Project Letter・Callus・Post-war curated by CHEN Hsiang-Wen invites artists from Taiwan, Indonesia, Japan and Malaysia. Artists will share about their works participating in the exhibition also to echo how people encountered each other on historical intersections. (Image courtesy of Mamoru; “Firando Tayouan Batavia- Japan Taiwan Indonesia”) 

ABOUT LCP

What stories have we heard about the past? In addition to written history, what did survivors witness? Is it possible to find more ways to define ourselves by looking into the rustling sounds coming out from the ash pile of history and by examining culturally significant marks ingrained in us?

This project starts with several journeys between Taiwan and the Indonesian archipelago. There is a lasting connection between these two countries in regard to their histories and current social situations. The colonies had been governed by different colonial regimes. Their native languages were eliminated. And the identity and feelings for the motherland were purposefully diluted. Moreover, whenever the governing body changes, the understanding of history and geography of a nation would be replaced by a new set of knowledge. In the post-war era, many cultural groups and individuals who are put at a disadvantage due to lack of discursive or militant power seem invisible. Yet their voices and memories might still be there despite that they choose to forget. In this exhibition, artists collect fragments of the past, research carefully on traces left in nature, cultural practice and personal micro-histories, and further dig out more means to articulate a discourse beyond the existing definition of politics and geography. What’s absurd and intriguing at the same time is that the residues of the past which could not be properly documented in written history have actually been passed on from generation to generation. They travel in the shadowed rifts, mutating and transforming into similar yet different manifestations in varied regions to be shared and divided.

SPEAKERS

Meicy SITORUS was born in Balikpapan in 1984, graduated from Industrial Design at Arts and Design Faculty in Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB). She has a big interest in photography, involved in several photography workshops and has held photography exhibitions. The photography works that she produced are focusing on a follow up on personal matters, usually associated with memory, time, and history. Photography is not just a medium of work and documentation tool, but a method to establish a connection and communication with her surroundings. Influenced by her training and background in design, it is also a tool to support her in researching and sketching during the creative process. Currently working as a freelance photographer as well as graphic designer. In 2013, founded a duo called ‘Tetangga Pak Gesang’ with Arum Tresnaningtyas Dayuputri and has been actively performing around Indonesia ever since, as a sideline project alongside her main passion, photography. Currently working as a freelance photographer and graphic designer. Alongside her main passion of photography, in 2013 she also formed the artist duo ‘Tetangga Pak Gesang’ with Arum Tresnaningtyas Dayuputri as a side project and has been actively performing around Indonesia ever since.

Mamoru holds B.F.A., The City University of New York, 2001 and Master Artistic Research, The Royal Academy of Art The Hague/The Royal Conservatory, 2016. mamoru transcribes the soundscape of the specific locations into texts through listening and extensive research on the history and/or geography; the presented soundscape can be of the past, present, future, and imaginary. The latest project “A Long Listening Journey of a Possible History Especially of Japanese & Dutch & Something More” grafts the 17th century Dutch made imaginary Japanese history on the actual present of the 21st century Japan and creates a possible history. It consists of lecture performances and video works.

Maharani MANCANAGARA is an Indonesian artist who lives and works in Bandung, Indonesia. Her works explore Indonesia’s history, ancient time to present, based on her personal and family experiences. Ideas occur within our natural consciousness on present happenings, while history then derived as a media, connecting different times through historiography of past occurrences. Aided by mandatory causal relationships, history’s coherency is based solely on the writer of the record. This subject is the drive for Maharani to enunciate stories from the outer realm of popular documented history, transforming those to reconstructed monuments. In the last five years, Maharani honed this tendency of devising interruptions as a fragment outside of history’s known continuity that affects incidents in the past.

Arham RAHMAN is an Indonesian curator and visual art researcher who lives and works in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He was graduated from Magister Program of Religious and Cultural Studies, Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta. During this time, he is working in several art and cultural communities, such as; Erupsi (Academia of Psychoanalysis, Art, and Politic), Colliq Pujie Art Movement, Study on Art Practices (SOAP), and a curatorial studies and art criticism group, SPASI. Besides doing research on art and cultural issues, he writes and curate some exhibitions on some art spaces in Yogyakarta. Now he work as a curator on Lorong Gallery. He interest on Lacanian psychoanalysis discourse, post-colonial criticism, and other approach on cultural studies. In art studies, he interest on the discourse about Indonesian art history, the political economy of art, digital art, and contemporary craft.

主辦：策展人陳湘汶、草埕文化藝術工作室
協辦：《數位荒原》駐站暨群島資料庫NML Residency & Nusantara Archive Project (the 2nd year)
贊助單位：東和鋼鐵、國家文化藝術基金會