to stress, at the core of the CAC collection are works by Negros artists, particularly those of the prime movers behind BAA — Alvarado, Co, Roldan, and Ascalon.
With its museum facilities projected to be a venue for major national and international art events and to be fully operational by 2004, the CAC has just as naturally set its sights to host the VIVA ExCon scheduled for the year. Once again, the idea to reconfigure VIVA ExCon into a bigger and brighter Negros Biennale — even to constitute an entirely new event either parallel to or independent of it — is being floated.
Sorting Out
But isn't VIVA ExCon already a de facto art biennale? Yes and no. With VIVA ExCon 1 seen more as a run-up and preparatory event, VIVA ExCon 2 from all indications shaped up to be as close to a biennale as one can get given the support system and resources available then. It centered on a theme, there was some measure of national and international participation, the artists' sessions were balanced and well-programmed, and there was good public accessibility to the exhibition stagings.
When we get to VIVA ExCon 3 however, it again begins to sound like a run-up, a pre-departure briefing for a future flight to who-knows-where. It was turned into an all-Visayan affair because there was a pressing need for a closed-door assessment session (one big issue was that the Visayan artists felt overshadowed by the national and international participation). Much ado was given to the local participants' organizational concerns and updates on their art-related activities.
From thereon, sweeping a judgment as it may be, the fledgling biennale had willingly succumbed to the parochialism and facile introspection that has always plagued a good part of the Philippine art scene.
In sum, VIVA ExCon will have to be credited for the groundbreaking vision it proposed and — to a certain extent — operationalized. The linkages it fostered are the true measure of its success thus far. The challenge remains for it to fulfill what looked great on paper and sounded awesome in the plenaries.
Surveys/Showcase
No matter where we are coming from, an art biennale is in essence nothing but a periodic survey/showcase of art produced within some defined parameters/boundaries — subject/themes, type of art-making, modes of art production, geographies, etc. As such, it follows that it is being staged for a specific audience/public as well. All other attendant activities to a biennial are directed to support, elaborate, and further expound on the core essentials of the art being showcased and how it engages its publics.
Still, the question needs to be raised: does VIVA ExCon want to be configured as a full-blown art biennale? We can only say why not when the concept has always been intrinsic to its vision. We now even dare venture that only in doing so can VIVA ExCon be saved from its current state.
For the past 12 years or six VIVA ExCons, focus has been on the Conference — the Exhibition component coming in almost like an afterthought. Maybe rightly so since the imperatives then were to establish the linkages, to organize the network, and to prep up the artist-constituents in their art-making. Time well spent but, at this juncture, an exercise that is beginning to look like a dog chasing its own tail.
The Conference component — which was meant "to provide a mechanics for the discussion and assessment of parallel artistic development in the islands, to give an opportunity for analyses of [pertinent] academic theories and other relevant issues, and to serve as the context for a better understanding of various aspects of contemporary art practices” (VIVA ExCon folio, 1990) — can clearly happen only after the fact of an Exhibition which was staged “to showcase contemporary works of visual arts from the different islands but also to promote visual art forms reflective of the islands’ cultural influences, historical traditions, and current social situations…” (VIVA ExCon folio, 1990). For what best to confer about rather than the art on view?
Quite possibly, mainly in giving greater focus to the production of art which can be showcased, surveyed, and assessed every two years can VIVA ExCon and its constituency truly fulfill their expressed mandate.
Rough Sketches for a Biennale
All arrows now seem to point to the staging of a Negros Biennale by 2004 in some form or other. But can VIVA ExCon transform itself into an expanded biennale without appropriate institutional support and resources?
In the light of persistent recent developments, namely, that VIVA ExCon has for the past 12 years continually laid down the pipeline for a Negros Biennale, and that the nascent CAC now projects to make Pontevedra a viable venue for major art events, VIVA ExCon and CAC can thus take the same path and with their combined attributes create the ideal environment out of which a Negros Biennale can take shape and become reality. (It goes without saying however, that CAC can always launch its own biennale independent of VIVA ExCon if it so decides, and the same can be said of VIVA ExCon.)
And the offer of the CAC truly comes at no more opportune time. The museum's purported facilities and resources for exhibition presents itself as one solution to the inherent logistical nightmare that has confronted VIVA ExCon — probably also the only reason why the Exhibition end was somehow relegated to the background.
Let us now take a quick look at a working model for a better appreciation of possible approaches to the staging of a Negros Biennale.
The setup at the Giardini della Biennale Internazionale dell'Arte in Venice first comes to mind. The CAC can provide individual exhibition spaces for each island/province, ideally as individual pavilions as in Venice or at least in the form of a large exhibition hall subdivided into distinct alcoves as in the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP)'s Bulwagan Juan Luna — particularly when it stages the 13 Artists Awards exhibitions. (The pavilions so named after each island/province, e.g. Samar Pavilion, probably Balay Iloilo, etc., are actually also the exhibition halls of CAC that will house its main collection and become venues for its exhibition program in between the Biennales — should this concept be amenable to the CAC. As an aside, the museum can even specialize on the art of the Visayas and focus its acquisitions program in conjunction with the VIVA ExCon exhibits in the same way as the Queensland Art Gallery does with the Asia-Pacific Triennial. Doing so might give it added focus and a truly distinct identity.)
These individual exhibitions will come as originated and packaged efforts. Organization and curatorship will be at their own discretion. Coordination and assistance — logistical and quite possibly financial in the form of grants — will be also available from the lead organizers of the Biennale. There will be no impositions other than physical and spatial limitations if ever. From the organizer’s end, participation can be as loose as in David Medalla's London Biennale 2000 where, apart from some routine registration requirements, almost anyone and everyone is welcome to join.
The arrangement allows each island/province as much autonomy as they could wish for to evolve how the current state of visual arts in their locale can be best represented. It will give them ample opportunities to actualize the problematics of art production and dissemination that they have continually grappled with on paper and in the endless discussions over the years.
It will hopefully set the stage for a healthy if vibrant competition of sorts among the participants. It will hopefully excise extraneous organizational politics out of the event. It will hopefully allow the audience a better framework for viewing and appreciation.
As an added dimension, there can of course be a parallel curated and thematic exhibition which will provide counterpoint and context to what will always remain as the centerpiece island/province exhibits of VIVA ExCon — much like the huge exhibition at the Arsenale, again in Venice.
Educational components such as symposia, curator's and/or artist's talks, lectures, and guided tours will necessarily have to revolve around these two distinct exhibitions and serve as integral links that will tie everything up both for the participants and the audiences.
The VIVA ExCon can remain the lead organizer with CAC as host venue and the main infrastructure and resource support or the two entities can forge a working arrangement that will be to their mutual advantage.
Stumbling Block
To operationalize such a blueprint for a Negros Biennale, a major stumbling block needs first to be addressed.
It cannot be ignored that an unprecedented forging of ties between BAA and CAC may be seen from most quarters as an unholy alliance — at the very worst, sleeping with the enemy. The ideological impetus that gave rise to BAA and has informed its art-making is at face value clearly at odds with even just the inescapable fact of the name behind CAC. By some extension, the same goes for VIVA ExCon having been a BAA-initiated and propelled activity. The issue becomes convoluted many times over with the plan for BAA to bag the bid to host VIVA ExCon in Bohol and deliver the booty to CAC in a silver platter as it were.
Allow us then some room for generalizations as we try to untangle this delicate matter — not being equipped with properly gathered data.
We of course hear of the major paradigm shifts that have taken place — and are still taking place — in Pontevedra and in the other towns beyond where CAC will stand. Pontevedra is said to have initiated a landmark break from the contentious sugar crop economy that has been the bane of Negros. Crop diversification and corporate farming methods and technologies are said to be working wonders here on an unprecedented scale.
We can only surmise that all these developments have of course taken into account the stubborn fact of realities such as extreme poverty and exploitation which has brought about the major political and socio-economic conflicts in the area. For isn’t Pontevedra at this point already proposing/actualizing a way out of Negros' woes?
Surely against such a backdrop, an alliance between BAA and CAC can almost become a foregone conclusion.
A Greater Biennale
In this light, a Negros Biennale in Pontevedra is in actuality a showcase of something even bigger than the arts of the region. It can be a showcase as well of such major breakthroughs in the political, economic and cultural paradigms operating in Pontevedra today. It can even be a showcase of operational models that can be actualized throughout the rest of Negros and elsewhere in the Philippines. (Such claims can/will have to be backed up by thoroughly researched and documented socio-economic statistics and data.)
It is a well-known fact that art biennials — even the mere establishment of specialized museums with very distinct collections — in recent history have become gatekeepers to culture, socio-economic, and political development. (There is also the oft-quoted remark by Pat Hoffie about art and culture being "lubricants" for trade and commerce to take root.) In much the same vein as the Olympics or the World Expo, the staging of biennales at the very least presupposes or can jumpstart the readiness of a given locale to manage and process the influx of participants and audiences. Thus, heretofore unheard of/bypassed/blocked-off places such as Kassel, Gwangju, Havana, Christchurch, Busan, Vilnius, and Queensland are suddenly thrust into the limelight and become destinations of the moment. (Art has also come in handy when needed to refurbish ingrained notions/unfavorable images about certain places like what has been done to the port cities of Yokohama and Fukuoka.)
In real terms, it almost follows the trajectory of siting tourist destinations. There will be major infrastructure requirements such as access/transport facilities, accommodations, restaurants, and yes, tourist/recreation sites to augment/make the trip all the way to a place like Pontevedra worthwhile. We can even see Pulupandan being developed into an alternative point of entry. Needless to say, all these become an exciting arena for public and private endeavours to come into play. The fiesta spirit will of course be harnessed to its full potential to engage community interest, participation, and support. In lieu of lodging facilities in the early stages, home-stay programs can very well be put in place. (Fukuoka even brought in Arata Isozaki to design a small hotel to revitalize the waterfront area just before he built the Olympic Stadium in Barcelona. And the new Tate Modem is of course expected to push the envelope for the neglected side of the River Thames.)
Scale and focus will always be a relative matter as shown by David Medalla and his one-man-engineered London Biennale or The Free Biennale staged last year on the internet. In Christchurch, NZ, the Art and Industry Biennale is expressly a joint venture between existing art organizations and local business Interests focusing on public art. It is interesting to note that the fabled Documenta in Kassel was first launched in 1955 as an accompanying program to the Bundesgartenschau or the German Federal Garden Show (we cannot help but think of the Orchidarium or the organic farm in Pontevedra and what parallel events here around the same time can do to double the impact of a biennale!)
We can always begin where we can — comfortably and conveniently — and take it to glorious heights step-by-careful/well-planned-step. The only imperatives are to work within a clear vision and context.
M.G. Chaves / Norberto Roldan
Green Papaya Art Projects
July 2, 2002
*****
#ThrowbackThursday
#greenpapayaarchives
Image: Manny Chaves and Norberto Roldan in Green Papaya, Teachers Village East, 2003. Photo courtesy of Asia Art Archive Hong Kong.
Norberto Roldan. “What Brought Us to Become the Hottest (It Had to Go on Fire Last June 3) Space in Kamuning?” (11 June 2020)
https://greenpapaya.art/What-Brought-Us-to-Become-the-Hottest-It-Had-to-Go-on-Fire-Last-June
A General Scenario for a Negros Biennale Proposal PDF: https://tinyurl.com/negrosbnl
The first time I found myself in the T. Gener space was to view “Domestic Bliss”, Ling Quisumbing Ramilo’s 2008 exhibit reflecting on ideas of home: her reestablishment in Manila after being gone for many years was layered with the renovation of the home she grew up in. I really liked that show but I didn’t think then that I’d ever associate Green Papaya with home beyond that.
A few years later I’d be there between film screenings, pirate radios, talks, and performances. I was a sort of active participant of the activities in the space for a while, I guess, as at that time I lived only a few blocks away. Often, I’d show up very early with little care, knowing I’d be alright even with just observing preparations. Before, during and after the activities I’d converse with both the same faces and new faces but even supposed strangers weren’t strange, pre-warmed by the recognition of community.
For most of my life, I lived between the zip codes 1103 and 1104. With long commutes not well-set in my system, we moved somewhere more distant as traffic in the metro got worse and worse. I recall going to only one GP event each in 2016 and 2017. I went to Catch272 once in 2018 but the friends I shared drinks with had no idea what Green Papaya Art Projects even was.
On the first Monday of this year, I found myself in the space after a long suspended catchup meal. I had been there for a talk just a few weeks before but the feel of that had a teeny-tiny prodigal child tinge to it. This time was more comfortable as I savored reading a book in silence as my company did work.
We were so naïve about how the year would turn out, I said going back to that a few days after the fire. Blissfully naïve, was the reply I got.
The space is missed but we remember that it is in other people that we find home.
Iris de Ocampo
September 12, 2020
#ThrowbackThursday #greenpapayaarchives
Images:
1. Taguri: The Kites of Sulu, 08 October, 2014. Courtesy of Neo Maestro/Gerome Soriano.
2. Minor Gestures, 14 December, 2019. Photo by Yuji de Torres.
3. Sound as Growing, 10 January, 2020. Photo by Yuji de Torres.
An excerpt from “The Ugly Truth: What do our cities really need?” by Rafael Schacter at Green Papaya Extension, 05 January 2016.
