Collectives - lee wen 李文

on festivals...

By tradition the festival idea originally derived from that of significant religious occasion, which manifests itself by way of a feasting celebration. Through the years of development they seem to lose its sense of value and relevance, in danger of spiraling down into frivolity and commercialism. One petition for its manifestation is the post-war consciousness that the preceding cultural status quo was called in question and as our world grew with intensified globalization artists should have more physical meetings and create with consciousness of inter-cultural sensitivities, exchange and understanding. Such events used the model of symposiums recalling the root word derived from the Greek “sympósion” as a drinking party in the Socratic tradition of meetings with philosophical discussions. The drinking was necessary to help loosen our tongues and make light our all too serious high-minded attitudes, to linger on the hermetic traditions of forecasting our imaginations. Performance art emerged from radical anti-art beginnings with inherent social and ethical dimensions, at times in an underground situation, and has been critical of prevalent social and cultural functions, norms and status quo. As it is being accepted into mainstream institutions and state initiated mega exhibitions such as bienniales, such universal acceptance may be a triumph of uprooting old ideas of art and culture but jeopardize its critical cutting edge and politically charged motivations for social change.

On groups, collectives, networks...

First and foremost we are individuals. Coming together to share resources, information and seek emotional, psychological and sometimes even material, economic support from each other. We come as individuals working together with a common belief in art making as a way of life. But we do not actually represent anyone in particular as far as groups go except ourselves.It is often a mistaken notion the expectations of a group of people who identify so much with each other in an art group in the same way as other social groups normally entails, some leader giving the main thrust and voluntarily followed by the rest. As artists we believe in each individual's responsibility and hence our close association with anarchic ideals of peaceful indeed responsible but never any advocacy for violence nor chaos and disorder as there seems to be the stereotypical perception of anarchy seems to be based on. Usually we are already busy in our individual work however often getting together when we find some discrepancy in our society with regards to certain manifestations of art whereby we saw the need to fulfill the gap with our collective effort.

I doubt as a curious observer of social behaviour whereby different societies have variations of alternative groups formations and structured around different key personnel. How these evolve into the frameworks where small committees of operational staff to maintain the minimal requirements as often on a shoestring budget and to get the show on the road is to me the amazing 'revolution' that is truely taking place in our society. This is the work i call the edge of cultural work where someone it takes place because we are fun lovers hahaha also sometimes mistaken for carpet baggers aiyoh one should know better where the gold pot lies and it ain't at the end of the rainbow just yet!