foi6catalogue

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InternatIonal Performance art event SIngaPore 2010

F uture oF

I magInatIon 6


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With support from


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Future of Imagination 6 catalogue is published on the occasion of the performance art eventFuture of Imagination 6 (FOI 6) atSculpture Square Limited, 155 Middle Road, Singapore 188977

Event Dates7 - 11 April 2010

Websitewww.foi.sg

Artistic DirectorsLee Wen, Kai Lam

ArtistsAlastair MacLennan (UK/Ireland), Amanda Heng (Singapore), Angie Seah (Singapore), Boris Nieslony (Germany), Elvira Santamar a(Me ico), Helge Meyer (Germany), Jacques van Poppel (The Netherlands), Jason Lim (Singapore), Jeremy Hiah (Singapore),Juliana Yasin (Singapore), Julie Andr e T. (Canada), J rgen Fritz (Germany), Kai Lam (Singapore), Lee Wen (Singapore), LynnLu (Singapore), Marco Teubner (Germany), Melati Suryodarmo (Indonesia), Myriam Laplante (Canada/Italy), Norbert Klassen(Switzerland), Roi Vaara (Finland), Sabrina Koh (Singapore), Vichukorn Tangpaiboon (Thailand), Zai Kuning (Singapore)

EditorsLee Wen, Kai Lam

Design/PublicationsChun Kai Qun

Logistics/Technical SupportDan Yeo

Public RelationsMagdalen Chua, Jacklyn Soo, Juliana Yasin

Artists LiaisonAngie Seah, Yuzuru Maeda

AdministrationAnnabelle Felise Aw

Photo DocumentationLim Yeow Sen (Nel)

Video DocumentationGhazi Alqudcy

Volunteers I/Cs:Marienne Yang, Joo Choon Lin

First published in an edition of 1000 in 2010 byFuture of Imagination 6 (FOI 6) , Lee Wen, Singapore

2010 the publisher, authors and contributors

ISBN 978-981-08-5577-2

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or byany means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission from the publisherand the copyright owners.

CONTENTS

PERFORMANCE ART PERFORMING 4by Lee Wen

THE ART OF ENGAGEMENT IN EVERYDAY LIFE Interview with Amanda Heng by Kaimei Olsson Wang

A NERVOUS SYSTEM 16 Interview with Ho Tzu Nyen by June Yap

A VERY ExPANDED NOTION OF CULTURE 22 Interview with Woon Tien Wei by Lee Wen

SOME NOTES ON COLLECTIVE PERFORMANCE by Jonas Stampe

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS BIOGRAPHIES 30

FESTIVAL PROGRAMME 53

ARTISTS AND SUPPORTERS LINKS 54


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Introduction

Tan Teng Kees Picnic event of 1979 was cited by veteran art historian TK Sabapathyas the rst evidence of performance art in Singapore. Tan created a one-hundred-meters long painting entitled The Lonely Road. He then cut into smaller piecesand incinerated one of his sculptures at the end of the event.2 It is hard to believethese actions amounted to a work of performance art as Tan did not continue hise plorations in performance but became known to us as a sculptor. However the imageof an artist destroying and burning his own painting and sculptural creations seemedlike an appropriate one for the beginning of performance art in Singapore. Especially

when many artists nd it hard to have a decent studio space in land scarce Singapore,hence e pensive real estate, and in moving every few years tend to discard some oftheir creations each time they move.

That Tans one and only action could also put him into Singapores art historical conte tforebode later short-lived forays by other artists and the capricious wavering supportby institutions. Such erratic inclination is also indicative of the uncertainties faced byartists as well as art institutions in an incessantly, rapidly changing society. At thesame time the various uctuating arts policies implemented were meant to administerorderly cultural growth carried questionable advantage. I would like to e pose somefocal positions asserted through some artists pertinent performances in response tolocal conditions. Money for your live

At the opening ceremony of Singapore Art 95, one of the preceding incarnationsleading up to the Singapore Biennale, Tang Da Wu had asked sculptor, founder ofLa Salle College of Art, Brother Joseph McNally and major water colorist, Ong KimSeng, to introduce him to the Guest of Honour, the President of Singapore, Mr. OngTeng Cheong.3 Tang rst handed the President, a card, not unlike a calling name card,hand written with the words: Dear Mr.President, I am an artist, I am important, YoursSincerely, Tang Da Wu. Then asking for permission to put on his black jacket, Tang

elegantly slipped it on and revealed the words for the President and all to see: DontGive Money To The Arts, which was embroidered on the back in golden thread.4

It was a gesture that acted out a message of deep concern for the changes that artsfunding were bringing. Especially when the National Arts Council (NAC) withheld allsupport and funding for performance art since 1994 arising out of the controversialperformance, Brother Cane by Josef Ng.5 The NAC policy of not funding performanceart was almost a categorical ban on the art form itself. Although we could still holdperformance art events without the support from National Arts Council, the withdrawalof support signaled to the public at large an of cial disapproval that many did not dareor wish to dispute with. Those who continued to do so face the risk of being blacklistedas trouble-makers, dissenters or rebels. Although the de facto ban was lifted in late2003, we have been subjected to a burdensome licensing system up to today. Thereare many speculations what brought on the change after almost a decade. Perhapsboth due to the lobbying pressure of local and international arts community together

with the states desire to e tend its economic success to cultural distinction in parity with global trends andin preparation for the then upcoming Singapore Biennale in 2006.6

Tang Da Wu may be the only one to be able to get away with such a self-contradictory statement and yetresonate with almost mystical wisdom, bringing to mind various poignant questions that reverberate even tartists are constantly asking for more nancial grant support, enigmatically, Tang beseeched the President not to givemoney to the arts. Tang was later quoted to say that public money funded the wrong kind of art, art thatcommercial and had no taste.7 Hence it was not a total rejection of arts funding that is advocated by Tang but rathtimely query on how arts funding was administered and distributed.

What Tang did by way of simple actions may be claimed as proceedings in real life, rather than performpublic, which would entail a need for licensing as some law-enforcing stickler might insist. What may bperformance art intervention par e cellence by the art world, in the eyes of the law will quietly be seen as message by an artist to the president and thus could not involve any legal violations. In contrast to the caseNgs Brother Cane that may qualify as an e cellent work in performance art parlance, yet could not overridobscenity as according to the hearing, claims of artistic merit does not count in Singapores courts.

With the changed situation of support funding from the NAC, performance art practice grapples with badesire to be nancially viable and maintaining artistic authenticity. Especially when looking into the historical context ofperformance art, being anti-establishment, provocative, interventionist, and an opposition to the commodi cation of artwould be leading a list of its common characteristics.8 When working with the support of NAC sponsorship the artisloses some autonomy and is forced to abide by various regulations, such as the licensing procedures, whicspontaneity and threatens authenticity.

Death is not the end

It can be quite intimidating to see a Chinese funeral band play during an art event in the Substation especiare the organizer of the event. Instead of performing something himself as e pected, the invited artist Ray Lhad engaged an 8 piece Chinese funeral band musicians to play at The Substation for his presentation duringImagination 3, the international performance art event that I was organizer.9 My rst thoughts were whose funeral isthe artist referring to? Kuo Pao Kun? The Substation? Democratic processes in Singapore? Or the U.S.? The it art itself? Or more speci cally performance art? Or worse, more speci cally the festival itself?

As I watched more intensely I started to notice the musicians were also nervous and uncomfortable. Dresseyellow shiny uniforms they could have been mistaken for Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band playingseemed that they were not used to being watched and listened to so closely, with so many cameras pointed Chinese funeral bands play a function in the funeral ritual where musical e cellence is not of prime concekey notes often sounded in tune with the wailing cries of the mourners. But no one was mourning today, in probably the rst time the band was facing an audience and an art audience at that. I began to wonder who was moreamused: the audience or the musicians?

As the band marched into the gallery, their solemn out of tune playing rang out a mischievous nuance, which bback to all those questions about what the artist is trying to say through such an engagement. Was Langenbachto the recent disquiet in KL? The week before the invited artists for our festival went to Kuala Lumpur to panother event, Satu Kali, which we helped co-coordinate.10 Satu Kali was organized by Kuala Lumpur-based artists, LiewKungyu and Ray Langenbach and was meant to be a private event but the police came to stop it on the third on a single audience complaint that some performances done by Muslim artists were un-Islamic. It was ubut a learning e perience. As our plans for a three days event faltered without completion, it felt like death. Nclose. As an organizer I see our role as facilitators akin to the Socratic notion of the dialectical philosopher asassisting to bring forth the birth and enactment of art. A stoppage after months of anticipation, felt almost likmiscarriage or worse still, a forced abortion.

