After the Fire

Ohandinearlyforgot! To observe the close of FCP 2007, David bought a paper motorcycle from the market, the kind you burn for dead relatives to bring them material goods in the afterlife.


And then we set fire to it outside Galerie Quynh.



The hawkers next door were rather intrigued, too. (Who says conceptual art is elitist?)



All gone!

I don't think I properly conveyed the sense, at the end of the talk among the artists, that this has been a highly nourishing FCP - I hesitate to use the words "successful" or "productive", because we've been redefining those very words. Reading past essays and hearing past descriptions of FCPs, I've realised there's often a tension, a clear division that emerges among traditionalists and conceptualists, the pioneers and the avant-garde. This time, that didn't happen - we somehow all became very sociable, treating everyone like soulmates, siblings.

How productive is that unity? Katarina noted that if we'd gone on for longer, we might have voiced more criticisms of each other's work, become less obviously supportive. Personally, I know that if I didn't love the person's work to begin with, I began to love the person, and the next time they presented, I understood the work, I knew where it came from, I fell in love as if at first sight.

Post-Manium

In four hours, I'm meeting Thu downstairs and we're setting off for the airport. Big mess of feelings. The heart = the way the head feels in aeroplanes: both heavy and light.

We had a big proper roundtable over at La Fenetre at 4ish. Everyone recapping, summarising, distilling their thoughts. Lotsa mushy stuff.

KS made me and the other documenters start. I said something like, I feel I have been a very bad documenter. I have spent all this time documenting the details of the official events of the FCP program, when the most important work has gone on between and beyond the schedule: late-night drinks and truant tourism. The casual bonds artists make with each other. The FCP programme is only a bamboo lattice and we are snakes and creepers among it.

(KS, incidentally, still wants me to redevelop the bits on Singapore Superintense and our first two days in Vietnam. Grrrrr. :P)

Other things that were said:

On FCP

KS: I must say, I’m glad that we’re leaving. I must say I’m glad that it’s finished. Because I feel I need the time to unpack it. I’m glad that I’m going straight on to making new work, because I know that it’ll be used for research."

Ka Fai: It’s almost like an art concentration camp. For me the interesting thing is you become friends first, before you see each others’ work.

Meg: Very intensive. Very overloaded. This question of presentation – you always have to think, what space do you mean? There was a sense of curiosity, in the act of listening, a sense of play - and no sense of pressure, because normally in work I have a lot of pressure to create.

Marc: It is so important not to have any curator: not inviting curators who could BUY it.

Caden: It’s a phantom economy of ideas. There’s no real economy to it, but it’s something that we’re all taking with us.

Koosil-Ja: For me, I will always think about the gathering of TiTan café that morning. That particular mood, that particular experience I had, was just interesting just so… new to me. There's a difference to the gathering from anything I experienced.

Katarina: To me, it’s right now, to stand in the middle of a kaleidescope. It’s very special fragments of work we’ve been doing – it’s overwhelming. And in Vietnam, to see all this tension, the complexity, it’s enormous. In many ways, this is kind of unfinished business. I have no idea how this will come out. I am sure I will meet several of you in different situations. I will stay here for another two weeks, and I have no plans – I will try to keep this kaleidescope going.

Tadasu: I’m wondering what I should do now. I’m thinking the apocalypse, the end of the world will come now. And this opportunity, meeting here, is very interesting in terms of n order to think how we stop our life. What we have to miss to think about stopping. Instead of make more stuff. More important. Production, so this is very good because we don’t have to make some have the opportunity given to think. And also we all come from different countries, this issue isn’t whether you are social - if you die, everybody dies.

On Geography

Naeem: E-mail gives this idea of proximity. Bt all you can do over e-mail is talk about work.

Julie: I’m actually excited to see how this is going to diffuse. Because everyone in my community is like, oh wow, Vietnam, oh wow, Singapore. But now I can now tell really great stories about all the great artists I’ve met and set you up with gigs, be a matchmaker. Close-knit communities? That’s cool. But I’m really eager to let it turn into gossip.

