immersed

upcoming show

2012-01-20T17:19:00.000-08:00

Mapping Caylus. Visualizations of place and mind. This exhibition shows typographic and topographic maps and videos of both place and mind, of location and history, of emotions and reactions. These works reflect location, history and the affairs of artist's heart. from a summer residency in Caylus France at Draw International

astrid kensinger almkhlaafy

Masangin

2012-01-19T22:24:00.000-08:00

When i was in Yogyakarta, at the cellsbutton festival, venzha took me out one midnight on his scooter to the banyan tree square, south of Kraton. He said, close your eyes, tie this blindfold, now walk between the trees. i think i tried 5 times before almost making it. the idea is to make a wish, get through the two trees at midnight, and the wish comes true. I liked this space. there laods of wandering blindfolded wishers wandering off in random directions.

so the next night i went back and walked around the space with my gps. i circled the whole square, but not completely, had to leave a space for the wishes to escape. but in that one midnight night i caught the thoughts and held them and let them out again.

the two circles were partially in respect to the cellbutton team. it's their logo too. cellsbutton captures masangin. astrid embraces masangin.

The word “Masangin” originated from the Indonesian word : “Masuk diantara dua beringin” which means “passing through 2 banyan trees” in English. This is a myth in Java about the power of 2 banyan tree at the south square of the Kraton. According to the myth, one day the Kraton was attacked by enemies from the south side. To reach the Kraton, enemy soldiers would have to pass the two big banyan trees on their way to the Kraton. The soldiers would then lose their power after passing through the trees and therefor keeping the Sultan’s Palace safe. Today, Masangin is considered to be a game where people would come to the South Square and witness the two banyan trees trees while trying to pass through them blindfolded. If they succeed, then it is said that whatever they wished for will be granted.

one of the magic elements of Jojya is the cartography of the city. it's lined up on a sacred axis between Merapri and the sea, a mystical line that connects actual locations, including this banyan wish square.

re-emerging

2012-01-19T21:34:00.000-08:00

Sometimes life gets in the way. Interferes and imposes a new schedule or a new set of priorities. Over the last two years I've been focused on a different form of creativity. Making my life humm, making sure balance, gracefulness and mindfulness were ever present. This took me away from this blog. But the time has come to re-emerge. So here. I'm back.

Although not posting, I have been living and making. Small steps into defining this new chapter. Yes vague. But yes, new chapter.

Perhaps the project that is the first of this new phase was the merapi red circle. A ritual for delineating my own space. The year before I married, in 1995, I climbed an erupting volcano, Mt Rinjani in Lombok. It is perhaps one of those experiences that ranks up in the top five of extraordinary. The volcano killed two people the night I spent up on the rim. They were on the other side, where the ash and rocks were being spewed. I remember the sound, the lightening, the intensity so clearly. It was transformative in that I felt awed and alive.

After the end of my marriage, I decided to climb another volcano. Although not fully erupting, it was steaming and spewing and erupted only a few months later. This one was Merapi, in Java. I went with meridel, she photo-ed, I climbed and gps-ed and made a little statement for myself at the top. A red circle of closure. A wish circle. A prayer circle. The action was meant for me alone. But it was performance and it meant finality.

red show

2010-04-08T20:40:00.001-07:00

After my installation and solo show in november the majority of my research time has been taken up in compiling the grant into a submission. this was submitted at the end of march. in the meantime, my wonderful friend meridel, mentioned a call for an exhibition at the Center for Fine Art Photography, an exhibition titled red. So i sent in some imges form the adventures and performances in Xian, Huashan and Taishan. Not being a fine art photographer, when one of the photos i submitted was accepted, i panicked. How to mount? how to print? how to present? Paul was down the hall and graciously walked me through the language and logistics, the art and the nuances. So coming up soon, Straight Drop, Huashan China will be up in colorado.

up&down @ night & day

2009-11-04T00:32:00.000-08:00

finally the exhibition is here, one week to go and things are coming together. have sound, videos, materials, a great venue, books, images, typographic elements. Have been working for 2 years on the project and for the last few months more on the production. there's an enormous amountof editing that has gone on. making a cohesive compact thing from two vast mountains and 2 enormous histories.

Preload-Honf and night & day

2009-08-30T21:22:00.001-07:00

After becoming acquainted with the House of Natural Fiber (HONF) during the cellsbutton#3 media arts festival, and hearing that the group had members coming through singapore, I wanted to make a local connection for the group with the downtown venue Night&Day. On friday, August 28 members of HONF and international artists Marko Batista and Tengal Drilon performed within the bar sapce of Night&Day to an intimate crowd of academics and artists. Kelley was gracious and gave her space for the session, and the HONF team now have made an excellent connection in the city.

Tengal performed solo and also collaborated in an improvisational duet with my video. His spontaneous piano and sound performance had a fascinating effect on the video pieces, changing meaning and emotion. This type of collaboration is an area to further explore.

Marko Bastisto. video and sound

cellsbutton #3

2009-08-05T18:31:00.000-07:00

The thrust towards new media arts in many of the Asian countries seem to be caught between two parallel and related trends – a) the need to develop culturally specific and located ways of engaging with and incorporating the new information, communication, experiential and biotechnologies; and b) the need to respond to the global imperatives that drive these technologies and their related artistic developments. While the media and technological developments in these countries indicate a constant juggling between these local and global imperatives, many of the media artistic developments in these countries pose interesting ways of reevaluating and significantly expanding the current discourses and practices in art, media and technology....(Gunalan Nadarajan)

....Now let us visualise a framework for this setting in which people resonate with media through simulating processes. I remember hearing the words intelligent interfaces, disappearing computer and smart environments for the first time at a conference in Sweden, Jönschoping. Bewildered I listened to academic researchers painting scenarios of strollers in the park being able to point at trees with their smart ( rfid/bluetooth enabled) watches resulting in... a screen rising up either from the ground or next to the tree. On that screen? ...information, data rather - about that tree. I'm sitting in my chair and look around me for smiling or laughing people, but nothing. This audience, top EU researchers and technical wizards, does not think this is ridiculous, strange, unnecessary at all. Instead, on the contrary what they see is open territory, a vast unknown adventure. Room to play. Yet I visualized a framework for this setting, grasping its radical
potential immediately- as that tree had always spoken to me, as trees do to people who feel as well as see and hear. Or towers for that matters, my towers. Do they not realize that what actually matters in this vast grid of affordances that overlays so called material objects is their potential? their imaginary? Unaware they raise issues of alchemy, of witchcraft, magic....(Rob van Kranenburg)

....One of EFP’s methods is to organise accessible, ‘hands-on’ workshops that allow the audience to share knowledge and explore different forms of artistic collaboration induced by technology. Furthermore, these workshops are based on a ‘Do It Yourself’ philosophy, which enables the participants to use, subvert and adapt technologies for the specific requirements of local communities. This perspective is examined in the ‘bricolabs’ workshops, for example.
Besides participatory authorship, another goal of the EFP is to stimulate a critical and reflective approach towards technology. What are the implications this new artistic practice for art, design and sciences for Indonesian context? In discussions and presentations, the aesthetic, social and philosophical context will be analyzed and debated in order to create a critical, practice based approach towards media arts in Indonesia....(Deanna Herst)

PARTICIPANT :

more than 100 Artists / Scientist / Activist / Researcher / Professional / Musician / Theorist / Local Communities from
Indonesia ( Jakarta - Bandung - Yogyakarta - Surabaya - Medan - Batam - Bali - Semarang - Pekanbaru - Makasar - etc)

+

Astrid Almkhlaafy / UK - US
Andrej Boleslavsky / Slovakia
Michal Marianek / Czech Republic
Mar Canet / Austria
Vladimir Todorovic / Serbia
Ondřej Skala a.k.a JTNB / Czech Republic
Darina Alster / Czech Republic
Alex Scraub / Netherlands
Jan Torpus / Switzerland
Rene TA Lysloff / US
Marco Batista / Slovenia
Varvara Guljajeva / Estonia - Austria
Peter Tomaz Dobrila / Slovenia
Deanna Herst / Netherlands
Marc Dusseiller / Switzerland
Tengal / Philippines
Somaya Langley / Australia
Dan Gregor a.k.a Initi / Czech Republic
Magdalena Peševa / Czech Republic
Alessandro Carboni / Italy

natural-fiber.com/cellsbutton/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=57&Itemid=79

- VENUE :

19 venue for 8 day program

natural-fiber.com/cellsbutton/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=58&Itemid=80

- SCHEDULE :

natural-fiber.com/cellsbutton/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=59&Itemid=81

- Featuring Presentation and Project on :

HONF - Fablab
natural-fiber.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=184:prosthetics-workshop-at-fablab-amsterdam&catid=85:concepts&Itemid=90

Indonesia Bricolabs 2009
cellsKIT
HONF - AKPRIND
akprind.ac.id/

HONF - INHERENT
inherent-dikti.net/?modul=bv&artikel=vicon/C48525D299C9

---------------------------------------------------------
HONF lab
the house of natural fiber, yogyakarta new media art laboratory
natural-fiber.com/

upcoming exhibition and festival

2009-07-07T19:43:00.000-07:00

Just invited and approved by school to attend the 3rd Yogyakarta International Media Arts Festival, thanks to Vladimir. Excited. I get to show the recent projects of Huashan and Taishan and my GPS works. Should be an exciting week.

life and death. up and down.

2009-05-20T06:45:00.000-07:00

Getting somewhere with this last trek up Huashan. Perhaps it was obvious from the beginning, but I don't remember picking the mountains based on location. In any case I did intuitively somehow opt for the eastern most and western most of the sacred Taoist mountains of China. Had I thought about it before I would have thought of the sun. I'm sure. Taishan was birth from the research early on, but for some reason Huashan eluded me and my research assistants. Once there it hit me. so obvious. The mountain is constantly referred to as the most dangerous in china, the dwelling place of the gods, of the five immortals, a place pilgrims go to seek immortality. Huashan is the west. the setting sun. Taishan the east, the sunrise. Taishan is birth and the bloodline and king-line of china. Huashan is death.

The trek up was gorgeous. lonely. solo. precarious. rainy, cold. by the time I reached the midpoint where the majority of the 'pilgrims' start from the cable cars, I was wet with sweat and drenched by the rain. Unlike Taishan where there are regular covered rest spots and cafes and even hotels and restaurants, Huashan was (although crowded) without a dry place to sit and get warm.

