Nomadic conversations with the local: labs of transformation, tradition and reenactment

I believe in artistic processes as a means to engage the world. Admittedly this is not the interests of all artists but it has been a guiding light in my own choices of work and of priorities. I want to continue to see artists playing vital roles in key issues of the world and of course, increasingly we have to engage with sustainability. However, towards environmental sustainability there has been considerable stasis from the artistic community. I cant say why, for all artists but for myself climate change is still a fairly abstract notion. It is about carbon emission, ozone depletion, deforestation... I know when I fly for a conference like this I am increasing my carbon footprint and I can reduce it by contributing funds for planting trees. But this is the epitome of abstraction. What does all this actually mean? How can we affect others if this still remains abstract for us? We need to refocus socially engaged artistic practice to reflect on the human dimension, the passion, the emotional stakes and not simply to reduce the discussion to issues, ideology or politics.

But before this, who are we talking to? I am interested in the larger public, the audience; this would include politicians, cultural workers, sociologists, economists and other professionals who are directly impacted by any discussion on environment. This interests on the general public is rather ironic for me as all my work has been focused on maintaining the sustainability of artists rather than audience per se. also there are many audiences as we all know. I would also like to state categorically that I am not interested in art as a pedagogical tool for environmental sustainability. Our roles as artists are not just to bring theatre-in-education and outreach projects to schools. The arts can play a part in making each and every individual personally responsible for his or her actions through inspiring dialogue, through negotiating conversation, through enhancing the human dimension, through igniting the imagination. It is important to look at environmental sustainability as a nexus of interconnected issues rather than one theme, one concern. Lets break it down to the human dimension, is it about floods, is it about danger, is it about survival, is it about extinction? There is no doubt that any artistic process about environmental sustainability will first and foremost need to be interdisciplinary as the themes are diverse and ramifying.

Ultimately I would like to engage with artistry, imagination, personal choice. I would like to bring about intimate conversations rather than large mass conferences, I would like sensitivity to be a major concern in bringing about these processes with small groups of targeted public. Intimacy and sensitivity to specific contexts.

For me personally, I reject climate change or environmental sustainability as a playing field for curators, as a fashionable arena for topical shows. In London right now at the royal academy of arts there is a show called EARTH: ART OF A CHANGING WORLD. I find it painful that many works were originally conceived as non-environmentally related but has now they have been curated or appropriated for the show. I find it insulting that artists are co-opted in this way. I believe that we are not endorsers of climate change like endorsers of detergents and deodorants. I find it problematic that ‘brand name’ artists are asked to make works singularly and randomly commenting on climate change. For instance, sophie calle (whose work I love) took her mother’s necklace and diamond ring with her on a visit to greenland, along with a portrait and buried them in a glacier. In a text on a porcelain plaque, calle wonders if the climate changes will carry her mother to the sea to be taken north by the West Greenland current or retreat up the valley towards the ice cap? I can only see this as a tongue-in-cheek response by the provocative artist in an impossible show. Similarly I find it suspect when artists compose music about the arctic/antarctic with sound of glaciers melting. I just don’t find this kind of work relevant to environmental sustainability nor engaging the issue at hand, for an audience.

For I believe that artists are transporters who can be involved in the transformation of society. We can transport our audiences to human dimensions of trauma, of loss, of migration, of assimilation. My first thoughts with the tsunamis and earthquakes in south east asia have been disaster and flight. How can we communicate to an audience that the issues of climate change and environmental sustainability concern them, that they are not abstract discussions involving scientists and politicians. One of my processes about artists and society, the Flying Circus has attempted to connect cultural and artistic sustainability with context, site, memory and reconciliation, ie social sustainability. Beyond conversations, the sustainability has necessitated the creation of alternative universities, knowledge production by artists/cultural workers. This work is ongoing right now in Cambodia with the trials of the khmer rouge; and young cambodians, born after the war, who do not see these trials as being related to them. Only with knowledge and understanding derived through personal experience by both artist and audience, can we begin to transcend the international with the context of the local, sustaining a conversation between the international artist, the local environment - a reflection of whats at stake. It is also important to note that there is also no stability in the local context, different generations have different relationships with nature, with consumption, with economy.

Lets take a trip along a river like the Mekong river flowing through Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Burma, described earlier by Francois Garnier, a controversial French explorer. Let us build a number of interphases along the way; conversations with the local; a nomadic expedition of international artists, scientists, sociologists; looking at how life along the river has transformed and changed; the coexistence of human life and the major source of life, trade, culture: the river. Perhaps it is not first about the issues, but about the humanity that intrigues us, the geopolitics that provokes us - they should speak to the artist viscerally or else it will be simply be another exercise of form and virtuosity, another splendid spectacular. We have to locate the will of the artists to work in this arena or else their participation will only be another workshop for the record.

Ong Keng Sen
Artistic Director