Back

SLEEPWALKING/UTOPIA
Submitted by Yason Banal

PROJECT OUTLINE:

1) Aims/ Objective/goals of project

- To explore and expand the possibilities of the newspaper/column as a laboratory, discursive and exhibition space
- To commission artists, writers, performers, filmmakers, architects and designers to create works specifically for a printed format
- To encourage practitioners from different creative disciplines to collaborate and exchange
- To create a different kind of network for Asian creative and thinkers
- To elevate the newspaper’s readership by introducing something totally special and visionary

2) Brief description of project

Since 2005, I have been a columnist for the nation’s second largest daily, the Philippine Star. Entitled SLEEPWALKING, my column is experimental in spirit and form, interested more in exploring the potential of publication as an art and curatorial space rather than journalism. From interviews with artists and cultural workers and treatises on media spectacles and suicide notes, to one-page conceptual photographs and musings on art, culture and identity, the column has been moved from Sunday (family/posh/conservative) to Friday (young/arts) so as not to upset the newspaper’s upper-middle class readership.

With the ANA grant, I would like to commission 12 Asian collaborations to make works specifically for publication. Inspired by artist’s books, the art magazine PARKETT and Hans-Ulrich Obrist’ s Venice Biennale publication Dreams, the newspaper column will serve as a platform for young exciting talent from various disciplines and countries to collaborate on “utopian projects for the printed page” and consequently get the widest exposure than any festival, workshop, or exhibition can provide. The individuals I invite may come from different fields – visual arts, performance, cultural studies, literature, media arts, design, architecture, etc. The important thing is for each of them to treat the newspaper column as a creative, critical and collaborative space.

Examples might include: a photographer working with a historian to produce a series of “revisionist colonial images;” a filmmaker collaborating with a fashion designer and poet to create movie stills using clothes and subtitled in verse form; an architect in tandem with a social worker and government official to design a shelter and livelihood center for disaster-stricken communities. The possibilities are endless yet also particular, like visions of a better world.

Each issue may feature photographs, drawings, 2D work, and of course, text - this may be in the form of an essay, an interview, a conversation, or an experimental genre.

There will be one collaboration each month, running for 12 months. Each participant will be given an honorarium. The grantee/columnist serves as the project director.

3) Methodology / Implementation of project

- Research on possible candidates
- Travels to and networking in Tokyo, Shanghai and Hong Kong, as well
as San Francisco, London and Sydney
- Grouping and commissioning of work for the newspaper column
- Interviews, Emails and Conversations
- Publication of work once every month for 12 months
- Collation and Publication of Catalog

4) Time frame of project: September 2007 – August 2008

5) Projected output of project (is it a workshop, a discussion, a showing etc)

A newspaper column in the Philippine Star that comes out one Friday each month.

6) Who is your target audience for your project?

The newspaper’s readership - reaching hundreds of thousands - both in print and online. Plus the art world, and the various disciplines and communities where the commissioned participants engage in.

7) How do you propose to disseminate information about the project to your target audience?

Apart from the newspaper column itself announcing in advance the idea for the commissioned works, there will be email invites/groups, flyers, radio guests and word of mouth.

8) How do you think your project will create impact on the cultures that you want to engage with?

In a society where contemporary art and critical discourse are still very much unknown practices, or if made familiar (to a select few), fairly distant and irrelevant from the wider public and the social issues of the time. Media in the Philippines on the other hand is the by-word and the end-all of information in the country, with too many inane spectacles and very little aesthetic experimentation let alone imaginative discourse.

Sleepwalking/ Utopia will definitely make an impact in the culture as it will make art and ideas very accessible to the public, many of whom have never set foot in a contemporary art gallery or museum, nor have been that well exposed to theory, music, film and literature. The breadth of the collaborations will expound on ideas of interdisciplinary, immanence and identity – certainly pertinent issues of a post-colonial Philippines and Asia. The reach of the project is amazingly wide, as the newspaper’s readership is in hundreds of thousands. The frequency of the project is also important in creating a more lasting impact, as it will run consistently for a year, thus reinforcing the ideas as well as letting culture’s evaluations of it germinate and develop through a longer period of time, unlike in one-day/week/month conferences, workshops or festivals. Furthermore, unlike in other formats, the audience’s reactions to the project can be printed and disseminated in the same as the way as the creators’, thus democratizing the playing field, empowering the community and really creating a dialogue – in print, and online, where the newspaper website (and the column) can be accessed and read anywhere in the world.

How will it develop the field of your art form?

The “art form” at hand is a hybrid – combining text, photography, design, performance and of course, ideas. It is in-between genres, experimental and constantly developing: it’s literary journalism in one sense, a gallery space in another. It could be a “documentation” of an artistic collaboration or an “artwork” in itself, or even both. The artists become creators (of work), collaborators (on ideas), and subjects (in interview/conversation), something that is very unique to the project. The “art form” that it might be closest to a sketch book, a journal or a screen test, all signifying process, exchange, reflection and utopian vision.