APRIL 2010 // 1

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Tue to Sun - 11am to 7pm / Mon & Public Holidays - Close
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FEATURES

8 // CONFABULATION APRIL 2010 // 9

+ CON-
TENTS A Tribute to Corazon C. Aquino

16. 19.

27. 29. 34.

46. 50. 66.

16 COMING UP
Damsel Liaison: Charisma of the Lady in Art
54 SITE SPECIFIC
Lee Wen
An Exhibition Featuring the works of:

WHOLE Arturo Luz • Richard Arimado • Karina Baluyut •

Gautama Buddha: Sculpture in Paintings
23rd Singapore International Film Festival
56 PHOTO ESSAY
When love departs, reason returns (or, notes to self
Amador Barquilla • Jovan Benito • Jomar Delluba •
Aileen Lanuza • Carlo Magno • Jerry Morada •
CHICAGO for next time) Ramon Orlina • Mario Parial • Aljo Pingol •
masquerade Vincent de Pio • Dominic Rubio •
57 DIRECTORY Tres Reyes • Lydia Velasco
19 FEATURES Singapore
Friday, The 16th of April 2010
15 Principles of Black Market International
21 Featured Artist of FOI 63 CREATIVE RESOURCES at Galerie Joaquin Singapore
The Regent Singapore, 1 Cuscaden Road
Ground Floor Unit 3, Singapore 249715

42 ESSAYS
A Confoundedly Confutative Construal: Performing the
64 POSTSCRIPT
Art of the meeting
Exhibit ends 10th May 2010

Perception of Performance
Interview: Effendy
A Brief on Asian Performance Art
66 POST-POSTSCRIPT
Roi Vaara. Artist’s Dilemma (video still)
Supported by the
Ninoy Aquino Foundation in Singapore S I N G A P O R E

10 // CONFABULATION Tel.: +(65) 6725 31132010

APRIL · Email: contact@galeriejoaquin.com.sg
// 11
www.galeriejoaquin.com.sg
Issue #5 (April 2010)
ISSN 1793-9739 / MICA (P) 183/02/2010
www.confabmag.com

Editor-in-chief // Sabrina Sit / s@confabmag.com

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Contributors // Bruce Quek / Richard Lim / June Yap
Site Specific artist // Lee Wen

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Cover
Jason Lim, Duet (3 hours durational performance), Sweden, 2009. Photo: Jürgen Fritz

Duet was a durational performance situated at the edge of the Museum of World Culture and the Museum of
Natural History in Gotenberg, Sweden. The granite wall and moss covered steps background was chosen for
providing dramatic visual and compositional purposes. In the duration of performance, Jason spent 2 hours
unspooling an industrial sized ball of red thread onto the backrest of the chair. After which he sat on a chair
balanced by three inverted glasses and draped his head with the newly ‘weaved’ fabric. Towards the end, with
his head still covered by the veil of red thread, he walked gingerly around the open space of the museum. He
ended the performance when his made his way back to the chair, unveiled and draped the fabric back onto the
backrest of the chair.

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EDITOR’S LETTER

Jason Lim Untitled (Trash Head), Sweden, 2009. Photo by Peter Lindl

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COMING UP COMING UP

Exhibition: Damsel Liaison: Charisma of the Lady in Art Exhibition: 23rd Singapore International Film Festival
Date: 02.04.10 - 13.04.10 Date: 15.04.10 - 24.05.10
Venue: Gnani Arts Space Venue: LIDO/THE ARTS HOUSE
190 Middle Road
#02-30/31 Fortune Centre www.filmfest.org.sg
Singapore 188979

www.gnaniarts.com

The largest international film festival in Singapore, SIFF has become significant in the Singapore arts
Via conventional and almost exotic portrayals of the woman, this showcase of paintings and sculptures
landscape because of its dynamic film programming and commitment to the development of film
by two masters and five emerging artists, extols the beauty that is inherent in the confidence, charm and
culture and local cinema. The Festival screens over 200 films annually of all genres, with a focus on
sensuality of the female element in human life. C. Dakshinamoorthy and A. Selvaraj are the two masters
groundbreaking Asian cinema. Under the umbrella of the Silver Screen Awards, SIFF recognizes
in the exhibition. Ann Meek, Aparna Sundaresh, Sam Kumar, Seema Chopra and Yeo - are being
excellence in Asian cinema with its three awards categories – Asian Film Competition, Singapore Short
launched into the dynamic community of fine artists through this alluring showcase.
Film Competition and the Singapore Film Awards introduced in 2009.

Exhibition: WHOLE Exhibition: CHICAGO

Date: 08.04.10 – 06.05.10 Date: 16.04.10 - 09.05.10
Venue: Indigo Blue Venue: Esplanade Theatre
33 Neil Road 1 Esplanade Drive
Singapore 088820 Singapore 038981

www.indigoblueart.com www.chicagothemusical.com

“WHOLE” express the individuality of parts in the bigger matrix of the whole. The exhibition showcases CHICAGO tells the tale of Roxie Hart, a nightclub dancer who dreams of heading in Vaudeville, kills her
a panoramic view of Indian art today with the intent to experiment with conventional display of art and lover, then convinces her husband to come up with the $5000 to hire Chicago’s shrewdest, smooth-
curatorship. The collection does not revolve around a given concept or theme, but instead collects talking lawyer, Billy Flynn. With an all-star cast including the award-winning Sharon Millerchip (Roxie
varied pieces of art from contemporary Indian scenario and collates them through an experiment with Hart) and Craig McLachlan (Billy Flynn).
display. Each piece of art is treated as an individual within a matrix of time, differing from the other
works; stylistically, by medium and/or by subject. What binds them all together is the size of the artwork,
and the disparity that is ordered through the display – or otherwise known as ‘the grid’. Exhibition: masquerade
Date: 24.04.10 - 22.05.10
Venue: Mulan Gallery
19 Tanglin Road
Exhibition: Gautama Buddha: Sculpture in Paintings #02-33 Tanglin
by J. Kalidass Shopping Centre
Date: 16.04.10 - 27.04.10 Singapore 247909
Venue: The Gallery of Gnani Arts
One Cuscaden Road www.mulangallery.com.sg
#01-05 The Regent
Singapore 249715

www.gnaniarts.com
This will be Singapore-born J. Kalidass’ first ever solo art exhibition. Here, conventional and historic
sculptures of the Buddha are portrayed within paintings of a limited colour palette, together with a
surreal touch that denotes the artist’s personal pursuit in the spiritual realm. The art in this enthralling
showcase reflects the emerging artist’s highly-skillful rendition of three-dimensional attributes on
flatness. Kalidass received his formal training in the art of painting at LASALLE College of the Arts The deliberate distortion and management of the images by the artist has a clear motive. Shiew Eng
(Singapore). is interested in the gaze of the viewer; she makes the person self-conscious so as to reveal something
about our seeing habits – the way we see gender in particular.

