THE QUIET IN THE LAND: Art, Spirituality, and Everyday Life, Luang Prabang, Lao PDR

2004–2007

LIMITED EDITION PORTFOLIO with

MARINA ABRAMOVIC, JANINE ANTONI, HANS GEORG BERGER, CAROL CASSIDY, CAI GUO-QIANG, ANN HAMILTON, DINH Q. LÊ, JUN NGUYEN-HATSUSHIBA, SHIRIN NESHAT, VONG PHAOPHANIT, ALLAN SEKULA, SHAHZIA SIKANDER, and RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA

The Quiet in the Land project is under the High Patronage of: The Department of Information and Culture, Luang Prabang, Lao PDR

In Collaboration With: Aid to Artisans Media Arts and Design, College of Graduate Study, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand The Quiet in the Land: Art, Spirituality, and Everyday Life, Luang Prabang, Lao PDR One Fifth Avenue, Suite 10A, New York, NY 10003 Tel/fax: 212-505 1353 Email:[email protected]

We are pleased to announce the publication of the limited edition portfolio THE QUIET IN THE LAND: Art, Spirituality, and Everyday Life, Luang Prabang, Lao PDR. The portfolio will be published in October 2006 in conjunction with the third project in The Quiet in the Land series conceived and organized by the contemporary art curator and art historian France Morin. The Quiet in the Land in Luang Prabang is organized in collaboration with the Media Arts and Design, College of Graduate Study, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand from 2004 to 2007.

The portfolio will be published as an edition of fifty, numbered l to 50, plus sixteen hors commerce (HC), numbered I to XVI, for the artists and the authors, and two artists’ proofs. Each portfolio will include twelve photographic diptychs (twenty-four 11 x 14 in. [28 x 35.5 cm] C-print photographs produced specifically for the project by twelve of the participating artists). Each diptych will be signed by the artist. The photographs will be presented in a silk case designed by project artist Carol Cassidy, internationally acclaimed founder of Lao Textiles, Vientiane, Lao PDR. The case’s clasp will be designed by Lorenz Bäumer, famed -based jewelry designer.

The purchase price for each portfolio is US $12,000 with possibility of payment in two installments: June 2005 and January 2006.

The price of the portfolio will be US $15,000 after October 2006. As of May 2005, twenty-six portfolios have been sold.

To reserve a portfolio, please mail the attached reservation form to the address indicated. If you are paying by check, please include your check with the form; if you are paying by bank wire transfer, please follow the instructions on the form. You will receive a letter acknowledging your purchase, which will support our project. Please direct any inquiries to France Morin at [email protected].

We thank you in advance for making this project possible with the purchase of a portfolio. Your generosity is greatly appreciated.

France Morin, Project Director and President The Quiet in the Land Inc. THE QUIET IN THE LAND: Art, Spirituality, and Everyday Life, Luang Prabang, Lao PDR

LIMITED EDITION PORTFOLIO RESERVATION FORM

A limited edition of twelve photographic diptychs (twenty-four 11 x 14 in. [28 x 35.5 cm] C-print photographs) specifically produced for THE QUIET IN THE LAND: Art, Spirituality, and Everyday Life, Luang Prabang, Lao PDR by twelve of the participating artists. Each diptych signed by the artist. Published in an edition of fifty, numbered 1 to 50, plus sixteen hors commerce (HC), numbered I to XVI, for the artists and the authors, and two artists’ proofs. The photographs will be presented in a silk case designed by project artist, Carol Cassidy, internationally acclaimed founder of Lao Textiles, Vientiane, Lao PDR. The case’s clasp will be designed by Lorenz Bäumer, famed Paris-based jewelry designer. The number of each portfolio in the edition will be determined by the order of the receipt of the reservations (the date of receipt will be determined by the postmark date of the reservation). The edition will be available in October 2006 on the occasion of the artists and community members’ reunions in Luang Prabang and in New York.

To reserve a portfolio, please complete the following information and mail this form to: THE QUIET IN THE LAND c/o Michael Barkan, Barkan & Kasen, 60 East, 42nd Street, New York, NY 10165. You will receive a letter acknowledging your purchase. Please direct all inquiries to France Morin at [email protected].