I walk fast and compete when there is a slope. I had pushed myself hard and really needed a place to dry off and warm up while I waited for my students and family. Instead I sat in the rain and my body warmth quickly turned to extreme chill. I waited for 50 minutes and by the time they arrived on the cable cars I was shaking and chattering and as close to hypothermia as I've ever been. I had to descend. It was on my cable car decline that I had the space to reflect on the nature of the mountain (Kaatje was on my lap warming me up). It was then that death and the west and the setting sun hit me. so obvious. what else is seeking immortality but a wishful attempt to avoid death? The death mountain.

challenging orders - humor that pokes.

2009-04-03T05:18:00.000-07:00

Two new favorite movies. Sedmikrásky (Daisies) by Vera Chytilová and Céline et Julie vont en bateau (Céline and Julie Go Boating: Phantom Ladies Over Paris), by Jacques Rivette.

Fantastic fun. a fusion of Dada, fluxus and Agnès Varda. the laughter, magic, gender and narrative play are inspirational.

by name

2009-04-03T03:18:00.001-07:00

i was just enlightened in a delightful way that if you translate my name into japanese (after a decade there it's funny i never found this one) it's:

あす（明日）とぅ（登）れっど(赤）
it's a treasure. it means "Tomorrow climb with red"
and so as the days begin to count down towards the next mountain, Hua-shan, I have this new focus. an absurd new drive to paint the next mountain red.

creative genius and inspiration

2009-03-14T00:43:00.000-07:00

This talk by Elizabeth Gilbert at TED touches something so wonderfully deep. I love how genius is the pixie, the shoe-making elf, the imp outside that touches us, passes through us, comes to us but is not of us. Creativity comes to us from daemons, from a divine genius. It removes the pressure of blocks, in some ways. Of course we need to work, to exercise our craft and skills and be ready, it's not that it can lead in all ways, but that there's this possibility of a spirit of creativity that can come through us. wonderful.

crayon art

2009-02-28T05:23:00.000-08:00

Picture: CHRISTIAN FAUR

this has nothing to do with what i do, but it's so deliciously simple and so hilariously complex.

goals

2009-02-10T18:31:00.000-08:00

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me,
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.

— Jenny Joseph, Warning, Selected Poems (1992) Bloodaxe Books.

Thaipusam

2009-02-10T05:37:00.001-08:00

Pain is as diverse as man. One suffers as one can.
— Victor Hugo
“Thoughts,” in Victor Hugo’s Intellectual Autobiography, (1907).

It's pretty fascinating the way people (all over the world) push themselves into extreme experiences. This festival is one of physical testing. It reminds me of stories of saints, of the Catholic pious inflicting pain in order to prove worth. But instead of it being dark and depressing as i imagine those examples were...this is joyous, colorful, communal, festive.

Pain is superficial, and therefore fear is.
The torments of martyrdoms are probably most keenly felt by the by-standers.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Courage,” Society and Solitude (1870).

In Thaipusam, at least as far as I've gleaned from Arul, the idea is beauty. It's all about asking for beauty and creativity. To ask properly you fast for 30 days, abstain from physical intimacy, think pure thoughts and prepare for the procession. Here in Singapore the procession is 4 km, repeated over and over between two temples, for 24 hours. Faithful walk and families join and encourage each other on. Those who do not bleed show that they abstained. Most do not bleed at all.

Everyone carries milk to the temples or buys milk at the temples, to be poured at the alter. There is an incredible smell of milk inside, which totally contrasts with the physicality of the followers. I imagine pain, but none is apparently experienced. and the milky contrast is like yin and yang. male extreme pain (or self inflicted tests that do not apparently cause pain) fused with the smell of mothers, of life. wild.

Mother,
strange goddess face
above my milk home,
that delicate asylum,
I ate you up.
— Anne Sexton “Dreaming the Breasts.”

No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.
— William Penn, No Cross, No Crown (pamphlet) (1669).

Thaipusam

2009-01-30T05:18:00.000-08:00

This Sunday, my dad's birthday, is also Thaipusam. Arul has invited us to come with her to Little India to document and reflect on the nature of this extreme festiva l.

huashan

2009-01-30T04:20:00.000-08:00

“In the morning worship the Great Dipper, in the evening worship Hua Shan, from the mountain, view the stars, in the stars see the gods…”

inscription on Hua Shan

http://picasaweb.google.com/srcgxs/HuaShan#

The next mountain on the grant horizon is Huashan. We are in for an adventure. Huashan is 'The Number One Precipitous Mountain under Heaven' and is also one of the 5 sacred Taoist peaks. Recently there has been a lot of excitement over Huashan on the Internet. When I applied for this grant, I only saw images. Once the grant was approved, I began to see references to "The Deadly Huashan Hiking Trail".

This has really affected my life in a way that is almost absurd. In order to climb I need someone to watch my daughter. I want someone else to be with me to video, while I map with GPS. Ideally there will be three of us climbing at once, while another always babysits. I do not want to be responsible for any dangers, deaths, dramas. I also need to be fit. So daily jogging and swimming has become more intense. At the same time in the back of mind I've been counting how many months are left for me to get pregnant in this lifetime. I figure I could climb a mountain up to 6 months pregnant, but I shouldn't fly in the first trimester. Basically I may have to cancel having a second child in favor of climbing this mountain. I need to climb in May, it's a dramatic climb. A mountain instead of a child? Or a 40 year old pregnancy. Life goes so quickly.

Anyhow according to wikipedia "Huashan was also an important place for immortality seekers, as powerful drugs were reputed to be found there". I like hunting for immortality.

what color will this mountain be?

Taishan Red

2009-01-21T17:21:00.001-08:00

astrid almkhlaafy

My explorations to Thailand, Borobudur and Angkor Wat fueled on my interest in mountains. The DNA of Singapore also pulled me to China, so in the tradition of the pilgrimage — in Chinese “ch' ao-shan chin-hsian”g – or 'paying one's respect to a mountain' — with the intent of better understanding some of the cultural roots of this new home, I proposed and received a grant to research, visit, climb, document and finally exhibit my findings of the pilgrimages to Mount Tai Shan and Mount Hua Shan in China. This is a report in progress.

You must ascend a mountain
to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body,
for it is at home there,
though you are not.

Henry David Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 6

In July we went to Shandong province in China to climb Taishan. To pay respect to this mountain and the pilgrimage we walked, documented and mapped with GPS...all the while wearing red. In effect, we painted Taishan red by walking everywhere in red. This action made manifest the pilgrimage itself, while also conceptually conjuring up an umbilical cord, or a red bloodline.

The son of the sun
Taishan is red. it's the color of the calligraphy, the stone carving, the wish trees, the temples. From the summit, Mao claimed "From here, all of China is Red". Taishan is blood. It is the bloodline, it is the male bloodline. It is also birth, it is the east, it is mythologically from where life began.You could say that Taishan is the linga of China. It is where sons come from and where the sun first rises. It is an incredibly complex site.

So with my collaborators, we considered these thoughts and more. As women, we were most curious about gender. So many women have climbed over so many centuries to pray for male offspring. And to a goddess they prayed. How did a goddess land the top of Taishan? Taoism usually puts the female at the ground level and the male towards the sky. How did a female deity get to reign supreme with a temple at the top of a linga?

Bixia Yuanjin (pronounced BEE-cha you-on-JEEN) is the Chinese Taoist Goddess of the dawn, childbirth, and destiny. As Goddess of dawn, she attends the birth of each new day from her home high in the clouds. As Goddess of childbirth, she attends the birth of children, fixing their destiny and bringing good fortune. Dawn and childbirth are two concepts often, and quite understandably, linked in world mythology: the rising of the sun, the bringing of light to the earth, is equated with the child emerging from the darkness of the womb to the light of the world.

Tai'an City is a stretch of ancient and mystical land. Five thousand years ago here originated the brilliant Dawenkou Culture, which reflects the whole course of the transition from matriarchal society to patriarchal society and the disintegration of the primitive society.
www.asia-planet.net/china/taian.htm

While on pilgrimage, women enjoyed a degree of freedom from some of the restrictions of their daily life. They were able to travel beyond their local area, they stayed overnight outside their own home, and they met people from other regions. Although women customarily played a minor role in rituals, they were the primary or sole actors in rituals associated with the Goddess of Mount Tai (Taishan Niangniang 泰山娘娘 or Bixia Yuan-jun 碧霞元君). In addition to physical mobility, pilgrimages allowed women to exercise ritual authority and agency and to establish new identities as mothers and ritual experts.
Brian Dott, Identity Reflections: Pilgrimages to Mount Tai in Late Imperial China

Over the week that we were at the mountain we climbed altogether over 8 times. Sometimes as a group, other times solo. Most often in red. When not in red we were documenting and interviewing over a hundred pilgrims. On the final day we performed an 'ode to the pilgrimage' at the base of the mountain, outside the temple to Bixia.

In the way
The most important 'performance' piece was at the top, leading up to the gate of heaven, here is where every pilgrim passes up to the summit. At this location, i walked zig-zag down, along every step, passing by everyone walking up, being in the way of the way. This was documented with gps, video and photography as well.

In a time where we are most often in urban settings, focused on screens, communicating virtually, it is easy to forget that the grand events of the past have often been on foot, up mountains, with strangers, to pray. On a meta level, I hope that by embarking on these pilgrimages, documenting the journeys, researching and studying the locations and finally exhibiting and sharing my findings that somehow the content will inspire others to explore heritage sites and become inspired by historical and cultural wonders.

The foot of the heavenly ladder, which we have got to mount in order to reach the higher regions, has to be fixed firmly in every-day life, so that everybody may be able to climb up it along with us. When people then find that they have got climbed up higher and higher into a marvelous, magical world, they will feel that that realm, too, belongs to their ordinary, every-day life, and is, merely, the wonderful and most glorious part thereof.
— E.T.A.W. Hoffmann, The Serapion Brethren. B, vol. II, sect. 5 (1892).

So far this has been partially exhibited in Tokyo and most recently in the 2008 Fall International Digital Design Invitation Exhibit, South Korea.

GPS poetry — ISEA exhibition

2009-01-18T02:34:00.001-08:00

While learning about the creative possibilities of my Garmin GPS I began to experiment. I wanted to write big messages and began immediately after the desired technology caught up to my ideas. For my first experiment I created an alphabet along the beach in Krabi, Thailand. Halfway through I realized it was backwards. The scale was enormous but not a typeface I wanted to continue in Illustrator.

