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01/21/2005: "The Final Push"
There is an amusement park in the enclave where hardly anybody goes. It has all the rides you could ask for and is set amidst fairy-tale gardens cut out from the jungle landscape that still surrounds it, but the rides are silent for lack of children and grown-ups to make them come alive. It could very well pass for a surrealist installation – fantastic three-dimensional structures flood-lit and lonely, rotting away in the harsh weather conditions of Borneo. An anthem to joy muffled by the call to prayer and the deafening sound of tropical thunderstorms. Tremendous site of inspiration.
I still remember the enthusiasm of the first times we drove there, an enthusiasm that has slowly withered away and I find hard to upkeep the more I uncover of the reality of the enclave. My favourite time is in the late afternoon when the sky gives off an incandescent yellow glow that brings everything to life for as long as it lasts… before the flood-lights take their cue and remind you that life is elsewhere. The enclave is a place in between breaths – structure and conditions are in place but everything has been breathed out and everyone seems to be waiting for life to be blown back in. In suspense(ion), so to speak, which is where I left you last time. The year 2003 was upon us and I had left you on the roller-coaster ride at that most uncomfortable moment when we had climbed so high and could only expect to come crashing down at any moment.
Well then, the final push – in fast forward through 2003/04 and past the endless, boring, legal wrangling that led to the final registration of the Art Forum on the eve, literally, of inauguration night [a succession of set backs and ludicrous demands from the part of government officials dead-set on avoiding any fresh air to be breathed back in to the bubble and which I’m sure you’re relieved I’ve decided to skip - time is short and there are interesting new things that I want to report on]. And then again, the real Art Forum had already been achieved as you will have gathered from the previous accounts. There was no stopping the momentum we had set in motion.
2003 started out with news that a group of ladies who had joined in the ‘Guests in the enclave’ exhibition intended to open an art space. This was welcome news. The Rainforest Gallery became the first gallery space where foreign and local artists could meet. Problems related to licensing stopped them from advancing full-throttle, organising exhibitions and selling the artists’ work at the pace we had wished for but it quickly became a focal point for anybody interested in Art. Sadly exhibitions have been scarce and necessarily lacking in promotion for fear of a clamp-down from the authorities and the main activity maintaining the space alive has been the sale of artists materials [extremely hard and costly to come by in these parts] and a carefully laid out schedule of workshops given by the artists represented by the gallery. This was the first time that I felt that a dynamics was definitely in place. True collaboration was taking place and keeping an important project afloat.
For fear of overkill I allowed some time to pass before setting the idea of the art society in motion. Legal proceedings to set up the Art Forum as a registered society started in April with the invaluable help of Paul Hirschfield. The idea was to have things ready for November but it soon became clear that we would be fighting against Ramadan and the odds. Beyond the red tape, the greatest challenge was getting the local artists to commit themselves to taking on an active part in the society proper [a requirement that needed to be fulfilled, understandably].
Parallel to the legal proceedings we formed a provisional committee to get things in place for the exhibition. To minimise stress and maximize output only those artists and participants from ‘Guests in the enclave’ whom I felt were genuinely enthusiastic were approached. I was especially happy to be able to count with the help of a friend and fellow-artist I had met the previous year, David Kelly, head of the primary art department at my daughters’ school. We set out to work in September holding meetings at the Rainforest Gallery and at each others’ houses, delegating tasks and establishing a calendar, gathering particulars of all the new participants and getting all matter of necessary details in place. We had no guaranties that the society would be formed in time but we took the gamble and scheduled things for January 2004. Somehow, we figured, it would just have to happen… and if not, we would deal with the situation when the time came. But for the time being we understood that it was important to concentrate on laying down the foundations for the big follow-up everybody was expecting.
This was undoubtedly the most interesting period of exchange of ideas with the artists of the enclave. Our paintings were on show for the first time together at the Rainforest Gallery and we would meet and talk in-between workshops. The idea of an art forum was no longer a hollow dream but a reality in the making. I almost felt there was no necessity to crystallise things in the form of a legal society but to just let it grow of itself.
