it has been a long time coming. but here we are. part 4 went through multiple rewrites so i hope you guys like it!!
part 1 / part 2 / part 3
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Your limbs ached, lungs burning from your first breath after waking up. Was this headache from the heavy sleep? It took your eyes much longer to adjust than you’d like, sunlight peeking through your curtains wherever it could. Vague, blurry images passed through your mind but when you tried to focus on any of them, your head throbbed.
Whatever had happened last night you were glad that you from yesterday had decided enough was enough and to get home… however that happened. Who did take you home? You know what sounded better than solving that mystery? Scrambled eggs and maybe some bacon.
Your stomach suddenly lurched, covering your mouth to prevent a trip to the bathroom to hurl your guts out, but the wave of nausea passed and you chose to think about anything other than food. Your legs tiredly carried you out of your bed and towards the bathroom, choosing to be responsible and brush your teeth and your hair… but the sweat from the night before and the drool that was dried to your chin made you make a small noise of disgust.
The hot water of the shower soothed the rising hangover from rearing its ugly head, knowing that afterwards you’d have to force yourself to eat to keep the hangover at bay. The scent of your shampoo and bodywash was a good way to start the rest of your day, telling yourself you would be taking it easy today. You deserved it, after all.
Loose clothes, unable to take the heat still radiating off your body from the shower, you headed down the hallway and turned into your kitchen and paused. You would, unfortunately, recognize that body shape anywhere.
His shoulders were possibly tighter than you remembered, assuming it was coming from being in the same space as you. You almost felt that your eyes unfocused for a long silent moment before you managed to get out -
“Hey.”
You watched him jump a little and turn around, phone in his hand. The way his eyes traveled over your face was strange, really seeing you for the first time, but you caught his gaze and everything felt… sideways. His eyebrow quirked as he watched the way your head tilted, trying to understand why you were looking at him differently too.
You shut your eyes to shake your head, ridding yourself of the intrusive thoughts edging at the back of your mind.
“You picked me up last night,” a statement, not a question.
“Yeah, Will-” You put your hand up and he stopped.
“I’ll talk to Will,” an emotion passed through his face but you couldn’t pick it out, you tried to keep your voice steady, feeling vulnerable. You couldn’t remember much of last night. Just the taste of acid reflux tinged with alcohol and the vague feeling that you had seen your ex. Your other ex. You brought your hand to your forehead and rubbed at the bridge of your nose. “Did I say anything weird to you last night?”
What a loaded question. Weird was subjective so that gave him the opportunity to pick and choose if he told you anything at all, and you really weren’t quite sure you trusted him to tell you anything after letting you go through with an incredibly long relationship only to speak up at the wedding and destroy the whole thing.
“Not sure I should tell you if you’re going to keep looking at me like that.” His words stung, which was strange. Your eyes dropped away from his face and to the counter between you both.
The words were strained, but you still said them, “I’m sorry.” You had to be the adult, clearly, always with him having to be the adult, a dull anger that you had long tried to drown out with any vice that would help rising in your belly. There wasn’t any way around this without being open. You were both adults, you could be adult about this. A friend helped you home. That’s it.
You continued, “I just don’t… remember much of last night. I remember the bar, and I remember,” you almost spat it out, not even able to actually say his name, “him being there. And then you and a car ride home and I woke up in bed.”
“You uh,” Hasan sighed, bringing his hand to his chin and scratching, pausing for such a long time you could actually kill him.
“Look if it was that bad you don’t have to tell me and you can leave. Thank you for bringing me home but if I turned into a freak last night-”
“You told me to stay.”
“I. What?”
The knowledge could have knocked you off your feet, but you stayed standing despite the wave of nausea that washed over you, and you were suddenly very aware of your heart thrumming in your ears. You wanted to convince yourself that it was the hangover, but the realization was much stronger than the lingering effects of the night before.
Because you did, didn’t you? Ask him- no. Actively tried to get him to stay, tried to hold his hand so he wouldn’t leave you. Twice.
‘With me?’ Yes, but no.
