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Welcome to the Schmigloo
By Philippa Barr
Have you ever been to an art gallery opening and just hung out around the bar, preferring to socialise than check out the art? A project by Keg de Souza and Christie Petsinis, the Schmigloo is an artwork that attempts to reconcile the conflict between the social nature of the art event and the ordinarily more subjective experience of art in a gallery setting. A portable and inflatable structure, the Schmigloo travelled to different openings and events during the Next Wave Festival held in Melbourne in May this year. Its walls and roof are made from a textile membrane, hand-stitched together by artist Keg de Souza and Alice Kruger. Since the structure is lightweight, it can be kept upright with just the wind energy from a small fan, and can be packed up and the end of the night and trundled off to the next venue. People could track down the Schmigloo online, using an SMS service, or by asking around. Keg de Souza discusses the reason for this work and the making of.
What conversation or moment inspired the esky? What was the first concept, a bar, an inflatable, or an installation?
The idea for (the bar formally known as Esky) was inspired from a previous Next Wave festival opening where there were over 50 shipping containers with different artist collectives and Artist Run Initiatives showing work. The "bar" was a trestle table with buckets of ice and beer. Instead of checking out the art, everyone was gravitating back to this table and gathering there. This is not an isolated incident; it's something that is usual at openings and festivals, where the social side is just as important as the art. So the idea behind Esky was to embrace both of these elements and allow the 'art' to be the bar. By making the bar a portable, nomadic structure it could be transported between openings during the festival to become the bar for each one.
Where did you go to research inflatables?
The 'world wide web'- it's a wealth of information! By learning about different types of inflatable making then deciding that trial and error with a little bit of logic were going to be the only way to go!
During the Festival, the Schmigloo was actually called The Esky (after another portable bar). How did Nylex find out about the Schmigloo/Esky? Did you contact them yourselves? How did you come to the agreement that you could use the name for a limited time?
We approached Nylex to be one of our sponsors. They hold the Registered trademark of the word "Esky", and we wanted all the furniture inside Esky to be made of Eskies. They agreed to be one of our sponsors and loaned us heaps of Eskies for the duration of the festival but made us sign a contract saying we would no longer use the name Esky post-festival. Without a legal force like the Nylex corporation have, and also rethinking this colloquial term in our language is actually quite racially insensitive, the name Schmigloo came about.
What made you decide on the igloo shape?
I guess it stemmed from the name, Esky, which was selected because it was a portable bar. Also when looking at different kinds of inflatables, there was this great one that was in this book called Recipes for Disaster, which was a huge dome shape made out of black plastic which they described as being super easy to make.
Why did you invite Christie Pestinis (a practicing architect) to participate in the project?
I actually also trained as an architect and Christie and I had always wanted to work together on a project partly for this reason, so we decided 'Esky' would be perfect and decided pitch this project together for the festival. In the end Christie wasn't really able to take that much time of work and I took on the inflatable side of the project, but as it turns out Christie is also amazing at organising sponsorship from all sides and we divided the project up in this way. We had such a small budget for this quite ambitious project so she went about getting sponsorship for everything from to Man with a Van to bump us in and out of each venue. It was also really important to us that we liked our sponsors and they liked our project- so we had all these lovely small businesses supporting us, like microbrew Mountain Goat beer.
With such a small time frame and just myself working on the structure, with no prior experience building inflatables, I sent out a group email telling people what I was up to and seeking people who could spare some time sewing, when the time came. I had heaps of people who said they would be keen to help and that's when I met Alice, a friend of a friend, who was definitely the most enthusiastic. We decided to meet up and she said she would love to help out, though she'd never built an inflatable either, she was really keen to learn how. We spoke a lot about how we were going to put it together and looked at beach balls and thought the basic structure should be a half dome and realised that it would need to be double skinned, if we wanted to have an entrance that was constantly open- which is kind of necessary as a bar. All the other inflatables we'd seen were single skinned and needed a kind of 'air-lock' system that allowed people to enter through a zip that was closed behind them, then a second zip into the inflatable was opened to allow them inside the main structure. I guess from there it involved a lot of lateral thinking, as we didn't have an example to work off.
How did you work out e to keep it erect with a fan?
We thought we would need a jumpy castle blower as the structure is quite large (6m diameter), which is what we used to initially inflate it. But in Recipes For Disaster, they claimed to have used a normal fan to inflate their huge structure so I figured it was worth a try. It is kind of amazing that it can stay inflated with just a desk fan.
And then you needed to choose a material that would be light enough to stay up and also fire retardant etc...?
I found this material supplier that specialises in plastic materials and had them send out a bunch of samples. With just a household sewing machine to work with we wanted something that was light weight, but durable to use and the material we chose was just a lucky uneducated guess!
Is this when the calculations began?
We had decided on breaking the igloo up into sections like a beach ball and offset the strips they cut them into small bricks, which would join on the edges between the inner dome and the outer dome. Alice figured out the calculations for the curve using her maths brain and a compass. We then got a big print out of one of the sections and used that as a template and started cutting and sewing it together systematically.
The esky is handmade, so the cutting and sewing had to be very precise in order for the structure to inflate. Since you admit little experience in sewing, was this difficult to accomplish? - Each fabric block is laid out and sewed in a precise arrangement. Were there any costly mistakes?
The structure was made up of hundreds of pieces of fabric sewn together; this enabled us to get the brick pattern, as well as the shape. The sewing involved was all pretty straight forward- nothing as complicated as following a dress pattern- or even hemming- there was just a lot of it! As Alice works full time and was only available for a day on weekends and the festival was getting closer I took a few months off from work to stay in my back room sewing, and sewing... and sewing! It got so large towards the end it required two of us to hold it in place just to sew it!
