Syndicate: +8+7+3+1-1-5

[Inke Arns <inke@berlin.snafu.de>]

Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1998 01:07:13 +0200
From: belouin <belouin@ensba.fr>

The non-profit association CHOOSE ONE, is pleased to inform you about the
exhibition

+8+7+3+1-1-5
(Taipei, Bangkok, Moscow, Paris, Dublin, New York)

the participants:
Claudia&Julia MÃ?LLER-Nawajul BOONPUCKNAVIG-Michael SHOAWANASAI-
Hsia-Fei CHANG-Fiona TAN-Magali CLAUDE-Rachel TOOMEY-Txuspo POYO-Natalia
ZOUBOVICH-Richard HOECK/Heimo ZOBERNIG
presented by Cécile Bourne

The title +8+7+3+1-1-5 simply spells out time differences between six
cities where this series of exhibitions will take place. Whether they live
in Moscow, Paris or Bangkok, artists often find themselves travelling from
one place to another. These movements have little to do with tourism. They
are not a matter of choice, but the necessary consequence of expanding
worldwide communication and exhibition opportunities which in turn affect
many contemporary  artists' thinking, as well as the content and reception
of their work. This presentation aims to shine a fresh light on a wide
range of approaches responding to tensions arising in contemporary life
around the world.

This show +8+7+3+1-1-5 includes a 60-minute video-programme, an extensive
selection of short pieces, made by artists who currently rely on electronic
media, to focus on fundamental issues relating to social behavior in a
sometimes humourous, sometimes tragic mode. Often produced with a minimum
of equipment, the narrative, experimental and performance works chosen for
this presentation are not video-clips. Understandable in any language, they
document short-moments of life to be shared or present animated visual
statements.

Be they real or fictive, distances in time and space are reflected in a
complex array of cutural differences and idiosyncrasies. Accordingly, the
ten selected artists have also been asked to come up a maximum of ten
snapshots related to the cities where their project is to be shown. These
virtual journeys provide subjective documentary views: at each venue every
artist's contribution expands by another couple of images and draws a
different response. The pictures may relate to whatever the artists will
have read or heard about those cities from litterature, music, the media or
any resources they consider relevant to their work and to the different
audiences. In each city, the video-programme will be identical but new
stills will be presented. Thus combined together, their significance and
their mode of production will be enhanced by the different urban contexts
and bring unexpected insights.

+8+7+3+1-1-5 already took place in Moscow at the Malinki Manege (catalogue)
in early July on the occasion of the Moscow Forum of Art Initiatives, The
project is supported by Afaa, Association Francaise d'Action Artistique,
Soros Center for Contemporary Art, Mondriaan Stichting. It will next be
shown at Glassbox, Paris, opening November 19th, 1998; Glassbox is a
non-profit space, run by artists and supported by the Drac, Direction
Régionale des Affaires Culturelles and private sponsors. Project 304,
Bangkok, March 99./Camera Obscura, San Casciano, near Rome, April 99./It
Park Gallery, Taipei, Taiwan, May 99. Dates and locations in Dublin and New
York are not confirmed yet.

Nawajul BOONPUCKNAVIG
b. 1965, lives and work in Bangkok
"The Bugs", 1995, Video, black&white, 4mn.
This simultaneously haunting and amusing short film chronicles a
Kafka-esque noodle-catering commune with cockroaches. Expertly short with
several disturbingly beautiful images of the boy and his bugs. Winner of
the First Thai Short Film Festival last month it was produced when
Nawajul's employers, Siam Studio, decided to encourage their staff to make
their own short films.  At that time Nawajul was working as a camera
assistant . Now he is a film director at Bandits production house. After
graduating with a bachelor's degree in political science from Ramkhamhaeng
University, Nawajul went on to study film production at the University of
California at Los Angeles and returned to Thailand to work for Bandits. C.B.

Michael SHOAWANASAI
b. 1964 in Thailand, lives and works in Chicago and Bangkok
"Exotic 101", 1997, Video, colour, sound, 7mn.
As a Thai-born artist, Michael Shoawanasai, addresses problems raised by
the growing local sex-industry through the notion of exoticism. He brings
together the dual point of view of his sexual identity and cultural
background to construct the essential part of his video "Exotic 101",
Instructions To Teach You How To Be Exotic In Seven Minutes. Easy to
follow. I guarantee that the minutes that we'll  spend together will give
you the  lesson of your life time". While he sees himself as a native Thai,
Shaowanasai spent half of his life in the US where he felt he was perceived
as an "exotic" person. He reinforces this notion by switching his focus and
engaging
"non-exotic" people to try and experience these feelings. The distinction
between exoticism and non-exoticism continues to generate interesting
interactions. Besides the night life, a quasi-freak-show scene depicts as a
parallel how queer-culture is perceived in his country. In his videos,
Shaowanasai examines the roles of various protagonists, go-go boys/clients,
host/tourists, sellers/buyers. Meanwhile he also calls ordinary Thais to
switch roles with Thai sex workers. Gridthiya Gaweewong, director of
Project 304, Bangkok.

Hsia-Fei CHANG
b. 1973 in Taipei, lives in Bordeaux and Taipei
"Mon frère chez le coiffeur"/"My Brother At The Haidresser's", 1997
Video, colour, sound, 5mn.
In her work, this young Taiwanese artist -currently studying at the
Bordeaux Art School in France-  juxtaposes texts, sometimes fictional,
sometimes real. Tales about distance or love also appear in the form of
short videos often documenting selected episodes of her life: her brother
at the hairdresser's, her dog's grooming session, her grandmother's
birthday etc... For the exhibition You Talk/ I Listen in Taipei, these
sequences where shown on a monitor placed on the floor and surrounded by
synthetic flowers which evoked an experience of the sacred in everyday life
such as the Taiwanese funerary cult of ancestors. With simple means,
Hsia-Fei Chang brings us close to her own situation between East and West
by sharing with us some moments of distance and
proximity. C.B.

Fiona TAN
b. 1976 in Indonesia lives and works in Amsterdam
"Totenklage/Lacrymosa", 1994/1997, Video, colour and black&white, audio, 4mn.
As much impressive as it is disturbing, this video - a plea against
forgetting - is dedicated to Ciro Lamarco, who died of AIDS on September
12th 1993. Over a period of two years while she worked in an Amsterdam
cinema, Fiona collected scrap 35mm footage; this became the raw-material
for "Totenklage/ Lacrymosa". The collecting process ran parallel to the
fatal advance of Ciro's disease. The score for this video-piece, written
and executed by Gregory Whitehead, is appropriately a requiem. There is a
clear reversal in the development of this film: towards the end the images
are upside down and the subtitles can no longer be read. All that is there
is the trace of a vanishing , a fading away and decomposition of every
conventional sense and meaning. Fiona engages herself in "Totenklage/
Lacrymosa" by giving a most individual experience a universal dimension.