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 BLACK MARKET INTERNATIONAL

15 Principles
of Black
Market
International
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FEATURES BLACK MARKET INTERNATIONAL

The performances of BMI

are exercises in derision and
concentration, sacralisation and
effacement. The performers try to
take life seriously yet demonstrating
that is worth very little, that it is
held by a gesture, that is played in
a moment. It is hard to describe that
gesture, to say what it should look
like, yet we recognize it as soon
as we see it. We are familiar with
metaphysics more that we want
to admit and that is why we can
recognize the fundamental moments
of existence without even knowing
what it’s about - in an epoch where
the acceptance of performance as
an artistic practice is not yet in the
dictionaries. That is the work of
BMI: create fundamental moments.
And it is our job to find out why
and how.

In this article, we will tell you

about the solo BMI performances
through 15 basic principles.

Black Market International, National Review of Live Art, Glasgow, Scotland, 2007.
Photo: Naranja

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FEATURES
The 1st principle of BMI is the privilege of encounter.
The art of encounter becomes a politic of comunitas. The
members don’t have a common theme; they work in open
cooperation, even if it’s not often that they are produced
collectively. The title Black Market (1985) is not a group
but ideas at work. Each performance must set up a singular
space-time complex, exhuming the structure of encounter,
which is genealogically the origin of what we call “space”.
The body is sublimes in space. There is also an experience
of human relation that has been deposited in what seems
today like an empty frame: the abstract notion of time-
space. A BMI performance seeks an encounter so that we
may reappropriate space and draw the invisible links that
make it up.
Lee Wen makes visual contact with the public, and then
does a ritual in which he takes small stones and bounces
them on his head. Then he eats a handful of red peppers,
leaving the audience in awe. We are attracted to him and
the tears in his eyes make the silence more enveloping...
Wen shows his capacity of being detached from himself,
yet maintaining self-control. He seems to be saying: all our
identities are false.
Black Market International, LiveAction, Gotenberg, Sweden, 2009. Photo: Peter Lindl
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The 2nd principle is the diversity of initial impulses.
Each member can bring his own impulse. A BMI event
can host guests that will bring their own impulse, but the
initial autonomy must hold its course; the performer is
a vehicle for experimentation. Elvira S. wants to get on
a bus without paying, negotiating the fare with a small
duck, asking the driver to be her accomplice. It is the
idea of the singularity of gratuity (“only this time”). The
impulse is accentuated by the resistance that is provoked,
and by the possibilities of eventual negotiations.
Black Market International, National Review of Live Art, Glasgow, Scotland, 2007.
Photo: Naranja
The 3rd principle is the parallelism of performances. We can
imagine many actors on the same stage, each one reciting his
own play. The happening-condition reminds us of the human
condition, each one being absorbed by his own existence,
each one unraveling the thread of his own existence. There
is nothing in common between Alastair M. nailing fish on the
wall and Roi V. writing a spiral of words on the ground. One
thing is sure and it is that we must not link the interventions
because it would reduce them to “episodes”.
The performances enable us to see forms of life that would
otherwise go unnoticed - they are “language games”
(Wittgenstein)
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FEATURES BLACK MARKET INTERNATIONAL

of the artist, whether or not to permit the complete success

Black Market International, Asiatopia 10, Bangkok, Thailand, 2008. Photo: Angie Seah
The 4th principle of BMI is that it is only an artistic idea, a
creative hypothesis that could not be founded on certainties
that must be verified in upcoming projects that need links
that are not based on our cultural backgrounds. We must then
choose links (structural, affective…) beyond our cultural
limits. Another way of saying that out familiar world is
made of a tight web of conventional links, and all things are
connected to each other in the consolidation of the evidence
of the world (I didn’t understand this part!!! I skip it!)
of the exchange protocol. The systematic character of the
unraveling of the action and the quality of the interpersonal
relationship in which the exchange is done contributes to
the degree of response of the public. So Meyer’s mechanism
is a link in an international transmission chain: the group
from Le Lieu became solidary with the Philippines group.
And more, each piece of clothing having a history, each
spectator discovers how much his clothing is related to
his own cultural universe. All this pushed an audacious
spectator to come and give up his underwear in front of
everybody in exchange for a black lace string that Helge M.
had succeeded in putting on. Thanks to this last audacious
act, all the process was ratified, and the public confirmed its
ability to conclude the “procedural” contract and overcome
idiosyncratic prudery. The spectators are not only people
who are asked to be there, they participate in an action and
become performers. Helge M. can go to his next festival
with a bunch of Québécois clothing. Let’s hope he will find
someone who will accept to take them.

With this 4th principle, BMI is conceived as a federative

idea (European inspired): a mutual political and economic
union that respects the cultural specificity of each member.
Within this union, the cultural differences are marked but
they do not risk to be menaced by concerted actions. The
political dimension must be assumed: the performer must
reflect on the type of relationship he wants to have with
his public. Each action questions the responsibilities of
the artist and of the public which, in a given situation, has
a drawing force and manifests an adhesion to the event in
all its ethical and political implications. Black Market International, National Review of Live Art, Glasgow Scotland, 2008.
Photo: Naranja
In Helge M.’s relationship with his public, a unstated
contract is passed: “All the clothing I wear are the result The 5th BMI principle is that the artist must adjust his
of an exchange (in a past festival in the Philippines) I presence in the way he feels the space, and in the way
must exchange them all with you today!” When it came to he creates a duration in time through his actions. This is
the last item, feminine underwear, and the public had to an existential statement that deals with the quality of the
decide collectively about this symbolic process of nudity presence and the specificity of the staging of the present.