What I gleaned from this was the tide and the topography affect the ability to carry out the task. These are walked, I mean, I walk up and down and back and forth on the beach, imagining what the letter will look like from a plane above. It's pretty amusing to the people sitting and relaxing at the beach bars. I was asked if I was treasure hunting, lost, in need of help—when i answered that i was writing it really made for instant conversations with very curious questions. After the slightly successful alphabet, i moved on to bigger and grander ideas. I had a quote that i wanted to write along the other side of the beach, ideal for the location, so it became a site specific piece of walked poetry:

May the tide be soon enough on high to keep our abstract verse from being dry

— Robert Frost, Etherealizing.

When viewed in google earth the quote is often shown with the tide in, and so the abstract verse is rarely dry. When written, the descenders of the ‘y’, ‘g’ & ‘p’ touched the water. The reaction of onlookers was never dry, nor the intention of the project, and so the walk (over 10km) physically expressed the location, the quotation and used the technology in an unconventional yet clear way.

I also discovered en route that script was far easier to walk than a serif or sans serif typeface. since my track was always being recorded i could relax in general within one word. when it came to word spacing i leapt quickly (since there is a time factor in this process of being recorded) to the next word. in general the legibility of this improved dramatically.

The next location was in Bintan, Indonesia. I researched the location and was really drawn to the historical drama of the Sultan of Malacca (Malaysia), Mahmud Shah, who fled the Portuguese and escaped to Bintan, bringing with him Islam to Indonesia. The survival and adaptability of a man, who was probably one of the richest on the planet in his day—the kind of the spice trade route—really intrigued me. He lives on through the religion, Indonesia has the largest Muslim population on the planet. That combined with the nature of this kind of writing, and the gorgeous location (we were staying in a resort on the island) led to this quote (roughly of the same period):

My trade and my art is living. He who forbids me to speak about it according to my sense, experience, and practice, let him order the architect to speak of buildings not according to himself but according to his neighbor; according to another man’s knowledge, not according to his own.
— Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) “Of Practice,” The Essays (Les Essais), bk. II, ch. 6, Abel Langelier, Paris (1595).

This led to another 'walked thought' based on my experiences in Angkor Wat. Angkor is extraordinary. but it is also so incredibly fragile, Siem Reap depending so heavily on it's past for basic survival now. I was overwhelmed by the scale of the space, and by the ruins of boulders tumbling down everywhere. I'd also spent a day exploring Tonlé Sap which geographically explained the location of the Angor ruins, such a futile source of nourishment, but today surrounded by impoverished communities dependent on weather and tourism. I hired a boat and explored the floating villages of Vietnamese and Cham communities and this influenced my quote:

These fragments I have shored against my ruins
— T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land: “What the Thunder Said”

I had spent three days already exploring the site and found only one location possible for walking type. It was along the edge of the eastern baray leading up to the Bayon. This was my first attempt at writing on soil: dusty dry, weedy. I imagined that it was once water, or along the shore of the artificial lake. In reality I ended up bumping into a tuk tuk parking area and had to write and navigate the word 'ruins' around the crowd. it was not easy, and that made the quote feel even more appropriate.

"these fragments"

I like the way i can merge my love for walking and reading and archaeology and poetics into a space. I also enjoy the invisibility of the message. I know what I'm doing, but no one else has a clue. There is so much potential in that. Peace signs in war zones, poison signs in toxic waste lands. it's an open palette.

Through these experiments I was asked to show at last year's ISEA conference here in Singapore. I met some fascinating people, Ema Ota of Dislocate Tokyo was one I'd like to show with in the future.

isea exhibition — NTU, singapore 2008

translating — thoughts on the nature of the designer

2009-01-15T04:00:00.001-08:00

Call it what you will, translation, solution, answer, gift: the role of the designer is to take what exists and reintroduce by making fresh connections to a new, often specific audience. We recycle culture. We archive, search, research, collect, deconstruct and re-present. It is the nature of making meaning. And so our role is not so different from that of an archaeologist. The archaeologist sifts, sorts, categorizes, connects, and re-introduces something that exists or has existed to a waiting audience. The archaeologist also must convince which again is a major role of the designer.

There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something unique and never surpassed will cease to exist except in the libraries of a few inquisitive book lovers.

Edith Hamilton
Three Greek Plays, introduction (1937)

The difference seems to me to be that designers are creative archaeologists. We sift through everything up to now, our past is the immediate. But we are free to connect and reassemble using everything from now on back in time. our work is montaging the past. we use letters, words, thoughts and ideas to create new messages or immediate messages. We use images and styles and photos and people. we are, like archaeologists, the sifters, collectors and keepers. It's an enormously important role. recycling. but what are the consequences? i mean in the long term?

how confusing for someone 2000 years from now to see the works of today. for how much of what we make is 'authentic'? from my hand? or yours? we mix time up in these doughs that then we reshape and re-present and they are so 'now'. but what is now other than a fusion of then or everything up to now? perhaps creative making is always this: reshaping the past, making meaning which is sometimes seen as 'new' but always a collection of old.

I think that's another reason why i prefer the live art aspect of creation. the immediacy doesn't make me ponder authenticity. there is no plagiarism in collective spontaneity. or is there?

The job to entice, surprise, engage, entertain, inform, persuade—in short, communicate with readers—has been the burden of the artist from Day 1.
Upper & Lower Case magazine
Jun 80

Intersections

2009-01-14T18:51:00.005-08:00

Just presented today to Johnny Lau— our SYOG connection—our experiences at the temple Sunday night, and low and behold— what a small world— Johnny knows and just played with (in the last few days) Govin Tan, the gifted tabla player from our temple night. Such an overlapping lovely world.

Our entire class was mesmerized by Govin and his art. One of the things I put forward to Johnny was the necessity of including him into the Youth Olympics in some way. He embodies such a lovely fusion of identity and represents the creative potential of Singapore. And it seems quite possible!

preservation and communication.

2009-01-14T18:51:00.003-08:00

Govin Tan photo: George James Parel

Live art, performance, ceremonies and rituals are ephemeral by their very nature. It is the responsibility of the creative community to capture and preserve these moments by whatever means available in order to understand identity and history and to communicate to wider audiences and future generations.
astrid almkhlaafy

This last Sunday, I took my designed experiences class to the Sri Sivan Temple in Geylang for an immersive experience into Singaporean identity and culture. My idea was so put the students into an unfamiliar, possibly uncomfortable setting, task them with documenting and let them unfold and observe, absorb and record. The goals of the workshop were multi-tiered: to confront identity, to record and document, to collect ingredients for future projects and to become comfortable in the role of cultural archivists.

This class is quite fascinating. we are working towards the first youth Olympics, briefed with creating content—of an experiential communicative nature— for the opening and closing ceremonies. The actual youth Olympics are in 2010, here in Singapore and the youth village will be on our university campus.

We've been invited by the Olympic committee and Johnny Lau to be actively involved in putting forward concepts for the events, and so ADM has jumped on the opportunity. My course is starting with the meta. What is a ceremony? a ritual? what is identity? what do we hope to communicate to an enormous international broadcast audience about Singapore? who are we? and how do we shape our concepts within the context of something rather sacred? a ceremony of national importance?

Our first field trip then was one of immersion. we were graciously invited by Arul Ramiah to come and observe and document the performance of Sita Jameison and Govin Tan, an Irish female, deeply spiritual chanter and a 17 year old Chinese Singaporean tabla player.

Sita Jameison photo: George James Parel

The setting was within the temple, surrounded by devotees, priests, sounds, smells, colors, details and action. The audience sat on the floor and faced the musicians while to our backs the temple continued on in its activities. The majority of my students were not Indian and none were Hindu by faith. Many had never stepped into a Hindu temple. There was some initial trepidation, but the role of documenting, and the cameras, notebooks and videos helped to remove the focus from self to task. All students had to document in at least two ways. they were asked to take note of colors, of architectual details, of sensory ingredients within the temple. To notice processions, motions, gestures. To observe the actual performance and to document that as well.

This workshop focused on important aspects of a designers' research duty: observing, collecting, archiving, and eventually in sorting and presenting. In the long term i hope to see Olympic proposals that incorporate and borrow, mix and 're-present' details from the experience in original shape and form.

We will continue immersing ourselves in culture over the semester, with the emphasis being on identity and culture. I expect to see some brilliant proposals for the Olympics. It was a very generous first step into understanding the richness of this territory, and special thanks go out to Arul and Sita for setting this experience up.

Here was the temple etiquette we received from Arul

TEMPLE ETIQUETTE
For Camera/Video Crew & Visitors

An Indian temple, like other places of worship, has its own set of unwritten and written rules. Visitors who wish to document temple traditions or temple concerts are encouraged to do so in a culturally sensitive way. Attitude of temples to photography, filming and interviewing devotees and priests vary vastly across temples around the world. To encourage temples to document their oral and social history, Studio Arul encourages you to observe the following rules of etiquette:

Attitude of Reverence. A temple is a sacred space where a meditative and contemplative attitude is encouraged. Adopt an attitude of respect and reverence on the temple grounds.
Respect Elders and Priests. There is a deep reverence for elders and priests within the Indian tradition. Putting your palms together in a prayerful manner when greeting elders and priests is a sign of respect that will be highly favored.
Dress Code. A formal and conservative dress code is the best. When in the house of God, there is an expectation that you honor the divine by wearing your Sunday best. Silks, jewelry and formal tailored attires are preferred. No shorts, tube tops or revealing clothes which are considered disrespectful. Socks and shoes should not be worn on the temple grounds.
Wash your Feet. If possible just after you enter the temple wash your feet and look up and contemplate the gopuram. This serves as reminder for you to shift your energies towards heavenly matters and humble yourself before God.
Sit Cross Legged. Sitting and meditating on the temple grounds after prayers is encouraged. Never point your feet out to the deity or to the performers on a stage when sitting on the floor. This is considered deeply sacrilegious.
Smile and Nod. Indians often study another person’s attitude, aura and vibration. A smiling countenance and a humble/agreeable attitude will score top points and typically grant you favors that direct verbal requests will not. Being aggressive and pushy however is culturally unacceptable and will often backfire.
Do Not Step Onto the Stage. The stage is often demarcated by a carpet where artists sit and perform. The stage is considered a sacred space and non-performers should not step into this space or allow their kids to run across it.
Do not touch the Statutes or Musical Instruments. Certain statutes are considered sacred and should not be touched. Musical instruments are also considered sacred and only the artist is allowed to touch them.
Getting Good Shots without Intruding. Many devotees and priests do not appreciate a camera being thrust onto their faces when they are in the midst of deep prayer, meditation or rituals. Keep a respectful distance when filming. And do not block the devotees path or sight of the sanctum to get a better shot.
No Meat, Smoking or Alcohol. The temple is a space where the consumption animal meat, and other forms of toxins like drugs and alcohol are strictly prohibited.
Learn through Observation. The best way to learn is through observation. Observe what the other Indians in the temple are doing – where they stand and how they partake in the prayers etc. Most priests and devotees do not appreciate being bombarded with questions on the whys and hows of their traditions from strangers. Build goodwill slowly through repeated temple visits before asking questions. The receipt of spiritual knowledge is considered a privilege, not a right.

archaeology of festivity

2009-01-14T18:51:00.001-08:00

Visual communication is a field that constantly expands and absorbs. This is the lure that brings in so many students and makers. We can self define as designers, and master areas that may seem left-field, only to find that those very 'esoteric' areas represent a core of what we call visual communication.

