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Goh Sze Ying

admin Resident Artist, Southeast Asian Arts Residency , ,
Sze, image credit: Verónica Troncoso

Goh Sze Ying (b. 1983) is a visual designer and researcher based in Kuala Lumpur. In the past decade, she has had many disparate roles in the areas of art, design, and urbanism. Her work is predominantly concerned with the relationship between design and politics in urban public space.

Between 2011 and 2014, Sze led an initiative advocating participatory urbanism called #BetterCities. While at #BetterCities, she developed various programmes – from public talks, private-public partnerships, workshops, research projects and urban interventions – framed around how art, design, and architecture can introduce tactics and situations capable of transforming the city into a playground of collective or individual actions. Some of these projects had been exhibited in Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, Kuala Lumpur, and George Town. More recently, she completed her MA in urban sociology in London and a research residency at Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (ZK/U) in Berlin. Since then, she is more focussed on research-based projects.

Presently, she is researching and developing an exhibition that will be staged in 2017 as part of a curatorial development programme under the aegis of Japan Foundation Asia Centre. Her exhibition proposal foregrounds the Southeast Asian haze crisis as a framework of inquiry to tease out socio-economic, geo-political, environmental, and technological narratives and issues in Malaysia and the region.

Her residency at Rimbun Dahan is intended to explore and develop a curatorial approach to look at exhibitions as archives and exhibition-making as a research methodology.

http://cargocollective.com/sze

Sarah Jane Parton

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Sarah Jane Parton

Sarah Jane Parton (Omoka, Tongareva, Avaiki-raro) is an artist, writer, filmmaker, and curator who works across performance art, installation, moving image, drawing, photography, creative writing, and ephemera. She creates work that operates as social commentary, and consistently engages with the politics of being, often through collaboration.  She is based in Wellington, New Zealand and is a lecturer in the School of Art at Massey University’s College of Creative Arts.

She studied Design and Fine Arts at Massey University’s College of Creative Arts, graduating with an honours degree in Time-based Art in 2003. In 2012 she completed a Master’s degree in Creative Writing at Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters.

Sarah achieved success straight out of art school when her single channel video work, she’s so usual (2003), was included in Telecom Prospect 2004: New Art, New Zealand – an inaugural survey of contemporary art at Wellington’s City Gallery. Since then she has featured in multiple group shows and public screenings both nationally and internationally, and has held six solo exhibitions, including Guidance at The Physics Room, Christchurch, and The Way at The City Gallery Wellington, both in 2007. From 2010 to 2014 she curated the visual arts component of the boutique music and art festival Camp a Low Hum. She is a member of the feminist art-rock collective, Fantasing.

Sarah currently lives in Wellington with her partner, musician Luke Buda (The Phoenix Foundation), and their two sons, who will be joining her for her three month residency at Rimbun Dahan from March to June, via a grant from the Asia New Zealand Foundation.

(Text adapted from CIRCUIT and Massey University’s website)

Bruce Pashak and Janet Langdon

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Where Are You From, 3D lenticular, Bruce Pashak

Bruce Pashak is a multidisciplinary unrealist artist who uses imagery, text and technology to create abstracted anti-narratives that both affirm culturally-encoded associations and break free of these limitations. The images become an experience, a slippery personal tour through existentialism where the meaningful is unhinged and the meaningless finds its private value. He creates art forms as playgrounds for the imagination. Pashak calls them, “riddles that you might try to puzzle out but never need to solve”.

A masters graduate of the University of Calgary, Bruce Pashak continues his theoretical inquiries into the construction and dissemination of perception with a studio practice that includes combinations of painting, drawing, sculpture, mixed media and 3D lenticular technology. Pashak has had over 40 group and solo shows throughout Canada, the USA and Europe, including the Toronto Art Fair and most recently the Miami Art Fair, Dec 2015 with Back Gallery Project. He has an upcoming solo show in Nov, 2016 at Back Gallery Project in Vancouver, BC. Pashak was a professor in the Faculties of Fine Arts at three Canadian universities for a culmination of 16 years. His works are in private and corporate collections, including the University of Calgary, University of Lethbridge, Nickle Arts Museum, Vancouver General Hospital and the Art Hotel in Calgary. He is represented by Back Gallery Project in Vancouver, BC, Paul Kuhn Gallery in Calgary, AB, and Buckland Merrifield Gallery in Saint John, NB.

