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| One of the many mysterious performances
on show |
PERFORMANCE art, say its devotees, covers a wide range of activities,
and many of these were on show at the international performance
art festival in Kamayut on January 29 and 30.
For those who had never experienced such a show it was as mysterious
as it was apparently meaningless.
With 24 artists from such countries as Singapore, Thailand,
Finland, Switzerland, Malaysia, Germany, UK and USA, Myanmar artists
also presented each performance under the title - Borders: withIn
withOut.
Jay Koh, the director of at Networking and Initiatives for Culture
and the Arts, which organised the festival said, “The title
of the show is WithIn, WithOut.
Everything has two sides. Myanmar artists were inside and the
other artists came from outside to join us.
“The main aim was to share experience between Myanmar
artists and other foreign artists and get to know each other.
It is a new form of art for Myanmar, and many of those watching
found it difficult to understand the point.
The performance of Ko Nyein, a novelist from Mandalay, was titled
Feeding. He jumped to the stage, clutching rice plants in both
hands. Then he paced the stage, shouting “aaaaaaaargh”
for two or three minutes and that was the end.
It was certainly a performance, but many in the audience would
have wondered whether it was art.
For the duration of the festival all the artists, both Myanmar
and foreign, wore longyi printed with the words - Performance
site Myanmar 05.
“We dressed the artists in longyi because they are unique
to Myanmar,” Jay Koh said.
The festival began with the Swiss group GABI and Moe Satt, a
Myanmar artist. Wearing red coats, they handed every arrival a
pair of scissors and asked them to cut the red ribbons hanging
across the lane. Pretty soon the entrance was covered in fragments
of red ribbon which was another form of art, apparently.
Some made their performance in the gallery, some on the stage,
some in the compound and some at the gallery entrance but wherever
they performed it was equally inexplicable.
Tin Maung Oo, a Mandalay artist said, “This is the biggest
show I’ve ever taken part in. It was very good.”
