(hard cover) PERFORMANCE ART: MOTIVATIONS AND DIRECTIONS by Lee Wen Master of Arts Fine Arts 2006 LASALLE-SIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS (blank page) PERFORMANCE ART: MOTIVATIONS AND DIRECTIONS by Lee Wen Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Degree Master of Arts (Fine Arts) LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts Faculty of Fine Arts Singapore May, 2006 ii Accepted by the Faculty of Fine Arts, LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts, In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree Master of Arts (Fine Arts). Vincent Leow Studio Supervisor Adeline Kueh Thesis Supervisor I certify that the thesis being submitted for examination is my own account of my own research, which has been conducted ethically. The data and the results presented are the genuine data and results actually obtained by me during the conduct of the research. Where I have drawn on the work, ideas and results of others this has been appropriately acknowledged in the thesis. The greater portion of the work described in the thesis has been undertaken subsequently to my registration for the degree for which I am submitting this document. Lee Wen In submitting this thesis to LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts, I understand that I am giving permission for it to be made available for use in accordance with the regulations and policies of the college. I also understand that the title and abstract will be published, and that a copy of the work may be made available and supplied to any bona fide library or research worker. This work is also subject to the college policy on intellectual property. ------------------------------------------------------- Lee Wen iii Abstract Author: Lee Wen Title: Performance art: Motivations and Directions Degree: Master of Arts (Fine Arts) Studio Supervisor: Vincent Leow Thesis Supervisor: Adeline Kueh Month/Year: May, 2006 Number of Pages: 32 Style Manual Used: Modern Language Association (2nd edition) This essay will attempt to make a survey of my personal experience and development working in performance art. In doing so I would also like to go over my motivations and encounters of working in performance art which led me to find the importance of representing the temporal form of performance art in more permanent materials of documentation and archive and organizing art events. Since its appearance in Singapore, the practice of performance art posed various questions. Why would artists feel motivated to work in a temporal art form which does not result in the making of a material art object? Given the temporal and ephemeral nature of performance art how does it continue to be represented? For us who had not seen the actual performances how does one continue to discuss the relevance and contexts of performances made in the past? We depend on evidences or accuracy of interpretations based on other media such as photography, film or videos, writings, interviews and hearsay or other records in various media forms of documentation and archives. What are the various possibilities in representing them after the fact of the said occurrences or “happening” of a temporal performance art work? How do the various media and methods compare and how do we assess them in terms of validity or relevance in relationship to what is deemed as an artwork? Based on this research, we can re-access performance art and its position as a valid artwork in relation to more traditional media. I hope to be able to look into possibilities for future actions and directions to develop my work in performance art and its contribution to contemporary art discourse. v Acknowledgements Many thanks to those who were generous with their time, effort, and support reading the dissertation drafts and offering suggestions and advises, To my supervisors: Vincent Leow, Adeline Kueh, and staff of LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts especially, Milenko Prvacki, Ye ShuFang, Ian Woo, Ahmad Abu Bakar. With special thanks to William Lim, C.J. Wee Wan-ling, Alastair MacLennan, Ray Langenbach, Lee Weng Choy, Audrey Wong, John Low. And all my relations vi Table Of Contents CHAPTER 1: Performance Art: Enactments, Documentations and Re-presentations p. 1 1.1 Introduction p. 1 1.2 Local perspective p. 2 1.3 Historical motivations p. 3 1.4 Global trends, marginal networks p. 5 CHAPTER 2: First Encounters: Towards a Conceptual Framework p. 8 2.1 Introduction p. 8 2.2 Tang Da Wu and the Artists Village p. 9 2.3 S.Chandrasekaran and Trimurti p.10 2.4 Asian Values, State intervention versus Individual vision p. 12 2.5 Birthrights: Identity and Society p. 14 CHAPTER 3: Manifestations p. 17 3.1 Self, ethnicity and multiculturalism p. 17 3.2 Image and context p. 20 3.3 Persona: contrasts and conflicts p. 21 3.4 Journey of a yellow man p. 21 3.5 