7th Asia-Europe Art Camp for Visual Arts 2009/2010 ｜ Moved, Mutated and Disturbed Identities, Application 何穎雅 ELAINE W. HO
As a national of none of the ASEM member countries, my motivation to participate in the Asia-Europe foundation’s 2009/2010 Art Camp is a flailing attempt. But it is call to response, for while the jury panel may notice immediately my lack of proper qualification to join the project, I would like to question the very mutation of identity that we bear by our claims/rights to citizenship, and how—while we would like to imagine the fluidity of identity within networked society—it is exactly the restrictions that we remain bound to (by way of the financial system, funding of the arts, national/international concerns, the ‘guise of cultural exchange’) that show the futility of identity as such. Can there be such a thing as a moved, mutated or disturbed identity? Is not the very nature of the stamp of identity (at border control or at tax time) such that it fixes us, holds us responsible to the laws, rights and privileges of whichever particular one we may be so lucky (or unlucky) to have? Those of us who evade and escape such identity formations (the expatriate, the refugee, the trickster) shatter the very notions of identity that most people take for granted; they leave identity, create ambiguity and garner suspicion. And thus fluidity very easily finds itself blocked in the real world. We are the stateless, the draft dodgers, the cynics. The neither here nor there.
[text taken from the letter of motivation for the 7th Asia-Europe Art Camp for Visual Arts 2009/2010]
Dear Elaine:
Greetings from the Asia-Europe Foundation and Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain.
We have received your application for the 7th Asia-Europe Art Camp-Art Workshop for Visual Arts 2009/2010. Thank you for your interest in the project.
The 7th Asia-Europe Art Camp-Art Workshop for Visual Arts 2009/2010, being organised by Casino Luxembourg, the University of Luxembourg and the Asia-Europe Foundation, is open to young visual artists from ASEM (Asia-Europe Meeting) countries. As you currently hold a US passport, we are unable to accept your application for the 7th Art Camp.
Currently, ASEM member countries include Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Bulgaria, Cambodia, P.R. of China, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Laos, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mongolia, Malta, Myanmar, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, United Kingdom and Vietnam. Your country is not part of the ASEM process yet. Hence, we are presently unable to accept your application at present.
We, therefore, regret to inform you that you would not be eligible to apply for the 2009/2010 edition of the programme. However, if are interested in applying for the 2011 edition, please visit the website of Casino Luxembourg’s Art Workshop at www.ArtWorkshop.lu.
Best regards,
Anupama
There is only a You amidst all of this, and while paperwork may never allow us to get past it, shouldn’t that space between the You and the I be the most significant one?
Posted by e | reply »silence
it’s never silent. there are always some noises, always something to see, smell, taste, feel…
i see families living by 4 in one room of 10 m2. houses are open, everyone can look into it. babies are sleeping, people are watching television, drinking coffee, tea, people are watching, touching.
we share the same space, the same time, the same air, the same city…
do we share our body?
is our body the only thing that is private?
what happens if we make our body public?
‘aesthetics of silence‘ by susan sontag (read by paul chan)
Posted by sim | reply »there is a story behind this image
he was so drunk when we arrived, had to touch fingers to the glass table top to keep standing up, his 黄酒 spilling to the sides, splashing on the glass, sparkling in the frays of his braided goatee. they were laughing at him, i think they were laughing at him. constant repetition, “祖国就是悲剧”, “祖国就是悲剧” and “好东西“。And what about this? and this? They were making fun. End of the night silences. Another grunt, he doesn’t give a fuck. He has 好东西! The motherland is simply a tragedy! We follow, think, repeat. Off to bed. and he’s still leading our way.
concepts to discuss
these are at the moment the main concepts my work is going to turn around. I met up with Xiao Ke today, we talked about that. It’s still to be developped, discussed, experienced and shared. So each of us is going to think about it and bring suggestions to make it physical, create methods, give exercises, make scenes… please feel free to join and comment!
1. pass ways, shifting timing, faith, coincidence, accidents: we move in the given structures, outer logical structure, for example streets in a city.
