Art Radar brings you 7 highlights not to miss during Singapore Art Week 2018.Singapore Art Week 2018 runs from 17 to 28 January, concurrently with Art Stage Singapore, and presents a rich programme of events across the city.
Happy to announce that a Lilith Commission from 2016 – Transaction of Hollows by the Indonesian artist Melati Suryodarmo will be shown at ShanghArt Singapore next week!
The live performance, titled “Transaction of Hollows”, is a long durational performance piece that investigates mankind’s desire on love and war.
Melati evokes her desolation at the state of politics and society as she negotiates the nuances of such emotions through these circumstances by repetitively shooting hundreds of arrows without a specific target.
The audience is invited to be present in the same space while she shoots arrows across the room, allowing them to be immersed and drawn in, connecting with the artist and the atmosphere in their own unique way.
At the end of the performance, the venue, left untouched, will form an exhibition on its own.
This provides viewers an experience in a different circumstance from the live performance, much akin to witnessing of the aftermath of a war after its conclusion.
Transaction of Hollows was commissioned by and performed first time at Lilith Performance Studio, Malmo in 2016.
Photo by Petter Petterson, Lilith Performance Studio, Malmö
Thank you all for a Glorious celebration and a MAGNIFICENT Final of our tenth anniversary series YOU ARE INVITED! Baby Shower for Mary by the two goddess Madams from Iceland ❤️?? Jóní Jónsdóttir & Eirún Sigurðardóttir = The Icelandic Love Corporation and our amazing participants and Dream TEAM was the best finishing EVER! Thank you dear audience for coming to all our performances during this fall. Great feeling to see you all there! And a BIG thank you all fantastic Artists ( Dafna Maimon, Myriam Laplante, Odun Orimolade & The Icelandic Love Corporation) that we have collaborated with during our jubilee celebration.❤️?
” YOU ARE MASTERPIECE,
A MASETRPIECE,
THAT WE ALL HAVE CREATED TOGETHER”
from Baby Shower for Mary
It has been a fantastic marvelous magical ride through this fall of out BIG celebtration of outr ten YEARS as a performance studio.
Tonight it will be the grand finale with our darlings – the wonderful art collective The Icelandic Love Corporation ( Madam Jóní Jónsdóttir and Madam Eirún Sigurdardóttir) <3 Fint skrivet om YOU ARE INVITED – Baby Shower for Mary av Clemens Altgård i Skånska Dagbladet i dag. ” Performancekonst kan vara otäck och oroande, men den kan också vara riktigt trevlig som denna kväll, om än inte utan spänningsmoment. En värdig avslutning på årets jubileumsaktiviteter.”
Very beautiful art review written by Clemens Altgård in today’s newspaper Skånska Dagbladet of, our last performance dinner by fab The Icelandic Love Corporation YOU ARE INVITED – Baby Shower for Mary
”Performance Art can be nasty and disturbing, but it can also be really nice like this evening, though not without tension torque. A worthy end to this year’s anniversary activities.”
Väldigt fin skrivet också av Anders E Larsson i Kristianstadsbladet:
” ILC:s uttryck hittas någonstans i skärningspunkten mellan (ett spelat) gravallvar och humorn som lurar i nästa andetag – kepsarna med en pärla längst fram på skärmkanten, som vi tar på oss för att hitta ”our inner pearl”, är ett exempel; detta paras med en samtidskommenterande attityd och en road nyfikenhet på hur vi som besökare hanterar de instruktioner vi får. Madamernas mjuka handlag och isländskt spirituella/ironiska mantran gör oss beredvilliga: ”The beginning and the end, the love and the drops, your rain of gold” – och så sprejas det polkagris(?)doftande vätska över våra huvuden.”