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FEATURES
Ideally, the event that assembles performer and public
should have no content or reason other than this “typical
presence” that characterizes the artist, signaling an ontic
event really taking place.
Roi Vaara, elegant in his evening suit, starts his performance
putting an alarm clock on the floor. Then he writes a series
of words on the floor in a spiral. Once it is done, he swirls
around and falls. He lights a cigarette and gets up, goes along
the spiral in the other direction cancelling the words and
replacing them by others. This performance magisterially
illustrates the construction of space (the spiral) and time
(the double movement centripede and centrifuge, systole
and diastole), a space-time constructed hic and nunc.
This vertiginal spiral of our time makes Roi V. loose his
equilibrium. SO he has the good idea of changing the terms:
fate (choice) etc…..
Black Market International, Bone 8, Bern, Switzerland, 2005. Photo: Martin Rindlisbacher
The 6th BMI principle is that the whole process must not
end in a synthesis (a demonstration, a moral…), the event’s
indetermination must be maintained. A direct consequence
of this indetermination is that hope remains in circuit
because the virtuality of the presence is not completely
actualized. BMI is an event without terms, produced within
events that leave us waiting for something to follow, waking
up the sense of community in the hope of a future world:
recognizing in ourselves a thirst for the absolute (vodka
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hahaha), : recognizing in ourselves the hidden hope for a
better world… Performance must give the most tangible
manifestation of hope, must make hope gush like and energy
flowing out of immateriality.
Boris N., almost nude, rolls on the gravel holding a stone
to his breast. Rolling stone gathers no moss? He underlines
his nakedness in a poetical action that is close to the
definition that Cage gave to poetry: a “celebration of the
fact that we own nothing”. It is like acts of meditation and
telluric incantation, when the stone becomes the nexus of a
mental concentration, a meditative exercise that transforms
the gravel of any parking lot into something as precious as
the Ryoanji Zen garden in Kyoto. A car with the headlights
on follows him… How can the spectator abandon himself
before the “unraveling” of this performance? He can
evaluate the distance covered, the speed of the movement
and thus the time. He can forget himself in this temporality
by projecting himself in the performer’s body (when one
thinks that it must be more painful in the elbows than in the
shoulders), by projecting himself into the enigmatic gravel
that gives a theological aura to the event. The viewer moves
along to follow the action, he is attracted by the stone
that accumulates presence, when Nieslony shows that the
effective daily being-alive of man, despite all the mediation
of our “spectacularized” society, can be re-centered in a
harder core.
Black Market International, Performance Art Konferenz, Berlin, Germany, 2005. Photo:
Petra Arndt
APRIL 2010 // 27
FEATURES
The 7th BMI principle is that time is not dissociable from the
elementary presence of the artist with the public, when both
negotiate each other’s presence.
Since Fluxus, MACINAS was looking for “monostructural
qualities…of a natural simple event”. It’s a rule of unity. This
is why it is important to set a specific duration: the time of the
basic event, from which we take conscience of others, element
in which we get closer to each other but also in which we
practice exclusion. The presence is overthrown by the passage
of time because the situation is precarious and the participants
are mortal. In the flux of time, objects and living people are
all temporal actors, inert objects can become useful actors,
and in fact they can become performers of equal value as the
live ones. Cage had already discovered that all objects can
“become Duchamp”. All stones, as long as they are willing to
roll along with us on the gravel, would be Nieslony.
With Norbert K., the flux of pedestrians walking on the
sidewalk across the street from Le Lieu and that we can
see through the window to his left and to his right, give the
rhythm of time. The street life becomes a discreet actor in the
performance. The performer throws flowers – symbol of the
corruptible character of all things in time, he blows a white
balloon – using breath as a component of the duration of the
operation. Covered in a black veil, he passes a red thread from
left to right, identifying himself with the three Parcae. There is
no duration to this piece; the piece is nothing but this duration
that unwinds in different ways.
Black Market International, National Review of Live Art, Glasgow Scotland, 2008.
Photo: Naranja
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The 8th principle of BMI is the exploration of ethnic and
cultural dimensions that are lost in the usual tracking we do
by using the most current ethno cultural markings. These
aspects do not appear on the map on which we would like
to frame the diversity of our times. A better knowledge
of cultural territories enables us to trace the borders and
to play with overlapping of cultures, hybridization and
crossbreeding. We find a widening of the intermedia
project that Dick Higgins is keen on, towards “interstitial”
productions, intercultural poetics.
Alastair M.’s performances deals with objects whose
connotation is specific to certain regions: in Northern
Ireland, an individual with a nylon stocking on his head
that nails mackerels to the wall, doesn’t give the same
impression as in, let’s say Italy. M. proposes an installation:
on the wall (three small plastic ducks, three mackerels) and
all the material on the floor, need an interpretation, just like
the door through which he finally disappears.
Black Market International, Acciones en Route, Mexico, 2003. Photo: Jürgen Fritz
The 9th BMI principle is that performance is an investigation
of forms of attention, from the reflective or meditative
attention to a purely instinctive attention. This instinct
enables us to recognize instantly “what must be”, what
corresponds to the right unwinding of the event, to the
natural traveling of time. But we are not familiar with the
logic of the event, we cannot narrate its course – it stems
from an inner knowledge that is like the analogon of the
structural unity of the world. Or it stems from the world that
knows itself through us.
APRIL 2010 // 29
FEATURES
Black Market International, Asiatopia 10, Bnagkok, Thailand, 2008. Photo: Barbara
Sturm
The 10th BMI principle is that all must occur in life. Here,
we find Robert Filiou’s exhortation: “Art is where you live”.
Art must be founded in life and merge with life so that in
return life can take hold on art: esthetics must open the
road of ethics. So the art of performance knows no limits,
so life surfaces in its reinvented project, offering through
its decisive actions, the impression of truth. Nieslony tries
to create daily koan on life’s synopsis (Daily Life Plots
Koan)
Black Market International, Asiatopia 10, Bangkok, Thailand, 2008.
Photo: Juliana Yasin
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The 11th BMI principle stipulates that it is in the heart of
total solitude that we can find the greatest concentration that
we can reach the utmost and accomplished being-entity. We
think of Lee Wen’s solitude holding on to his stool to absorb
the shock of his peppers, Nieslony’s solitude in which he
realizes that the stone is his ally.
Black Market International, Performance Art Konferenz, Berlin, Germany, 2005. Photo:
Petra Arndt
The 12th BMI principle aims at maintaining performance
in an ontological paradox: the ambivalence of being
and non-being, of visible and invisible – trying to give
form to a third element, that of a differed existence, of a
constantly imminent emergence. A lot of our experiences
and perceptions are not stored because they don’t
seem to contribute positively to our dichotomous and
positivistic perception of the world. However we must
find these experiences again, recognize them as sketches
of another world, or of a multiplicity of worlds: as
dreams dreaming themselves. Performance enables us to
seize these experiences and perceptions, and to organize
them according to what Daniel Charles calls “insular or
compartmental structurations, rather than informative o
sequential”.
APRIL 2010 // 31
FEATURES
Black Market International, National Review of Live Art, Glasgow Scotland, 2008.
Photo: Naranja
The 13th BMI principle is performativity. Performance,
as seen by BMI, is not the search for a greater technical
or utilitarian efficacy; it is neither the development of a
narrative knowledge that may challenge the great tales of
modernity, as in Lyotard’s proposed alternative. It is the
performativity of a direct transmission, where saying is
doing and doing is saying. In direct performativity – as
in “direct provocation” – the discourse and the action
merge: a thought or a word surfaces from the action, and
it is a thought or a word that must become action. When
accomplished, the word no longer has to be said, it becomes
a virtuality of silence.
Another aspect of performativity: when the literal and the
figurative combine, the performative encounter will be
positive and through manipulation, symbols will be either
desecrated or sacralized. It is like this when Jacques V.P.
makes believe he is regimenting his public, buries his flag,
distributes fetishist objects, all with the help of a translator
called Nathalie, in an action interspersed with the reading
of chapters of Tao te King. And in the finale, a well-known
Gilbert Bécaud song about a pretty guide in Moscow is
played. As if we could hear this song only through the
present situation we are living.
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Black Market International, LiveAction, Gotenberg, Sweden, 2009. Photo: Peter Lindl
The 14th BMI principle is that we must stay away from common
language; we must practice a game of non-communicative
provocations that create in the end a deficit of interpretation, a
hearing hindrance, and a spiritual embarrassment. Pro-vocation:
provocare, “call (vocare) out”, place the voice outside, towards
the outside. It is rather an ante-vocation, a call from inside.
Auto-exhortation. The BMI performance, which has only a few
vocal effects from the verbal sphere, suggest the passage from
a verbal communication to a communication from self to self,
self-oriented through vital energy. This concerns first of all
the performer, who is carrying out a scenic activity disjointed
from the reactions and participation of the public.
Moments of energy that concern only him: Boris N. did not
only carry a heavy stone, he made a crowd disappear, allowing
it to become something else. On the gravel, under the highway,
Nieslony is holding onto a piece of absoluteness. In fact, he is
an admirer of Martin Buber, who said: “The words of he who
wants to speak with human beings without speaking with God
will not be accomplished; but the words of he who wants to
speak with God without speaking with man will be lost”.
APRIL 2010 // 33
FEATURES 21. (FEATURED ARTISTS)

