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Interview with Load Na Dito

This interview is conceived as a follow up to a residency undertaken in May 2019, when Load Na Dito (Mayumi Hirano and Mark Salvatus) visited Vancouver, together with their young son Yoji. The Pacific Crossings project is conceived to have long term growth, with relationships that unfold across time as well as distance. The hope is to build on mutual relationships, forms and modes of making, and common goals. Communicating together now offers a snapshot of how Load Na Dito (Mark and Mayumi and Yoji) are faring during the epidemic and subsequent lockdown of Manila, and through them reach into a community of other contemporary artists.
For context to readers less familiar with the Philippines, we begin with the note that the measures being implemented around the world to combat the spread of the COVID-19 disease have had severe impacts on daily life as it has been known in Metro Manila. In particular, individual mobility has been limited in the extreme by household ECQ (enhanced community quarantine) lockdown, which at the time of writing has been downgraded to general community quarantine, affecting the ability to move freely and gather outside of a home, as a community health measure. These strict protocols in the National Capital Region and other regional areas have had the necessary effect of slowing the spread of disease, yet the government response methods and tactics in the Philippines has instilled fear among many of a return to Martial Law. Tactics related to the management of health over the past four months have predominantly been shaped through the crude and hasty implementation of armed checkpoints limiting freedom of movement and relying heavily on punitive measures, police and military presence. Immediate enforcement and incarceration by aggressive police of this imposed quarantine and curfew, and the corresponding lack of meaningful resources directed toward the wellness of Filipino citizens leaves many in a precarious state without access to healthcare, public education, or social support, nor the means to provide for their own livelihoods. These limits to freedom correspond to a rise in human rights abuses that has become normalized in a country undertaking a perpetual war on the poor. Since the election of President Rodrigiuo Duterte in 2016, a so-called war on drugs has amounted to regular assassinations of vulnerable citizens, predominantly the poor, undertaken by police on behalf of the state. Elevated levels of state-sanctioned violence against drug users has, by some counts, resulted in the loss of lives in numbers reported between 16,000 and 27,000 at the time of writing. Voices of opposition are subject to coordinated smear campaigns, and journalistic freedoms are now under direct threat, as the government rushes to quell political adversaries, human rights advocates, or any coordinated questioning of the state. As quarantine measures now begin to be relaxed, this interview is conducted amid a community bearing the weight of state intimidation, enforced control and a destructive lack of infrastructure, including even basic transportation, to support the average Filipino.

LnD: We do want to comment on this introduction!: This context is very important for the readers and to make an overview of what is happening in the Philippines over the past months and PRD in power, we are unsure of the flow of the interview that can address the situation properly and safely, especially now that the anti-terror law that was recently passed.  We will be careful throughout in considering what is written and said. It’s a different reality here now.

 

 

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Between the Corpse and the Tree

 

1.

 

The concrete walls around me are painted in stale white. I’m sitting on a chair made of cheap wood banded with light metal. The metal parts are coated with glossy, black enamel paint.  The chair is chipped in various places that reveal the metal’s dull white-grey colour underneath. I lean heavily on the backrest and two of the chair’s feet rear up creakily from the floor. My right knee is folded on the wooden table in front of me and my chest. I turn right and look out a jalousie window. The glass panes are peppered with fine dust. My view is partly obscured by a mango tree’s branches thick with foliage. From the jalousie window I watch myself standing, slouched, behind a rusting beige gate. The gate’s height goes up to my collarbone. I watch myself peering over it to look out onto the street. I give the street slow, sweeping glances, left to right. I watch myself stare at two vehicles parked in front of the gate. To the right of these vehicles, I see one of my neighbors, a man of about seventy, walking up slowly from the right side of the street and then slowly come to pause on the sidewalk right across the gate. He stares up at the mango tree with a face pale with exhaustion. After several seconds, he drops his head and shambles towards his house in an excruciatingly slow pace. After the pale neighbor is gone, the street is unnervingly still. It has the feeling of a theatre play backdrop after all the actors have left. Silence is seeping into everything like a heavy grey miasma that muffles anything that it touches. I imagine this grey haze and it makes the linings of my lungs itch and the back of my throat taste of bile.

Dusk is sinking into the city like an immense, bruise-colored blanket. I rub my eyes with both hands. I look out again and feel a slight dismay at my blurred vision; my eyes adjust slowly in the fading light. I watch myself open the small door on the left side of the gate and shut it behind me with the latch sounding a small, clean click. With fists clenched, I stand on the sidewalk for a few moments and then begin to head east. A short walk in this direction will take me to small stores selling food and basic goods, a bakery, a moderately expensive hardware store, a barbershop. Walking further will take me to several grocery stores and a wet market. I think of the barber shop and remember that it has been years since I have gone there for a haircut. These days I cut my own hair because this avoids the awkward conversation with the barber on what kind of haircut I want. It always seemed like I had a vague idea of what I’d want for a haircut, but I’d forget what it was once I reached the barbershop. And so I’d say to the barber, to get it over with quickly as possible, It’s up to you. Just cut it short and make it quick. And he would shear everything off as quickly as he could so that he could get to his next customer. I’d always feel a mild regret while looking in the mirror as I brushed clumps of hair off my shoulders and hurriedly paid the barber with crumpled bills from my pocket, all the while thinking that I should have been more decisive about what my head should look like. When I got home, I’d take a look at my head again in a mirror and would see that beads of blood that formed around my shaved temples from the hurried but forceful strokes of the barber’s razor. While thinking about the barber, I lose sight of me. The last glimpses I catch of myself are through a sickly looking tree to the right of our gate. The tree has branches that are like gnarled, rheumatic fingers sprouting small purple leaves. I have known this tree since I was a child and have always thought it looked like a pale, withered old man standing stiff and crooked in the corner by the gate. The image of that pale old man stands silently beside me as I write this. His eyes are tightly shut and his hands are crushed into quaking fists, seemingly in great frustration or rage. Now out of sight, I imagine myself walking, making my way east. I am now passing the moderately expensive hardware store. I adjust my face and continue walking towards the grocery store and the wet market. I take a deep breath. Areas beyond the hardware store have begun to make me nervous. Clusters of faceless men in camouflage now set in these places. The other day I saw one of these camouflaged men shout threats of violence at a line of cowed people. I promptly lined up with the people while I nervously watched the men fingering their guns. I hope that the shouting never turns into shooting. (As I write this now, I know that eventually it will.) As I watched these faceless men shouting, the word dehumanizing came to mind.


