WANTED: Someone to restore Arteri and give it 2nd life. Interested? Email: mail.sharonchin.com
GOSTAN FORWARD
A Solo Performance Lecture by Marion D’Cruz
In collaboration with director by Mark Teh, with visual designs by Grey Yeoh.
An artist once commented that the Malaysian art scene works something like this, ‘For every two steps forward that we take, we are often falling back one step’. I thought this is an accurate description of the development of the Malaysian art scene, for we negotiate with our defeat (facing an insurmountable battle against the institution, government policies, lack of public support, community infighting, etc.) just as much as we celebrate the fact that there’s always enough drive to move us forward.
Gostan Forward as a lecture performance plays out this precarious struggle we all face as arts practitioner and workers. It charts an almost 3 decade long career of choreographer, Marion D’Cruz, who is indomitably part of the Five Arts initiative that was central in forging a Malaysian vocabulary across a number of artistic discipline since 1984.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Five Arts centre. For many who have grown up and grown old with the Five Arts staple, this is a time for reflection. More importantly, this assessment of the past also calls into the question the directions the Centre wishes to take. It is an opportunity to reflect on the values that have become the corner stone for all their projects, as well as a chance to reaffirm their continuous presence and relevance in the local art scene. For others, this is an invaluable opportunity to acquaint ourselves with an artistic endeavour that is seminal in changing the way we understand ourselves through art.
Marion D’Cruz’s lecture performance takes a new generation of arts supporters back into the heyday of theatre/dance/visual art/literary/education collaboration, reliving the Five Arts recipe that was borne from a sincere drive towards a multidisciplinary approach in art practice. It is therefore interesting that Five Arts, though now operating on primarily performance platform, is the only collective that continuously sought to engage with arts practitioners in other disciplines. Marian jokes in her performance that the question of whether this work is a dance piece or not is passe. And it’s true, it’s really the least interesting question that one can lay out on the table.
What interest me in the performance medium is its ephemerality. The transient form that takes place within a certain time and place means that the performance as an event is only accessible to a selected number of people who just happens to be at the right place and time. A good work becomes the stuff of legend, communicated through hearsay, word of mouth, reviews, academic writings, photographs, or a video documentation. It’s never quite the same, but the rest of us live with it.
I am glad that this retrospective piece is not an attempt to recreate her past works. The lecture format allows Marion to entertain us with stories, with pictures, with collaborators It is a format of delivery that is much more sensitive to the nature of memory, how it is shaped through experience and the lens of time. We are cajoled into believing her cause and the cultural landscape through which she had to weave through to create a dance language that transcends the dominant Malay-centric ethos that gripped our cultural production of the 80s, paving way to the full-blown multi-cultural expression of identity that has become the mainstay of more recent Malaysian practices.
Trained in classical Malay dance, Marion made her pilgrimage to New York, worked alongside collaborators who have no doubt shaped her thinking. Her pieces pay knowing nods to contemporary dance pioneers such as Yvonne Rainer, through her use of non-dancers as well as everyday objects, though the works are no less local in the liberal doses of the classical Malay dance she injects in and adapts to her performance.
Directed by Mark Teh, the lecture essentially uses Marion’s story to telescope into a nation’s larger history and the on-going culture war that complicates what it means to be a Malaysian. It is a battle that is hardly won. She makes occasional allusion to the on going Perak constitutional debacle as a ‘civil war’ and mopes about our current state of affair. Stretching her legs on stage, she demonstrates the movement of gostan forward (moving backwards and then forward) in a hypnotic and repetitive action that may at first seem futile, but carried through by an optimism that comes with acknowledging the obstacles of practicing art in Malaysia and the will to see through it.
The Marion that is on the stage is visibly older, she has aged and we are able to compare her heavy set presence with the youthful lissome images of her younger years. But this is not a dancer’s curse, is it? With the passing of years, what she has imparted in this performance is a genuine reflection of a single minded practice that has pushed the boundaries of contemporary dance in Malaysia, a dance that recognises the complex values that our bodies subscribe to and are abscribed with. Furthermore, it concedes to the discursive limits of identity politics through her fascination with the masks as an identity or a personality we can fall in and out of (as well as form a personal relationship with) and is convinced that we can construct a more plural and more sophisticated identity in a culturally complex nation, if we want to work within nationalism’s communal framework.