21.
Alastair MacLennan
/ Juliana Yasin /
Helge Meyer & Marco
Teubner (System
HM2T) / Sabrina
Koh / Boris Nieslony
/ Kai Lam / Elvira
Santamaria-Torres /
Angie Seah /
Vichukorn Tanpaiboon
/ Melati Suryodarmo /
Jeremy Hiah / Jürgen
Black Market International, National Review of Live Art, Glasgow, Scotland, 2007. Fritz / Roi Vaara /
Photo: Naranja Norbert Klassen /
Jacques van Poppel
The 15th BMI principle is that all is possible. The simple fact / Amanda Heng /
of reminding this during a performance means inciting shock. Myriam Laplante /
It is putting on us the weight of the immensity of reality. Helge Meyer / Julie
Then, the room seems small, the action seems trifling, and our Andree T. /
knowledge seems useless. The only thing we must know is Zai Kuning
that the real form of a work of art is its approaching the other, / Lee Wen
and its true color, its attraction, its impact etc., all this has no
place except in the people.

When Roi V., sweating and panting, comes back from his
vertigo, he tries to light a cigarette, but his lighter doesn’t
work. Someone from the public comes up with another lighter,
but Vaara crossly throws it out. We don’t leave a chance to
possibilities because we determine from moment to moment
what it should be! //

Myriam Laplante, Crying Ghost, Germany, 1998. Photo: Jürgen Fritz

34 ////CONFABULATION
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FEATURES 21. (FEATURED ARTISTS)

System HM2T (Helge Meyer & Marco Teubner), 21 Grams, Canada, 2004. Photo: HM2T

Alastair MacLennan, BALK IN TALK (8 hours performance) Sweden, 2009.

Photo: Jürgen Fritz

Juliana Yasin, ‘The present (a secret)’, Australia, 2008. Photo: Richelle Spence Sabrina Koh, The Questioning Room, Germany, 2008. Photo: Sabrina Koh

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FEATURES 21. (FEATURED ARTISTS)

Kai Lam, Untitled (In the Name of...), Spain, 2009. Photo: Juan Casellas

Boris Nieslony, A Feather Fell Down on Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 2007. Photo: Jesse Clockwork Elvira Santamaria-Torres Carmaquia With Roses, Sweden. 2009.
Photo: Giovanni Salaris.

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FEATURES 21. (FEATURED ARTISTS)

Angie Seah, The Samurai Melancholia, Japan, 2009. Photo: Hitomi Melati Suryodarmo, Alé Lino, Germany, 2007. Photo: Reinhard Lutz

Vichukorn Tangpaiboon, Across The Line, Indonesia, 2009. Photo: Andri B. Jeremy Hiah, Mr One Cent, China, 2009. Photo: Arai Shinichi

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FEATURES 21. (FEATURED ARTISTS)

Roi Vaara, 7x7 Chairs, USA, 2009. Photo: Pekka Kainulainen

Jürgen Fritz, Sitting With Sticks, Indonesia, 2008. Photo: Christine Biehler Norbert Klassen, Viva Fluxus! Germany, 2009. Photo: Norbert Klassen

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FEATURES 21. (FEATURED ARTISTS)

Jacques Van Poppel, Self Medication0, Canada, 2009. Photo: Rebecca Belmore

Amanda Heng, Let’s Walk, Sweden, 2009. Photo: Peter Lind Myriam Laplante, Mutant Mermaid. Germany, 1996. Photo by Jürgen Fritz

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FEATURES 21. (FEATURED ARTISTS)

21.
Artist’s brief

Alastair MacLennan
The work is in part based on the realization that one
can learn more of contemporary, ‘international’
culture from what it throws away, than from what
it retains, a sort of recreation of the self-image.
Helge Meyer Wann? When?, Germany, 2008. Photo: Peter M. Glantz.
Juliana Yasin
Souvenirs and tokens of affection may come
to represent the past or the absent loved one.
Collaboration is an exchange; ‘the present (a
secret)’ is an intimate exchange between Juliana
and Australian artist Cassandra Shultz.

Helge Meyer & Marco Teubner

Julie Andrée T. Climbing The Sky China, 2009.
Photo: He Chengyao
Zai Kuning Mr One Cent, China, 2009. Photo: Arai Shinichi
(System HM2T)
System HM2T worked with the idea of the
weight of the soul, 21 grams which apparently
the weight of the soul. A myth says that
our body in the moment of death losses 21
grams in weight. Through an examination of
different body parts and scientific ideas of the
body, System HM2T tried to find the truth.

Sabrina Koh
This site specific performance congests 2
coexisting systems into action; art and religion,
supported by questions that may have no answers
at the end of the day.