[It comes to mind through your front door and leaves it ajar. It settles down on your couch with a relieved sigh and opens a newspaper. The way its face looks as it reads with the corner of its lips downturned, it seems to be smugly reveling in a recent achievement. It has entered your space with an ease, as if it has done this countless times before (maybe because it has.) It gracefully lifts its legs and places them on your low table, one leg on top of the other. It continues to read the newspaper with its eyes squinted, head tilted upward and lips still turned downward. Feeling nervous and confused, from a corner in the room you’re thinking, Who is that? And why are it’s feet so dirty? I don’t want it trailing dirt in here…But it will leave dirt. Staring closely, the dirt caked beneath its shoes seems to be a very deep maroon verging on black, rather than the simple brown of mud or soil. Just by looking at it you can somehow tell that the dark dirt will stain like blood on teeth. Now it’s reaching for your cup of coffee on the low table and sips it loudly and with pleasure. It savours the hot black liquid from your mug. Time passes. It feels like hours or possibly days or weeks. You can’t tell anymore — time has taken on a peculiar quality and has become slippery, like attempting to grasp a slick but scaly medium-sized fish thrashing in your hands.Finishing your coffee, it takes its feet off your table and folds its newspaper neatly and sets it squarely on the table. It opens its mouth wide, wider than you thought a mouth could (and should), and yawns deeply. But it doesn’t stand up to leave as you’re hoping it would. Around its feet, hidden by your low table, it picks up a suitcase made of leather, aged and tanned a deep brown from frequent use, from your floor and opens it on its lap. The two metal clasps on the suitcase open with simultaneous, satisfying clicks. It takes out a number of objects from its suitcase and lays them around your low table. To make more spaces for its things, it takes down your personal belongings from the table: a small green notebook, a stack of family photographs, a small marble turtle figurine, a square, jade-green paperweight sculpted in ceramic with a relief of stylized people who are holding each other together through their linking of arms, once given to you by your uncle. They may seem of small value at first glance, but each one is of great value to you. It tosses them down to the floor. that may seem of small value at first glance, but are of great value to you, and it tosses them down to the floor. You feel offended as your possessions are carelessly removed from their usual places but somehow don’t make a move to stop it. The marble turtle’s head snaps off as it lands neck first on the floor. Ah…They’re not supposed to be handled that way, you think meekly. It slowly turns its head to you, as if it has just noticed that you were there this whole time. Seemingly far from finished from unpacking its things, it looks at you with an eyebrow raised in mild surprise and then its eyes quickly and sharply narrow as they move over you. While it looks, you can’t help but squint and wince glancing toward the window to your right, to avoid its gaze. A sour drop of sweat painfully streaks down into your eye as you rigidly watch motes of dust floating in the yellow streaks of sunlight coming through the window. Its head quickly flicks back to the open suitcase on its lap, apparently finding something more worthwhile in the suitcase compared to the effort of regarding you. With its focus on whatever is still in the suitcase, it says to you with disconcerting unabashedness, You don’t mind. I’m staying here for a while — for a long while, as long as I’d like. Don’t know until when… And also, having some others over. They’ll settle in as I have. I know you don’t mind. No, you don’t mind — you don’t, no. They’ll make their way here soon enough, soon enough, soon.  As soon as the last syllable drops from its mouth, it seems to forget that you were there at all. You don’t matter at all it seems to be exclaiming just with its presence, the wordsit seems to be leaking inexorably from its being. You throw a nervous glance at the front door that’s still hanging ajar. Standing in your corner, you are sure of nothing apart from being unsure. You stand frozen and hapless, yet something inside you knows you should be showing an effort to address whatever is happening. You take a deep breath and you consider what to do. A considerable amount of time (you can’t tell anymore) passes while you think. Motes of dust continue to float lazily by the window.

As you stand there, a black, viscous substance, not unlike tar, blood or molasses, begins to flow and pool underneath your couch. Smug voices from the direction of the couch, rudely cut into your reverie, sounding like they come from mouths lined with razors: Good luck getting that stain out. Look! It’s spreading — What’s that pattern it’s making? Is that a tree or a house fire? A bruise blooming on flesh? A dry rattling lung? I can see someone — what is he doing — pleading? Reasoning? Oh…he might as well wish he was…]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the Author

Remaining anonymous for reasons of safety, an Unnamed Artist lives and works on the archipelago known as the Philippines where they regularly contribute to events and activities as an independent artist.

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Dispatches Screening

 ( online JULY 30 – AUG 13)

Artists: Alwin Reamillo, Danielle Madrid, Leslie DeChavez, Martin DeMesa, Sidney Valdez, Tanya Villanueva, Timmy Harn, Tekla Temoria, Ralph Barrientos

Lost Frames is a community-based initiative for viewing artists’ moving image in the Philippines, organized by a small group of artists in Manila who show short experimental video works. As an in-person event, Lost Frames encourages individuals to share their works and to talk about each other’s methods and ideas with regards to video as a medium. This online screening program presents a selection of artists’ moving images from the Philippines that have been included in past programs.

This screening program asks the community

 

 

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Load Na Dito

Load Na Dito is an artistic and research project by Mayumi Hirano and Mark Salvatus based in Manila, Philippines. Developed as a home made culture, currently located in Cubao, Quezon City, it uses any possible space as a site for knowledge sharing, inquiry and discussion. “Load na Dito” is a local top up system for cellphone credit, where you can load anywhere as long as you can see a sign “load na dito.”  Developing it as a model, the pair make projects in different locations—building new energies to have “load.”  Load Na Dito co-founders, researcher-curator Mayumi Hirano and artist-organizer Mark Salvatus, offered context of their practice working in the Philippines and within the wider Asian art community.

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Inti Guerrero

Inti Guerrero (b. 1983, Colombia) is The Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator of Latin American Art at Tate, London since 2016, and Artistic Director of Bellas Artes Projects, Manila since 2018. He was Chief Curator of the 38th EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial, Limerick (2018), Guest Curator of Dakar Biennale 2018 – La Biennale de l’Art africain contemporain-DAK’ART, Dakar (2018), and Artistic Director of TEOR/éTica, San Jose (2011-2014).