2. moving organsime (bacteries, animals in the nature…) related to biology, phisics and chemistry: inner logical structure
3. meeting in different scales: small (intimate meeting), medium (a meeting of a few people), big (a demonstration, a battle). the impact a meeting has on a person and the space around it.
4. energy versus qi, chinese philosophy, understanding of space (cultural differences)
5. power: what is power? what does power mean to you? and how does power relates between human being, space and time?
6. public and private space: what is public and what is private?
7. net work: the need to create a network to gather. create, recognize and pull strings.
Posted by sim | reply »the workaholic, propaganda and mantras
Harder Better Faster Stronger (Diplo Work Is Never Over Remix), by Daft Punk
《人有多大胆，地有多大产》image by didelidi.
simone’s, from audition, 19 April 2009: 《我们要团结起来，因为团结让我们变得更强！》
Posted by e | reply »thanks to everyone
Thanks elaine for the pictures and thanks to xiao ke to assist me in that workshop, thanks the dancers for your energy and sweat and thanks to mon, sylvie, e and mandy to witness and translate.
this last weekend was very intensive. we worked 3h on saturday and 4h on sunday. The workshop was build up in the way that on the first day we would work more on physical tasks, first more collective and than more individual work and the second day focusing more on creativity. we met some really inspiring, intersting and nice people. i am really happy!
Posted by sim | more »collectivity, contrast, interdependence: views from audition 18 april 2009
Power as intermedia
By power… I do not understand a general system of domination exercised by one element or one group over another, whose effects… traverse the entire body social… It seems to me that first what needs to be understood is the multiplicity of relations of force that are immanent to the domain wherein they are exercised, and that are constitutive of its organization; the game that through incessant struggle and confrontation transforms them, reinforces them, inverts them; the supports these relations of force find in each other, so as to form a chain or system, or, on the other hand, the gaps, the contradictions that isolate them from each other; in the end, the strategies in which they take effect, and whose general pattern or institutional crystallization is embodied in the mechanisms of the state, in the formulation of the law, in social hegemonies. The condition of possibility of power… should not be sought in the primary existence of a central point, in a unique space of sovereignty whence would radiate derivative and descendent forms; it is the moving base of relations of force that incessantly induce, by their inequality, states of power, but always local and unstable. Omnipresence of power: not at all because it regroups everything under its invincible unity, but because it is produced at every instant, at every point, or moreover in every relation between one point and another. Power is everywhere: not that it engulfs everything, but that it comes from everywhere.
‘The history of sexuality’ by Michel Foucault
Posted by sim | reply »the translator, a cross post
In terms of the linguistic aspects, i think it has to do with my hesitations about the propagation of ideas and beliefs in the first place… how we live and die and shun and fraternise and conspire and love and love and loselove by these things, all framed for and to one another by these very fragile things such are words. Please excuse my feeling a bit pessimistic tonight, but it all feels very silly and futile when looked at from this context, as most of the time we’re simply misunderstanding one another in language, not so much that you or i or we or other are necessarily so different.
But through this comes the power of the translator as an in-between, a conductor, a metaphorical parlay and/or very possibly subversive player. We cannot ignore the importance of this in the thinking about why we should translate texts, but also maybe why we shouldn’t. There is no one-to-one here, no 辅导, not even you and me. That parlay is neither yours nor mine, yet what stakes should we play to come to something new, to something better?
As he speaks, his gesturing hand inadvertently slaps a loaf of bread.
i laugh in my own thoughts;
he won’t stop talking to me about the better.
i leave, feeling upset.
He likes discussion. I keep thinking of productivity. Yeah, yeah, yeah… boil it all down to 语言, to 文化区别. So where is the translator? Can we add to meaning? Can we destroy it? What was that term of vital nourishment, about boiling the thing down until only its essence is left? Oh right, so sorry. I’m neither the chef nor the translator. But let’s put that in motion, a blurry train ride, a thought of chasing down your unmade sculpture. What is hidden laid bare behind our backs. Like the difference between a solitary fish leading the others, a single fish swimming in front of a shoal.
Posted by e | more »spaces
a courtyard
a tearoom
a bar
a kitchen
a bedroom