In this imagination, just as much as Marion warns against pastiche and callous appropriation of forms, she proposes inclusiveness and a sensitivity to the possibilities of hybridity. In the final moment of the lecture, Marion puts on a Balinese topeng (mask) and shamelessly announce that she has learned the movement from video and not through a dance instructor. Sitting cross-legged on the table, her hands sweeps out in a Terinai repertoire. It is a moment of marriage that many of us, coming out of ill-considerate medley so common in po-mo art, are wary of. But it is also a poignant moment that allows us to consider once again why it was (and probably still is) a form that was/is evocatively political. This struggle lives on, repeating and renewing itself, endlessly.
Gostan Forward runs from 8 – 10 May at the Annexe Gallery:
Fri 8 May 2009, 8.30pm
Sat 9 May, 2.15pm & 8.30pm
Sun 10 May, 2.15pm
Admission by RM10 donation
Presented by Five Arts Centre
Images by James Lee
(SS)
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Hi Simon,
Thanks for this report and for beautiful pictures by James Lee.
I think you left out an important point that Marion made about ‘claiming’. The way she talked about the 1970s was all about that: claiming your country, history, identity, etc. Arts practitioners who spent their formative years in that era have a sort of strength and confidence in their vision that we today lack. (**insert here** all disclaimers about how I DON’T mean that that was a golden age and we are now living in the shits etc etc etc**)
I remember Yeoh from The Lost Generation collective telling me that Redza Piyadasa once gave him hell for using the name ‘Lost Generation’. Piya felt that it was up to artists to lead the way, to FIND a way.
Your last paragraph:
“It is a moment of marriage that many of us, coming out of ill-considerate medly so common in po-mo art, are wary of. But it is also a poignant moment that allows us to consider once again why it was (and probably still is) a form that was/is evocatively political. This struggle lives on, repeating and renewing itself, endlessly.”
This idea of the ‘ill-considered medly’ – I think it needs to be looked at with a sharper lens. When I watched Marion dance with the topeng, I didn’t see two forms (topeng + terinai) coming together with all their joints showing. I saw one performer holding both forms in her body and welding them together to become a new, powerful thing. The performer is central here, NOT the marriage of forms. In all this po-mo debate, we tend to forget that it takes artistry, mastery and immense vision to CLAIM something as your own. You are only wary of ‘po-mo art’ because so much of it seems ill-considered, convenient, lazy and attention-hungry.
Today, we don’t know how to claim things. We have difficulty claiming our country and our different places here. Alot of us prefer to maintain a comfortable distance, with one foot out the back door.
One more thing about aging…
I’ve never seen Marion dance. For this reason alone, watching Gostan Forward was a real experience. The images of her younger self seemed to make the living presence dancing in front of me even more potent. It was a powerful way of saying that one never stops dancing/creating. Time passes, the body ages, but somehow… something is mastered. You get something that you can only get through time and experience. That quality is what I saw in Gostan Foward, and it blew me away.
Yo Sharon,
Thanks for sharing your insight.
I remember Yeoh from The Lost Generation collective telling me that Redza Piyadasa once gave him hell for using the name ‘Lost Generation’. Piya felt that it was up to artists to lead the way, to FIND a way.
That’s a terribly unfair thing to say and something which I disagree with. This is also perhaps why I have downplayed this idea of ‘claiming’ in Marion’s performance, which I found to be verging on the rhetorical. It’s almost like how the word ‘rakyat’ is invoked these days, there’s something aggressive and violent about these exhortation that I am uncomfortable with.
If the late-Piya only knew or had a clue what kind of background and context Yeoh is operating from, he wouldn’t be throwing the optimism gauntlet down at them. Yeoh might be more honest than we like to think.