 As an independent curator he curated or co-curated the exhibitions: ‘Soil and Stones, Souls and Songs’ (touring at MCAD, Manila, Para Site, Hong Kong, and Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok, 2016-2017); ‘Afterwork’ (touring at Para Site, Hong Kong; and ILHAM, Kuala Lumpur, 2016-2017); ‘The World is Our Home. A Poem on Abstraction’‘, Para Site, Hong Kong (2015); ‘A Chronicle of Interventions‘, Tate Modern, London (2014); ‘A Transatlantic Affair. Josephine Baker and Le Corbusier’, Museum of Art of Rio-MAR in Rio de Janeiro (2014); ‘A Journal of the Plague Year’ (touring at Para Site, Hong Kong; The Cube, Taipei; Arko Art Center, Seoul; and Kadist Art Foundation and The Lab, San Francisco; 2013-2015); ‘The City of the Naked Man’, Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (2011); ‘Light Years. Cristina Lucas’ (touring at Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo, Madrid; Carrillo Gil Museum, Mexico City; and Museo Amparo, Puebla 2010-2011); ‘Flying Down to Earth’ (touring at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Vigo; and FRAC Lorraine, 2009-2010); ‘Eppur si Muove’, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino (2009).  

 

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Cosmin Costinas

Cosmin Costinas (b. 1982, Romania) is the Executive Director/Curator of Para Site, Hong Kong since 2011, and Artistic Director of Kathmandu Triennale 2020. He was a Guest Curator of Dakar Biennale 2018 – La Biennale de l’Art africain contemporain-DAK’ART, Dakar (2018), Guest Curator at the Dhaka Art Summit ’18 (2018); Co-curator of the 10th Shanghai Biennale (2014), Curator of BAK-basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht (2008-2011), Co-curator of the 1st Ural Industrial Biennial, Ekaterinburg (2010), and Editor of documenta 12 Magazines, documenta 12, Kassel (2005–2007).

 

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Para-Site HK

Para Site is Hong Kong’s leading contemporary art centre and one of the oldest and most activeindependent art institutions in Asia. It produces exhibitions, publications, discursive, andeducational projects aimed at forging a critical understanding of local and internationalphenomena in art and society.

Founded in early 1996 as an artist run space, Para Site was Hong Kong’s first exhibition–making institution of contemporary art and a crucial self–organised structure within the city’scivil society, during the uncertain period preceding its handover to Mainland China.Throughout the years, Para Site has grown into a contemporary art centre, engaged in a widearray of activities and collaborations with other art institutions, museums, and academicstructures in Hong Kong and the international landscape. In early 2015, Para Site moved togreatly increased premises, in North Point/Quarry Bay. Throughout its history, Para Site’sactivities have included a range of different formats, among which P/S magazine(1997–2006), a bilingual publication, which was Hong Kong’s first visual arts magazine and acentral platform for the development of art writing and of a discursive scene in the city and theCuratorial Training Programme (2007–2010). Since 2012, Para Site has been running anInternational Art Residency Programme and has been organizing an annual internationalconference. This is accompanied, starting from 2015, by a new educational format aimed attraining young curators and other art professionals. Para Site’s activities are made possible bythe generous support of its patrons, and grants from foundations and the Government of theHKSAR.

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Carol Yinghua Lu

Carol Yinghua Lu is an art critic and curator. She is a Ph.D. candidate in art history at the University of Melbourne and director of Beijing Inside-out Art Museum. She is a contributing editor at Frieze and is on the advisory board of The Exhibitionist. 

As a curatorial team, Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu have curated Liberation (2010); Little Movements: Self-practice in Contemporary Art I\II\III (2011, 2013, 2015); The 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale (Accidental Message: Art is Not a System, Not a World) (2012), From the Issue of Art to the Issue of Position: Echoes of Socialist Realism (2014), New Measurement and Qian Weikang: Two Case Studies in Early Chinese Conceptual Art (2015), Salon Salon: Fine Art Practices from 1972 to 1982 in Profile—A Beijing Perspective (2015) and Factories, Machines, and the Poet’s Words: Echoes of the Realities in Art (2019). Their ongoing practice of exhibition and publication making establishes organic connections between history and the contemporary, investigates and narrates historical realities from multiple perspectives. They intend to generate narratives of the subjectivity in Chinese art from a diversity of entry points, related closely to the intellectual tradition in China.

 

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Liu Ding

Liu Ding is a Beijing-based artist and curator. He has participated in international biennials such as 2015 Istanbul Biennial, 2015 Asia Pacific Triennial, 2014 Shanghai Biennial, 2014 Prospect 3 New Orleans, 2012 Taipei Biennial, Chinese Pavilion of 2009 Venice Biennial, 2008 Media City Seoul, and 2005 Guangzhou Triennial. His works have been presented in many art institutions and museums across the world.

As a curatorial team, Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu have curated Liberation (2010); Little Movements: Self-practice in Contemporary Art I\II\III (2011, 2013, 2015); The 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale (Accidental Message: Art is Not a System, Not a World) (2012), From the Issue of Art to the Issue of Position: Echoes of Socialist Realism (2014), New Measurement and Qian Weikang: Two Case Studies in Early Chinese Conceptual Art (2015), Salon Salon: Fine Art Practices from 1972 to 1982 in Profile—A Beijing Perspective (2015) and Factories, Machines, and the Poet’s Words: Echoes of the Realities in Art (2019). Their ongoing practice of exhibition and publication making establishes organic connections between history and the contemporary, investigates and narrates historical realities from multiple perspectives. They intend to generate narratives of the subjectivity in Chinese art from a diversity of entry points, related closely to the intellectual tradition in China.

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Nozomu Ogawa

NOZOMU OGAWA was born and lives in Tokyo and is currently Director of Art Center Ongoing. He graduated from Musashino Art University in 2001, and completed an MA from the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, University of Tokyo. From 2002 to 2006, he organized an annual juried exhibition showcasing a diverse network of artists. In 2008, based on this network, he launched Art Center Ongoing, an art complex in Kichijoji. He also serves as Chief Director of TERATOTERA, an artist project that develops programs in the area between JR Koenji station and Kokubunji station.

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Art Centre Ongoing

Art Center Ongoing is a complex art institution located in the Kichijoji, Tokyo, Japan. The Art Centre has a popular  gallery space that regularly exhibits a wide range of independent artists, supported by a cafe and a bar space that is also used as a communicational gathering space for visitors. A library of old and new art books also includes a booth providing extensive information on artists compiled by the Ongoing artist network. As a collective the actively set up events such as symposiums and live events searching for the possibility of expression that is Ongoing.

http://ongoing.jp/

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Sa Sa Bassac

SA SA BASSAC was a gallery and resource center dedicated to curating, mediating and archiving Cambodian contemporary visual culture, both within and outside of our space. Their program in Phnom Penh focused on singular exhibitions of new work by Cambodian artists, and projects by guest curators and collaborative projects. All of their projects worked to inspire innovative educational programs in Khmer and English. From 2011 until 2018 SA SA BASSAC acted as a partner with local, regional and international institutions, residencies, museums, and galleries to expand networks and knowledge for artists and audiences alike.