I came to graphic design from the past. the deep past, specializing in classical & near eastern archaeology. It was artifacts and pieces of extraordinary civilizations from before that grew this love of documentation. I mean, who are we if we leave nothing behind? What greater challenge than to preserve, package and save snippets of our cultures for an unknown future observer?

" 'No one,' Pascal once said, 'dies so poor that he does not leave something behind.'
Surely it is the same with memories too — although these do not
always find an heir."
— walter benjamin.

There is something of Mnemosyne in all this. Sure we may leave a footprint trail behind, but it will dry out with the time. it's only by being carved or made of stone, by being baked clay, by flukes of volcanic or natural fossil making quirks that things really get passed along down thousands and thousands of years. Our recent abilities to retell collective memories (oral traditions) have faded completely in most western communities. we rely on paper, electricity. Neither of which last long at all.

And yet there are festivals and they often DO connect back.

In Tokyo, I designed my way up from a production artist to an art director to a Media and Design Manager, and the big thing I worked around consistently, was events. promoting, staging, branding, and of course documenting. It was exciting. but my creativity wasn't pushed enough, nor my archaeology. I threw costume parties, followed matruris and in general tried to celebrate. But in the end grad school beckoned and I finally was able to fuse and focus.

I call it the archaeology of festivity. it's a field of research that explore feasts, festivals, processions, rituals — in general very ephemeral communication pieces — for the purpose of preservation, deconstruction, and translation.

This was my first attempt at defining the world I wanted to research. It's a book called Celebrate. It categorizes the universality of the celebration into 6 chapters. Fertility and Harvests, the Sacred, Mapping Power & the prince, the State, the Rebellious & the Personal Journey.

It was a first statement. An attempt to map out and present, to contextualize and declare that the immersive experience is ancient. It is part of our DNA. it is universal and it communicates. The festival/ritual/dance/procession/pilgrimage communicates. Each communicate culture, identity, history and self. As such they are living threads of the past. they are often 'alive' archaeology. They communicate through immersion through physically engaging the body. They are part of an area of the performance or communication world that I'm calling (at least here in this blog) 'physical communication'.

astrid in tokyo

2009-01-14T18:50:00.001-08:00

Just back from my fist solo show in tokyo. A great opportunity to return with my work and introduce to a creative gathering the projects that have been done since leaving in 2002. Andrew Thomas of Hybrid Gallery invited me to have a one week show and also give a talk on the opening night. It was a great feeling being back, immersed in the warmth of his hospitality and generosity. ADM also was quite supportive of this project and backed my trip fully.

photo — Aiko Wakao 2008

The talk included my work from 2002 until now, and focused on the history of graphic designers who have been involved in performance and live art. I showed Futurists, Dadaists, Bauhaus and Black Mountain College, and discussed the Fluxus happenings as well as looked briefly at some contemporary examples of commercial pieces and flash mobs and that come out of this experimental spirit. It was well received and later I was asked go present again at the Pink Cow.

The presentation press release:

Graphic Design History books are full of adventurous creatives who go beyond the printed page and screen and into the world of events and collaborative happenings. This talk will discuss the rich history we share as designers, explore contemporary examples of communication pieces that include the performative, and finally will introduce the methodology and works of the presenter.

The history of twentieth century graphic design includes many significant practitioners who are highlighted in performance art history textbooks. Twentieth century performance can be viewed as an experimental laboratory where certain leading graphic designers have tested out manifestos and new art forms in collaborative and improvisational settings. Performative examples from the Futurists, Dadaists, Constructivists, Bauhaus and Black Mountain College will be introduced and related to the graphic and typographic works that simultaneously emerged from these groups. The talk will then move into contemporary examples of designers using performance and live art in communication pieces.

Astrid has been invited to present her work, stage experiences and lead workshops at Central Saint Martins, London College of Communication, & Brighton. She currently resides in Singapore - teaching designed experiences, graphic design history and typography - and is working on two grants that have taken her to China, Cambodia, and Borobudur to stage and document experiences. In July she staged a collaboration in Taiwan through Oistat. Her current work is gravitating towards the creation of rituals for communication.

physical & visual communication

2009-01-14T17:59:00.000-08:00

Not only did live art by artists represent the very spirit of its own times and reveal the ways in which artists from different disciplines interconnected, it also showed me how certain ideas in a painting or a sculpture, which as a traditional art historian I might have looked for in other paintings or sculptures, often originated in some sort of performed action. Indeed, the history of performance throughout the twentieth century showed performance to be an experimental laboratory for some of the most original and radical art forms; it was a freewheeling, permissive activity for intellectual and formalist excursions of all kinds that could, if studied carefully, reveal layers of meaning about art and artmaking that simply were not clear before.
—Roselee Goldberg, introduction
Performance, Live Art Since 1960

As designers we often create works that live through print or on screen. Part of the need to mass produce spurs this on, to communicate to large audiences. It is often part of our task. But living behind a screen can be isolating — and as communication people, a hunger grows to get out and meet the audience. It's often not possible with huge campaigns. It's often part of the PR and marketing team to handle those aspects. But creating a one way flow of information is almost like talking to yourself. Sometimes being in the moment with your audience, making your audience take part in the actual process of the design (or art) can lead to incredible insights while also allowing for a freedom of experimentation not allowed in a final polished thing.

Many creatives have recognized the potential of experimenting in real time. There is the cost and the immediacy as lures, there is also a sense of play and inclusiveness. Our audience is with us, our critics are our players. it can be immensely satisfying to have closure in a sense. of course these moments are experiments or sketches that do get translated. and the translations do go further to reach larger less local or immediate audiences. but during the actual creation and 'painting', we are engaged with others and communicating in real time, in the same space. it's almost rebellious, in the sense that so little is made this way today.

When i worked as a more traditional designer, I met with others within my office to discuss strategy, to report progress, to delegate duties and to present pitches. rarely did i include others in my making process, rather i showed and moved on to the next stage of implementation. I was lucky in that i did see my audience at times, and could get a sense of the reception of my work. Also working within events, i went and saw the events and documented them. But in those days, other than the costume parties I threw, making things for the audience to create wasn't really something possible. We made things for the audience to observe.

Part of my fascination with experiences, is that of the immersive possibilities. There is something about creating a communication piece that must be engaged in and made manifest through that engagement that is so full of potential. Say I want to communicate 'collaboration' — what better way than to get my audience to collaborate— to understand not only conceptually, but also physically. this is compelling.

I've looked deeply into the Futurists and Dadaists, into performances from the Surrealists and Constructivists to Black Mountain College and the Fluxus period, and they tap into this thing I'm drawn to, but I've found that i need to look further afield. And so Masturis and rituals, ceremonies and pilgrimages have been pulling my attention and absorbing my research time.

The concept of pulling a person totally into an experience to communicate to them is ancient. It's part of the core of Borobudur, of Angkor Wat and of mountains like Taishan. We must engage in the space to read and glean the meaning. the meaning is there, but not accessible from a distance. it requires pedestrian focus, you must walk to know. I love that concept.

Taiwan Ghost Festival — OISTAT 2008

2009-01-14T06:27:00.000-08:00

OISTAT post workshop poster | that's me in black

Since coming to Singapore, and being back in the diverse and rich festival worlds of south east Asia and greater Asia, I've been on site researching and recording as much as possible. From August 13th (arrival) to 24th (departure), 2008. I was invited to join From Ritual to Theatre – Asian Ritual Festival Workshop, organized by OISTAT Secretariat and supported by Taiwanese Governments. The workshop took place during the Ghost Festival in Taiwan.The opportunity to work with theater people was a first, and housed within this the focus on ritual was extraordinarily ideal.

As one of the international artists, I was asked to present my work in order to be invited, and again, on the second day of the workshop, to the participants. The response to my own work was positive (being a visual communication I was nervous that my work would be too left field). But the live art and the intersection of performance with graphic design history, and my body of work in staging and documenting live art experiences, somehow connected well with the participants who were enthusiastic to collaborate They compared my most recent grant work at Taishan to Christo.

The workshop consisted of a two-day trip to visit the Ghost Festival ceremony in Keelung to observe the Taoist Shaman’s ritual performance, lantern pole erection, folk art parades and the “ water lantern releasing to the sea”. We also were guided through rituals like the “Grand Putu” as well as the Hakka Holy Boar Competition. In the workshop we were expected to share our observations and inspiration with the Taiwanese performing art professionals (directors, designers), as well as theatre apprentices/assistants who toured and worked with us. The intention of the workshop was to encourage intercultural exchange and dialogues based on the grass-roots culture and to transform the ritual into theatrical ideas.

Hakka Holy Boar Winner 2008
a boar, fed like a king for a year, then stretched out and painted and displayed for competition

It was expected that after breaking into smaller groups during the workshop, that we work intensively together in the conceptualization, making and staging of our projects on the final day of the workshop in the form of installations, story boards for a potential production, video/photo documentary and its transformation, design as performance, etc. My group consisted of one of the leading choreographers of Taiwan, Hsiao-Mei Ho—leader of Taipei Crossover Dance Company and Associate Professor of Dance Department of TNUA—and her four dance students, as well as Francis Shen—one of the top costume designers and also one of his students. We worked intensively and were able to bring our areas of interest together into a performance on the last night.

