LEE WEN
  • ABOUT
    • Curricullum Vitae/bio
    • Downloads
    • Links
    • Videos, Films, Moving Images
    • Bibliography
    • Interviews >
      • Huang Zhiming/Open Ends
      • Woon Tien Wei/Performance Researchwa
      • Iola Lenzi/Shifts
      • "Modern Art Reveries" Cheah Ui-Hoon
      • Artlink/Interview2014
      • BLOC TALK >
        • Beauty Is A Battle
  • Collectives
    • Artists Village/FOI/RITES
    • Independent Archive
    • Black Market International
    • Eternal Network international >
      • Call Of The Red
      • We Here Spend Time : Jason Wee & Lee Wen
      • A Clockwork Pisang
  • IDENTITY
    • Journey Artist's Statement >
      • "We are 'perfurbing' here" March 2008
      • "Will the real Singapore art please stand up?" Dec.1999
      • "If you see a performance artist, kill him", 1997
      • Lexicon Of Dissent
      • Sustaining Alterity in the Times of R(v)apid Changes.
      • How To Change The World Without Really Trying
      • Open Letter to the Nation of Josef Ng's
      • Letter to Alan Oei
      • Return to Daydreams >
        • Iola Lenzi/Shifts
    • Journey Of A Yellow Man >
      • Journey of a yellow man No.2
      • Journey of a yellow man No.3
      • Journey of a yellow man No.4
      • Journey of a Yellow Man No.5: Index to Freedom
      • Journey of a yellow man no.6
      • JYM No.9: Trees Resurrection
      • Journey No.11: multi-culturalism
      • Journey No.15: Touching China
    • More China Than You[我比你中国] >
      • More China, Manchester
      • More China, Rome
      • More China, Tokyo
      • More China, Cheng Du
      • More China, Suzhou
    • Ghosts Stories >
      • Ghosts Stories, Tokyo
      • Ghosts Stories, Kwang Ju
      • Ghosts Stories, Mexico
    • Stagger Lee >
      • Stagger Lee
    • Re-imagined Self >
      • Mirrors In The Dark
      • Picasso & Me
  • Interactive Art
    • Ping-Pong Go Round
    • World Class Society
    • AIM: Raffles
    • Chewing Gum Paintings
    • Give Peace A Chance Redux
    • Art vs. Art
    • Freedom, Service, Hope >
      • Freedom, Service, Hope #1
  • Revisits
    • Give Peace A Chance Redux
    • Anthropometries
    • Zen For Clay
    • Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps)
    • COSMOS: Currencies OfferingS Move Over Sky
  • Contexts & forms
    • Drawings (as Renewal) >
      • Drawings (as Endgame)
      • Songs Unsung
      • Portraits of Remarkable People and Tree
    • Strange Fruit
    • Unframed7
    • Nychthemer 1 & 2
    • Lifeboat
    • Dream Boat
    • One Stone, Three Forms
    • Paintings
  • Institutional Critique
    • I Am Not A Performance Artist >
      • I Am Not A Performance Artist/This Is Not A Work Of Art
    • Is Art Necessary? >
      • Is Art Necessary?
    • Anyhow Blues Project >
      • Diary of A Dead Artist >
        • Diary of A Dead Artist #1, Xi-An, China
        • Diary of A Dead Artist #2, Staglinec, Koprivnica, Croatia
    • Dog Man Domesticate
    • "Room For Nothing To Do" >
      • "Room For Nothing To Do #1
      • "Room For Nothing To Do #2"
      • COSMOS: Currencies OfferingS Move Over Sky
  • Texts
    • Lucy Davis/“Insects as Others”
    • Adele Tan/Art & the Iterative
    • Lee Weng Choy/Critical Response
    • Mitsu Salmon/Daydreamer
    • "Inside an Outsider's Dream" Huang LiJie
    • "A Performative State of Indefinite Duration" Bruce Quek
    • Chinese texts: 中文 >
      • Chng Seok Tin/黄人之旅--李文与行为艺术
      • 已死艺术家的日记 1 – 070513 : 英汉翻译:朱爱伦
"Lifeboat 1, 2, 3"
"Theertha International Artists Workshop - 2001",
Lunaganga, Sri Lanka, Sep, 2001.
1. Earthwork
2. Earthwork
3. Performance

There were two earthworks before i did the performance "Lifeboat 3" evolved as a performance based on my series of work, "Journey of a yellow man", in which I paint my body from head to foot in bright yellow paint. Exaggerating and parodying the Orientalist's symbol of ethnicity. At the same time in the context of the performance, I sought to break free from narrow stereotype perception of identity.

Sri Lanka once was a land of imaginative aspirations and enchantment is now in a state of collective paranoia, sharpened by ethnic and intensified economic and social conflicts. The performance itself seeks to reconcile my personal contradictions with that of the desperate and critical social reality I found there.

Besides this there was the climatic condition of drought, which resulted in power cuts at unexpected time of the day due to the prevalent civil strife. In Lunaganga estate I found two dried up ponds where I decided to make lifeboats out of the mud there. It created a fragile image of irony when I filled them up with water, so that the water filled boat appeared to be floating on mud.

