Bangun!
Calling for both artists and the audience to arise and take notice of the relationships within our living environment, Bangun! is a series of site-specific contemporary art projects focusing on history, heritage, community and culture. By intertwining the social and political in between contemporary art practices, the Bangun! Project is an important marker for the Lostgens’ collective.
This series marked an interval where our focus and conception of fine arts have begun to move beyond art galleries. By conceiving art exhibits outside the traditional white cube, our conception is permeated by the social political situation of Malaysia.
Looking back upon reflection 10 years later, the Bangun! Projects were the foundational building blocks in bridging our artistic practice with socially engaged practice.
Bangun! Art Project includes
Bangun Abandon Project (2008) &
Bangun Penang Clan Jetties Art Project (2009)
Dates of Exhibition
1st (Fri), 2nd (Sat), 3rd (Sun) Feb 2008
Time
4:30pm-7:00pm
* Audiences were bringing own torchlight, umbrella and wearing sensible shoe
Venue
Lost Generation Space
Robson Height 11A Lorong, Permai Jalan Syed Putra
Opening Night
2nd February, 2008 (Saturday)
4:30pm-7:00pm
spontaneous performances improvisations in response to the space
7:30pm-8:00pm
after the last group has come back from the site, a discussion about the project will take place at Lost Generation Space. From 8pm till late, the opening will continue
Special Thanks to:
Kim Ng , Allen Ng, Chan Lai Kuen, Tan Kean Hong & See Yee Wen
Sometimes we have plants in our rooms, pictures, expressions and examples of the “natural” to bring some of the outside wilderness inside. This is a safe and tamed version of the outside, an exhibit to balance the construction and restrictions of the building with our own ideas and feelings about nature.
When a building becomes idle, the insects and arachnids move in, the rodents, lizards and creepers, the dust and dripping water, the scavengers, outlawed and destitute, slowly eating away, coating and growing into the abandoned building and its fixtures. The boundaries between inside and outside are no longer monitored.
An abandoned building offers up many stories, feelings, ideas, comments – many possibilities of imagining and reading mainly through what is not there. Something was there before, maybe every day and now it is not there yet traces are left behind.
It may become a playground for the explorations of adolescents.
/artist review by Dean Linguey
Bangun Abandon Project is a three-day site-specific exhibition conceived collectively in conversations with Lostgens’ and visiting artists from Australia and the UK. The site of the exhibition is a complex of three vacant buildings which had been abandoned for seven years and was once a foreign cultural institution in Kuala Lumpur.
In this instalment, the project involved 28 installation and performance artists from Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia and the UK. Site-specific installation works were splashed liberally throughout the site with performances art pieces greeting audiences on this journey of discovery. Through their individual and collaborative art practices, these artists came together to voice their response to the abandoned spaces provided for the exhibition.
Working organically together with Lostgens’, 28 artists engaged the site as a point of departure. The exposed abandoned building, a host for artists to experiment with material, form and relationality in their artworks.
Working sans curator meant that participating artists had to work together in a self-organizing manner. The artists also had to expand their engagement with exhibitions beyond the idea of displaying artworks on white walls.
Navigating between the site and each other, the multiple possibilities to install the artworks intrinsically creates a network which supports the entire exhibition. With a multiplex of entry points and interpretations for both audience and artists alike, the exhibited artworks dealt with the idea of memory, space and the conception of journey and home.
Participated Artists:
Wing Lim Kok Yoong, Tobias Richardson, Ilham Fadhli Mohd. Shaimy, George Wielgus, Hayley West, Tan Hui Koon, Song Huei Chuen, Ong Boon Keong, Kim Ng & GanTee Sheng, Joseph Teo & Kim Ho, Azliza Ayob, Tsuji Lam, Yeoh Lian Heng, Dean Linguey, Chao Harn Kae, Melissa Lin & Rahmat Haron, Yap Sau Bin, Sun Kang Jye, Teh Leong Kwee, Tan Wai Ding, Aisyah Baharuddin, Chuah Chong Yong, Pauline Siah Cheah Swee & Hoo Kiew Hang
doorWAY
Joseph Teo & Kim Ho
Taking Over Feng Shui Hill
Yap Sau Bin
Ask Your Mother
Azliza Ayob
World Without Us
Tobias Richardson
Save Him…
Chao Harn Kae
Light Drawing
Yeoh Lian Heng
Forever Delayed
Kojek (Ilham Fadhli Shaimy)
Can
Hayley West
Manhole
Tsuji Lam
Untitled
Dean Linguey
In Dreams
George Wielgus
Untitled
Teh Leong Kwee
Love, Home and Warmth
Sun Kang Jye
Untitled
Aisyah Binti Baharuddin
V.I.P
Kim Ng & GanTee Sheng
Recon Project
Pauline Siah & Tan Wai Ding
Chuah Chong Yong, Hoo Kiew Hang
The Altar Where Memory Coalesced
Melissa Lin & Rahmat Haron
Someone is Looking Down on Me
Ong Boon Keong
VIP
WING Lim Kok Yoong
Untitled
Tan Hui Koon
生命的长度与宽度
Song Huei Chuen
In the early 2000s, Selangor and Kuala Lumpur as a city was undergoing a renewal. Selangor as a state has begun the implementation of the Zero Squatters” (“Setinggan Sifar”) Policy 2000 targeting the year 2005 as zero squatters year. Villages were torn down including buildings such as Pudu Jail, Bukit Bintang Girls School, The Bok Mansion, yet abandon building projects such as Plaza Rakyat next to Pudu bus station, displayed its derelict structures.
Lostgens’ then too had begun to make artworks by engaging communities such as autistic children, mental hospital patients and communities that lived in villages often dubbed as squatters; Kampung Berembang, Kampung Cempedak Sentul and Pudu.
In 2008 the effects of Selangor’s 5-year policy Zero Squatter (“Setinggan Sifar”) was seen in the city of Kuala Lumpur where there was an increase of homeless people and abandoned construction projects in housing and commercial buildings. Politically it was also the year where the opposition was elected in Kelantan and four new states, Penang, Selangor, Kedah and Perak.
Taking the social context of Klang Valley and the exhibition site as a source of engagement, the Bangun Abandon Project exhibition is the first project where LostGens’ engagement with fine arts is permeated by the social and political.
image: Lostgens’ building (2004-2009) next to Bangun Abandon Project Site