The mandala floor

My contribution was in the concept, the space, the stage design and the experience of the audience. I also staged a ritual using the paper money for the ghosts, which ended up becoming the floor for the audience. For an entire day i layout the papers one by one, into a perfect mandala like shape. It was exhausting. but somehow the absurdity of what i was doing (i had no idea what i was doing until i began and then i was too stubborn to quit) attracted the attention of nearly everyone, and the combination of these papers, the possible presence of ghosts, and my obstinacy in finishing it completely made the entire process elevate on it's own.

There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
— Napoleon Bonaparte

Somehow within this collaboration i was able to stay true to my own research and interests while working with 2 strong directors. It was incredibly satisfying.

The response to our collaboration was very positive and we are in the process of exploring how to make this into an actual performance in both Taiwan and Singapore. Hsiao-Mei Ho is looking into funding in Taiwan. Further development of works from the workshop has been strongly encouraged and OISTAT is hoping the works may be presented in future OISTAT events such as Scenofest, World Stage Design, or even end up as production in Taiwan.

making it personal—an article on women design educators

2009-01-11T00:31:00.001-08:00

Often in the (recent) past design world we were asked to erase ourselves, to try to step away from the personal and get into an almost mythical (nonexistent) objective mind frame. I come from a school of thought that actually encourages the personal as a way to tap into the meta. An inward looking practice that is not self absorbed but rather reflective and intimate. It's a direct lineage from educators like my main thesis advisor, the head of the graduate program at RISD, Bethany Johns, as well as from other leading women practitioners including Lucy Hitchcock and Jessica Helfand. I was also fortunate to work under LCC's Sian Cook and Teal Triggs, their head of research.

It could also be age, a San Francisco 70' upbringing, gender, education (Bryn Mawr is proudly feminist)—but i prefer to think of it as the new wave. The genre of the subjective. How can we speak for others if we have not developed our own position? How can we communicate effectively without bringing in our self? Besides, there is no objectivity. The world is a matter of perspective.

One of the most powerful and controversial effects that woman educators have had on the discipline overall is the emergence of a type of work that is more personal. This is directly derived from elements of the feminist movement when many educators gravitated toward subjective interpretation, encouraging diversity and multiple perspectives. While definitely not an inherent “feminine” approach, there’s a method embraced by many of these women that focuses on the development of the individual, and ensuring that students can append meaning to their work

“I always try to approach each student as an individual and help each cultivate his or her unique capabilities as they acquire fundamental knowledge and skill sets,” says McCoy. “I also encourage each student to develop his or her own voice—to learn to articulate their thoughts about design and to participate in discussions equally with others.”

“To encourage students to make work that means something requires more than amplifying opportunities for self-expression, and this is what I personally feel needs to happen—and is happening—at many schools,” says Helfand, a Yale professor. “Students need a skill fluency as much as they do many other things.
for the full article

kaleidoscope

2009-01-07T18:06:00.000-08:00

One of the highlights of teaching here at ADM is the designed experiences course I get to lead every spring semester. It's a highly collaborative, experimental course that looks into the history of gatherings and allows for the students to come up with solutions that are performance based communication pieces. It's been a laboratory of experiments. We've scored, staged, documented and translated original works as well as actual festivals, like Chinese New Years.

Last year, as a warm up exercise I got the class to engage in an experience of my own. It was called kaleidoscope. I'd been teaching Graphic Design 4 at the same time, and was heavily into systems and time, and kept going back to the circle and it's metaphysical poetic nature (as a group experience). This led to a short study. The book became a study of beauty and form heavily leaning on Plato.

The great thing, is the video we worked on was invited and accepted into the MilkBar Festival.

Angkor Wat

2009-01-07T05:38:00.001-08:00

“Mountains are cosmological symbols of the divine—human meeting, as well as the point of creation—creation of community as well as cosmos. Depending upon the era, culture, and text, the cosmological emphasis on the mountain might be one or more of the following: the assembly place of the gods, the connection between heaven and earth, the center/navel of the earth (and thus the locus of creation), the locus of revelation.” — Donaldson, Terence L., Jesus on the Mountain. A Study in Matthean Theology.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
— Chinese proverb.

From Borobudur, my research lead me to consider other locations dedicated to conveying religion through architecture and the pedestrian experience. Spaces that are associated with mountains, that are mystical, that have the power to draw crowds, and which were made for spiritual purposes and for the benefit of the pilgrim and to help in enlightenment.

“The mountains ... are a passive mystery, the oldest of all. Theirs is the one simple mystery of creation from nothing, of matter itself, anything at all, the given. Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home.” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Angkor Wat was next. Obviously the mountain is embedded deeply in the architectural iconography. Mount Meru is conjured up as is the procession of a mandala, from the profane into the sacred. The fusion in south east Asia of animism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, into these shrines, temples, mandalas, and processions weaves history and culture and creativity together into living rites of passage that keep alive older pilgrimages and history and refer back in time to other spaces and countries. knowledge is stored in these paths, but reading is also untangling and sifting. the threads are so intertwined and complex.

Following on the footpath of research from Thailand’s Wat Tham Sua (Tiger Cave Temple) and the work into the Nalanda trail— the spread of Buddhism into south east Asia— while focusing on the walking experience as physical communication, and while continuing the mountain research from Sisyphus to Borobudur and the mythical Mount Meru, I spent a week in February 2008 GPS mapping and absorbing Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat, located at 13Δ˚24’45”N, 103˚52’0”E is a unique combination of the temple mountain, the standard design for the empire’s state temples, the later plan of concentric galleries, and influences from Orissa and the Chola of Tamil Nadu, India. The temple is a representation of Mount Meru, the home of the gods: the central quincunx of towers symbolises the five peaks of the mountain, and the walls and moat the surrounding mountain ranges and ocean.

The spaces however do not end as metaphors that are simply physical duplicates of a physical or mythical mountains, they also become representations of centers of the universe:

omphalos:
in Greek and Roman religion, navel-shaped stone used in the rites of many cults. The most famous omphalos was at Delphi; it was supposed to mark the center of the earth.” — The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.

“Along the southeast Asian peninsula, mountains were regarded as sacred territories as early as three thousand years ago. As sources of water, and therefore of agricultural fertility, mountains were the subject of reverence and ritual celebration. But as burial sites, these same mountains inspired ore profound questions of death, impermanence and the fragile balance between humankind and the forces which could destroy fields, crops, families, and on occasions, entire generations living in villages which were swept away by floods and landslides falling from neighboring slopes. Given this reverence in which mountains were perceived, ancient peninsula civilizations such as the Cambodian Funan people of the second century AD, enthroned their sovereigns and emperors on these mountain summits. Indeed, the word Funan can be translated as either Sacred Mountain, or King of the Mountains. Following the downfall of the Funan, the Khmer dynasty began to spread it’s civilization from Cambodia in the ninth century to govern most of southeast Asia over the next six hundred years.” — Adrian Cooper, Sacred Mountains, Ancient Wisdom and Modern Meaning.
The Khmer people continued to draw inspiration form local mountains, in fact building their cities and temples either with respect to the views, in alignment with, or in reference to local and mythological mountains. They too, called themselves kings of the mountain. By becoming the mountain, these rulers direct the gaze of their people. They are the center. Their capital and magnet. The man-made peaks beckon the faithful and center the pilgrims both to look inward — at their rulers and their monuments and their direct descent from mountains, and outward from a common home from where they go and return on longer pilgrimages. These metaphorical mountains, the palaces and temples of the mountain rulers of Angkor Wat, Burma, Java, and Bali give their visitors religion, history, culture, and guides towards spiritual attainment towards a larger pilgrimage of the life well lived as a Hindu or Buddhist. So the monuments are mountains of knowledge as well as physical metaphors for the mountains they represent. This is a universal metaphor:

“It was common in the ancient Near East to construct temples and altars with mountain symbolism.The religious center is thus accorded cosmic significance. That is, the mountain-temple or temple-mount—especially in the political capital—manifests a divine sanction, a sacral quality, and thus a relationship to the cosmos which other places do not possess. — Clements, R. E., God and Temple.

“Besides natural mountains, the ziggurats of Mesopotamia and the Canaanite temples were constructed as sacred meeting places between humans and the gods, as gateways to the heavens, as divine thrones, and likely also as altars: that is, locations for the enactment of ritual at or upon the axis mundi.Egyptian pyramids also bore this cosmological significance. In the inscriptions found in the pyramids of Mer-ne-Re and Nefer-ka-Re (both Sixth Dynasty, 24th century BCE), an analogy is made between the primeval hill that emerged from the watery chaos at creation and the building of the pyramid. — Wilson, John A., 1969 “Egyptian Myths, Tales, and Mortuary Texts.”

So in the manmade mountains we receive a sense of identity as far as group. we belong to a larger unit. and yet beyond the immediate connections to our community we also are guided through visual narratives along the designed pedestrian experience that allude to grander pilgrimages, meta journeys of life. Angkor Wat alludes to the Ramayana and Mount Meru and Mt Kailash. Borobodur to Mt Sumeru and the the way towards the life of a Buddha. These created axis mundi, mountain centers are centers and also guides. The pilgrim can then absorb the lessons and head north.

“And often, guarding and overlooking the man-made omphalos, generally to the north of it in the direction from which disruptive forces are traditionally supposed to emanate, is found a lone, conical mountain. It’s mythological prototype is the mountain at the centre of the world. The chief god of the pantheon resides there, presiding awesomely over the rituals in his sanctuary below. The traditional sacred landscape,
— John Mitchell, At the Center of the World, Polar Symbolism Discovered in Celtic, Norse and other Ritualized Landscapes

So when we seek a mountain, or enlightenment, as the Chinese like equate the two, we seek our own center. The pilgrim goes physically on a quest to a location that represents the center of a universe, the universe as a whole, but also the center of the pilgrim. By moving outward we somehow move inward. By seeking we see ourselves from a new perspective, and in many of the instances that have been examined, that persepctive is one of centering the pilgrim at the heart of the mandala. The axis mundi within.

There’s no Discouragement,
Shall make him once relent,
His first avow’d intent,
To be a Pilgrim.
— John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Borobudur

2009-01-06T23:01:00.000-08:00

The mountain stood there to be pointed at.
— Robert Frost.