As much as I appreciate and understand their aspiration (I think I once communicated it as the ‘Five Arts legacy’ to you), I would never weigh this on a younger set of artists, who aren’t struggling over the same things. Maybe they are less of a “Malaysian” artist, but definitely no less of an artist.
Whoa Simon – I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that Piya ‘threw down the gauntlet’. Both generations of artists need to understand where the other is coming from. Understanding where artists like Piya, Krishen Jit, Marion D’Cruz and Wong Hoy Cheong come from can only benefit us. Doesn’t mean we have to follow, or resist, or whatever.
Take what’s relevant to us, build on it. That’s what moving forward means, right?
I would also be careful about lumping ‘their aspiration’ (or something) under a ‘Five Arts legacy’, even though I agreed with you at the time. Sorry if this seems like a back-peddling. What was great about watching Marion dance is that it made me realize that knowing the theory/writing surrounding a period of practice is very different from actually experiencing it. We still have a chance to engage directly with the previous generation of artists – and I think it’s important that we do so.
While we’re mentioning Piya, I’m going to take this opportunity to post a couple of links remembering him:
On Nur Hanim’s SENDAWA – **CLICK ‘Hitam Itu Menawan’**
And via Sentap! Magazine’s blog – **CLICK a video interview with Piya, courtesy of Amir Zainorin**
Understanding where artists like Piya, Krishen Jit, Marion D’Cruz and Wong Hoy Cheong come from can only benefit us. Doesn’t mean we have to follow, or resist, or whatever.
Agreed Sharon and I don’t mean Five Art legacy in a bad way. But I also want to acknowledge there are artists who are not primarily interested in the Malaysia question and we need to acknowledge that this shouldn’t be the over-riding issue that determine what art in Malaysia is, or that it is the only thing we should talk about (which seems to be the case).
Increasingly this is happening with the works of a younger generation of artists – Fei, Vincent, Ise, etc. Sometimes they assert a certain autonomy in the way they practice and work that is so much more politically effective than an artist that is harping on certain social-cultural issue. I wouldn’t want to think that they need to look back to look forward. Sometimes historical consciousness can be a burden.
Perhaps that’s why I’m so uncomfortable with the term Malaysian art in the first place because it hinges on the predicate it’s about a nationalist identity. :/
That night…
i saw the Text was
performed,
talking,
pointing..
yes…the Text was here…
some statements need to be speak out clearly..
the movement of body cant afford that mission,
Text was necessary…
Tex was weighty
Body was lighten
Exotic,Exotic,Exotic,
She said it third times,
do it two times
with
the Mask,the movement,the silent,the body
the last time
won the applause..
(a W man next to me,stand up claping and shout: “once more…!!!”
im confused….the whole show or
the so called ‘Exotic dance’ ?)
I suspect that its usually the older folks who are more sensitive to the way local culture is being suffocated by the media of all the bigger countries out there. For every ‘local’ text created, the world will produce manifolds more. Young people are more eager to see what’s out ‘there’. I’m kind of in the middle because I think it helps me see the big picture best…
but once heard Valentine say:
the middle ground is where the killing field is.
So yeah, Simon, I guess we have might have an endless battle ahead.
I suspect that its usually the older folks who are more sensitive to the way local culture is being suffocated by the media of all the bigger countries out there
Hi Daniel,
Do you mean they got more sensitive as they grew older? Or, do you mean that they were more sensitive even back then when they started? I tend to see the latter. So I think it’s a generational thing la. hehe
Dear all
Thank you so much for all these deep and insightful thoughts….I am so moved that Gostan Forward is eliciting such exciting discourse.
Marion
“more sensitive”, “out there”, “local text” – uhhhh… HUH? I don’t get what you’re saying.
Where is this nebulous “out there” you think young people are so enamored with?
I think Fei hits it on the head alot more clearly.
Marion! Thanks for stopping by. Please jump in whenever you want.