Ghosts Stories p. 23 3.6 Neo-baba p. 24 3.7 Method against method p. 25 CHAPTER 4: Representations p. 27 4.1 Archive and documentation; memory and history p. 27 4.2 Alternative and strategic use of media p. 29 4.3 Re-enactments p. 31 4.5 Conclusion p. 35 Notes p. 38 List Of Figures p. 44 Figures p. 46 Bibliography p. 60 1 CHAPTER 1 ENACTMENTS, DOCUMENTATIONS AND RE-PRESENTATIONS 1.1 Introduction This essay will attempt to make a survey of my own development working in performance art. In doing so I would also like to go over my own motivations and encounters of working in performance art which led me to find the importance of representing the temporal form of performance art in more permanent materials of documentation and archive as well as art works in more durable media. My research will attempt as much as possible to follow an academic format based on published materials. However, it is an endeavor embarked upon with the foreknowledge that there are very few comprehensive written surveys with references to performance art in Singapore art history.i With the help of some exhibition catalogues, my perspectives are informed largely from personal experiences and conversations via actual encounters with the artists than on textual readings alone. There have been claims that one cannot partake in making judgmental critical discussion of performance art unless one had actually seen it “live”. The “live” element of performance art and its dissolving of the separation between the artist and spectator also privileges itself as an unmediated form which arouses an immediate, unique and radical cultural experience. However this is contradicted by the fact that many of our understanding and knowledge 2 of performance art has been studied and written about from evidential proofs via other media such as photography in the early hey days and increasingly in film and videos today. When making her wide-ranging discussions on performance art practices, Amelia Jones held the premise that there is no possibility of an unmediated relationship to any kind of cultural product, including performance or body art. ii Such privileges should not override other knowledge that arises out of the documentary traces of a live presentation. Being there to see the live presentation does not mean that the audience would immediately know or understand more about the work. A later research based on documentation, whether in the form of photography, textual or oral, film or video, with the help of hindsight and historical distance may lead to a more meaningful and clearer appraisal. 1.2 Local perspective In South East Asia the practice and development of performance art had become progressively more intensive within the 1980’s up to today. The recent growth and diversity of contemporary art in South East Asia remains unconsolidated research due to its diverse social historical situations of rapid changes and emphases on post-war politics of nation-building and economic development. iii Added to that its varied cultural histories and multi-lingual status where even if there were published literature, a large part of it would not be in English. Performance art too have been prejudiced into a marginal position in the market driven society, ignored by the mass media or may also be misrepresented by institutions due to its radicalized potential. Within Singapore’s context TK Sabapathy had cited Tan Teng Kee's 3 Picnic event of 1979 as the first evidence of performance art. Tan created a one-hundred-meters long painting entitled “The Lonely Road”. He then cut into smaller pieces and incinerated one of his sculptures at the end of the event.iv The next foray into performance art is that of Tang Da Wu in 1982 who presented “Five performances” at the National Museum Art Gallery. Following this Tang went on to initiate The Artists Village in 1988, an alternative space and group came together in the last remaining farms of Singapore where experiments by various artists forayed into performance art.v In the same year 1988, Salleh Japar, Goh Ee Choo and S. Chandrasekaran put together an exhibition called “Trimurti” where some performances were also presented. vi Within contemporary art perspective, performance art is traced back to the Futurists, Dadaists and Surrealists during the early 20th Century. Most surveys of performance art would cite the movements in the post-war 1950’s such as Happenings and Fluxus in the U.S. and neo-realism in Europe together with Gutai in Japan as the starting point of performance art as a genre in its own right of tradition and historical discourse.vii Without the knowledge of our own local contexts and historical developments, one would easily fall into the fallacy that our local forays into performance is merely an copy of Western art history which is comparatively found in more publications and documentations.