“I keep a mountain anchored off eastward a little way, which I ascend in my dreams both awake and asleep. Its broad base spreads over a village or two, which does not know it; neither does it know them, nor do I when I ascend it. I can see its general outline as plainly now in my mind as that of Wachusett. I do not invent in the least, but state exactly what I see. I find that I go up it when I am light-footed and earnest. It ever smokes like an altar with its sacrifice. I am not aware that a single villager frequents it or knows of it. I keep this mountain to ride instead of a horse.” — Henry David Thoreau.

The mountain as a spiritual pilgrim destination is not specific to any one region; it is an archetypal metaphor that transcends location and time. Think of Olympus, Ararat, Zion, Sinai, the Temple at Delphi, the Tower of Babylon, Ziggurats, Pyramids, Manchu Picchu, Temples on Mounts, Mounds, Tells and so many other upward looking locations where we are inspired to consider if not engage in intense communication . We have real mountains where real gods reside, and man-made mountains where we see the achievements of civilizations. This holds true for the Americas, Africa, Australia and of course Asia. But it is the mountain in Asia that inspires my imagination. It’s the small temples perched on hilltops, the monuments of Borobodur and Angkor Wat, and the gaze of the regions religions up to Mount Meru, Mount Sumeru, and Mount Kailas. The first step into climbing up in a pilgrimage and physically experiencing the bliss of the summit made me hungry to see mountains in a range of locations and range of manifestations.

The next location was Borobudur. A man made mountain metaphor in the shape of a mandala, where the circumnambulation and the visual richness of the striated friezes leads the pilgrim through a symbolic 10 cycle walk mirroring the 10 steps of enlightenment towards Buddhism.

pil·grim·age: 1. A journey to a sacred place or shrine.
2. A long journey or search, especially one of exalted purpose or moral significance.
— The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000,

The sophistication of the experience is made clearer by researching the nature of Buddhism. By walking Borobudur you live out by physically enacting spiritual concepts which are extraordinarily complex and conceptual. The experience of Borobudur is one of the most advanced spaces made for pilgrims to read as they walk. It’s impossible to put into words how much information is packaged into the mountain monument.

Being on site for three days, in the only hotel within the complex walls, meant we had full access to the monument whenever we became hungry for further reading. it is a tranquil and harmonious space. It takes time and transcends time. It is a bold statement and unlike anything in the region.

Mount Meru: a sacred mountain in Hindu, Buddhist cosmology, and Jain mythology considered to be the center of all physical and spiritual universes. It is believed to be the abode of Brahma and other deities. The mountain is said to be 80,000 yojanas or leagues (450,000 km) high and located in Jambudvipa, one of the continents on earth in Hindu mythology. Many Hindu temples, including Angkor Wat, the principal temple of Angkor in Cambodia, have been built as symbolic representations of the mountain.” — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Meru.

Mount Sumeru: the polar center of a mandala-like complex of seas and mountains. The square base of Sumeru is surrounded by a square moat-like ocean, which is in turn surrounded by a ring (or rather square) wall of mountains, which is in turn surrounded by a sea, each diminishing in width and height from the one closer to Sumeru. There are seven seas and seven surrounding mountain-walls, until one comes to the vast outer sea which forms most of the surface of the world, in which the known continents are merely small islands. The known world, which is located on the continent of Jambudvipa, is directly south of Sumeru.” —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumeru.

“Some beliefs, local to that area of the Himalayas, associate mythical Mount Meru with a mountain called Kailas near the Lake Manasarovar in Tibet, which can be traced to some later layers of Mahabharata.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Meru.

Mount Kailash:“The most sacred mountain in the world. Uncannily symmetrical, this remote and remarkable peak located in the forbidden land of Tibet might have built by superhuman hands. It stands out of a primordial landscape: a horizontally stratified plinth thousands of feet high, crowned with a perfect cone of pure snow. To Hindus it is the Throne of the great god Shiva. Buddhists associate it with Chakrasamvara, a powerful Tantric deity, and with the sage Milarepa, who fought a magic duel there with a shaman priest in ancient times. To the Bonpo, the followers of the indigenous religion of Tibet, it is the giant crystal on which their founder, Thonpa Shenrab, descended to earth from the skies.” — John Snelling, The Sacred Mountain (Travellers and Pilgrims at Mount Kailas in Western Tibet and The Great Universal Symbol of the Sacred Mountain).

With the understanding of or at the very least the point of reference of these mountains in mind, every mandala, every stupa, every 5 peaked architectural wonder suddenly becomes a reference or a metaphor for at least one of these mountains, pivotal to the regions grand religions.

“The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript.” — Aleister Crowley.

Wat Tham Suea or 1300 steps

2009-01-06T22:27:00.000-08:00

When I think of mountains I think of quests, of looking and climbing, of pushing and expanding horizons. The mountain started of in the metaphorical zone, getting to Singapore was a feat. Finding what I wanted — a push, getting what I needed as far as a place where I could open my horizons and expand my daughter’s views — much of the goal.

It felt like a mountain. In many ways I dealt with the task by climbing as many hills as possible while I waited in San Francisco. The walks up, laptop over shoulder and emails in limbo, breath and lungs expanding and steepness to physically confront helped in the waiting.

When we finally arrived, the hilltop grass of ADM immediately called for a Sisyphus experience. In the research around Sysiphus, Camus and the solar theory led me out of the repetitive negativity that is so often associated with his myth, and my perspective broadened and narrowed. I needed to take a first step, climb something that could expand my views further. Map it. Experience it.

The opportunity came in a visit to Krabi where a 1300 step climb to a temple of a Buddhapada — a footprint of Buddha — made sense to me as an ideal first step. With my GPS and camera and openness to the space, I climbed. What could have been an hour trek and a simple task of documentation was instead what I had hoped for. Suddenly the views opened up
and my need to research and figure out the nature of the journey inspired me.

This space, a hilltop set aside for anyone to walk up, paved with steps, jeweled with stupas, through a jungle up a steep incline, created to be experienced is a mirror on a micro level of temples and monuments, mountains and hilltops throughout Asia. The mountain as religion. The place where earth and sky meet or where earth reaches up to sky, where the two realms seem to touch has been a place of tension and speculation, legend and myth, hermit and pilgrim all around the world.

To understand the space, the pilgrim must climb. In the act of climbing, you become one of many who have climbed before, of who built, of who will climb in the future. the path becomes a thread like a timeline that you enter into and become part of. You engage in unity. You share identity. You become part of a path. The path is a metaphor to enlightenment. The climb a rite of passage, the individual part of the larger flow of humanity.

GPS map of the climb

5 km from Krabi Town is a small temple, one of the south’s most famous meditation centres, built inside a long shallow limestone cave, surrounded by natural forest. The temple has two staircases winding up a limestone cliff — 1300 steps up to a footprint of Buddha. I figured this was a good place to start my research – a first step into mapping with the gps and a first step into the experience of climbing towards something – and finally a first step into experiencing a local procession space.

Wat Tham Sua (Tiger Cave Temple) named after a rock formation resembling a tiger paw, is a forest temple in southern Thailand. The main hall inside the cave, was built for practicing meditation, while a circular path leading up from the temple, is a 300-meter high staircase of 1300 steps leading to a footprint of Buddha, a Buddhapada. Statues of Buddhas accompanying the footprint are visible from the surrounding valley. This temple complex not is a religious site for the 260 monks and nuns who live and worship there, and also an archaeological area of interest with natural caves in an overgrown jungle valley where stone tools, pottery remains and the mold for making Buddha footprints have been excavated.

The first steps

The monks and nuns follow Phra Archan Jumnean Seelasettho, who teaches the meditation technique Vipassana (insight meditation). A synonym for Vipassana is paccakkha, meaning “before the eyes,” which refers to direct experiential perception. Exactly the kind of experience trekking up a mountain of stairs might be seen as being. This type of direct perception, is directly opposed to knowledge derived from reasoning or argument.

In the spirit of Vipassana, and as an experience designer, the challenge of trekking up 1300 steps to have Buddha’s footprint before my eyes, brought me to Krabi. In order to capture and document the experience, I brought a Garmin GPS Map 60CSX w/ sensors & maps,
a still camera, and a video camera. The 60CSX can record altitude shifts, as well as global positioning. How effective will the GPS be, when used in conjunction with photography and video, in capturing the walk up the mountain?

The marks of the trek (every 13 step was marked on the GPS)

Being immersed in an experience while mapping and documenting gave me multiple levels of experiental data to examine. From the data collected I had a large amount of raw material to work with to create a translation of the experience. This project was a first step towards a series of projects. With the possibilities determined of the technology, I have gone on to map Angkor Wat, Borobodur, and other monuments created to be walked, as well as local festivals and processions, pilgrimages and historical routes.

The summit and the Buddhapada

On interviewing and gathering

2009-01-06T20:34:00.000-08:00

Taishanred | Taishan Mountain, China 7.2008

in this flux
are assembledges, or shapes,
or patterns of relative intensity
and fixity, and certainty. paradoxically solid
and fluid,the images are moments in the
flow of human experience.
— charles madge p48

Part of the process — of researching around a topic — requires interviews and contact. To understand points of view, to map subjectivity, to make physical contact with people on the same path or to gain information from people encountered. The group expands my understanding and takes my research from the self to the group experience.

The more people gathering firewood, the higher the flames will grow.
— Chinese proverb.

It's not with ease that these interviews are done. There is discomfort at times, but pushing beyond stage fright and shyness is imperative to gather facts and stories. The group wisdom and the individual stories are essential. It is also a method to humanize what could be distant or dry. By reaching out and engaging with strangers i force myself out of my shell, my self — and relate. When it's in the name of work, i manage. Sometimes it's excruciating. to go up and smile and ask for help. It's help really that I'm seeking. Help in the sense of adding to my research. making my project have content, or in the case of the San Francisco Independent Film Festival, of coming up with the 'independent' typeface

But pushing out is the point. This work in general is about getting off the computer away from routine and engaging in contact. Immersing myself is as important as creating immersive spaces for others,

from the risd student gallery

setting bodies in motion

2009-01-06T18:03:00.000-08:00

Convey —London College of Communication | 2006
an experience in making meaning

So the world that I've been looking into is the immersive experience — moments of collective group joy — and from the research I've tried to glean what ingredients can be deconstructed out and used for my own live art pieces. These moments have been wide ranging, from festivals to processions, from happenings to pilgrimages. I like groups of people together doing the same thing in their own way. I like setting bodies in motion. I like to be a part of the group, and to watch the group.