Hi Sharon,
I don’t think ‘out there’ is an accurate description although I understand what Daniel is saying. By saying out there, it also automatically defines an ‘in here’. What I like to think we are talking about is that a number of younger people tend not to work within the framework of nationalism, so what’s out there could easily be – the biennale circuit for one, a taste for global art discourse, youtube, 4chan??, tedtalks, international arts festival, residencies, studying overseas, a second home country, agents and cultural producers that support artistic production in another country, etc.
not all of these are new of course, but effectively they facilitated in the disregard for national concerns in some artists. I’m not entirely against this thinking. And am sympathetic to it just as much as I am sympathetic to the works of radical artists challenging identity politics. I completely miss the ‘local text’ bit though.
Marion,
Thank you for stopping by, please share your personal thoughts with us :)
I’m not a professional dancer, but have been learning dance since I was little. Here’s a home truth about aging – the body weakens. You can’t do what you were able to do in your younger days. You lose your agility, your reflex, the body you once knew.
What I thought was amazing about Marion in this performance is that she acknowledges this and not try to prove that she is striving to be what she can no longer be. I thought it particularly clever that the story now stands in place for bodily movement, it is a way to take dance to another level when the body can no longer carry it. This admission and adaption was I thought the most powerful element in the performance.
Hi Sharon,
I mean ‘text’ as in any cultural media production.
So for every song, poem, painting, TV program, website made in Malaysia or made about Malaysia, there’s always a lot more being produced in other countries. Malaysian kids can grow up seeing more scenes of America or Oriental countries than what they can experience in Malaysia itself.
My ideas of ‘out there’ is akin to Simon *high ‘art history’ 5*
Being more ‘sensitive’ just means that when people grow older, they gain more more experience and wisdom about the issues related to their locality. If you live somewhere long enough, you become more aware of the patterns that reuccur in that environment.
The massive influx of foreign media over the last decades should be obvious for those who can still remember the age before google. Those born after google have a harder time sympathising with grainy issues of local/foreign, inner/outer, pure/hybrid. Heh, its already difficult to imagine young people looking to their parents for fashion advice. So unless 5 Arts set up a youtube channel, I’m afraid a lot of this wisdom will be lost.
Sharon ah, what did you understadn from Ah Fei’s comment ah? Cause in the end he wrote ‘I’m confused’….
Daniel: haha ur not paying attention. He was confused as to whether the man next to him was applauding and saying ‘once more’ in regards to the whole show, or just the exotic dance.
Heh, its already difficult to imagine young people looking to their parents for fashion advice
Sorry but in this regard I beg to differ. In the local fashion bloggosfera vintage clothing (as in curtain dresses and stuff your grandmother used to wear) is all the rage. There’s a whole blog dedicated to just tracking all the OTHER vintage clothing blogs out there: http://thriftbook.blogspot.com.
Your (and to some extent Simon’s) lumping of ‘young people’ and ‘older generation’ into distinct groups… makes them seem more disconnected from each other than they really are. For all we know Five Arts is in the very process of setting up a Utube channel. I know for certain that they have all their performances recorded on tape… it wouldn’t be a stretch lar.
I get the feeling that you feel somehow what’s ‘in here’ is authoritative and dismissive of what’s ‘out there’ – and you’re championing and defending the ‘out there’ because of this.
I say be a bit more open minded and you’ll see that both sides really want to engage with each other… unless of course you’re interested in maintaining this ‘in’ and ‘out instead of blurring or dissolving it.
I get the feeling that you feel somehow what’s ‘in here’ is authoritative and dismissive of what’s ‘out there’ – and you’re championing and defending the ‘out there’ because of this.
Sorry I’m a little lost here, are we talking about artists or the general populace?
Sharon:
Recording performances is de rigueur for documentation purposes, actually. As for the suitability of them being on Youtube … some editing would be required, I’d think.
Simon & Dan:
The divide of “in here” and “out there” (as applied to artistic trends) is problematic to me: seems like a bugbear.
I see interest in “global art discourse, youtube, 4chan??, tedtalks, international arts festival, residencies” residing in the current generation of Five Arts peeps; they deal with their ‘Five Arts legacy’ — the one that’s supposedly capable of weighing down globally-minded young practitioners — quite well.