SA SA BASSAC was co-founded in 2011 by Stiev Selapak artist collective and curator Erin Gleeson.

http://sasabassac.com

 

 

 

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Shen Xin

Shen Xin’s practice engages with film, video installation and performative events. Her work fabricates the process of producing abstraction of inclusivity and foreignness, forming ways to be known to others that is reflexive of images’ representational agencies. Recent solo presentations include Methods of Inhabiting, K11 Shanghai (2018), Sliced Units, Center for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester (2018), half-sung, half spoken, Serpentine Pavilion, London (2017) and At Home, Surplus Space, Wuhan, China (2016). Recent group shows include New Metallurgists, Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf (2018), Songs for Sabotage, the New Museum Triennial, New York (2018), and The New Normal, UCCA, Beijing (2017). Shen was awarded the BALTIC Artists’ Award in 2017, and she is currently an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam.

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Mayumi Hirano

Mayumi Hirano is an independent curator, researcher and translator based in Manila and Osaka, Japan. She is the co-founder of a multi-disciplinary space 98B COLLABoratory where she was the head of educational program, until 2018. After her curatorial practice at Yokohama Triennale (2005) and Koganecho Bazaar (2008-2013), her research and practice continues to focus on the relationship between art and society. She is currently focusing on developing educational programs that facilitate experimentations with various ideas by using creative mediums. Mayumi was an Asian Public Intellectuals Fellow (2013-2014), and worked as a researcher for Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong (2007-2008).

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Mark Salvatus

Mark Salvatus (b. 1980) currently lives and works between Manila, Philippines and Osaka, Japan. He graduated cum laude at the University of Santo Tomas College of Fine Arts and Design Manila with a degree in Advertising Arts. He had solo shows at the Vargas Museum (Manila/PH), Ateneo Art Gallery (Manila/PH), Cultural Center of the Philippines (Manila/PH), La Trobe University Visual Art Center, (Melbourne/AU) and Goyang Art Studio (KR). His works have been presented in various international exhibitions including Video Spotlight: Philippines, Asia Society (NYC/USA, 2015); Neither Back nor Forward: Acting in the Present, Jakarta Biennale (Jakarta/ID, 2015); Survival Kit, (Umea/SW, 2014); Prologue: Honolulu Biennial (2014); Censorship, Move on Asia, Alternative Space Loop (Seoul/KR, 2014); Hotel Inmigrantes, parallel event Manifesta 9 (Hasselt/BE, 2012); 4th Guangzhou Triennale, Guandong Museum of Art (Guangzhou/CN, 2011); 3rd Singapore Biennale, Singapore Art Museum (SG, 2011); Koganecho Bazaar (Yokohama/JP, 2011); X IV Jakarta Biennale, Galeri Nasional (Jakarta/ID, 2011), La Trobe Univeristy Museum of Art | LUMA (Melbourne/AU, 2011), Next Wave Festival (Melbourne/AU, 2010); Asia Panic (Gwangju/KR, 2009). Mark Salvatus is a recipient of the 13 Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines (2012); Sovereign-Schoeni Art Prize, Hong Kong (2012) and Ateneo Art Awards (2010) and was part of the Philippine Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale 2016 in Venice/IT.

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Unnamed Artist

Remaining anonymous for reasons of safety, an Unnamed Artist lives and works on the archipelago known as the Philippines where they regularly contribute to events and activities as an independent artist.

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Lost Frames

Lost Frames is a community-based initiative for viewing artists’ video in the Philippines. Through local events and collaborations with other institutions, it has consistently staged programs for artists whose works occupy the margins and interstices of the vast field of moving images. From its origins inside a small screening room in Cubao, Lost Frames has gathered more than 80 filmmakers, animators, designers, and visual artists through regular screenings held since 2015. Each screening event includes talks by artists and discussions among viewers and other participants. This format of presenting and discussing works highlights dialogue as a vital part of the viewing experience, which is geared towards developing a community where anyone can participate and put forward artistic, practical, or social concerns. From its initial attempts to future regular screenings, Lost Frames aims to adhere to this simple format, which is discovery through viewing, and understanding through discussions.  

Lost Frames differ from other screening programs being a non-curatorial outfit, reaching out instead to other artists to share works that have, since their time of production, failed to sustain an audience. These are works that fall outside more conventional screening programs, have received limited gallery exposure, or are simply at their stage of finding viewership. 

Some of Lost Frames’ notable screening events include collaborations with institutions like MCAD, in College of St. Benilde, Manila (2016); Gasworks London, UK (2017); The First Manila Biennale, Intramuros, Manila (2018); Cultural Center of the Philippines, Manila (2018); and Unconfined Cinema, The Link, Makati (2020).

Lost Frames current member organizers include:

Poklong Aanding
Victor Balanon
Lena Cobangbang
Rico Entico
Cocoy Lumbao

 

 

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Erin Gleeson

Erin Gleeson is an independent curator, researcher and writer. Her work is rooted in knowledge and practices in and related to Southeast Asia, with current focuses on indigeneity and contemporary art in the region, and exhibition histories of Cambodia. Erin was the co-founding director and curator of SA SA BASSAC, a non-profit exhibition space, reading room and resource center in Phnom Penh (2011-2018) and is the founding curator of the biennale exhibition and symposium Elevations Laos (2018-).

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Triangulations pt III:
Dispatches from Manilla

Part of our Triangulations series, Dispatches From Manila asks artists and curators from the region to ‘check-in’, offering perspectives or creative projects that they have been occupied with during the recent months. At the time of writing, Metro Manila (the National Capital Region, made up of 16 individual cities) had been in lockdown since early March 2020, when measures to restrict movement were taken to prevent the spread of disease. With the COVID-19 crisis unfolding among its citizens, governing officials have used the pandemic as a pretense to impose military and police enforcement around the NCR, inciting fear through forms of restriction that echo previous eras of forced civic containment under Martial Law.