We had planned the structure so much and thought about how it would work but we actually had no idea if it was actually going to work until we had sewn it all up and inflated it for the first time- and it worked! It's amazing what a DIY philosophy, a lot of sewing and maybe a bit of cockiness can do!
Any plans to work on more inflatables?
I definitely would love to make more inflatables in the future but usually the process of me making things comes from the idea, then skills or processes I am familiar with come into practice.
To find out more about The Schmigloo (including future sightings) go to:
http://www.whereisesky.com
Or Keg's blog:
http://www.allthumbspress.com
Philippa Barr is producer of Uliko based in Berlin.
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Vientiane 4 Seoul
By Emily Johnson
Image courtesty of Phoonsab Thevongsa & Vientiane Times
In the capital of the Lao People's Democratic Republic break dancing is very cool. Open mic and 'battle of bands' events are popular, and it's not uncommon for any kind of music event to turn into a dance-off between b-boys. And In June the Korean Gambler and Animation crews performed their Flying High show at the Lao National Cultural Centre to a packed audience at the Lao National Cultural Centre. Vientiane loves it's K-pop.
A simple stage was draped with enough red velour to suit a high school eisteddfod. Organizers went to some effort to decorate, and even covered the BeerLao sponsorship sign under worn cloth. The show began with some choreographed routines which evolved into more freestyle steps and dance battles. But the key move, surprisingly, involved a laptop and a Powerpoint presentation. The b-boys used amid show interval as an opportunity to take a breather and play a video of recent achievements. The audience was suitably impressed, and later the venue looked more like a European soccer field than a cultural centre in a communist country, as excited fans surged forward to praise their team.
There are currently a few groups making pop, rock and metal in Lao, including popular group Cell. Yet most young locals go to neighbouring Thailand or Vietnam for music events. That is starting to change with the development of a local Vientiane music scene.
In June French group X-Makeena, staged an industrial techno party in a dilapidated circus tent built by the Soviets in the 1980s. Creating atmosphere with dry ice, WWII gas masks and flashing lights, the rave raged until late (if you call 11pm late). Supported by the French Cultural Centre in Vientiane, this event and others like it are mostly targeted at the falang, however on this occasion attendees were surprised by the collaboration with Lao hip hop star L.O.J.
Twenty years ago, gigs in Gambler and Animation crew's hometown of Seoul were finished by 10pm, so kids could catch the last metro ride home. Japan was easily the coolest country in Asia. But these days with thanks to Korean and Taiwanese music producers, Japan has had to make some room at the top of the cultural hierarchy. Maybe one day Lao will have a strong music culture, and the means for that culture to be valued in Thailand and Vietnam - or somewhere as cool as Korea.
http://www.myspace.com/xmakeena
www.gamblercrew.co.kr
Emily Johnson is a policy advisor with a Lao government agency in Vientiane.
Phoonsab Thevongsa is entertainment reporter for the Vientiane Times.
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The Tokyo Spank
by Melanie Fulton
1. When u get dressed, do you prefer to look
a) like a salary-dude
b) like an earth mother
c) like an ice-cream
2. At a party do you
a) get wasted
b) get busy
c) get 17 new best-friends and start a techno band
3, Your dream is
a) to have a boob job
b) to have a baby
c) to have a holographic monster machine
If you answered mostly C`s the find a bow the size of a small man, glue some candy to your face, and join your new friends in the Tokyo SPANK scene.
Image courtesy SPANK Koenji
The SPANK style wave of art, fashion and music began in 2004. Mastermind Sayuri Tavuchi says, `I was inspired by America`s 80s culture. I started a shop at my own standards and I just did as I pleased'. Customers can play the shop like a game, racks of amazing clothes and accessories hide plastic play-things, obselete toys and sparkly crafts. Keyboard-pop pumps out of the stereo as staff talk, giggle and make accessories. Unlike the boutiques with more attitude than clothes, no-here one`s cool, they happily greet everyone who walks through the door. Customers always leave the shop with new clothes, new friends and a hankering for a banana milkshake.
A style this fun has attracted the interest of Japanese such as Fruits and Cutie. From the shop HQ, accessory-weighted teens spill out onto the streets and are snapped up by cameras everywhere. These days these kids are featured in most fashion mags, blinding readers with hyper-colour.
Dressed and ready, it`s time to find a SPANK party. Noisy rap bands, DJs and rock`n`rollers mix to entertain the fluffiest crowd you can imagine. As you approach the dance-floor don`t be surpised to see tribes of unicorn-people bopping with popples (an 80s toy monster which can roll up into a furry ball), as teens chew candy and scream for bass. According to Tavuchi, a SPANK party is `loads of color, never enough accessories, and only the prettiest boys and girls'. Crazy live shows, on-stage dance breaks and a bustling shop are some of the things you can expect.
After opening a second shop in Tokyo, and staging many parties, the SPANK staff have finally stepped under the lights and started Chimmy and the SPANK Drox, a music group self-described as, `upbeat, techno-pop, fluorescent!`. Despite its very recent birth, Chimmy and the SPANK Drox are already playing in parties all over Japan. Their recent concert in Osaka, a place mostly known for noise and hardcore, saw a whole rainbow of party-goers lighting up the concrete streets of Shinsaibashi. Adjusting pom-poms and polka-dot hair SPANK Drox took to the stage, and the crowd went wild. Heartshaped guitars and toy keyboards created the sound, while seven girls plus four boys bounced energetically and punch-danced their way into one anothers' hearts.
From a small shop in Koenji, SPANK has become a style and series of colletives across Japan and overseas, making fashion and music, learning English off the backs of t-shirts from the 80s. And if it does come to a fight between unicorn and ice-cream, my money's on strawberry ice cream - to win.
