Do-it-with-others:

Space, Art and Human Activity.

In 2012, I was given the opportunity to work on a very interesting project in conjunction with
40th Japan-ASEAN Friendship Year. The sponsors, Japan Foundation, asked the curators; there
were thirteen of us from South east Asia and Japan; to describe the media art scene from our
respective countries. By the end of the project, I noticed that difference between the Japanese
and South East Asian media art were a result of artists respond and attitudes towards
technology. Japan, a country known for its innovation in technology, approached media art from
the perspective of a creator. On the other hand, the South east Asian countries were mainly
technology consumers responded by ways of analogue reverse engineering, hacking, piracy and
do-it-yourself or DIY.

However, I felt the term DIY independence did not do complete justice to the works despite its
connection with media arts from my region. It was not until my casual conversation with
Jogjakarta-based artist Andreas Siagian, where he mentioned Do-it-with-Others (DIWO). I was
struck by the appropriateness of the description. Andreas is part of the artist collective Lifepatch,
and this type of DIY and DIWO collaboration is central to Lifepatch artistic production methods.


My chance to experience DIWO came in an offer from Dayang Yraola to come on board her
Project Glocal. According to Dayang, the brainchild of this initiative, Project Glocal is a social
experiment where artists were exposed to situations or circumstances that allowed them to
interact with and in their cities and participate in projects with other Project Glocal artists.
During the course of a Project Glocal project, it would connect different cities and their artists
with others.


Project Glocal embodied the spirit of community art that attempts to redefine our stereotype of
what a community is. It shares an area of contemporary art that has gone through a series of
names it becomes a part of global art. From community art, to new genre public art to art in
the public interest as described by Graham and Cook in the book Rethinking Curating. Despite
the name adjustments, their characteristics of interaction, participation and collaboration,
remain the same. Art goes beyond aesthetic intellect to become a vehicle for inclusive
participation and collaboration of an audience or particular community that is generally denied
the opportunity to do so.

The phrase Do-it-with-others emphasized on the need to interact with other people as part of
the making process. To burrow Graham and Cooks description of interaction as acting upon

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each other; it might occur between people and machines, or between artwork and audience. In
Transi(en)t Penang, I wanted to understand what these forms of interaction between people and
art looked like. How do you encourage doing it with others in a place where people did not even
talk to each other? How can we create the conditions that can serve as the basis for DIWO
interactions? How far can we get away with it if these conditions are temporary?

My role as a co-curator required me to intervene with the site in order to gauge the conditions
one needs to engage audience outside of the conventional art spaces like in art galleries or other
art institution.

The contemporary art scene is in its infancy in George Town, thus its audience capacity has not
fully matured. So, without a mature art audience, I was curious to understand how a non-art
audience would encounter works of art in the public sphere. Dayangs selection of artists were
those who were familiar with public art and social engagement. This was to ensure the artists
themselves were comfortable with public intervention. Her vision for PROJECT GLOCAL was:
The emphasis is on working together, in building relationships, in answering and posting more
questions between people from different but related creative and social contexts. -
Projectglocalstamped.com


Within the subject of people, I observed 2 sets of stakeholders, one were the creative that
included artists, curators, writers and producers and the other participants, collaborators, or
audience.

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The constellation of activities we organized throughout the 2-weeks allowed us access different
audiences. But for the purpose of this essay, I will discuss the forms of interactions in the artist-
in-residency and Open Studios.


Open Studio

The Open Studio presented an opportunity to observe the interaction between artist and
audience. Designed as places where the artists could conceptualize, develop and produce the
artwork on the exhibition site, it also reflects Project Glocals mandate is to address specific site
issues, first, local and global as communities are imagined (ref. Anderson, 1983); second, that
geographical boundaries and cultural boundaries are blurred through filters of
cosmopolitanization of cities (NB: not all cities are cosmopolitan, ref. Flores lecture, 2009); and
third, similarities, intersections and pseudo-homogeneity of cityscapes may be recorded and be
used as indices of lived lives. In this light, Project Glocal artists, therefore, instigate a discourse
or conversations with the city.