Resistant voices among artists in the community, balanced with considerations of safety circulate messages of critique, humourous resistance, and creative forms of virtual comfort.  Dispatches asks members of the Manila community to share their perspectives. Drawn from three separate corners, the trail of connections reveals a rhizomatic network of solidarity and support. The program unfolds in three parts:

Dispatches, a screening program with Lost Frames (online JULY 30 – AUG 13)
Artists: Alwin Reamillo, Danielle Madrid, Leslie DeChavez, Martin DeMesa, Sidney Valdez, Tanya Villanueva, Timmy Harn, Tekla Temoria, Ralph Barrientos

This program of shorts, selected by the community open call process of Lost Frames Collective offers artist’s recent works and perspectives.

Between the Corpse and the Tree

Remaining anonymous for reasons of safety, this story contribution by an unnamed artist looks at the spectral life lives under a militarized state. Pulling from live experiences, both remembered and imagined, the narrative is a dark account of the extreme force that state-sanctioned terror exerts on the minds and lived realities of its citizens.

Interview with Load Na Dito

Following up on their visit of one year prior, this interview asks Load Na Dito to elaborate on how they manage to survive and thrive in circumstances that limit mobility and freedoms of speech.

 

Pacific Crossings: Triangulations 

Borrowing a term from both navigation and research methods in social science that employ multiple points of view, Triangulationsoffers three online propositions with artists and curators in Hong Kong, Beijing and Manila, encompassing shared concerns germane to the pandemic and locational contexts. Produced as part of Pacific Crossings in partnership with Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Nanaimo Art Gallery, and Richmond Art Gallery, Triangulations is a coordinated effort to bring forward distinct perspectives from different regions through digital means to support empathy and to cultivate shared understandings about what the future may hold for the arts sector and for the public.

Lost Frames is a community-based initiative for viewing artists’ moving image in the Philippines, organized by a small group of artists in Manila who show short experimental video works. As an in-person event, Lost Frames encourages individuals to share their works and to talk about each other’s methods and ideas with regards to video as a medium. This online screening program presents a selection of artists’ moving images from the Philippines that have been included in past programs.

A previous participant in Pacific Crossings projects, Load na Dito is a mobile art site that explores creative energies generated and circulated through interactions of individuals, objects, images and ideas. It creates spatio-temporal situations that address issues of participation and problematize the potential of collective production. Load na Dito was initiated by Mayumi Hirano and Mark Salvatus in 2016.

Remaining anonymous for reasons of safety, an Unnamed Artist lives and works on the archipelago known as the Philippines where they regularly contribute to events and activities as an independent artist.

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Triangulations pt II: Let Individuals Represent Individuals

Through Beijing-based Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu’s own daily conversations and their contributions to “Letters Against Separation” on e-flux conversations, they have had a chance to reflect on the impacts of COVID-19, not just on the everyday life in a practical way but on their conception of the existing orders of organization that condition our lives. They have observed a general overdependence and almost blind trust on larger structures, systems and framework of thinking as well as a universal abstraction of individual positions, conditions and subjectivities. The rhetoric around COVID-19 has pivoted on politics and its problematic, yet they argue that politics can only represent and emulate an abstract form of the society consisting of countless individuals, but not actual individuals.

The talk will be followed up by a written response by Toronto-based curator Su-Ying Lee, which will be published by Pacific Crossings at a later date.  

About the speakers:

Liu Ding is a Beijing-based artist and curator. He has participated in international biennials such as 2015 Istanbul Biennial, 2015 Asia Pacific Triennial, 2014 Shanghai Biennial, 2014 Prospect 3 New Orleans, 2012 Taipei Biennial, Chinese Pavilion of 2009 Venice Biennial, 2008 Media City Seoul, and 2005 Guangzhou Triennial. His works have been presented in many art institutions and museums across the world.

Carol Yinghua Lu is an art critic and curator. She is a Ph.D. candidate in art history at the University of Melbourne and director of Beijing Inside-out Art Museum. She is a contributing editor at Frieze and is on the advisory board of The Exhibitionist.

As a curatorial team, Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu have curated Liberation (2010); Little Movements: Self-practice in Contemporary Art I\II\III (2011, 2013, 2015); The 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale (Accidental Message: Art is Not a System, Not a World) (2012), From the Issue of Art to the Issue of Position: Echoes of Socialist Realism (2014), New Measurement and Qian Weikang: Two Case Studies in Early Chinese Conceptual Art (2015), Salon Salon: Fine Art Practices from 1972 to 1982 in Profile—A Beijing Perspective (2015) and Factories, Machines, and the Poet’s Words: Echoes of the Realities in Art (2019). Their ongoing practice of exhibition and publication making establishes organic connections between history and the contemporary, investigates and narrates historical realities from multiple perspectives. They intend to generate narratives of the subjectivity in Chinese art from a diversity of entry points, related closely to the intellectual tradition in China.

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Triangulations pt I: Revisiting A Journal of the Plague Year on the Eastern Pacific Coast

The exhibition, A Journal of the Plague Year, originally responded to disparate narratives of 2003 in Hong Kong—the SARS epidemic, the first arrivals of mainland Chinese on individual tourist visas, and the beginning of the democracy movement, as well as the death of pop culture figure and pan-Asian icon Leslie Cheung, the exhibition traced the fears of disease and fears of other people, both colonial and recent, and the political and pop-cultural watersheds that have shaped Hong Kong identity in the years since. These themes have come back with renewed strength in the recent months of the COVID-19 crisis, with a similar profile of fear grappling our collective imagination. For this special Pacific Coast presentation, curators Cosmin Costinas and Inti Guerrero will focus on the 2015 version of A Journal of the Plague Year held at Kadist Art Foundation in San Francisco. As noted in the press release for San Francisco version of the exhibition:

California and San Francisco were deeply affected by the Western world’s anti-Chinese immigration prejudices, through the history of Chinese immigration in relation to the Gold Rush, the 19th-century railway construction in the Western United States, and the subsequent Chinese Exclusion Act. These events make this exhibition highly relevant in a context that has not entirely moved beyond the stereotypes of its past centuries, even as it finds itself ever more deeply entangled in an emerging Asia-Pacific geopolitics of power. 

While held in the United States, the questions raised in the exhibition are also highly relevant to the parallel histories of immigration, exclusion, and heightened xenophobia on Canada’s West Coast, as exemplified by recent acts of violence and intimidation perpetrated against members of the Chinese Canadian community in B.C.