SPANK is online at http://SPANKworld.jp
Melanie Fulton is a writer and performer based in Osaka.
Image courtesy SPANK Koenji
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Hanging Out in Yogja
Interview by Philippa Barr
Walking on the sky by Bayu Widodo
Bayu Widodo is a contemporary artist from Yogyakarta, Indonesia who produces line drawings, paintings, woodcut and stencils that feature strong political references and judgments. Bayu has exhibitd at Mori Gallery in Sydney and The National Art Gallery in Canberra. When we made this interview he was exhausted from making art and fun for the Yogyakarta Art Festival, but very kindly agreed to answer my questions in English, without a translator.
Mau ke mana?
Yesterday we finish job for the jogja art fest. Today I just hang out and drink coffee.
What did you do for the festival?
I made patches and some t-shirts from my drawings and organized a tattoo workshop with my friend. DIY is important for me.
I want to ask you about pop music in Indonesia.
Pop music here is just what they make for the major music market. I don't like it because it just sells love between boy and girl.
When you are listening to recorded music are you usually hanging out with other people or sendiri, alone?
I like to listen to music with my friends and everywhere.
Where do you hear bands? What kind of venues do you have in Jogja?
Usually I see bands at art gallery openings or in music events, I like indie gigs, in open spaces.
Does everyone dance to the music? Do you dance?
I like energetic music with much power which makes me yeayyyy and happy. Music that makes my body feel burned! I dance with everybody.
Have you been to any gigs recently?
He he too much party now at jogja for the art festival. Two days ago I went to a punk gig and saw this band from Australia called CRUX. I hung out with all my friends, and put too much alcohol into my body.
What other kinds of music are you into? Or not into?
I don't really like hip hop. I don't know many references to hip hop, but I like it with resistance lyrics, which makes me think and get more spirit.
Mostly I love energetic, powerful, hardcore music. Punk music.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goodgoodwae
http://www.nyalakanapi.blogspot.com
Philippa Barr is producer of Uliko based in Berlin.
TV addict #2 by Bayu Widodo
Dance with life by Bayu Widodo
Angry people #2 by Bayu Widodo
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House and Lifestyle
By Philippa Barr
Commission house in a town camp of Alice Springs
It's a mess in here. Blankets and crap all over the floor. Rubbish everywhere. No chairs, just people squatting on the floor. What is the artist thinking?1
This work is an investigation into the aesthetics and invention of aboriginal housing. In an indigenous context, housing is most often conceived as a problem and a right. If shelter is fundamental to existence, then in order to protect its citizens the state has a duty to ensure they are housed. Indigenous communities and families should be provided with houses - a house - so that they can maintain life. A life. Because different houses come fitted out with a normal of doing things.
Food in the kitchen, toilet at the back, television in the living room. Toys left wherever they're dropped. The odd potted plant. Sleeping inside, cricket outdoors, sex inside with the door shut. We learn this as we grow up, mostly we follow it. Not always. But it is true to say that a house comes fitted out with ways of doing things inside it, a model life, a way of being in the world. In the Central Desert, Aboriginal people want the house but they don't want the life. Both must change.
Houses must be reordered. The State delivers a house ready-made, one size fits all. First it lays out the rectangular concrete slabs, then the concrete bessa blocks - one by one, straight up, until you have yourself a perfect rectilinear house. 3 bedrooms, one bathroom. Same as all the other houses. Job don . The house is given to us ready-made, one size fits all - a European house, the public house. But it doesn't work. We need to be able to see outside. We need to see the stars as we sleep. The toilet's in the wrong place, too close to the bedrooms, and we can't see who's going inside.
So the process of disassembly begins. We take it apart and put it back together in some new way. Maybe that doesn't work either. Its hot inside, there's no electricity for air conditioning and the concrete has been cooking all day in the 45 C sun. We knocked out the windows for some relief. Then a relative who always demands our money or attention has arrived in town. We stick black plastic in the windows and paint the leftover glass black. We hide. When night falls we drag our mattress outside and sleep there. We're so relieved to be outside and not in that hot house. This might not work either. It's a deconstructive process, we keep trying different experiments in order to get something that works for us. Maybe we never do. Or maybe we find something that works for a while but it doesn't last. Nothing lasts.
The houses are used differently, by many people - often an uncontrollable number - and consequently they have a affect on the senses, they look and smell different, they even sound different. This appearance of disorder creates a negative aesthetic impression, and also belies the order that can and does underlie the presentation of these houses. This exhibition confronts people with an Aboriginal way of ordering space and thereby plays with the feelings of disease and discomfort often experienced by Western visitors to Aboriginal communities.
The investigation aims to get an impression of the aesthetic value that residents and visitors place on these houses, how they use them, and how they would change them. The dominant theme that has emerged is one of impermanence, adjusting to living in permanent structures after millennia of mobility, caring for things so that they last, and maintaining the view that ultimately every thing is impermanent.
In western culture we try to keep things, to petrify them - fixed in place and time, permanent. We are very afraid of decay. Once we have something we want it to remain in the same state forever. We encase our selves and our stuff in houses, for preservation. It is this fear of decay that informs our aesthetic reactions to these spaces - our aversion and fear. In Aboriginal communities this is less of a concern, people come and go, toys get lost, the air conditioner breaks down, people take spare parts from one another's cars. Only law and country are permanent.
So the space is a zone of conflict. Different sets of ideas wrestle one another, different ways clash. Whether to preserve or not, to care or not? Teeth decay, people die, matter transforms. Even rock is not solid. Against this, running through this, underneath it, and all around everywhere you have the law - stable, unwavering. We erect a humpie for one night, we live for fifty years, law stays. Law is forever. Only now the law will change, has to change, has to remodel spaces, houses, objects to allow some kind of coexistence with another civilisation. Law will have to find a way to meet and negotiate. To compel people in Australia to care for country like their houses. And to compel them also to recognise the indigenous logic, another way or ordering space and life. Even if it fights their sense of what is beautiful, young, well preserved. Because it fights.