“Street art – as well as its artistic forebear graffiti – are often thought of as radical, rebellious aesthetic practices. Both the artists and their works are portrayed as the very definition of “edgy”; dangerous and dissident, but also creative and avant-garde. Yet within the last five years or so, street art has been commandeered by the corporate interests of the “creative city”.
Do our cities need revitalisation through gentrification or reinvigoration through communication? Do we need a single comfortable community or diverse, contradictory publics? Drawing from a decade of research into graffiti and street art, anthropologist and curator Rafael Schacter stakes a claim for the ugly yet important, the disagreeable but necessary.”
Rafael is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow 2014-2017, honorary research fellow at the Department of Anthropology at University College, London. His first book The World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti, won the 2014 Los Angeles Book Festival in the Photography/Art Category. His second book, Ornament and Order, a monograph based on his PhD research, was published in September 2014. As Creative Director of arts production company Approved by Pablo, he is curating and producing a two-year series of events at Somerset House, London. He has worked on numerous other exhibitions, including co-curating the iconic “Street Art” show at the Tate Modern in 2008.
*****
Norberto Roldan: Let’s hear out two more questions before you reply and consolidate your reactions and comments as your closing statement before we go back to the bar. We have Adrian and Alice for the last two questions.
Adrian Alfonso: I have a question. I think there's some confusion as to what's being talked about here, so maybe you could clarify the difference between street art with permission and street art without permission.
Alice Sarmiento: Mine is pretty simple. You mentioned visibility earlier and one of the things that I thought about that was that, in order for art to have any kind of political potential, it does have a specific kind of visibility. And that's where I guess the conventions about graffiti come in, especially in the case of your paper, because you have an idiom of dissent being used essentially for dispossession.
So in the case of street art, there is, in a way, something futile about discussing the politics of it, because each one has its own specific kind of politics. In that sense, I guess it would be more productive to talk about the usefulness of art because you did mention usefulness earlier — we talked about artists working in bakeries and social practice and relational aesthetics where it's more or less the same thing. So rather than go anecdotal, could we at least go into the usefulness of the practice in the context of the Philippines?
Rafael Schacter: Those four words are gonna stop me in the context of the Philippines but I'll try. So I probably should have started with a kind of footnote like what graffiti and street art are to make things clearer, but better late than never. So thank you. It's obviously really complex. But I've got kind of two basic understandings of what they are, and which will always be critiqued. But nevertheless, I can give it a go.
There's a lot of broad descriptions of it but one could argue that graffiti is generally letter based and street art is often image based. That's one kind of broad distinction. And you could argue that graffiti in general kind of works against architecture. Graffiti would traditionally go over borders — if you have a window and a corner, graffiti will go over that window in the corner, that's going against the architecture. Wherein street art will generally work with it. It’ll generally try to improve it or change and try, like to try and detourne it in a way which kind of emphasizes it. You could argue that graffiti is generally illegal. And street art is often more enabled. But for me, graffiti is not about illegality, it's about lack of permission, Iike street art for me, is as well. So that's why street art with permission with me is potentially no longer street art.
But I think the terms are really confused. And there are as many graffitis as there are graffiti artists and as many street arts as there are street artists. For me, what's more interesting is looking at is agonistic versus consensual — acts which are working against compared to acts which are working for. A lot of street art, inverted commas, although traditionally seemed to work consensually to work with, actually works agonistically. Whereas a lot of like graffiti, which is supposed to always be against, actually always isn't. So I think the terms are very diffuse, and complex and change the whole time.
Whereas “independent public art” is a good kind of catch all term, to describe practices, which happen in the public sphere, which are independent. The independence for me is really something which is so key, even if it is the ethic of independence, which is gained through like 5, 10, or 15 years of practice, which is what a lot of these artists have. By working without permission, it changes the way you look, and you see your environment because there is a need to produce.
I think that's what many graffiti and street artists have imparted to me is that it's a need. It's not something you do because you can — it's a need to do. And exactly as you were saying before about an environment being dehumanizing, I think that need to become part of one's environment is key within everyone. And the correlation of the increase of independent public art, graffiti and street art, with the increasing privatization of our cities, I don't think is an accident. I think this leads to usefulness. I think both those questions are kind of similar.
I think graffiti, by its nature, shows that something else is happening. It shows an outside exists in the center. In that way, it has amazing importance in showing an outside. The politics where I'm from is centered — everything has gone to the center. There is consensus politics and it is all that matters. The problem with center consensus is that it creates radicality because people feel that their needs are not being met.
One of the great things about graffiti in its essence is its consonant showing of something else. Also, its ugliness is amazingly beautiful, because its ugliness is about efficacy. A tag, which might look really ugly to someone, is about speed and being able to do something to mark and delineate a complex surface within one beautiful form. So I think that in itself is aesthetically beautiful.
In terms of visibility and having political potentiality, one of the most politically subversive and fantastic works and artists of the moment are these guys from Stockholm, and Copenhagen, Adams and E.B.Itso who are producing work, which is totally invisible. They're producing graffiti, producing spaces, which is never seen. They produce narratives, like secrets, which then people tell, and to me that is amazingly powerful. It's about imagination.
So for me the usefulness of street art, graffiti is about imagination — imagining something different to what exists; whether that's by something you can see, or you don't see. It's also about revealing what is underneath the surface not by being surface. Graffiti and street art lie on the surface. It's literally superficial. But to me, its site specificity is about showing what hides behind it. It's about showing the regulations and the norms, which are so ingrained within our cities, that we don't see them. And I think that's one of the beautiful things about street art and graffiti is revealing the things which are so obvious that we can't see.
*****
Images courtesy of Neo Maestro and Green Papaya Archives:
1. The talk at Green Papaya Extension in medias res. Nice Buenaventura, Alfred Marasigan, Paulo Alcazaren, Alden Santiago, Cheese Cori Co, Brisa Amir.
2. On the opposite side of the room. Neo Maestro, Marika Constantino, Issay Rodriguez, Renan Laru-an, Jose Gabriel.
3. The usual hangout after talks. Alice Sarmiento, Merv Espina, Erick Calilan, Raf Schacter, Joee Mejias, Tengal Drilon, Veronica Lazo, Cian Dayrit.
4. Green Papaya Extension’s garage scene.
An excerpt from “Whither Art History? Institutions, Curatorship and the Undead Nation State” by David Teh at Green Papaya Extension, 17 May 2016.
“How should art be historicized in its ‘contemporary’ and ‘global’ phase? What is to be historicized, if not the work of art per se? Where art history has shallow roots, the emerging paradigms of visual culture, curatorial studies, and exhibition histories offer appealing alternatives. But their path is strewn with hazards, not least, the lack of that visual literacy and discursive space that art history, for all its sins, has long cultivated elsewhere. In this talk, David Teh will address some of the obstacles to the study of contemporary art in Southeast Asia, with reference to the institutional landscape, the curatorial function, and the still pivotal role of the Nation.”
Dr. David Teh is a writer, curator, art advisor, and researcher based at the National University of Singapore (NUS), specializing in Southeast Asian contemporary art. Before moving to Singapore, he worked as an independent curator and critic in Bangkok from 2005 to 2009, and has since realized projects in Germany, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore. His writings have appeared in Third Text, Afterall, LEAP Magazine, Art Asia Pacific, Artforum, and The Bangkok Post.
*****
Eileen Legaspi-Ramirez: I was asking him what he thinks about the relationships between institutions and quasi-institutions because they don't exist totally separate from each other. At some point, institutions validate what quasi-institutions produce.
David Teh: Well, again, I think I can't really give a very lengthy answer, because this is something that, I think, in the context that I'm most familiar with, we've really started to see happening, or at least has been getting critical mass quite recently.
I think Asiatopia is a really good example. Asiatopia was formed in the late ‘90s as a performance art festival, a very international, fun circuit. It's really almost more than a quasi-institutional kind of performance art circuit. It's artform-specific and therefore a little more modest in scale than say biennales and so on. But also, it doesn't involve collection, shipping, and these kinds of things. It’s quite a lightweight sort of organization. It was a really important embassy of the contemporary, from the late ‘90s to the early 2000s.
By the time I arrived, it was already really boring. They became kind of like institutions in a way, so that's one possible trajectory. I will still try to go to Asiatopia. I think some interesting things still happen there, but it became very predictable and repetitive. It became sort of a closed chapter to some extent. I think there was a lot of intent on the part of the organizers and founders to broaden the church and to bring new generations in. But, as you know, as is often the case with this kind of autonomous groups, people don't feel like it's theirs. Sometimes, if you come from a younger generation or another gender position, perhaps you might not feel like it's yours to take over. I think they had that problem. That left it, in a sense, a little bit vulnerable. Now, the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC) has basically kind of latched on to it. It's more than a quasi-institutional kind of thing now, so that's one possible scenario.
The other is the artist-run space that kind of flourishes and dies. I think that's probably, by numbers, the most common. Sort of artist-run spaces are supposed to die. They're not necessarily, in many cases, designed for long term. I know we’re sitting within that kind of contrary case, which is a great thrill, but, I mean, I've been involved in these things too. Sometimes they gotta die. I think sometimes you shouldn't belly-ache about that. I think it's great when they die. Sometimes they need to, because otherwise they'll retard the development of some of the people that are involved in it.
The other thing, of course, is archiving. I think it becomes more and more important when you get this kind of regional institutional data like we have recently. I mean, if anyone has been to the National Gallery Singapore (NGS), it's like this scary mothership from outer space. It’s like a massive statement. It really is doing the stuff that a museum does. This is something that the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) never really pretended to do. SAM pretended to be a museum and sometimes it has been convincing in that, but it never had any pretenses towards historical scholarship or a historically informed collection. I mean, that wasn't what it was doing. I think most of the people I know that worked at SAM are reasonably honest about that; they knew they weren't experts in most cases and they were happy to admit that this is a different kind of institution.
I think the NGS really is a paradigm shift. It's some kind of a weird quantum leap where you're not just in the trappings of institutional existence that are there, but also actually some possibilities for genuine memory building. With objects, I think they can do that quite effectively. They can also initiate research a little bit. They've got more people who are interested in doing that and I think they've hired very carefully to get that, so I think it's changing.
Right now, the role of the quasi-institutions is often, kind of, trying to shift to serve that historicization and, maybe, sometimes also to thwart it. I would sit on the fence about what artist-run spaces should be doing with their memory or their legacy. In some cases, it may be the best thing to consign it to the institution that can keep the moisture out, keep the bugs off, and keep the coloring things and so on, right?
In some cases, I think, maybe one should just burn it all down and start again. People who have been asked to give things that are important, they would say, “You know, I would rather slit my wrists than give it to them, to that place. In my territory, we don't have these sorts of institutions, but it's not right for it to go and live there. That's not where it belongs.” I think that has to be taken seriously as artists have a relationship and the responsibility for the legacy of their past work that I think goes beyond some kind of hippie dippie sense of the “United Nations of Contemporary Art Collection.”
With Singapore, it plays that role too, I think, too convincingly. Often, people are a bit flattered when the institution comes knocking. I think my general kind of manifesto on this would be to make them earn it. I just wish that more artists in Southeast Asia had the foothold and the wherewithal to force institutions of that nature to really do their homework. I think artists, in my opinion, at least the ones that I've seen go through this process, have not been demanding and exacting enough in terms of the care that is taken to historicize that stuff.
But yeah, I can't generalize about them. It's really different. Groups like Forum Lenteng and ruangrupa, both in Jakarta, have massive archives of stuff. They have pretty much the smell-of-an-oily-rag sort of operation. Although they also have some very lucrative revenue streams these days, it's not a fancy pants institution. They don't have super archival conditions, etc. I would say, in their case, that's the best place for what they've got. It's really what they use; they hire people who specialize in making it available to people so it's very well-kept and very well-used. I think, in that sort of case, I don't really see a reason for trying to go the next step, to the kind of vaulting in the West or in Singapore where these will be buried. They can really do more with it by keeping it alive.
*****
Images and captions from David Teh:
1. Brutalist ethnography, National Museum of Myanmar, Yangon, 2015.
2. The crumbling facade of the Bhirasri Institute of Modern Art, Bangkok, Thailand.
3. Basement parking space of Teater Jakarta — Taman Ismail Marizuki, Jakarta Biennale 2013, Jakarta, Indonesia.
MATERIALISM IS A EUPHEMISM: Excerpts from the first Kalampag Tracking Agency screening, UPFI Videotheque, 2014
The Kalampag Tracking Agency was initially started as “a screening program in the form of an initiative.” An organizational collaboration between Shireen Seno of Los Otros and Merv Espina of Green Papaya under its Generation Loss (GEN_LOSS) program, Kalampag sought to present some of the most singular, fragile, and striking moving image works by Filipinos over the past 30 years. The initiative was launched by two screenings and discussions, the first of which took place on 20 August 2014 at the University of the Philippines Film Institute (UPFI) Videotheque.
The impulse of Kalampag led to ongoing research and archiving of Philippine artists' moving image that branched off into other projects, such as the ongoing Light Leaks series currently hosted by the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD).
Advancements and ongoing experimentation with digital technologies and artists’ moving image creation and distribution are ever accelerating at breakneck speeds, perhaps even more so now because of the conditions set about by the pandemic. Who could have imagined that in less than a decade since the first Kalampag screening that watching videos from our smartphones would become normal behaviour? Most of the artists, collaborators, and curators had no smartphones during the preparation work for the Kalampag in 2014.
