In the summer of 2009, more than thirty renowned scholars, artists, and practitioners in visual arts, performance, and other cultural fields from around the world, gathered in Bangkok to discuss and reflect on the dynamic, ongoing echoes of the ancient trading route Silk Road and its multiple dimensions.
The four-day symposium organized by Arthub, was titled The Making Of the New Silk Roads (August 27th-August 30th 2009), and its ambitious aim was to reassess the complex interconnections within Asia’s cultural and artistic spectrum at the beginning of the 21st century. The summit was built around the idea of Arthub’s collaborative intelligence, with participants from across Asia including China, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Turkey, Georgia, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and beyond -along with additional participants from the prestigious Prince Claus Fund Network Partnership Program.
The Making Of the New Silk Roads was conceived as a performative symposium and, with this in mind, Arthub commissioned a new production to artist and filmmaker Ho Tzu Nyen. The final video work is a unique documentation of the four days, and of the dynamics behind the idea itself of such an encounter.
By calmly stepping out and bringing two actors into action – one as his avatar (Ho Tzu Nyen 2) and one as the ‘presenter’ of the official documentary team that had been put in place – Ho Tzu Nyen fictionalized his own subjective observations of the participants and the actions they performed. The video he produced out of his unique viewpoint, paints a subjective picture of the small threads that tied the event together, while allowing for certain connections that existed or emerged during the three days to remain invisible.
The Making Of the New Silk Roads was hosted at the Bangkok University Gallery (BUG), and the symposium was organised in collaboration with the Prince Claus Fund, the Bangkok University, National Research Center of the Kingdom of Thailand, with additional support from Mondriaan Foundation and ANA (Singapore).
Small Threads – Davide Quadrio in conversation with Ho Tzu Nyen
The following interview is published as part of The Making of Meeting, published by MER
Davide Quadrio [dq]: Symposiums, talking, power games, relationships, boredom, intangible experiences, talking just to talk, blah blah blah. Is all this “intellectual” practice useful or is it only an exercise? I think this informed our idea to not document the content of the symposium in Bangkok, but rather the forms/the relationships that the participants developed during the encounter. How would you like to comment on this?
Ho Tzu Nyen [htn]: Symposiums are platforms that I have personally en- joyed and benefited from, whether as a space for the exchange of ideas or encounters with interesting personalities. But of course there are also symposiums that go nowhere in particular, so it is impossible to generalize. But I think what makes The Making of the New Silk Roads such an interesting proposition is that you and Defne Ayas seemed concerned with the symposium itself as an object – surely this is why you have situated it in a gallery, and thought through its spatial configuration and its temporal shape by attempting to choreograph its unfolding. There is a dramaturgical dimension to it, and as I understand, a willingness to experiment, and risk failure.
I believe that there is always a personal dimension to the projects and experiments that we undertake. For me, your event happened at a time when I had just come off a particularly grueling film shoot, and the notion of being a participant in the symposium created some amount of discomfort – it was merely a question of the state of my nervous system at that moment. Yet what I heard of The Making of the New Silk Roads seemed so interesting, that I was also inevitably drawn to it. The solution seemed to find a way for me to be simultaneously, and productively involved with the event as a whole, while also not being a part of it as a participant. What interested me was the shape of the event as a whole, as well as how it would turn out. It seemed to me that the best way to do this would be to become a part of the ‘documentary’ team that you had already assembled, while getting an actor to be my substitute in the symposium.
Being part of the ‘documentary’ team turned out to be a fascinating experience, a kind of being inside and outside at the same time. I’m glad you mentioned the intangible, but nevertheless concrete dimensions of every symposium – the ‘power games’, ‘relationships’ and ‘boredom’, its atmosphere, its moments of heaviness, and lightness, it physiological dimension, a narrative of faces, gestures, energies. Freed from the anxiety of participation, I was somewhat plugged into the skin of the event, without being pulled into its pool of words.
dq: You were telling me that I was crazy because I did not want limit your approach to the making of the “documentation”. Do you not think that as an organizer and a critical art activist I should grant the artist the freedom to define his own boundaries? What did you find interesting in this collaboration and way of producing this new piece of work?
htn: Well, Davide when I tell someone that he or she is crazy, it is usually a compliment.
To be honest, this was the first time we have worked together, and I was, on my part, a little uncertain about how far I could go. Because this was not simply a case of producing an artwork, rather, I was working directly with an infrastructural component of the event that you had assembled – the video ‘documentary’ team. The team was there to fulfill a utilitarian function, and my primary concern was how much my own interference might be an irreparable disruption, so this wasn’t just a normal artwork – I felt it was my responsibility to constantly check if there was some kind of threshold that I shouldn’t cross.