Philippa Barr is producer of Uliko based in Berlin.
By Philippa Barr
Have you ever been to an art gallery opening and just hung out around the bar, preferring to socialise than check out the art? A project by Keg de Souza and Christie Petsinis, the Schmigloo is an artwork that attempts to reconcile the conflict between the social nature of the art event and the ordinarily more subjective experience of art in a gallery setting. A portable and inflatable structure, the Schmigloo travelled to different openings and events during the Next Wave Festival held in Melbourne in May this year. Its walls and roof are made from a textile membrane, hand-stitched together by artist Keg de Souza and Alice Kruger. Since the structure is lightweight, it can be kept upright with just the wind energy from a small fan, and can be packed up and the end of the night and trundled off to the next venue. People could track down the Schmigloo online, using an SMS service, or by asking around. Keg de Souza discusses the reason for this work and the making of.
What conversation or moment inspired the esky? What was the first concept, a bar, an inflatable, or an installation?
The idea for (the bar formally known as Esky) was inspired from a previous Next Wave festival opening where there were over 50 shipping containers with different artist collectives and Artist Run Initiatives showing work. The "bar" was a trestle table with buckets of ice and beer. Instead of checking out the art, everyone was gravitating back to this table and gathering there. This is not an isolated incident; it's something that is usual at openings and festivals, where the social side is just as important as the art. So the idea behind Esky was to embrace both of these elements and allow the 'art' to be the bar. By making the bar a portable, nomadic structure it could be transported between openings during the festival to become the bar for each one.
Where did you go to research inflatables?
The 'world wide web'- it's a wealth of information! By learning about different types of inflatable making then deciding that trial and error with a little bit of logic were going to be the only way to go!
During the Festival, the Schmigloo was actually called The Esky (after another portable bar). How did Nylex find out about the Schmigloo/Esky? Did you contact them yourselves? How did you come to the agreement that you could use the name for a limited time?
We approached Nylex to be one of our sponsors. They hold the Registered trademark of the word "Esky", and we wanted all the furniture inside Esky to be made of Eskies. They agreed to be one of our sponsors and loaned us heaps of Eskies for the duration of the festival but made us sign a contract saying we would no longer use the name Esky post-festival. Without a legal force like the Nylex corporation have, and also rethinking this colloquial term in our language is actually quite racially insensitive, the name Schmigloo came about.
What made you decide on the igloo shape?
I guess it stemmed from the name, Esky, which was selected because it was a portable bar. Also when looking at different kinds of inflatables, there was this great one that was in this book called Recipes for Disaster, which was a huge dome shape made out of black plastic which they described as being super easy to make.
Why did you invite Christie Pestinis (a practicing architect) to participate in the project?
I actually also trained as an architect and Christie and I had always wanted to work together on a project partly for this reason, so we decided 'Esky' would be perfect and decided pitch this project together for the festival. In the end Christie wasn't really able to take that much time of work and I took on the inflatable side of the project, but as it turns out Christie is also amazing at organising sponsorship from all sides and we divided the project up in this way. We had such a small budget for this quite ambitious project so she went about getting sponsorship for everything from to Man with a Van to bump us in and out of each venue. It was also really important to us that we liked our sponsors and they liked our project- so we had all these lovely small businesses supporting us, like microbrew Mountain Goat beer.
With such a small time frame and just myself working on the structure, with no prior experience building inflatables, I sent out a group email telling people what I was up to and seeking people who could spare some time sewing, when the time came. I had heaps of people who said they would be keen to help and that's when I met Alice, a friend of a friend, who was definitely the most enthusiastic. We decided to meet up and she said she would love to help out, though she'd never built an inflatable either, she was really keen to learn how. We spoke a lot about how we were going to put it together and looked at beach balls and thought the basic structure should be a half dome and realised that it would need to be double skinned, if we wanted to have an entrance that was constantly open- which is kind of necessary as a bar. All the other inflatables we'd seen were single skinned and needed a kind of 'air-lock' system that allowed people to enter through a zip that was closed behind them, then a second zip into the inflatable was opened to allow them inside the main structure. I guess from there it involved a lot of lateral thinking, as we didn't have an example to work off.
How did you work out e to keep it erect with a fan?
We thought we would need a jumpy castle blower as the structure is quite large (6m diameter), which is what we used to initially inflate it. But in Recipes For Disaster, they claimed to have used a normal fan to inflate their huge structure so I figured it was worth a try. It is kind of amazing that it can stay inflated with just a desk fan.
And then you needed to choose a material that would be light enough to stay up and also fire retardant etc...?
I found this material supplier that specialises in plastic materials and had them send out a bunch of samples. With just a household sewing machine to work with we wanted something that was light weight, but durable to use and the material we chose was just a lucky uneducated guess!
Is this when the calculations began?
We had decided on breaking the igloo up into sections like a beach ball and offset the strips they cut them into small bricks, which would join on the edges between the inner dome and the outer dome. Alice figured out the calculations for the curve using her maths brain and a compass. We then got a big print out of one of the sections and used that as a template and started cutting and sewing it together systematically.
The esky is handmade, so the cutting and sewing had to be very precise in order for the structure to inflate. Since you admit little experience in sewing, was this difficult to accomplish? - Each fabric block is laid out and sewed in a precise arrangement. Were there any costly mistakes?
The structure was made up of hundreds of pieces of fabric sewn together; this enabled us to get the brick pattern, as well as the shape. The sewing involved was all pretty straight forward- nothing as complicated as following a dress pattern- or even hemming- there was just a lot of it! As Alice works full time and was only available for a day on weekends and the festival was getting closer I took a few months off from work to stay in my back room sewing, and sewing... and sewing! It got so large towards the end it required two of us to hold it in place just to sew it!