I don’t think that any right-thinking artist / critic / observer today would dispute the need for people pushing in all directions.
Hi Sharon and Zedeck,
I do agree the divide is untenable to a certain extent. No doubt the current generation of Five Arts peeps are just as plugged into this global discourse as other artists. But that’s not the only position to take is it? Or one that is recognisably superior? (At least, it doesn’t for me)
What I understand from your suggestions is that they are prescriptive, that artists are for the better if they are ready to negotiate with this legacy. It makes them whole.
I’m not so dead set that this is the only approach that makes sense. What I believe Daniel and I are trying to say is that increasingly this global discourse or this global pull effectively render issues such as nationalism or national identity irrelevant to a number of artists. This is why, they don’t have to look back into the ‘past’.
One may argue that this is a dangerous and uncritical road – forgetting the struggle of our forebears, our roots, the value of merdeka, etc – but i like to believe that these are also approaches we can move away from nationalism’s violent face. You can’t have an artist pushing in all directions if he/she wants to embody a way of looking at the world in his/her practice that makes a geographically bound cultural communal identity inconsequential.
Again, that’s why I said I would never weigh this on a younger set of artists, who aren’t struggling over the same things. Maybe they are less of a “Malaysian” artist, but definitely no less of an artist.
1,2,3,
Gostan,
farword,
turn and turn
again to make a movement….every step follow with another step..
move on and move on…
Waltz,
move in cycle way,
not linear.
Um, S & Z, as I wrote before, I’m here observing from the middle ground, looking for the big picture. I’m not championing any side. I was just trying to point out that there’s usually a difference in priorities and sensibilities between the generations. Each group has different advantages and shortcomings. On some issues they connect, on some they don’t.
When you zoom out from an issue, a lot of stuff becomes lumpy terms but eventually a different picture is formed. The global statistic shows that ever since the baby boom, the number of senior citizens is growing more and more massive but youths are still dominant for now. On a big picture level, it’s also clear that mass communication is dominated by Western conglomerates. Saying that an ‘in/out’ is just imaginary socially constructed bogey that you can overcome just by semantically deconstructing it will not shoot down the hundreds of US satelites up in space.
Yet somehow I’m made to sound like I’m closed minded and making up myths about a sense of ‘in/out’ or ‘young/old’…If you walk around a mall and see that all the mannequins and photo models are white, healthy, rich and young, or just totally unlike the Asian shoppers, are you saying that I have a bug in my head for seeing these differences?
When I see the kids in my classes, I do not confuse them with the clothings of the uncles, aunties, or my ancestors. When I walk around the mall, I do not see the fashion of the youth section being similar to those in the adults section. If I check out the magazine covers, I do not see giant shoulder pads or bell bottoms on the models.
Perhaps in very poor or traditional societies you’ll have this absence of differentiation but in modern/modernizing societies, many tribes are formed and many costumes are created. Vintage and retro dressing are one of these tribes but funny how they will skip their parents’s teen clothing and gravitate to what their grannies wore. Vintage is also a pastiche strategy. It’s different from actually wearing the same clothes as your parents.
When you zoom in, you see the subtleties and gradations between in/out, us/them, young/old, left/right, up/down, liberal/convervative…and the exceptions to the rule.
Zooming in is necessary to achieve a bigger picture too but I’m not very good with focusing on one thing and looking at details. You can call me out on that but for not being open minded enough? NUh uh. Sorry.
Heheh actually its funny cause I used that as a cheap shot on Simon in our earlier exchanges and I’m sure it annoyed him since I think we are hanging out here because of our openmindedness.
Hi Simon:
Er.
“But that’s not the only position to take is it? Or one that is recognisably superior? (At least, it doesn’t for me)
What I understand from your suggestions is that they are prescriptive, that artists are for the better if they are ready to negotiate with this legacy. It makes them whole.”
Nowhere do I use the word “superior”, or the phrase “for the better”. Or, for that matter, “only position”.