Also very well written art review by Anders E Larsson in in Kristianstadsbladet today:
”The ILC’s expression is found somewhere at in intersection (an acted) grave seriousness and humor lurking in the next breath – the caps with a pearl at the front of the cap edge, which we put on to find” our inner pearl”, is one example; this is paired with a contemporary commentary attitude and an amused curiosity about how we as visitors handles the instruction we receive. Madame soft touch and Icelandic spiritual / ironic mantras makes us entreated: ”the beginning and the end, the love and the drops, your rain of gold ”- and then a fragrance of mint scented liquid is sprayed over our heads.”
” Att sätta hushållsarbete eller det vardagliga i centrum är en inarbetad feministisk strategi inom konsten, men här görs det inte främst för att uppmärksamma värdesystem, utan för att betona idén om omsorg och det kollektiva. Performancekonst spelar mycket på publikens förväntningar och okunskap, vilket ofta bidrar till en spänning i rummet. Detta verks små gester av tacksamhet och respekt – vi får våra händer tvättade, görs delaktiga och uppmuntras – bidrar istället till en avväpnande trivsel. Det kan låta trivialt, men när vi står där och sjunger, en mörk decemberkväll 2017, välkomnar jag denna trivsel och uppfattar den som radikal.”
”To put household or everyday work in the center is an incorporated feminist strategy in the art, but this is not primarily aimed at paying attention to value systems, but to emphasize the idea of care and the collective. Performance art plays a lot about the audience’s expectations and ignorance, which often contributes to the excitement of the room, which makes little gestures of gratitude and respect – we get our hands washed, participated and encouraged – instead contributes to a disgusting well-being. It may sound trivial, but when we stand there and sing, a dark December evening 2017, I welcome this well-being and perceive it as radical. ”
Last rehearsal of our grand finale in our anniversary series – YOU ARE INVITED – Baby Shower for Mary
by the fabulous amazing art collective The Icelandic Love Corporation and dream participants!
Feeling blessed and happy!
Tonight it will be wonderful.
Baby Shower for Mary will be shown 3 times with the lovely participant: Jóní Jónsdóttir, Eirún Sigurðardóttir,
Tania Naranjo, Agnes Wästfelt, Lo Pettersson-Lundgren, Selma Kjellsson, Ida Mårdhed, Gittan Jönsson, Molly Berggren <3
”Thomas Millroth: I became a voluntary mummy Odun Orimolade creates various games with herself as cheating playmaker. Thomas Millroth gets into the play – and allow himself to be turned into mummy.” ”I became a volunteer mummy. The venue of the games moved from the room into my own body and mind when I was wrapped with tight fabric strips. Could not move, saw nothing, the balance unstable, rocking. I felt hands lay me down on the floor, feet bounced around me, my body lifted to the wobbly upright Normally a horror experience, now I was emptied, zeroed and surprised. ”
”The meaning of the seemingly meaningless is an artistic challenge, which Orimolade fixed with a superb sense of timing, and by using humor to override all the rules we are used to.
When finally the lights went out, it felt solemn, for this was an unusual evening with absurd moments and thoughtful surprises.With an irresistible slow performance Orimolade sucked me into another world.”
”The politics of the hostess” Interview 25 nov 2017 by Matthias Hvass Borello / kunsten.nu
”It always depends on hierarchies and a special goal that you’ve as a host by gather people. And that’s what I’m trying to make clear. None of us, nor I or the audience, are in total control. It is about the policy of the situation and a combination where I try to get an engagement released” the artist explains.
”That’s what I love by art. This feeling of: Okay, now we are in this situation along with all that it implies, ”Elin Lundgren summons, who has been running Lilith Performance Studio with her partner Petter Petterson since 2007. ”I see this work as a very basic study of what a dinner is, why we are together and what to expect when it happens. It’s all unpredictable because everyone gets so involved in the piece. In this connection, the work is also very much about the prejudices that may be in relation to African culture. ”
”This is a situation where I try to fool you to let go of things that you normally don’t want to do. Normally, I would make myself vulnerable by investing myself in a hope to get something specific from you, but in this statement it is more orchestrated, but I still need guest response and commitment and they will be both homage and lose large. It will be constantly flowing because we always try to fit in – confirm our position to survive. You do not own anything in this circumstance, because it will always change, ”Odun Orimolade expands.
