010: global entanglements
We start with a retrospective on a collaboration I did with my friend Moe a few years back. Then, some words on Maborosi, Hirokazu Kore-eda's first fictional feature.
What does it mean to apply our creativity on the very structures that contextualize our art? What does it mean to think beyond traditional galleries and art museums, for the art to not be in a dedicated space outside of our community, but embedded within it? Like any other production under capitalism, the art we make gets funneled out of where we are, our lived experiences, our communities, our beliefs to be sold back to us again behind glass, on white walls, with new parameters of valuation and scarcity.
My friend Moe and I were working through various creative ideas a few years back, and thought about what an exhibition we created might look like. We were based in different regions, she was in Yangon and I was in Chicago, and we were really intrigued by the premise of DIY art culture, the idea of creating with the resources available, and how that can be a template for others to build off of, a template of not just resourcefulness, but practicality—what is both accessible for a larger amount of people and what better reflects the creative desires of the community. We thought about the call that we were on that very moment that connected us across the ocean, but also this desire for something tangible—something that can be held. We started thinking about zines and zine culture, how it was a response to the inaccessibility of the broader publishing world.
We thought about printers.
What if we designed an exhibition that can be printed? Anyone with access to a printer can be a curator and a participant. People can print out the items they want, in any order, and showcase it in whichever way they fashion. The exhibition space is not limited to certain institutions, now it can be a neighborhood coffeeshop, or a local community space, or a friend's apartment. By bringing more people into the process, it also encourages folks to explore how they too can create additional templates of their own art to make printable, or to remix the existing works in new ways.
By both shifting the distribution of the art to the hyper-local, and also folding in the distribution as a creative practice in of itself, it both invites people to be more active participants in shaping the platforms that care for our art and recontextualizes the artworks themselves as abundant connections within the community, rather than trophies to be gazed at by outsiders.
The Pop-Up Print Kit started as a collaboration with Moe Myat May Zarchi, and for the first iteration of the exhibition featured the works of Thura Khaing, Er Yi, Kyaw Zeya, Morris John, Vicketta, Operation Kino, Ei Mon Kyaw, Freya Thu, Dasom Seint, Eddie, Evelina, P Phyaung, Harley Aung, Nu Nu, Wai Yan Htut, Taiki, Gabriel Htoo, Aung Kyaw, Kyi Shwin Soe (Hades Soe), Wai Yan Phyo, Asad Ali Zulfiqar, Saw James, Yan Sae, Khant Myat Thein, Neutron Aung, Annesha Mitha and Mayco Naing.
Together, we created a series of printable exhibition items, visual art became part of a printable miniature gallery space, video art became flip-books, and songs were re-imagined as cassette tape sleeves. The process of creating "printable" representations and versions of the art became a space to explore the bridge that is manifested via the printer, a third space that holds elements of both virtual and physical, the abundance of duplication and the sentimentality of tangible objects and physical spaces.
On the same day we launched the Print Kit in Yangon, Myanmar at an outdoor cafe, we hosted a gathering in an apartment in Chicago. A global, but local series of events. An entanglement brought together by the attendees, the artists who contributed both their art and their ideas, the printers (the machines), and the printers (the people printing). On that day, everyone was printing.
Traveling, from life to death, from Osaka to a small seaside village, across time and space. Maborosi charts the journeys we embark on, and the questions we ask along the way. The first act is of Yumiko and Ikuo, a young couple with a newborn living in Osaka. The couple are on a shared journey. One day Ikuo comes back with a bike he stole, after having his own stolen, then shortly after, he leaves for work and never comes back. Yumiko finds out that he was struck by a train, it's speculated to be a suicide, but there was no clear motive. The rest of the film documents Yumiko's continued life without Ikuo, she remarries, and along with her son moves to a small town with her new husband Tomoko and his daughter. There are moments of serenity and pleasure, but after a brief trip back to Osaka, the underlying and repressed grief reemerges.