Hong Kong artist Jaffa Lam and Singaporean artist Terrence Lin both decided to host their open
studios in Chinahouse, a trendy and chic fine dining restaurant that boosts a bar, art gallery and a
performance stage. It appeals to the upper-middle class society, and has quickly become a place
to be seen at as the customers lounge over coffee and home-baked cake.

Within this restaurant Jaffa choose the garden courtyard. She hung her umbrella skylights over
the tree and wore her Micro_economy under the cover of to entice customers in a
conversation with the artist. She then lingered in the courtyard for the entire day draped in her
wearable sculpture.

Terence, on the other hand, decided to have his open studio in the Reading Room section of
Chinahouse. There were bookshelves of old magazines and 2nd hand books for customers to read
or browse, and Terence thought this would be an ideal spot to engage with the customers for his
artwork. He would ask the person about an object that they had with them and why is it
important to them. As the person relays his/her story, Terence made an interpretive drawing the
object on a cardboard paper. Once the drawing was complete, he would display them on the
bookshelves.

The Postcard Shop became the location of choice for Anjo Bolarda. Owned and runned by our
collaborator, Dickie Ten, it sells postcards and rubber stamps designed by Dickie himself. Anjos
open studio was called Portrades where he would trade a free portrait (rendered in
watercolour by Anjo) in exchange for a story the customer would like to share about George

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Town. These stories were written down on 2 postcards; where one was sent to the artist in
Manila and the other was addressed to the Penang State Museum.

The last Open Studio location was 23 Seck Chuan Lane, currently uninhabited shophouse that
Dickie plans to renovate into a guesthouse in the future However, at the time, he was still in the
midst of painting the property and he agreed for us to use it for Aisyah Baharuddins and Shih-
tung Los open studio. The shophouse is located off the busy Chulia street and is a stones throw
away from the historic Kapitan Keling mosque.

Aisyah rearranged tableware, furniture, old photographs, and other things into a composition
which she titled Dapor. This installation was position right at the entrance of the shophouse on
the ground floor. Shih-tung, on the other hand, opted for the 1st floor, right above Aisyahs
installation. He positioned the old metal cabinet at the front of the space, towards the lourved
glass windows. He fished out this cabinet from Dickies storehouse and found a piece of paper
inside the cabinets door. On the paper was a Chinese proverb, Even if you are rich, there is
nothing you can do to fix the poor. Assembled with a retro clock, projector and live-feed camera,
his installation would project the proverb on the wall outside of the cabinet at a 15-minute
interval. The projection of the proverb was under a staircase.

Prior to the Open Studio was a 2- week artist-in-residency program. Forced by a tight budget, the
entire creative production, from curators, writers and artists, shared a guesthouse. Private
spaces were blurred as we all had to co-exist in harmony. It presented a challenging situation as
most of the artists were accustomed to privacy. For the first few days, everyone maintained their
reservation. This was exacerbated by our close physical proximity resulting in a slight tension in
the air.

But, everyones reservation washed away immediately after an unplanned incident in the dorm.
One evening; tired of take-out food; I decided to make pasta. I asked if anyone else in the house
would like pasta as I am not a big eater. As I stirred the onions with the minced beef on the
electric stove, Anjo emerged from his room. Soon enough, Anjo and Dayang offered to make
salad. Dickie bought soup for everyone and the rest helped with cleaning and washing. The
gathering over the simple, impromptu dinner encouraged the other artists to take up kitchen
duty every few days as a way to unwind over food together at our home.

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Our houses first makan-makan.


The locations of 5 open studios fell into 2 types; one located within human activity and the other
without. The latter was 23 Seck Chuan Lane, presented a room-like setting similar to the
dimensions and character of a gallery space. Both artists understood the spatial quality of the
shophouse.