Boris Nieslony
Performance artist Siu Lan Ko (Hong Kong)
reads 30 names of countries in a deliberately
slow manner. The citizens of these countries
died from capital punishment and human
rights violations. With the naming of each
Anthropometry Revision:Yellow period (after Yves Klein) #2. By Lee Wen with Lynn Lu, Arai Shinichi, music by country, Boris smashed a glass on his head.
Kai Lam and Jeremy Hiah, Singapore 2008. Photo by Chua Soo Bin

46 // CONFABULATION APRIL 2010 // 47

FEATURES
Kai Lam
This action started with the collection of portraits
of artists who had passed away in the last twenty
years. It is a performance paying homage to
artists, writers and cultural producers, whose
individual and collective works had inspired and
informed Kai’s own art practice.
Elvira
Elvira covered her left leg with red roses
and made her way to the street. At the traffic
junction she made simple gestures in relation
to the red traffic light. Ordinary relationships
were exposed to the symbolic yet concrete
actions.
Angie Seah
Matsushiro is an old castle town of samurai
families. Seah chances upon an accidental
collaboration with a samurai, who was
practicing his sword in the samurai school
during the performance.
Vichukorn Tangpaiboon
By observing situations and evidences of
his socio and political surroundings and
environment, Vichukorn (Jon) constructs
poetical actions in his performances. Through
the immediate space of emotions and logics
he creates his performance, where the public
can enter his world without touching it.
Melati Suryodarmo
Alé Lino is a durational performance in
which Melati stands on a plinth for three
hours, with a pole pointing at her upper
body. The performance was based on
Melati’s research on the practice of the
Bissus among the Bugis society in South
Sulawesi, Indonesia.
48 // CONFABULATION
Jeremy Hiah
This is a durational performance where
Jeremy glued coins to a tuxedo, while
wearing a balaclava, after which he wore
and paraded his money-made suit wielding
two huge meat cleavers to the audience.
Jürgen Fritz
Jürgen has performed this action on various
occasions and sites. In this durational
performance of 6 hours, it was important for
him to concentrate and sustain physical effort,
which resulted in a sculpture and was eventually
transformed into a performative image.
Roi Vaara
Seven piles of chairs were laid in a row.
Roi re-arranged the chairs, stacking them
precariously. Finally the stacked chairs
collapsed. During the performance, words of
world news were audible.
Norbert Klassen
Norbert played with two hammers - hitting
one against the other - in a 4/4 rhythm for quite
some time until he stopped on the two beat
and held the pose. Keeping attention through
presence and purpose, he convinced the
audience that there is something happening
beyond the everyday while simultaneously
paying extreme attention to the everyday.
Jacques van Poppel
In these performances Jacques invented
situations, that break preconceived assumptions
and welcome an intimacy with the audience
through an original way of using objects to
create a collage of imaginative interpretations
and actions, which reclaims the infinite
possibility of performance art.
21. (FEATURED ARTISTS)
Amanda Heng
A performance series employing the act of
walking and the pleasure that derives from
it. In the course of walking, Amanda and the
participants explore and discover the relations
and possibilities of the urban cities.
Myriam Laplante
Myriam was a mermaid, as a result of genetic
mutations: she grew a fur tail and 3 breasts,
dying by the riverside with furry fish that wiggle
and cry (until their batteries died).
Helge Meyer
In an experimental theatre space, Helge uses
different materials to explore the passing of
time. He uses maggots as co-performers, whose
movements create different images on the floor
and on his body.
Julie Andrée T
In this performance, Julie plays with the binaries
of strong and fragile, red and blue, identity and
object. She is trying to reach the impossible, yet
just being a moving drawing.
Zai Kuning
This is a durational performance where Jeremy
glued coins to a tuxedo, while wearing a balaclava,
after which he wore and paraded his money-
made suit wielding two huge meat cleavers to the
audience.
Lee Wen
Based on the explorations by Yves Klein,
Wen re-opened discussions of Klein’s work in
contemporary situation and raises questions
such as ‘why should the bodies be that of the
female only?’ and ‘what is the position of
painting in contemporary art practice with
reference to Yves Klein and performance art?
APRIL 2010 // 49
ESSAYS A Confoundedly Confutative Construal

A Confoundedly
Confutative Construal:
Performing the Perception
of Performance
Text: Bruce Quek

I have been performing for around five years.

I don’t mean that in the sense of ‘Over the past five

years or so, I have assiduously maintained a reasonably
well-regarded performative practice.’ I mean that right
now, as I’m writing this, I am still performing. On the
other hand, I might very well not be performing, insofar
as I only recently remembered that I might have been
performing since 2005, and it hardly counts if I cheat
retroactively.

This regrettably confusing state of affairs has its origin

at a friend’s event, a party of sorts with music, artwork
and poetry. During this event, I had decided to present a
performance piece that consisted, quite simply, of two
declarations: that a performance would soon commence,
and, some time later, that a performance had ended.
Only the first declaration was made, though, and if we
follow the logic of it to its dreadful end, I have been
performing continuously since then.

If we ascribe validity to this accident, an unavoidable

consequence is that my perception of (and reaction
to) performances over the past few years has been
undertaken from the perspective of performance
itself. This would include the readily apparent, such
as sotto voce commentary or walking out on a boring
performance, as well as such infinitesimals as, say, the
mental visualisation of the fantastical futurity of Duan
Ying Mei’s Yingmei, or the innervation of extraocular
musculature in observing Cai Qing’s Transformation at
the last Future of Imagination.

Such physical manifestations reflect the role I assume

when encountering art, that of the suspicious peasant –
Tang Da Wu, Untitled,Singapore 2008. Photo by Bruce Quek intelligent, yet lacking in codes and contexts, wary of

