LONG MARCH PROJECT HO CHI MINH TRAIL 2008-ONGOING

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1 LONG MARCH PROJECT HO CHI MINH TRAIL 2008-ONGOING

2 Initiated by the Long March Project, Ho Chi Minh Trail is a collaborative contemporary arts project in the implementation of physical, discursive, and artistic activities between China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. This project involves multiple individuals (visual artists, writers, historians, film makers, performers, musicians etc), artistic organizations and institutions (public and private) from across this region and its diaspora. Discussions, lectures, public forums, informal screenings of historical and contemporary visual material, new art works, performances, new imaginings, new texts - all to be created, shared, exhibited, documented, and distributed, in the spirit of artistic exchange that is recognized as foundationally paramount to the crucial relationship between culture and contemporary society. Long March Project begun with a grand historical narrative in 2002 and continued in the following eight years as an ongoing investigation of critical discourse surrounding art and culture. Today the project places its focus specifically on the disguised spaces that reveal political economics of visual culture. The geographical and historical complexities of the Ho Chi Minh Trail presents the route as an ideal metaphor for engaging with and constructing a new interrelational reality between Southeast Asia, China, and other communities in the world.

3 RATIONALE The Ho Chi Minh Trail, though internationally understood as a logistical supply route created during the Second Indochina War, formed a vast network of passageways across China, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. This area was the strategic battle ground between the two communist powers [China and the Soviet Union] and the US during the second Indochina war. China s decision to support Southeast Asia during this time was instrumental to Mao Zedong s domestic argument to gather the masses against Imperialist forces encroaching its national borders. This rhizomic map serves as a reflection of the interconnected, influential, overlapping histories of the region. Taking Vietnam as example, Kublai Khan s presence in Vietnam in the 13th Century; Vietnam s complicated relationship with the People's Republic of Kampuchea in the 1980s; and vassal relationship between the Cham Dynasty of Vietnam with China are but a few historical examples which to this day contribute to significant and prolonged feelings of divide between different countries.

4 The Ho Chi Minh Trail Project calls for a questioning of fixed relations of social production as determined by ideas of history, identity, market logic and subconscious effects of geographical imposed divide. The tangible elements of the project will include dialogue, artistic production, physical experience, and other forms of feeling to reach a state of baiganjiaoji, literally meaning a multitude of feelings. This process of following through intellectual, physical, and interactive re-sensitizations will transform the act of acting into actual action. I n c o n t e m p o r a r y t i m e s, s o c i a l conditions encourage us to assume cosplay characters determined by the nature of specific social production models. It is crucial that we re-evaluate and contemplate upon the terms postwar, post-revolution, post-colonial, and post-historical that define our cultural realities today. Through Thought Discourse Body Action, the Ho Chi Minh Trail project will journey through these hidden spaces and histories, thereby constructing a disguised political space.

5 A parallel urgency is evident in the contemporary art world in which art is continually identified as materialization and spectacle of global capitalism and neo-liberalism, instead of what it can be a materialization of cultural/thought production and negotiation between memory and reality. What new artistic modes will follow the recent trends of institutional critique, social engagement and relativism? What are the ways in which an individual can perform his/her historical consciousness? How can we take the Ho Chi Minh trail, a layered geographical network with multiple intertwining historical narratives, and examine its disguised spaces of contemporary visual, political, and economical complexity? Through Thought Discourse Body Action, the Ho Chi Minh Trail project will journey through these hidden spaces and histories, thereby constructing a disguised political space.

6 5 PROJECT STAGES Field research 2008-ongoing Knowledge of the Ignorant (project database) 2009 Residency 2010 Physical journey 2010-ongoing Rehearsal-theatre

7 F i e l d R e s e a r c h ( )

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9 Residency (July 2009) L o n g M a r c h E d u c a t i o n Platform 1: Ho Chi Minh Trail

10 Ten artists, curators, and thinkers from Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Korea, and USA form a curatorial think tank for the Ho Chi Minh Trail Project This phase of the Ho Chi Minh Trail project was organized in conjunction with Long March Education, an ongoing educational program focusing on the study of critical relationships between art, its production and the systems in which this visual practice is historicized and displayed. The July residency program operated as a curatorial brainstorm for the Ho Chi Minh Trail project, through which residents closely examined the shared physical and psychological landscape imbedded within the Ho Chi Minh trail route. Throughout July, four thematic topics were introduced as starting points to discuss ways in which artists transform discursive material into visibility.

