Key Terms: texture, softness, colonialism, entanglement, individual, collective, boundaries, nature

MEETING MINUTES

The seventh working group session dealt with topics such as authority and control, as artists used the motivating power of curiosity to craft artworks intent on sharing empowering decolonial narratives and ideas. In addition, the discussion saw intriguing connective threads between the works, including the use of technology as it relates to human behavior, and our curiosity towards the environment as a source of hope.

Elena Artemenko began this conversation by sharing her video piece, “Soft Power,” which interpolates the visceral performative bravado of yearly Russian military parades into a choreographed rooftop performance. Mechanical sonic automata accompany each methodical motion, as the performers wield a variety of silicone props, from severed replica human body parts to a convincing plastic submachine gun. As Elena described it, the piece was an attempt to capture the hypnotic ‘show of power’ which has become commonplace for children and adults alike in Russia, and to tackle the metaphorical aspirations with which tools (or weapons) act as ‘extensions’ of the human body itself. Power and hierarchy, people as ‘pawns,’ nationalism, towards an end goal of control – are these ideas which reverberate and disrupt us so potently to be merely abandoned, or can they be transformed into tangible art that fuels our hope?

Reena Saini Kallat followed up with “Aperture,” an animated cinematic seemingly culled from a video game: a multitude of birds flock to the silhouetted scene of power lines against a plain background, revealing a series of words and phrases as targeting gunshots fight to regain control over the industrialized horizon-scape. The phrase, “on the horizon the shadow speaks another story” brings some clarity to the narrative, suggesting a liminality which is unknowingly surmounted by the natural world (represented here by the quintessential birds on a wire). The video was prominently projected in a train station in Mumbai, inviting bustling passengers in transition to slow down to reflect on their own environments and how the mysterious words might take on meaning for them. Reena explained the context for “Aperture,” which was intensely motivated by her family history: her father was an Islamic man born in Pakistan, before it was split from the secular state of India. As a result, Reena has used her work to consistently interrogate ideas of schism, artificial borders, and – especially with this piece – the potential for confluence to arise out of conflict.

Lam Tung Pang then introduced the group to his work in and outside of Hong Kong, entitled “Curiosity Box.” In its earliest incarnations, the project developed from a residency in San Francisco, where Lam’s apartment became a hybrid public/private space for creating and sharing the works produced during that time. Seeing a clear trajectory towards what might be called a ‘rebirth’ in his own country, Lam explored the idea of being a ‘hometown tourist’ and merging art and home life into one, with an emphasis on public engagement. For the iteration highlighted in his presentation, Lam took the project to a personal and empowering home during 2014’s Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong, in a one-take video recording featuring demonstrators in the street below, immortalized from an apartment not unlike those adorned with artwork during his previous curiosity boxes. Of this piece and others, Lam explained that curiosity always underpins his practice; during discussion he compared hope and curiosity to darkness and lightness, where being surrounded by the dark infallibly prompts human curiosity to draw us out into the light of potentialities yet unexplored.

Jane Jin Kaisen closed out the presentations by sharing a video of hers entitled “Invocation,” which was part of a larger film installation called “Community of Parting.” Set in the Korean volcanic landscape of Jeju Island, this video in particular gave Jane the opportunity to explore topics relevant to her in relation to Korean identity: migration, war, and the wreckage of modernity...as well as the spiritual dimensions of Korean shamanism and the intersection of personal and political history. By negotiating a typical human visual perspective and the non-anthropocentric aerial view, she connected the centrifugal figures of technology, spirituality, and humanity (a spinning figure in center frame) which gradually receded as the camera pulled upward into the sky to reveal a larger spatiotemporal frame. The video is supplemented with a soundscape comprised of Shaman Koh Sun Ahn’s ritual invocations, in which the shaman through her oral chant connects the distant past with the present moment. With “Invocation” especially, Jane was able to give contemporary artistic agency to a piece of her cultural heritage, and highlight some of the history of a Korean island long-embattled by repression and violent authoritarianism.

Notes taken by CJ Tio
Revised by Moises De La Cruz

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