However, Langenbach did not hire the funeral band to play because of the shutdown of Satu Kali by the polLumpur. On the contrary, its une pected suppression showed that art can still be deemed dangerous and ther

Performance art Performing 1by Lee Wen

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be seen as a triumph in its ability to play a continued historical position as resistance to the status quo. It evoked theposition performance art clearly held in Singapore during the 1994-2003 ten years of censure on performance art. Therecent acceptance and endowment of nancial support has perhaps upset its integrity.

Langenbachs hired Chinese funeral band was playing a critical lament to imply the death of the Artist. And if the Artistwere not already dead, this was his provocation for the Artist to die now, instead of continuing to play a heroic role just toupkeep the show.11 In relinquishing his role to be the main actor on the stage by engaging the funeral band Langenbachhad transferred the acting role to unsuspecting yet willing players.

But if art is really dead how do we bury it? Are we then just mourners and sympathizers at the wake of art? Placinga funeral band to play and march through The Substation does not make a funeral. No one was mourning while weresponded like voyeurs, amused, entertained, uncomfortable, bored watchers of passivity; are we not merely waitingfor the clima before we applaud to show our satisfaction, our approval? Looking at the nervous discomfort on theirspotlighted faces is not the same thing as looking at the cold breathless face of death. Instead of feeling remorse oneinstead related to the musicians grimaces as they hit the off notes, taking their solemn role ever more seriously as theperformance proceeded.

However it did send a chill down my spine to think that the acceptance of once controversial practices such as conceptualart or performance art into the mainstream culture may be seen as a satisfactory victory while giving up its stances ofresistance.12 On the contrary, it may also be seen rather as that of failure if not death, whereby its earlier motivationsas strategies of resistance to dominant global capitalism and commercialization or commodi cation of art as well as atool for directly effecting social changes will be surrendered in order to gain admission through the heavenly gates ofArte paradiso, in the form of international biennales, art auctions, traveling block-busters museum e hibitions andother material gains.

Naked jokes

In 2003 soon after the announcement that NAC will resume funding for performance art again Kai Lam, Jason Limand I organized Future of Imagination, a performance art event, which would later present more international artists inSingapore over the years. As producers we try as much as possible to help the invited artists achieve their proposedideas. Often we would sound off the danger zones trying hard not to play the censors role but to ask for sensitivityfrom the invited artists to our local conditions. Besides the disparaging or desecration of national, religious and racialsymbols and icons is the problem of nudity in performance. This is easily acceptable in performance art conte ts invarious secular societies including some Asian countries like Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, The Philippines, S.Korea, andeven China today but not in Singapore.

For some artists performing in the nude is necessary to the image that they have conceived and would nd it dif cult topresent their work otherwise. One option would be to hold a private event for invited guests only. However this is dif cultto arrange properly within the time frame of our festival, which usually runs over four or ve days.

Since 1999 Arai Shinichi had been doing a series of performances, Happy Japan!13 He talks about his e perience asa member of Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV) in Zanzibar, Tanzania in 1992 to 1994. This undertakingintensi ed his consciousness of Japans imperialist tendencies and he related it to the dangers of the proliferation ofright wing ideas through the popular manga series Senso-ron (War Theory) by Kobayashi Yoshinori. At some point inhis performance he would sing the national song in the nude while appearing to let out red paint through his bowels overa white canvas, in order to spin over the paint with his backside on the paint to create the Japanese sun-disc ag.

Arais performance actions may have moved some audiences in China to tears; it can also be grotesque, alarming andoffensive to others. However I only sounded the problem of nudity for his performance in Singapore. His rst responsewas that he had decided to make a different performance, since we were going to Kuala Lumpur for Satu Kali, whichthe organizers were willing to take the risk by putting his Happy Japan! as the last performance of the event. As itturned out Satu Kali, got shut down on the third day so that Arai did not get the chance to do his piece and he decidedto incorporate some of his actions from Happy Japan! into the one he proposed to do in our festival in Singaporeinstead.14 He had the consideration not to be totally naked but to put on a pair of skin coloured panty-hose and also a

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Pikachu soft-toy over his genitals while he did his Japanese red sun-disc ag routine. However the costume actuallye aggerated his nakedness and gave him an une pected surrealistic bizarre dimension, making him look hnot in the way he intended.

Herma Auguste Wittstock is an obese artist who often performs simple actions responding to local site andwith spontaneous humour. Her piece, Welcome To Singapure was in direct response to her encounter wladen Singapore.15 She entered the performance space dressed in a see-through dress and stood still, staringthe audience. Her stillness, in contrast to Arais performance made us even more aware how her transpareactually accentuated her nakedness. Blue blood began to drip from her nose and later from her mouth. begins to redden as she slowly begins to scream. At rst it looked too clich for me to take it sitting down. The kindof usual stereotypical take on our situation, like the old joke about Singapore being a ne city. She could have wornthat Singapore-city of nes tourist T-shirt, chew gum, spit them out and made the same impression. However as herscream got louder I realize my reaction was actually out of an anger that was triggered in seeing her manifestaseemed to poke fun at my inability to nd release and my own decision to submit to these inane rules and regulationsin order to gain continued trust and support to run this event in Singapore. I held back my tears, swallowed mit was more important to reconcile my contradictions as an artist who disdains censorship with that of a comorganizer and learnt to laugh at her painful joke in order to keep our hopes for a higher cause.

Staying alive: Revenue, Resistance, Regulations

The acceptance of nancial support from the state does not mean that we shun ethical responsibility by conformityand compromise although it does give us more liability to adhere to binding regulations imposed by the spWhat happened to Satu Kali in Kuala Lumpur is of different dynamics and consequences as compared toperformance art in Singapore. The political and bureaucratic processes in Malaysia have their unique complecan sympathize with but its not for outsiders to deal with directly. However in Singapore performance art fapeculiar restrictive regulations for it to develop and grow spontaneously, unhampered by repressive state int

The ten years of funding ban had traumatized and stunted its growth in contrast to other genres of art. The in state support and funding today for conceptual and performance art does not translate easily to an augmmarket. This may actually be a blessing in disguise as it remains perpetually negating its own commercialcommodi cation by default. However this also perpetuates its dependence on centralized public funding of the NAC.The market command of various performance artists like Zhang Huang, Marina Abramovic or Flu us is ethe possibility of its commodi cation. That will be the day when we get an enlightened collector like, Francesco Conz,an Italian cultivated self made businessman who had been collecting avant-garde, performance art relics seventies and now houses them in one of the most comprehensive archives for performance art in the woArchivio e Edizione Conz in Verona.16 A pragmatic consideration is to create an independent funding body that wilable to dispense nancial assistance to artists without conservative obligations to allow more cutting edge works tosurface.

Performance art can continue to contend with various current contemporary issues and need not directly tror be oppositional to social norms and status quo in order to stay relevant and hence live on. Critical respotake various poetics and not necessarily be anti-establishment to the point of contumacy or even negatingcommodi cation that one remains impoverished forever. No doubt resistant and interventionist stances that transgressestaboos or even legality remain one of the important strategies of performance art practice but it should not beto be the one and only of all the possibilities that it can be.

The severe conditions of licensing and regulatory rules coupled with an inevitable dependence on the cavailability of funding that we willingly now work under does not mean we are compromised as artists but rareached a point of transition in the evolving role of artists within changed circumstances. There is need fothese rules now and again to keep up with our changing consciousness. Is it not time that laws written andduring Victorian times such as those that found the artist Josef Ng guilty in 1994 be reviewed and updated? Ainducted into the contemporary art world by hosting Biennales and building billion dollar art infrastructurefear the effects of performance artists creating chaotic public disorder threatening internal security?


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In the meantime, it is up to artists to organize themselves in order to help keep performanceart stay alive. The choices remain open whether to work with the support of public funding orbe independently self-suf cient. There is a price to pay in taking either choice but hopefullythe battleground should not be tilted against performance art and artists like those 1994-2003 watershed years again. What we hope to see is a society that allows performance artsvaried possibilities to ourish and reveal itself like the full spectrum of the rainbow not to beobscured by the dark clouds of cumbersome bureaucracy, dictatorial suppression or intolerantfundamentalism.