You swallowed the lump in your throat and you rubbed at the space between your brows again, but he spoke before you could.
“If you’re worried, I slept on the couch.” You couldn’t tell if he was making a joke or not, but it made you breathe out a laugh. And then another one and another one.
“What-” still laughing, “what would I be worried about?” You could barely tell that his expression had changed from trying to be genuine to straight confusion as to why you were laughing at him. It didn’t take more than a second or two for a strangled laugh to leave him too and it must have taken everything in his body not to come meet you where you stood in the kitchen. Laughing with a world's amount of space between you.
“Fuck, I don’t know,” Hasan breathed out and through his shaky laughter tried to shrug his shoulders and add some kind of nonchalance to the conversation, push past the awkward air that clung to your bodies. “Is that not just - is that not what you’d say? To a woman?”
Your face twisted into incredulity, eyebrows pulled together but raised, laughter still playing at your lips which forced them to curl into a confused smile. “Yeah, definitely, just start telling random women, if you’re worried I slept on the couch, see how they reply.”
“That’s, holy shit you’re impossible, that’s not what I meant,” Hasan pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumbs, pushing them gently into his brow. “You know exactly how I meant that.”
You did know, because even after all this time he was still the Hasan you had fallen in love with all those years ago. Even if realizing that made your chest hurt.
(or Wrong Person, Wrong Time, from Hasan's perspective).
this is probably the most purposefully sad thing i've written and i really love it.
edit - 12/10: part 2 / part 3
🌠🌠
People are brought together for two reasons - weddings and funerals.
Hasan was grateful it was the former, though right about now he wished that it was a funeral. His funeral, or your betrothed's if he was really being honest with himself. Once upon a time that could have been him, standing at the end of the aisle and waiting for you to walk down. Your betrothed stands tall at the end of the aisle, hands clasped nervously in front of themselves, staring towards where you are supposed to make your entrance.
Hasan stands with the rest of the crowd and with his height towers over just enough to have a perfect view of you. He can feel his own heart tighten in his chest, beating erratically against his ribcage, drowning out the wedding march out of his ears.
You are ethereal. Dressed to the nines with your hair done to suit your face the best, cheeks with a noticeable twinge of heat to them, and nothing but love radiating from your eyes.
He is happy for you, he tells himself, working on memorizing the way the light hits your face as you walk.
He is not upset that you are reaching for someone else's hand and not his.
He does not seriously contemplate standing up to object to the wedding which is why he sounds surprised as his body moves on it's own to stand say the words "I object." And you are horrified.
"What?" you gasp. How could- no, how dare he show up only to ruin everything! To ruin everything again! Your eyes lock and you are transported back to a memory that you aren't sure Hasan even remembers. (He does.)
"I'd never let you marry some douchebag," he says, tilting his water bottle back for another swig while you're talking on his stream. Neither of you pay attention to chat while you are tapping back through the video.
"Good thing I'm not planning on getting married, marriage is a scam," you keep the video paused and sit back in your spot. "Because what do you really get out of marriage? You can just get your last name changed to someone else's if you want, it just costs money instead of being 'free'. Disability benefits if you're in America get yeeted into the trash can, not that I'm on disability but the point stands." Hasan nodded along listening to you speak.
"I feel like if you get married to someone and things change, it probably wasn't a good relationship in the first place."
"Yes!" You say clapping to accentuate the word, "yes if you need to get married to continue on the relationship? Don't do it. It's a mistake, get out."
"Would you marry me if I asked?" Hasan's voice was genuine and your eyes flicked to the audio levels to see that his voice indeed going through his stream still. It was hard not to stammer and take the question into serious consideration with your eyes focusing on the very quick stream of people screaming in chat. "You're gonna leave me on read in person?"
"No! No, I. Oh my god-"
"You wouldn't marry me? Wow chat, can you believe it? I give my girlfriend a loving spot next to me for a stream and she says no in front of 10 thousand people." The smile on his face was huge, clearly enjoying that you were covering your face in embarrassment.