Name ______Address: ______Phone/Fax Number: ______Email: ______

I wish to reserve ______portfolio(s) of the limited edition THE QUIET IN THE LAND: Art, Spirituality, and Everyday Life, Luang Prabang, Lao PDR in the amount of US $12,000 each.

I give permission for the inclusion of my name on the list of subscribers that will be printed in the publication accompanying the project: YES/NO. If YES, I wish my name to appear as follows:

______

Signature: Date: ______

Method of Payment (Please Select One of the Following) 1. Check I have attached to this reservation form a check payable to THE QUIET IN THE LAND INC. in the amount of US$______

2. Bank Wire Transfer To pay by bank wire transfer, please follow these instructions. Please remit payment in US dollars only by wire to JP Morgan Chase Bank, 32 University Place, New York, NY 10003. Account Name: THE QUIET IN THE LAND Account no. 600-84178465, routing number 021- 000021. THE QUIET IN THE LAND Art, Spirituality, and Everyday Life, Luang Prabang, Lao PDR © Conceived and Organized by France Morin, Project Director

Under the High Patronage of: The Department of Information and Culture, Luang Prabang, Lao PDR In collaboration With: Media Arts and Design, College of Graduate Study Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand

THE QUIET IN THE LAND: Art, Spirituality, and Everyday Life, Luang Prabang, Lao PDR is the third project of The Quiet in the Land series inaugurated by the contemporary art curator and art historian France Morin in 1995. It is a community-based art and education project that is taking place from 2004- to 2007 in Luang Prabang, Lao People’s Democratic Republic. For this project, a group of fourteen artists from Southeast Asia and countries outside the region are creating long-term, on-site art projects with communities in Luang Prabang, including the Buddhist sangha (community of monks), students and teachers, artisans, ethnic minorities, and environmental groups. A major publication will document all of the projects. The first phase of The Quiet in the Land in will conclude in October 2006 with two reunions of all the participants. The first reunion and symposium will take place in Luang Prabang; the second one in New York at The Asia Society and Museum.

The artists are working in close collaboration with a group of invited writers, curators, and educators in art, art history, art restoration, art administration, cultural studies, and urban studies, among other fields, through lectures, presentations, and informal meetings. In addition, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia University School of the Arts, New York, and the Université de Vincennes—Saint- Denis, Paris, are organizing study trips to Luang Prabang and to Chiang Mai with students and faculty to work with The Quiet in the Land project.

The project is working in close collaboration with Luang Prabang’s cultural institutions, including the Department of Information and Culture, The Heritage House, the Luang Prabang School of Fine Arts, Luang Prabang National Museum (former Royal Palace Museum), and UNESCO’s Cultural Survival and Revival in the Buddhist Sangha project, which is working to re-establish the tradition of transmission of decorative arts skills within the sangha.

In spite of its small size, the city of Luang Prabang is distinguished by the extent to which the spaces and rituals of everyday life fuse art, spirituality, and politics. It is one of the few Southeast Asian cities still organized traditionally as a cluster of ban (small neighborhoods), each centered on a vat (monastery), around which the community’s life revolves. It has a venerable history as the initial capital of the first independent Lao kingdom, a major center of Theravada Buddhist scholarship, and the artistic and cultural capital of the Lao PDR. Within its historical district are over thirty vats, and over 600 civil and religious protected monuments. To help ensure the preservation of its historical heritage, threatened by years of neglect wrought by war and poverty, and more recently by the rapid growth of tourism, UNESCO designated Luang Prabang a World Heritage Site in 1995.

The city’s distinctive history—especially the integration between art, spirituality, and everyday life that has defined it for centuries, and the challenges it is presently facing—make it an ideal location in which to ask the fundamental questions of The Quiet in the Land series: what is the relevance of art and spirituality in everyday life, and what role do they play in the encouragement of personal and social development? All the projects in the series are committed to reaffirming the potential of contemporary artists as catalysts of positive change in an era in which their role in society has become increasingly circumscribed. Through the processes of collaboration and creation, they open up for questioning broad social and cultural categories such as art, craft, politics, spirituality, and history; bring greater understanding of the impact of globalization on the lives of individuals in developing and developed nations; and envision how the creative process can be used to address issues such as poverty, displacement, and the loss of tradition.