11 How are geographies border-lined by images and texts that become their own fictions bearing no relation to actual territory? Political games as psychological strategy? Propaganda or Promotion? Disguised Space: anti-mapping of the contemporary art landscape

12 Journey on the Ho Chi Minh Trail June 12 - July 3, 2010 The June program was a journey realized through walking, rehearsing, artistic and textual production, dialogue and recording. Throughout the journey, local and international participants were invited to perform a process of confessing and flushing-out to explore issues of globalization and local, Empire and The Third World, ideology and politics, art and theory, and other critical questions that concern us today. To achieve this state of existence we would rather admit our position as cultural travelers - we don t pretend a romantic level of interaction or seek to reach the impossible goal of being on the same page with the locals (any imagined success on this aspect will nevertheless be a mirage). Phnom Penh - Ho Chi Minh City Hue Dong Ha Savanakket - Vientiane Hanoi Nanning Beijing What the participants facing along the journey were something beyond China and Southeast Asia, beyond artistic production and other realms of activity. Every local and international participant was simultaneously host and guest to engage with subjective and local interpretations of geopolitics, historical and war memories, and cultural and ethnic conflicts encountered along the way, thereby revealing the absurdity and futility of political correctness. While the journey was realized mostly by bus transportation, there has also a walking segment through a critical Ho Chi Minh Trail portion in Laos.

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15 Eight Points from Artists walking on the Ho Chi Minh Trail 30th June, 2010 in Hanoi 1 Any pre-named journey is always difficult 2 A thousand words: So close to home and so many routes back. 3 Container 4 When you are told about a way called the Ho Chi Minh Trail, this is what we call a political moment; and in this moment, you are not innocent. Anybody who has not been told about the Trail is also not innocent. The Ho Chi Minh Trail exists in every one of us. 5 Collectivity can change humanity; Is collectivity itself humane? 6 Anyone can complete the journey 7 The Ho Chi Minh Trail had existed before our journey. Once we began our walk, the tangible roads disappeared under our feet. 8 On behalf of the project, we pay our respect to all the great actionists in history.

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19 Thirteen points from participating curators, philosophers, and artists theatre of mass media society - art; it is an act of 13 One must first become an artist then an individual

20 Rehearsal (Sept ongoing)

21 REHEARSAL ACT I August - December 2010 Long March Space (Shanghai Biennial Beijing venue) October January 2011 Shanghai Art Museum (Shanghai Biennial) Drawing inspiration from the project s textual and visual documentations, interconnected resources, and physical experiences of walking the Ho Chi Minh trail, the project presents a series of rehearsals realized as different chapters of a theatre. These performances/ actions will be organized as simultaneous or staggered events in various locations. As part of the 8th Shanghai Biennale Rehearsal, Long March Project presents a series of works by eight artists engaged with the Project. Participating Artists include: Chen Chieh-jen, Liu Wei, MadeIn, Wu Shanzhuan, Wang Jianwei, and Zhang Hui. Installational views at Long March Space, Beijing

22 Wu Shanzhuan i=per pro c c c (i: imagination, per: perspective, pro: projection, c: cloud) steel frame and wood 240 x 160 x 330 cm 2010

23 artist sketch for i=per pro c c c (i: imagination, per: perspective, pro: projection, c: cloud)

24 Wu Shanzhuan d=mr2 Installational view at Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai 11 pieces, cm each detail

25 MadeIn Spread ( ) Installation, performance actor, cotton rope, sponge, acrylic, light box, DVD-ROM size variable 2010

26 Performance of Spread ( ) at Long March Space, Beijing The Spread series is all about 'realism.' Pretty much all the images, shapes, and ideas come directly from the media. What this series represents is our relationship with tthe media, our attitude towards it, even how we grow with it. All of this, these cartoons, fabrics, installations, sculptures thatyou see here, and those abstract installations and paintings, they all try to represent a single basic idea, which is using the media as a medium, using the media to create media.

