BackGrant Proposal (Jason Wee and Amanda Heng)
1. Aims / Objective / Goals of project
Amanda Heng is one of Singapore’s most important artists. Her art history ranges from her participation in The Artist Village with Tang Da Wu, her involvement with Kuo Pao Kun in the early years of the Substation, to her recent work setting up Women In The Arts, Singapore (WITAS) and her influence as a teacher at LASALLE College of the Arts. Her recent exhibitions include Classic Contemporary at the Singapore Art Museum, and the performance art platform The Future of Imagination 6.
The project considers the ways to consider the decades‐old practice of this artist in ways that remains faithful to the principles of her practice, especially her research methodologies, her aversion to authority and her insistence on collaborative work. One way to think of this project is to think of a performative archive. How does one begin to think about the performance work of an artist other than to begin with its documentation? Can we begin to think of the work in terms of its influence and its openness?
Another way of thinking about this project is to imagine an anti‐retrospective retrospective. How does one look back into the past in ways do not mire one’s attempts in self‐congratulation and canonization? How can one discuss the history of a practice that activate the past and reinvigorates the present?
2 Brief description of project
The application for funding is to begin seeking out dialogue opportunities with artists, critics and curators who are co‐investigators into the same field of interests as Amanda. These could be individuals that Amanda has previously worked with, but the project is not restricted to these. In fact, this project aims to uncover those cultural workers who are working in parallel to Amanda, regarding research, hierarchical authority and collaborative enterprises. We aim to spark productive exchanges between artists and cultural workers who could have spoken about proximate interests but have not, as well as to spark exchanges between those who have not had recent opportunities to re‐look each other’s work.
One question we aim to ask is, in this region, are we or have we witnessed parallel activities and methodologies because of coinciding changes that are occurring at various sites and cities across Asia?
We are looking at Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan as places to begin our research.
3 Methodology / Implementation of project
The project begins when contact is made with the practitioners around Asia. The individuals and our respective research rationales are listed below:
Ushiroshoji Masahiro, Chief Curator, Fukouka Art Museum, Japan.
Masahiro‐san has a long‐standing interest in Amanda’s work, having invited her to perform in Fukuoka in the 1990s. Masahiro‐san has expressed strong interest in developing a conversation about Amanda’s work and influence regarding performance art practices in Japan and the rest of Asia, as well as her place within the context of relational aesthetics and socially‐oriented art.
Wong Hoy Cheong, Artist, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Wong Hoy Cheong and Amanda are contemporaries who are familiar with each other’s work, but have never spoken to each other about the way family performs as history in their own practices, or the way family can be scripted upon other historical narratives around women, migration and genealogy.
Melati Suryodarmo, performance artist, born in Surakarta, works in Germany.
Melati Suryodarmo ́s performances use physical presence and visual forms to talk about identity, energy, politics and relationships between the body and the environments surrounding it. The arrangements to her performances are simple but they give her pieces an edgy closeness to the audience. The recent collaborative work between Melati and Amanda is another fortuitous affirmation of the proximity of their interests.
Anothermountainman (Stanley Wong), artist and designer, Hong Kong.
Having worked in graphic design and advertising for many years, Stanley Wong has begun a second life as the artist Anothermountainman. Through his art practice in photography and video, he has addressed a broad range of social issues. It is in this relationship between photographic image, social issues and the city that we think a productive exchange with Amanda can take place.
Lindy Lee, artist, Australia.
Lindy is among a handful of Australian women artist who work internationally. Her recent exhibitions include shows in Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Beijing and Venice. Although known for her work on minority and migrant history in Australia, our research approaches her practice from a new and different angle – her reliance on a meditative energy that refigures the body beyond its physical boundaries. Its implications on the female body, women’s health and ideas of transcendental selves
is a subject that we think will prove to be a fruitful point of renewal between two artists who have shown together previously.
Jeannine Tang, art writer, born in Singapore, currently based in New York.
Jeannine is a Terra Foundation for American Art Predoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. She is recently a Critical Studies Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. She has written previously on art in Singapore, in conjunction with her interest in the development of conceptual and post‐conceptual practices. We would like this exchange to focus on Amanda’s pedagogy as a crucial component of her socially‐oriented practice, as well as her concept of ‘research’ and ‘process’, terms that we think are under‐theorized and overlooked in her work.
The application for funding will pay primarily for travel and documentation, which
4 Time frame of project
Upon receipt of the grant, we would like to begin organizing meetings from Dec 2010 to June 2011. We expect the website to go ‘live’ with substantial material by June 2011, with most of the exchanges logged and ready for public use by Aug 2011.
5 Projected output of project (is it a workshop, a discussion, a showing etc.)
The outcome of the project will firstly be an online documentation of all the exchanges, which may include video, images, transcripts of conversations, as well as a depository of documents. We envisage that it would be a useful research point for any artist, curator or critic working in performance art, social and community art, relational practices, women‐centric work, the body, urban studies and cinema.
We are also in the midst of organizing a mailing list that we hope to translate to an active ‘comments’ section on the website, so that the exchanges can continue on, and include a wider circle of dialogue partners.
We also envision a possible exhibition of the material. Currently the Singapore Art Museum has expressed interested in supporting a survey of Amanda’s work sometime in 2nd‐Half 2011.
6 Who is your target audience for your project?
It is clear that we are targeting artists, art researchers, curators, critics, art institutions and spaces. However, our aim is to begin thinking of influence and parallel practices transnationally, as memes of information and inspiration that are transmitted across national borders throughout Asia. This is not due simply to the Internet, but to the fact that many of these individuals maintain some familiarity with each other’s work due to discrete but isolated moments of contact, contact that is encouraged by geographical as well as geopolitical proximity.
7 How do you propose to disseminate information about the project to your target audience?
As mentioned in the outcome, we hope to develop a website, that will subsequently develop into an exhibition and its accompanying publication.
8 How do you think your project will create impact on the art communities/the cultures that you want to engage with? How will it develop the field of your art form?
I think that art research in this region is still thinking of ‘local environments’ nationally as opposed to transnationally. There are many contributing reasons for this approach, a lack of monetary and exhibition resources, for one, translation issues for another. But I think it is vital to conceive of researching ‘locally’ as researching in the region, not just in the nation. In many ways, Asia, even Southeast Asia, does not exists as physically fixed forms, but as forms of transactions and exchange
Secondly, there is a great number of opportunities for emerging artists in Singapore, be it to exhibit or travel, but there is both a lack of bureaucratic and, more importantly, art historical interest in a whole generation of artists who have been working productively for more than a decade, artists including Amanda. The problem facing any art historical project is the lack of material, and this project helps to correct that.
Finally, we would like to think that it is possible for independent curators and spaces to begin Asia‐wide research projects that does not rely immediately on museum or state agency support, so that projects can begin primarily from what artists and creatives are interested in, and less from the interests of the state and institution.