Notes:1 This essay will be published in Singapore Shifting Boundaries: Social Change in the early 21st century, edited by Sharon Siddique, William Lim,and Tan Dan Feng (Singapore: Select Publishers, forthcoming August 2010).2 T.K. Sabapathy: Sculpture in Singapore. Exhibition Catalogue Singapore: National Museum Art Gallery. 1991.3 Dont Give Money To The Arts, performance by Tang Da Wu, Venue: Singapore Art 95, Suntec City, Singapore, 11, August 19954 Pay more attention to the arts - President, The Straits Times, 12 August 1995.5 There have been much already written about Josef Ng, so I will not deliberate here.6 Langenbach, Ray, Looking Back at Brother Cane: Performance Art and State Performance, 1995 Space, Spaces and Spacing, The SubstationConference1995.The Substation Singapore 1996. P.132-1477 Langenbach, Ray, Performing the Singapore State 1988 1995, PhD thesis, Center for Cultural Research, University of Sydney. August 2003, Ch.7, p. 207-2398 http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/5766 C. J. W.-L. Wee, Local Cultures and the New Asia: The State, Culture, and Capitalism in Southeast Asia. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies,Singapore 2002.10 C. J. W.-L. Wee, Creating High Culture in the Globalized Cultural Desert of Singapore, The Drama Review 47, no. 4 (Winter 2003):84-97.11 C. J. W.-L. Wee, Global Art, Globalised Art and Belief: The Singapore Biennale 2006, CONTEMPORARY VISUAL ART+CULTURE Broadsheet magazine, vol 35 no 4, Adelaide, South Australia.12 http://www.cacsa.org.au/archives/index_frames.html7 Sian E. Jay, Ironic twist to Substation fund-raiser, The Straits Times, 15 November 2000.8 Carlson, Marvin A.: Performance: A Critical Introduction, Routledge; 1999. p. 809 Untitled funeral band performance by Ray Langenbach (Assisted by Lim Tzay Chuen), Venue: The Substation, Singapore, Event: Future of Imagination 3, 13 April 2006.10 Satu Kali, MFX Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 6 to 9 April 2006.11 Based on email conversations with Ray Langenbach, 18 January to 10 February 2010.12 McEvilley, Thomas, The Triumph of Anti-Art: Conceptual and Performance Art in the Formation of Post-Modernism, McPherson & Co., 2005p.351-35213 http://www.araiart.jp/14 You Are No Good-tourist #6-by Arai Shin-ichi, Venue: The Substation, Singapore, Event: Future of Imagination 3, 12 April 200615 Welcome To Singapure by Herma Auguste Wittstock, Venue: TheatreWorks, Singapore, Event: Future of Imagination 4, 29 September,200722 http://www.hermaauguste.de/catalogue/art/welcome-to-singapure16 http://www.archiviofconz.org/

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Adina Baron, Future of Imagination 5, Sculpture Square, Singapore, 2008 (Photo: FOI Archive)

Chia Chuyia, Future of Imagination 5, Sculpture Square, Singapore, 2008 (Photo: FOI Archive)

Cai Qing, Future of Imagination 5, Sculpture Square, Singapore, 2008 (Photo: FOI Archive)


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Amanda Hengs artist oeuvres span over twenty years and employ various mediums:photography, multi-media, installation and performance. She is one of the key guresin founding some of the most important artists collectives and networks in Singapore,such as the Artists Village and Women in the Art. Most importantly, Amanda Hengwas one of the rst to introduce feminist discourse into the Singapore art scene, andhas been consistently arousing awareness of womens rights, gender equality andother feminist issues. As part of her art practice, Heng organizes events, forums ande hibitions that engage both the artists society and people in local communities. Shebelieves contemporary art concerns are rooted in society and should be connectedwith people from the ground. Starting from personal e perience, Hengs search for

her own identity would involve psychological, ethic, historical, linguistic and aestheticaspects of the society in change. Amanda Hengs works are indeed all about the artof engagement.

Kaimei Olsson Wang (KOW): Your art works and projects always contain distinct socialengagement and political statements. Being a feminist artist in Singapore wheretraditional Chinese values hybridize with post-colonial modernity, your works addressedmany important issues, from gender equality, historical perspectives to personal andnational identities. How is it being a feminist artist in Singapore?

Amanda Heng (AH): Womens right, gender difference and identity politics are importantissues for me. I grew up in a traditional patriarchal Chinese culture and e periencedthe different treatments toward the female and male members in the family structure.Women in my mothers generation have lived their lives under the Confucius dogmawhere a womans social and family statuses are not de ned by her own ability, butdecided by her relation to the male members in the institutions of family and marriage.The famous Confucius prescribed that a woman has to be obedient to her father athome. After marriage, she is required to be obedient to her husband and eventuallyto her own son. It became very clear to me when my mother lost her status as the

rst lady in the family. I saw how the relatives changed their attitude towards herimmediately after my fathers death. There were urgent questions for me to ask: Whoam I? What does it mean to be a woman? What role does women play in society and

who decide? What is gender difference? Who do I look to, to understand and how doI articulate these issues? I found the space and the language for articulation in myart practice.

I was born after the World War II and my quest for the answers on the identity politicscoincided with the nation building campaigns and the modernization processes in thisnew multiracial and multicultural country. Ethnicity was downplayed and English wasmade the common language for business and economy. I realized the comple ity inthe identity discourse. My work articulates the comple ity and changes, the impactit has on the society, on my life and the lives of many others in this country. My

rst performance works, S/he, addresses such gender difference and identity crisis,especially when my Chinese cultural background clashes with Western values.

It was hard working as a woman artist in the paternal and patriarchal society inSingapore when I rst started practicing in the 80s. I had to work really hard to be

the art of engagement in everyday LifeInterview with Amanda Heng by Kaimei Olsson Wang

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Lets Chat Helutrans Art Space, Curating Lab, Singapore Art Show, 2009(Photo: Amanda Heng)

Worthy Tour Co (S) Pte Ltd City Hall, Singapore Biennale 2006(Photo: Amanda Heng)


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taken seriously. Only few women artists were recognized in the art scene in those days. Even women curators anddirectors in the art institutions generally did not believe that women artists can make good works and that their viewsare important. There was no feminist study in the art colleges and most women students were taking art as a hobbyrather than learning to e press themselves.

It is even more dif cult for a woman artist working with a feminist perspective or employing feminist strategies in herpractice. Feminism is still an issue that many people in this country dont want to deal with. In fact many women andparticularly women artists, do not want to be associated with feminism because it is perceived to be political. Eventhough there are now feminist study in the universities and art colleges but the discussions remain con ned to thecampus. There are still no monographs on women artists produced from a feminist perspective. And no serious researchand materials on women art history and feminism addressing issues in local conte t, and to provide a theoretical conte tfor the feminist art practice here. It is dif cult to practice with no supporting network of women and feminist artists, arthistorians and critiques in Singapore.

KOW: Do you see womens status improving and changing in society with time?

AH: A lot of changes have happened in the last twenty-two years. Womens position in society seems to have improved,but this is a super cial assumption. We claimed with pride that women in Singapore are given equal opportunities foreducation and employment, but shouldnt women be born with the same right as an individual like the men? The factthat women have to be g iven equal right to education showed the inequality in the system. Besides, providing womenequal right to education doesnt necessary mean the society respect the rights of the women, the pragmatic governmentknew the values of the educated labor force in the women population for the development of the economy. There areother agendas and such policies dont touch the root of the problem. Women have to be aware themselves and initiatechanges. There are still difference in salary scales for male and female in the employment and women are the rst inlines for retrenchments during recession. During the 1997 economic crisis, businesses in beauty and slim industrieswere striving because worried and anxious women still believe it is the look that helps them gain con dence andseek employment, not their ability. My performance piece Lets walk made comments on some of the issues when Iperformed with a high-heeled shoe in my mouth. These beliefs are deep rooted in the patriarchal culture and there are

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still many psychological barriers to be dealt with in day-to-day e perience.

In the art scene today, it is still natural to think of the male artists rst in the selections of artists for exhibitions, publicforums, awards or commission works. Women artists are always the after thought. They are the token. WKurau Studios was ready for housing the visual artists, I was the only woman artist given a studio space. I the selection was done and was told that there were not many female artists around. I did not believe that anan archive for the women artists. It holds portfolios and information of 40 women artists. This was how WoArts, Singapore (WITAS) started.1 Together with some women artists from WITAS, we organized Witalk and creaplatform in my studio for a series of public talks for local and international women artists.

KOW: Yes, many of your works not only involve people from the artworld; you have engaged people that aseen in the art crowd to work together with you. The process of art making also e press your desire for command understanding. Like Another woman that you e ecuted together with your mother over two-years dudid you involve your mother in your art project?

AH: My mother couldnt understand why did I have to give up my regular job to do art. How could I e plainwhat is art? My mother speaks only in Teochew dialect and I know little vocabulary in Teochew. I couldnunderstand the importance for me to have my e pression in my own language. So I thought the best way wher involve in my artwork.

The idea came about when she asked me to take a headshot of her, a custom for the Chinese elderly who wiprepared for the dawning reality of death. We made that portrait of my mother together and I took the oppcontinue taking other photographs with her and making objects together. I had the idea of using photographclothes we wore in my artwork. When I was in the school, my peers always admire my well-pressed uniformshas a way of handling the clothes by using starch. The process looks primitive today but it was an innovative well-pressed uniforms. I liked to incorporate that creative process in the work. So we started the process fromthe starch using tapioca our. Socked the clothes in water and the starch. Then I had to wear the wet clothes and stoodunder the sun for hours for the clothes to dry. When the clothes were dried my mother had to remove the clomy body and we got the clothes with my body forms. We completed the whole process together. So when Iphotographs and put the clothes together, my mother understood the idea instantly.