Pashak has recently formed the creative collaboration “PLACE” (Pashak Langdon Affirmative Common Experience) with textile artist Janet Langdon. Langdon studied serigraphy at Langara College and textile design at Capilano College and ran her own furniture upholstery business in Vancouver for 10 years. Her textile background brings the element of pattern design into the art works, aligning itself with the philosophy of the neopatternist theory of connections.

Bruce and Janet will be in residency at Rimbun Dahan from February to end of March 2016. For more information on Bruce’s work, you can visit his website.

Arko Datto

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Arko Datto

Arko Datto was in residency at Hotel Penaga from February to April 2016.

My aim with photography is two-fold. I want to push the boundaries of photography, question what it means to be a photographer in the digital age while simultaneously playing the role of observer and commentator on critical contemporary social issues. I was on my way to a doctorate in the theoretical sciences before I decided to change course and explore the burgeoning field of contemporary photography.

I have been promenading across the globe for the past few years and am presently awaiting the next adventure the four winds will carry me to. Apart from working on my own photography related projects, I enjoy playing curator too and have been associated with the Kochi Biennale and OBSCURA Festival of Photography in this role.

Exhibitions & Projections:

  • Gangetic Interludes screened at VOIES OFF, Arles. 2015.
  • CROSSINGS shown at Angkor Photo Festival. 2014.
  • CROSSINGS exhibited at Mindpirates Vereinsheim, Berlin. 2014.
  • CROSSINGS exhibited at OBSCURA Festival of Photography, Malaysia.2014.
  • Paris: La Vie des Autres shown at the Angkor Photo Festival, 2013.
  • The River shown at the Delhi Photo Festival, 2013.
  • CYBERSEX and The River shown at OBSCURA, Malaysia. 2013.
  • Solo exhibition Realms Nocturna at the Seagull Foundation for the Arts, Kolkata. 2012.

Daniel Bear Davis

admin Arts, Dance, Workshops
Daniel Bear Davis

 

 

DANIEL BEAR DAVIS has taught composition, contact improvisation, and Axis Syllabus internationally in Estonia, Finland, Greece, Spain, Germany, Denmark and Mexico. His work prioritizes content over genre, weaving text, dance, video, music and new media without hesitation. He considers all work to be site and context-specific and is interested in mobilizing audience agency through interaction and unconventional use of space. His work has been presented at the Imagining Bodies Symposium in Tallin, Estonia, the San Francisco International Arts Festial, SoWat Now Contemporary Performance Festival, and Looking Left Festival in California, and at the SEEDS Festival and E|MERGE Residency at Earthdance Center, MA. He has performed in theaters, on submarines, desert rocks, construction scaffolding, and art galleries. He’s made pieces about dementia, gender, war, heritage, identity. He cares about image, awe, and beauty. In creating a wide and rich acceptance of what it is to be human in a more-than-human world.

Daniel has been blessed with opportunities to perform with Nita Little, Nancy Stark Smith, Live Art Installations, Felix Ruckert, Kira Kirsch, Erika Tsimbrovsky, Scott Wells, Krista DeNio and many other inspiring body/minds.

(Time)(Place)(Body): a site-specific dance workshop

Join us for a week long excavation of image and movement in time, place and body. We will engage various approaches to body-based performance in relation to site and context. We will compose, de-compose, and re-compose an ever shifting relation to self, other, and environment.

This interdisciplinary performance workshop will combine movement training based in Axis-Syllabus, contact improvisation, butoh and other somatic awareness approaches with compositional tools from Viewpoints, Moment Work, and Performance Collage to create original choreographed and improvised performances in relation to site. The beautiful artist residency center, Rimbun Dahan, offers countless natural and cultivated environments to frame, support, complicate, and shape our work.

The workshop will end with an informal public showing of solo and group material we would have created over the course of the week.

All levels are welcomed – contact dancers, contemporary dancers, performance artists or dancers interested in site-specific, interdisciplinary or installation work.