Below is an excerpt from a lengthy post-screening discussion between Alice Sarmiento, Raya Martin, John Torres, Nick Deocampo, and Merv Espina. Shireen Seno, Kidlat Tahimik, Kidlat de Guia, Teddy Co, Jon Lazam, Martha Atienza, Malay Javier, and many others were in attendance and actively contributed to the discussion. What follows is an example of the performative and participatory nature of the screening program and the post-screening discussion that further enriches the materials and informs ongoing research.
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Alice Sarmiento (AS): To append to what Nick [Deocampo] and Raya [Martin] were talking about earlier, I think one of the interesting things I noticed from the second half was this element of decay that was present in almost all the films. I know it has to do with bad prints or whatever, but the fact that it’s present in these films from the past, if you look at the current visual vocabulary especially with something like Instagram, you’ll notice that decay is something we simulate now using technology.
The thing with technology now is that we’re coming from a place of abundance where it’s super easy to flatten everything, but everything is also infinitely reproducible so we’re talking of a very different garbage pit altogether. We’re not talking about the dumpster behind LVN Pictures or Mowelfund, we’re talking about how to work and sift through a different pile of garbage. We now have concepts like infinite reproducibility, flattening, and simulating decay and the fact that there is no limit to what you can upload to YouTube. These really change the potential for what film is going to be in the future or what we’re experimenting with.
I have a really horrible example right now. I saw the trailer for Sex Tape (2014) earlier, starring Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz. One of the things there is that they have an iPad and they filmed themselves having sex for three hours which accidentally got uploaded to the cloud. So, we’re talking about a generation that’s born into this concept of the cloud.
To add to what Teddy Co was saying about communities earlier, we’re not even talking about forming communities. We’re talking about a population that’s literally native to this idea of filming themselves and publicizing everything they do. I think those are the things that are completely beyond our grasp right now. The fact that the common, the public sphere, and the act of disseminating something have all changed.
Of course, you have technology as the culprit for all of that but I think that, rather than feel nostalgic or like you’re being displaced, just understand that technology never really displaced or displaces us, but more like it adds to what is present. Thank you, Raya, for laughing.
Raya Martin (RM): No, I think I kind of understand it…
Merv Espina (ME): Well, I agree.
RM: Sorry, just a footnote, but what you said about that certain aesthetic of bringing together the older and newer works, of course we still don’t see it yet, but what if this sort of cinema from the ‘70s is now in this one big app or website?
AS: Well, yeah. Because if we think about it, the people who are using Instagram now are the people who have access to smartphones. Who are these people who have access to smartphones? It’s people who were born in the ‘70s and ‘80s. So, there will still be that hampering that, “When I was a kid, it was like this.” We’re still the generation that can recognize that kind of frame. I’m sure that if I show it to my nieces, they’re not gonna have any idea what celluloid and those frames are. They’re gonna think, “Oh, that’s the thing they have on Instagram right?” It has now become a filter. It’s another way of co-opting that language from the past, but that is something that came up. It’s something that they’re going to translate in their own hands.
RM: In the same way, I’d like to say that experimental cinema turned into a music video aesthetic.
AS: Yeah, that’s what I recognized also. I’m sure that Nick sees something else when he sees the videos of Roxlee, but I was like, “It’s like that Peter Gabriel video.”
Nick Deocampo (ND): This is the reason why I’m more of a historian than a filmmaker right now because the fear that I have in what we’re discussing is that you tend to efface the historical markings that are necessary to inform us of the state of technology, politics, economics, society, our mental well-being.
I’m sorry if I or some of us here may sound nostalgic because, in the end, I think it’s a kind of temporal framing. That’s also our legacy. One thing you may understand is that materialism is a euphemism of Marxism. You belong to that generation where the material reality, all of these were part of the process that we were in. That’s what I’m trying to caution ourselves; that unless you see that, it’s just a style that belongs to a certain temporal continuum, which technology enriches and adds up.
We still need to demarcate exactly that this technology in the ‘70s is different from the ‘80s. I’m sorry to be so chronological about it. Of course that kind of historical periodization can be put into a question or argument, but I feel that there’s still room for a historical nuancing for us to know what is still useful. Again, being informed is all I’m asking for and that’s why, as I’ve said, I engage in history because this country, our people primarily, tend to forget so easily.
AS: I think the fact that it’s becoming added to the argument is a result of a very interesting point that we started to realize what technology has to do with the formation of communities and how it influences aesthetic because you’re working from a place with limitations.
ME: There are still a lot of limitations with digital, so much.
ND: Codec issues.
AS: Yes, there is! I only mean to bring up how that is going to be augmented in the future especially now that you see 15-year-old filmmakers and 8-year-old app developers. I mean, those are very interesting developers right now. One of the things that concerns me at least, is how optimized it’s becoming with how people develop things. It’s becoming more convenient and more possible to just confine yourself to your room and do your own thing there without having to relate to people in this space because dissemination and screening mean something else now.
ME: We’ve all been very nostalgic about form, material, and how your works from the ‘70s and ‘80s were disseminated. Now that you’re focusing on the digital, no one has questioned or brought to attention the politics and possibilities of distribution when it comes to digital forms. There are so many ways to distribute. Cross-referencing with what you were saying about community, of course communities are developed from screenings and workshops because you literally had to be physically present in the workshops and the screenings.
ND: Now it’s all virtual.
ME: Yeah, and now, for example, some of the Marcos-era films can actually be seen online. Jon, what works do you have online? [Hindi sa Atin ang] Buwan (The Moon is Not Ours) (2011)?
Jon Lazam (JL): Yes, Buwan.
ME: You can see some of Raya’s works if you download.
RM: But I’m more old school, you have to pay for it.
John Torres (JT): I like watching in a big dark room with the others. Some people prefer to download and watch in solitude at home. Inside the cinema, I don’t have the remote so I power through a contract of continuous playback. If it were just me and the remote, I could take my sweet time and take breaks or naps. Or I could just decide not to watch altogether. I like both.
Teddy Co (TC): It’s also a discipline not to answer any phone calls!
ND: As a challenge to the curators here: why don’t you try to program something digitally? Because this actually questions the very practice of why you have to have a physical screening like this and bringing us together. Of course, we are rushing here because this is a sacred ritual as far as we’re concerned. Now, here’s the challenge: we won’t see each other. Let’s see what results you’re gonna have and inform us, maybe we’ll see each other. Again, it’s not a question of comparison of which one is better. We want to see exactly how we can move on from this old ritual of getting together, talking to each other, and trying to exchange or share some ideas. I know that on the internet, we somehow can, we can comment immediately. So, let’s move on to that.
If I sound so nostalgic, then I just want to correct one thing. It’s just an impression that maybe we sound nostalgic but personally, I’d like to say that we’re not. In fact we do recognize the materiality of video technology and that cinema has moved on. As I said before, my works right now involve digital technology and my documentaries have CGI. I’ve reconciled myself with the technology. It’s just that once again, we’re burdened by history. And don’t worry, 20 years from now, Raya, all of you will be speaking the same language when we are in the age of holograms. You know, I’m sure digital media will be over! Holograms will be here and that’s where the new masterpieces will be. We don’t even have to see each other, we’ll just be projected there.
Right People, Wrong Timing: DEFINITELY NOT SINGAPOREAN: A Conversation with Jennifer Teo and Woon Tien Wei on p-10 (Singapore, 2004-2008)
p-10 was a curatorial collective founded in 2004 by Charles Lim, Lim Kok Boon, Lee Sze-Chin, Jennifer Teo, and Woon Tien Wei. In 2008, p-10 disbanded and the different members have since focused on other things. The group organized numerous exhibitions and talks in their space along Perumal Rd. and curated Koh Nguang How’s “Errata” exhibition. p-10 was also instrumental during the early days of Post-Museum, an initiative which was subsequently managed by Jennifer and Tien. In this conversation, we discuss with Jennifer and Tien curatorial practices in mid-2000s Singapore, the phenomena of biennialization, collectivism, and issues surrounding archiving.
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BEGINNINGS
Woon Tien Wei (WTW): p-10 started after [Lim Kok Boon, Lee Sze-Chin, Charles Lim, and I] finished our studies in London and returned to Singapore. The ground floor unit in the building where Kok Boon and Sze-Chin’s studios were was available so we rented it.
At first, p-10 included Jennifer [Teo], Charles, Kok Boon, Sze-Chin, and myself. Rather than open another studio, we decided to form a curatorial team because we thought that maybe curators can do something different from what artists were doing back then.
Jennifer Teo (JT): That was in 2004 which was also the start of the Renaissance City Plan (RCP), the cultural policy of the National Arts Council (NAC), which we thought was too focused on just creating and having a lot of exhibitions. We thought that the government and the artists were focused on doing a lot of exhibitions — the NAC was giving out grants for exhibitions and the focus was on producing those. Nobody really took the time to look at the exhibitions and artworks seriously.
As a curatorial team, we wanted to slow it down and form some kind of discourse. Even artist talks weren't done then. We were basically interested in looking at the issues and practices surrounding the production of art. Everyone in the team had their own artistic practice already so we decided not to focus on our own artwork, but to find other artists and look at their practice.
WTW: I guess we were also thinking about other people that were regional like Project 304 or About Café in Bangkok. I think Plastique Kinetic Worms (PKW) really introduced us to a lot of this because of their relationship with some of the networks in Southeast Asia.
Merv Espina (ME): You mentioned before that you both were involved with The Artists Village (TAV) before p-10. Can you also describe that time period leading up to the creation of p-10?
JT: We were active with TAV from around 2000 to maybe 2002 so there wasn’t much overlap. We were still TAV members but we weren’t really active then.
WTW: I think it was also a different sense of collectivity or mode of working. Actually, maybe most of us were not curatorial but I think, strategically, we just felt that the curatorial had more power than the artistic because curators were more in-between in those days.
JT: Independent curating wasn’t a profession or even a thing yet in Singapore.
Sau Bin Yap (SBY): Were there any curators, art historians, or researchers operating in Singapore at that time?
WTW: I think if there were, they were probably in the museums. You would think that curators function like art historians but in hindsight I’m not sure if they were. I doubt it. I think today we can also think that the art historian does not need to be curatorial. They are also quite different. In fact, I think the curatorial now has its own space as opposed to the art historical. Maybe in those days you would think we imagined them to be very close but we actually imagined that we were not that close to art history or making art history.
JT: I think it was also like mutual aid or a self-help thing in the late ‘90s when artists were creating exhibitions and doing things together. We weren't trying to be professional curators.
10 PERUMAL RD.
ME: Was the curatorial collective already formed before you found the space?
WTW: We found the space first.
ME: How did you find this space in this residential area?
JT: Colin Reaney and Karee Dahl, an Australian artist couple who were teaching at the NIE (National Institute of Education), were the first to rent a unit there. They told us there were other units available so people started going to have a look. This was in Little India so it was really convenient and it wasn't that expensive.
So then at least five other flats were taken up. Later on, we collaborated to have this open studio thing where the different people opened up their spaces in the building and around Little India. It was really like a small community then.
ME: How did you guys support p-10 and yourselves living-wise?
WTW: We had some grants for the projects we were working on.
JT: Some of us were working like the two teachers, [Kok Boon and Sze-Chin].
WTW: Some of us were alright financially and so we didn’t have some of the financial pressure and I think it is important to acknowledge that. I felt that we are trying to figure out what to do in the art scene and figure if what p-10 was doing could be sustainable financially.
JT: Also, it was like the start of your careers after coming back so everyone was trying to figure out their own place in Singapore and what they could do. At the same time, I think you guys said that you missed these kinds of places where you used to hang out in the UK?
WTW: Right. I think we wanted something like studios which are also not always very common or trendy, but maybe during that time it was a little bit trendier. I definitely think that that culture of studios is quite British.
JT: Definitely not Singaporean, at that time at least.
WTW: I'm not sure exactly. Even today, I think the whole idea of studios is not very popular. People find it really difficult to get it.
SBY: It's interesting because I think that studio culture is not only about making art, but also the discussions and meetings that may lead to organizing or even curating.
WTW: Also, to just think about the modes of production needed to fit something. I mean, to have something as big as the RAP house in Kuala Lumpur would be completely unimaginable in Singapore. But, at a certain point in time, it was affordable. Definitely before 2000, you could imagine something like that. There was also this idea that Singapore could never be as free as KL.
JT: Or Manila I think.
SBY: That's interesting. I remember when you guys came to KL and visited RAP, you said that it actually sort of reminded you of [Ulu] Sembawang and TAV.
WTW: Yeah, but we never really went there so we were just imagining it.
SBY: We haven't been there as well, so we were all imagining. So, there is actually a rustic nostalgia of TAV at Sembawang.
WTW: Yeah. But we were not sure whether you could do things outside. That means, in order to have an exhibition, you have to be formal. I think now it's a lot more free; you could just do anything anywhere.
JT: No, I think we just see it that way but maybe for younger people they don't.
WTW: Okay, it’s subjective. But let's see. I think people still think that you need some officialness.
JT: I think now even more so.
WTW: But I think that's why we didn't know whether we were allowed to do that so everything was by-appointment then. We weren't sure whether we could actually be open. It wasn't clear.
