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Long March Project - Ho Chi Minh Trail
Discussion on 21 st June 14:30 -17:30 at New Space Arts Foundation
Address: 15 Le Loi Street, Hue city
Theme for discussion
Topic1. Use body to test the limitation of the public space.
Topic2. The negative effects of being far from cultural and information centers on the developments of Contemporary art, Hue in particular. What will be the solutions?
Speakers:
Le Duc Hai, Le Ngoc Thanh
Facilitators:
Nguyen Nhu Huy and Lu Jie
Discussants and Observers:
Gao Shiming (curator), Wu Shanzhuan (artist), Lu Xinghua (scholar), Wang Jiahao (architect), Xu Zhen (artist), Zhang Hui (artist), Liu Wei(artist), Wang Jianwei (artist), Dong Jun (artist), Song Yi (curator), Weng Zhengqi (artist), Jiang Yizhou (project administrator), Luo Wenhong (researcher),
Interpreters:
Trang Thi Thuy Nguyen, Vietnamese - English
Hoang Dieu, Vietnamese - Chinese
Sheryl Cheung, Chinese - English
Du Keke, English - Chinese
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Long March Project - Ho Chi Minh Trail
Timeframe: 2008 - 2010
Initiated by the Long March Project, the Ho Chi Minh Trail project aims to be a collaborative contemporary art project in the implementation of artistic and educational activities between China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail project puts emphasis on its examination of disguised spaces in contemporary visual and political economics. The project takes the historical Ho Chi Minh route as a metaphorical framework and departure point for creative and intellectual breakthroughs that challenge fixed relations of social production as determined by ideas of history, identity, market logic and subconscious effects of geographical imposed divide. The project aims to transform the act of Acting (performing) into the actual Action through a process of thorough re-sensitization to the complexities of history, collective consciousness, visual culture, and spatial and physical memory.
Background
The Long March Project began as an artistic investigation of the grand narrative and historical consciousness determined in the wake of, and resulting mythologizing, of China’s revolutionary Long March of 1934-36. This historical pathway was re-traced by the Long March Project in 2002, serving not only as a geographical route, but also symbolic of a much larger philosophical and ideological pursuit engaging ideas behind the process of writing, remembering and recreating a cultural history, revolutionary memory and the struggle to articulate motivations evoked in individual and collective action. There are many similar historical journeys that represent the resilience of the human spirit and though they are fraught with their own agendas and traumatic consequences, they are important cultural memories to which the possibility of a future is informed and can be given birth.
Rationale
The Ho Chi Minh Trail, though internationally understood as a logistical supply route created during the Second Indochina War (1969-74), formed a vast network of passageways across China, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. This rhizomic map serves as a reflection of the fraught, interconnected, influential, overlapping histories of the region. This area was the strategic battle ground between the two communist powers [China and the Soviet Union] and the US during the second Indochina war. China’s decision to support Southeast Asia during this time was instrumental to Mao Zedong’s domestic argument to gather the masses against Imperialist forces encroaching its national borders (eg. USA). This strategic decision not only internationally presented China’s support for revolutionist forces in Vietnam, but also encouraged Mao’s domestic grand plans for ‘The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’. Taking Vietnam as example, the complex tale of conquest (eg. Kublai Khan’s attempt to invade Vietnam in the 13th Century; or Vietnam’s occupation of the People's Republic of Kampuchea in the 1980s); of cultural and intellectual exchange (eg. vassal relationship between the Cham Dynasty of Vietnam with China) are but a few historical examples which are to this day remembered with a significant and prolonged cultural animosity.
This project seeks to engage the varying contexts of perspective from the artistic and educational communities within these countries, their stories pivotal to an overall understanding of the metaphorical legacy of this trail as a divergent journey, drawing relevant and pertinent comparisons with broader international movements of social thought, strategy and intervention.