”And when you accept an invitation, you agree to fit yourself to some extent under the intention and power of others,” points out Elin Lundgren and supplemented by Petter Petterson: ”Right now we do not know if people will be happy or angry when they go. It may be quite emotional. ”
YOU ARE INVITED – Kalo Kalo hit the wheel and gamble in to the night! Happy happy! Thank you lovely wonderful participants, fab Odun Orimolade and all of you that came and took part <3 Love in the air. On it again tonight! Only two more times to be in this extraordinary performance!
”Som vanligt är det genomarbetat och storslaget. Under sina tio år har Lilith etablerat ett unikt svenskt konstrum där performancegenren fått växa både i storlek och betydelse.
Även om omfångsrika produktioner inte är något nytt i sig har villkoren inom performance länge varit sådana att de favoriserat snabba och improviserade happenings. Inget ont i dem, men Lilith har visat att performancekonst är mer än så. Med sin institutionella plattform har de produktionsmässigt, men framför allt publikt skapat förutsättningar för att ta den till en ny nivå. Där andra sedan kunnat följa efter.”
Dan Jönsson DN
In the newspaper yesterday about Lilith, The gateway and Orient Express, Yourself! GREAT!
” Sometimes you’re lucky. Apparently, our spacecraft has fallen off course and we have landed on an unknown, dark planet where the queen and her cloned satellites invite to a party with bubbles in neon-blinking glasses and some kind of space-tapas,
ingeniously sereved as molecular models. They shine like gems but taste surprisingly similar to our own chocolate balls, grapes and petits chouxes.
Lilith Performance Studio in Malmö turns ten years and celebrates during this fall with a whole series of imaginative parties. Myriam Laplantes extraterrestrial cocktail party last weekend was the second in the series, an odd mix of new- spiritual science fiction and playful Halloween party where it struck garish, ironic sparks between the props colliding symbols. Zombies and caramel colors. Smoke machine and cookies.
As usual, it is well-worked and magnificent. During its ten years, Lilith has established a unique Swedish art space where the gengre of performance been allowed to grown both in size and importance.
Although extensive productions are not new in themselves, the terms of performance have long been such that they favored fast and improvised happenings. No bad in that, but Lilith has shown that performance art is more than that. With its institutional platform, they have productionwise, but above all, audiencewise created conditions for bringing it to a new level. Where others could follow.
There is a built-in contradiction in the institutional experiment that Lilith has become increasingly skilled in dealing with. The artistic chances of rapid production meet the audience’s expectations in a way that makes uncertainty an asset. Some become pure magic, some fall flat to the ground, and rarely there is any space in between.
In short, it is a risky venture, which as Laplante, try to balance the moods of the novelty space story and the yawning of children in the same work. If that succeeds depends largely on the audience.
The performances in the autumn series ”You are Invited” are made by all artists who have been in the past. Myriam Laplante was introduced in 2013 with a deep-psychological maze where surveillance cameras acted as a connecting metaphor.
Dafna Maimon, who started the fall, stood last year for one of Lilith’s more unforgettable productions, the Sleeping beauty –like ”Modern Lives” with somnambulist-like
actors in a spooky century-shifted environment. Her performance now in September was a reconstruction of Finland’s first falafel kiosk, where the food was paid by the audience responding to strained questions about their growth and did not have the same energy at all.
But here, such distinctions are not as important. For the faithful audience, it is exciting to follow how Maimon is looking for inspiration in her personal history – the falafel place in Helsinki was run by her dad, while the characters in ”Modern Lives” were based on a figure her mother created.
What Lilith offers is a scene for experiments where the audience is included as an obvious part of the trial process. It’s a luxury to be a part. As I said, sometimes you are lucky.”