For Aisyahs piece, she assembled a myriad of found objects and recomposed them into a kitchen-
like setting, titled Dapor (Malay word for kitchen). While kitchens are usually found at the back
of a house, Aisyahs Dapor was found to be at the front. Thus, the first room that greets a visitor
was the kitchen. To me, the strength of her piece came primarily from her placement as
juxtaposition emphasized her statement. Shih-Tung, on the other hand, placed his piece on the 1st
floor. With a video projection that appeared every 15 minutes, visitors needed to invest
considerable time to fully understand his piece. Shih-tung melancholic aesthetics required a
slower time-space and his choice of exhibiting it on the 1st floor; relieving it from the busy street
below; was very apt.

The second group of Open Studios became instruments of urban intervention because they
dealt with locations of commercial human activity. But between Chinahouse and the Postcard
Shop, Chinahouse proved to be quite difficult to interact through chance conversation. Somehow,
the patrons kept to their own groups of friends and avoided interaction with others. In Jaffas
case, no one spoke to her during her artist session day and Terrence did not get to interact with
as many people as he hoped for, resulting in a few drawings. The Postcard shop is a shop to buy
and mail postcards. Dickie designed a counter (similar to those found at a post office) for
customers to write and stamp their postcards. This existing human activity is what Anjo played
up on his Open Studio. In his piece, Anjo invites customers to purchase two postcards, one to be
mailed to Anjo in the Philippines and the other to the Penang State Musuem. In exchange, Anjo
painted a watercolour portrait of the customer. The postcards served as a medium for the trade
and Anjos Portrades drew large number of crowds through words of mouth. There were even

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requests from audiences whom found out about this project through social media, to extend it for
a few days more.

Places like 23 Seck Chuan Lane that is devoid of active human activity is good for artworks that
can be a catalyst of the space. This is as close as the characters of a white cube gallery space one
can get outside of the art galleries. But it is not completely neutral as a gallery space as one still
needs to be understand the internal spatial dynamics.

The other set of Open Studios took place at locations with active human activity as Jaffa, Terence
and Anjos open studios were part of commercial premises. Here, the artworks served as an
urban intervention, as it tried to meanuvour or hack locations existing human interaction.

The biggest challenge for off-site artistic production is managing the sites forces. Many times,
this means to prepare for unpredictability. Unpredictability could be taken up as exchanges and
interactions between variables. However, unpredictability can be managed by understanding the
sites local conditions that consist of human activity, commercialism of the space and physical
placement (especially indoor or outdoor).


Looking back at characteristics of public art as, interaction, participation and collaboration.
By comparing the Open Studios with the artist-in-residency, both programs provided avenues to
apply art as a vehicle for audience interaction and participation.

On the other hand, to encourage interaction through ways of collaboration, a deeper sense of
kinship is needed. This feeling of kinship and comradeship was successfully fostered among the
creative. Personally, I feel the large amounts of time together gave us the opportunity to
appreciate our shared interests rather than differences. The turning point for me was when we
shared out 1st meal together as a family.

Situating DIWO in its South east Asian context, I discovered that DIWO is much more than
inclusive participation as described by Graham and Cook. It is about working in unison within a
semi-structured organization. There is a goal without an orchestration. Each member
harmonizes with each other with constant adaptability. Everybody works for the same cause but
without the division of labour or quality control. DIWO needs high levels of participation,
coordination and negotiation, which is something that can only happen when both parties trust
each other.

Bibliography

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1.

Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media, Graham, Beryl, & Cook, Sarah, 2010 USA. The
MIT Press, Cambridge.

2.

Bourriaud, Nicolas (1997) Relational Aesthetics, Dijon: Les Presses du Reel, 2002, orig.
1997.

3.

Art as Social Practice: Mapping New Relations Within The Social Interstice
http://rillkeanheart.org/v_blog/?p=717(research paper) Helen Hyun-Kyung Park
(accessed online January 2015)

4.

15th Jakarta Biennale 2013 Catalogue (pg.63)

5.

http://mediaartkitchen.tumblr.com/

Websites
www.projectglocalstamped.com

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