diacritic | art and culture

Where You At

I was speaking to a friend and gallerist the other day who mentioned that during recent months she has not been able to bring as much work home due to an injury (she admitted to having smuggled on occassion work onto a USB key). Does anyone really have a distinction between home and office? I'm basically doing the same thing at any one of the three desks: the university, the fashion design company and my home. For me, the only place I can really relax is on the toilet or in a restaurant. The temptation is to whip out my laptop/pda to check if there's a wireless signal.  I wonder what desktops (the real ones, rather than the interfaces) say about people. Here's two of mine.

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The BBC has published a double combo on Vietnam. On the 21st, Vietnam censorship concern grows was followed the next day with Vietnam net users fear crackdown - the former for the printed word, the latter for the electronic. The first article reports the Ministry of Culture suspends two newspapers while "considering further measures against the (other) two newspapers, Thanh Nien and Tuoi Tre, which have become most vocal in criticising corruption and government failures." Yesterday, the BBC reported on measures currently being undertaken to police internet practices with quotes from Amnesty International's UK director, Kate Allen.

While Vietnam's control over information remains tightly controlled, anyone living here would have to agree that improvements have been made over the last years. For example, Haruki Murakami is now in Vietnamese translation. However, certain areas with concern to politics, religion and sex remain taboo and areas of extreme sensitivity and paranoia.

 As Vietnam prepares to enter the global community through its membership into the WTO it must take seriously its commitment to be an open and tolerant society. As a WTO member, its people must be competitive. To be so, Vietnam needs to have at its disposal as much information as possible to deal with rapidly changing conditions and trends. To be reluctant to embrace change runs counter to the desire for inclusion in an organization where change and exchange are central.

The government's commitment to tackle problems such as corruption through investigative reporting by the press has been a positive step. Not being able to deal with the criticism it invites has not been. -RST

Souces
BBC. Vietnam censorship concern grows
BBC. Vietnam net users fear crackdown

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Good art has always provoked the hard questions, least of which is an informed qualitative assessment of value (as opposed to the quantitative, read: how much did you say this is worth again?). A recent project makes no attempt to solve this dilemma, but may be in a tongue-in-cheek artwork in itself. Introducing the Art-O-Meter.

Seriously folks. If the criteria is the time someone stands in front of a work, video remains the champ of this battle of forms.

Information
We-Make-Money-Not-Art. Art-O-Meter

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Yesterday, the exhibition Xin Chao, My Darling! opened at the Stone & Water Supplemental Space in Anyang, Korea featuring the work of several young Vietnamese artists in connection with the Pace on Peace project. Curated by the Nguyen Nhu Huy, Kim Kang and Chan Yeng Park.

My contribution is a work-in-progress, or rather a sketch in video. Thanks to Vu Phuong Lien and Eun Yang Kim for their assistance with the Vietnamese and Korean translations. A big thanks to Huy, who had to wait until the day before the exhibition for me to finalize the video and upload the ISO for burning. The past week in Singapore had been ferocious, attending the Comparative Contemporaries conference by day, and drawing images in my hotel room at night.

S*H*A*M

S*H*A*M is the anagrammatic configuration of M*A*S*H, the long-running and popular American television series, based on the Richard Hooker novel MASH and the 1970 film of the same name, that premiered in 1972 and ran 251 episodes in 11 seasons. The show followed a team of doctors and support staff stationed at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Uijeongbu, Korea during the Korean War. As American viewers watched the film safely from televsions at home, its soldiers were fighting a prolonged and frustrating war abroad in Vietnam. Some have argued the show was an allegory to the mounting frustration and disillusionment the American public had towards the ongoing war.

It is through this allegory that this work-in-progress follows. I will use the M*A*S*H  theme song, "Suicide is Painless" and reconfiguring it to a set of new and archival images, some now iconic and others made specifically for the work, connecting America's violent engagements in Korea and Vietnam then to its policies now.