Naeem: The ultimate privilege is not money, but passports. The ability to travel. Mobility is power and access.

Marc: For me as an Italian, I noticed there were a few days people were trying to contact me by telephone and e-mail. And I told them I’m sorry I’m in Vietnam, I’m in Singapore, can we talk later. And as a one, they would tell me, oh sorry for disturbing you, have a good holiday. Because for them, Asia doesn’t exist for work. Could you do something like this in Brussels?

On the Role of the Artist

Rachid: Here in this group I feel I have a kind of immunity, an artistic passport. I can do whatever I want. It does question me a lot.

David: It's often boring for people to present in the country of art. Perhaps we take the passport of art. It's interesting, thinking of responsibility.

Tadasu: It's time to rethink the meaning of success.

KS: I thought Melati was very strong here. What is our responsibility here? What is our role here? The very act of shifting the site means becoming more aware of ourselves and our audience.

On Vietnam

Trung Lung: One thing is, we should have brought you to a rural area near Saigon. As it is, we have to explore our city with each two years.

Julie: Singapore is so open, trying to create its new identity; Vietnam is culture police, cyberpolice, on-the-dance-floor police. They could be here right now. That’s how we constantly feel all the time - people who still feel that paranoia. That’s a reflex.

Naeem: When the Vietnamese artists presented, they always opened by apologising that they couldn’t speak English. But we never opened by apologising that we couldn’t speak Vietnamese.

Julie: I feel because of the translation. It just makes me think about how vulnerable language is.

We broke late and headed over to Cafe 44 for Wonderful Evening, organised by the French/Viet collective Wonderful District - experimental club music, video art, quiche and gratinated croque monsieurs, and complimentary two drinks on Theatreworks's tab. I popped off early to go semi-gay clubbing at Lush with Thu and Arlette (only mixed clubs in HCMC), and ended up bumping into Vietnamese video artist Tu and his friends. He gave me a T-shirt. :)

Loads more to upload... more pictures, and a few interviews coming soon. But the 100 perfect hours are over. Now comes the age of imperfection.

Blank screen

I did not enjoy the video art from young Vietnamese artists and non-artists they showed us this morning. "Love Letter" had promise, but like the rest, it had no sense of narrative and dragged like hell at 40 min. Tinh, the blind masseur, was an interesting director conceptually but his film wasn't much better than the rest.

Of course, I was also exhausted from insufficient sleep (nothing scandalous, just bad time management) and the fact that I have the runs (drinking tap water does catch up with you eventually).

KS closed the event well - gave some background on his philosophy behind the current incarnation of FCP, drawn from that experience back 2000 when the traditional artists included 20 Tibetan monks, whom the cameras went crazy over - exotica exotica, same as the inclusion of a blind director. "How can it become a context in which he’s no longer so paraded?" he says. “How do we keep the balance so it does not become a circus?"

The Artists Have Arrived!

And we've been introducing ourselves each other in a circle since 3pm, talking about language and communication and global origins and theory and practice and collaboration.


Koosil-Ja:
It seems to be that communication always seems to fail. And that’s part of communication. You say 100, and someone thinks “polygon", or the listener thinks "99.99"… That’s the way I feel about communication in general. But shall I give up? My time runs out, so I'll just keep communicating? Language is definitely an immediate tool for my idea and maybe that’s not the only thing that fails when you communicate; language is translated. I’m very interested int that area of failing communication.

Looking at everybody’s biographies it’s very interesting, everyone’s ideas approach to creation and looking at my own biography, I look like an asshole, listing my awards. I wrote a bio as if it’s to get a grant. I love reading everyone’s bios except mine.

Chapter One: Loomings

It's the night before FCP, and our menagerie of artists is still flying in from each one's respective international timezone. But I've promised to update daily so I'll grab this op to expand a little on what I understand of TheatreWorks ideology.