The Quiet in the Land in Luang Prabang seeks to establish a framework in which the participating artists and communities may work together in mutually beneficial, lasting interactions to address these questions. It operates on the assumption that providing such a framework enables the participants to slowly develop new perspectives on their lives, work, and place in the world. The acquisition of new perspectives on this personal level in the context of a broader network of individuals, organizations, and institutions in cooperative relationships may encourage thoughtful, meaningful, and sustainable social development in the long-term. By operating in the focused context of Luang Prabang over a period of time, the project will achieve depth. By ensuring that its inquiry has relevance for the challenges the region as a whole faces, it will have breadth.

THE QUIET IN THE LAND SERIES The Quiet in the Land in Luang Prabang is the third project in The Quiet in the Land series. The first project, THE QUIET IN THE LAND: Everyday Life, Contemporary Art, and the Shakers, began in 1996. This project brought ten artists to live and work with the only active Shaker community in the world, in Sabbathday Lake, Maine, over a period of six months. It sought to probe conventional notions of gender, work, and spirituality; to redefine the making and experiencing of art; and to challenge the widespread belief that art and life exist in separate realms. The second project, THE QUIET IN THE LAND: Everyday Life, Contemporary Art, and Projeto Axé, began in 1999. Over a period of a year, it brought nineteen artists to Salvador, Brazil, to collaborate with Projeto Axé, Centre for the Defense and Protection of Children and Adolescents, a nongovernmental organization that works with approximately one thousand former street children. In unison with Projeto Axé’s pedagogical philosophy, this project sought to empower the children by helping them to understand for themselves, through how they lead their own lives, that art does not have to be a privileged activity, but can instead be an approach to the world: a path to self- knowledge, pride, and empowerment.

FUNDING The following foundations and individuals have contributed to our first or second project: The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts: l’AFAA, Association Française d’Action Artistique, Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, France; Lorenz Bäumer; the Canada Council; the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, New York; Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro (in honor of Penny McCall; The LEF Foundation; Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, Salvador; The National Endowment for the Arts; the Norman & Rosita Winston Foundation, Inc.; the Penny McCall Foundation: the Peter Norton Family Foundation; The Rockefeller Foundation.

For our third project in Laos, we have received to date the support of the American Center Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, Lorenz Bäumer; Ken Freed; the Henry Luce Foundation; the Jim Thompson Foundation; Sean Kelly; the Open Society Institute; Keith Recker; Brent Sikkema, and the Thin Man Fund. We are also requesting funds from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the American Embassy, Lao PDR; the Heinrich Boell Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Norman & Rosita Winston Foundation, Inc.; the Penny McCall Foundation; the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, and The Rockefeller Foundation. We are also thankful to James Mohn of James Mohn Design Studio, and to Pascal Trahan of Boutique Hotel Les 3 Nagas, Luang Prabang, Lao, PDR

Board of Directors: Michael F. Barkan, John Alan Farmer, France Morin, Keith Recker, Gerard C. Wertkin

FRANCE MORIN is a contemporary art curator and art historian based in New York, USA. She was Senior Curator at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York from 1989 to 1994, and began The Quiet in the Land series in 1995. She organized The Quiet in the Land: Everyday Life, Contemporary Art, and the Shakers, in Sabbathday Lake, Maine from 1996 to 1998, and The Quiet in the Land: Everyday Life, Contemporary Art, and Projeto Axé in Salvador, Brazil from 1997 to 2000. She also organized Heavenly Visions: Shaker Gift Drawings and Gift Songs, which appeared at The Drawing Center in New York and the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2001. Confirmed Participants (from Australia, Bahamas, Cambodia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Holland, India, Iran, Lao PDR, Nigeria, Pakistan, Thailand, USA, Venezuela, and Vietnam)