JT: Well, the place that we rented was actually residential so officially, we were not supposed to hold events there.
ME: How did that work considering you got grants?
JT: Yeah, but they didn't really...
WTW: I don't know why they allowed it?
JT: Maybe now they wouldn't anymore.
WTW: I think they were more relaxed then. We just weren’t sure and we didn’t know how to check. We weren’t as flexible as we are now.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
SBY: In 2003, when p-10 visited RAP, I remember thinking you guys were serious researchers because you had mics and recorders. That left quite an impression that you were sort of doing this regional research and networking and it’s interesting how it’s connected to your positioning as a curatorial outfit. I’m wondering what spurred you or what informed your consciousness? What kind of discussions did you have that led to the creation of p-10?
WTW: I think it was mainly a way of reframing the situation and changing some of the context because when we started, it was not a trend to give talks and reshow your work. If I'm not wrong, during that time, exhibitions did not last for more than two weeks.
I think there were a lot of things that we were figuring out but also, I guess it was, discursively or strategically, a way to start rethinking what we could be doing. Things like TAV’s work about going back to Bali were not common because looking back historically wasn’t popular then.
But I think that's the only thing that was very different then. Now, everybody wants to go back and research. I think there's also a tendency to change, but I'm not sure how much of it is driven by this whole biennialization because it is also a privileging of something intelligent.
One of the things that I feel is valuable talking about when it comes to regional consciousness is how it's also pretty much dominated by the biennialization of the artworld. That seems to be the driving force.
ME: It seems that p-10 had this regional awareness and that it was like an advocacy project where artists advocated to take on a curatorial role to highlight certain artists and practices.
WTW: Yeah. Because, back then, let's say I have a show at The Substation, it will last one week and one would never show the works again because it is “old work.” Just one week. Who can see your show? Nobody. So, it was very [modernist] in the sense that...
JT: You had to be productive and creative. It was also the time where it was cool to say that you're a full-time artist and people would look down on those who are not full-time artists.
WTW: Just a side note, when we were in the UK, David Medalla was an extremely important person to us. Even before I met him, I was already really interested in what he was doing. I guess his generosity and TAV or [Tang] Da Wu’s kind of collectivity were really important for us because, in a sense, there wasn’t this kind of modernity involved? The modern as in like “the genius.” There was a different kind of value structure and sense of openness within that sense of collectivity which I thought was interesting for me. I was interested in how people can come together, do something, and be influenced by each other and then just go and do their own thing. There was no sense of something permanent that needed to go on, but it was a confluence of relationships.
David taught me a lot actually. I think he played a big role in why London became an interesting place for me. I don’t think London is a place that makes people feel at home, but David did. I think that generosity is something that, in contemporary art writing, we don’t really talk about.
JT: A bit more now. Generosity, care, hospitality...
THE “ERRATA” PROJECT
JT: Our first show was Lee Wen’s “Unframed¬7” and that had to do with this policy regarding grant applications. He was like, “No, we just want to do this,” so we very quickly had an exhibition, a performance, and several discussions in seven days. We then moved on to quite a few bigger projects one of which was Koh Nguang How’s “Errata.”
WTW: For us, it was a really different way of curating because we were contextualizing Koh’s practice. For the longest time, people didn’t understand Koh’s practice fully. He was just very historical but nobody could really pinpoint what it was exactly. After he was invited to the [2011] Singapore Biennale, his practice really shifted a lot but I think it developed from the “Errata” project.
JT: “Errata” also revived attention towards a whole generation of artists, the Equator Art Society (EAS).
WTW: “Errata” was about Chua Mia Tee’s painting “National Language Class” that had been wrongly dated in Kwok Kian Chow’s book Channels & Confluences: A History of Singapore Art (1996). It touched on that whole Cold War period when, here in Singapore and Malaysia, the British were arresting anyone they suspected to be communists. The project was interested in unpacking the suggestion that there was some kind of leftist link with the EAS.
JT: Also, the EAS was kind of left out or forgotten so “Errata” actually brought them back in a way.
WTW: People were afraid of being associated with the left or being called “communist” or “Marxist.”
JT: At the time, the museums wouldn't have been able to do this project. They wouldn't have wanted to work with Koh.
WTW: There was one time that Koh, Chua Mia Tee, and Kwok Kian Chow, who was also a museum director, were in the same room talking about this whole thing. It was really obvious that there was nothing more to it; the caption was definitely a mistake. But that caption kind of opens up that lost time.
At the time, I think we weren't very good at researching; it was just research in a very general way and it was driven by what Koh sees as his research.
JT: In “Errata”, what we did was really to complement him.
WTW: And we had to curate him. We had to put him somewhere. It's a particular history that just wouldn't have resonated anywhere else. I mean, you would not have known this book. I don’t think it was a hot seller but it’s completely sold out. No more second copies. It’s completely colloquial; the national collection is based roughly on the same script.
ME: Official narrative.
WTW: Yeah, I thought it made sense. What Kian Chow did was to put concepts in time and had the concepts propel the movements. So, it made sense if they were just concepts at the same time; just different people who felt different about things. As a structure, it was pretty sound. It’s just that nobody was interested in reading about the “past.” Which contemporary artist would want to read about art from the past published in 1996? Nobody.
Many would have difficulty connecting with Liu Kang or Nanyang Style in the search for the contemporary. Back then, if I painted in Nanyang Style, I feel that people would laugh at it because it was not contemporary. That’s what I felt was driving some of the interest in the project, that it was restoration of something no one was looking at.
JT: For the artists then, it was a very intentional break away from the past, to something new.
WTW: Yeah. Because I think in Singapore, it was very important for people to be contemporary and that meant you have no past in a way.
POST-MUSEUM AND THE END OF P-10
ME: How did the idea of Post-Museum come about? Because it was founded in 2007 when p-10 was still around.
JT: The father of someone I know had a property in Little India and he asked whether we would be interested to move p-10 to this bigger space.
We thought about it and we decided that if we were to move, it would no longer be the same p-10 anymore because we would have to pay a lot more rent so we needed to have a proper income and since the space was bigger, we would also have to do more. So, it kind of came about because someone offered us a space rather than us thinking of doing something more “proper.”
We decided to run it as a business and that became a problem for the two teachers because legally, as civil servants, they are not allowed to be co-owners of private businesses.
ME: Since p-10 closed in 2008, it seems that it overlapped with Post-Museum for about a year. What were the circumstances that led to p-10’s closing? Did it lose its space?
JT: By that time, Charles left and [Cheong] Kah Kit joined. The two teachers were getting too busy with school and Kit was planning to do his master's abroad so it was just the timing. We thought maybe we should end because everyone wanted to go and do their own thing. We didn't think of changing the team. None of us were really trying to hang onto it so it just felt right to end there.
Our last project as p-10 was when we participated in the Asia Art Triennial in Manchester in early 2008. It was a huge independent initiative that was supported by the government there, and we worked with Kwong [Lee] from Castlefield Gallery. After that, we stopped p-10 because we were also getting really busy with Post-Museum.
WTW: But we kept the space for a while.
JT: Yeah. We rented it to other people
WTW: But it was very difficult to maintain financially.
JT: We still used the p-10 space for residencies.
ME: p-10 positioned itself as a curatorial rather than artist collective and, in Tien's dissertation, he distinguished p-10 from Post-Museum by saying that it's a “fixed team working in the field of fine arts,” whereas Post-Museum is like a “networked collective” engaged in the fields of cultural work, education, etc. We were wondering if this eventual shift or expansion was a result of your experiences in p-10?
JT: When we were doing p-10, we already felt that it was too insular and that we were only talking to art people. So, with Post-Museum, we intentionally wanted to open it up to everyone. And then also, as I mentioned, because of the space and its whole set-up, we had to also do more things, include more people, and really try to work out certain ideas we had about what participation was and also how art could change the world. I think we all had some kind of idea, but we never really tried it on such a large scale.
At that time, The Substation was the only place where people could gather and that was where you could meet different artists and musicians. We wanted that sort of atmosphere where people could just come and things could happen. In many ways, we were thinking of it as an open platform. The attitude was really quite open and we didn’t want to fix what Post-Museum as a space was; we wanted it to be decided together with everyone who came and visited. It was meant to be a completely different thing from p-10.
WTW: When we started, Post-Museum was trying to be less art and more social. I think even with p-10, we wanted to think that art could shape and change the world but, if you really work in the artworld, that’s something you actually do and see less of. That was something we felt and we weren’t sure why it wasn’t happening but we knew it was not happening. So, with Post-Museum, I think that’s why we decided to just open it up to anybody who’s interested in doing something.
JT: We were much more interested in other people as participants and not just as audience, so it was quite different. It was an intentional change in direction.
WTW: Honestly, I thought it would be different, but I didn't expect it to be so different. I'm not saying that art doesn't really have a way of opening itself up; art does have a way of being very flexible and fluid, but it doesn't have access to certain networks which actually takes time to build. For the first few years, we felt that Post-Museum was mainly different because we had a café. People would hang out and gradually trust each other over time.
JT: A lot of people actually came to eat so it really was a whole new group of people that we never encountered.
WTW: I think that was very important for us and that kind of changed our perspective.
ARCHIVING P-10
ME: Why was p-10's Facebook page started in 2015?
WTW: I think Kah Kit did it.
JT: It's so full of holes because we don't know where the other materials are and it's all over the place. I think Kah Kit just wanted to put what he had there. I guess we're also supposed to put in what we have but we haven't.
ME: There seems to be some investigation or reinvestigation about your own history.
WTW: Maybe it was not so intentional. I think it's just one of those things that you see once in a while, like a very small pet.
I guess it’s just our way of making sense of the archive because I think it’s difficult for us to make time to actually work on it. We have a lot of materials but we just need time to go through it.
JT: But we really haven't been going through it.
WTW: Yeah but we just felt that it was very important to do so. One of the things I always say is that archives are monsters — they consume you and they consume everything around them. Koh is a very good example. He’s half-consumed, a bit like that Naked Lunch thing. But yeah, it’s just impossible for me. I think to even have an archive is an unreasonable request. But, as researchers, we know how valuable it is; it’s just so hard to know when these things become valuable. It’s the most unsexy thing ever.
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The online interview took place on 6 September 2020. This interview was edited for length and clarity
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Post-Museum is an independent cultural and social space in Singapore which aims to encourage and support a thinking and pro-active community. It is an open platform for examining contemporary life, promoting the arts and connecting people. In addition to their events and projects, they also curate, research and collaborate with a network of social actors and cultural workers.
Images courtesy of p-10:
1. "Unframed¬7" with Lee Wen performing and Juliana Yasin holding the camera, 2004 April
2. Koh Nguang How "Errata" at p-10, 2004
3. Kuala Lumpur collective Rumah Air Panas (RAP) giving a talk during their residency with p10, 23 Aug 2005
4. Exchange 05, slideshow of Lim Kok Boon's food intake for a year; photo by Jennifer Teo, 2005
5. RAP with Koh at Singapore History Museum for another version of "Errata", 2005
6. p-10’s facade, 10 Perumal Building
7. Handdrawn neighbourhood map
8. Floorplan of p-10
More info:
p-10 Singapore Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/p10sg/
p-10 Blogspot
http://p10.blogspot.com/?m=1
June Yap. “Singapore: Censorship, Institutions, and Alternatives.” (March 2016)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316990701_Singapore_Censorship_Institutions_and_Alternatives
Fang-Tze Hsu. “Escape or Advance: The Politics of Independent Art Spaces in Singapore.” (28 April 2014)
http://www.leapleapleap.com/2014/04/escape-or-advance-the-politics-of-independent-art-spaces-in-singapore/
Woon Tien Wei "Arts in a Knowledge-based Economy: Activist Strategies in Singapore's Renaissance." (2012)
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/48c7/9ae51fc4b9e9db8e1d0f0782b5e13abf0ae2.pdf
The Bali Project, 2001
https://universes.art/en/singapore-biennale/2008/parallel/the-artists-village/08
Woon Tien Wei. “Still Here Somehow: Artists and Cultural Activism in Singapore’s Renaissance.” (December 2017)
https://www.on-curating.org/issue-35-reader/still-here-somehow-artists-and-cultural-activism-in-singapores-renaissance.html#.X0PVpzURXIU
Post-Museum
https://post-museum.org/root/
Georgi Gyton. “The First Ever Asia Art Triennial 2008 Kicks Off In Manchester.” (15 April 2008)
https://www.culture24.org.uk/art/art56377
If you can:
https://greenpapaya.art/donation
*****
Right People, Wrong Timing (RPWT) is a series of texts on defunct or inactive independent Asian arts initiatives that had crossed paths or ran parallel to Papaya’s own 20-year history. With new posts every Friday from August to December 2020, RPWT is kindly supported through a local grant by the Japan Foundation Manila.
When I first became acquainted with Green Papaya, I had no idea what an “artist-run space” meant, let alone what it meant to be an artist. It was only later that I realized the latter had something to do with living precariously. However, the former seemed to me more interesting and significant, as it grew to be a house for precarious people to keep living and sustaining themselves.
But when I say house, I don’t mean the physical kind. Every person who performed, lectured, danced, interacted, talked, laughed, drank, and breathed in this space are the glue that holds it together wherever they might go. I guess this is what you could call the essence of community.