Can such events of the past be objectively re-written, re-interpreted so as to confront, alleviate, or alter an understanding of historical consciousness? How can sensitive misgivings between cultural and social communities be creatively engaged so as to create new identifications, new possibilities of beneficial engagement where psychological and social prejudices are laid aside? How has the historical exchange of knowledge and ideas created, supported, or spurned a sense of mutual imaginings? In contemporary times social conditions encourage us to assume cosplay characters determined by the nature of specific social production models. It is crucial that we re-evaluate and contemplate upon the terms post-war, post-revolution, post-colonial, and post-historical that define our cultural realities today. A parallel urgency is evident in the contemporary art world in which art is continually identified as materialization and spectacle of global capitalism and neo-liberalism, instead of what it can be—a materialization of cultural/thought production and negotiation between memory and reality. What new artistic modes will follow the recent trends of institutional critique, social engagement and relativism? What are the ways in which an individual can perform his/her historical consciousness? How can we take the Ho Chi Minh trail, a layered geographical network with multiple intertwining historical narratives, and examine its disguised spaces of contemporary visual, political, and economical complexity?
The Ho Chi Minh Trail project will continue the international journey of the Long March Project, a journey that has so far been realized as a conceptual, philosophical and physical examination of the relationship between past, present and future; between an understanding of assumption, stereotype and identity; between creation, production and market. The Ho Chi Minh Trail project extends this contemporary campaign of critical discourse surrounding art and culture, investigating the potential common threads and divergent perspectives on lived and felt experience, and aims to be a progressive artistic and educational exercise built on the value of process and exchange, rather than an assumed investment in result and subsequent object making (though undoubtedly an inherent part of the process).
This project aims to involve multiple individuals (visual artists, writers, historians, film makers, performers, musicians etc), artistic organizations and institutions (public and private) from across this region and its diaspora. Discussions, lectures, public forums, informal screenings of historical and contemporary visual material, new art works, performances, new imaginings, new texts - all will be created, shared, exhibited, documented, and distributed, in the spirit of artistic exchange that is recognized as foundationally paramount to the crucial relationship between culture and contemporary society.
Project Implementation
The Ho Chi Minh Trail project consists of five stages: field research, residency, physical journey, theatre, and an on-going database Knowledge of the Ignorant, which is a collection of research material relevant to the project.
E.Field Research (2008-2009)
F.Long March Education Platform 1: Ho Chi Minh Trail (2009.7.1 – 7.31)
The month-long residency, held in July 2009, hosted eleven thinkers from Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Phnom Penh, New York, Seoul, Hangzhou and Beijing. This phase of the Ho Chi Minh Trail project was organized in conjunction with Long March Education, an ongoing educational program focusing on the study of critical relationships between art, its production and the systems in which this visual practice is historicized and displayed.
The July residency program operated as a curatorial brainstorm for the Ho Chi Minh Trail project, through which residents closely examined the shared physical and psychological landscape imbedded within the Ho Chi Minh trail route. Throughout July, four thematic topics were introduced as starting points to discuss ways in which artists transform discursive material into visibility.
G.Journey (June, 2010)
Strategic sites: Ho Chi Minh City, Phnom Penh, Vientiane, Hanoi, Hue, and a segment on the Ho Chi Minh Trail
Participants: Ten writers and thinkers invited as participating artists; ten artists invited as participating thinkers; four Long March staff members; and four media representatives and volunteers. This team of twenty-eight travelers will also engage with local participants along the way.
The program is structured as a journey through which travelers will challenge their subjective understanding of geopolitics, historical and war memories, cultural and ethnic conflicts in face of contradicting realities that will be locally present. One of the project’s intentions is to reveal the frustrations and futility of political correctness.
Along the journey, participants will be invited to perform a series of confessions and explore issues of globalization and local, Empire and The Third World, ideology and politics, art and theory, and other critical questions that concern us today. The continuous, intense, and physical process of confessing, discussing, walking, and recording along the way will thrive to transform the act of Acting (performing) into actual Action. While the journey will be realized mostly by bus transportation, there will be a walking segment through a critical Ho Chi Minh Trail portion in the west of Laos.
The aforementioned trends are all present in China, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in different dosages and of various levels. Instead of operating upon an east-west or north-south divide, can China and Southeast Asia examine each other’s politics, histories, geographies, and culture with an interconnecting attitude of “I have you in me, and you have me in you?”
H.Theater (Sept. 2010 - ongoing)
Venue: Beijing (Sept. 2010), Shanghai (Oct. 2010), and varied sites in the future
Drawing inspiration from the project’s textual and visual documentations, interconnected resources, and physical experiences of walking the Ho Chi Minh trail, the project will present a series of rehearsals realized as different chapters of a theatre. These performances/actions will be organized as simultaneous or staggered events in various locations.