KOW: The photograph of you and your mother sitting at the dinner table, doing household works and eventuhands together and standing naked in front of each other. There must be many touching moments to break the of mother and daughter relationship in cultural and social conte ts. How did you managed to make your mnaked in front of the camera?

AH: It did not come naturally, but there was precisely a strong need to do so. There was always a distanrelations even though we live under the same roof. To make photographs with her without clothes is a metaphtalking face-to-face and opening up to each other. I wanted to do it deliberately and physically in a visual lsee my mother as a person, an individual woman, not just her role as a mother. By taking away our clothes, wwomen nding our connections.

Mother and I rarely touch each other. It is not a common practice in our Chinese culture to have bodily touch.my mother gets older and needs help, she would feel uneasy when I hold her hand to go across the streets. Stry to withdraw her hand from mine. Engaging my mother in the whole process of making the photographforms, allows her to understand my desire for closer contact and connection. So when I hugged my mother, I wto feel the connection and she understood it. I wanted to say that we are two human beings hugging each othis all right to do so. It was the most moving moment.

KOW: How did this process of working with your mother in your art in uence you?

AH: I learned there are meanings and wisdom in the mundane and everyday life and they formed the signi cant sourcesof ideas in my art practice.

singirl online project Valentine Willie Fine Art, The Air-conditioned Recession: A Singapore Survey3, 2009(Photo: Amanda Heng)


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I learn to appreciate the hidden strength in my mother. She had no education and worked all her life taking care ofothers. From very young age she looked after her siblings when her parents worked in the farm. She survived thecruelties of the Japanese War. After her marriage, she took care of my fathers parents and his siblings, as it was myfathers duty as the rst son in the extended family. She also raised nine children of her own with little support, as lifewas dif cult after the war. When all Chinese dialects were barred in the name of nation building, she lost her forms ofcommunication, entertainment and mobility. She always showed strength in her quiet way and persisted in life despitethe dif cult time.

I was inspired how she makes the best of the very little things she had in life and nd simple pleasure in living. Knowingmy mother becomes a necessary process of nding my own identity and values. It made me understand that the manythings I enjoyed and took for granted today, were made available for me because of the sacri ces and hard workscontributed by her and her generation. I feel the need to listen to their stories. They were never taught in schools. Ilearned that memory and history have to be re-addressed critically, especially in the forming of new beliefs and valuesin our contemporary living.

KOW: If Another Woman is about your concern to yourself and the person closest to you, in your other works, like Letschat, you have e panded you engagement to people you dont know. Why are those people living in the HDB housesso important to you?

AH: The center of my works is always about people, relationships and communications. It starts with me questioningwho I am, how do relate to my environment and to the people in this environment? Lets chat is about communication.It addresses the way of living we have lost in Singapore. When I was growing up, most people live in villages and wealways did things together, like plucking bean sprouts. Our living environment was open and spacious. And we wereused to having neighbours drop by anytime to chat and gossip. Sometime they brought food, shared their problems andexchanged news and information. When we moved from the village to the HDB ats, my mother lost all the connectionsshe had in the village. It was a drastic change for her.

When I started making work with my mother, I noticed she would meet with some women folks at the void deck of myblock every morning after her round of market. They would have tea, chat and share their chores like the old days. I wasfascinated how mother re-established her social-network in the strange and new environment, how she was determinedto seek continuity and meaning in life through the simple and mundane activities. This touches me tremendously. Ilearned to appreciate and respect the need to repeat the conventional, the past and memories, in order to live and to

nd the pleasure of living.

Lets chat is partly nostalgic. The image of women folks in the neighbourhood meet and chat at the void deck, remindedme of things we used to do together in the old days. The work presented was a 7 days event at The Substation. I setup a space with tables, chairs and lots of beans sprouts, and invited viewers to have tea together, to chat and pluck beans sprouts. The work had also traveled overseas and staged in different spaces including shopping malls and realwet markets. The idea was to make a space for e periencing the old everyday activities in an urban conte t. By bringingart into the real life situations, I urged for a rethink about changes we made in the name of progress and some of thevalues we hold today.

KOW: So you use installation, performance, networking and events to engage art into life and also use art to addressand comment on different social issues. What project are you working on now?

AH: I have started an on-line art project called Singirl and it was e hibited at the Valentine Willie Gallery last year.2Singirl refers to the Singapore girls, the world famous air stewardesses of the Singapore Airlines. Singapore Airlineswas founded after Singapores separation from Malaysia. The Singapore girls image was designed by the Frenchimage designer, Pierre Balmain. He presented an image of a gentle, smiling and mystery Singapore girl in her e oticsarong kebaya from the tropical island in Asia. And the Singapore girl has become the well-known marketing image forSingapore ever since. I made an intervention by putting on the signature sarong kebaya designed for the Singapore girl,and took the persona of the Singapore girl in my work. It has since been developed into an on going project to makeenquiries on the many issues of representation, gender politics, colonization and identity. The Singirl on-line projectcalls for women of all age, races, colors and sizes to join the Singirl community with the aim of forming a contingent of

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100 Singirls to participate in the National Day Parade on 9th August, when Singapore celebratesits independence day.

Singirl has also been exhibited in installation, prints and as objects. She has rst performed in thetheatre production A woman on the tree in the hill , directed by Ivan Heng of Wild Rice TheatreCompany in 2000. And she was also the appointed air- hostess in another art project, the travelagency called Worthy Tour Co (S) Pte Ltd , that leads viewers to a discovery tour to some of theSingapore artifacts that were relocated overseas. The installation performance was presented atthe inaugural Singapore Biennale in 2006.

Notes:Kaimei Olsson Wang was born in Inner Mongolia, China, studied in Beijing and lived in Europe for many years before she relocated herself inSingapore three years ago. With her unique transcultural background, she has been working extensively with cultural exchange writing and translatingseveral books on culture, art and childrens literature. She obtained her MA on contemporary art at the Sothebys Institute of Art in Singaporerecently. She writes artist reviews for SYCA Singapore Young Contemporary Artists and contributes art writings to art magazines in Singapore,Sweden and China.

1 WITAS was started in February 2000. http://www.witas.org/2 www.singirl.net 3

The Air Conditioned Recession: A Singapore Survey, 05 Aug 30 Aug 2009, Valentine Willie Fine Art Singapore http://www.vwfa.net/sg/exhibitionDetail.php?eid=113

Fabien Montmartin, Future of Imagination 5, Sculpture Square, Singapore, 2008 (Photo: FOI Archive)

Dariusz Fodczuk, Future of Imagination 5, Sculpture Square, Singapore, 2008 (Photo: FOI Archive)


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Ho Tzu Nyens practice ranges across lmmaking, painting, performance and writing,and investigates the forms, methods and languages of art; the relationship betweenthe still, the painted and the moving image; and the construction of history. His

lms expose the apparatus of cinema by mixing varied genres from music video todocumentary, creating highly arti cial sets, or by making cameras, crew and lighting akey part of the action. In the recent Asia Paci c Triennale in Brisbane, Ho will produceda new lm, Zarathustra: A Film for Everyone and No One 2009 draws on the writings ofGerman philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche which e plores the potential of humankindto overcome their environment as well as music N ietzsche inspired: Thus SpokeZarathustra by Richard Strauss, famously used by Stanley Kubrick in his 1968 lm2001: A Space Odyssey.

June Yap (JY): Thinking about performance I recall a particular performance that I stillnd pleasure in, Trisha Browns rather simple yet hypnot ic work Accumulation (1971).

Performance may essentially be characterised by the use of the body, a particularengaged relationship with audience or participants and ephemerality. What would be aperformance that has been particularly striking for you and what about it?

Ho Tzu Nyen (HTN): I think that the live performances that most fascinate me havealways been those characterised by a sense of being, together, in which bothperformer and audience share an intensi ed experiencing of the passing of time, asthough drawing a single breath. I would describe these e periences as embodied,trans-subjective and temporary, which I guess is a variation of your characterisationof performance as involving the use of the body, engaged relationship andephemerality. For me the most memorable performances are those in which I amsimultaneously absorbed in the unfolding of the event, while feeling the thicknessand the nitude of my own body. When this happens, the relationship between theperformer and myself melts into a kind of nebulousness in which a new mind promisesto arise in the horizon, like a strange ritual, which I am tempted to say, is Dionysianin the Nietzschean sense of the term. Finally, it is important that the performancecelebrates its temporary nature, and does not actually determine the coordinates ofthe new mind that is to come, as opposed to ideological and religious indoctrination.

Something intense but empty and I mean emptiness not in a negative and nihilisticsense, but as potentiality.