You hear him say it out loud, "I would never let you marry some douchebag," loud enough that you can see your mother gasp and cover her mouth in response. You cannot move - can't imagine that this is actually happening. Your betrothed looks at you with aggravation and a hint of suspicion. Before you can speak and defend yourself, they cut you off.
"What is he doing? I told you not to invite him, I knew this would happen," your betrothed is much louder than you assume they intended. Their hands come up and they wave them in front of themselves taking a step back and away from you. "For someone who has 'no feelings' for you, he sure is ruining our life right now." You tear your eyes away from them and towards Hasan, who only speaks when you're looking at him.
"You can't marry him," he moves towards the aisle and your to be marches down to meet him but Hasan has strength on him. "You've been uncertain for months, you can't do this to yourself."
"I-I," your voice comes out as a whisper with tears running down your cheeks, the officiant putting a hand gently on your shoulder. Both sides of the families start to try to break up the stalemate that stands with the distance that feels like forever between you and he. You're frantically looking at the people who don't know who to turn to and your father comes to your rescue, stepping up to the two of them, while you pick up your dress with the help of your maid of honor and walk past everything. You can't do this. Not now.
"Not now", you remember saying, standing in front of Hasan on your doorstep. You're still holding hands even if you've just broken up, staring down through tears at the connection of your fingers. "I don't understand."
"I promise it's not you, it's me," he says, smoothing his thumbs over your knuckles. He hasn't looked you in the eyes once since the conversation started, couldn't stand the idea of seeing you cry. "There's just a lot going on right now and trying to commit to someone isn't fair."
"When have-" a deep, shuddering breath, "when have I ever pressured you for more time together? Was I not asking for enough time? Did I... when did being committed to me become such a chore?" You took your hands from him and wiped away at your eyes. The places he touched stung like bees and you took a step back towards your door. "Go - just go, I don't want to be around you right now."
Before he could say anything, you disappeared beyond the barrier of your home, a place he was no longer welcome and wouldn't step inside of for 2 years.
The next few hours were a whirlwind of people getting kicked out of the wedding, your maid of honor trying to salvage whatever she could while you sobbed in the room where a few hours prior you had your makeup done. Two little words, two, and the last three years of your life could collapse like a poorly constructed bridge. You could hear your betrothed yelling and being escorted out by (you assumed) one of your larger cousins and your father.
"Hey honey," your mothers voice carried across the room quietly as she entered, closing the door behind her. She crossed the distance and wrapped you up in her arms as you started to sob again, unable to hear what she was saying as she consoled you from how loud everything else was.
More time passed and eventually you had amassed the important people in your life in the room with you. Your parents, your maid of honor, and a few of of your friends. Your betrotheds family left along with him sans a handful who felt like he was the one being a jackass. Nobody would quite call you calmed down, but you were able to speak through it now, apologizing that this had all been a waste of time. That inviting your ex to your wedding was a bad idea, but you really did feel blindsided by his outburst.
The exhaustion in your bones by the end of the day would have been enough to paralyze a horse. An uncomfortable silence, only disturbed by the phone buzzing occasionally on the bed next to you. You couldn't bring yourself to silence it entirely, convinced that it was keeping you tethered to reality.
11:19 PM
Love of my Life - 17 Missed Calls
Love of my Life - 24 unread messages
Hasanabi - 2 Missed Calls
Hasanabi - 1 unread message
... bzzzt ...
Hasanabi - 2 unread messages
Love of my Life - 18 missed calls
Another time, another day, another life. You'd give up anything to do over today, without the interruption, without letting the next few years of life plans collapse on the whim of someone who dumped you in the first place. Someone who had now broken your heart not once but twice. Twice!
A pathetic choked laugh left your throat before you rolled over, away from sight of the phone and waited for sleep to grace you with it's presence. If anyone asked you to estimate how quickly you fell asleep, you would tell them you didn't. You don't remember ever closing your eyes long enough for time to pass. Restless. Brokenhearted.