E.Knowledge of the Ignorant
This is a database of information collected by participants and interested persons, with considered focus on documentation, memories, and issues relevant to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The growing database is an ongoing construction and will be finally uploaded online as an open resource akin to an online encyclopedia. This database has the following characteristics:
5)Cross-region. Gathered information will include, but not be restricted to, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Southeast Asia, their visual cultures, and other material provided by local and international participants.
6)Cross-media. There is no limit to the form of submitted information. Accepted materials have included: text, sound, moving or still images.
7)The database will also include material amassed from the physical journey of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in June 2010
8)The database is an ongoing construction and its organic developments will not be predetermined by any particular phase of the project.
Project management structure
Chief curator: Lu Jie
Project Management: Xu Tingting, Song Yi
For further information, please contact:
Xu Tingting
Associate Curator
Long March Project
Mail Box 8503, Beijing, P.R. China 100015
Phone: +86 (0)10-64387107 / Fax: +86 (0)10-64323834 / M: +86 13269172891
e: tingting.xu@longmarchspace.com
This project is made possible with the support from the following organizations: Prince Clause Foundation, Arts Network Asia (artsnetworkasia.org), Foundation for Arts Initiatives, and Long March Foundation.
Discussion at New Space Arts Foundation, Hue, 2:30-5:30 pm
Wang Jiahao: Today I am speaking on behalf of myself from my own experience of the project, which traces back to when I first received the project proposal until now. We have walked almost half of our journey so far. On the first day, all of us marchers have agreed that we will not able to come to a final consensus. The only consensus we have is our questioning of the foundations.
Within these ongoing internal meeting we hold throughout our journey, I have somehow become the moderator of discussions. And we came upon this idea to bring something from our internal meeting into these public discussions. This is why I am here speaking today hoping to take an effective position
May I first introduce my colleagues accordig to my understanding of them:
Gao Shiming: Independent curator. During our internal meetings, we have been continually discussing and critiquing with him his interest in curatorship
Lu Jie: Chief curator of Long March Project. During the prepration for the journey, I had no idea of what the project wanted to do.
Wang Jiahao: An artist. He believes that within his mind he has built an institution.
Xu Zhen: An Artist. He has give up his individual name in the contemporary art scene and now embodies a cultural production company called MadeIn
Liu Wei: An artist. During this journey he have repeatedly declared himself as a theorist
Zhang Hui: My impression is that he believes he can carry on painting within the contemporary art conditions today.
Lu Xinghua: Professor of European Cultural at Tonji University. On one night Lu Xinghua gave us a lesson on the idea of Agamben. In particular I would like to share with you something he told us. According to my own understanding, Agamben responds to the question of ‘what is contemporary’ with the idea of Walter Benjamin, that we should find the light within the darkness of reality and shine this light on tradition. Meaning we should take what we learn from the present to better understand the past.
I myself am Wang Jianwei and I am the only architect in the group. During this journey I have gained a lot of different alternative perspectives on architecture and in a sense have realized and better understood, according to Agamben, some darkness within my own reality.
The Le Brothers screen their film the bridge
Hai: We spent 10 years to complete this film. The reason why we make this film. It started 10 years ago, I discussed with my brother together and we thought about the country of our history. The bridge in the film connects between south and north. If the bridge was not rebuilt, we would be considered the north and would not be able to contribute to the art scene as we are doing now. This film is not a ‘film’ but a story told by Le Brothers.
We are thinking about Korea and Germany. We are thinking about going to the neutral zone between north and south korea and do this performance.
Huy: I want to go back to Lu Xingua’s quote on Agamben. I woud like to ask him, what is his view of contemporary art?
Lu Xinghua: In the film by Le Brothers we heard a lot of noise, popular and ancient music. It seems to bring us to question of contemporaryness and invites us to feel what is conteporary around us. In the beginning there is imagery that depicts an apparent, black and white past of this country, but film’s developments seems to suggest that the reality is much more complicated than the a textbooks.
Huy: It is my first time watching this movie. Sometimes I feel this kind of film is too local. Does this avoid this kind of too-local artwork from going international?
Lu Xinghua: I think this is an interesting philosophical topic. I think it’s not the problem of being local, being local is not a problem. But if you have an agenda of selling your identity to the international world, that becomes a problem. We should start from being local, but more importantly we should go further and become singular. Instead of international, let us go universal. The film is not local, it is singular and therefore I find it universal.