This essence… I felt most when it collided with something bigger than itself, when it converged with other communities. When it took on the task of challenging history by being a space not just for living, but also for remembering…
Around this time last year, Green Papaya hosted a gig, initiated by the Defend Negros-Stop the Attacks network, to remember the Escalante Massacre of 1985. That night, we remembered the 21 farmers and sakadas killed by state forces on September 20 of that year, when thousands marched to demand for justice for victims of the Marcos dictatorship.
We remembered the furthering impunities on Negros Island. We remembered Sagay 9, who were strafed on their bungkalan—on the very land they were cultivating to make up for food scarcity during tiempo muerto. We remembered the year after that, when 14 peasants were killed and 12 were arrested in a so-called “anti-criminality campaign” by police and military in Negros Oriental, where the only crime of the people is fighting for genuine land reform.
Then there was Escalante 8, which happened only two days before that gig. Eight cultural workers and activists were arrested while preparing for their own Escalante Massacre commemoration event. They were charged with illegal possession of firearms and explosives, which the police themselves had planted.
And today, we remember Zara Alvarez. And we shall never forget.
Though the rain poured on that night of the gig, people flocked and huddled together in solidarity. A night such as that situated the Papaya community’s precarious position within the larger context of cruelty and oppression in the country. We remembered that we as artists are part of larger communities of marginalized peoples, and that we have a responsibility to respond to injustice against our own. We remembered our duty to expand our systems of care and inclusion. We continue to remember that these are things we should never forget, never again.
Alyana Cabral
September 17, 2020
Images from Yuji de Torres:
1. Teenage Granny set for Idiolalia, August 13, 2016.
2. Aly as Passenger Element bassist for Pareidolia, October 8, 2016.
3. Long Time No See, September 17, 2019.
4-10. Never Forget! Never Again! In cooperation with Concerned Artists of the Philippines, Sama-samang Artista para sa Kilusang Agraryo (SAKA) and Catch 272, September 20, 2019.
After months of paperwork, securing permits for shipping out recently obsolete optical media, further encumbered by various degrees of lockdown, we finally managed to send some miniDV and VHS tapes from Papaya's conflagrated archives.
Receiving them in Vancouver are our friends from the media archive initiative Recollective, who have banded together and kindly volunteered to help in the rescue and restoration of these rare archival works.
The materials consist of miniDV and VHS of artists' moving image works and documentation of performances and various events held in Papaya the last few decades: Donna Miranda's choreographic projects; documentation of Papaya's 10the anniversary celebrations; miniDV of the early noise, media art and WSK events; Tad Ermitano's only remaining analog copy of his film, The Retrochronological Transfer of Information (1994); and a few VHS tapes that collect the early video experiments of Lena Cobangbang. Most of these were fire-damaged, wet and moldy, a true challenge for any archivist, regardless of media.
Between 2014-2015, back when we had working VHS players, Papaya and Los Otros managed to make crude digital reference transfers of some materials, like Tad's and Lena's, and Katya Guerrero's (luckily returned to her before the fire!). Tad's was included in the first edition of the Kalampag Tracking Agency screening program. While attending a media archives workshop, co-led by former National Film Archives director Bono Olgado, artist-curator Con Cabrera transferred materials from one of Lena's VHS tapes labeled Green Strip '97. This tape collected 5 video works, and a collaborative, all-analog audiovisual performance at Surrounded By Water in Angono, 1998.
The generated interest and research surplus turned into an advocacy that eventually led to an independent archival project between Green Papaya and Los Otros. Lena's Torch Song was included in Post Gallery's Instructions exhibition that Shireen Seno (Los Otros) and Merv Espina (Papaya) curated, and thanks to Romeo Lee's trusty VCR, it was even shown in its original format as a VHS-loop. In the hopes of aggregating and encouraging further research into Philippine experiments with the moving image led to Light Leaks, that was launched at and hosted by Ateneo Areté in September 2018.
It took 2 years, but the next Light Leaks eventually found a partner with MCAD through its MCAD Platforms program this September. The current edition features some of these crude digital transfers of Lena's and Katya's works, combined with the independent archiving efforts of Jean Marie Syjuco and Art Lab. To learn more about the Philippine artists' moving image histories, please join us tonight for a discussion with Lena and art historian Eileen Legaspi Ramirez:
https://bit.ly/MCADPlatformsEE
Lena's works are now on view until 15 September 2020:
bit.ly/MCADPlatformsCobangbang
Thanks to Don Gervin Arawan of the National Film Archives of the Philippines and Roman Carreon of the Film Development Council for helping us secure the certificate from the Optical Media Board to clear us for shipping to Vancouver. Our deepest gratitude and respect to Allison Collins, Dan Pon, Emma Metcalfe Hurst, Karen Knights, Tara Fraser, grunt gallery, VIVO Media Arts Centre, and the Recollective family for extending much needed love, support, resources and archival expertise in these troubling times.
Many have forgotten that it is wrong to kill, or that Manila's name came from a mangrove, Ixora manila, that once thrived along our shores and riverbanks. During these days of easy murder, morals are twisted, violent hate crimes are easily pardoned, and the state continues to white wash and white sand their corruptions, we continue to be thankful to have friends who, regardless of geography and geopolitics, still share the same values and continue to care and to remember. To remember is to resist.
Images:
Playback (1998), Lena Cobangbang and friends, video still with a line from Vince Serrano's poem, Fireflies
Lena's "only existing copy yet" of Green Strip and others in a VHS comprising of works from 1997-2000, showing some specks of mold
Donna Miranda's Anatomy of Love and Desire (2004), badly overcome with mold
Donna's box of video documentation a few days after the fire of 3 June 2020
Tad Ermitaño's translations of his VHS with Japanese labels containing The Retrochonological Transfer of Information
Inventory and condition check of WSK miniDV tapes
Papaya’s tape archives package in Recollective member Dan Pon's apartment, his black cat Boris inspecting and looking displeased
Right People, Wrong Timing: FROM A REBELLIOUS SENTIMENT (A Conversation with Kok Siew-Wai on SiCKL)
FROM A REBELLIOUS SENTIMENT
A Conversation with Kok Siew-Wai on SiCKL (2006 - ca. 2010)
In late 2005, Kok Siew-Wai returned to Malaysia after having lived in the US for over seven years. Shortly after, she co-founded Studio in Cheras Kuala Lumpur (SiCKL), an initiative which sought to promote experimentation across different media, with Yong Yandsen and other members from Experimental Musicians and Artists Co-operative Malaysia (EMACM). It has since ceased its operations but in some ways transformed into the Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film, Video & Music Festival (KLEX) in 2010. In this conversation, we discuss how SiCKL was formed, the chaos that ensued and the friendships made along the way, and how it all led to KLEX.
*****
MEETING THE GANG
Merv Espina (ME): We’d like to concentrate on SiCKL (Studio in Cheras Kuala Lumpur) and maybe discuss EMACM (Experimental Musicians and Artists Co-operative Malaysia) as well.
Kok Siew-Wai (KSW): I joined a bit later as EMACM was formed before I returned to Kuala Lumpur. I was studying in the US and only came back in late 2005, around Christmas time.
About two weeks after I came back, I went to Goh Lee Kwang’s solo show at Rumah Air Panas (RAP). It was a show with the dancer [Lee] Swee Keong. He asked me to document his performance. [Yong] Yandsen, Tham Kar-Mun, [Yeoh] Yin-Pin, and a bunch of musicians were there at the show. They were playing improvised music and, before I went to the US, I had never heard improvised music in Malaysia so I was really surprised hearing it there.
We started to converse and they mentioned some musicians that inspired them like Peter Brötzmann. I told them that I’ve seen Brötzmann live in the US and they were surprised. Then we just kept talking and became friends. In January 2006, I did a talk at RAP and invited Yandsen to perform with me.
After that, Yandsen and I talked about renting a space for music practice and artists’ gatherings. We got excited and looked around and found a place, and that became SiCKL.
HAPPENINGS AT THE STUDIO
KSW: We kind of had an informal opening ceremony for SiCKL and invited Joe Kidd to open the space for us, with a durian. When we opened it and the smell was like, "ahh..." It’s a fruit with a strong “personality,” definitely not for everyone, ha!
ME: It's officially open, you can smell it. What other funny weird stuff happened in that space?
KSW: There's this dancer, Low Shee Hoe, who brought in a group of young female dancers, and they were just very cute and funny. After the high energy performance, I don't know how, everybody just got into a dancing mood and it kind of became like a trance dancing party. Everyone was dancing and the musicians were playing and the audience were also banging on tables and chairs.
There was also one time that we had zero audience. I remember I was performing, Yandsen was performing, and Azmyl Yunor. Azmyl is a folk singer and he ended up doing a spontaneous stand-up comedy set. It was hilarious! There was no audience and we were like, “Why don't we just perform for each other? We are performers. And we are audience too!” So, we decided to go on anyway because the show must always go on!
Also, at one point, part of SiCKL became kind of like a storage for Yandsen's company which is a supplier of Chinese herbs. I think they had too much goods that time and he needed more space so part of the studio was stacked with so many Chinese herbs boxes that when you entered the studio, you could smell them.
ME: What did your neighbors think of you?
KSW: Our neighbor changes. At one point, it was like some kind of educational center. I think they just thought we were a little strange.
ME: They never attended your performances?
KSW: No. But I remember one funny thing, maybe two floors below us, there was a small church. During one of our events, they were also having one and so when our audience came up, they thought they were going to the church. So the church people were greeting our audience and shaking their hands. Our audience was confused. It’s quite funny.
TRANSFORMATIONS
KSW: Eventually, Yandsen and I were like, “If it’s just us two, the rent is too expensive. We need to ask more people to pay with us.” So, we approached other EMACM members.
Some of them decided to make SiCKL the base of EMACM. That’s how it started basically. Then of course, people come and go, and for some of them, experimental music wasn’t the only thing they did. Some did it for a while before returning to what they are actually more comfortable with. Basically, the ones who stayed to play purely experimental and improvised music from that group were Yandsen, Goh Lee Kwang, and myself.
The two of us became the core members in terms of organization. I ended up doing a lot of the writing and paperwork. Yandsen was the one who took care of technical things. He would be the stage manager during events. And then we both discussed and decided on the content of the programs. Actually, we still work with this structure until today.
ME: So how did you financially sustain that space?
KSW: We have day jobs!
ME: But how many of you contributed? What was the logistical dynamic in sustaining the space financially?
KSW: The space had no official funding at all so basically it was just all the members contributing. At first, everyone contributed together and then, little by little, some pulled out for different reasons. We could understand because some people didn't have full-time jobs so the ones who had stable jobs, like me and Yandsen, tended to contribute a little bit more.
Eventually, we had other people who were not from the initial group coming in to share the studio with us. At one point, there was a theater group who came in and used the space for theater rehearsals. Sometimes, dancers or actor groups would rent it for one or two weeks. But yes, financially, we felt like it was hard to survive because at one point there were only three of us contributing.
ME: Who was that? You, Yandsen, and who?
KSW: [Tey] Beng Tze who now runs RAW Art Space. He used that place as his painting studio. That was the last batch of people sharing: me, Yandsen, and Beng Tze.
Then, the rent increased and, at that time, RAW Art Space was already there in the city center so we thought perhaps we didn't need two spaces that do similar things.
So, we thought that if we weren’t really using the space for public events, then we should perhaps stop. But, as you can see from the KLEX (Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film, Video & Music Festival) website, SiCKL is mentioned as a producer. SiCKL does not have a base anymore but it still kinda stays as a collective.
ME: It seems like EMACM kind of became SiCKL and then it kind of became KLEX. Is that right?
KSW: Yeah.
ME: So it never really ended? It transformed and changed names?
KSW: Yeah, in a way. Also, I think it became more focused? Its direction became clearer. Because, for example, during the SiCKL time, we had our Open Lab series showcasing all kinds of artists and musicians in all styles. It was very friendly and inclusive but there was no clear direction.
Actually, I had a small drama with a member in the team due to the issue of having a clear direction regarding the kind of works we are dedicated to support as a collective. My argument was that we should have a focus and since the establishment of EMACM, our focus is on experimental work or work that is more unconventional and underground and so we should stay in that direction.
But of course, as you work with different people, these kinds of things happen. You will have different ways of working and different ideas. And sometimes, for things that I hold dearly, I can be quite stubborn.
SAMA-SAMA GUESTHOUSE MINI ALTERNATIVE ART FESTIVAL
ME: You mentioned that you were renting out the space for some time. Didn’t you also have some kind of informal residencies?
KSW: It was very informal. It was basically just musicians or artists writing to us. I think that was because there weren’t many platforms for experimental arts. Like, if they just google "experimental arts Kuala Lumpur," somehow we will pop up.
At the time, we had random people writing to us and they would give samples of their work and if we thought it was okay, we'd meet them and if we felt okay about the person, or the person was recommended by someone we trusted, then we were quite relaxed about letting them stay at the studio.