ARTISTS: Marina Abramovic, born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia; lives in Amsterdam, Holland and New York Janine Antoni, born in Freeport, Bahamas; lives in New York Hans Georg Berger, born in Germany; lives between , Laos, Elba, and Bangkok Carol Cassidy, born in Woodbury, Connecticut, USA; lives in Vientiane, Lao PDR Cai Guo-Qiang, born in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China; lives in New York Ann Hamilton, born in Lima, Ohio, USA; lives in Columbus, Ohio, USA Manivong Khattiynalath, born in Luang Prabang, lives in Luang Prabang, Lao, PDR Dinh Q. Lê, born in Ha-Tien, Vietnam; lives in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and Los Angeles; Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, born in Tokyo; lives in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Shirin Neshat, born in Qazvin, Iran; lives in New York Vong Phaophanit, born in Savannakhet, Lao PDR; lives in , England Shahzia Sikander, born in Lahore, Pakistan; lives in New York Allan Sekula, born in Erie, Pennsylvania, USA; lives in Los Angeles Nithakhong Somsanith, born in Luang Prabang, Lao PDR; lives in Paris, France Rirkrit Tiravanija, born in Buenos Aires; lives in New York and Bangkok, Thailand

IN COLLABORATION WITH: Uthit Atimana, Head of Media Arts and Design, College of Graduate Study, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand Robert Bougrain-Dubourg, Director, Restorateurs Sans Frontieres, Bangkok, Thailand Dr. Carol Becker, Dean of Faculty/Vice-President for Academic Affairs of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA Dr. Catherine Choron-Baix, Anthropologist, CNRS, Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Urbaine, Paris, France, director of the film Memories of Gold, Memories of Silk on Nithakhong Somsanith Dr. Vishakha N. Desai, President and Director of the Museum and Cultural Programs, The Asia Society and Museum, New York Felipe Delmont, Architect, Consultant, UNESCO for SCOT (Schema for Territorial Coherence), Luang Prabang, Lao PDR Sophie Duong, Painting Restorer, Restorateurs Sans Frontieres, Bangkok, Thailand Francis Engelmann, Consultant, UNESCO, Luang Prabang, Lao PDR. Author of Luang Prabang, Capital of Legends, ASA Editions, Paris 1997 Dr. Grant Evans, Reader in Anthropology at the University of Hong Kong; recent publications include A Short History of Laos: The Land Between (2002), the edited collection, Laos: Culture and Society (1999), and The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance: Laos Since 1975 (1998) Vanpheng Keopannha, Deputy Director, Luang Prabang National Museum (Royal Palace Museum), Luang Prabang, Lao PDR Bounkhong Khutthao, Deputy Director, Department of Information and Culture, Luang Prabang, and Deputy Director of UNESCO, Cultural Survival and Revival in the Buddhist Sangha, Luang Prabang, Lao PDR Regine Lemoine-Darthois, Sociologist, President of Euromap Consultants, co-author of Elles croyaient qu elles ne vieilliraient jamais and Vieillir eux? Jamais, Albin Michel, Paris, France Dr. Boreth Ly, Assistant Professor of Asian Art, Department of Art and Art History, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA Somsanouk Mixay, Advisor to the Minister of Information and Culture, Vice President of the Lao Journalists Association, Vientiane, Lao PDR Rassanikone Nanong, Managing Director Nikone Textiles, Vientiane; Director of the Lao Handicraft Association, and Board Member of Aid to Artisans, Vientiane, Lao PDR Sisavath Nhilatchay, Director, Luang Prabang National Museum (Royal Palace Museum), Luang Prabang, Lao PDR Dr. Vithi Panichphant, Professor, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand Dr. Heather Peters, Consultant, Culture Unit, UNESCO, Asia and The Pacific, Bangkok, Thailand David Rosenberg, Editor and Writer; teaches Art History and Aesthetics at the Université de Vincennes-Saint-Denis, Paris; he published a monograph on Chen Zhen and Art Game Book (Assouline, Paris, 2003) Luk Singkhamtanh, Director, Luang Prabang School of Fine Arts, Luang Prabang, Lao, PDR Ouane Sirisack, Director, The Heritage House, Luang Prabang, Lao PDR Phra Ajahn Onekeo Sitthivong, Abbot of Vat Pak Khan and Vat Xiang Thong Monasteries, Luang Prabang, Lao PDR