A few weeks down the road and you were at what was was supposed to be day one of your honeymoon. Instead of boarding a plane, you were making a call to Will Neff to ask him to tell Hasan to stop contacting you. He even tries to apologize for him.
"I know he fucked up but I really don't think that he..." he trailed off and you didn't have the energy to cut him off. He wants to tell you that Hasan was just doing what he thought was best, he really didn't want you to marry someone who he thought was not good enough for you. "I really don't think that he even meant to do that. I know he's talked about it before but, you always kind of think and hope that it's a joke." He tries for a laugh but it falls flat out of his mouth before he sighs. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay Will."
"You can always call me if you need me."
"I know."
"I know he loves you!" Will yelled, gesturing towards the sky. You didn't know it at the time, but Will knew that Hasan had bought you a ring two weeks before breaking up with you. "He loves you because he never shuts up about you, he didn't tell me that he was thinking about any of this at all. It doesn't make any sense." It made you feel better to know that Will was on your side, but if he wasn't talking to him about it, was he talking to anyone?
"I hate him," you say before downing the liquor in your glass and sinking further into your seat. "I never wanna see him again, okay? Gonna delete his number from my phone. Teach him to... teach him to drop the best thing that ever happened to him!"
"Yeah!" Will yelled and slapped his hand against the couch. As supportive as ever, even if his best friend was an absolute dickhead.
"I know he loves you still," Will said after a long slow minute of silence. "I think after all this time he does, in his fucked up Hasan way. I'm not saying you give him another chance-"
"Oh thank you for clarifying, I was almost certain you were going to tell me to get with the man who destroyed the marriage that didn't even have a chance to start."
"I'm JUST saying... feelings make people fuuuuucking dumb." That got the softest chuckle out of you and you weren't sure if Will heard you, but he continued. "It's not an excuse, but at least it can be closure for you. Maybe. Just know he's as stupid as he's always been."
Surely there was a reason for this. To be damned to show up with your bar-crawling friends to a place where your ex fiancé is flirting with some woman. Your friends haven't noticed him and it doesn't seem like he's noticed you, too busy trying to get the woman to laugh at his jokes.
It takes less than 2 minutes from your friends to find a table near the bar itself but far enough away from him that you don't really mind, sticking to the innermost corner of the group. They barely even paid attention when you were more focused on getting a good shot of him than ordering a drink.
you 7:19pm: [picture of your ex fiancé]
you 7:19pm: stupid motherfucker couldn't pick a better bar to go hard ass women at
you 7:20pm: harass*
You weren't even entirely sure of who you sent the message to, perhaps a little too inebriated yourself to be completely in control. Maybe that was what you really wanted though. That's what you were used to, wasn't it? Having other people make decisions for you? One of the people you were with slid their drink over to you.
"Drink honey, drink and I'll get me another one. You need it you just look... you look sooo so sad." Fruity. You could barely taste the alcohol.
"You can't be sad!" Another one says, smacking their hand down on the table before pointing at you. "You can't be sad because your life is going to get so much better. I can feel it. It's in the stars. I was reading your uh... your... fucking what is it called, shit."
"Horoscope?"
"YES! Your whore scope."
"Horoscope."
"Shh shh shh. That's what I said. It said that your life is going to change in a big big way soon. I believe it's gonna be good." You shook your head and continued drinking, not paying attention to the way that the conversation drifted away from you once again. The way you liked it.
... bzzzt ...
Willard Neffard 7:30pm: I thought he didn't even drink?
Thank god you had texted Will and nobody else.
you 7:32pm: 8 months ago he didn't
you 7:35pm: but maybe that was a lie??
you 7:38pm: IDK i kind of wish i could leave but i cannot drive right now
Willard Neffard 7:50pm: I got you 👍🏻
you 7:51pm: a literal night in shining armor
you 7:51pm: knight
"Guys, I'm gonna have a friend come get me." Your friends frowned and the one next to you wrapped their arm around you and dropped their head to your shoulder. "I don't feel that great and I think I'm out of battery for the night."