S*H*A*M: The word sham has mulitple meanings including a term to describe a person or situation that is false. As a colloquialism, it also refers to a person of perceived toughness. Both terms apply to America's war agressions in Korea and Vietnam and are more appropriate than M*A*S*H, which aims to save rather than take lives.

한국 전쟁 당시 의정부에 있는 4077번 군사 이동 병원에서 일하는 의사들과 병원 의료진들을 그린 미국의 텔레비전 시리즈물 <Mash>의 주제곡 <Suicide is Painless>(자살은 고통이 없다)와 한국전 당시의 영상을 병치시킨 R-Streitmatter-Tran의 <SHAM>은 전쟁의 참상을 담담하게 표현했지만 보는이에게 뜨거운 전율을 안겨주는 작품이다. <Mash>가 인기를 끌던 시기에도 베트남 전역에서는 전쟁과 학살이 자행되고 있었다. 

Information
+ Stone & Water Supplemental Space
+ CultureNews.Net

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Last September, I passed a young woman at La Salle University. Plainly dressed in white and black, she was Asian Amish. She was completely non-descript and would have passed for any college student in uniform but for the small black ring in her nose. Without saying, this was totally hot. I found my hand pinching the small of my nose. I returned to Saigon and waited for the image to dissapate. It didn't. So, a few days ago on a break from the conference, on a whim, I went into a body art shop at the Free Asia Plaza, laid down some cash and had my septum pierced. I'm impressionable.

The test was coming back to Vietnam. For the first time I managed to get through the immigration without a small hassle and there doesn't seem to be any problem at the University (yet). I've met design clients in meetings. So far so good. A friend from the US will be arriving with a retainer in the next weeks. I'm counting on needing at least another month before the hole is reliable. Because the horseshoe-shaped ring is small, black and centered, it sort of looks like a thin mustache from a distance. That kind of grosses me out.

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Tomorrow, for the third time in as many months I'll be returning to Singapore. This time, I hope to be able to digest and think about things. The Comparative Contemporaries conference organized by The Substation and the Asia Art Archive runs from October 10-13. From the The Substation site:

Comparative Contemporaries is a website anthology project. The project begins with five editors who have selected what they believe are ten key texts of art writing from Southeast Asia. These selections will then be published on the Asia Art Archive website (www.aaa.org.hk). The aim is to encourage a process of debating and developing an anthology, to establish a regional community engaged in discussion, rather than establish a canon of authors. Over time, new editors, and new “proto-anthologies” will be added to the website.

From 10 to 13 October, the Comparative Contemporaries Conference brings together over 40 writers, curators, artists from the region to discuss the website anthology project (the website itself will be launched in May 2007). The editors will preview their selections; the planning of the website will be discussed, as will topics in theory, history and translation. There will also be a workshop on the region’s engagement with the documenta 12 magazine project. 

 This time around, I hope to be able to see the Singapore Biennale. Last month, my five days were spent preparing the installations and attending the biennale's opening events and conferences. I had to return to Vietnam before the public opening on September 4th for my teaching at RMIT. I will, come hell or highwater, see all the exhibitions this time. If anyone needs to reach me in Singapore, you can call me on my mobile at: (+65) 9355.4519 or send along an email.

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The final report, Mediating the Mekong, for the Martell Contemporary Asian Art Research Grant 2005, has been completed and delivered to the Asia Art Archive and is now available for download from the AAA website. I would like to thank the Asia Art Archive and the artists, curators and arts organizations that have generously contributed their knowledge, advice and honest opinion to this report.

Just this week, artists from over 12 nations met in Ho Chi Minh City for the Performance Art Conference, including artists from Myanmar and Thailand. And on Sunday, Nicolas Mesterharm (Director of Meta.House in Phnom Penh) will arrive to discuss the InterCity project. The organization of international and trans-regional arts Mekong-based projects continues to expand - which makes it difficult to find a sense of completion in the report. It's like seeing a baby off to college.

To view/download the report (with images):
Asia Art Archive | Newsletter October 2006

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