A striking recent e ample is my e perience of a live performance by the musicians,Sunn O))), which I will describe as post-minimalist heavy-metal. Actually, their latestalbum, Monoliths and Dimensions (2009) features a work by Richard Serra, so thisconnection is quite real. I would say that their performances are e tremely interestingfor me in a phenomenological way, particularly in relation to how we e periencesound. The e treme volume and low frequencies means that what they generate is nolonger music that one listens to, but is a sound that the entire body e periences asa giant trembling ear. By slowing down the rhythm of metal into a painful crawl, theymanage to intensify the density of the metal sound, while completely recon guringmy e perience of time and duration. At the same time, the stage was shrouded in athick veil of fog, while the performers are wrapped in robes, hence eliminating the kindof solitary ego-tripping that characterizes metal music of the 80s. In the meantime,

the set-up and the gestures plug both the performers and the audience into a kind of ritual, in which it is unce actly is the object of worship. Im not sure if discussing this performance in a contemporary art conte t isfair but I had personally learnt so much from this e perience, with regards to live presence, intensity, sourelationship to human perception and the body.

JY: I think were meant to talk about performance and performativity speci c to your work, but lets start with somebroader issues about performance and then progress towards your own practice from there. Performance is awith the body, both that of the performer and those for it is performed, with all its quirks, super cialities, problems andsurprises. In Singapore, as in societies with similar desire for social control, the body and performance wosomewhat unruly and potentially subversive (not to say that other forms and medium are not potentially subwell). Performance has had its own obstacles here with the media-fuelled controversy of the New Years Ev1993 that we inevitably nd ourselves returning to. A few issues emerge here: rstly about the body and social control;secondly, performance in Singapore and the burden of its history; and performance discourse which FOIs is an attempt to contribute to.

HTN: James Joyce famously wrote that, history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake, and Ithat the controversy of 1993 is like a bad wound that cannot heal. Its lasting damage is that it has been eand unimaginatively repeated in so performances that it has become a stale neurosis, while at the same timeffectively circumscribed the imagination of commentators and writers on performance art in Singapore seems to circle it, hence suppressing the possibility of new directions and perspectives. This moment has bnew master narrative.

I am not suggesting a kind of amnesia about the controversy of 1993, but it is important to place that min perspective, and move on to new engagements and e perimentations. At some level, I would even sayimpossible to forget that moment, because the same system of control from 1993 continues today to inscribinto our esh and our nervous systems, though it does so with new techniques and disguises. Dealing with its presentmanifestation is perhaps the best way that we can continue to engage with that ghost from 1993.

JY: Performance, especially in the case of performance art, is fraught with challenges - audience participreaction, permissions (in the case of Singapore), interpretation and e hibition, not to mention the inadvune pected accidents or incidences during the performance. The risk involved in performance is matched ohand by its possibilities for direct social engagement. On the notion of risk, well move on to your works, starKing Lear Project (2008) your rst large-scale theatre production that was a commission by the Singapore Arts Festivaland the Kunstenfestivaldesarts and presented at the National Flemish Theatre in Brussels and at the Dramin Singapore, and that is a clear case of performance, in this case theatrical, but in the work you have intenincorporated unscripted performance into the production. Prior to The King Lear Project of course there wasThe Avoidance of Love (2007) that you developed for the Esplanades Sparks programme. How did these twcome about, how were they developed and how did they work, or did not?

HTN: One of the side-effects of the controversy of 1993 has been its framing of performance art in Singlimited, and potentially unhealthy way. Terms such as audience participation, permissions, accidentsengagement are the fall-out from controversy of 1993. And these terms can blind us from particularitiedreaming of new e periments. To be honest, I seriously question if performance in Singapore does indeespecial possibilities for social engagement. It is inaccurate or simply unfair to project a martyr/messiah comperformance art and artists simply because the form was once the object of persecution.

As for my own experiments in theatre making, they were borne out of my interest rst and foremost in the texts of KingLear attributed to Shakespeare. The King Lear Project (2008) an its prototype King Lear The Avoidance of were really attempts to put on stage the disembodied voices of critical essays written about King Lear. The oimpetus I had was my own obsession with awkwardness, self-consciousness and theatricality, and some of themes that the American philosopher Stanley Cavell have woven into his magni cent reading of King Lear in his essayThe Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear. Finally, I was also very curious about the theatre scene in Sterms of its key players such as the actors and the crew, because what I have seen of Singaporean theatre uninteresting, I wanted to nd a way to engage with it, to nd a way of perhaps understanding it from the inside, and

a nervous systemInterview with Ho Tzu Nyen by June Yap

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hopefully to gain a better appreciation of it s practice. Part of this process nding a way for the actors and the crew tobe as uncomfortable as I was, so that we can all start out equal, for this new adventure.

This is one of the reasons why the performance had large chunks of unscripted material - so that the actors cannot slideinto their usual modes on stage, and the resulting moments of awkwardness are for me, precious slices of realism. Ishould perhaps also add that even the scripted parts were composed entirely of pastiches of various academic te tson King Lear, and hence impossible for the actors to naturalise they cannot slip into the usual actors formulas fordramatising. In this way, the spoken language and the bodies of the actors are always in tension. It is like a montagebetween text and esh. To make things more interesting, we did three different performances over three days, so thatthe crew and the cast cannot familiarise themselves. For me, it is only in the throes of awkwardness that a particularsense of realism can emerge. The performances turned out to be interesting for me, though of course they offendedsome people from the theatre scene who think they have some hold on how theatre should be like. Of course I recognisethat the performances were not perfect and should be open to critique, but I believe criticism rst needs to perceive thespeci c intentions of the work of art before it can proceed, and not blindly apply old and tired, formulas.

JY: Performance is particularly amenable to media, not just in terms of historical documentation of the performanceitself, but in using media as part of its presentation and continuing discussion. Starting with the idea of documentation,The Bohemian Rhapsody Project (2006) is arguably a documentation of an audition that becomes presented as a videowork. In a similar vein Zarathustra: A Film for Everyone and No One (2009) is also a performative production, as processof the nal work is through the deliberate engage ment with a student body as part of their academic curriculum. Asidefrom the nal work in video form, could you talk a bit about the larger performative framework you were attempting toorchestrate?

HTN: A number of the projects I produce are perhaps performances that no longer go by that name, or form. TheBohemian Rhapsody Project (2006) was really a full-blown theatrical production that disguised itself as an audition inthe former Supreme Courtroom, and orchestrated accordingly to the perspectives of 3 cameras so that it will eventuallyexist as a lm. The Bohemian Rhapsody Project was a kind of ritual, in which the process of the audition was meantto double the legal proceedings that once unfolded in that space. The judgement of the Director and the effects on the

esh of the audition participants, was a way to summon the ghosts of those put to death by our legal system in thatvery place.

I would say that with each new work, I have become more interested in crafting the process of production to a pointwhere it becomes ritualistic in form. This is especially true of Zarathustra: A Film for Everyone and No One (2009). Bythe way, thank you for the new catchphrase performative production which is a really succinct way of e pressingits spirit!

Basically what we tried to do was to start a new course in LASALLE College of the Arts, for students from lm, acting,musical theatre, visual arts and music to participate in. The te t on which the project is based on is Nietzsches ThusSpoke Zarathustra A Book for All and None (1883-5), which is a slow and dense book full of repetitions, passagesof unending tirades, and also punctuated by moments of beauty. It is clumsy, but it also possesses a form of grace thatonly an imperfect animal is capable. As the curator Russell Storer describes, Zarathustra is a beautiful disaster. Assuch it is a book that I feel very close to, not only in terms of its ideas, but also its form and its rhythm, which resonatesa lot with my own nervous system. The lmic adaptation is basically a wordless compression of Nietzsches narrativeinto a dynamic physical drama of weight and lightness, slowness and speed, disease and health.

Nietzsches Zarathustra was also a book about pedagogy and its failures, so it seemed interesting for me to locate theproject entirely within the milieu of a school, in order that that its production p rocess could double this aspect of thenarrative. This was also a way to engage with the art education system in Singapore, which I think has really not beenthe most successful. The course was to be structured around a month of theoretical lessons, in which the main purposewas to enable the students to understand the philosophical conte t of Zarathustra, and to spread Nietzschean ideas aprocess perhaps always doomed to failure. This would be followed by another month of workshops in which some ofmy professional collaborators were invited to do exercises with the stude nts. This would culminate in the lm, which wasacted out by the students, and lmed with their help. Finally, students would also score the lm. I would say that thewhole process of engaging with the institution plagued by administrative and bureaucratic inef ciency was the most

trying part of the project, though we also met a number of staff and students whose enthusiasm gave us muand hope. The school was a microcosm of the world, while I tried my best to play Zarathustra, though I thinkoften little more than a buffoon like the character in Zarathustras book known as Zarathustras Ape, who double or imitation of Zarathustra, and who went around disseminating distortions of his teachings.