We had planned the structure so much and thought about how it would work but we actually had no idea if it was actually going to work until we had sewn it all up and inflated it for the first time- and it worked! It's amazing what a DIY philosophy, a lot of sewing and maybe a bit of cockiness can do!
Any plans to work on more inflatables?
I definitely would love to make more inflatables in the future but usually the process of me making things comes from the idea, then skills or processes I am familiar with come into practice.
To find out more about The Schmigloo (including future sightings) go to:
http://www.whereisesky.com
Or Keg's blog:
http://www.allthumbspress.com
Philippa Barr is producer of Uliko based in Berlin.
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Vientiane 4 Seoul
By Emily Johnson
Image courtesty of Phoonsab Thevongsa & Vientiane Times
In the capital of the Lao People's Democratic Republic break dancing is very cool. Open mic and 'battle of bands' events are popular, and it's not uncommon for any kind of music event to turn into a dance-off between b-boys. And In June the Korean Gambler and Animation crews performed their Flying High show at the Lao National Cultural Centre to a packed audience at the Lao National Cultural Centre. Vientiane loves it's K-pop.
A simple stage was draped with enough red velour to suit a high school eisteddfod. Organizers went to some effort to decorate, and even covered the BeerLao sponsorship sign under worn cloth. The show began with some choreographed routines which evolved into more freestyle steps and dance battles. But the key move, surprisingly, involved a laptop and a Powerpoint presentation. The b-boys used amid show interval as an opportunity to take a breather and play a video of recent achievements. The audience was suitably impressed, and later the venue looked more like a European soccer field than a cultural centre in a communist country, as excited fans surged forward to praise their team.
There are currently a few groups making pop, rock and metal in Lao, including popular group Cell. Yet most young locals go to neighbouring Thailand or Vietnam for music events. That is starting to change with the development of a local Vientiane music scene.
In June French group X-Makeena, staged an industrial techno party in a dilapidated circus tent built by the Soviets in the 1980s. Creating atmosphere with dry ice, WWII gas masks and flashing lights, the rave raged until late (if you call 11pm late). Supported by the French Cultural Centre in Vientiane, this event and others like it are mostly targeted at the falang, however on this occasion attendees were surprised by the collaboration with Lao hip hop star L.O.J.
Twenty years ago, gigs in Gambler and Animation crew's hometown of Seoul were finished by 10pm, so kids could catch the last metro ride home. Japan was easily the coolest country in Asia. But these days with thanks to Korean and Taiwanese music producers, Japan has had to make some room at the top of the cultural hierarchy. Maybe one day Lao will have a strong music culture, and the means for that culture to be valued in Thailand and Vietnam - or somewhere as cool as Korea.
http://www.myspace.com/xmakeena
www.gamblercrew.co.kr
Emily Johnson is a policy advisor with a Lao government agency in Vientiane.
Phoonsab Thevongsa is entertainment reporter for the Vientiane Times.
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The Tokyo Spank
by Melanie Fulton
1. When u get dressed, do you prefer to look
a) like a salary-dude
b) like an earth mother
c) like an ice-cream
2. At a party do you
a) get wasted
b) get busy
c) get 17 new best-friends and start a techno band
3, Your dream is
a) to have a boob job
b) to have a baby
c) to have a holographic monster machine
If you answered mostly C`s the find a bow the size of a small man, glue some candy to your face, and join your new friends in the Tokyo SPANK scene.
Image courtesy SPANK Koenji
The SPANK style wave of art, fashion and music began in 2004. Mastermind Sayuri Tavuchi says, `I was inspired by America`s 80s culture. I started a shop at my own standards and I just did as I pleased'. Customers can play the shop like a game, racks of amazing clothes and accessories hide plastic play-things, obselete toys and sparkly crafts. Keyboard-pop pumps out of the stereo as staff talk, giggle and make accessories. Unlike the boutiques with more attitude than clothes, no-here one`s cool, they happily greet everyone who walks through the door. Customers always leave the shop with new clothes, new friends and a hankering for a banana milkshake.
A style this fun has attracted the interest of Japanese such as Fruits and Cutie. From the shop HQ, accessory-weighted teens spill out onto the streets and are snapped up by cameras everywhere. These days these kids are featured in most fashion mags, blinding readers with hyper-colour.
Dressed and ready, it`s time to find a SPANK party. Noisy rap bands, DJs and rock`n`rollers mix to entertain the fluffiest crowd you can imagine. As you approach the dance-floor don`t be surpised to see tribes of unicorn-people bopping with popples (an 80s toy monster which can roll up into a furry ball), as teens chew candy and scream for bass. According to Tavuchi, a SPANK party is `loads of color, never enough accessories, and only the prettiest boys and girls'. Crazy live shows, on-stage dance breaks and a bustling shop are some of the things you can expect.
After opening a second shop in Tokyo, and staging many parties, the SPANK staff have finally stepped under the lights and started Chimmy and the SPANK Drox, a music group self-described as, `upbeat, techno-pop, fluorescent!`. Despite its very recent birth, Chimmy and the SPANK Drox are already playing in parties all over Japan. Their recent concert in Osaka, a place mostly known for noise and hardcore, saw a whole rainbow of party-goers lighting up the concrete streets of Shinsaibashi. Adjusting pom-poms and polka-dot hair SPANK Drox took to the stage, and the crowd went wild. Heartshaped guitars and toy keyboards created the sound, while seven girls plus four boys bounced energetically and punch-danced their way into one anothers' hearts.