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DATES: 19 January to 24 January 2016
TIMES: 10 am to 6 pm daily (witth a day off on the 22nd)
VENUE: Rimbun Dahan, Kuang, Malaysia

FEES
Malaysian* participants (with accommodation): RM550
Malaysian* participants (without accommodation): RM450
Non-Malaysian participants (includes accommodation): RM850

SPECIAL OFFER FOR MYDANCE MEMBERS
The first five MyDance members who register get an RM100 discount!

* “Malaysian” refers to Malaysian citizens based in Malaysia.

To register, send an email to david.lim@mydancealliance.org.

 

(Time)(Place)(Body): a site-specific dance workshop is organized by David Lim and supported by MyDance Alliance and Rimbun Dahan.

Check the Facebook event page for updated info…

Dancing in Place 2016

admin Dance, Dancing in Place
Dancing in Place 2016

A fun and informal excursion for the whole family, Dancing in Place features 12 short dance works performed outdoors in the lush tropical garden at Rimbun Dahan.

3-6:30pm
Saturday & Sunday
16-17 January 2016 [same program on both days]
FREE ENTRY

Featuring works by:

  • Alla Azura Abal Abas
  • Lim Hooi Meng
  • Rithaudin Abdul Kadir
  • Lee Ren Xin
  • Rathimalar Govindarajoo
  • Ming Low, for Balletbase
  • Syed Haziq Afiq
  • Nadhirah Razid

And special international guests:

  • Daniel ‘Bear’ Davis (USA)
  • Li Yong Wei & Seow Yi Qing (Singapore)
  • Jed Amihan and Airdance (Philippines)
  • Ong Pholchir and Spine Party Movement (Thailand)

The event will continue, rain or shine! Please bring your own picnic, as well as shoes that can get wet/muddy, umbrellas, and mosquito repellent. Refreshments will be provided.

Sorry, Rimbun Dahan is not a wheelchair-accessible venue.

For map and directions to Rimbun Dahan, see https://rimbundahan.org/?page_id=32

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/708357295930507/

Ineza Roussille

admin Resident Artist, Southeast Asian Arts Residency , ,
Ineza Roussille

Ineza Roussille

Ineza Roussille is an independent documentary filmmaker from Malaysia. She’s produced videos for local NGOs on various social issues. These include videos for Yayasan Chow Kit on street children, for the Joint Action Group for Gender Equality (JAG), a coalition of local feminist civil society organisations, on the importance of women’s participation in the elections (Undi Anda, Suara Anda), a series for PT Foundation on People Living with HIV (PLHIV), and for UNICEF on children’s rights in Malaysia. Currently Ineza is working on an ongoing campaign called I Am You: Be A Trans Ally, which aims to raise awareness on the issues of the Transgender community in Malaysia, and complement the efforts regarding the recent judicial challenge against laws that infringed on the rights of the Trans* community.

Other than her documentary work, she has also worked on several creative side projects, including a short film entitled Blackbird, and a mockumentary on lesbians in KL entitled, Angmo & Amoi. Angmo & Amoi has been screened at various queer film festivals including in Manila, Philippines, Jakarta, Indonesia, and Austin, Texas in the USA. She recently won first prize for the PLHIV series at the Red Ribbon Short Film competition, organized by the Malaysian AIDS Council.

She’ll be in residency at Rimbun Dahan for January 2016 to work on a memoir project to explore the story of her father’s life, which may be turned into a graphic novel further down the line.

“As fulfilling as my journey into video activism has been, I feel like I need to step away from the camera and focus more on my writing. My father passed away in March this year, and while clearing out his apartment, I realized I was surrounded by his life story. From the primary school report cards that he kept, to the disgustingly smoke stained walls of his apartment, the visuals in that space painted a picture of him I knew so well, and yet did not understand at all. I realized I needed to write his story, from the perspective of the only person who had the experience of being his child. In writing his story, I hope to allow myself the space to personally grieve his loss, and at the same time produce a story that would make him proud.”

 

Priceless: Featuring works by 2015 resident artist Al-Khuzairie Ali

admin Exhibition, Resident Artist
Priceless: Featuring works by 2015 resident artist Al-Khuzairie Ali

PRICELESS Web header

Rimbun Dahan presents Priceless, showcasing works made by ceramic artist Al-khuzairie Ali during his six-month residency from July to December 2015, where he explored the concept of human connection to the external world (an ongoing focus in his work) through the subject of animals. The external world overflows in Rimbun Dahan, a green lung home to a variety of wildlife, tucked away from the bustle of the city. Within the grounds humans, animals and plants alike live under a canopy of branches, leaves and steel beams, providing fruitful intersections of the organic and the constructed. This setting provided the perfect incubator for the artist and his explorations.