I say that the stage is a concrete physical place which asks to be filled,
and to be given its own concrete language to speak. I say that this
language intended for the senses and independent of speech, has
first to satisfy the senses, that there is a poetry of the senses as there
is a poetry of language, and that this concrete physical language to
which I refer is truly theatrical only to the degree that the thoughts is
expresses are beyond the reach of the spoken language.
— Artaud (1958) The Theater and its Double. p37

Naturally as a graphic designer I've had to prove that this work is within the realm of communication design. I think I have. I'll get back to that in another chapter. But for now I'd like to dwell on the idea of people as paintbrushes. On the concept of using bodies to express concepts within a time based period.

Some people use paint, I use the human body in motion to express my ideas. This started in Tokyo. as a designer promoting and branding, documenting and archiving events. For fun I threw costume parties (I'd been hosting gatherings since childhood). As the designer of an event, I controlled all aspects of the planning. The time, the location, the duration, the sequencing. I choreographed without having the performers available for rehearsal. I had to imagine and sculpt in advance — the boundaries and limits, the structure so to speak, of a thing that didn't yet exist. And the whole thing would then come to life for a brief and magical period, and then be done. This is the nature of the event. it is so very different form a performance. There are no dress rehearsals. There is no 'out there' audience (i take that back totally, the out there audience views through mediated translations. TV, web, flikr, etc). but in the moment. it is LIVE. once off. not repeatable.

I like this alchemy. Of playing with time. Of giving a space. Of structuring from nothing a group shared something. The more structured the planning, the more playful the actual experience. The limitations of location, time (sometimes of noise and number of people etc) helped to focus the events and allow for spontaneity and improvisation. The less I planned, the more open the invisible structure...often the more chaotic and less intense the experience, some spillage of energy and thinness of immersion occurred.

A theatrical piece ought to be written, presented, costumed, furnished with musical accompaniment, played and danced, by a single individual. This universal athlete does not exist. It is therefore important to replace the individual by what resembles an individual most: a friendly group.
— Cocteau, Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel

These early experiments were mainly costume parties. A Chinese opera party, an Oscar Wilde Party. 50 people. set menu, three stages. we met for champagne, were paraded through the space, led to our long tables (arranged seating preplanned by me), ate, then went up to the rooftop for dancing and music.

The communion and communication and play and theatricality of the nights were etched in memories. For not only me, but for all the participants. I like this. Setting up shared moments that are tattooed in the memory. I like stopping time. I like the magic of being silly with wonderful people. It is this interest that fueled the MFA and my current research.

For the last 6 years I've been focused in this world (5 more if you count art directing for TAC and ACCJ's events). Much more conceptually than in the past. At this point I've staged over a dozen experiences and exhibited or been asked to present in the states, uk, taiwan, tokyo and sinagpore.

To link the theater to the expressive possibilities of forms, to everything in the domain of gestures, noises, colors, movements, etc., is to restore it to its original direction, to reinstate it in its religious and metaphysical aspect, is to reconcile it with the universe.
— Artaud

What I've gleaned from the research and studies is that there are ingredients that can be used to foster the potential for synergy. Often color, movement, masks, time and place have been used. I've focused on color. By this I mean the uniforms of the participants. We share the same color. If the event is red, we all wear red. If the event is based on an object and the group is enormous, we wear black. Sameness immediately sets the groupness.

white event | risd | 2004

From there I use action. More specifically, an activity. The group is tasked with either doing something, with acting out something, or with being something. This action is expressed by the group. The individuals come up with the solution. It is spontaneous and it ends. There is a limit. In time, in stage area, in a sense of completion.

On documenting

2009-01-06T05:19:00.000-08:00

My eyes, however strong or weak they may be, can see only a certain distance, and it is within the space encompassed by this distance that I live and move, the line of this horizon constitutes my immediate fate, in great things and in small, from which I can not escape...Now it is by these horizons, within which each of us encloses his senses a if behind prison walls, that we measure the world, we say that this is near and that is far, this is big and that is small, this is hard and that is soft: this measuring we call sensation— and it is all of it an error!
— Gary Shapiro
Archaeologies of Vision: Foucault and Nietzsche on Seeing and Saying, 2003

Convey —London College of Communication | 2006
an experience in making meaning

By looking down I have a god’s eye view. capturing all that is within the frame. limited only by the rigidity of my self imposed rules. the camera locks my wandering eye. and so I see details I would have missed. a shadow cuts across the frame and has a narrative unintended, yet so much more real than what I planned. I have my lens that captures what my experience misses. is this the role of technology? of the documentarian? to capture the otherwise unnoticed? to trap the invisible? to remind us of what we miss? to rewrite our past? to alter our memories? Inspect my events through my lens please. see though my edits. I cut and trim and subjectify with a desire to share. is this any different from truth?

Convey —London College of Communication | 2006
an experience in making meaning

There are so many issues to capturing. Immediately subjectivity enters the process. It's impossible to be objective with a camera. But then it's impossible to cast an objective gaze. I see where my eye travels. there is much that is leftout, unnoticed. The role of the camera then, in this work is to act as an Argus, to have eyes watching from as many angles as possible. To be multifaceted and wide ranging. to see what I can not see. This manifests itself in my process. My collaborators use cameras, i use a camera, there are more static cameras set up from other angles, and always the overhead is used.

What is presented as evidence remains evidence, whether the observing eye qualifies itself as being subjective or objective. At the core of such a rationale dwells, untouched, the Cartesian division between subject and object which perpetuates a dualistic inside-versus outside, mind-against-matter view of the world. The emphasis is again laid on the power of film to capture reality “out there” for us “in here.” The moment of appropriation and of consumption is either simply ignored or carefully rendered invisible according to the rules of good and bad documentary.
— Trinh T. Minh-ha & Renov
Theorizing Documentary p.95

Stretch — University of Brighton | 2006
an experience in translating

astrid almkhlaafyi
Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long.
It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.
— Salman Rushdie
Herbert Reade Memorial Lecture (February 6, 1990)
“Is Nothing Sacred?”
On a practical level — a preservation note — the saving from oblivion of these moments is also what motivates much of this research. The ephemeral nature of performance is not an excuse to avoid attempting some kind of documentation. There is far too much of value in these moments — culture, history, creativity, play — to be lost. It is imperative that creatives task themselves with preserving not only tradition but also contemporary live experiments.

Lost Histories
Tate Collection 14 November 2003 - 25 January 2004
It was only with the invention of photography that performance began to make its mark in the history of art. Prior to this there was no instant means of making a visual record of live events. As film and video equipment became more readily available, artists with access to this technology experimented not only with recording live action but also with the moving images they created.

Many well-known figures in the history of art have been involved in performance during the course of their careers, from scandalous dance performances of the late 1800s to the happenings and actions of the New York loft scene in the 1960s. However the focus on the art object has meant that the ephemeral elements of these artistic practices are often lost or overlooked.

And this is the final meaning of work: the extension of human consciousness.
The lesser meaning of work is the achieving of self-preservation.
D.H. Lawrence
Study of Thomas Hardy
Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence, p. 430, (1936)

oscar wilde party — tokyo 2000

2009-01-06T04:49:00.000-08:00

A party, like a meeting for worship, is not operating on the level of reason.... It transcends logic. It slides willingly and consciously (if it is a good party) toward a celebration of the fact of being alive. The celebrants at a party share bread and wine and reach toward a communal touching, for a moment, of an existence that is not limited by the individual ego. The sound of a party is a sound of amity, of human beings who have become for a moment, and for nonaggressive reasons, something outside themselves.
— Jessamyn West, To See the Dream, part 1 (1956).

group synergy

2009-01-06T03:01:00.000-08:00

There is a sense of synergy that is hard to not experience in group moments. It is an aspect of our humanness to meld together at times into collective units. This can be positive or negative or neutral. It has been harnessed by every tier or ripple of our existence. From the family to the neighborhood, from the school to the company on up to city, state and race or nation. It is used with very designed intent within religion and the military and can be reached through parades, rallies, rites of passage, holidays, festivals, sports and more.

It is always possible
to bind together
a considerable number
of people in love,
so long as
there are other people
left over to receive
the manifestations
of their aggression.

— Sigmund Freud
Civilization and Its Discontents, (1930)

There is a sense of belonging that occurs. The ego somehow losses it's sense of other and we are immersed into a bigger sense of belonging. politically this can be tricky territory to navigate. It does not equate to socialism or communism, though certainly all politics have recognized the importance of mobilizing the masses. How do we mobilize — media & word of mouth — it's a form of uniting the many individuals. We see it every election, the fervor of the followers, the volume of many into one.

A person
of definite character and purpose
who comprehends our way of thought
is sure to exert power over us.
She cannot altogether be resisted; because, if she understands us,
she can make us understand her,
through the word,
the look,
or other symbol,
which both of us connect
with the common sentiment or idea;
and thus by communicating
an impulse
she can move the will.
— Charles Horton Cooley
Human Nature and the Social Order, (1902)

This is seen in cults, in religions, in lifestyle advocates. It can be seen in the commercial world through branding and brand followers. One one hand we desire to belong. we look for tribes. It's how facebook and flickr are able to connect. we want and need to find our group/s. Where once upon a time it was our village or agora where we could see our place and through the town or city we'd unite for our shared gods and calendar celebrations, now in our fragmented and diversified lives we become hunters for the tribe. seeking over the entire world, people of kindred spirits. This is the beauty of the internet, for me. but also a sign of how far we have moved from tradition. I have no traditons from my great grandparents other than baking. no rituals or festivals or celebrations that have been passed down intact.

And that brings me to here, now. South East Asia. Sinagpore. On one hand we are surrounded by immersive experiences that carry culture and history and identity, and on the other this city state is on an identity seeking mission. Singapore is a country of transplants. it is a place of opportunity and trade. Peoples from all over have come and set up and built from kampongs this massive power. It — like the states — looks forward. All around us we have much older societies and cultures where continuity and identity are strong and rather extraordinary. Here, however, we are in a defining mode. What and who are we? I'm including myself. I'd like to stay here.

