A call for knockouts!

TENDER FOR APPLICATIONS |
WEDNESDAYS i’m-n-love

OPEN PLATFORM RESIDENCY

APRIL 24: WOP RESIDENCY OPEN CALL LAUNCH BAR OPENS 7 PM,
OPEN DISCUSSION (ON THE RESIDENCY) 9PM GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS

True love never dies. And unlike hot summer flings, this one is here to stay. After nearly eight months of relentless romance, unwavering faith, accidental chance encounters and careful planning, our love has finally come to bear fruit. Its time to step up. Swingers meet their match, cynics lost among throngs of intoxicated hope. Paperwork bureaucracy thrown out the door, paving the way for mad spontaneity. A bit of temper if only to extend our cheap honeymoon getaway. No need to pack your bags for this one. Yes, settling in can be nerve-wracking, even unforgiving. Take your chance, as usual the moment is now! The day has finally arrived. With much much anticipation we are launching the call for applications to WEDNESDAYS i’m-n-love OPEN PLATFORM RESIDENCY.
WEDNESDAYS i’m-n-love OPEN PLATFORM RESIDENCY (WOP) is an experimental and creative laboratory for new artistic explorations in contemporary visual arts, performance, and new media. Open to artists, curators and researchers who wish to present their current tendencies for a once-a week critical exchange via screenings, readings, conversations, performance and temporal exhibitions. WOP Residency provides 6 local young artists/curators the possibility of research residency at Green Papaya Art Projects for 2 months (or 8 Wednesdays) each with some production allowance.

Six artists/curators will be selected from an open call to organize and co-curate eight succeeding WOP programs. Aside from co-curating, the resident will also assist in documenting and archiving the events. While in residency, the participants shall also be encouraged to produce their own works (literary, writing, video, performance, painting and plastic art) referenced on the creative environment and experience brought about by the Wednesdays happenings. The works may be multidisciplinary and collaborative. All creative outputs of the six participants will be presented in a culminating exhibition and publication after one year of WOP Residency completion as part of Green Papaya’s calendar for 2009.

Launched in September 2007 as Wednesdays I’m-n-love Open Platform, this weekly happening opens up the space to discuss aesthetic, ideological and pedagogic strategies involved in any artistic process. Now running on its eight month, WOP has evolved into a weekly gathering much anticipated with unexpected creative twists and turns. Generating a platform for interventionist tactics, cross disciplinary interaction and collaboration in varying artistic stages – from script readings, improvisation jams, lectures, live talk shows to ping-pong nights. Originally conceived as loose, informal and anarchic gatherings, WOP Residency arose from the exigencies of a structured sustainable artistic program empowering the local art community in the face of temporary artist-run initiatives. Bringing in much needed environment to discuss strategies that will bridge the gap of managing independent initiatives whilst promoting creative and artistic agendas.

Aims and Objectives • WOP Residency aims to put-in-place the necessary mechanisms to develop a curatorial approach and strategy emerging from the sensibilities and context of new artistic explorations of young emerging multi/cross-media artists. It is creative laboratory with a diverse interest in anthropological, social, political, and technological contexts, and probe how these areas of diverse interests impact on contemporary art practice. • It provides artist/curator a unique environment for artistic engagement between him/her and those artists involved in the weekly WOP programs. Such environment is seen as a fertile ground for the resident artist/curator to create his/her work witin the context of that engagement. • WOP Residency seeks to ensure a year-long uninterrupted programming with 6 resident artists/curators taking charge of curatorial and program implementation for 12 months, with each one covering 8 weeks of residency. Putting in place a curatorial and managemment support mechanism involving members of its community thereby putting into practice the principle of comunity ownership and responsibility over the idea of an independent, alternative and “open platform.”

Ask and you shall receive. Artists, curators, researchers, talkers, thinkers, auto-didacts, art students and enthusiasts alike can submit your motivation letter, one-page proposal/artist statement expressing the desired residency period from June 2008 to May 2009 and curriculum vitae on or before May 15, 2008 to

greenpapayaartprojects@gmail.com

or send it via post to:

GREEN PAPAYA ART PROJECTS
124A Maginhawa Street, Teachers Village East
Diliman, Quezon City

http://papayapost.blogspot.com/

Ipanga na and tails and tales of Flying Fish

Along with several exciting young Southeast Asian artists, we are also considering works by Tao artists for the cover and interior art of the anthology. One of the Tao artists on our list is Flying Fish (born 1970). Some of his work can be viewed on his Xuite webpage, Flying Fish Cafe.