50 // CONFABULATION APRIL 2010 // 51

ESSAYS
glibness and perpetually half-convinced
that he has somehow been hoodwinked; a
notional everyman denied generality by
the city without memory. In other words,
the approach is a sort of fictive paranoiac-
naïveté, a situational deprecation of given
aspects of the performance reliant on
factors external to the performance – not, as
a recently publicised study might imply, to
enhance appreciation, but as a speculative
inquiry concerning probable responses by
a hypothetical outsider, as problematic as
such a figure may be.
Even when doubled by the aforementioned
accident, in terms of perceptible stimuli
such a role remains largely covert – unless
the artist in question is, say, easily affected
by gimlet-eyed stares and disconsolate
mutterings. Unilateral action exceeding
what may be typically observed in
percipients is not, however, a prerequisite of
performativity; in discussing the dramaturgy
of the spectator in theatrical space, the theatre
historian Marco de Marinis observes that
the relative positioning of the performance
and the percipients has a significant effect
on the perception of the performance.
Likewise, we may observe that this relative
positioning would also have a significant
effect on the performance; unless the artist
initiates contact, one is admonished not to
stray too close – suggesting a precarious
equilibrium, not unlike photography, which
balances uneasily between what it reveals
and occludes.
Nor are accidents required for perception to
be performative; for instance, in Nightsea
Crossing: The Observer (1984), an edition
of Nightsea Crossing (1981-1987), Marina
Abramovic and Ulay inducted Rémy Zaugg
as a performative percipient, deliberately
interposed between the supposed audience
and the artists – to the extent that in the
52 // CONFABULATION
subsequent video, the back of Zaugg’s
head fills most of the frame, the smoke
of his cigarette occasionally obliterating
Abramovic and Ulay. However, while
Zaugg’s presence as a performer-percipient
questions the viability of both roles, the
critique loses a certain amount of force when
one notes that Zaugg had been deliberately
included, and the overall effect of his role
had, to some extent, been anticipated,
incorporated and curtailed.
The monolithic presence of such a
performer-sponsored percipient-performer
would seem to restrict the performative
potential of the general mass of percipients,
reinvesting the authority of the artist in the
performance space in permitting a limited
re-negotiation of the percipient’s role. It
would seem, therefore, that any apparent
attempt on the part of the artist to question
or alter the role of the percipient leads,
ironically enough, to the solidification of
their respective roles. Parallel to this would
be exhibition texts for ostensibly interactive
artworks that enjoin the interaction of the
percipient, reducing interaction to simple
obedience. Good percipient! You twiddled
the knob, well done.
However, supposing the distinction
between percipient and performer were to
be discarded, we might substitute Roland
Barthes’ figure of the scriptor; given the
contemporaneous nature of performance
art, such a translation might be particularly
apt, insofar as Barthes noted that the scriptor
is born simultaneously with his text. Thus,
as opposed to a defined separation between
performer and percipient, there is a given
set of scriptors, with fluctuating values of
performativity and perception at any given
time – an agonistic approach to performance
dialogue.
A Confoundedly Confutative Construal
The upshot of this would be that what we would
conventionally designate as an audience is not,
by default, a passive receptor of the artist’s
transformative performance. By default, the so-
called audience is instead a loose conglomeration
of performative individuals, acting in concert with
the apparent performance. This is not just to say
that the percipient is an active participant in the
process of meaning-making, or the interpretation of
a performance that is presented to them – Rather,
as scriptors coequal to the apparent performer, their
participation is a fundamental determinant of the
overall situation.
Perhaps an interesting effect of such participatory
pluralisation, in its riotous cacophony, would be
the transition from the revelation of a single truth,
or even variable truths generated by individual
reading to a field of occultations and deceptions;
from Elysium to elisions. As a fertile field of risk,
such situations may be distinguished from another
apparently participatory phenomenon of recent
years – the flash mob, which might be readily
defined by such retrograde terms as obedience and
resorbability, if postings on the artscommunity
mailing list are anything to go by. Discarding
such facile formulations, we might consider
the possibility that a Carnivalesque plurality of
consciousnesses remains viable, though it remains
to be seen what form such a thing might take under
present conditions.
All such matters aside, what of the performative
accident at the origin of this trajectory of inquiry? A
dimly remembered event attested to by nothing and
no-one, adrift in an indeterminate limbo. In being
revealed, however, it attains a fleeting brilliance, a
decaying satellite screaming through the stratosphere.
It is fitting that a project of uncertain origin achieves
a definitive denouement – prolonging it would be
cheekily facetious, an interminably stale game of
Guess-the-Intent to which the only response would
be a short, sharp poke in the eye. So if you, fellow
scriptor, are inclined to agree, these are the very last
words of the performance. //
APRIL 2010 // 53
ESSAYS TALKING SHOP

Richard Chua: I know you hate classifications. But for

the benefit of the readers of this interview (and I know you
will kill me for this) I am going to choose the best label
for you – Contemporary art. Contemporary refers to the

Talking shop with

present, now. Art that reflects what’s going now is called
contemporary art. Can?

Noor Effendy Ibrahim: (With great non-chalance) Ok.

Noor Effendy Ibrahim

Text: Richard Chua
Now you make me look like an idiot (Laughs). Ok. What’s
theatre to you? Is it an experience? Or, maybe we could put
it in more general terms, when you are doing your “well-
known” contraption. It is an experience of sort.

It is more practice, actually. Experience may not be rigourous

enough. It is more of the practice, as in how do I strategise the
practice and formulate the practice.

Rigour, from an artist’s point of view?

Experience is just momentary. It is very specific. Experience

is a state of consciousness, or the subconscious, where you
remember something you did but not immediately sensed.
Experience is part of a bigger thing, the practice. I am not
looking at the product.

The practice will inform where the product is heading towards.

The practice does not restrict on a particular project, but time.
It is not like I could isolate a project and focused on it. I usually
think of something else when I am working a project.

Like, right now, as the artistic director of The Substation,

I am also thinking of other things. How these things inform
or inspire certain decisions I have to make, as an Artistic
Director (AD). My negotiations and practice also informs me.
So when I meet different artists, policy-makers etc, with due
considerations given to these constraints, CSOs and others,
it informs back.

It is getting more and more abstract. Let me try to make

Effendy Ibrahim (with Jason Lim), Si Woof Woof, Singapore, 2006. Photo by Effendy Ibrahim.
sense of this so that this interview will not become an self-
indulgent affair. Can I say that your practice is more about
dealing with problems that come you way? Now, being an
AD, you encounter different problems, so as we negotiate
your way through them, there must a aim, a destination, and
manymore destinations. How would your thought process
like, to first go with the flow, or subvert it?

54 // CONFABULATION APRIL 2010 // 55

ESSAYS
It is a mix of all, depending on the situation.
I am very conscious of my environment and
problems that come to me in the moment.
Sometimes I have to subvert it, sometimes
make a U-turn, or even to challenge it.
What’s the difference, the problems you
encounter in a performance art piece,
as opposed to a theatre production? In a
nutshell, in theatre we usually work with
living objects, and in your other practice,
in performance art, with non-living
objects? What are the problems, and in turn
relationships? Do you love human beings
more, for they have emotions?
I see them as extensions. Hence, my
machines; they are extensions to the bodies,
or bodies are extensions to the machines. But
that doesn’t mean that they should be literal
extensions.
For example, I could still perform in an empty
space where the space between me, and, for
example, the wall, or the audience member,
is an extension. It should be highly charged
space. How they see, how they smell, how
they feel, how they remember the viscerality
of what’s happening before their eyes, or how
it invokes their senses. That space between
me, or the performance, and that person,
needs to be highly charged. So when I create
a work, even in theatre, what’s the space on
the stage (the performance space), between
the stage and audience?
I am not a fan of proscenium staging. For me
the most ideal space is environmental theatre,
where people are in the space. These people
cannot merely be voyuers. They should be
really active participants, even as a passive
event-watching audience.
So, I think, what’s important to me is to
create the space in-between, the meeting
56 // CONFABULATION
point. The meeting point is a place is where
the performance is also responding to how
audiences engage it or responding to it. It is
much easier to achieve this in performance
art, but for theatre, it is definitely more
rehearsed, more controlled and contained.
But at the same time, it is also a live
performance. Every actor will definitely have
different performances every time they do
it. I usually will leave the space open so that
actors could own that space, so that they are
able to respond.
And also they are able to change...
Eveything will be formed by how audiences
respond to them. That does not mean playing
up to the audiences. No, it is not about that. It
is about being in the character. The character
needs to be there, in that moment.
I see a difference. A spectator in live
arts, in relationship with the performance
artist, will find ease in responding to each
other, given the time and space both share.
You would want them to more active than
passive. This can also be archieved in the
theatre?
Actually spectators in performance art are
usually more active than passive. Passive
is more apt to describe audiences in the
theatre, or they come into the theatre thinking
that they are passive.
Ah! Then right after they watch the
performance, they might realise that they
are more active than they thought they would
be. Does this apply to both performance art
spectators and theatre audiences?
The most challenging thing is that
performance art spectators have to sit down
throughout the performance. For example,
if there is no smell, how could they smell
something in the performance, there and
TALKING SHOP REVIEWS
then, at that moment; the sweat, the blood. In the theatre, it is
still rather performative -- in the way how theatre understands it
-- theatricality, not living.
Switch off all the theatre lights, up the house lights and
get the actors to right to the audience to interact with the
audience members!
That blurs the lines. But it is still a very controlled theatre event.
What’s most important is to make the audience members
complicit with what’s happening on stage? What’s happening
on stage is to play the reality.
Ok, we are moving into murky waters here. Confusion, it
is. An audience member in theatre has to paricipate in the
reality on stage, not reality in a traditional sense, but with
what’s going on on stage and establishing a relationship
with it.
On a contrary, in performance art, spectators are involved
directly with the performance artist in that space, at that
time. Lots of similarities here. So what’s the intricate
differences?
Suspension of disbelief.
In theatre, we suspend disbelief, and belief.
In performance art, we have nothing to suspend. It is there. In
the theatre, I want to make audience members suspend and
yet not suspend their disbelief.
Damn, cruel, lor, you! (Laughs)
You see! It is what’s happening on stage... regardless whether
it is theatre or not!
You know what’s most exciting on a theatre stage? It is when
an actor’s dress, mustache, wig drops right to the ground. For
that moment, we all know that it is real, and we are waiting
for the real thing that’s going to happen, not rehearsed, just
like people watching the World Cup; It is not about the ball,
it is about how players conduct themselves too. That moment
is also a rather “performance art” moment?
Somewhat, yeah! (drinks coffee) //
APRIL 2010 // 57
ESSAYS A Brief on Asian Performance Art