From a small shop in Koenji, SPANK has become a style and series of colletives across Japan and overseas, making fashion and music, learning English off the backs of t-shirts from the 80s. And if it does come to a fight between unicorn and ice-cream, my money's on strawberry ice cream - to win.
SPANK is online at http://SPANKworld.jp
Melanie Fulton is a writer and performer based in Osaka.
Image courtesy SPANK Koenji
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Hanging Out in Yogja
Interview by Philippa Barr
Walking on the sky by Bayu Widodo
Bayu Widodo is a contemporary artist from Yogyakarta, Indonesia who produces line drawings, paintings, woodcut and stencils that feature strong political references and judgments. Bayu has exhibitd at Mori Gallery in Sydney and The National Art Gallery in Canberra. When we made this interview he was exhausted from making art and fun for the Yogyakarta Art Festival, but very kindly agreed to answer my questions in English, without a translator.
Mau ke mana?
Yesterday we finish job for the jogja art fest. Today I just hang out and drink coffee.
What did you do for the festival?
I made patches and some t-shirts from my drawings and organized a tattoo workshop with my friend. DIY is important for me.
I want to ask you about pop music in Indonesia.
Pop music here is just what they make for the major music market. I don't like it because it just sells love between boy and girl.
When you are listening to recorded music are you usually hanging out with other people or sendiri, alone?
I like to listen to music with my friends and everywhere.
Where do you hear bands? What kind of venues do you have in Jogja?
Usually I see bands at art gallery openings or in music events, I like indie gigs, in open spaces.
Does everyone dance to the music? Do you dance?
I like energetic music with much power which makes me yeayyyy and happy. Music that makes my body feel burned! I dance with everybody.
Have you been to any gigs recently?
He he too much party now at jogja for the art festival. Two days ago I went to a punk gig and saw this band from Australia called CRUX. I hung out with all my friends, and put too much alcohol into my body.
What other kinds of music are you into? Or not into?
I don't really like hip hop. I don't know many references to hip hop, but I like it with resistance lyrics, which makes me think and get more spirit.
Mostly I love energetic, powerful, hardcore music. Punk music.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goodgoodwae
http://www.nyalakanapi.blogspot.com
Philippa Barr is producer of Uliko based in Berlin.
TV addict #2 by Bayu Widodo
Dance with life by Bayu Widodo
Angry people #2 by Bayu Widodo
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
House and Lifestyle
By Philippa Barr
Commission house in a town camp of Alice Springs
It's a mess in here. Blankets and crap all over the floor. Rubbish everywhere. No chairs, just people squatting on the floor. What is the artist thinking?1
This work is an investigation into the aesthetics and invention of aboriginal housing. In an indigenous context, housing is most often conceived as a problem and a right. If shelter is fundamental to existence, then in order to protect its citizens the state has a duty to ensure they are housed. Indigenous communities and families should be provided with houses - a house - so that they can maintain life. A life. Because different houses come fitted out with a normal of doing things.
Food in the kitchen, toilet at the back, television in the living room. Toys left wherever they're dropped. The odd potted plant. Sleeping inside, cricket outdoors, sex inside with the door shut. We learn this as we grow up, mostly we follow it. Not always. But it is true to say that a house comes fitted out with ways of doing things inside it, a model life, a way of being in the world. In the Central Desert, Aboriginal people want the house but they don't want the life. Both must change.
Houses must be reordered. The State delivers a house ready-made, one size fits all. First it lays out the rectangular concrete slabs, then the concrete bessa blocks - one by one, straight up, until you have yourself a perfect rectilinear house. 3 bedrooms, one bathroom. Same as all the other houses. Job don . The house is given to us ready-made, one size fits all - a European house, the public house. But it doesn't work. We need to be able to see outside. We need to see the stars as we sleep. The toilet's in the wrong place, too close to the bedrooms, and we can't see who's going inside.
So the process of disassembly begins. We take it apart and put it back together in some new way. Maybe that doesn't work either. Its hot inside, there's no electricity for air conditioning and the concrete has been cooking all day in the 45 C sun. We knocked out the windows for some relief. Then a relative who always demands our money or attention has arrived in town. We stick black plastic in the windows and paint the leftover glass black. We hide. When night falls we drag our mattress outside and sleep there. We're so relieved to be outside and not in that hot house. This might not work either. It's a deconstructive process, we keep trying different experiments in order to get something that works for us. Maybe we never do. Or maybe we find something that works for a while but it doesn't last. Nothing lasts.
The houses are used differently, by many people - often an uncontrollable number - and consequently they have a affect on the senses, they look and smell different, they even sound different. This appearance of disorder creates a negative aesthetic impression, and also belies the order that can and does underlie the presentation of these houses. This exhibition confronts people with an Aboriginal way of ordering space and thereby plays with the feelings of disease and discomfort often experienced by Western visitors to Aboriginal communities.
The investigation aims to get an impression of the aesthetic value that residents and visitors place on these houses, how they use them, and how they would change them. The dominant theme that has emerged is one of impermanence, adjusting to living in permanent structures after millennia of mobility, caring for things so that they last, and maintaining the view that ultimately every thing is impermanent.
In western culture we try to keep things, to petrify them - fixed in place and time, permanent. We are very afraid of decay. Once we have something we want it to remain in the same state forever. We encase our selves and our stuff in houses, for preservation. It is this fear of decay that informs our aesthetic reactions to these spaces - our aversion and fear. In Aboriginal communities this is less of a concern, people come and go, toys get lost, the air conditioner breaks down, people take spare parts from one another's cars. Only law and country are permanent.