The talk will be followed up by a written response by Nanaimo-raised and Los Angeles-based artist Charlotte Zhang, which will be published by Pacific Crossings at a later date.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Inti Guerrero (b. 1983, Colombia) is The Estrellita B. Brodsky Adjunct Curator of Latin American Art at Tate, London since 2016, and Artistic Director of Bellas Artes Projects, Manila since 2018. He was Chief Curator of the 38th EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial, Limerick (2018), Guest Curator of Dakar Biennale 2018 – La Biennale de l’Art africain contemporain-DAK’ART, Dakar (2018), and Artistic Director of TEOR/éTica, San Jose (2011-2014).

Cosmin Costinas (b. 1982, Romania) is the Executive Director/Curator of Para Site, Hong Kong since 2011, and Artistic Director of Kathmandu Triennale 2020. He was a Guest Curator of Dakar Biennale 2018 – La Biennale de l’Art africain contemporain-DAK’ART, Dakar (2018), Guest Curator at the Dhaka Art Summit ’18 (2018); Co-curator of the 10th Shanghai Biennale (2014), Curator of BAK-basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht (2008-2011), Co-curator of the 1st Ural Industrial Biennial, Ekaterinburg (2010), and Editor of documenta 12 Magazines, documenta 12, Kassel (2005–2007).

 

With Cosmin Constinas and Inti Guerrero, presented by Jesse Birch with response by Charlotte Zhang

 

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A public conversation with Load Na Dito and Pacific Crossings team

A public conversation with Load Na Dito and Pacific Crossings team

Load Na Dito is an artistic and research project by Mayumi Hirano and Mark Salvatus based in Manila, Philippines. Developed as a home made culture, currently located in Cubao, Quezon City, it uses any possible space as a site for knowledge sharing, inquiry and discussion. “Load na Dito” is a local top up system for cellphone credit, where you can load anywhere as long as you can see a sign “load na dito.”  Developing it as a model, the pair make projects in different locations—building new energies to have “load.”  Load Na Dito co-founders, researcher-curator Mayumi Hirano and artist-organizer Mark Salvatus, offered context of their practice working in the Philippines and within the wider Asian art community.

Mayumi Hirano is an independent curator, researcher and translator based in Manila and Osaka, Japan. She is the co-founder of a multi-disciplinary space 98B COLLABoratory where she was the head of educational program, until 2018. After her curatorial practice at Yokohama Triennale (2005) and Koganecho Bazaar (2008-2013), her research and practice continues to focus on the relationship between art and society. She is currently focusing on developing educational programs that facilitate experimentations with various ideas by using creative mediums. Mayumi was an Asian Public Intellectuals Fellow (2013-2014), and worked as a researcher for Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong (2007-2008).

Mark Salvatus (b. 1980) currently lives and works between Manila, Philippines and Osaka, Japan. He graduated cum laude at the University of Santo Tomas College of Fine Arts and Design Manila with a degree in Advertising Arts. He had solo shows at the Vargas Museum (Manila/PH), Ateneo Art Gallery (Manila/PH), Cultural Center of the Philippines (Manila/PH), La Trobe University Visual Art Center, (Melbourne/AU) and Goyang Art Studio (KR). His works have been presented in various international exhibitions including Video Spotlight: Philippines, Asia Society (NYC/USA, 2015); Neither Back nor Forward: Acting in the Present, Jakarta Biennale (Jakarta/ID, 2015); Survival Kit, (Umea/SW, 2014); Prologue: Honolulu Biennial (2014); Censorship, Move on Asia, Alternative Space Loop (Seoul/KR, 2014); Hotel Inmigrantes, parallel event Manifesta 9 (Hasselt/BE, 2012); 4th Guangzhou Triennale, Guandong Museum of Art (Guangzhou/CN, 2011); 3rd Singapore Biennale, Singapore Art Museum (SG, 2011); Koganecho Bazaar (Yokohama/JP, 2011); X IV Jakarta Biennale, Galeri Nasional (Jakarta/ID, 2011), La Trobe Univeristy Museum of Art | LUMA (Melbourne/AU, 2011), Next Wave Festival (Melbourne/AU, 2010); Asia Panic (Gwangju/KR, 2009). Mark Salvatus is a recipient of the 13 Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines (2012); Sovereign-Schoeni Art Prize, Hong Kong (2012) and Ateneo Art Awards (2010) and was part of the Philippine Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale 2016 in Venice/IT.

(documentation: there should be an audio file, some casual photos, and possibly more from RAG, ask Shaun/Allison)

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Either a Storm or a Drought 

Curated by Load Na Dito, Either a Storm or a Drought was a deconstructed screening of video works by artists in the Philippines.

Referring to ideas that are commonly associated with the Filipino weather, Either a Storm or a Drought explored the ever-changing, unforeseeable and idle state of the life in the Philippines. The works introduced here playfully portrayed transient and unsettling situations that draw visible and invisible borders between personal, social and political territories.

Set up in a casual arrangement for self-directed viewing the event took place throughout an evening of socializing. Emphasizing the social space,  Mark Salvatus and Mayumi Hirano of Load Na Dito created a temporary installation using materials that were found in the Artspeak storage space. Visitors were encouraged to look around at their own pace and the team at Artspeak welcomed guests who dropped in with refreshments and casual discussion.

A brochure for the project was created by Cheyenne Rain Le Grande. The event was produced as part of the Pacific Crossings residency, hosted by Artspeak and Western Front.

Featured works:
CMYKA
Rico Entico
Cocoy Lumbao
Neo Maestro
Manny Montelibano
Annie Pacaña
Gerome Soriano
Shireen Seno
Christian Tablazon
Tanya Villanueva
Kanade Yagi

KALEIDOSCAPE V.4, 2019 By Annie Pacaña + Baile (sound) 03:22 min 

Kaleidoscape uses the visual elements of infrastructure (steel frames of billboard structures, railways, wires and electric posts, and power transmission towers) in an urban weave of Metro Manila to create a space of contemplation from the city’s chaos. Bringing these to the fore heightens the legibility of urban connectivity and alienation. A calm from chaos provides a momentary escape from the complexity, confusion, and congestion of urban life. An immersive installation of this work is intended to create a space of contemplation within a city. 

If a tree falls in a forest, 2019 By Christian Tablazon 5:47 min 

The abstractions of images, bodies, and experience in the numinous technologies of moving- image practice (and art in general) may point to methods of divination as potent alternative models for producing, reading, and thinking about the already inherently spectral medium/apparition that is cinema. Taking off from the popular conundrum “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”, this project combines video, performance, field recording, and crematorium soot imprints laminated on found film in an attempt to explore the traces of both living and dead, and the haunted convolutions among dream, perception, memory, language, desire, and extinction. 

runExecuteCommand.mp4, 2017 By CMYKA 30 sec 

The work, showing glitch image of dancing girls, is made up of two components: Salvaged audio from a news report of a police chase – hence the title; and a video clip of a random local ‘sexy’ dancer act, both sourced from the internet. 