And of course, it turned out that you were entirely prepared to give me a free reign, which threw me off a little. In retrospect, I might have been pushing around to sense the boundaries that you and Defne might have, so that I could create a kind of frame for myself, a frame that I might work with, work against, a frame that I might have tried to stretch, or secretly unravel.
So what was really interesting for me was that I had to make up my own rules. The first was that I would use the existing documentary team that you had already assembled, with minimal interference to their technical set up. I wanted to create a kind of system that would not so much negate, but parasitically latch on to the filming process that Kob, the original director of the ‘documentary’, had already planned.
Second, I would try to understand as much as possible your agenda and construction of The Making of the New Silk Roads, and again, with minimal interference into your plans. I am really glad that this facilitated a kind of engagement with you as an organizer that would have been impossible if I had been a participant in the event.
dq: The fictional narration of the film that you produced from the symposium is based on the two actors that were secretly introduced into the symposium. Were you satisfied with this strategy? And what changes would you make if you could do it over?
htn: The first of these actors was my surrogate – he was to play ‘Ho Tzu Nyen’. As I have mentioned earlier, having a double allowed me to unplug from the symposium in order to find another way of engaging with it from another perspective, but this essentially introduced a degree of ‘fiction’ into the proceedings of the symposium, which I found appropriate, given your obvious attempt to foreground the performativity of the event.
The second actor was a girl, who played the official ‘presenter’ of the ‘documentary’ team. She was a useful mouthpiece through which very basic interviews could be conducted with the participants.
I had to find a way to construct a kind of relationship tying the two actors together. I needed to develop a narrative that could be sensed, which wouldn’t have been too hard as spectators are always ready to project the most clichéd of stories between a young man and a young woman.
It is impossible to be satisfied or dissatisfied in a process such as this one. It is like a roll of a dice, you can’t control or make undone what results from it. I have edited the film in such a way that it amplifies its inherent dynamics, without changing it. One doesn’t cheat and ask for the dice to be rolled one more time.
dq: Can you explain a little more about how you technically organized the shooting?
htn: Technically, I tried to conform as much as possible to the set-up devised for you by Kob, the original and real ‘director’ of your ‘documentary’ team. I also involved Kob as much as possible in my process, and it was great working with him. It was also necessary – because none of the camera crew spoke any English, and all communications went through Kob!
So we had a basic set up of two cameras, and we worked out a system where at least one of these cameras was to be perpetually focused on the proceedings of the symposium, while the other would be allowed to drift in the most idiosyncratic way possible. Initially the crew began rather ‘politely’ – it was not unlike any normal, or commercial ‘event-coverage’. As such, they automatically restrained themselves from filming down those more compromising moments that plague every symposium – moments of fatigue, boredom, irritation, distraction. Participants yawning, dozing, chatting, surfing, messaging… Though at the same time, it was obvious that this were the stuff that amused them greatly. So I gradually weaned them off these kinds of inhibitions, and instructed them to film what they were really interested in looking at.
In the meantime, Kob and I were constantly coming up with different kinds of exercises for the girl. We would map out elaborate trajectories for the girl to undertake while the symposium was ongoing, and challenge the cameramen to track her movements in long, unbroken takes. I saw this as an interesting way to carve and reconfigure the space of the symposium for the eye of the camera. For me, the girl was a mobile element, in constant movement, while the boy was a static presence – a gaping eye, glued to the symposium – though he would also have his moments of distraction, like anyone else.
dq: Can a piece of ‘documentation’ become an artwork? From what I can understand of your project, you seem to be trying to capture the behaviors of the participants in order to abstract the event, in the hope that a different kind of poetics may emerge. Is this an accurate way of describing the artistic process and the resulting artwork?
htn: Whether or not the documentation becomes an artwork is really something I can’t say. My primary interest was to test how I could expand the notion of ‘documentation’. For me, the film is a kind of group portrait of all the participants in the symposium. And hopefully, like some of the classic Dutch group portraits of the 17th Century, this portrait can evoke what is buried within the image – secretive, hidden, untold, little narratives waiting to be unfolded. As a ‘documentation’ of the symposium, what it records are not the words, or the ostensible happenings, but its nervous system.
Film directed by: Ho Tzu Nyen
Concept by: Defne Ayas, Davide Quadrio, Ho Tzu Nyen
Advice by: Seph Rodney
Filming crew organized by: Kob Chacree
Actor 1: Karn Wanadornworawisan
Actor 2: Joe Chan
Produced by: Arthub Asia with the support of FarEastFarWest Collection