A Brief on Asian
Performance Art
Original text in Chinese: 蔡青 Qing Sonnenberg
Translated to English: Richard Chua

I moved to Singapore from New York

two years ago, aimed at providing
convenience for me to return to
China and other neighbouring
countries for performance art events.
Performance art in Asia is bustling
with life, those participating in
them filled with fervour liken that
of a devotee of a religion. There are
many excellent art-works here.

For example, in October 2008,

Taiwan performance artist Lin
Qi Wei’s spectator interactive
piece in the UP-ON International
Performance Art Festival in
Chengdu, China is one good
example. He made the spectators
sit together, while dishing out
strips of cloths from the centre of
the sitting area with repeated and
‘hybrid’ words written on them.
All spectators chanted the words
and made them into a melody, with
occasional single tones rising from
the midst. In this sea of melody,
we could sense the united-ness of
Asian performance artists.

Performance art in China is on

the rise, mainly due to rapid
developments in the arts market.
But some performance artist still
turn to painting as profession.
For paintings are of demand,
not the works of a performance
artist. In Chengdu, Sichuan and
Xian, performance art is still
Cai Qing Sadness of A Rock on Mekong River, Thailand, 2009. Photo: Jeremy Hiah

58 // CONFABULATION APRIL 2010 // 59

ESSAYS
active. In fact, Chengdu is considered
one of the biggest performance art
districts in China. Artists Zhou Bin and
Chen Mo are key figures in the scene.
For many young performance artists are
constantly presenting their works in the
midst of veterans. Just like artist Xiang
Xi Shi in Xian, he has been organising a
small performance art festival called Gu
Yu Performance Art Festival during the
Chinese New Year season. Not forgetting
another venue in Beijing, Song Zhuang,
Xian’s Wang Chu Yu have gathered fellow
performance art colleagues in presenting
The Square Performance Art Workshops
on the 10th of every calendar month.
Workshop venues get rotated among the
said artists residence or studios.
In Singapore, the Future of Imagination 5
International Performance Art Festival is
probably the most intricate performance
art festival I have ever attended. From the
selection of artists to the actual planning
of the festival, everything was well taken
care of. Till date, the impression Polish
performance artist Dariuz Fodczuk
left in me was fresh, for his piece The
Tiny Therapeutic Theatre was indeed a
surprising piece of work, allowing people
to get into wild imaginations. In addition,
Belgian artist Gwendoline Robin’s work
Where is the Future? was also impressive.
She actually set fire to her helmet, resulting
in a ball of fire right on top of her head.
Indonesian artist Melati Suryodarno’s
Rainbow and Singapore artist Jason Lim’s
The Last Drop were also very intricate.
Impressive, indeed.
60 // CONFABULATION
A Brief on Asian Performance Art Jason Lim,
Last Drop,
7a*11d,
Toronto, Canada,
2008.
Photo: Henry
Chan
Black Market
International,
LiveAction 09,
At year end in 2008, I was fortunate to have Recently Singaporean performance artist Gotenberg,
attended the 10th Asiatopia International Lee Wen has initiated a project called Rooted Sweden, 2009.
Performance Art Festival in Thailand, and in The Ephemeral Speak (RITES) , where Photo: Peter Lindl
saw a renowned collective Black Market’s performance artists could choose a venue of and Christian
collective performance. This international their choice to showcase their works, aimed Brevens
group has invited Singaporean at linking up performance art and everyday
performance artist Lee Wen as one of activities, not to represent performance art
their members; a significant addition as a “performance on stage”. This is indeed
to the group giving it an international a fresh start.
stature. In that performance lasting 2 Jason Lim,
hours, they had also invited Singaporean As an artist staying in Singapore, located in Last Drop,
artist Jason Lim into the performance. the rich Southeast Asia, I hope I could travel 7a*11d,
Jason Lim’s nuanced actions have made to more neighbouring countries, getting into Toronto, Canada,
the performance even more memorable. the pulse of performance art in this region 2008.
The very next year end in 2009, I attended and to participate in them. // Photo: Henry
Thai performance artists ‘s festival called Chan
the Mekong River Project, an event
orgainzed by artists Jittima Pholsawek
and Paisan Plienbangchang. We travelled
down the river, going against the currents;
researching, observing, creating, for 3
weeks. This activity -- as a performance
Black Market
art event -- is a direct response to building
International,
of a dam, where the project has contributed
LiveAction 09,
to the damage of the natural ecological
Gotenberg,
system in that area. They had hoped that Sweden, 2009.
the event would be an effective response. Photo: Peter Lindl
and Christian
What moved me most is the festival Brevens
entitled Bunga 2001 in the Philippines.
The organizers, together with the artists,
has gathered everybody together, resulting
in great unity among the artists and
organizers. As much as limited financial
resources is a problem, they have made Jason Lim,
the festival a success, albeit in meagre Last Drop,
7a*11d,
resources. In addition, their vigour and
Toronto, Canada,
enthusiasm has also been shown in their
2008.
performance art performances. Photo: Henry
Chan
APRIL 2010 // 61
62 // CONFABULATION APRIL 2010 // 63
 + Art
PHOTO ESSAY

direc-
tory

Leading visitors on a walking

tour in a dark warehouse,
Lynn reads excerpts from
love letters written by
historical figures (King
Henry VIII, Beethoven,
et al) to their partners, in
romances that ultimately
crashed and burned. From
time to time, she takes a
flash photograph of a blank
wall. The blinding light
charges up corresponding
post-heartbreak realizations
of her own, written in glow-
in-the-dark paint. The text
glows for a few moments,
then fades back into the
shadows. //
Lynn Lu When Love Departs, Reason
Returns (or, Notes To Self For Next Time),
Singapore, 2009. Photo: Tan Ngiap Heng
and Lynn Lu