Also, at the time, we were quite inexperienced and just coming from a place like, "We love art, we just want to do what we love.” We were very naïve and idealistic. Around this time, we organized a no-budget festival called Sama-sama Guesthouse Mini Alternative Art Festival. It happened at the Guesthouse in this small historical town called Melaka. Basically the two people who planned out the whole festival were just me and Yandsen, with the generous support from the Guesthouse owner who allowed us to occupy the space for a weekend. With no funding at all, we gathered artworks from over 50 artists and performers. The participating artists were very generous and independent, with a strong DIY spirit to manage things by themselves. It was a very idealistic project and somehow it was realized in a memorable way, like a miracle. So, at the time, we didn't really think so much about how to sustain ourselves financially and things like that. It was only when we started to do KLEX that we figured that we actually need funding in order to sustain ourselves in the long term.
ME: But didn't that happen in the same year?
KSW: It happened in the same year but this festival happened before KLEX.
ME: Oh my god, you're crazy!
KSW: It came from a very rebellious sentiment because, at that time, we already had KLEX in mind. The idea for KLEX was actually initiated by the filmmaker Tomonari Nishikawa. He was the one who suggested that, since we had been doing SiCKL for a few years already, why don't we try to organize a festival and start doing things in a more professional way. Sau Bin [Yap] was actually in the first KLEX committee as well.
We had a lot of meetings about that first KLEX. It was just meeting after meeting about how to find money and things like that. Yandsen and I found it frustrating so we wondered if it was possible to make something happen without funding. I think it was just this kind of rebellious thinking that led us to make an experimental festival with no budget at all.
It was a very good experience for us not just because it actually pushed through but also because we saw that some people genuinely have the passion and enthusiasm to do things and, of course, we knew this would only happen once because people can’t just work for free all the time. But that’s okay, this one-time experience is enough to give us the courage to keep doing what we believe in.
KUALA LUMPUR EXPERIMENTAL FILM, VIDEO & MUSIC FESTIVAL (KLEX)
ME: How did you apply that learning to KLEX? Because KLEX became kind of big.
KSW: It's only bigger in terms of content but the team is actually very small. It's easier to discuss things and, little by little, we get to know the kinds of people we can work well with. Working with the right people is quite important. The team is getting smaller but more efficient. We have been working much faster and smoother in the past few years. We can focus more on the content, and our content does grow stronger in recent years.
Also, we now know how to say yes and no. In the very beginning, we felt that we were so inexperienced and so everything was “okay.” As a result, the quality was inconsistent. In one show, you would see something really good but also something that was not up to standard. Personally, I feel like in the recent editions, there generally has been a good standard in terms of content. But of course one thing that I still haven’t learned is how to get money. It's still not enough money. The KLEX committee still works for free!
Actually, the first KLEX... I don't know. Sau Bin is here. What do you think about the first KLEX? I think the first KLEX was a bit of a failure.
Sau Bin Yap (SBY): It is the first KLEX. How can it be a failure or a success? Either you're harsh with yourself or you're actually harsh to the people that were working there.
KSW: No, I think... it wasn't very organized.
SBY: It was the first time, Siew-Wai.
KSW: It was very last minute and I remember I was really sad on the opening night because only ten people came. The promotion wasn't good. I think I was also sick on the second day. I think I had diarrhea or something after the opening night.
Also, the setting wasn't very ideal. During some of the screenings, there were technical problems that we could have avoided had we prepared better. So, I don't know. Personally, I detected many problems with the first KLEX. After that, some left the team. For us who stayed, the only thing we wanted to do was to correct all the mistakes that we made during the first KLEX, to list them all down so that we don’t repeat them.
THREE EVENTS
Norberto “Peewee” Roldan (NR): These are not questions but I just would like you to recall three events which happened in 2007 and 2008. In 2007, Donna [Miranda] had a residency at Rimbun Dahan and her final output was a major production at the Annexe Central Market which was a big collaboration with SiCKL. Could you give us a little story regarding how that collaboration came about? How were you introduced to each other?
The next event was when, after the residency, Donna went back to KL with me and Joaquin [Roldan] and then she did a performance at your space.
Lastly, in 2008, you and Yong Yandsen came over to Manila to do a performance at Green Papaya. These are three events that I hope you can recall how they developed, how they were organized, and how was your experience of these happenings?
KSW: To be honest, I don't remember who introduced me to Donna but I remember somebody told us that there’s this very good dancer from Manila who is now at the Annexe Gallery and she would like to meet artists. It was probably someone from the Annexe Gallery. So, we just went there and talked with Donna and my first impression was that she is such a strong artist and I like her. I think that's how it started, it was quite random.
We started to have more conversations and she did a movement workshop which I think I took part in. In her performance project at The Annexe, I was actually involved as a musician, together with my peers from SiCKL. I really enjoyed the collaborations because Donna was very open to communication. After every rehearsal, she would ask everyone what we felt about it and if we had any thoughts or suggestions on how we could go about these things. She never placed herself in some authoritative position and she was always open for people to give feedback so she was very pleasant to work with.
SiCKL was the music coordinator for the [2007 Notthatbalai Art Festival’s] experimental music program. Actually, Donna’s appearance in that performance was random. We already had a program but we just decided on that day to call Donna and ask whether she wants to dance and she said yes. So we added one “encore act” with Donna, Yandsen, Aziz, and myself.
After Donna’s residency, she came back with Peewee [Roldan] and Joaquin, and we organized a SiCKL Open Lab for Donna to perform and collaborate with local musician Aziz. Aziz was also the artist that did all Open Lab series flyers for SiCKL from 2006. Also on the bill were Yandsen, Azmyl, and myself.
After that, we kind of became friends and then Yandsen and I were interested in going to Manila so we just talked to Donna and said, “Hey, we are coming. Can we do something?”
ME: And then you stayed at Peewee's house.
KSW: Yes, having met some Filipino artists in KL, we were curious about Manila. Both of us haven’t been to the Philippines, it was the first time! Tengal came to KL and stayed at SiCKL before we went to Manila. So we knew Tengal, Donna, and then we got to know Peewee at Green Papaya. And got to know turntablist Caliph8 [Arvin Nogueras].
Our residency at Green Papaya was very brief, I think it was only four or five days? We did some recording sessions with Tengal, Arvin, and others. And then Donna, Tengal, Yandsen, and I did a performance at Green Papaya where we improvised in different combinations. I remember it was a good night with a great atmosphere and meeting other Filipino artists and musicians at the event. Oh, and Donna and Peewee cooked dinner for us. So nice!
About our "networking," SiCKL was really not like a fully functioning art organization because we all had our day jobs and so we were doing this organizing work just whenever we could. It was quite hard to run it very “professionally." We just let things flow so it was more organic. For example, our relationship with Green Papaya was through Donna and it started as a friendship. Just as individuals that enjoy the company of each other. Actually most of our network works like this. It’s very seldom that we purposely go out trying to network with “the VIPs.” For us, it’s much more organic and random. For example, we played with some musicians or collaborated with some artists like Donna, and then we became friends. And when an opportunity arises, we think of our friends (or friends of friends…) and the collaboration happens. I would say that 90% of our network works like this.
ME: ruangrupa has a term for that: "Make Friends, Not Art.”
EMACM AND SiCKL TODAY
ME: What's the current status of EMACM and SiCKL? How are they now?
KSW: I think all of these "collectives" were basically formed by the same people and they didn't really end so they're just kind of inactive? They each morphed into the more currently active thing? As I said, SiCKL is no longer a space but it became the producer of KLEX. And EMACM never really disappeared. It's still there, but perhaps it changed into another form.
ME: So knowing what you know now with your experience, would you still form SiCKL the way that you did? What would be your ideal scenario? What is your ideal form of SiCKL?
KSW: I don't know. I think it is okay as it is? It's interesting because personally I never really think about the ideal scenarios of things. Perhaps I’m so used to imperfect circumstances? I think that all experiences are okay because eventually, they make us who we are today. It doesn't matter whether it failed or not. Maybe because it is a failure and you feel that you need to do something about it, and that makes you grow. In other words, in order to grow, you need that failure. So... I don't know. I think it's okay.
Maybe I should be a little bit more organized about my flyers so we can have a good list of events and artists we've worked with. Documentation and archiving. This is the aspect that we need to do a better job at. In a way, Facebook is good because we now create events there. If Facebook doesn't disappear, then at least we have some history we can retrieve. For the coming years, I hope that our team can afford to put more effort into documentation – posters, pictures, texts, and videos. Yes!
*****
The online interview took place on 20 August 2020. This interview was edited for length and clarity.
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Hailing from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Kok Siew-Wai started as a video artist and is now active as a vocal improviser and artist-curator/organizer. She received her BA in Media Study at University at Buffalo and MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts at Alfred University in USA, where she was based from 1998 to 2005. Siew-Wai has shown her works, curated projects and performed in Asia, Europe, Australia, Canada and the USA. She has a deep passion in experimental and improvisational arts, and is the co-founder and co-director of SiCKL and the Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film, Video & Music Festival (KLEX). She’s currently teaching at the Faculty of Creative Media, Multimedia University.
Images:
1. Dancer Caesar Chong (RIP) and artist Teoh Shaw Gie in the event “Leave Me Alone” at SiCKL. Photo by Lesly Leon Lee.
2. Au Sow Yee during SiCKL's opening night, 20 May 2006.
3. Aziz and Fahmi Fadzil in “Projek Wayang,” 29 Sept 2006.
4. Low Shee Hoe and the Lapar Lab performing SiCKL X’mas Gig in 2009. Photo by Ilyia.
5. Directions to SiCKL.
6. Poster for SiCKL Open Lab, June 2008. Designed by Aziz.
7. Poster for Extended Periods of Waiting, the culmination of Donna Miranda's residency at Rimbun Dahan, June 2007. Designed by Norberto Roldan.
8. Yong Yandsen, Kok Siew Wai, and dancer Lena Ang in Improv Lab, Findars, August 2009. Photo by Ricky Sow.
9. Poster for Sama-sama Guesthouse Mini Alternative Art Festival 2010. Designed by Hee Chee Way.
10. Kok Siew-Wai introducing a program at KLEX 2011.
More info:
Kok Siew-Wai. “On the Experimental Path in Kuala Lumpur.” (Aug 2020)
https://www.laobanrecords.com/post/on-the-experimental-path-in-kuala-lumpur
SiCKL & Experimental Musicians and Artists Co-operative Malaysia blog
http://emacm.blogspot.com/
Goh Lee Kwang’s first solo exhibition at RAP (11 Dec 2005)
http://rap.twofishy.net/events/leekwang_solo.html
Kok Siew-Wai’s talk and performance at RAP (Jan 2006)
http://www.rap.twofishy.net/events/koksiewwai.html
S. Chin, E. McGovern, S. Soon. “Independent Spaces in Malaysia.” (April 2010)
https://universes.art/en/nafas/articles/2010/art-spaces-in-malaysia
“Penunu bunsen & Tabung Uji, baybeh!” (23 Oct 2009)
https://www.arteri.com.my/2017/02/08/penunu-bunsen-tabung-uji-baybeh/
Sama-sama Guesthouse Mini Alternative Art Festival 2010
http://samasama2010.blogspot.com/
Kok Siew-Wai. “Why No Budget? A Little Story…” (28 July 2010)
https://koksiewwai.wordpress.com/scrapbook-2/
"Performance may serve as a lesson on punctuality." (15 June 2007)
https://www.thestar.com.my/news/community/2007/06/15/performance-may-serve-as-a-lesson-on-punctuality
“Regurgitating Rabbits / Open Sound Lab.” (5 June 2009)
http://soundartmovementexist.blogspot.com/2009/06/regurgitating-rabbits-open-sound-lab.html
If you can:
https://greenpapaya.art/donation
*****
Right People, Wrong Timing (RPWT) is a series of texts on defunct or inactive independent Asian arts initiatives that had crossed paths or ran parallel to Papaya’s own 20-year history. With new posts every Friday from August to December 2020, RPWT is kindly supported through a local grant by the Japan Foundation Manila.
NOT COUNTER BUT PARALLEL (Excerpts from Light Leaks 1 2018)
2018 was an extremely busy year for Green Papaya. Somehow, between preparation work with VIVA ExCon Capiz 2018, Papaya still managed a collaboration with Los Otros, “Light Leaks 1: Tracing histories of Philippine experiments with the moving image” which was hosted by Yael Buencamino at the Ateneo Areté on September 12, 2018. Light Leaks developed from the research that started with another Papaya-Los Otros collaboration, the Kalampag Tracking Agency, a screening program and accidental archive of Philippine artists’ moving image that started in 2014.
Among the discussants and panelists for Light Leaks 1 were curator Clarissa Chikiamco, artist Pandy Aviado, and then NCCA Commissioner Teddy Co. Screenings included the cult short film Tronong Puti (1983) by Ted Arago and Roxlee, Philippine indie cinema documentary Beyond the Mainstream (1986), and a surprise preview of Rod Paras Perez's Conversation in Space (1962) courtesy of Odel Perez.
Coinciding with the current edition of Light Leaks at MCAD Platforms this month we are posting below the opening remarks made by artist and filmmaker Shireen Seno of Los Otros and an excerpt from the Q&A.
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Introduction:
Shireen Seno (SS): Philippine moving image practice has a history of pioneering experimentation, but because of this very experimental and uneasily classifiable nature, not much is known or published outside of its more popular iteration: cinema.
Light Leaks is an attempt to piece together these disparate and mostly oral histories by convening a series of forums that consist of research presentations and focused discussions with key artists, curators, researchers, and cultural workers across generations. Along with key historical texts and newly commissioned essays, the proceedings from this symposia will lead towards publication that will hopefully inspire new generations of scholars and practitioners.