"We get it babes, you gonna stay with us till your ride gets here?" You nodded and leaned your head against the one on your shoulder.
"Probably for the best. Just means I can keep knocking them back until then. Excuse me, miss!" You called your waitress over and ordered another round. The Uber driver would get it surely, if you explained to them that you saw your ex fiancé who technically left you at the altar showed up at a bar that you were at to relax so you drank a little more while waiting for them to get there? Yeah, definitely, of course they would. Who wouldn't?
Willard Neffard 8:26pm: Outside
At this point you were near stumbling and your mind was in a perpetual spin cycle. Were you too hung up on your life getting destroyed, or were you hung up enough? Your friends told you it was grief. You were grieving the burning of bridges, the deaths of friendship, and that grief was hard to get over. You grow around grief, grief doesn't get smaller.
The air outside the bar had a bite to it, the cool breeze immediately lighting your cheeks up, what a difference. No Uber to be seen though... and no Will either. Did you send him the wrong address? You pulled out your phone and checked, no you sent the right one. You ran your hand through your hair. There was a slim chance that he was playing a joke on you but after everything you didn't put much weight into that theory.
"I heard you needed a ride."
No, absolutely not. You shook your head with your eyes shut, hoping that you wouldn't fall over.
"Will was busy and there wasn't a way you'd get an Uber out without it being completely overpriced." Hasan stood a few feet away, like he was nervous to be any closer, in a tan sweater and dark slacks. "All I want to do is get you home safe."
In another life you would have ran and wrapped your arms around him, telling him he looked good and thanking him for being willing to pick you up. In another life he would have been at the bar with you and your friends, celebrating something. All you could muster was a quiet 'okay' before opening your eyes and walking past him to his car, getting into the passenger seat without saying anything else.
With your head against the headrest, you closed your eyes again and tried to pretend you were anywhere else with anyone else. The car ride was quiet sans the random radio station all the way down to where you could barely make out the beat to the music with your hand against the speaker.
Eventually, Hasan sighed heavily and smacked the steering wheel before leaning back. You jumped in your seat, eyes snapping open before looking over to him and then the cars ahead of you. Lines and lines of red taillights, backed up far past the edge of your vision. This was not going to be a quick 30 minute drive home.
"Oh. Of fucking course," the liquor in your system making you louder than intended. "The first time I go out drinking in months, months, I have to see both assholes who have ruined my life. I'm going to kill Will. I should have told them I couldn't go out. Should have stayed home." Hasan turned enough to look at you, but said nothing.
"I wouldn't be in this fucking mess if it weren't for you," your body turned to face him and you jabbed a hand in his direction but didn't make contact. "Seriously, every time my life goes to shit, it is you at the wheel of the ship. Why is that Piker? Do you hate me? Is it active sabotage, or is it just the balance of the universe? I'm the one who has to suffer for you to be happy?" The car moved a few feet before stopping again. "Well? Nothing? You have nothing to say to me?"
You observed him the best that you could in the lack of light. One hand sat on the steering wheel still, the other on his lap in a fist and he gnawed on the inside of his lips in thought. You had seen that look many times before, the gears in his head were turning, but still he stayed silent. Impatient, Words started to tumble out of your mouth again, each heavier with angry tears than the last.
"I can start it for you since you're too stupid to think of it first. How about I'm sorry? You don't even have to be specific. Just 'I'm sorry'!" Your fingers were cold on your face when they wiped at your cheeks. His hand left his lap and gingerly reached for one side of your face and for a moment you even contemplated letting him. But only a moment. Seething with pent up rage, you smacked his hand away from your face and moved towards the window with the little room you had left. He had pulled his hand back into his lap but cut you off before you could take a deep enough breath to speak again.
"I am sorry." For a moment Hasan let his words hang in the silence, waiting to see if you'd cut him off this time and continue ripping into him. "I should have said it to you way earlier than this. It shouldn't take Austin and Will doing an event to get me in front of you to apologize for... everything."
"No you can't just cop out with everything, you need to apologize for ruining my life!"
