In Memory of a Name symposium – documentation

Thanks to all those that made it to 4A last weekend for the In Memory of A Name symposium. All of the presentations from the symposium have been recorded and will be uploaded early next week.

Elly Kent’s project, Née (born as), continues the conversation on the memorialisation of names all this week at Casula Powerhouse. Elly’s project will be open to the public from 11am – 5pm until Friday 24 February.

In the mean time, here are a few photos taken of the various presentations throughout the day.

Celebrate-Obliterate-Recreate

Fx Harsono, Writing in the Rain (2011), installation view, photograph: Susannah Wemberley

COR (Celebrate-Obliterate-Recreate: an invisible ritual of shared sacrifice) is a response to the In Memory of Name workshops led by FX Harsono. It is a 3-stage process involving aspects of celebrating, obliterating, and recreating personal narratives and identities. Each participant brought one image of a cherished object to the project.  Echoing the words of Eva Gyarmati, “The value of an object lies not only in how beautiful it is but in the stories that it holds, the emotions that it evokes and the lessons that it teaches us,” they wrote about the object and its personal significance to them.

4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art – Exhibition Launch

Edge of Elsewhere launches this evening, 6 – 8pm at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, 181-187 Hay Street, Haymarket. The exhibition will be opened by Maud Page, Curator of Contemporary Pacific Art, Queensland Art Gallery.

YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, THE SLICKEST LITTLE KOREAN SCUMBAG DOWN UNDER, 2012, HD QuickTime film and original sountrack

In its final year, Edge of Elsewhere presents a number of projects in development since 2010. Exhibited at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art are works by Arahmaiani, FX Harsono, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Khaled Sabsabi and YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES.

By initiating and developing experiences of cross-cultural dialogue with communities, and linking these to significant experiences of contemporary art and everyday life, Edge of Elsewhere expands the profile of Australia’s emerging communities by connecting them with broader national and international arts practices.

Workshop – FX Harsono: In Memory of a Name

Beginning in early 2011, Indonesian artist FX Harsono initiated a curatorim to be made up of a group of emerging cultural producers – artists, writers, curators, academics – as part of the artists contribution to Edge of Elsewhere. Through a series of workshops, online discussions, meetings and individual research the group has conisdered the implications of, and decisions tha lead to changing one’s name.

In late October, 2011 Harsono returned to Sydney to participate in the third In Memory of a Name curatorium workshop. The workshop was a chance for participants to come together to share their individual research and begin discussions about how the outcomes of their progress so far.

The curatorium will present a selection of outcomes from their individual and collective research as part of the 2012 Edge of Elsewhere exhibition program. These outcomes are still in development, but stay tuned for more details closer to January!

Why Remember?

Peter Allen sings Tenterfield Saddler. (Sound only, static images)

by Helen Fong

The late singer/ songwriter, Peter Allen, changed his surname from Woolnough. In his autobiographical song “Tenterfield Saddler”, Allen told how his grandfather, his father, and by implication his Tenterfield past no longer had a place in his life. Then came the throwaway line leading to a rousing chorus- “except in this song”. In the song’s three short minutes, Allen deftly managed to memorialise his family while also making a clear statement that he had moved on. Some people who have had traumatic childhoods, as Peter Allen did, seek to reinvent themselves and leave the past behind. It can be an act of courage to do so. Why do others choose to remember? Why did FX Harsono choose to recall his Chinese name in “Rewriting the Erased Name” and “Writing in the Rain”?

Flip

Flip was presented as a case study as part of the emerging critics workshop and curatorium, In Memory of a Name, by participant Scott Wark. Initiated by Indonesian artist FX Harsono, the project aims to provide emerging cultural practitioners with a unique professional development opportunity, to gain invaluable insight into a creative methodology for art making and thinking. The project invited a handful of individuals to research the socio-cultural implications of changing one’s name and what we can learn about representation and identity from this process.

In a pause between recollections, my partner’s Eighty-eight year old grandmother, Flip, said that she didn’t know where the memories spurring her stories and musings came from. The waves of her voice breaking over us appeared from an indistinct part of her past, lacking a linear chronology for her or for us. True to this mode of experience, I am going to tell the story of her name(s) as I know it, partially and disjunctively, speculatively and digressively, from her, from my partner and from their family.

Remembering and Forgetting the Name

by Macushla Robinson

In his recent work ‘Writing in the rain’, FX Harsono writes his Chinese name with a calligraphy brush repeatedly on a sheet of glass, until it is difficult to see the artist through the network of interlocking characters and drips of ink. After a while, water begins to splash against the glass and over the artist, washing away his name in a flood of black ink.

FX Harsono’s recent work deals with personal and political histories: the artist seeks to re-learn his Chinese name, which was changed by Indonesian Government mandate. This is an act that reclaims an ethnic identity and an a personal history.

Maiden – A response to FX Harsono: In Memory of a Name

Maiden was written as part of the emerging critics workshop and curatorium, In Memory of a Name, by participant Elly Kent. Initiated by Indonesian artist FX Harsono, the project aims to provide emerging cultural practitioners with a unique professional development opportunity, to gain invaluable insight into a creative methodology for art making and thinking. The project invited a handful of individuals to research the socio-cultural implications of changing one’s name and what we can learn about representation and identity from this process.

Photo Diary: In Memory of a Name Workshop

4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art played host on 10 and 11 June 2011 to a lively coming together of artists, curators, local historian and critics for FX Harsono’s workshop for emerging cultural practitioners – In Memory of a Name. Over the course of two days, participants bonded over series of talks and discussion sessions.

The workshop began with FX Harsono’s presentation of his recent projects that have used social research as a methodology for his recent exploration on the history of the Chinese community in Indonesia.

We then had invited guest speaker Sue Ingham contextualising Harsono’s practice within Indonesian contemporary art, John von Sturmer expanding on the practice and value of naming in Indigenous culture and John Kirkman explaining the discursive possibilities of community-engagement art through a case study ‘Tracksuits for St. Mary’.

Participants divided themselves into two smaller groups on the second day and continued to devise suitable approaches and methodologies for the upcoming research. As they continue to develop individual case studies and prepare them for our blog, we want to first share with our readers some photos from the workshop. Enjoy!

Watch – TESTIMONY by FX Harsono

There’s only one more week left until we welcome our team of emerging artists, curators and critics to FX Harsono’s In Memory of A Name workshop at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art!

As we busy ourselves in preparation for the event, we thought of sharing a bit of socio-historical background that has formed the basis of FX’s investigation into name-changing. Here’s a two part video made by the artist himself. Beautifully shot and produced, this documentary sheds light on how Chinese Indonesians are coming to terms with their identity as a diaspora community that have been culturally tested under Dutch colonialism and subsequently during the founding of Indonesia and the New Order regime.