This first edition of Light Leaks focuses on a general overview of practices from the ‘60s to the ‘80s in Manila from the personal accounts of Pandy Aviado and Teddy Co and the ongoing research of curator Clarissa Chikiamco.
In her essay “Otherwise Video: Development of Video Art in the Philippines in the 1970s,” Chikiamco states, “When we talk about the development of video art, I believe it is important not simply to consider artworks which use video, but artworks which anticipated video art works. By that, I mean art works which foreshadowed art works that actually used the medium of video. These artworks, forerunners to video, may not have used video but we can name certain qualities which have overlapping identities with the video medium. In particular, these qualities are movement and time.” These experiments paralleled movements in the US and the UK with expanded cinema, installation, and performance. Starting in the ‘60s, expanded cinema practices featured artists moving away from the screen and finding creative ways to project and intervene with moving images. The emergence of video, and later digital moving images, opened new possibilities concerning what artists could do and what moving images could be.
I quote from Kim Knowles’ book Experimental Film and Artists’ Moving Image: “Existing outside the boundaries of mainstream cinema, the parallel fields of experimental film and video art present a radical challenge, not only to the conventions of that cinema, but also to the social and cultural norms that it presents. In offering alternative ways of seeing and experiencing the world, they bring to the fore different visions and dissenting voices. In recent years, scholarship in this area has moved from a marginal to a more central position as it comes to bear upon critical topics such as medium specificity, ontology, the future of cinema, changes in cinematic exhibition, and the complex interrelationships between moving image technology, aesthetics, discourses, and institutions. This series takes on exciting new directions in the study of moving image practice, from the black box to the white cube, film to digital, crossing continents and disciplines, and developing fresh theoretical insights and various histories. Concerning the terms “experimental film” and “video art,” we see these as interconnected practices and seek to interrogate the crossovers and spaces between the different kinds of moving image-making. Finally, we acknowledge the emergence of a new term—artists' moving image—in which to situate the most recent generation of filmmakers and artists alike who work with the moving image.”
Q&A excerpts:
Merv Espina (ME): I’m gonna read a question, this is being live streamed so some people are watching us online. I think this question is for all of us: “Since the program is framed under the development of video art in the Philippines and while most works within the oral history presented focus on experimental, avant garde, performative, and materialist films all rooted under the notion of expanded cinema, how do the curators see them as a kind of anticipation to our present concept of ‘video art’ and what could be the basis for categorizing them as leading to video art or into this more expanded category of artists' moving image from the rest of other experimental films done during that time?”
Teddy Co (TC): That’s an interesting question.
ME: From Cocoy Lumbao.
TC: Okay, Cocoy. All art is evolving, nothing is static. Because if anything remains static, it will die and no one will want to practice. The language of art, of the moving image, is developing. There have been high points and low points but it moves forward and to categorize all these video images under video art, maybe that’s a bit too narrow because it’s really expanded. Some people have said that the better word to use is not “experimental” or “video art” but maybe something more like “expanded cinema” because we’re getting into all kinds of forms, content, and platforms. On the internet, on the big screen, in virtual reality.
We’re living in very exciting times because it’s so diverse now and technology has leapt forward. Before, it was all flat. Now we have 3D, there are a lot of participatory and interactive elements with the works now, and also, the disciplines are getting together. For example, there’s a lot of dance programs now incorporating video creatively. Tad [Ermitaño] has collaborated with Denisa Reyes to produce some works. The dancer-choreographer Rhosam Prudenciado has collaborated with Annie Pacaña who had all these videos of telephone poles and then she had two dancers do a ballet across the poles. You’d think they’re on the telephone lines but that’s a video. I hope that answers the question.
ME: Also, since Johnny Manahan was mentioned earlier, there were also some collaborations between him and the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) dancers and Ballet Philippines, even using overhead and slide projectors around that time.
TC: I saw one performance but it’s by a foreign dance troupe in the CCP back in the ‘70s or ‘80s in which they did something—what we would now call “video mapping”—using slide projectors. They projected slides on the dancers’ bodies who were wearing skin-colored suits.
Clarissa Chikiamco (CC): Hi, Cocoy. I find the question very interesting. Even when I was writing my paper, I have to admit that I was also struggling because, if I were to expand simply on video art, you would be looking at all these other impulses. I was thinking, “where do you stop?” It just becomes this really large body of work. I’m sure when we continue to do research, even more will be uncovered. Even just the idea of categorizations, at that time, maybe artists were not really concerned with it. They were just doing these things. Artists alongside filmmakers maybe didn’t classify themselves and their works in a particular category. They were just making work. And somehow, decades later, we are trying to make sense of these things. We’re trying to fit these things into certain boxes or even break them apart. Where do you stop from here? This is also an ongoing question that I have.
ME: I’ll read the follow-up question. “In situating these diverse forms under the more encompassing category of artists' moving image, I just want to open the question on whether there might be a kind of “counterproductiveness” to research if these diverse forms are not explored under their own stream of either being under essentially cinema or film practice, or video being under the technology or tradition it was originally made like broadcast, VCR, video recorders, etc?” Do you want to react? Is it counterproductive?
TC: Well, I don’t think it’s counterproductive. I think we should discuss, talk, and exchange ideas. That’s why you have a forum like this, you have a panel. It’s very healthy to talk and discuss. It’s unhealthy to not talk and to shut up because that’s a different kind of atmosphere. Like I said, the whole thing, the whole movement or whatever, would have been much bigger if there had been a proper community of people who exchange ideas, people who read and would say, “Why don’t you read this book?” or, “Go to that screening” because a lot of these things were done in isolation unlike today.
Today, since you have social media, ideas spread so fast. Will we reach a saturation point? I don’t know. Things evolve, like I said. Not to put things into boxes like, “this one’s visual art, this one’s cinema” because things mix. They intermarry and there’s a lot of fusion going on, even and especially in food. If we just stick to our native food, we will be stuck with lechon. But there’s a lot of creativity in the food scene now, right? Because there’s a lot of fusion and intermarrying. Culture and art are like that.
I think that has been going on especially now because we’re a wild world. As [Marshall] McLuhan said, we’re in a global village. Of course in some territories, some people would say, “We have too many film festivals now, we have too many films.” But would you like to go back to 2004? We had nothing but the Metro Manila Film Festival. It used to be like that. Just that, every December. Your choices were limited to Vice Ganda or Vic Sotto.
Don’t take the market of ideas and the freedom that we have for granted. Last year, at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, I met this Chinese filmmaker who made a film about the last independent film festival in China that was closed down by the government. They don’t have a Cinemalaya or Cinema One. They have nothing like that. We have to learn to appreciate all of this, all of the institutions that are helping us put up all these programs even with a President like that. There’s a lot of open and free space.
ME: In response to Cocoy, I think—at least for this series of forums and discussions that we want to convene, focusing on Philippine experiments in moving image practice—we’re essentially looking at works that were hard to categorize. We should re-examine these materialist considerations of works in film or video and also look at works that have fallen in between the cracks—and there are many cracks. Some of the works mentioned today fall outside major art and film histories so what we’re trying to propose is that we need space for more narratives, histories, and maybe not look at particular materialist media, film, and cinema-specific narratives. This is not counter but parallel.
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These excerpts have been edited for length and clarity. Some parts were translated from Filipino.
Watch the archive of the 2018 livestream:
https://facebook.com/events/s/light-leaks-1-tracing-historie/317775908984451/
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The current edition of Light Leaks is now live.
Watch early works by Lena Cobangbang:
https://bit.ly/MCADPlatformsCobangbang
Register for the discussion:
https://bit.ly/MCADPlatformsEE
Sep 9-15 Screening: Lena Cobangbang, works 1997-2002
Sep 12 Discussion: Lena Cobangbang with Eileen Legaspi Ramirez
Sep 16-22 Screening: Katya Guerrero, works 1990-1992
Sep 19 Discussion: Katya Guerrero with Cocoy Lumbao
Sep 23-30 Screening: Jean Marie Syjuco, works 1986-1992
Sep 26 Discussion: Jean Marie Syjuco with Clarissa Chikiamco
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1. The Salenga Experience (2002), Alice & Lucinda (Yasmin Sison and Lena Cobangbang), video still
2. Untitled (1990-1992) Katya Guerrero, video still from 16mm transfer
3. Signed, Sealed, Delivered (1989), Jean Marie Syjuco, video documentation, Performance Space (Sydney, Australia), photo courtesy of ART LAB: Atelier Cesare and Jean Marie Syjuco
Images from Light Leaks 2018 at Ateneo Areté by Yuji de Torres:
4. Lisa Chikiamco
5. Pandy Aviado
6. Teddy Co
Right People, Wrong Timing: RETHINK WHAT YOU NEED TO DO (Interview with Dinh Q. Lê on Untitled Space)
RETHINK WHAT YOU NEED TO DO: Interview with Dinh Q. Lê on Untitled Space (Sài Gòn, 2005 - 2006)
From 2005 to mid-2006, artist Dinh Q. Lê ran Untitled Space, a residency project that invited various artists, curators, and museum directors from all over the world to give talks in Sài Gòn, Hà Nội, and Huế. Around the same time, Lê also co-founded the Vietnam Foundation for the Arts (VNFA) to help fund Untitled Space and Lê’s next project, Sàn Art, which he co-founded with Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn, Phunam Thuc Ha, and Tiffany Chung in 2007. In this interview, we discuss the reasons behind launching these initiatives and the numerous challenges he faced through the years.
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STARTING NETWORKS AND PROJECTS
Merv Espina (ME): I think one of the take-off points for the Right People, Wrong Timing series was Intra Asia Network (IAN).
Dinh Q. Lê: I think it was really a wonderful time because it was the first time we all gathered together. We met each other through that network. You know how it started, right?
Norberto Roldan (NR): My recollection was that Margaret [Shiu] started the first meeting in Taipei [in 2005].
DQL: Yeah. But before that, there was also something else.
NR: The one in Berlin [in 2005] coincided with the Res Artis International.
DQL: Yeah, so basically Rockefeller Foundation gave Res Artis funding to start reaching out to Asia because Res Artis was primarily a European organization. Clayton Campbell was the head of Res Artis at the time and he reached out to Rockefeller to see if they could get funding to expand their network and bring in partners from Asia. They got the grant from Rockefeller and they invited me and Margaret to be advisors for them.
Res Artis and their European members were so different from the Asian partners and organizations. Because in Asia, particularly Southeast Asia, most of us are independent and self-financed. We don’t get funding from the government. So, the two were so different that there were a lot of complicated feelings. We were all questioning, “why should we pay Res Artis”—I believe it was 100 or 150 euros a year—“to be a member when we could do a lot with that money in Southeast Asia?” There was a lot of interest in starting our own network rather than have to pay a fee to Res Artis to be in a network that primarily catered to a more European residency program that, most of the time, was fully funded by their own governments. It was very different from our organizations here in Asia and Southeast Asia. That’s how Margaret decided that she was going to start IAN.
ME: But prior to that, how did you get involved? How did they select you and Margaret?
DQL: I had a long relationship with Rockefeller even before 2005. They came to Vietnam in 1999 and asked me if there was anything they could help with. They came with, I think, the Ford Foundation and Asian Cultural Council (ACC) people. They travelled around Vietnam and they came to my studio and basically asked what they could do to help and I told them that Vietnam needed information about contemporary art. The schools at the time didn’t really teach contemporary art. Everything they were teaching was up until 1950 and it sort of ended there.
So, I proposed that they fund a reading room. Contemporary art magazines would come in monthly and artists could just go in and look at them and, if we had funding, we could even try to translate some of the important articles, or they could browse just to have a visual idea of what’s happening with contemporary art outside of Vietnam. The Rockefeller agreed to give me $35,000 to open the space.
The problem was that I couldn’t get the $35,000. The Rockefeller had this policy where they could not give the money to individuals, only to non-profits or governmental organizations. The problem in Vietnam is that I cannot set up a non-profit even today because the law is so badly designed that we cannot open such.
I asked some of the governmental organizations like the Fulbright Foundation here to be the grant recipient but they refused because contemporary art for them was controversial. Some of the local Vietnamese government-run organizations wanted a large percentage of the grant but I was not willing to hand over 30% just so they would be the fiscal sponsor. In the end, we lost the grant. That was a big frustration and it, in a way, led to me opening two other organizations later on.
THE VIETNAM FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS
DQL: So, partly out of the frustration of not being able to get money from the Rockefeller Foundation before, I opened the Vietnam Foundation for the Arts (VNFA) in 2005 with my dealers in Los Angeles. It was a way for us to have a non-profit status so we could apply for grants like that. I think we got five collectors from America to be on board and a few museum directors and collectors as well. They would each give $5,000 a year to VNFA, and so, in a year, we would have around $30,000 to do programming in Vietnam.
At the same time, I just built my house. Because I have a lot of relatives in America, I figured I’d build it big so they could visit during the summer. But, during the school year, the place was not being used so I thought of opening a residency. That’s how Untitled Space opened pretty much around the same time as VNFA.
It was the first organization that I opened so I was a novice. I had no idea how to run an organization and it was not an easy task because, at that time, I was also very busy with my work as an artist. I was showing quite a lot.