Negative Cutter, 2017 By Cocoy Lumbao 5:36 min 

Part elegy, part parody, Negative Cutter delves into the qualities that surround the idea of endings and obsolescence. Using the form of ‘end credits,’ as a kind of cinematic trope, it takes a closer look at a disappearing trade which are the negative cutting services that used to be vital in the distribution of Hollywood feature films. As the film industry tethers on the brink of total transformation from analog to digital processes of post-production, the job title of ‘negative cutters,’ who have occupied the bottom section of the rolling credits for several years, face the possibility of becoming obsolete. The process of negative cutting is described as manually cutting motion picture negatives or film rolls to match the editor’s final cut before distribution. In movies produced in the post-digital age, negative cutters have disappeared from the credits’ list. 

As a kind of formal composition, the work explores the paradoxical nature of paying tribute through digital video in creating a pseudo-collage, of cutting and pasting together appropriated elements from films. It also explores the nature of the ‘end credits’ as an integral part of our visual culture with its own set of significations. Furthermore, in magnifying what could only be perceived as ‘residual’ in the whole spectacle of film-making, the works presented also serve as commentary on seldom-noticed variables behind the main attraction, which are the labor force and the complexities that arise from constantly changing technologies. 

Chocnut Structures, 2018 By Gerome Soriano 06:16 min 

This work is inspired by the one of the many stories told to us by the artist/tour guide Carlos Celdran about the old Spanish walled city in Manila, Intramuros. He said that before there used to be 7 Churches inside and many government offices and universities. But most of it has been pulverized by the bombing of the city by American forces trying to rat out the garrisoned Japanese during World War 2. Leaving Manila as the second most devastated city during the war. 

Metabolism of the Wall, 2018 By Kanade Yagi 9:57 min 

She graduated Tokyo Zokei University and finished the research program of CCA Kitakyushu. She did research in the Philippines as a researcher of Asia Fellowship of Japan Foundation in 2016 and the Japanese Government Overseas Study Program for Artists (short term) in 2017. She currently stays in the Philippines half of a year and does research about spiritualism and creativity in the Philippines, and explores how to express the things that she got from the research as her art works. 

Home Sale, 2018 Manny Montelibano 08:03 min 

Based in Bacolod on Negros Occidental, Manny Montelibano is a video and sound installation artist, film and stage director, editor, and technical specialist. His work focuses on the psychology of contemporary socio- political, economic and religious structures. Home Sale is one of Montelibano’s recent video works shot by a thermal camera, which address issues of economy, politics and psychology around Filipino ideas of security. 

Banuyo, 2017 06:31 min By Neo Maestro 

Looking at the absurdities of urban life in Metro Manila, the original video work showed the entire 3-hour commute of the artist (which included walking, jeepney and train rides,long lines), as he travelled just 12 kilometers that crossed three different cities, from his home in Banuyo, Quezon City to General Luna, Manila, and back. Mapping the artist’s way from his home to his work space, the video work serves as his personal, intentionally frustrating, and literal “step-by-step” commute. 

Precedence of life according to Mr. Ped Xing,2017 By Rico Entico 6:52min 

In a dark, dusty box, surrounded by metals and concrete. Oftentimes, when nobody watches, I mimic what I see. Yellow headed men who would come and destroy the road. Fixing it again days after. Others in coloured outfits, taking turns on their silly dancing and collection from random metal moving. I wait in my place as people stare when I turn red. Some would stop, others just stare…they begin to wait…before i turn green. Bang! Bang! he looks like me now. All red….a familiar face in the night. Meanwhile, I am trapped in my box until the lights go out. 

Seeing Machines By Shireen Seno 5min 

When I was a kid, I had really bad motion sickness, and the only way for me to cope with being on a moving vehicle was to focus my vision on a certain point rather than letting my eyes shift. It was a way to take control of something I otherwise had no control over.  Growing out of my motion sickness came with a newfound thrill of being in motion. 

With ‘Seeing Machines’, I was thinking about different kinds of structures. More than buildings, built spaces, and transportation, I became interested in the power of the camera and the structuring in our own vision. I wanted to experiment with the frame, and the movement of things in and out of it. I wanted to resist the desire to look or go elsewhere, and see what was in front of me.   ‘Seeing Machines’ documents three important arteries in Toronto: the Spadina streetcar line, the National railroad, and the pedestrian tunnel connecting the city’s two main subway lines. 

Work Performing, 2019 By Tanya and Luna Villanueva 4 min 

This video is the second collaborative project I created with my daughter, Luna. We are seen sleeping on a makeshift bed stage in our backyard with surrounding soundscape crated by Luna by recording an ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) of her eating merienda (chips and milktea) merged with the environment sounds on our garden around 8 am. Layered on that is a video of several pictures of safe spaces of different creatures temporarily tattooed on some of our body parts, being moved onscreen by massaging each other. Each element of the video pertains to feeling good in order to make work, and make our relationship work as well as make ourselves work well. 

Our collaboration is an answer to how to make things work as a family unit that deals with mental illness as much as it is about the work that we do in order to create a safe space for us to make make meaningful work as artists.  Much is needed from the both of us in order to make our small family flourish. Insisting on showing the invisible work of taking care of each other, and not losing hope by manifesting our desire to create a safe, and comfortable future for us.

 

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Two Talks: Mayumi Hirano and Mark Salvatus

In residence with Pacific Crossings from May 22 – June 7, 2019, Mayumi Hirano and Mark Salvatus shared their individual practices of research, curating and art making. Based in Quezon City, Philippines, and working frequently in Japan and across Asia, both Hirano and Salvatus address deep commitments to community building and alternative institutional structures in their working methods.

Load Na Dito is an artistic and research project based in Manila, Philippines. Developed as a home made culture, currently located in Cubao, Quezon City, it uses any possible space as a site for knowledge sharing, inquiry and discussion. “Load na Dito” is a local top up system for cellphone credit, where you can load anywhere as long as you can see a sign “load na dito.”  Developing it as a model, the pair make projects in different locations—building new energies to have “load.”  These presentations by Load Na Dito co-founders, researcher-curator Mayumi Hirano and artist-organizer Mark Salvatus, will offer context of their practice working in the Philippines and within the wider Asian art community.