"Yes," he sounded exasperated and it fueled the rage in your stomach but you let him continue, actually biting your lip to keep your words in. "I am sorry for fucking up your life. Do you-" he ran a hand through his hair, "do you think I've stopped thinking about you once in the last 3 and a half years? When I saw you with that... motherfucker the first time, I wasn't even upset at you for moving on, I was fucking happy for you dude.
"And then you fucking tell me and Will the same shit you've always said, marriage is a scam, that this marriage will be no different than any other marriage. You expect me to think you're in love with him? I'm not that fucking stupid and neither are you. And he walked out immediately because he thought you were cheating on him!"
"Yes because my ex boyfriend decided to object at the wedding!" Your voice was much more a shriek than anything else, "why couldn't you have just pulled me aside beforehand instead of... ruining my life!"
"I didn't-" mean to ruin your life. The words stuck in his throat like tar, singing his breath. He leaned his head in his hand as he inched the car forward. How do you really apologize to someone for causing someone so much heartache because you were still heartsick? Hasan felt like he could throw up. He'd never be able to apologize enough, he knew that from how you were barely holding yourself back. "I'm sorry, button."
If there was anything he could say that would have broken you entirely, it was calling you button. The first sob wracked your body the hardest, remembering the last time he called you that. His lips on yours and on your cheeks, telling you he loved you, that he would never find another one for him like you. It seemed so silly now, having it bloom a sickening warmth in your stomach when it should have been disgust.
It was still in there. A small piece of him, sitting in your heart like iron, rusting the gates that you had tried so hard to reinforce.
You didn't reject his hand this time, rubbing your back gently as you tried to catch your breath. It was an angry, ugly cry where your throat was dry and tight, coughing all the usable air away. It didn't help that you were absolutely still drunk which only caused everything to be more intense than you could handle in the moment. His hand left you and he glanced in the back seat, reaching for a water bottle.
"Please, drink." You could hear the seal break when he opened it, handing it to you and putting a hand back on the steering wheel and the other on your back. You went back to thinking about other lives and various what ifs. The worst timelines converged to form this one, didn't it? One where neither of you would be happy without the other, a binary star doomed to collide instead of dance infinitely. The water settled in your stomach uneasily along with the silence in the car.
You couldn't ever remember a time where it was this quiet, the air constantly filled with conversations. Maybe that's why you were still clinging onto the frustration of him breaking up with you in the first place. You two were always talking about everything, down to things that bothered you in the moment with each other. It was a strength to be able to vocalize how you were feeling and only did it click to you now that you had lost that ability.
You couldn't even in bad faith blame your ex. It was your fault and you knew it. Hasan had hurt you and you put the argumentative part of you aside, just wanting someone to love you, willing to mold yourself so they wouldn't have a reason to leave.
Hasan was frustrated by the silence, knowing how many other things he wanted to say. Starting with another apology to you for making you almost throw up from how upset you were. He was thankful that you were letting him rub your back gently as you calmed down. Maybe it was selfish but to be able to make you feel better made him feel a little better too. Will didn't have to tell him that he was the last person to be asked, he knew he was, but he genuinely just wanted to get you home in one piece.
Time stretched in the silence. Hasan's hand eventually steadied and just sat comfortably somewhere in the limbo of on your back and neck. You didn't forgive him, that wouldn't come with one good deed. Maybe it never would. As time (and traffic) trudged forward you stole long, tired looks at Hasan, trying to put into words the chaos swirling in the fog of your brain. The idea of going to sleep and speaking in the morning with more eloquence crossed your mind, but eloquence was hard to bargain for. It was getting hard to stay awake - crying was hard work.
"Hey," Hasan's voice was soft as it hit your ears, eyes fluttering open to the familiar outdoor lights of your home. Oh. "Where are your keys?" You gestured towards your feet where you had thrown your things when you got in the car, not having the energy to sit up and grab them yourself. He disappeared again past your line of vision that's still blurry with sleep. Only a moment passed (or maybe it's been many, but you can't really tell) when he arrived back at your side and hesitated to unbuckle you. It was sloppy but you managed, your head lolling with a small smile on your face, you think.