I think my dealer was also afraid that running the residency program would take over my life and I would not be able to operate as an artist. But that’s how it was designed: Untitled Space was a by-invitation-only residency program and VNFA would pay for the people that we invite.
UNTITLED SPACE
ME: Who was the first? How many residents did you have?
DQL: First were Shirley and Sara Tse. Shirley represented Hong Kong at the Venice Biennale 2019. I collected some of Shirley’s work before so I invited her and her sister to come and talk about their work. Then we had Moira Roth who is a historian who lives in Berkeley, California and teaches at Mills College. Her expertise is on performance art in the West Coast, in California.
Shirley and Sara Tse came and talked about their work and practice while Moira Roth talked about performance art. I remember the reason we brought Moira was because Vietnam at the time didn’t know what the hell performance art is and, in Vietnam, every time you do an exhibition or a performance, you have to get permission from the Ministry of Culture. They didn’t know what a performance was. They thought it’s theater. We had to explain to them that it’s not theater because they kept sending us over to the Theater Department to ask permission.
Moira gave a talk about performance art in Sài Gòn and we flew her to Hà Nội to give a talk as well. The people from the Ministry of Culture actually came for the talk and they came up to her after to thank her and that was really kind of interesting because she actually showed a lot of images of very provocative, sexualized performances with nudity and yet, all these officials came and sat through the whole thing and that was really kind of funny.
We also had Catherine de Zegher who was the head curator of The Drawing Center in New York. She spoke about contemporary drawings. Vietnam has a very strong tradition of drawing. Many of the artists in Vietnam are extremely well-trained when it comes to drawing. They draw beautifully and their skill is amazing, but they’re still very traditional types of drawing.
When we brought Catherine de Zegher to talk about drawings, she started out with a work that’s still quite interesting to me: a work by Gabriel Orozco, this Mexican artist who I think lived in Paris. It’s a photograph of him riding a bicycle through a puddle of water and the wet mark of the bicycle wheels on the pavement going round and round and round. She called that a drawing and I remember all the artists that attended the lecture were so upset with her because they were like, “that’s not a drawing!” They started to get really angry but that was the point. The point was that drawing can be more than just pencil-on-paper. It gave them something to think about and that was good. [1]
NR: Were you hosting mostly artists and curators from the US?
DQL: Yes. At the time, my network was in America. I didn’t have much of a network in Asia. I think many curators and museum directors and even artists in Asia thought of me as somebody still living in America. I think it was when I opened Sàn Art that people realized that I actually had been living in Vietnam for a long time.
ME: Why “Untitled Space?”
DQL: Whenever I make a work, I don’t think of a title. It’s always at the last moment when the gallery asks me, “so what’s the title of the work?” that I scramble for it. I’m still kind of fond of the idea that I don’t think about a title, it’s just something that I do, and to give it a name is something else. Also, I like this idea of “untitled” because the space was the first time I was doing kind of a community art space. I was a novice and I didn’t know how it was going to function. I didn’t have a staff and I didn’t know much about anything so I didn’t want to give it a name yet, basically.
ME: You didn’t have staff? It was only you?
DQL: That was a problem.
ME: And you ran it from 2005 until 2007?
DQL: I think we stopped at around mid-2006 because it became a bit too much for me because curators and museum directors would fly in and then I would fly with them to Hà Nội to organize talks at the fine arts university there and, if they had time, I would also take them to Huế to give a talk at the university there and then to Sài Gòn. It really took a lot of time for me to do all this and I think, at some point, I realized I could not do this forever. It was just too much. It takes too much time from my studio work. [2]
I also realized that, in Hà Nội, the art scene was quite active because all the NGOs and embassies were there and so they got a lot of foreign funding. In Sài Gòn, there was zero funding. There was really nothing happening in Sài Gòn.
That was the reason why after a year-and-a-half of running Untitled, I thought we could use the 30,000-a-year funding we had with VNFA to open a contemporary art space. We stopped using the money to invite international figures to open a space where local artists can experiment with all these new forms and ideas without having to rent a gallery and pay a certain amount when they don’t have the money. That’s how Sàn Art opened.
SÀN ART
NR: At some point, you decided to close Untitled because it was taking up so much time from your studio-
DQL: Yes.
NR: But then you started Sàn Art.
DQL: Well, after Untitled Space, I became a little bit smarter. I asked Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn and Phunam [Thuc Ha] of The Propeller Group and Tiffany Chung to come in and collaborate with me. Now, the work is divided into four and we also hired a gallery manager to do other things. We would take turns curating the shows. It worked much better as it wasn’t solely me running the space.
ME: Between you stopping Untitled in the middle of 2006 and starting Sàn Art [in 2007], why was it so short? And what told you to restart it again and what were the lessons that you learned from running Untitled Space? What were the mistakes you learned from that you applied to running Sàn Art?
DQL: The idea was to stop Untitled but not to stop working with a community entirely. We needed the six months to plan out and strategize how Sàn Art was going to be because I knew that when I stopped Untitled, it was to open Sàn Art, an art space for young artists. It wasn’t like I stopped and then thought, “what next?”
ME: So you already had the idea for Sàn Art when you stopped Untitled?
DQL: Yeah, definitely. We had the funding and there was a need for a gallery space for experimentation. So, I stopped Untitled and, I have to tell you, my board members at the VNFA were not very happy with that idea.
But in the end, they saw the logic of it so they reluctantly agreed to stop bringing in international artists, curators, and museum directors and transfer the money to fund Sàn Art. There was never a plan to stop, but just to basically transform Untitled into something else. In terms of lessons, definitely find people that you like, people who are capable, and work and collaborate with them. That was the big lesson: you could not do things alone.
ME: So basically, Sàn Art inherited a lot of Untitled’s networks.
DQL: Yeah. During the first three years, funding came from VNFA. We didn’t have any other funding source. That’s how we were able to pay our rent, pay the staff, and get the funds for artists to create exhibitions at our space.
Three years ago, Sàn Art went through a really difficult time because we had this major grant from the Prince Claus Fund and when that grant ended, Sàn Art went broke.
ME: But didn’t you still have VNFA?
DQL: No, VNFA now... this is one of the big problems I think for any organization: the funders’ interest slowly moves elsewhere. They don’t give forever. For the funders from VNFA, eventually, their interest moved elsewhere so right now we actually are on our own.
When we got the big funding from Prince Claus, it was a three-year funding and was something like $350,000, which is a lot for three years. We had around ten staff members, three buildings that we paid rents on, and when that grant was over, there was no other grant to replace that and we basically collapsed. I had to let everybody go.
So, for a while, we had a little office space. The whole process was to try to rebuild again. But we’re okay now. We have an 80-m2 space in pretty much the city center. We’re also selling artwork a bit too and it’s actually working, although we still have to focus on that a little bit. We also apply for grants here and there. Also, our operation is very small so the budget is manageable now.
CYCLICAL PRACTICE
NR: How much are you involved with the operations of Sàn Art today?
DQL: I’m more of an advisor and kind of an architect in a way. Right now, we have a completely new team and they’re young, they’re very good. They all received scholarships to study in America and elsewhere, and they all came back which is really wonderful. It’s a whole new generation of young people who are interested in the arts.
What I see happening now with Sàn Art is that it has become more of a space to train young curators or art administrators. I don’t do the day-to-day running and programming. The team pretty much does the local artist programs and, starting last year, we discussed a 50/50 program: 50% local and 50% international artists. We were planning to do an international program but the pandemic happened so we have not been able to carry it out.
It’s fascinating in a way because, in Vietnam, the art scene is so small that an artist would be showing in so many spaces within a year and, after a while, we’re all competing for the same artist. So, we thought, why don’t we go outside of the local network of artists and focus on bringing really interesting artists to Vietnam?
ME: It seems a bit cyclical because Untitled had a lot of international networks and then the first few years of Sàn Art were quite local.
DQL: It’s true. In the beginning we wanted to bring in information about what’s happening outside Vietnam and then, when we opened Sàn Art, we wanted to support local artists and help nurture their talents by giving them a place to experiment.
Now, we have a lot of spaces in Sài Gòn. Many of the artists that we trained through Sàn Art are now showing everywhere and so we feel that we’ve done our job. We have trained a good number of artists and the art scene is vibrant now that we don’t have to focus on the local artists anymore. We can now also think about Vietnam and how to connect it back to the rest of the world.
SBY: Can we say that, from Untitled to Sàn Art, the role that both spaces have played is to stimulate the growth within the scene? Whether by bringing in international practitioners or even just cultivating the local talent? So, as Merv says, it’s cyclical in a sense that you are actually gauging what is important and necessary for the scene?
DQL: Yes. You know, I was born in Vietnam, left when I was 10, ended up in America, grew up, went to school in California, and then I did my master’s in New York City. In New York, the art scene was so vibrant. Everything was happening. Then, in [1993], I came back to Sài Gòn for the first time and there was nothing happening. The difference was so drastic that I felt I had to do something. By 1997, I decided to live in Sài Gòn full-time.
At some point, I felt it was necessary for me to create a community because I needed a community and I think the rest needed a community to be together, people with like minds, to think together and to support each other. So, yes. Every decade or every five years, you really have to rethink what you need to do. It needs something different. It changes.
POSITIVE DEVELOPMENTS
ME: You’ve been dealing directly with government institutions with all these projects. What do you see are the positive developments of you having to constantly deal with these since you started?
DQL: Do you remember Saigon Open City and how it was censored and the whole thing collapsed? So that was the frustration because the government didn’t know contemporary art and they didn’t trust it because it was something they didn’t understand.
So we thought, let’s open Sàn Art and, every month, we have to engage with the Ministry of Culture for permission to the point that they get used to us and to contemporary art, and basically prove that it’s nothing so threatening for them to be so worried about.
It’s almost 13 years now since Sàn Art opened. We’re still around. Besides the fact that we went broke, the government hasn’t tried to shut us down so I guess they’re used to us now. I think, for them, contemporary art is not so strange and scary anymore. I mean, they could shut us down anytime. Now, they even gave me my Vietnamese passport back. Before that, they could kick me out of the country anytime if they didn’t like what I or Sàn Art was doing but they didn’t.
Of course they’re still nervous and every couple of years we have a new crop of bureaucrats who are running the Ministry of Culture so it’s a bit frustrating because we have to re-train them in a way for them to get used to what we’re doing. But we have been around for so long that I think that they think what we do is somewhat normal now, which is kind of great.
ME: You educated them.
DQL: We either educated them or we just wore them down.
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[1] Other guests include Jeremy Strick, Melissa Chiu, Alma Ruiz, and Carolee Thea.
[2] In a later conversation, Lê said they would be flown to Hà Nội and he would fly up to meet them there. The guests would usually stay for about three to five days in Hà Nội, spend another three to five days in Huế, and then fly to Ho Chi Minh City and stay for another three to five days, all depending on their schedule. Many did not have the time to visit Huế.
The online interview took place on 16 August 2020. This interview was edited for length and clarity.
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Dinh Q. Lê was born in Hà Tiên, Vietnam. He received his BA in Art Studio at UC Santa Barbara and his MFA in Photography and Related Media at The School of Visual Arts in New York City. In 1993, Lê returned to Vietnam for the first time and in 1997, settled down full time in Ho Chi Minh City. Lê’s artistic practice consistently challenges how our memories are recalled with context in contemporary life and his work has exhibited worldwide.
Images:
1. Lê, seated between Ly Daravuth and Noriyuki Tsuji, presenting on Untitled Space during the 2005 Pilot Project AIR Asia - Mapping Asian Artists’ Mobility, better known as the first IAN meeting, in Taiwan.
2. Lê presenting on Untitled Space in Taiwan, 2005.
3. Lê presenting on VNFA in Taiwan, 2005.
4. Day 2 of 2005 IAN meeting in Taiwan. From L-R: Nicholas Tsoutas, Ly Daravuth, and Lê.
5. Lê speaking during the 2006 IAN meeting in Seoul, Korea.
6. The opening of The Future at Sàn Art’s first space along Lý Tự Trọng, District 1, HCMC, 2007.
7. Opening of Diary of Traveling City at Sàn Art, 2008.
8. Across the street during the opening of Diary of Traveling City at Sàn Art, 2008.
9. Sàn Art’s Reading Room, July 2015.
10. Untitled Space's de facto location, Dinh’s studio and home, and his 20-year old frangipani.
Credits:
Koh Nguang How: 1-4
Anne Yao: 5
Dinh Q. Lê and Sàn Art: 6-10
More info:
Berlin 2005 - Res Artis
https://resartis.org/res-artis-conferences/past-conferences/berlin-2005/
“Will Vietnamese non-profit art space Sàn Art shift the art scene from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh city? - interview Dinh Q Le.” Art Radar (15 Dec 2009)
https://artradarjournal.com/2009/12/15/will-vietnamese-non-profit-art-space-san-art-shift-the-art-scene-from-hanoi-to-ho-chi-minh-city-interview-dinh-q-le/
Sàn Art
https://san-art.org/info/about/
Saigon Open City
http://www.saigonopencity.vn/
If you can:
https://greenpapaya.art/donation
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Right People, Wrong Timing (RPWT) is a series of texts on defunct or inactive independent Asian arts initiatives that had crossed paths or ran parallel to Papaya’s own 20-year history. With new posts every Friday from August to December 2020, RPWT is kindly supported through a local grant by the Japan Foundation Manila.
