Thaipusam

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 festival.

huashan

“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

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

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

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

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.

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:

1. 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.
   
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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

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

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

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

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

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.
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