The Flying Circus Project 2009/2010 : an update!

The Flying Circus Project (FCP) 2009/ 2010 has been ongoing, we started with expo zéro on 7 and 8 November, which was the first of three platforms for this current edition of the FCP.

The first platform came and went; we hosted dancers like Padmini Chettur from Madras, Donna Miranda from Manila, Singaporean architect Torrance Goh, visual artist Heman Chong and dancer Joavien Ng who met with artists from Musée de la Danse in Europe. They presented expo zéro, the first-ever dancing museum in Singapore. This continued to Cambodia where FCP artists did a detailed dance workshop programme with 16 dance artists from Amrita Performing Arts.

The second platform was with contemporary artist / filmmaker, Kutlug Ataman, who went to Cambodia first and then to Singapore (where there was a screening on 18 November 2009 and an artist talk on 19 November 2009 at 72-13). He really singed the minds of the dancers from Amrita and also the Cambodian audiences who were at Bophana Center with a screening of Journey to the Moon. Bophana Center is the only audiovisual resource centre in Phnom Penh headed by famed film-maker and documentarist, Rithy Panh.

History is contemporary!

Between 20 to 25 November 2009, FCP was working with Bophana Center where we conduct a one-week workshop with young local visual artists and filmmakers around memory / archives. The participants were an energetic mix of dancers, editors, filmmakers and fashion designers. Led by TheatreWorks' artistic director, Ong Keng Sen and Singaporean film editor, Jasmine Ng, who studied at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, the workshops encouraged critical thinking and to relook at history both personal and beyond.

On 23 November 2009, the participants filmed at the trial of Kaing Guek Eav (alias Duch) former Khmer Rouge, interviewing those who experienced the Khmer Rouge years and those attending the trial. On that day at the ECCC Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, the public gallery in the courtroom was packed with a large audience of Cambodian citizens, including some of the civil party victims, and a small group of foreigners.

Artist universities run by artists for artists.

We are also opting for a more intimate FCP. We are seeing it as ALTERU— alternative universities; introducing different methods, diverse strategies to younger Cambodians born a decade after the civil war who want to express themselves in contemporary ways, in a country which has had to spend the last three decades preserving a destroyed culture and heritage. We have also co-opted our FCP artists to collaborate, bringing them into inter-phases with Cambodian emerging artists.

ALTERU kicks into full swing in January 2010. We will have many artists coming from all over to spend time at Amrita and ending with another workshop for the youths from Bophana led by Wu Wenguang and Keng Sen.

At the same time, the FCP culminates with SUPERINTENSE, ie Platform 03 on 16th January 2010 at 72-13.

SUPERINTENSE is 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 have an hour each to present their work, recreate their practice to themselves and 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 an insight to the myriad ways of inhabiting, dissolving, thinking, making, living, destroying, rejuvenating. An actor, an audience, a shared space. Take a cigarette pause on the run.

For more details on FCP and its artists, read more >>