" 'can do it," the tiny nod you gave him was slow and meticulous, hands fumbling to get the buckle untangled from your limbs. He rolled his eyes and watched you swing your legs and body to face him. You shrugged and gestured at him. "You're in th' way... move." Despite the severe lack of authority in your voice, Hasan stepped back and held his hands out so you could steady yourself as you exited the vehicle. You grabbed them without thinking about it, knowing from the first foot to hit the ground that you'd rather not land on your ass and be any more humiliated that you had to get saved from an ex by another ex.
You heard the door shut and he walked you towards your home, your hands clinging to his forearm. The front door felt like an omen, not wanting to face the reality that he was going to leave after he laid you down. If you stayed out here on the small concrete pathway to the front door, you could live in this moment forever. He stopped when you did, squinting his eyes a little in confusion.
"Are you o-"
"Jus' wanna stay here."
"... Outside?" Yes, but no, you thought, shaking your head in response slowly as not to knock yourself off balance.
"Here," you said again, giving his wrist and forearm a gentle squeeze. In a vacuum, she assumed, they'd be able to make it. With no other influences or things to consider, they could make it and live happily ever after and make out and get married and have babies and grow old together and-
"With me?" Sometimes he could be so stupid. Yes yes yes yes yes, you could feel your heart screaming inside your chest. You thought you were over this, over him, the growing realization of how bad of an idea tonight was made you sick. Regrets piling haphazardly in your brain. You stood there with your eyes closed tightly, trying to steel everything inside of yourself to not go through with whatever half-assed idea you were getting on the dark side of your mind.
Yes, but no. In another life, you told yourself, slowly finishing the strides towards the front door. Once inside, despite being as drunk as you were, felt routine take over. Shoes off and into the corner, trying to take off the imaginary jacket once or twice before realizing you weren't wearing one, attempting to put the keys that Hasan had in his pocket into the dish on a counter. He had locked the door behind you, right? Surely you heard a click. Hasan's hands came to your shoulders as you blinked away the bleary vision.
"Let's get you to bed." You didn't have fight left in you, so you nodded and let him walk you towards your bedroom. Hasan sat you down on your bed and you watched as he opened your drawers, finding you pajamas and going to hand them to you. His voice was hesitant when he spoke again, almost nervous about the answer even if he already knew what it was, "do you want me to help you change?" Your face scrunched up.
"No, g'out, I can do it, sssshooo," you waved your hands to usher him out of the room. The gesture was weak but he listened, backing up and leaning in the doorway but facing away. In your stupor, that was good enough, pulling the fabric from your body to replace it with the non sweat in clothing. Had you been sweating this entire time? You felt like you reeked and you could use a shower... but the bathroom was so far away. Tugging on your pajamas, you ran your hands through your hair. " 'Kay."
Hasan turned around and mimicked your motion from earlier, shooing you into your bed like you were just an unruly child. He threw the blankets over you as you settled and watched you as you watched him, even though he wasn't quite sure your eyes could really focus on him or not. Before he could finish turning away you reached out for his hand, swiping it instead of being able to actually catch it. You saw the way the fingers twitched as he paused his exit and looked at you.
Don't go. Your hand grabbed onto his.
Please. Don't leave me. A tug towards yourself.
Want you to stay. Your eyes up to his, peering through your lashes, a pathetic sight if there ever was one.
"Get some rest," Hasan ran a hand over your forehead gently and through your hair, the motion alone nearly enough to put you straight to sleep. Just for a split second he even entertained the idea of giving your forehead a kiss, but you had already had so many... interesting moments this evening, did he want to add another one that you probably weren't going to remember?
Hey dear, are you going to write more parts for right person, wrong time?
Hello ☺️ yes I do plan to write more parts to the series. life has been a bit hectic with work. my goal is to at least have a few parts out before June. thank you for being patient. 💜💜
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
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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.
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.
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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!
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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
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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.
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.