Khuzairie hails from Pahang, home of the largest portion of Taman Negara, one of the oldest rainforests in the world. This sense of place informs his connection and exploration of the natural world time and again – from his studio in Puncak Alam he began to think of what used to be lush, thick jungle disappearing under development and construction, habitat disappearing under greed. “I look at the hideous side of the human character which has an impact on other beings in the ecosystem,” says Khuzairie of his inspiration. “We know that some animals are threatened with extinction but the modern world focuses on the importance of money and this has many people losing their judgment and ignoring the nature of life.”

We invite you to visit the exhibition and experience Al-Khuzairie’s work as well as the surroundings that made the work possible.

OPENING HOURS:

Weekends 10am – 6pm, Monday to Friday by appointment
16 – 24 January 2016

Admission is FREE.

Rimbun Dahan is also hosting our annual dance event, Dancing in Place, a series of site-specific contemporary dance performances by dancers from all over Asia, on 16 and 17 January.

There will be a guided tour of Rimbun Dahan’s grounds and traditional village houses at 9am on Sunday 24 January, conducted by Angela Hijjas. For the event page on Facebook please click here.

Southeast Asian Choreolab 2016

admin Dance, SEA Choreolab
Southeast Asian Choreolab 2016

An international choreographic laboratory for emerging Southeast Asian contemporary dance choreographers, facilitated by Japanese choreographer Akiko Kitamura, at Rimbun Dahan, from 28 May to 5 June 2016.

Participants

  • Noun Sovitou (Cambodia)
  • Citra Pratiwi (Indonesia)
  • Sabri Gusmail (Indonesia)
  • Muhammad bin Samsudin (Malaysia)
  • Al Jabar bin Laura (Malaysia)
  • Chantal Primero (Philippines)
  • Bernice Lee (Singapore)
  • Norhaizad bin Adam (Singapore)
  • “Haste” Sompong Leartvimolkasame (Thailand)
  • “Much” Pakhamon Hemachandra (Thailand)
  • “Ben” Mai Minh Anh Khoa (Vietnam)
  • Lucy-Margaux Marinkovich (New Zealand, special participant-observer)

Project Overview

The 14 participants were chosen through an open call process, with applications submitted to a panel including committee members of MyDance Alliance and World Dance Alliance Asia-Pacific.

The participants lived, worked and explored together in the arts community of Rimbun Dahan for 9 days, with guidance from our international facilitator, Japanese choreographer Akiko Kitamura.

The program consisted of 7 work days in the studio, with choreographic tasks assigned by Akiko Kitamura involving working in duets. The morning sessions consisted of workshops led by the participants themselves, to introduce their own cultural backgrounds and creative practices to their peers.

The Choreolab concluded with an informal showing of the duet works that the participants had made, to a small audience in the studio at Rimbun Dahan. [Photos from the showing below by Huneid Tyeb.]

Project Aims

Like the previous Southeast Asian Choreolabs in 2014 and 2015, the project aims to support and enable emerging Southeast Asian contemporary dance choreographers to

  1. Adopt new choreographic tools and physical, thematic and conceptual approaches to enrich their artistic practice;
  2. Develop regional networks among their peers and with regional dance institutions, for knowledge sharing, future artistic collaboration and touring;
  3. Experience works of art, cultures, places and histories beyond their home, to increase international understanding and to help contextualize their artistic practice.

Akiko Kitamura profile imageAbout Akiko Kitamura, facilitator

Akiko Kitamura was born in 1970 in Tokyo. She learned ballet dance and street dance in her youth, studied dance theory at Waseda University and began to build a professional career as a choreographer in show business while still in her teens. She choreographed many pieces for commercial films, fashion shows and plays. In 1994, she founded her own company Leni-Basso. In 1995-1996, she stayed in Germany for a year as a resident artist.