[Above image originally posted on Flying Fish Cafe. Artwork © Flying Fish, the artist. Flying fish, the fish, are revered by the Tao and form an important staple food.]

Some time ago one of our Paiwan friends, musician and aboriginal culture activist Red-I, emailed us news of a very exciting project by the Tao. Below is an excerpt from his email:

[Tao] tribesmen constructed a traditional boat (ipanga na; they haven’t built one in over 100 yrs) and made a voyage from Lanyu (Orchid Island) to [Taitung] … in preparation for their voyage back to Batanes [the northernmost and the smallest province of the Philippines] in order to keep [a] tradition from completely dying. … [No] one alive has ever made the trip, but some of the elders still have the oceanic knowledge of the “black current” that runs between Taiwan and [the Philippines] (which is how them used to travel between the 2 islands!) So this journey is very important for them in order to keep the connections alive!

In an interview with the Taipei Times, one of the rowers, Maraos (瑪拉歐斯), relates how he was weened on stories of a great seafaring nation of islands that shared the same language and culture as his own—the Tao. The project is known as Keep Rowing (繼續划船), an effort by the Tao people to relive an ancient voyage and reconnect with the Ivatan, the people of the Batanes. For this project, the Tao built Ipanga na 1001. Ipanga na in Tao means moving, crossing over, navigation, from here to there and further. They started construction on November 2006 and finished in May 2007. Ipanga na 1001 is the largest Tao wooden boat ever built in a century and the first to reach Taiwan in living memory. Batanes, 100 km south of Lanyu, formed part of the legendary nation spoken of by Maraos’s ancestors. The journey to Batanes next year will be one of the most important events in the history of the Tao and Ivatan. Maraos in the Taipei Times: “These are our people. We speak the same language and we share the same culture … This is my … and Lanyu people’s dreams.”

[Photo on right by casyc23. Reposted from I-fan Lin's Global Voices post. The red and black circle at the head of the boat is "mata-no-tarara," (eye and sun) traditional Tao symbols believed to expel evil spirits and evoke good fortunes.]

Related links:
Keep Rowing (繼續划船) blog (only in traditional Chinese text)
I-fan Lin’s Keep Rowing posts and translations at Global Voices Online
Austronesian adventurer revives Aboriginal traditions
Tao tribesmen get hero’s welcome at Tamsui Wharf
Tao aborigines paddle fishing canoe to Taipei
Patagaw Blogspot
Red-I’s Myspace
Marie Angeline Liquigan’s short introductory write-up on the Ivatan

hanging on in Yangon

We would like to acknowledge Jay Koh of Artstream Myanmar / NICA (Networking + Initiatives for Culture and the Arts) and IFIMA (International Forum for InterMedia Art) for his continued support for this project. Jay’s now back in Yangon and currently helping us look for translators and artwork we can use for the anthology. Kudos, Jay!

The Autumn issue of Art Journal is featuring some of Jay’s photos of Burma, including those done by his partner and principal collaborator, Malaysian-born artist Chu Yuan.

[Photo on right, from Art Journal. Chu Yuan and Myanmar/Burmese collaborators, Offering of Mind:Indian Young Professional) preformed photography in front of Swedagon temple and park grounds, Yangon/Rangoon, 2005, (artwork © Chu Yuan, photograph by Chu Yuan)]

For those interested in Burmese literature, there are profiles of some contemporary writers and sample writing on the Artstream site, as well as other interesting stuff. Below is an excerpt:

Khet Mar (born 1969) started writing professionally at the age of twenty. So far she has published a novel, a collection of essays and a collections of short stories with three other women writers. Of her works, over a hundred short stories, thirteen novels and three serialised novels had been featured in various magazines. (Photo from University of Iowa’s list of 2007 IWP Participants.)

Overture

She washed out her brush and regarded her painting critically: definitely a lot of blues. Blue-gray monsoon clouds over the rippling waters of a river; on the far bank, dark green mountain ranges; a blur of red sky just at the top right edge.

That last ray of fading sun fell on the lone boatman rowing against the current, the muscles of his arms standing out in relief in the light.

A gloomy and dark painting overall, but she had wanted exactly that. It might storm, it might rain, and one might have to row against the current, but then, all one needs is the strength to row. …

[Translated from the Burmese by Ma Thanegi. To read more of Overture, click here.]