Over the past decade, the Singapore government's been consciously reinventing Singapore as an "arts hub" - one of those London/Paris/Tokyo/New York cities where a citizen/tourist/expatriates can delight in immersion in Culture. There's hence been a largely successful effort to expand audiences for theatre/music/visual arts/dance/indie film/literature. The National Arts Council calls it "audience creation", as if we were moulding you guys out of clay or subatomic aether.

Now, the problem with having "audience creation" on your agenda is that you're suddenly beholden to market demands - you've gotta avoid alienating your viewers too much, you've gotta work within time constraints to create a finished international-standard product at the end of the day. This makes it that much more difficult to experiment.

You've gotta remember, the Singapore theatre scene of the 90s was chock-full of experiments - forays into forumtheatrepanAsiandevised- polyglot10minuteplaysitespecificBrechtiangaysexalternativepolitics fiestas that played to small but dedicated communities. Most theatremakers would agree that the drama scene's gotten rather less experimental since then.

Luckily, the folks at TheatreWorks somehow got very good at applying for international grants, so they wouldn't have to be beholden to this system. Aside from a few ra-ra shows like "Geisha" or "Sandakan Threnody" or "Diaspora", artists working with TW get the leisure to do personally-motivated work with little or no demand to be populist - tickets for their smaller shebangs are priced at $8, $5 or free or by-invitation-only, so there's no need to get into a tizzy if no-one comes to watch. What's important is the process.

The problem - and I speak as if KS only mentions one problem - is that one company alone doesn't set the tone for the culture. We want a Singapore - hell, we want a world - where people are open to new ideas, to new cultures, to new coincidences of contact.

Which is why FCP (atgreatexpensetothecompany) is FOC: anyone can call ahead and attend the events for free. And I really do believe the average TanAhKow in the street should be curious enough to want to witness feminist underwater nudie dancing by Julie Atlas Muz or revisionist silentmovie spinning by DJ Spooky. I'm a Warholite: I believe everyone should like everything.

KS has told me that he's no longer sure FCP is right at home in Singapore: maybe it'd have more of an impact stationed permanently in Vietnam, where the emergent culture is hungry for anything new. I told him he oughta go ahead and move the circus tent a little; maybe it'll make us on this island a little hungrier for his kind of art.

The week to come is a compromise: first we'll be occupying Singapore, then off to Ho Chi Minh City. To prepare for the trip, I'm reading the novels of Duong Thu Thuong and studying some elementary Vietnamese, because I do want to know more.

I am curious. Come be curious with me.

Seeya at the opening.

A little background...

The Flying Circus Project started off in 1994 as an effort to inspire a pan-Asian performance tradition, bringing together traditional Asian performing artists and contemporary theatre practitioners to share and workshop. The products of this first generation of culture were Theatreworks's big ol' epic dramas like Lear and Desdemona where kabuki divas rubbed shoulders with rappers, alternately adored and deplored for their ambition, beauty and arguable autoexoticism.


From the 5th FCP in 2004 onwards, however, attention turned towards the development of individual contemporary artists, with a focus on visual artists (who're really the vanguard of the cultural experimentation in Singapore today, IMHO). With a programme of free discussion events and an agenda of provoking casual, interdisciplinary discussion, FCP's since hosted artists and intellectuals like Jerome Bel, Ho Tzu Nyen, Goenawan Mohamad, Tony Chakar, Tan Kai Syng, Bilal Khbeiz, Navin Rawanchaikul, Nadia Bamadhaj, Popo, Tintin Wulia, Ly Daravuth, KYTV and Tsunamii.net.

But enough with the name-dropping. My name's Ng Yi-Sheng, I'm a writer in Singapore, and this year, I happen to be a Creative-In-Residence at 72-13. KS (Keng Sen) has directed me to be a witness - half-participant, half historian - at this year's FCP, moving between Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City to create some kind of daily and immortal document on our activities, thought processes, personalities, debates, etc. during our 100 hours of pleasure.

