(Author: Dayang Yraola; this article is for the panel discussion on Mar 29th in DAC, Taipei)
Introduction
Project Glocal Transi(en)t is first and foremost a circumstance-engineering project to bring creative people together in a committed conversation for the purpose of expounding their relationship or their connections. Residency is the circumstance. And collaborative art production is the conversation.
In this residency, the visiting artists are situated in conditions that are not familiar to them. It was hypothesized that unfamiliarity to the environment, situation and culture, would give them more opportunities to explore or more challenges to conquer.
Project Glocal Transi(en)t, a residency
Transi(en)t as the name suggests, is both transit or passing-by, and transient, which is to be in one place temporarily. Another term I thought would best describe Project Glocal Transi(en)t is lightning residency, wherein it happens in a flash. It is not intended to create fireworks or spectacle. Instead it is expected to have a sudden but undeniable effect.
Some might think 2 weeks to a month is just very short time for the artists to connect or to immerse. I would like to view it in a different angle, wherein the artist knew they only have a few days to immerse, so they maximize their time.
This might not be ideal for all artist, as a matter of fact, this might be cumbersome for some artists, especially those who take awhile to warm up and focus. But my thought is to challenge them to actually be productive despite and beyond their habitual limitations. It is a challenge and an opportunity.
Transi(en)t is also a nomad residency, which means that the residency does not exactly have a home.
Project Glocal’s home is in Manila, because it is where I came from. But Transi(en)t, the program’s home is in Taipei for March, Penang for August, and Manila from April to November.
Transi(en)t is also different in structure. Most residencies give their artists freedom to decide what they want to do when they get to the residency. Perhaps they will be asked what they want to focus on, but work plan is not required.
For Transi(en)t, artist’s engagement in the residency starts when they said yes to the invitation. Before they arrive, they already have a tentative work plan stated. This is necessary because they will be paired with a local counterpart, a collaborator—which is either a local artist or a local group.
Pairing is a curatorial decision. What it entails is to familiarize with the artists portfolio and find out who has practice that has the potential to connect. To sort out the constants and consider derivatives, that’s the long and short of it.
For Project Glocal Taipei, on the on-set, the present host, Digital Art Foundation, informed me that they are more inclined to have a performance at the end of the residency, rather than an exhibit or a workshop; and since it is the Digital Art Foundation, the artists has to work somehow with digital technology.
So the visiting artists selected were those whose work is performative and technology based art or new media art. Although this latter category is also a given since the theme of Project Glocal this year is art+technology, heritage & people.
When the visiting artists have been selected based on their work, they were again sifted to find out who would most benefit from a Taipei residency.
Duto Hardono because Taipei is one of sound media source in the region and that is his common medium; Mannet Villariba because of his inclination to explore digital technology to express prominent internationalization issues (technology and issue are both here); and Fairuz Sulaiman because of his curiosity to the universality of socio-cultural iconography (alas the Panda!).
For the local artists, portfolios of Chang Yung-Ta, Huang Chung-Ying and Lee Po-Ting shows that their previous works has the capacity to be expounded. By this I mean their previous work can be refitted, redeveloped, restaged, accommodating a new element, which might be introduced by the visiting partner.
Practice, Process, Project: Collaboration Essentials
Collaboration is not something new for Project Glocal. For fourth exhibit of Project Glocal 2012, there were 3 types of artists project – new, on-going and collaborative. Collaborations are between artists from different cities and production is remote from each other. The only time the artists are to meet (for this particular exhibit) is during installation.
[2] This photo is the collaborative work of Thai artists Kaowtoo Uncanny, Thosapol Boriboon, Jittagarn Kaewtingkoy and Filipino artist Mideo Cruz.
[3] Even the Thais leave apart from each other, one is from Khon Khen, the other from Bangkok, and another from Muang Phayao.
[4,5] Another collaborative project is by Anton del Castillo (Phils) and Jaffa Lam (HK).
[6,7] The other one between Mark Salvatus (Phils), Irma Lacorte (Phils) and Tang Ling-Nah (SG). During production, Mark was in Yokohama and Irma was in Los Banos.
When all these were happening, I was curating from airports. So we are strongly dependent of the Internet. It may seem like a careless decision. However, I would like to think of it as another challenge. There are things technology enables us to do. And while we are at it, let’s try how much of it can work to our advantage.
In these three projects, there were 3 types of processes:
[8] Kaowtoo, Thosapol, Jittagarn and Mideo developed a project from scratch. They all agreed first on the form. They have decided to do graffiti. Then they gave each one liberty to decide what they would draw or stencil. Putting the pieces together was decided during installation. It was like a puzzle project.
[mov] For the next one, Jaffa first built the travelling tree. After they discussed what the travelling tree is all about, Anton planned an excursion for “her”, for the tree, and filmed it. In other words, they collaborated by allowing Anton to react to Jaffa’s work.
[mov] For Mark, Irma and Ling-Nah, it was a combination of the first two. Mark’s work is actually ready made. It is a work he developed earlier in the year. Irma’s drawings were from the previous Project Glocal show in Manila, called Cityzening. And Ling-Nah’s performance is of course new. So it was a puzzle piece and an action-reaction work.
For the present projects, now here at Transi(en)t Taipei, the process is less complicated. The artists have the chance to get-to-know each other, to discuss their work several times and explore possibilities face-to-face.
Transi(en)t Projects
[9] Mannet Villariba and Lee Po-Ting
For this residency, Mannet who works with combination of anatomical technology and digital technology partners with Lee Po-Ting. This dynamic duo is a new media art curator’s dream. Both artists have conscious opinion on the role of technology in their art and their respective lives.
