Marko Bastisto. video and sound
Picture: CHRISTIAN FAUR
Pain is superficial, and therefore fear is.
“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#
astrid almkhlaafy
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
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.So far this has been partially exhibited in Tokyo and most recently in the 2008 Fall International Digital Design Invitation Exhibit, South Korea.
— E.T.A.W. Hoffmann, The Serapion Brethren. B, vol. II, sect. 5 (1892).
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: 
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 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.
isea exhibition — NTU, singapore 2008There 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.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?
Edith Hamilton
Three Greek Plays, introduction (1937)
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
Govin Tan photo: George James ParelLive 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
Sita Jameison photo: George James Parel
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'.
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.