Lu Xinghua: In the film, the music is playing on the idea of universal. International is a consensus between different identies. Universal cannot be stopped or rejected. Music was a good reflection that the quality of contemporary is unavoidable. What can contemporary art help us bring to this idea of singularity/ When I hear a good piece of music while I watch a film unfamiliar to me, the music helps me cross my own boundaries, to feel the effects of contemporary.
Lu Jie: From my understanding of Lu Xinghua’s speech, this construction of international is being looked as the difference of identity and locality. If the artist’s work tries to sell their identity and locality to the assumed international space, that is not good. He brings up the idea of universal and says it after the development of singularities. Therefore every meaning of local is important. This is a fundamentional problem in contemporary art production system and we have continually been discussing along our journey. We all feel it is important for artists here to follow up on this question, and on the issues of locality, international, and internationale which is universal.
Hai: To be contemproary artist we do have to professional training. Me and my brother do not, we learn by ourselves through our friends and through internet. Secondly, everyone has a different concept of contemporary art. This film is not about art but about individuality. We did not dream that this film should go international. It was to be shown to friends and the people of Hue and to be critiqued by them.
With the bridge, the film becomes very local. He Lum bridge divides North and South and is located in Hue.
I have a question: In what aspect should an artist and student keep his individuality. If he has a very strong ego, then he doesn’t learn new things or care about what the world is doing.
Lu Jie: It will be a lifetime process to be aware that true singularity is a struggle which is interrelated with many things. This same goes to our understanding of history. In this sense, there is no difference between student and professor.
Xu Zhen: Is this related to the will of the artist?
Liu Wei: The film reminds me what we have been discussing along the journey. We have heard that now that the north and South
We only want to tell our story you have the right to interpret. If there is no unity between north and south we may be divided as part of North Vietnam and will not become contemporary artists we are today.
I’m not trying to speak into a political discussion here, I am interested in how these political spaces play in relationship to contemporary art, and how it relates to the question of what is contemporary. It points the relationship between universal and singularity as Lu Jie as pointed out. It also points to what we have been discussing a few days ago, and that is the idea of conspiracy of global capitalism.
Huy: I have been involved in this filming of The Bridge. This is a very individual story but as you can see, there is connection with the history of korea and germany. In this sense it is connected to internationalism. Does this film then help build a new circle of universality?
Wang Jianwei: From my understanding, singularity has to do with the body, education, and memory. I doubt that a single person can self clarify their own singularity. To search for this idea of singularity, one must leave his/her own position, their own knoledge and education and go out to a shared space with other people. I doubt the possibility of a clarified singulairty. I would also like to clarify that singularity and personality are different. Personality cannot be shared, singularity can be talked about and shared.
Lu Xinghua: The difference between singularity and universality is that individual was first local and then it develops personality. When s/he finally faces reality and certain truths,
Lu Jie: I do presentaitons and events all the time I understand that translation and time is always a problem. Each event and festival that you have introduced, there is so much more to understand. We are grateful to see one complete film of yours. During our preparation of this project, we could feel that the energy of Hue is very different from Hanoi and Saigon. So far we have not had before so many audience who are so patient listening to our discussion and jargons. I would like to propose that we are all ignorant and would like to learn. I understand that performance has been rather strong medium in Hue, through our communication, I’m sure this is a powerful and positive side. Unfortunately there is limited time today to see more about your festivals and events. But may I ask what is the positive and negative side of what you have experienced working with the performance community here.
Duc: We are very lucky to be working in this city. We have the support of the cultural department of Hue. License of any event is not easy in Vietnam. But it is easier for us with official support. Lots of people come to our events, they are interested, they may not understand but they come.
During our studies of art, we wanted to do something new to ourselves, that is why we begun with performance art.
Duc: We do things in a very professional way and that is why people trust us. Our events are also educational, The policies in Hue are looser. The artist that you have mentioned, there might have been some issues with his artwork.
Huy: I remember there was a painting exhibition that was censored in Hue.
Tn: Events first need to go to the art council, upon approval the cultrual department of the city will then look over it. Both bodies have to be approved. The artist last year whose exhibition was censored, he was approved from the arts council but not by the cultural department. This has to do with institution and policy.
Zhang Hui: To establish this idea of singulairty, there needs to be an overlap between society and indivuals. Within this complexity, do we have the right to speak from a single sided point of view, or from a brutal simplifcation?
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