[10] For this project, the tandem agreed to explore the place of information, knowledge and imagination in what is the now and what could be—the present and the future. Both space-time measure were appraised as a perspective given and not necessarily a universal fact. Chance of linearity is key to this performance. What Po-ting did is to have sound files taken from Michio Kaku’s vlog expounding on his theory of future, to crawl on the wall and visual through representational sound waves.
Meanwhile, Mannet, is on a revolving stage designed by Po-ting. Mannet, used his raw movements to articulate the contents of Kaku’s vlog of how technology is woven to the projected future.
[11] Duto Hardono and Chang Yung-Ta
Duto and Yung-Ta will be working on sound files borrowed from the sound archives of National Taiwan Normal University. To use the shellac recordings of colonial Taiwan from NTNU is a fragment or a remnant of an original plan that was later set-aside by the artists.
Originally they plan to use audio samples from colonial Indonesia and colonial Taiwan. Time constrains however in availing materials from Indonesia made the artists decide to design another presentation that is more doable given their available resources. I thought taking this back step is a genuine humility in the part of the artists, which is very rare now a days.
So now, Duto will use analogue sound processing. Yung-Ta on the other hand will use digital signal processing.
[12] On one level, it is a conversation of technologies. More specifically it is a conversation of analogue and digital technology. According to the artists both medium has limitations and capability that are not available to the other. There are things analogue media can do that digital cannot, and vice-versa.
As an experience, it could be deemed as a sensorial exercise, wherein audience and artists are subjected to a dialogue that requires connection, listening, viewing using senses rather than articulating and perceiving literal message.
This is a type of conversation we do not always involve ourselves with, but somehow necessary. It reminds us that human, the body is one of the most sophisticated technology that creatives should explore.
[13] Fairuz Sulaiman and Huang Chung-Ying
Using Lin Giong(林強)’s song “Marching Forward”(向前走), Fairuz and Chung Ying worked on issues of moving. According to Chung Ying, this song talks about how the singer yearns to go to Taipei because he thinks it is a place where dreams can come true. It is a place of possibilities. In actuality, in Taiwan this moving from one’s province to Taipei is quite common. People move here to work or study. Some go back. Others stay.
By comparing their own experiences in moving, Fairuz and Chung-Ying, draped the question in a more personal backdrop, while hypothesizing that moving is usually motivated by the search for fertile ground where dreams have more potential to grow or flourish.
[14] Their conversation is represented in their presentation—a conversation employing multimedia montage. While Fairuz will work on the visual narration, Chung-Ying will be working on the audio narration.
Fairuz harvested still and moving images online and other live theatre devices.
Chung Ying on the other hand used her library of recorded sounds that contain environmental sounds and random interviews that she collected since 2008/9.
Articulating the same point at the same time is not really the focus of this collaboration. It is more a project presenting two opinions on the same issue. Points of coalescence are simply manifestations that despite difference in their origin and context things can be connected. Everything is somehow connected.
Summary
[15] As Project Glocal 2014: Transi(en)t Taipei comes to a close, I am happy to report that we did what we came here to do—to get to know creative people of Taipei and to engage them in a committed conversation. All artists, visiting and local, together and separately are not required to complete a project. What they are tasked to do is to find a ground fertile enough to plant a seed of creative association and hopefully lasting friendship. This is first and foremost the reason how Project Glocal can afford a lightning and a nomad residency.
At one point I felt we had to change course to give ourselves more chance to take in the current events in Taipei while we are here. But then again I realized that we are involved in it one way or another. We don’t have to literally involve ourselves in the protest. We have to be aware though that it is happening. To know what is happening and why it happened in the first place. Taking part, like taking sides is an option that should be left for individual participants of Project Glocal. I am not going to be dictatorial about it. It is imperative though that we are aware and reflective of the space we occupy at the moment.
I always emphasize that Project Glocal isn’t about igniting fireworks to burn a forest. It is not about defining what contemporary art is all about or what it is for. It is not to identify who is the best artist. It is a project that brings people together and places them in a circumstance where they can reflect on their lives as creatives. It is finding connection. It is building relationship. It is offering that the world is made of people who create art, and not an Art world who makes people.
Finally I would like to share a conversation I had with this good man, also a curator. Paraphrasing his question, he asked, “what do you think is our role here?” By us obviously he meant curators.
My answer was as usual simple. I think we are not a necessity. Artists’ will and can produce art even without us. But we can be useful in setting situations, in directing directions, in encouraging discourses, in imposing reflections. I know that that answer might cause me my job, a profession that I hold so dearly. But then again, that is a truth I believe.
In forging relationships of artists, we, the curators, could play a good role of matchmakers. But at the end of the day, it is the artists who will make the connection happen. It is them who are the main characters.
[16] On this note, I thank you all again for being here, No Man’s Land, DAF, FabLab Dynamics and the rest of DAC for hosting Project Glocal—Wen-Hao Huang, Rikey Cheng, Feng Hsin and Megan Lan, thank you. Chang Yung-Ta, Lee Po-Ting and Huang Chung-Ying for being involved in this project. To our new friends, The Cube Project Space, TamtamART Taipei, Outsider Factory, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Bamboo Curtain, thank you.
You are all invited to join us in Project Glocal Transi(en)t Penang in September to be hosted by Digital Art Media and finally Transi(en)t Manila in November to be hosted by 98B Art Collaboratory.
Again, maraming salamat at mabuhay!
