Inke Arns on Sat, 14 Nov 1998 16:44:12 +0100 |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
Syndicate: +8+7+3+1-1-5 |
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1998 01:07:13 +0200 From: belouin <belouin@ensba.fr> The non-profit association CHOOSE ONE, is pleased to inform you about the exhibition +8+7+3+1-1-5 (Taipei, Bangkok, Moscow, Paris, Dublin, New York) the participants: Claudia&Julia M�LLER-Nawajul BOONPUCKNAVIG-Michael SHOAWANASAI- Hsia-Fei CHANG-Fiona TAN-Magali CLAUDE-Rachel TOOMEY-Txuspo POYO-Natalia ZOUBOVICH-Richard HOECK/Heimo ZOBERNIG presented by Cécile Bourne The title +8+7+3+1-1-5 simply spells out time differences between six cities where this series of exhibitions will take place. Whether they live in Moscow, Paris or Bangkok, artists often find themselves travelling from one place to another. These movements have little to do with tourism. They are not a matter of choice, but the necessary consequence of expanding worldwide communication and exhibition opportunities which in turn affect many contemporary artists' thinking, as well as the content and reception of their work. This presentation aims to shine a fresh light on a wide range of approaches responding to tensions arising in contemporary life around the world. This show +8+7+3+1-1-5 includes a 60-minute video-programme, an extensive selection of short pieces, made by artists who currently rely on electronic media, to focus on fundamental issues relating to social behavior in a sometimes humourous, sometimes tragic mode. Often produced with a minimum of equipment, the narrative, experimental and performance works chosen for this presentation are not video-clips. Understandable in any language, they document short-moments of life to be shared or present animated visual statements. Be they real or fictive, distances in time and space are reflected in a complex array of cutural differences and idiosyncrasies. Accordingly, the ten selected artists have also been asked to come up a maximum of ten snapshots related to the cities where their project is to be shown. These virtual journeys provide subjective documentary views: at each venue every artist's contribution expands by another couple of images and draws a different response. The pictures may relate to whatever the artists will have read or heard about those cities from litterature, music, the media or any resources they consider relevant to their work and to the different audiences. In each city, the video-programme will be identical but new stills will be presented. Thus combined together, their significance and their mode of production will be enhanced by the different urban contexts and bring unexpected insights. +8+7+3+1-1-5 already took place in Moscow at the Malinki Manege (catalogue) in early July on the occasion of the Moscow Forum of Art Initiatives, The project is supported by Afaa, Association Francaise d'Action Artistique, Soros Center for Contemporary Art, Mondriaan Stichting. It will next be shown at Glassbox, Paris, opening November 19th, 1998; Glassbox is a non-profit space, run by artists and supported by the Drac, Direction Régionale des Affaires Culturelles and private sponsors. Project 304, Bangkok, March 99./Camera Obscura, San Casciano, near Rome, April 99./It Park Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan, May 99. Dates and locations in Dublin and New York are not confirmed yet. Nawajul BOONPUCKNAVIG b. 1965, lives and work in Bangkok "The Bugs", 1995, Video, black&white, 4mn. This simultaneously haunting and amusing short film chronicles a Kafka-esque noodle-catering commune with cockroaches. Expertly short with several disturbingly beautiful images of the boy and his bugs. Winner of the First Thai Short Film Festival last month it was produced when Nawajul's employers, Siam Studio, decided to encourage their staff to make their own short films. At that time Nawajul was working as a camera assistant . Now he is a film director at Bandits production house. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in political science from Ramkhamhaeng University, Nawajul went on to study film production at the University of California at Los Angeles and returned to Thailand to work for Bandits. C.B. Michael SHOAWANASAI b. 1964 in Thailand, lives and works in Chicago and Bangkok "Exotic 101", 1997, Video, colour, sound, 7mn. As a Thai-born artist, Michael Shoawanasai, addresses problems raised by the growing local sex-industry through the notion of exoticism. He brings together the dual point of view of his sexual identity and cultural background to construct the essential part of his video "Exotic 101", Instructions To Teach You How To Be Exotic In Seven Minutes. Easy to follow. I guarantee that the minutes that we'll spend together will give you the lesson of your life time". While he sees himself as a native Thai, Shaowanasai spent half of his life in the US where he felt he was perceived as an "exotic" person. He reinforces this notion by switching his focus and engaging "non-exotic" people to try and experience these feelings. The distinction between exoticism and non-exoticism continues to generate interesting interactions. Besides the night life, a quasi-freak-show scene depicts as a parallel how queer-culture is perceived in his country. In his videos, Shaowanasai examines the roles of various protagonists, go-go boys/clients, host/tourists, sellers/buyers. Meanwhile he also calls ordinary Thais to switch roles with Thai sex workers. Gridthiya Gaweewong, director of Project 304, Bangkok. Hsia-Fei CHANG b. 1973 in Taipei, lives in Bordeaux and Taipei "Mon frère chez le coiffeur"/"My Brother At The Haidresser's", 1997 Video, colour, sound, 5mn. In her work, this young Taiwanese artist -currently studying at the Bordeaux Art School in France- juxtaposes texts, sometimes fictional, sometimes real. Tales about distance or love also appear in the form of short videos often documenting selected episodes of her life: her brother at the hairdresser's, her dog's grooming session, her grandmother's birthday etc... For the exhibition You Talk/ I Listen in Taipei, these sequences where shown on a monitor placed on the floor and surrounded by synthetic flowers which evoked an experience of the sacred in everyday life such as the Taiwanese funerary cult of ancestors. With simple means, Hsia-Fei Chang brings us close to her own situation between East and West by sharing with us some moments of distance and proximity. C.B. Fiona TAN b. 1976 in Indonesia lives and works in Amsterdam "Totenklage/Lacrymosa", 1994/1997, Video, colour and black&white, audio, 4mn. As much impressive as it is disturbing, this video - a plea against forgetting - is dedicated to Ciro Lamarco, who died of AIDS on September 12th 1993. Over a period of two years while she worked in an Amsterdam cinema, Fiona collected scrap 35mm footage; this became the raw-material for "Totenklage/ Lacrymosa". The collecting process ran parallel to the fatal advance of Ciro's disease. The score for this video-piece, written and executed by Gregory Whitehead, is appropriately a requiem. There is a clear reversal in the development of this film: towards the end the images are upside down and the subtitles can no longer be read. All that is there is the trace of a vanishing , a fading away and decomposition of every conventional sense and meaning. Fiona engages herself in "Totenklage/ Lacrymosa" by giving a most individual experience a universal dimension.