64 // CONFABULATION APRIL 2010 // 65 APRIL 2010 // 65

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66 // CONFABULATION
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Galerie Belvedere
168 Robinson Road Lukisan Art Gallery
#36-01 Capital Tower 110 Faber Drive The Gallery of Gnani Arts
Singapore 068912 Singapore 129421 1 Cuscaden Road
+65 6423 1233 +65 6774 1609 #01-05 The Regent
www.galeriebelvedere.com www.lukisan-art.com Singapore 249715
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1 Cuscaden Road
#01-03 The Regent Hotel Mulan Gallery
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APRIL 2010 // 67 APRIL 2010 // 67
ART VENUES ART SERVICES

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68 // CONFABULATION APRIL 2010 // 69 APRIL 2010 // 69

ARTISTS

Nanyang Technological ARTISTS’ STUDIOS

University
School of Art, Design & Chieu Sheuy Fook Studio
Media Studio 102
81 Nanyang Drive 91 Lorong J
Singapore 637458 Telok Kurau Road
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ANTIQUITIES AND FURNITURE

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www.antiquaro.com

70 // CONFABULATION APRIL 2010 // 71

POSTSCRIPT

Art of the meeting
Black Market International -
Kunst der Begegnung
Text: June Yap
There is no good translation
for the German ‘Begegnung’.
It relies a lot on the definition
of ‘communitas’ which Victor
Turner mentions in his book
From Ritual to Theater: The
Human Seriousness of Play
(2001). Performance Art
as a picture of events that
constitutes the society - the
gesture of Black Market
International
- Boris Nieslony
How does one, or collectively, operate to resist the pull to centralise, thematise,
June Yap: Let’s start with a line lifted from the
publicity info for the Future of Imagination, “the and be read in this manner?
title ‘Black Market’ does not designate a group,
but rather an idea of working”. What is this ‘idea
of working’ that grounds BMI’s public activities? There is no description for works I do as a performance. BMI is a performance,
when I write it down, I’m a writer, not a performer.
Boris Nielsony: In the 1970s, when I was running a
space for performance, installation and intermedia
art, I met so many people, not just artists, with
an interest in cooperation and collaboration. You mentioned that the decision to invite particular individuals to participate in
For myself, it was a profound question: how can BMI is based on their practice. What sort of performance practices and artists are
people, artists, work together and how can I
then considered ‘interesting’ to BMI, or have been the reason for their invitation
frame this kind of encountering. Some facts were to be part of BMI’s work?
seminal for me: that there should be no leadership,
an open situation, no guidelines in themes and
aesthetic paths, an exchange of values as a pure To be a professional, to be a ‘figure’ (a character), to be
encounter. For this kind of framework, I had had full of utopian thoughts, to be full of love for fellow humans,
some experiences since 1980, particularly in the to be radical.
project ‘The Council’ (1981), and we came to, in
a discussion with Zygmunt Piotrowski, the name,
Black Market.

How is ‘radical’ defined?

[The Council project was realised in September 1981 in Stuttgart in collaboration It is without any description, without any relation, to be real as a character, as
with the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, organized by Uli Bernhardt. It was a 30-day a work. For example in The Third Network- a poetical mode of collaboration
performance, 24 hours of each day. We invited 40 artists, (70 finally became [a work by BN from 1980]: Persons in the intellectual network cannot form
involved) from Europe and Germany to confront contemporary questions. In the groups, not to mention any type of society. Networking becomes a spirit, an
field of contemporary art, performance and social activities. The research for attitude, a lifestyle in the social capacity with subversive tactics, which result
the project focused more on the thoughts within our heads, the feelings within from ethical notions, without establishing rules of a social order (i.e. without
our souls and our social behaviour. The one-month research resulted in a lot of moral judgement).
elements, ideas and tools, from which some basic projects were then built upon.]
The intellectual personality is not creative, he lives in the encounter with other
The term black market suggests trafficking, resistance and critique. However the persons, at the same time with living and dead persons. This person is not
parallel performances that are presented under the framework of BMI cannot help active, does not work. He/she is in attention.
but be read as related.
The mental being, the ritual life, is the community of the “ART of ACTION”. The
mental being between the persons, objects, spaces and times transforms the
It is not trafficking but an exchange of values which are not compatible in the “between” into the incomparable.
traditional cultural market. Cultural values, developed by the each participants from
his own life, in his cultural and social education and behaviour. When we do not fail,
the audiences will get to see one work. The audience asks no questions. When we
fail – the audience will see several, good performances at the same time, in the same
space. What do you foresee for the BMI
performance at FOI?
In Black Market we do not raise the question about being a collective, about being a
group, or cooperation, leadership and so on. We have to eliminate these questions
Nothing. We will give a very good performance
when we work. The fact is the work itself. How we encounter, is for us dependent
without any question of predictions, plans or
on the selection of individuals we invite. The selection is based on the practices of
hopes. It will be good!
the various artists we meet at different festivals and such. We do not have to create
a collective aesthetic. No BMI work is the same. We do not know what will emerge,
when a BMI work takes place (and when we do not fail).

72 // CONFABULATION APRIL 2010 // 73 APRIL 2010 // 73

 masquerade
POST-POSTSCRIPT

by Hii Shiew Eng

Neon VI, 90 x 120 cm, Oil on Canvas

Roi stands on a frozen sea, 50km east of Helsinki. In this

performance, he shares with the viewers the moments of life and 24 April - 22 May 2010
to convey the feelings of existence through an art form that is
direct. Artist’s Dilemma is a performance made for the camera.
Roi Vaara Artist’s Dilemma (video still), Finland 1997. Photo: Naranja MULAN GALLERY
19 Tanglin Road #02-33 Tanglin Shopping Centre Singapore 247909
T: (65) 6738 0810 | E: enquiry@mulangallery.com.sg
74 // CONFABULATION
www.mulangallery.com.sg
APRIL 2010 // 75
76 // CONFABULATION