The merry men and maidens I'll mingle with include:

Brian Gothong Tan, Singapore
Caden Manson, New York City
David Subal, Vienna
Francis Ng, Singapore
Julie Atlas Muz, New York City
Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Ho Chi Minh City
Kaffe Matthews, London
Katarina Eismann, Stockholm
Kim Ngoc, Hanoi
Koosil-Ja, New York City
Luigi de Angelis, Ravenna, Italy
Meg Stuart, Berlin
Melati Suryodarmo, Gross Gleidingen, Germany
Michikazu Matsune, Vienna
Naeem Mohaiemen, Dhaka/NYC
Nibroll - Mikuni Yannaihara & Keisuke Takahashi, Tokyo
Ong Keng Sen, Singapore
Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky, New York City
Rachid Ouramdane, Paris
Raqs Media Collective, New Delhi
Tadasu Takamine, Kyoto
Tiffany Chung, Ho Chi Minh City
Yuen Chee Wai, Singapore

They run the gamut from sound art, burlesque dance, commercial filmmaking, deejaying, choreography and activism. Stay tuned for morethandaily updates.

This Is Your Captain Speaking

aka some words from the Artistic Director and the company:

2007 marks the 6th edition of the Flying Circus Project or FCP. This year's programme, TRAVELOGUE, begins in Singapore and then travels to Ho Chi Minh City. The themes of this TRAVELOGUE are memories/local wisdoms/future-ness. The FCP 2007 brings together artists from different cultures, disciplines and politics.

Established in 1994 by Ong Keng Sen, the FCP is a major programme exploring creative expression in Asia NOW! This transcultural, inter-disciplinary, long-term research and development programme consists of performances, screenings, conversations, laboratories, workshops, talks and engagement with local communities – food for thought for the future. The focal points are on individual creative strategies, diversities, cultural negotiation and the process of art practice.

In 2007, for the first time, the artists from Asia, Europe and North America will travel together to two different sites, interacting with the cities, localities and contexts. The Flying Circus Project artists will make presentations with invited guests of each city.

Some Thoughts from Hanoi

The Flying Circus Project (FCP) has matured immensely over the last 12 years. It has always been a gathering of artists interested in investigating our processes. In the larger scheme of our individual artistic trajectories, the FCP can be said to be many small processes which happen intimately, quietly and continue to resonate thereafter. Presently as i am here in Hanoi, accompanying Raqs Media Collective on their FCP Residency through Vietnam, i am struck by their words describing their practice. 'Talking and Listening' for instance is something which completely relates to the FCP practice. How little this is valued by artists and by audiences as we become overwhelmed by preconceived contexts and expectations. The beginning platform of the FCP is to provide a broad enough space that all invited artists of multiple disciplines from urban research to burlesque, individual interests, diverse contexts can participate. The actual tasks together are simple, we share a short intense time together, almost mundane. But hopefully, the communications amongst ourselves become more compassionate and sharper. Converations across boundaries within and without ourselves. Leaving our usual contexts to see again, hear again, experience again, reflect again. Being challenged to leave our artistic contexts to travel, an activity of the everyday, of mere mortals!

Quoting from travel magazines, using taglines like "100 perfect hours" to be in a city; opening up the space to be shared with the audiences who can join us on observerships throughout the time in both cities - "in the casual company of". The travel by the community of artists is also accessible for the audiences to partake. The performance of travel. Open spaces, secret spaces, shared spaces. A shared space of where there is no dumbing down, these are artists working all over the world who have not been seen in Singapore before and whose work i enjoy, appreciate. An occasion like this is also one to ask the question of why we are only seeing Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba's video, 6 years after it was first premiered in Yokohama? What is the role of the audiences, the independent arts groups to articulate the kind of artistic and social discussion that we would like in our cities? How do we want to inhabit our cities? Conversely is it about making a mark or about leaving traces in the urban noise for those who desire to discover you?

Ong Keng Sen
Artistic Director
Flying Circus Project 2007