For me, one of the most interesting aspects of lm and theatre making is that the process is always already a communalone. However, in most Singaporean lms, the lmmaking process is often subsumed to utilitarian anxieties, whereinterns, volunteers and professionals alike are used only as means to create the nished product. So a project likeZarathustra, or King Lear is meant as a way to slow down the process of production, and to open it up to discuthat everyone involved understands where the project comes from, and can agree or disagree with the prinwhich it is made.

For the lmic adaptation of Zarathustra, I tried to make the actual process of lming as complicated as possible. It wasdone in a single take, with hundreds of cues for the camera, the lights, the actors and the art department. Of cowas done for an aesthetic purpose, but it was also meant in to unfold as a collective ritual one that demandeconcentration from everyone on set at every moment of the shoot. The collective sense of being, togethermoment in time, as opposed to the mundane being together in space, is something of spiritual importance fo

JY: As you have brie y touched upon, performance has also become an analytical framework for practices other thanperformance art itself. In the case of your work, the performance of history and two works come to mindthe idea of re-enactment: Utama - Every Name in History is I (2003) - about the legend of Sang Nila Utam

4: Episodes of Singapore Art (2005) attempting to chart a Singaporean art history from pioneer NanCheong Soo Pieng to contemporary post-conceptual art by Lim Tzay Cheun. How were these works differenperformance and the investigation of performance for you?

HTN: I think that your question opens up the term performance in a way that is useful and crucial. It bringsan interesting book by Peter Sloterdijk called Thinker on Stage: Nietzsches Materialism. Amongst other thinforegrounds the dramaturgical dimensions of Nietzches modus operandi which is precisely what made himof an outsider, because he saw the eld of discourse not as some eternal search for truth in the vacuum of objectivity,but rather as a down and dirty battleground between active and reactive forces. Anyone who has read Nietzsthe rhetorical force of his writings, as well as the profound power of his sarcasm, because for him, critique wimpersonal game between gentlemen. Behind every philosophical idea is a physiology, and the stakes of philohealth and sickness, vitality and hatred of life. I would say that for me, the most productive dimension of thdoing performances is that it encourages the perception of ones playing eld in a dramaturgical way. To attack an ideaor a set of discourse requires one to sense the underlying psychic investments, and also the kind of bad conscis shielded from rational communication.

In relation to Utama and 4 x 4, I would say that both are really works in which I wanted to nd a way to embody thesehistorical and art historical discourses, to give them esh and blood, and then subject them to all the awkwardness,the failings and also the grace of mortality. The very act of re-enacting these discourses as art frees theme pectations of truth-speaking. After all, to make art is essentially to subscribe to what Gilles Deleuze wopowers of the false, for creation is essentially the production of the new, for which no criteria of evaluationhence the police test of the true and the false is irrelevant. Nevertheless, grim-faced historians, and academic often protect themselves against these works by labelling these works playful. Working with Utama, the pfounder of Singapore, was essentially a way to intervene into the writing of national history, which is profoRaf es and state oriented. But at the same time, one has to refute any possibility that Utama himself can become a solidand stable point of origin for would-be essentialists and their political agendas. So the mode of operation was dialectical and deconstructive at the same time it needed to produce information that challenges the stwhile destabilising itself at the same time.

I would say that my interest in performative process for making lms began with 4 x 4, which was made up of 4short lms that I made with working professionals from the media industry and disseminated on national television. Atthe same time, it was an attempt to engage and disrupt patterns in art historiography that were already in fin Singapore a place where these discourses are large institutionalised by organs of the state. The four lms were

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like a humid, sleepy and unending afternoon in Singapore, at once oppressive and comfortable.Olivier Pere, the artistic director of The Directors Fortnight, who presented the lm at Cannesdescribed it as a Unidenti able Filmic Object. For me, I am inclined to call it an attempt to make akind of ambient lm, the way Brian Eno conceives of his music for airports. But of course, manycritics of the lm seem to read these qualities as weaknesses, as defects, or as lacks, based ontheir own rather narrow expectations of what constitutes a lm.

Perhaps HERE did not conform to many peoples expectations of what a lm is, just as The KingLear Project may not have be in sync with received ideas about thea tre. But for me, lms, theatreor artworks that conform to e pectations too easily are most often than not, highly uninteresting.I should also add that subverting e pectations was never the main reason for producing theseworks. I just try to e press myself as forcefully as possibly, and the nature of each of these projectsdictates their forms of e pressions. Still, with HERE, and most of my other projects, I made somenew friends, and maybe alienated some old ones. So with every work, I realise that Im not totallyalone, but also that alliances are never permanent. I guess this is all good and natural things just go their ways.

JY: So what do we learn here?

HTN: To be honest, Im not sure. I guess weve tried to be as clear and honest about the intentions,processes and reception of the work that Ive done, in connection to an e panded notion ofperformativity. I wish I had something more productive and useful to say about performanceart speci cally, but Im afraid I dont. This is because it no longer makes sense for me to engagewith a work of art speci cally as a performance anymore. For me, works of art are extensionsof the makers nervous systems. The great works of art are those that connect forcefully withsingular and unique nervous systems. Sometimes, there are nervous systems that are out of syncwith a particular milieu, at a particular time. It doesnt mean that they are any less valid, nor dothey deserve special attention just because they are so. But as an artist, I think it is importantto preserve your own nervous system, rather than to be concerned about synchronization withyour milieu. Perhaps the syncing will never happen. Perhaps the syncing will take place in thefuture

Notes:June Yap is an independent curator and writer based in Singapore. She studied Art History a while back, then got caught up with organisingexhibitions, here, there and elsewhere, and has been trying to get back to r esearch ever since. Fairly recent exhibitions MATAHATI For Your Pleasure(Galeri Petronas, Malaysia), Bound for Glory: Wong Hoy Cheong (NUS Museum, Singapore), Paradies ist Anderswo (ifa Galleries, Germany).

perhaps not what you might call respectful interpretations of the four artworks that they revolved around. Instead theyappropriated the artworks from their authors, by pushing the interpretations of these works to a hallucinatory limit. And

nally, many of the formal strategies of 4 x 4 were constructed so that they can performatively intervene and subvert thenorms of reception for television programmes such as documentaries and life-style shows.

JY: More recently in EARTH [cinema] you worked with Japanese eld recordist Yasuhiro Morinaga and Italian droneguitarist Stefano Pilia in its presentation at the 66th Venice Film Festival (2009). The video itself is inspired by DarcyGrimaldo Grigsbys E tremities: Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France (2002) and is in a broad sense theperformance of painting, but then in the Venice performance this was dramatised in a different manner. Could youspeak of how EARTH came about and the development of that particular performance?

HTN: EARTH was rst presented as part of a live show with The Observatory in Invisible Room, a commission for theSingapore Arts Festival (2009). Subsequently, I made a soundtrack for it by sampling and distorting hard rock songsfrom my youth in a version called EARTH (((radio))), which was shown in the Singapore Art Show (2009). Following that,I began working with Yasuhiro Morinaga and Stefano Pilia for EARTH [cinema], which is the same lm accompaniedby a soundtrack made up of samplings of lms from different time and places, from Hollywood to Bollywood. This isthe version that we eventually presented at the Venice Film Festival. Yasuhiro usually works with recordings of spaceswithout adding any distortions to the sound, though of course the very act of recording the choice of microphones andplacement is always already a process of composition. Stefano is a guitarist who creates a very unique sound almostforce- elds that have shape. Experiencing Yasuhiro and Stefanos performance live was a great and physical experience,entirely different from the recorded soundtrack, which is always limited by the audio equipment and acoustics of thesite so often inadequate in galleries and museums, entirely ill equipped to handle audio-visual works of art.

At a different level, I am just really curious about all the different stuff that these gifted musicians can create with thesame image track it becomes a really educational process for me about all the ways in which the image can beopened up by sound. As a lm, EARTH, is similar to Zarathustra in that it is shot in a theatre, and is composed entirelyof long takes which average 12 minutes, with a large cast, and an immense amount of choreography and cues .Zarathustra was much more mobile and uid, and in many ways, is a testament to the magni cent athleticism of oursteadicam operator, Joel San Juan. For me, EARTH was an exercise in the ampli cation of small movements withinan atmosphere in which time has slowed down. Under these conditions, where a lm is freed from the forward pullof the narrative, perception can take on a hallucinatory intensity, and discover powers that are eroded in our age ofspeed. In terms of its composition, EARTH was a videographic remi of many 18th Century French paintings discussedin Grigsbys fascinating book. This process of re-assembling the paintings doubles what the paintings themselvesdo to the human body, fragmenting them, penetrating them, and re-arranging them. But these eventually led meto another of my obsessions Caravaggio, one of the greatest re-assemblers of the human bodies, with his manypaintings of decapitation and penetration. Caravaggios paintings also inspired the harsh directional lighting schemeof the lm, which we employed as a way to further recon gure bodies. In many ways, you are quite spot on in callingit a performance of painting, as EARTH is indeed a fantasy of what happens when great gurative paintings, whichare so often compressions of narratives as a pregnant moment, is put back into the stream of time. The e tremetechnical dif culty of shooting the lm having 50 actors in minimal movement, amidst rotting sh, with repetitions ofits seemingly endless long takes, was also a really hypnotic, and ritualistic e perience.

