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Key Words
DIscussion, Laboratory, Lecture-Demonstration, Talk, Workshop,About
The Flying Circus Project (FCP), conceived and directed by Ong Keng Sen, had a singular focus on Asian artists of all disciplines — traditional, contemporary, urban, folk, ritual, activists, etc. The first three editions were a geographical survey, with artists coming from Burma, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, India, and China. The FCP started primarily with a group of urban Asian artists who were outside of the traditional arts of their countries and Asia, but were interested in reinventing tradition, conceptualising its place in contemporary arts, and looking at the parallels between the traditional cosmos and contemporary life. The first edition in 1996 began with much physical training. 1998 saw the moving away from the aesthetics of intercultural performance into the politics of intercultural performance. There was the introduction of visual artists and unconventional artists in traditional arts. 2000 was the culmination of the geographical survey, with 20 Tibetan monks from Yunnan, China joining contemporary artists in exploring rituals of spirituality and rituals of daily contemporary life. 2002/3 was the final year of all-Asian artists, but it was also the first time that FCP moved out of Singapore. It evolved into an 18-month project where one visiting artist a month worked and collaborated with the residents of the royal town Luang Prabang in Laos. In 2004, Ong began to perceive Asia more as the site where artists would continue their conversations. The process started in 1996 had been achieved in part, i.e. to begin the collaborative processes between Asian artists, who, due to the development of contemporary arts, were often looking towards Europe and the US. However, after eight years, there was the danger that a ‘ghetto’ was developing. There was a need to make porous new borders that were emerging. Hence, the FCP in 2004 invited numerous Asian artists, and others as well, opening a new door. In the sixth lab, artists visited Vietnam under the FCP 2007 – TRAVELOGUE. This was a contextualised conversation in a specific site to explore the issues of memory, transformation, and the local.
In January 2010, the FCP continues in Cambodia and Singapore through the creation of alternative universities (ALTERU) with Cambodian partners, Amrita Performing Arts and Bophana Audiovisual Resource Centre. The alternative universities will include intensive workshops by Ong Keng Sen, Jasmine Ng and Wu Wenguang on the subjects of ‘memory’ and ‘archive’. The programme culminates in Superintense, a marathon of personal strategies of creativity in the urban context in our worlds. From one morning to the next, all the FCP artists will each have an hour to present their work and their practice to themselves and to a public audience. A table, a projector, a microphone, an audience, which can all be reconstructed into an open space – the same conditions are given to each artist. They are invited to share their practice with the audience — past work, present work, future work. It can take the form of a talk, a lecture-demonstration, a performance, slides, a video, a DJ session, a workshop, a discussion. Without a break, all the artists relentlessly articulate their practice, communicating insights into the myriad ways of inhabiting, dissolving, thinking, making, living, destroying, and rejuvenating. An actor, an audience, a shared space. Take a cigarette pause on the run.
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Printed Matter
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