So the space is a zone of conflict. Different sets of ideas wrestle one another, different ways clash. Whether to preserve or not, to care or not? Teeth decay, people die, matter transforms. Even rock is not solid. Against this, running through this, underneath it, and all around everywhere you have the law - stable, unwavering. We erect a humpie for one night, we live for fifty years, law stays. Law is forever. Only now the law will change, has to change, has to remodel spaces, houses, objects to allow some kind of coexistence with another civilisation. Law will have to find a way to meet and negotiate. To compel people in Australia to care for country like their houses. And to compel them also to recognise the indigenous logic, another way or ordering space and life. Even if it fights their sense of what is beautiful, young, well preserved. Because it fights.
Philippa Barr is producer of Uliko based in Berlin.
Melanie Fulton is a writer and performer based in Osaka.
Image courtesy SPANK Koenji
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Hanging Out in Yogja
Interview by Philippa Barr
Walking on the sky by Bayu Widodo
Bayu Widodo is a contemporary artist from Yogyakarta, Indonesia who produces line drawings, paintings, woodcut and stencils that feature strong political references and judgments. Bayu has exhibitd at Mori Gallery in Sydney and The National Art Gallery in Canberra. When we made this interview he was exhausted from making art and fun for the Yogyakarta Art Festival, but very kindly agreed to answer my questions in English, without a translator.
Mau ke mana?
Yesterday we finish job for the jogja art fest. Today I just hang out and drink coffee.
What did you do for the festival?
I made patches and some t-shirts from my drawings and organized a tattoo workshop with my friend. DIY is important for me.
I want to ask you about pop music in Indonesia.
Pop music here is just what they make for the major music market. I don't like it because it just sells love between boy and girl.
When you are listening to recorded music are you usually hanging out with other people or sendiri, alone?
I like to listen to music with my friends and everywhere.
Where do you hear bands? What kind of venues do you have in Jogja?
Usually I see bands at art gallery openings or in music events, I like indie gigs, in open spaces.
Does everyone dance to the music? Do you dance?
I like energetic music with much power which makes me yeayyyy and happy. Music that makes my body feel burned! I dance with everybody.
Have you been to any gigs recently?
He he too much party now at jogja for the art festival. Two days ago I went to a punk gig and saw this band from Australia called CRUX. I hung out with all my friends, and put too much alcohol into my body.
What other kinds of music are you into? Or not into?
I don't really like hip hop. I don't know many references to hip hop, but I like it with resistance lyrics, which makes me think and get more spirit.
Mostly I love energetic, powerful, hardcore music. Punk music.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goodgoodwae
http://www.nyalakanapi.blogspot.com
Philippa Barr is producer of Uliko based in Berlin.
TV addict #2 by Bayu Widodo
Dance with life by Bayu Widodo
Angry people #2 by Bayu Widodo
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
House and Lifestyle
By Philippa Barr
Commission house in a town camp of Alice Springs
It's a mess in here. Blankets and crap all over the floor. Rubbish everywhere. No chairs, just people squatting on the floor. What is the artist thinking?1
This work is an investigation into the aesthetics and invention of aboriginal housing. In an indigenous context, housing is most often conceived as a problem and a right. If shelter is fundamental to existence, then in order to protect its citizens the state has a duty to ensure they are housed. Indigenous communities and families should be provided with houses - a house - so that they can maintain life. A life. Because different houses come fitted out with a normal of doing things.
Food in the kitchen, toilet at the back, television in the living room. Toys left wherever they're dropped. The odd potted plant. Sleeping inside, cricket outdoors, sex inside with the door shut. We learn this as we grow up, mostly we follow it. Not always. But it is true to say that a house comes fitted out with ways of doing things inside it, a model life, a way of being in the world. In the Central Desert, Aboriginal people want the house but they don't want the life. Both must change.
Houses must be reordered. The State delivers a house ready-made, one size fits all. First it lays out the rectangular concrete slabs, then the concrete bessa blocks - one by one, straight up, until you have yourself a perfect rectilinear house. 3 bedrooms, one bathroom. Same as all the other houses. Job don . The house is given to us ready-made, one size fits all - a European house, the public house. But it doesn't work. We need to be able to see outside. We need to see the stars as we sleep. The toilet's in the wrong place, too close to the bedrooms, and we can't see who's going inside.
So the process of disassembly begins. We take it apart and put it back together in some new way. Maybe that doesn't work either. Its hot inside, there's no electricity for air conditioning and the concrete has been cooking all day in the 45 C sun. We knocked out the windows for some relief. Then a relative who always demands our money or attention has arrived in town. We stick black plastic in the windows and paint the leftover glass black. We hide. When night falls we drag our mattress outside and sleep there. We're so relieved to be outside and not in that hot house. This might not work either. It's a deconstructive process, we keep trying different experiments in order to get something that works for us. Maybe we never do. Or maybe we find something that works for a while but it doesn't last. Nothing lasts.
The houses are used differently, by many people - often an uncontrollable number - and consequently they have a affect on the senses, they look and smell different, they even sound different. This appearance of disorder creates a negative aesthetic impression, and also belies the order that can and does underlie the presentation of these houses. This exhibition confronts people with an Aboriginal way of ordering space and thereby plays with the feelings of disease and discomfort often experienced by Western visitors to Aboriginal communities.
The investigation aims to get an impression of the aesthetic value that residents and visitors place on these houses, how they use them, and how they would change them. The dominant theme that has emerged is one of impermanence, adjusting to living in permanent structures after millennia of mobility, caring for things so that they last, and maintaining the view that ultimately every thing is impermanent.
In western culture we try to keep things, to petrify them - fixed in place and time, permanent. We are very afraid of decay. Once we have something we want it to remain in the same state forever. We encase our selves and our stuff in houses, for preservation. It is this fear of decay that informs our aesthetic reactions to these spaces - our aversion and fear. In Aboriginal communities this is less of a concern, people come and go, toys get lost, the air conditioner breaks down, people take spare parts from one another's cars. Only law and country are permanent.