27 MadeIn Must Act Installational view at Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai oil on canvas, acrylic on canvas dimensions variable 2010 In this media age, the real world is no longer important What we deal with is a reality made up of images processed by the media. And that reality now plays a major role in world events.

28 Chen Chieh-jen On the Empire's Borders - My guerilla-style art project report film projections and symposium 2010

29 installational view of video presentations at Long March Space

30 Chen Chieh-jen The Route Installation view at Shanghai Art Museum The Route was commissioned for the Liverpool Biennial in Chen Chieh-jen filmed real Kaohsiung dockworkers staging a symbolic picket, recalling the strikes that stopped the Neptune Jade, Those strikes were a milestone in the history of the global labor movement. For Chen Chieh-jen, filming this imagined striek was in one way looking forward, toward a new system of freedom, opposed to the collaboration of capital and state. Equally important, though, is how to use art to 'extend' historical events. The lessons of history should not be relegated to the past simply because the historical event is over. Art can produce new versions of these stories, making history part of our collective 'story' and 'experience,'

31 Wang Jianwei Output of the labor force on timeline five channels video 01:05:20 each channel 2010

32 Wang Jianwei Surplus value Ping-pong table 85 x 275 x 153 cm 2010 The starting point of Output of the labor force on timeline is based on a true report: a 16 year old teenager from rural China went to the city one day. Naturally inclined to retreat from reality, the boy was only able to find his true social place in fantasy and internet games. In his fictitious world, misconceptions and misunderstandings were foundations to human behavior, while reality and illusion were perfectly synchronized. In the end, murder in his fantastical world became a true incident.

33 There is a relation between the juvenile and the five stories; were these five fictional stories written in his laptop or are they true reflection of his life. Which answer is closer to reality? Wang Jianwei

34 Liu Wei Merely a Mistake old wooden doors and frames, steel rods, recycled wood, acrylic on board size variable 2010 In the studio, everything is connected. It is difficult to separate one piece from another; they are all linked together. I think the relationship between me and all of these pieces is more important. Everything around us, why does it exist like this? There are a lot of implications to this, and of course they include 'politics.' Get rid of any non-complex materials. Realize more of the value in these things.

35 details of Merely a Mistake To fit these things into this space, I piece them together, even scoop out holes. Anything in this area will be sucked in and will generate meanings, and when that happens, the so-called artwork is diluted, and even disappears. On the suraface, it seemed that design in the socialist era took away people's indivudality, but all that was actually lost was a label which had long been used to define them. And what emerged was a greater collective spirit and strength.

36 Liu Wei Merely a Mistake II old wooden doors and frames, steel rods, recycled wood, acrylic on board size variable 2010

37 Zhang Hui Open Ground / Clear Skies Turning Cloudy Acrylic on canvas 42 x 30 (60 panels), 30 x 42 (60 panels) 2010

38 Artist at work To Zhang Hui, visual experience is not only one of fine arts, but one that has been trained by the eyes. It sends people into deep thinking and drops hints, affecting the way people view the world. He seeks to the largest extent possible to dissect such experience and examine the relationship between how hints are given and how they are taken by practicing painting.

39 Relief Installational view at Shanghai Art Museum Acrylic on canvas 200 x 600 cm 2010 What determines the visual experience? How does one decide what to do and how to view things? Zhang's paintings are not 'what you get is what you see' --not even compensating the visual defects with technology, but are focusing on how you look at the world--which of course depends on your cultural accomplishment, knowledge base, judgement--and the depth you desire to find out in things you see.

40 Ho Chi Minh Trail Project Workstation Installational view

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42 Knowledge of the Ignorant (2008-ongoing)

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44 LONG MARCH PROJECT HO CHI MINH TRAIL continues to journey on... Please visit our website: hochiminhtrailproject.com

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