On the “Critical dialogue day”, when the workshop was opened to the public I decided to make a performance that began from another performance which the local artists were collaborating in a patch of cinnamon trees. The cinnamon barks were spices, which the colonialists exploited slave labor to produce for export in Sri Lanka’s history. I walked around their performance, carrying a bundle of cinnamon sticks already stripped off their barks. At the end of their performance, I continued with my performance improvising around my mud lifeboat. I opened up the bundle of cinnamon sticks, which I had tied together like a trail of railroad track; a reminder to the introduction of train travel by Sri Lanka’s past colonial imperialists. Making a procession with the cinnamon sticks “train tracks”, trailing me, I moved on towards the lake where I had anchored a small floating island. Upon reaching it I tied the cinnamon “train tracks” to the island and laid over it like a desperate man on a tiny “lifeboat” of an island.

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  • ABOUT
    • Curricullum Vitae/bio
    • Downloads
    • Links
    • Videos, Films, Moving Images
    • Bibliography
    • Interviews >
      • Huang Zhiming/Open Ends
      • Woon Tien Wei/Performance Researchwa
      • Iola Lenzi/Shifts
      • "Modern Art Reveries" Cheah Ui-Hoon
      • Artlink/Interview2014
      • BLOC TALK >
        • Beauty Is A Battle
  • Collectives
    • Artists Village/FOI/RITES
    • Independent Archive
    • Black Market International
    • Eternal Network international >
      • Call Of The Red
      • We Here Spend Time : Jason Wee & Lee Wen
      • A Clockwork Pisang
  • IDENTITY
    • Journey Artist's Statement >
      • "We are 'perfurbing' here" March 2008
      • "Will the real Singapore art please stand up?" Dec.1999
      • "If you see a performance artist, kill him", 1997
      • Lexicon Of Dissent
      • Sustaining Alterity in the Times of R(v)apid Changes.
      • How To Change The World Without Really Trying
      • Open Letter to the Nation of Josef Ng's
      • Letter to Alan Oei
      • Return to Daydreams >
        • Iola Lenzi/Shifts
    • Journey Of A Yellow Man >
      • Journey of a yellow man No.2
      • Journey of a yellow man No.3
      • Journey of a yellow man No.4
      • Journey of a Yellow Man No.5: Index to Freedom
      • Journey of a yellow man no.6
      • JYM No.9: Trees Resurrection
      • Journey No.11: multi-culturalism
      • Journey No.15: Touching China
    • More China Than You[我比你中国] >
      • More China, Manchester
      • More China, Rome
      • More China, Tokyo
      • More China, Cheng Du
      • More China, Suzhou
    • Ghosts Stories >
      • Ghosts Stories, Tokyo
      • Ghosts Stories, Kwang Ju
      • Ghosts Stories, Mexico
    • Stagger Lee >
      • Stagger Lee
    • Re-imagined Self >
      • Mirrors In The Dark
      • Picasso & Me
  • Interactive Art
    • Ping-Pong Go Round
    • World Class Society
    • AIM: Raffles
    • Chewing Gum Paintings
    • Give Peace A Chance Redux
    • Art vs. Art
    • Freedom, Service, Hope >
      • Freedom, Service, Hope #1
  • Revisits
    • Give Peace A Chance Redux
    • Anthropometries
    • Zen For Clay
    • Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps)
    • COSMOS: Currencies OfferingS Move Over Sky
  • Contexts & forms
    • Drawings (as Renewal) >
      • Drawings (as Endgame)
      • Songs Unsung
      • Portraits of Remarkable People and Tree
    • Strange Fruit
    • Unframed7
    • Nychthemer 1 & 2
    • Lifeboat
    • Dream Boat
    • One Stone, Three Forms
    • Paintings
  • Institutional Critique
    • I Am Not A Performance Artist >
      • I Am Not A Performance Artist/This Is Not A Work Of Art
    • Is Art Necessary? >
      • Is Art Necessary?
    • Anyhow Blues Project >
      • Diary of A Dead Artist >
        • Diary of A Dead Artist #1, Xi-An, China
        • Diary of A Dead Artist #2, Staglinec, Koprivnica, Croatia
    • Dog Man Domesticate
    • "Room For Nothing To Do" >
      • "Room For Nothing To Do #1
      • "Room For Nothing To Do #2"
      • COSMOS: Currencies OfferingS Move Over Sky
  • Texts
    • Lucy Davis/“Insects as Others”
    • Adele Tan/Art & the Iterative
    • Lee Weng Choy/Critical Response
    • Mitsu Salmon/Daydreamer
    • "Inside an Outsider's Dream" Huang LiJie
    • "A Performative State of Indefinite Duration" Bruce Quek
    • Chinese texts: 中文 >
      • Chng Seok Tin/黄人之旅--李文与行为艺术
      • 已死艺术家的日记 1 – 070513 : 英汉翻译:朱爱伦