It's become the way of the world for many now. transplanted peoples, recreating and seeking villages. It's this lifestyle. So many of us are nomadic. We move with our homes on our backs. turtles looking for opportunities, bringing wealth of ideas and personalities, seeking shelter. This global nomad. And there is something that lives in that — the sense of belonging, the village is movable, like the movable feast. transplanting here and there...connected however, to all irregardless of location. I have here, now — and yet still seem and feel connected to all those from there / elsewhere. thanks to facebook the internet etc. Yet it's the physical here - the shoulder to shoulder that somehow can stop time. momentarily.

There is only one city on the planet, the planet itself
— Marshall McLuhan

The Banquet

2009-01-06T00:05:00.000-08:00

The Banquet 2004 — risd
Shown at the Last Supper Film Festival | New York | 2007

We know that the earliest art works originated in the service of the ritual — first the magical. then the religious kind. It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function. In other words, the unique value of the authentic work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value.
— Walter Benjamin

Interpretation: The Banquet is a narrative exploring the convergence of identity and chance with text from Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes this World. It was also an opportunity to commune with absurdity in the form of the last supper.

ittekimasu : and ode to Sisyphus

2009-01-05T21:15:00.000-08:00

Ittekimasu | ADM Singapore 8.2007

Upon arriving in Singapore the first project we staged summed up the journey to this place. The building of ADM was an ideal setting for me & kaatje to cathartically push a pretend boulder up and summon up the myth of Sisyphus. So we sweated and pushed and rolled and chased and did it over and over, so the name became Ittekimasu, which means 'i'll be back', in Japanese. It was good. Healing. We did it as a threesome, the little family in black in the new and intense crazy tropical heat.

Somehow the mountain settled on me then and for the last year and a half I've been dragging my research and family up hills and mountains and pushing upwards. It's been rather extraordinary where the research has led—from the ADM rooftop to Wat Tham Suea, to Borobudur and Angkor Wat. More recently we climbed TaiShan and are headed to HuaShan this summer. I'll go much further in detail in the mountain chapter. but what i wanted to mention is that it started here with Sisyphus.

Kal edited the footage and we were invited and submitted to the MilkBar International Film Festival where it was well received and has been listed as an avant garde film.

I made a book out of it, which I've yet to exhibit. I'm thinking of a whole room dedicated to the video posters and book...a yellow green and black event.

Ittekimasu | ADM Singapore 8.2007

what surprised me in the story of Sisyphus is the reason he was punished. It was often said that Zeus took the form of an eagle and abducted Aegina, taking her to an island near Attica, then called Oenone; henceforth known by her name. Aegina’s father Asopus chased after them; his search took him to Corinth, where Sisyphus was king. Sisyphus, having chanced to see a great bird bearing a maiden away to a nearby island, informed Asopus. Though Asopus pursued them, Zeus threw down his thunderbolts, sending Asopus back to his own waters. Aegina eventually gave birth to her son Aeacus, who became king of the island. For his troubles, Sisyphus was punished in Hades by having to forever roll a stone uphill which continually rolled back down before he could complete his task.

What is fascinating is this: Historically the island Egina rivaled Athens. It was the sea trade power spot (like Singapore). Athens did not like the competition. Aegina was the daughter of the sea god Asopus. Was she the primary goddess or original goddess of the island? Is she a hint of an earlier culture that was raped and shaped by the dominant colonist (symbolized by Zeus) mainland power?

She was pursued by eagle Zeus. the shape shifting patriarchal seed planter and rapist and her offspring, Aeacus became the ‘founder’ or first king. The tradition of powerful women baring god seed and birthing leaders is not unique to the ancient greco-roman culture. we live under this tradition through Mary & Jesus today. So now a man is in charge, a man half Zeus. half Greek. but not all is well. Hera (good cop/bad cop marriage) is punitive. I guess I become fascinated in the rivalry of Athens and wonder if myths are not propaganda and historical. because it is stated that later Athens came and squashed the island, as it is also later that Hera comes and kills all of it’s inhabitants. they are then replaced by clone like, drone like worker ant robotic like workers. what a freaky story. what exactly was the role of Sisyphus, the woman Aegina, Athens, Zeus and the geographic rivalry? i wonder.

words to set the tone

2009-01-05T21:09:00.000-08:00

CEREMONY:
1. A formal act or set of acts performed as prescribed by ritual or custom: a wedding ceremony; the Japanese tea ceremony.
2. A conventional social gesture or act of courtesy: the ceremony of shaking hands when introduced.
3. A formal act without intrinsic purpose; an empty form: ignored the ceremony of asking for comments from other committee members.
4. Strict observance of formalities or etiquette: The head of state was welcomed with full ceremony.
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English ceremonie, from Latin caerimnia, religious rite.

CUSTOM:
1. A practice followed by people of a particular group or region.
2. A habitual practice of a person: my custom of reading a little before sleep. See synonyms at habit.
3. Law A common tradition or usage so long established that it has the force or validity of law.
4a. Habitual patronage, as of a store. b. Habitual customers; patrons.
5. customs a. Duties or taxes imposed on imported and, less commonly, exported goods. b. (used with a sing. verb) The governmental agency authorized to collect these duties. c. (used with a sing. verb) The procedure for inspecting goods and baggage entering a country.
ADJECTIVE 1. Made to order. 2. Specializing in the making or selling of made-to-order goods: a custom tailor.
ETYMOLOGY Middle English custume, from Old French costume, from Latin cnsutd, cnsutdin-, from cnsutus, past participle of cnsuscere, to accustom : com-, intensive pref.; see com– + suscere, to become accustomed

FESTIVAL:
1. An occasion for feasting or celebration, especially a day or time of religious significance that recurs at regular intervals.
2. An often regularly recurring program of cultural performances, exhibitions, or competitions: a film festival.
3. Revelry; conviviality.
ADJECTIVE: Of, relating to, or suitable for a feast or festival; festive.
ETYMOLOGY: From Middle English, festive, from Old French, from Medieval Latin fstivlis, from Latin fstvus, from fstus.

RITUAL:
1a. The prescribed order of a religious ceremony. b. The body of ceremonies or rites used in a place of worship.
2a. The prescribed form of conducting a formal secular ceremony: the ritual of an inauguration. b. The body of ceremonies used by a fraternal organization.
3. A book of rites or ceremonial forms.
4. rituals a. A ceremonial act or a series of such acts. b. The performance of such acts.
5a. A detailed method of procedure faithfully or regularly followed: My household chores have become a morning ritual. b. A state or condition characterized by the presence of established procedure or routine: “Prison was a ritual—reenacted daily, year in, year out. Prisoners came and went; generations came and went; and yet the ritual endured” (William H. Hallahan).
ADJECTIVE: 1. Associated with or performed according to a rite or ritual: a priest’s ritual garments; a ritual sacrifice.
2. Being part of an established routine: a ritual glass of milk before bed.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin rtulis, of rites, from rtus, rite. See rite.
OTHER FORMS: ritu·al·ly —ADVERB

SPECTACLE:
1a. Something that can be seen or viewed, especially something of a remarkable or impressive nature. b. A public performance or display, especially one on a large or lavish scale. c. A regrettable public display, as of bad behavior: drank too much and made a spectacle of himself.
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English, from Old French, from Latin spectculum, from spectre, to watch, frequentative of specere, to look at.

PROCESSION:
1. The act of moving along or forward; progression.
2. Origination; emanation; rise.
3a. A group of persons, vehicles, or objects moving along in an orderly, formal manner. b. The movement of such a group.
4. An orderly succession: the procession of the seasons.
INTRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: pro·ces·sioned, pro·ces·sion·ing, pro·ces·sions
To form or go in a procession.
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English, from Old French, from Late Latin prcessi, prcessin-, from Latin, an advance, from prcessus, past participle of prcdere, to advance. See proceed.

PARADE:
1a. An organized public procession on a festive or ceremonial occasion. b. The participants in such a procession.
2a. A regular place of assembly for reviews of troops. Also called parade ground. b. A ceremonial review of troops. c. The troops taking part in such a review.
3. A line or extended group of moving persons or things: a parade of strollers on the mall.
4. An extended, usually showy succession: a parade of fads and styles.
5. An ostentatious show; an exhibition: make a parade of one’s talents. See synonyms at display.
6. A public square or promenade.
VERB: Inflected forms: pa·rad·ed, pa·rad·ing, pa·rades
INTRANSITIVE VERB:
1. To take part in a parade; march in a public procession: The circus performers and animals paraded down Main Street.
2. To assemble for a ceremonial military review or other exercise.
3. To stroll in public, especially so as to be seen; promenade.
4. To behave so as to attract attention; show off.
TRANSITIVE VERB:
1. To cause to take part in a parade: paraded the floats past city hall.
2. To assemble (troops) for a ceremonial review.
3. To march or walk through or around: parade the campus.
4. To exhibit ostentatiously; flaunt: paraded their wealth.
ETYMOLOGY:Probably French, action of stopping a horse, from Old Spanish parada, from Vulgar Latin *parta, from feminine past participle of Latin parre, to prepare. See per-1 in Appendix I.
OTHER FORMS: pa·rader —NOUN

SPECTATOR:
An observer of an event.
ETYMOLOGY: Latin specttor, from spectre, to watch. See spectacle.
OTHER FORMS: specta·tori·al (-t-tôr-l, -tôr-) —ADJECTIVE
specta·tor·ship —NOUN

PERFORMANCE:
1. The act of performing or the state of being performed.
2. The act or style of performing a work or role before an audience.
3. The way in which someone or something functions: The pilot rated the airplane’s performance in high winds.
4. A presentation, especially a theatrical one, before an audience.
5. Something performed; an accomplishment.
6. Linguistics One’s actual use of language in actual situations.

CELEBRATE:
Inflected forms: cel·e·brat·ed, cel·e·brat·ing, cel·e·brates
1. To observe (a day or event) with ceremonies of respect, festivity, or rejoicing. See synonyms at observe.
2. To perform (a religious ceremony): celebrate Mass.
3. To extol or praise: a sonnet that celebrates love.
4. To make widely known; display: “a determination on the author’s part to celebrate . . . the offenses of another”
(William H. Pritchard).
INTRANSITIVE VERB:
1. To observe an occasion with appropriate ceremony or festivity.
2. To perform a religious ceremony.
3. To engage in festivities: went out and celebrated after the victory.
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English celebraten, from Latin celebrre, celebrt-, to frequent, celebrate, from celeber, celebr-, frequented, famous.
OTHER FORMS: cele·bration —NOUN
cele·brator —NOUN
cele·bra·tory (sl-br-tôr, -tr, s-lbr-) —ADJECTIVE