JY: To end lets move on to the work HERE (2009) that as a lm deals with ambiguity and the attendant possibilities forfailure, awkwardness, an ieties, which we seem to have gradually been shifting towards, and which I think surfacednot only within the lm itself but I suspect also its reception. Like your earlier works there is an element of subvertingexpectations for completion, clarity, and perhaps entertainment, in lieu of complication and complicity that de es thesterility of an easy and familiar pedagogical approach.

HTN: I think a lot of the commentators on HERE simply projected their own criteria of what a lmic object should orshould not be. For example, there are the rather tiresome comments that t he lm was slow, and did not possess adynamic narrative, which is again, hard for me to answer, because slowness and sleepiness are sensations, like anyothers like pleasure, like titillation, worthy of being af rmed and expressed in art. HERE was for me, ultimately a directe pression in sound, image and rhythm, of my own sensations growing up and living in Singapore. It is a tone, morethan a narrative, and it was constructed to belong to no genre, to obey no cinematic laws, and to go precisely nowhere,

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Gwendoline Robin, Future of Imagination 5, Sculpture Square, Singapore, 2008 (Photo: FOI Archive)


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Woon Tien Wei and Jennifer Teo initiated and run Post-Museum, an independentcultural and social space, which seeks to e amine contemporary life, promote thearts and connect people. 0pened in September 2007, it includes the Show Room(e hibition space), Food #03 (contemporary vegetarian caf ), Back Room (multi-purpose space), artists studios and of ces. Food #03 is a Veg Place and an a rt projectstarted by a group of creative people interested to change the world and serves atasty contemporary vegetarian menu and a signi cant part of the pro t goes to Post-Museum.

Lee Wen (LW): It has been more than 2 years since you started Post-museum andFood#3. I understand you see it more than that of running a gallery space andrestaurant, if i am not mistaken you see yourself as an artist and Post-museum andFood#03 are your works of art, almost like a durational performance. How do youreconcile that?

Woon Tien Wei (WTW): Just to clarify, Post-Museum is not my artwork. I see Post-Museum as an entity which aims to create an independent cultural space to provide aplatform to work with different cultural producers to make art and culture relevant tocontemporary life in Singapore. So, I am just part of the Post-Museum team.

On the other hand, Food #03 is my artwork and it has the quality of a durationalperformance but it is not a performance piece. The entity Food #03 is a work of art.As you know, I dont make art works in any particular medium. My works are usuallyprojects and I enjoy that process of working with different people and see what comesout of that.

So there is not much for me to reconcile. Food #03 is an artwork and over the 2 years,it has become much more than that. In a way, the artwork (Food #03) has taken a lifeon its own and so it has taken different meanings and signi cance for all the differentpeople to e perience the work. This is what I love about this piece.

LW: The artist Gordon Matta-Clark, who died in 1978 at age 35, loved to cook, and co-founded a restaurant inSo-Ho in 1971 but they gave in before 3 years was up probably nding it hard to balance utopian artistic ideals with realbusiness demands. How is your project related to Gordon Matta-Clarks?

WTW: Food #03 is a development from Food #02, an artwork / performance created in 1999/2000 whreading B.A. Hon. Visual Art in London. For Food #02, I performed by cooking meals for students and lecturthe diners wait for their food, I discussed about art. Food #02 is part of a series of appropriation of artworfascinated me. In fact, I even made drawings of your yellow man journeys. It is a part of my appropriation sSo Clarks Food was one of the pieces, I appropriated.

Basically, I have only seen a few photographs, brief mentions in essays and a short lm about Clarks Food project. Sothere is not much information out there about Food but I am still drawn to it..When we started planning for Post-Museum, I wanted to make a work for Post-Museum. So, I thought whyan artwork in the form of a cafe / bar/ restaurant which is a social-enterprise and can be a source of revenue Museum (30% pro ts pledge).

It will be a hangout venue for like-minded individuals to mingle, platform for new & e citing ideas and aSo I revisited Food #02 because I wanted to create a work, which can compliment Post-Museum and alsosome of the ideas, which I am interested in like: Social Entrepreneurship, food, environment, social media, indetc.

Now that Food #03 is realized, whenever, I chanced upon documentation of Clarks Food, I feel a strange and connection.

LW: There has been various artists run spaces in Singapores recent past, in what different or unique way orPost-museum aspire to play or do you have any speci c focus or directions you a re steering towards? What are the mainobstacles you face and how do you cope?

WTW: Firstly, Post-Museum is not an artist run space. It is an independent cultural space where differenproducers present their programmes and projects. I am interested in a very e panded notion of culture and bthat we work with people from many elds therefore it is not only art and art exhibitions.

Our activities cover many areas including Art, Design, Architecture and work by NGOs or Civil Society iprogrammes include Local and International E hibitions, Residency Programmes for Local and InternatioTalks by Local and International Talents, Workshops and Classes, Community Projects, Research and Publis

For me, I believe that art and culture is an important and relevant aspect of contemporary life and as Post-M

really want to steer our programming, projects and initiatives towards that.LW: Post-museum was initiated by the curatorial team formerly from p-10 (as stated in your website), has thiover time. How do you plan your programs? Do you have any plans for the future?

WTW: p-10 initiated Post-Museum and contributed with the planning and realization of the project. Since thTeo runs and manages Post-Museum. While, I have been operating Food #03. Post-Museum comes from a veidea and that is to have an open independent space for a community of cultural producers from all elds to share thisspace through presenting their programmes, share studios, etc.

So it is important for everyone who believes in that to share resources and responsibilities. Post-Museum is nus but a space to be shared with the community. I see myself more like a custodian of Post-Museum. So the hand over Post-Museum to a new team who will be custodians of the place within 5 years.

LW: Besides being a vegetarian restaurant Food#03 had been the venue for various events as well. How did

a very exPanded notion of cuLtureInterview with Woon Tien Wei by Lee Wen

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Food #03 , 2009(Photo: Woon Tien Wei)


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about and do you see it changing over time?

WTW: Food #03 has been a meeting point for various events. For e ample, it has been a venue for Green Drinks,a monthly meet-up of Environmentalist. Also, it is a monthly meet up venue for SinQsa, Singapore Queer StraightAlliance.

We organize mystery dinners where we bring interesting people from different elds so that they can network and meetwith other interesting people. I nd that people from different elds dont get much chance to get together in general.I believe that it is important to have people dialogue and learn about each other and not just focus in their own area ore pertise.

Other than that, Food #03 initiated The Soup Kitchen Project where volunteers will cook and distribute food to the needyaround Little India area on our off days. That has been going on for a year now and the core team volunteers run theproject.

In a way, Food #03 is like a P2P (Peer 2 Peer) machine. Kind of Facebook Groups materialized in the physical world. AndI think that is important. We can all show our beliefs by clicking on the cause apps, etc. But I think it is equally importantto meet face to face to make something physical.

LW: Your location is a notorious and sleazy corner of Singapore. Has there been any dif cult incident or are there anyinteresting stories you like to share?

WTW: We are at the edge of an old red light district. But thats just one aspect of it. Rowell Road is full of characters andthey come from all different walks of life. I really like that. This is the only cultural space that serves so many differenttypes of people. I like this potential and reaching a wider spectrum of audiences. So the Rowellians (people aroundRowell) include the syndicate, which runs the red-light operations, HDB residents (Singaporean and PRs), the workingladies (various nationalities), migrant worker community, tourists...We are in smack in the middle of this! When I say allkinds of people visit our e hibitions, it is true. From what I observe, Rowellians love colourful painting and installations.

There are too many stories and short of giving a dramatic one which happens only once since our e istence. I muchprefer to document every thing that happens at Post-Museum and Food #03. But for this interview, I will list some thingsthat happened. 1 ght, 1 petty quarrel over who broke a table, which involved the police, 1 auntie who gave me 2 garlicwrapped with red paper for good fortune and comes with 4-D tips....

I am working on comics and songs to document these stories and characters. Or you can check it out online: http:// food03.blogspot.com/ or http://www.food03.sg where it will be published later this year.

Lastly, everyday sure got drama. I would invite everyone to visit us and join the d rama. Especially if you are good actor ordancer and most importantly, you believe in having an independent cultural space on Rowell Road and in Singapore.