So, when I talk about the “need for people pushing in all directions”, I mean: everyone, pushing in the direction(s) of their choice, make up a cultural practice that pushes everywhere at once.
There is space for the old Five Arts, and the Vincent Leongs, and the new Five Arts. No one is saying any one of them is more important than the others.
This notion of the One Right Way to be a Malaysian artist — I haven’t actually seen it for a while. No one I know agonises about the question any more. The hegemonic “Malaysian artists have got to talk about Malaysian identity, if not they are lesser artists” attitude you talk about — where is it coming from? Who is saying this?
Hi Z,
Yes you’re right that no one agonises about the question, but that’s pretty much the very few ways we talk about art these days, innit? :)
What do you mean where is it coming from?
I was referring particularly to what Sharon has said Arts practitioners who spent their formative years in that era have a sort of strength and confidence in their vision that we today lack.
hardly true.
oi go sleep
too full la… all the hummus… :/
Hey Simon:
“Yes you’re right that no one agonises about the question, but that’s pretty much the very few ways we talk about art these days, innit?”
??? The point I’m trying to make is that hardly any practitioner I know feels the need to talk like that — at least, not anymore. “What makes a true(r) Malaysian artist?” is much a moot point for ’em. (A lot of the griping nowadays concern structural matters.) The only people I know who dwell inordinately on this issue are writers / critics.
I doubt our circles are completely divorced.
When I ask “where is it coming from?” I really want to know about where this perception there’s some sort of prevailing hegemony is from. Cause I’m just not convinced it’s there’s loh. I was under the impression that hand-wringing about “Which artists are really Malaysian?” had gone out of vogue in the early 2000s.
I can’t speak for Sharon as to what she means, but you quote her without the completing disclaimer: “(**insert here** all disclaimers about how I DON’T mean that that was a golden age and we are now living in the shits etc etc etc**)”
So, once again, no one is really talking of superiority …
Salam siang semua…
Simon:
Sorry, I guess I should have added even more disclaimer such as ‘strength and confidence in their vision [SOMETIMES TO THE POINT OF BLINDSIDED-NESS].
Clear enough that I’m not championing one era over the current one? Remember, you were the one who said ‘more Malaysian/more of an artist’. I never implied as such. But the fact that you jumped to that conclusion is very telling. Why so defensive?
Piya giving Yeoh hell for using ‘Lost Generation’ – he couldn’t just have been giving his opinion, meh? I don’t see Yeoh feeling pressure and then changing the name of his collective. It was just an opinion – to say that it was a deliberate WEIGHING of a certain obligation on another artist…
‘More strength and confidence in their visions that we today lack’. Just using the example of the names ‘The Lost Generation’ vs. something like ‘Five Arts’ – cannot say they had more strength and confidence in their vision, meh? What’s so bad about that? Like Daniel says, each era has their own strength and weaknesses. No need to reject either one, and no one is doing that either. People just doing their own thing and sometimes… giving their opinion.
So why this idea of a (imagined, IMHO) hegemony?
Daniel:
I fully appreciate your position in the middle ground. It sometimes seems though that you’re so intent on staying there that you make further distinctions between one side and the other that may not be as obvious as you think.
Sure there are differences. But there are also engagements. Accept those also lar. My dad is asking me how to set up a Facebook account! And vintage clothing… sorry – I’m going to have to correct you again: alot of young women are looking back to the way their mothers dressed. And along with the wearing of the clothes is also a desire to revisit those times (the nostalgic, golden tinged 1960s, 70s). It’s not just pastische.
When you say ‘Those born after google have a harder time sympathising with grainy issues of local/foreign, inner/outer, pure/hybrid’ – I’m not convinced of that. I’m not convinced there’s such a neat divide – now engages with back then, using google and technology (e.g. vintage clothing blogshops, etc) and so-called ‘back then’ engaging with now, also using same technology (hello, fathers and grandfathers on twitter). It’s a two way street. And it’s moving.
Hi Z and S,
Perhaps superiority is too strong a word to use. And I guess I have misunderstood your point, if so, then my apologies la.