By Christmas 2003 we had a clear view of what the launch of the Art Forum could be [if only the society existed and the licence for exhibiting came through!]. The organizing committee had collected B$10.000 [roughly US$ 5000] from leading businesses and banks in town allowing us to go beyond the programme established initially. A 52 page, full-colour catalogue was in the making, banners and posters were ordered with matching invitations and envelopes with the Art Forum logo, the works. Absolutearts.com got us on-line [my thanks again to Markus Kruse and Jodie Melfi for their vision and generous support] and to top it all the enclave’s Minister of Culture accepted our invitation to be Guest of Honour at the opening. I would say that qualifies as a major upgrade in terms of organization. With a few funds left in the bag and without the possibility of convening the committee before leaving for a short Christmas break I took one last decision: I engaged the services of a young film-maker/installation artist from the Philippines [Glenn Cruz , not a relative, I wasn’t fixing up jobs for the family] who had arrived in the enclave the day before, to cover the setting-up of the show – the meeting of the artists, our comings and goings, camaraderie and squabbles – and interview whoever he intended for a DVD art-movie [his movie] of the Art Forum and the enclave. Somewhat of a risk, but one I felt sure would pay its dividends to the Art Forum, to Glenn and to all the artists involved.
When I returned from Thailand the exhibition was upon us but…
The society had not yet been registered, the licences for exhibiting from the chief of police and the Ministry of Religious Affairs [the censors who check that everything is in conformity with the prevailing mores of Islam] had not come through, the catalogue deal risked falling-through… and, and… the list just never ended… it still feels like the longest seven days of my life and I’m still amazed at how much work fit in. In the end, miraculously, we managed to overcome all the hurdles on time and the whole thing went like clock-work.
On the battle-field things functioned along the lines of the previous exhibition [see my previous entry] and if you’re still with me at this stage of this never-ending saga you can check most of the works displayed and overall views of the museum gallery here. The Philosophy of the Art Forum does not seek to create a society restricted to it’s artists – a group set apart from the rest, organizing things for its members alone [or even aspiring to be the sole promoter of artistic events] – but an open group, a database so to speak, of artists keen on promoting opportunities for Art to spring forth.
To paraphrase the catalogue text:
‘[This] exhibition, the first of a number of events The Art Forum looks forward to organizing is not simply a collective show of works left at the gallery door by the artists to be put up by the members of an organizing committee. It is a group show, a large group but a group nonetheless. It is the result of the spirit of companionship that grew throughout the year and culminated in the work of all the artists involved at the Museum Art Gallery during the three days that preceded the opening night. The Art Forum lives up to its name in that it provides the framework for artists in [the enclave] – professional and amateur – to come together and show their work in a professional environment, sharing thoughts and experiences in the hope that the involvement will lead to the enhancement of the artists’ potential and the progress of their craft. The Art Forum is alive and we foresee that it will spark new collaborations amongst its participants. Whether these will materialize in the form of concrete projects or exhibitions is difficult to foretell but we can now state that there exists a platform for the meeting of like-minded spirits and that a bridge has been set in place for the meeting of foreign and local artists within the enclave.
Art is not a self-centred, self-sufficient pursuit. The possibility of encounter is at the core of the artistic ideal and endeavour. Painting, sculpture and other forms of artistic expression are purely more subtle forms of communicating knowledge and true communication eventually requires a meeting of like-minded souls.
The expatriate artist cannot rightfully claim to have lived and worked in [the enclave] unless he/she has had some sort of rapport with its artists, for their view of things is an essential aspect of the artistic reality in which he/she is immersed and his/her own work can only acquire its true meaning if and when juxtaposed to the work the local artists are producing. Any other attitude would be tantamount to arrogant plundering and would result in little more than a body of work severed from its roots to be shown elsewhere in the future, emptied of its soul. By acknowledging each other’s projects, sharing experiences and exhibiting together our work slides into the present and becomes visible in a new light. The power of art does not so much come from the imagery our technique allows us to conjure but from the commitment we are willing to invest in its development and the wealth of experience we can gather in the process through our interaction with other artists. Without such interaction Impressionism would never have reached the height of its expression, Surrealism would most probably have remained an obscure practice and Art in general would be quite a futile pursuit indeed.
These are but the first steps in a new direction and the current exhibition is but one of the ways in which the Art Forum can contribute to the local Art scene…’
The Art Forum has opened a door to a completely new reality, life itself has acquired [for us artists] a completely new feel. Like the catalogue text says, these are just the first steps, but it feels great. Greatest of all is the feeling of friendship and mutual respect we all seem to have [or at least display] for one another, perhaps because we share the same predicament and sense that we either pull together and get somewhere or fall back into oblivion.