LW: You were invited to participate in the Fourth Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale1 last September. What did you presentthere and how was the e perience there? WTW: Jennifer Teo and myself presented a project as Post-Museum and it was a project called Really Really Free MarketFukuoka: Heart to Heart

Basically, we worked with Post-Museum supporting team (Tabihito Fujihara, Geirei Kim, Nane Koituska, Rika Kojima,Minna Matumoto, Akiyo Nakamura, Mami Uramoto with Geikou Festival representatives, guided by Prof. Keiyo Fujihara)and the local community in Fukuoka. The project was to organize the Fukuoka Really Really Free Market during Fukuoka Triennale 2009. The Really ReallyFree Market Fukuoka project will see us carve out spaces / zones where a utopian marketplace based on an alternativegift economy will be created.

Really Really Free Market Fukuoka space and participants are informed of the followingguidelines:1. Nothing is sold or e changed within this space.2. Public is encouraged to have a giving, sharing and caring heart.3. Everyone is free to participate and participants should organise amongst themselves.

Through Really Really Free Market Fukuoka, we wanted to e plore new alternatives to the e istingeconomy. It will be a celebration of the value of giving and sharing, as the participants meet otherswho share those ideals and we e hibit and show to the public there can be alternatives and youare not alone. Our small utopia will remind people of community and bring some hope to thecurrent gloomy economic outlook.

Really Really Free Market Fukuoka was presented in FAAM and various outdoor venues through aseries of events, documentations and workshops.

The Really Really Free Market is a global movement, which began as an anti-capitalist movement inUSA. Post-Museum started Really Really Free Market Singapore and has hosted it since February2009. The e perience was amazing as the project was very well received. But I am very happywith it because the Really Really Free Market Fukuoka continues as the core teams own projectand initiative after the Triennale.

Notes:1 Live and Let Live: Creators of Tomorrow, The 4th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (& various locations), Sep. 5 ~

Nov. 23, 2009.

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Fukuoka Really Really Free Market: Heart to Heart , 2009(Photo: Post-Museum)


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In these notes on collective performance I would like to outline what I see as some of its basic compositionalcharacteristics. First I would like to e clude from this subject any virtual collective performance, realizedthrough simultaneous connections over the internet, since we are here addressing a physical presence.This is also the case with a video p resenting a number of people and towards which a performance artistinteracts. The rst would in my opinion rather be categorized as net art, and the second a performancerealized by an individual artist. A collective performance have per se to involve the physical presence of more than one person, and maybethe most usual performance is that of two people realizing the work as a duo. But a collective performancecan of course include many more people. Which is the case for instance with Black Market International as

well as with the Estonian group Non-Grata. If the number of participants in a collective performance naturally is of crucial importance, so is the roleof the person involved in the work. It could be as a creator of his or her own actions, or a person who isinstructed by the conceiver how to proceed in the work and what actions to realize, or as a member ofthe audience participating in the work through instructions and/or dialogue and without whom the work wouldnt e ist.

Another signi cant characteristic in a collective performance is that of the action and its image, it canbe a static or a semi-static action, a sequence of actions, or a multitude of simultaneous actions. Theimportance here is what kind of structural image is produced: static, sequenced or simultaneous. A fourth fundamental quality in a collective performance concerns the character of the action betweenthe people involved in a collective performance, i.e. the degree of interaction or non-interaction betweenthe persons. And of course, a crucial compositional part is how the space is used, i.e. if the set up is frontal or if it isa realized in an encircled or even in an open space, in relation to the audience. Encircled meaning thatthe audience can walk around the work, and open signifying that they are integrated in space with thoserealizing it. We can so distinguish ve basic qualities in the composition of a collective performance work, i.e. the

number of participants, their role, the structure of the action, the degree of interaction between theparticipants and if the performance is realized in a frontal, encircled or open space. All these parameterscould be said to constitute the fundamental parts in the compositional structure of a collective work ofperformance art. Beside these compositional parts in the structure of a collective performance, there are, of course, otherqualities, which has to be taken into account in the analysis of the work. Like, the used objects, materials,media, gestures, concepts, not to mention historical references, reproduction of own, or re-enactment ofother artists, works.

NumberIn most performances involving two persons there is a dialogue, visual, verbal, emotional or other. It hasto be a dialogue since there are two persons, whether one is silent and the other is speaking or, one ismoving and the other is not. It can be rehearsed, or semi-rehearsed, it might also be based on completespontaneity. But it is always a dialogue with a rather simple formal composition. Much like that of a

some notes on coLLective Performanceby Jonas Stampe

performance realized by an individual artist. However, it usually involves an interaction, although simpli ed. Of course,this doesnt mean that it is not ef cient, but it cant go beyond the notion of what I would describe as an apprehendedimage in the reception of the perceiver, i.e. an image or images that the viewer can control visually. I bethe same goes for a performance realized by three people. i.e. that the viewer receives a number of imagehierarchic discursive way where you can read the work, as a series of images, a sequence, or for that matterdistinct actions. Actions or images, simultaneous or not, but which you can apprehend as a viewer. The interanecessity less complex in its structure than a performance created by eleven or fteen artists or for that matter thirty. Toapprehend a collective performance, is however not only a question about the number of people participatinof their function and role, of the structure of their action, and of their interaction and how the performance ispace, frontal, encircled or open. FunctionThe role or the function of the persons participating in a collective performance can be the conceiver and his or her own actions, or one who is instructed what to do, or a participating member of the audience who fpre-conditions set by the artist. We can say that these are the three basic roles of people being a part in a coperformance. The rst is usually made up of artists, like Black Market International or Non-Grata. Where all the participants are artists,belong to a collective, usually knowing each other and creating their actions freely. This kind of collective pcan of course involve different degrees of independence, i.e. from following a semi-scenographic script complete spontaneous independence. The second could be exempli ed by Yves Kleins famous work Anthropomtries de lEpoque bleue, which took place inMarch 1960 at the Galerie Internationale dart contemporain in Paris where he used through instruction nuparticipants as living brushes to paint on canvas.1 A different e ample could be Richard Martels work D ambulatiwhich he performed at our festival InfrAction S te in 2008, amongst other places. The people participatiparticular collective performances were instructed what to do, and how to do it. There can be even in thesesimprovisational part, despite the instructions. But it is in no way based on an artistic improvisation, or withintention. The third e ample of a collective performance is distinguished by the participation of one or several memaudience (here largely de ned from by-passers to those paying a ticket) being a part of the work. A historic example isPiero Manzonis Consumazione dellarte dinamica del pubblico divorare larte, which he realized in June 1the artist boils eggs, marks them with his ngerprint, and gives it to the audience to eat, or for that matter not to eat.2

There might be a mi of these kinds of roles of the participants in a collective performance, usually, howeverone of these three basic functional characteristics. InteractionA collective performance work do in most cases, but doesnt have to, engage in an interaction between the pain one way or another. Whether the actions are independent or separated from each other, the audience wilassociate the actions or the images created in a collective performance. The question here is what kind of inthe participants, artists or not, are engaged in. An unhierarchical interaction or a hierarchical, free and sponan instructed, an inclusive or an e clusive, a separated or an integrated one. The procedure of the interactionit is realized is much signi cant in regards to how the viewer apprehends and nally experiences it. Structure of ActionI would like to divide the structure of the action in a collective performance into the following categories, stastatic, sequenced actions, and a multitude of simultaneous actions. What concerns the rst two they are also used inindividual performances. Where the static action can be described as being either repeated or durational, clof a still image. The sequenced actions could be described as a hierarchic series of actions being realized by twith a start and an end. Like a lm or a text, with one action being followed by another, in dialogue or independently inregard to the other person(s) in the collective.

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Notes:1 The rst of this work was carried out on June 6 1958, in the publisher Robert Godets apartment at a dinner with some of his New Realist friends like the critic Pierre Restany who also coined the term.2 Piero Manzoni realized this one-to-one performance on June 21 1960, where the participants had the choice to either eat or not eat theegg with Manzonis thumbprint.3 I have seen several performances by the Black Market International and to experience the collective in a frontal space like at the festivalAsiatopia in December 2008, is in my opinion very different from that of an encircled space like at the Trouble festival in Bruxelles in 2006.4 I speci cally here refer to the live art work Noun Furan languge performance by La Fura dels Baus, performed in La Grande Halle de laVillette in Paris, October 15 1990.5 Isidore Isou. Fondements pour la transformation intgrale du thtre, Isidore Isou, 1952. Isou speaks here about a polylogue limpliquewhich in English could be translated as a tacit pylologue, i.e. an uninterrupted suite of autonomous and dense formulas, suf cient inthemselves. Although Isou uses this term, in reference to theater and in opposition to its traditional dialogue of reply, this notion can in myopinion be used in relation to the actions and the structure of actions of the Black Market International.

The notion of a multitude of simultaneous actions, sequenced or static, implies however, a certain number of participants.In the sense that the viewer cannot only see one, two or three actions or sequences of actions, but a multitude. A numberof static or sequenced ac

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