So the space is a zone of conflict. Different sets of ideas wrestle one another, different ways clash. Whether to preserve or not, to care or not? Teeth decay, people die, matter transforms. Even rock is not solid. Against this, running through this, underneath it, and all around everywhere you have the law - stable, unwavering. We erect a humpie for one night, we live for fifty years, law stays. Law is forever. Only now the law will change, has to change, has to remodel spaces, houses, objects to allow some kind of coexistence with another civilisation. Law will have to find a way to meet and negotiate. To compel people in Australia to care for country like their houses. And to compel them also to recognise the indigenous logic, another way or ordering space and life. Even if it fights their sense of what is beautiful, young, well preserved. Because it fights.
Philippa Barr is producer of Uliko based in Berlin.
Mau ke mana?
Yesterday we finish job for the jogja art fest. Today I just hang out and drink coffee.
What did you do for the festival?
I made patches and some t-shirts from my drawings and organized a tattoo workshop with my friend. DIY is important for me.
I want to ask you about pop music in Indonesia.
Pop music here is just what they make for the major music market. I don't like it because it just sells love between boy and girl.
When you are listening to recorded music are you usually hanging out with other people or sendiri, alone?
I like to listen to music with my friends and everywhere.
Where do you hear bands? What kind of venues do you have in Jogja?
Usually I see bands at art gallery openings or in music events, I like indie gigs, in open spaces.
Does everyone dance to the music? Do you dance?
I like energetic music with much power which makes me yeayyyy and happy. Music that makes my body feel burned! I dance with everybody.
Have you been to any gigs recently?
He he too much party now at jogja for the art festival. Two days ago I went to a punk gig and saw this band from Australia called CRUX. I hung out with all my friends, and put too much alcohol into my body.
What other kinds of music are you into? Or not into?
I don't really like hip hop. I don't know many references to hip hop, but I like it with resistance lyrics, which makes me think and get more spirit. Mostly I love energetic, powerful, hardcore music. Punk music.
http://www.nyalakanapi.blogspot.com
This work is an investigation into the aesthetics and invention of aboriginal housing. In an indigenous context, housing is most often conceived as a problem and a right. If shelter is fundamental to existence, then in order to protect its citizens the state has a duty to ensure they are housed. Indigenous communities and families should be provided with houses - a house - so that they can maintain life. A life. Because different houses come fitted out with a normal of doing things.
Food in the kitchen, toilet at the back, television in the living room. Toys left wherever they're dropped. The odd potted plant. Sleeping inside, cricket outdoors, sex inside with the door shut. We learn this as we grow up, mostly we follow it. Not always. But it is true to say that a house comes fitted out with ways of doing things inside it, a model life, a way of being in the world. In the Central Desert, Aboriginal people want the house but they don't want the life. Both must change.
Houses must be reordered. The State delivers a house ready-made, one size fits all. First it lays out the rectangular concrete slabs, then the concrete bessa blocks - one by one, straight up, until you have yourself a perfect rectilinear house. 3 bedrooms, one bathroom. Same as all the other houses. Job don . The house is given to us ready-made, one size fits all - a European house, the public house. But it doesn't work. We need to be able to see outside. We need to see the stars as we sleep. The toilet's in the wrong place, too close to the bedrooms, and we can't see who's going inside.
So the process of disassembly begins. We take it apart and put it back together in some new way. Maybe that doesn't work either. Its hot inside, there's no electricity for air conditioning and the concrete has been cooking all day in the 45 C sun. We knocked out the windows for some relief. Then a relative who always demands our money or attention has arrived in town. We stick black plastic in the windows and paint the leftover glass black. We hide. When night falls we drag our mattress outside and sleep there. We're so relieved to be outside and not in that hot house. This might not work either. It's a deconstructive process, we keep trying different experiments in order to get something that works for us. Maybe we never do. Or maybe we find something that works for a while but it doesn't last. Nothing lasts.
The houses are used differently, by many people - often an uncontrollable number - and consequently they have a affect on the senses, they look and smell different, they even sound different. This appearance of disorder creates a negative aesthetic impression, and also belies the order that can and does underlie the presentation of these houses. This exhibition confronts people with an Aboriginal way of ordering space and thereby plays with the feelings of disease and discomfort often experienced by Western visitors to Aboriginal communities.
The investigation aims to get an impression of the aesthetic value that residents and visitors place on these houses, how they use them, and how they would change them. The dominant theme that has emerged is one of impermanence, adjusting to living in permanent structures after millennia of mobility, caring for things so that they last, and maintaining the view that ultimately every thing is impermanent.
In western culture we try to keep things, to petrify them - fixed in place and time, permanent. We are very afraid of decay. Once we have something we want it to remain in the same state forever. We encase our selves and our stuff in houses, for preservation. It is this fear of decay that informs our aesthetic reactions to these spaces - our aversion and fear. In Aboriginal communities this is less of a concern, people come and go, toys get lost, the air conditioner breaks down, people take spare parts from one another's cars. Only law and country are permanent.
So the space is a zone of conflict. Different sets of ideas wrestle one another, different ways clash. Whether to preserve or not, to care or not? Teeth decay, people die, matter transforms. Even rock is not solid. Against this, running through this, underneath it, and all around everywhere you have the law - stable, unwavering. We erect a humpie for one night, we live for fifty years, law stays. Law is forever. Only now the law will change, has to change, has to remodel spaces, houses, objects to allow some kind of coexistence with another civilisation. Law will have to find a way to meet and negotiate. To compel people in Australia to care for country like their houses. And to compel them also to recognise the indigenous logic, another way or ordering space and life. Even if it fights their sense of what is beautiful, young, well preserved. Because it fights.