Mayumi Hirano is an independent curator, researcher and translator based in Manila and Osaka, Japan. She is the co-founder of a multi-disciplinary space 98B COLLABoratory where she was the head of educational program, until 2018. After her curatorial practice at Yokohama Triennale (2005) and Koganecho Bazaar (2008-2013), her research and practice continues to focus on the relationship between art and society. She is currently focusing on developing educational programs that facilitate experimentations with various ideas by using creative mediums. Mayumi was an Asian Public Intellectuals Fellow (2013-2014), and worked as a researcher for Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong (2007-2008).

Mark Salvatus (b. 1980) currently lives and works between Manila, Philippines and Osaka, Japan. He graduated cum laude at the University of Santo Tomas College of Fine Arts and Design Manila with a degree in Advertising Arts. He had solo shows at the Vargas Museum (Manila/PH), Ateneo Art Gallery (Manila/PH), Cultural Center of the Philippines (Manila/PH), La Trobe University Visual Art Center, (Melbourne/AU) and Goyang Art Studio (KR). His works have been presented in various international exhibitions including Video Spotlight: Philippines, Asia Society (NYC/USA, 2015); Neither Back nor Forward: Acting in the Present, Jakarta Biennale (Jakarta/ID, 2015); Survival Kit, (Umea/SW, 2014); Prologue: Honolulu Biennial (2014); Censorship, Move on Asia, Alternative Space Loop (Seoul/KR, 2014); Hotel Inmigrantes, parallel event Manifesta 9 (Hasselt/BE, 2012); 4th Guangzhou Triennale, Guandong Museum of Art (Guangzhou/CN, 2011); 3rd Singapore Biennale, Singapore Art Museum (SG, 2011); Koganecho Bazaar (Yokohama/JP, 2011); X IV Jakarta Biennale, Galeri Nasional (Jakarta/ID, 2011), La Trobe Univeristy Museum of Art | LUMA (Melbourne/AU, 2011), Next Wave Festival (Melbourne/AU, 2010); Asia Panic (Gwangju/KR, 2009). Mark Salvatus is a recipient of the 13 Artists Award from the Cultural Center of the Philippines (2012); Sovereign-Schoeni Art Prize, Hong Kong (2012) and Ateneo Art Awards (2010) and was part of the Philippine Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale 2016 in Venice/IT.

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Sa Sa Bassac, On Attachments and Unknowns: On Sharing Unstable Space

Erin Gleeson spoke about affinitive artistic and curatorial strategies at work in the 2017 exhibition On Attachments and Unknowns. Taking place in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, this group exhibition was held within a research residency FIELDS (2017), hosted by SA SA BASSAC, a non-profit contemporary art space in Phnom Penh (2011-2018). Thirteen artists’ works were convened in part to consider practices of imaging personalized counter-visions to statecraft ideologies and methods in their respective contexts. On Attachments and Unknowns looked to the space of the ‘How’ to let an exhibition be an unstable space that follows artist’s intentions to resist immediacy of message. With each artist and work located in Southeast Asia, and all but one artist identifying as female, a reflection on the exhibition proposes a series of questions: What can a regionalist and gendered framing of an exhibition offer? How can one curatorially rhyme with the methods by which artists conceive of power within their primarily authoritarian environments? How can an exhibition resist the habit to communicate artist’s resolve, action or agency within political and social movements.

Erin Gleeson is an independent curator, researcher and writer. Her work is rooted in knowledge and practices in and related to Southeast Asia, with current focuses on indigeneity and contemporary art in the region, and exhibition histories of Cambodia. Erin was the co-founding director and curator of SA SA BASSAC, a non-profit exhibition space, reading room and resource center in Phnom Penh (2011-2018) and is the founding curator of the biennale exhibition and symposium Elevations Laos (2018-).

 

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Shen Xin, Warm Spell 

Shot on the Thai island of Ko Yao Yai and set amidst the environmental change caused by global warming, Warm Spell explores the economic and cultural challenges the island faces as it shifts from a predominantly farming community to one dependent on tourism. The work constructs a ghostly presence, weaving it through the traces of disparity in climate change amongst high and low emission countries, and the experiences of tourism based on racial representations. This event is offered as an informal ‘preface’ to On Attachments and Unknowns, as part of a series that actively contributes to questions of dialogue and exchange wrought by artists across and around regions of the Pacific.  Warm Spell was co-commissioned by Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art and Salford University Art Collection. Supported by Elephant Trust London and Rijksakademie Amsterdam.

Shen Xin’s practice engages with film, video installation and performative events. Her work fabricates the process of producing abstraction of inclusivity and foreignness, forming ways to be known to others that is reflexive of images’ representational agencies. Recent solo presentations include Methods of Inhabiting, K11 Shanghai (2018), Sliced Units, Center for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester (2018), half-sung, half spoken, Serpentine Pavilion, London (2017) and At Home, Surplus Space, Wuhan, China (2016). Recent group shows include New Metallurgists, Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf (2018), Songs for Sabotage, the New Museum Triennial, New York (2018), and The New Normal, UCCA, Beijing (2017). Shen was awarded the BALTIC Artists’ Award in 2017, and she is currently an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam.

 

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Nozomu Ogawa, Art Centre Ongoing & Pacific Crossings Team Alternative Asian Art Network – How do we survive? 

Sharing his experience of a recent three months intensive research trip to 83 art spaces in 9 countries in South East Asia, Ogawa discussed the “collective” activities shared among many artists in South East Asia, where organic communities share resources and networking as pragmatic survival strategies within complex socio-political situations, lacking funding for the arts. Following the trip, Ogawa founded “Ongoing Collective”, with his colleague artists, curators, musicians for seeking a new economy and strategy for being alternative.

(audio recording? Ask Bopha)

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Nozomu Ogawa, Art Centre Ongoing Alternative Tokyo Art Scene – What’s going on?

Saturday January 12, 2pm at Richmond Art Gallery

Ogawa presented on the Tokyo alternative art scene and various unique art practices by the young and emerging artists. He will discuss Art Center Ongoing, the alternative art space/cafe in Kichijyoji, Tokyo that runs independent of public funding, hosting international artist in residence, bi-weekly exhibitions with public talks, workshops and live performances. He will also share TERATOTERA a year round public art project developed in collaboration with City of Tokyo and Art Council Tokyo.

(documentation? Ask Shaun)