But I think I’ve made my point clear. That the refusal to engage with the past is no lost at all, this engagement with the past is a form of art practice that belongs to a particular period or movement and that if artist don’t wanna look back it doesn’t mean they have less strength and confidence in their vision. In comparison, of course Lost Gen sounds a lot more ‘lost’, but by which standard are we basing this comparison on?
Of course, if we read the word ‘Lost’ as a reflection of their state of mind, state of practice, state of being, then they might seem like a confused bunch, but artists are hardly a reflection of the environment they live in right? It’s their response to this feeling of ‘lost gen’, by acknowledging it and then by resolving it that characterizes their vision and strength. That’s why I feel Piya is unfair lor, and yes it’s just an opinion, too bad I don’t agree or see value in it lor. :)
I’m not being defensive, I’m just stating we should give younger people some slack la. What hegemony am I defending? I clearly state that we should at least acknowledge where everyone is coming from. Yes, they are all important. Whether they are all equally important is another thing altogether la, and that’s a discussion for some other day. :)
The whole Malaysian artist thing has been misread. It refers back to a reading of Malaysian art as something that is grounded in Malaysian subject. I agree with you Z, it’s a pre 2000 thing but it’s not something that’s entirely discarded in reading contemporary practice – exactly because it’s the issue that’s been dwelled on today by writers and critics (not just locally you know, more urgently, it’s the framework that academics elsewhere are using to frame a local scene – local here refers to a nation or a city) that we need to highlight this problem.
Hey Simon:
Ah, okay. So what you are saying is that this Five Arts legacy / hegemony is a device that’s being propagated among / by observers and criticism, then?
If so I would agree; it’s us, damn writers, that have to dismantle this old-fashioned construct, for ourselves. “Refusal to engage with the past is no lost (loss?) at all” is something that artists today, to my experience, already say.
As for Piya vs Lost Gen — well, Piya’s not saying that any more, is he? That sums up the currency of that sentiment, to me. The critics that have inherited his legacy need to catch on …
Since when did ARTERI’s tag line changed to Art + Culture I Malaysia + Southeast Asia?
It was different before right?
Hi Daniel,
I think I changed it sometime last week given that there are some projects that are in store for the future are more archival in nature. Since it’s not going to be just about contemporary art, but also modern art in malaysia and southeast asia, i changed it lor. u don’t like it?
-simon
its almost saying that there’s two opposing camps of thought forming in arteri.
excellent!
Process bifurbikisasi pandangan kepada dua kemah akan membawah lebih defi-nasi kepada ide-ide yang bermakna kepada kita semua yang berkelompok di peti laman ini.
what was the tagline then? my memory doesnt really work in this fastpaced networld, too distant to recall.
interesting projection though. in less then 3 months, contempory art has ‘expanded’ to include modern art (no postmodern art?) and from malaysia to southeast asia.
i wonder doesn’t that really confirm the spirit of this regional nusantara culture – ever emcompassing, ever ready to acknowledge the co-existence of differences, instead of purist identification.
Ca veux dire aussi qu’on est en trains de developer chacun son point de vue. Une voie menant a la monde de l’art et la culture tellement vague et vaste. L’autre voie represente une desire de trouver un pont de references plus concrete. La nasionalite et l’identite regional de l’asie du sud c’est la terre. On se combattre pour une future ensemble/ des futures fragmente? Pour mes etudients, je suis un guide. Alors il faut que je soit positive pour l’avenir.
Ca please also say that one is developing each one his point of view. A way leading to the world of art and the so vague and vast culture. The other way represents desired to find a bridge of refer more concrete. The nasionalite and the regional identity of the South Asia it is the ground. One to fight itself for future a whole of future splits up? For my etudients, I am a guide. Then it is necessary that I am positive for the future.
It also want to say we’re each developer’s point of view. A path to the world of art and culture so vague and broad. The other represents a desire to find a bridge of more concrete references. The nasionalite and regional identity of South Asia is the earth. We fight for a future together / fragmented future? For my study, I am a guide. So I have to be positive for the future
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