“Caught by the Lockdown: Artists’ Struggles and Strategies” is a webinar describing the personal situation of foreign visual artists as they were caught by the global pandemic and the ensuing lockdown.
It was an insightful sharing on how the global pandemic and lockdown affected their art practice and projects and the strategies they employed to cope and thrive. The insights and realizations shared with fellow artists who are struggling during this time elicited relevant discourse.
Inagaki Tatsuo of Japan shared that after doing many art projects since 1992, the roots of his ideas took shape. His artistic concept of realizing communication that transcends cultural backgrounds seems to have originated in experiences over several days at VIVA.
He said that last February, he had to cancel his research trip to Bacolod as the pandemic quickly escalated in Japan. The art project scheduled to be implemented in his country was postponed until 2021.
He thought it was more important to protect his family’s lives and the university students’ learning environment than his artistic activities. He had since kept that in mind. Online activities became his main focus. While doing something else, he thought about waiting for the storm to pass. He conducted various art experiments with students in his online classes. There have been outstanding achievements in performance art and video art.
His pandemic-related works include work created with inspiration from and as a homage to Yoko Ono’s performance Cut Piece and a video installation work that digs up people’s existence and memories on a university campus where people have disappeared.
Tatsuo also researches community-based art projects in the Alternative Art Scene in Southeast Asia. Currently, as a principal investigator, he works with researchers from several Japanese universities on community-based art projects in the alternative scene in Southeast Asia.
They investigate the practices of various artists and explore their social implications. Tatsuo San plans to solidify the basic research plan during the COVID-19 pandemic and start the Southeast Asian countries’ survey as soon as the pandemic ends.
He thinks that the silver lining of the pandemic is that the number of contacts with people decreased, the speed of communication slowed down, and Inagaki Tatsuo had time to think clearly.
In the future, he would like to accumulate art projects in each country while accessing various societies to accomplish his plans. Tatsuo San aims to use his online knowledge and experience in multiple areas. As a researcher, he would like to resume research on the Southeast Asian art scene.
As a long-term plan, Inagaki Tatsuo is thinking of creating a platform for overseas artists to come to Japan and work, and he would like to start preparing for it.
Rini Hashim of Malaysia, on the other hand, expressed that artists from her country have long looked for inspiration in Filipino art and have integrated certain Filipino artists in their university syllabus.
Hashim narrowly made it into Cebu to do her internship as an art student abroad for VIVA ExCon; just 48 hours before the lockdown was imposed in the Philippines. A lot of her classmates had to postpone their studies and at that point, the future seemed shapeless.
At Bantayan, Cebu, Rini was given the opportunity to unearth a precious relationship with foreign soil as she grew her own food.
She briefly touched on and observed how songbirds change their tune during pandemic shutdowns. Her art strategies include using material that is in abundance which resulted in sculptures to celebrate the nourishing attributes of soil, acknowledging resources and inspiration from people around her, applying biomimicry, and observing soil ecology.
Hashim’s works include “The womb of our Mother,” an experimental sculpture-making project using the ancient Rammed Earth method. She said that “the form must be durable and well braced, and the two opposing faces must be clamped together to prevent bulging or deformation caused by the large compressing forces. Soil is compacted within the walls layer by layer while soil mixture is still damp. Once it is filled, the walls will be released gently to reveal the sculpture which will be set aside for curing.”
She further explained that 80 percent of the effort was spent on carpentry, 5% on finding the right mix of soil and 15 percent goes into tamping.
She also did the case study “Robust Architect,” that retrained young ex-soldiers with rammed earth building skills to equip them for post-military life.
Her insights is that the economy should be circular and not linear, as linear economy costs more in the long run. She is advocating for the practice of circular economy in art-making.
Wimo Ambala Bayang of Indonesia focuses on photography and video as his primary art mediums and creative channels. He shared that in the early stages of the pandemic, there was a high level of anxiety among Jogja citizens and many initiated lockdown by themselves. People were purchasing masks and sanitizers. Activities were postponed indefinitely.
The pandemic taught Jogja citizens to help each other, and to think and work together towards overcoming COVID-19. As a community, they initiated donation drives and distributed masks and food to people adversely affected by the lockdown. Around May or June, Wimo and his group started a workshop program and held a fundraising exhibition.
Apparently, Jogja artists kept inching forward even if the world was in a standstill. There were artist grants from different sectors. One was the grant “The New Normal at Work” which opened a chance for artists to send proposals to one of Indonesia’s biennale organizations. One such collaborative project was was Jogja_Kronik, a video by Wimo Ambala Bayang, M. Erlangga Fauzan, Arief Budiman, Rully Shabara, and Vandy Rizaldi.
Kronik means chronicle or journal but it also sounds like the word “chronic” meaning long-lasting, like the pandemic. Jogja_Kronik is the result of their research and notes. It features the team’s thoughts and personal accounts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The photos Wimo has captured in his nightly rounds were included in the 15-minute video.
“Caught by the Lockdown: Artists’ Struggles and Strategies” was held this December 19 as the final installment of the Visayas Islands Visual Arts Exhibition & Conference (VIVA ExCon) 16’s VCon 2 to close the year 2020.
VCon 2 is set to resume in January 2021 with Online Art Therapy on Jan. 9, the second Curators Converse on Jan. 16 and Art Initiatives in Challenging Times on Jan. 30. Saturday inputs will continue until June 2021.*