In 2001 she was invited to the Bates Dance Festival and created Finks, one of her best known works, performed more than 60 times worldwide. Ghostly Round (2005), choreographed for In Transit organised by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), is another of her signature works which has toured internationally. Akiko Kitamura has made many works for international companies, commissions and collaborations such as for American Dance Festival, Group Motion Dance Company in Philadelphia, ACE Dance and Music of Birmingham, and avant-garde rock group Art Zoyd in France.

Akiko started to learn pencak silat in 2004 according to a strong interest in the body techniques of South East Asia, and in 2010 she came to Indonesia to research dance, music and martial arts more deeply. In 2011, she started to collaborate with Indonesian artists including choreographer/dancer Martinus Miroto, Yudi Ahmad Tajudin (Teater Garasi), dancer Rianto, musicians Kill the DJ (Jogja Hip Hop Foundation), Slamet Gundono, and Endah Laras, and a team of Japanese artists to create the To Belong Series, such as To Belong-cyclonicdream- (2013) and To Belong/Suwung (2014). The work explores how two cultures meet, and connects the old world to the contemporary using video, music and dance. It also aims to discover the new generation of the Asian Body: the repository of the traditional and the contemporary worlds.

In 2015, Akiko was an Asian Cultural Council Fellow and a Saison Foundation Fellow. Since 2001 Akiko Kitamura has taught at Shinshu University, Nagano, as associate professor of the Faculty of Arts.

http://www.akikokitamura.com/
http://www.akikokitamura.com/tobelong/english/

The Southeast Asian Choreolab 2016 was a joint project by

rd_text_green wda logo

Supported by

JFKL-Logo_KL_smallerMyDance Alliance Logo Smallaswara_logo

Chan Aye & Phyu Mon

admin Resident Artist, Southeast Asian Arts Residency , , ,
Chan Aye & Phyu Mon

Chan Aye (b. 1954) is a sculptor, installation artist, painter, and writer from Myanmar. He was self taught before going on to study traditional Myanmar painting between 1986 and 1989. He has developed a unique pictorial language that is inventive and at the same time inherits the iconography of Myanmar cave painting and mural paintings, as found in the temples at Bagan, Sitkaing, and Po Win Taung in North Myanmar, as well as his studied interest in Western art, which the artist has studied in magazine and book reproductions through the years. His art is rooted in physicalizing the various states of life’s existence and spirituality, and engages with the dualities of material and immaterial forms: color, time, and the dimensions of human emotions, of anger, love, hate, and greed, with diverse materials such as paint, wood, marble, glass, sandstone, and paper from Myanmar Shan State, silk, motor equipment, lighting, bronze, and steel. Searching for new ways to merge traditions with the contemporary condition, he continues to create art through periods of political turmoil and change, and in the aftermath of the devastating Cyclone Nargis in 2008. Chan Aye has exhibited in Singapore, Germany, Finland, France, Hong Kong, India, Thailand, China, New York, and London.

Phyu Mon (b. 1960), writer, photographer, performance artist, and painter, grew up in an environment distinguished by strong tradition and rich culture. Since her teens she has written poetry, short stories and also painted. Now, her recent work is writing articles about art in Myanmar Magazine and Journal, as well as other international publications. Her work expanded beyond writing when she was introduced to video and film production through a program at the University of Finland, and also when she accepted a Diploma of Photography from Myanmar Photography Association. She is one of the very few women artists in Myanmar who currently works with digital photography and visual art. She is also the first female performance artist in Myanmar and has participated in several local and international exhibitions and festivals. She currently runs the Blue Wind Art project in Myanmar.

In her art, she presents the contentment and peace even of a hard life, the need for progress but at the same time the need to care for the environment. She is at present witnessing the cultural changes taking place in the urban areas through globalisation but she feels confident that the rural people, the true representatives of Myanmar, will not be overly swayed by western culture. Having struggled to break out of a restrictive and traditionalistic society, she knows how strong the culture’s values are. Her hope, presumed in her art, is that the best of these values will be kept intact for the sake of future generations. Phyu Mon has exhibited her works in Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Cambodia, Singapore, Korea, Denmark, Spain, UK, France and the US.

Chan Aye and Phyu Mon will be undergoing a two month residency at Rimbun Dahan. For more information on their work, visit Chan Aye’s website, and Blue Wind Art’s website.