Bangun Penang Clan Jetties Art Project 2009
Bangun! Art Project 2009 – Penang Clan Jetties is initiated by Lostgens with cultural & heritage workers in Kuala Lumpur and Penang. In this edition, the aim of Bangun! is to bring contemporary arts to the grassroots by creating a bottom-up, community-oriented platform to actualize the local communities’ involvement in an arts festival highlighting the people’s local life history and the surviving heritage. What began as a humble intention for artists to hold art workshops for the Penang Clan Jetties community, multifold into a fortnight of multi-media community arts festival held on and around the historical Penang Clan Jetties.
Co-curated by Lostgens, Yeoh Lian Heng , George Wielgus (UK artist), Dean Linguey (Lostgens’ AIR program AUS artist) and Ong Boon Keong, this self initiative art project collaborates with the Chew Clan Jetty community with the support from YB Wong Hon Wai and festival volunteers.
Distilling art with grassroots communities
The Clan Jetties of Weld Quay are one of the few communal sites which are thriving for over a century, yet the cultural practices and social institutions that address their daily functioning are fast disappearing, the community remains intact despite the threat of urban development.
The Bangun Penang Clan Jetties Project centers on the families and communities living at the Chew Clan Jetty in Penang. Together with the residents of the Chew Clan Jetty, artists from Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Italy, the United Kingdom, Australia and many other countries came together to create interactive creative workshops and performances.
Date of Workshop
25th – 30th August 2009
Date of Exhibition
28th – 30th August 2009
Main Venue
Weld Quay, Chew Clan Jetty, Penang
Art on Sea (Music & Acoustic Live)
29th – 30th August 2009
Floating Fish Farm from Chew Jetty
Events & Activities
painting exhibition
site-specific installation art
music, performance and mural workshops
jetty cultural, music & art performances
art on sea – unplugged live music performances
Organizer:
Lost Generation Art Space
Supported by:
YB Wong Hon Wai & Chew Clan Jetty, Penang
Photo credit: Ricky Sow, Jess Cheng & See Tho Chee Seong
Prelude to Bangun 2009
Art Workshops, Installation Exhibition and Art On Sea festival
are three manifestations of this project. The festival is a series of site-specific art projects that centers on local history, humanities and communities.
The site which are homes for families, encourage a flow of artistic dialogue between the communities living in and around jetties, local Penangites and visiting artists.
Site-specific Installation Arts
The installation exhibition is heavily influenced by local culture and narratives, which saw artistic works imbued with local history, heritage and communal conviviality.
Participating artists are local artist David Wong Tay Woei, Khoo Boon Want, Liew Teck Leong, Yap Sau Bin, Teoh Joo Ngee, Kim Ng, Tan Voon Yam, Tsuji Lam, Tan Chee Hon, See Yee Wen, Saiful Razman, Jazmi Izwan Jamal, Shahrul Jamili, Tengku Azhari Tengku Azizan, You Sue Ching (Taiwan), Hitori Nakayama (Japan) , Dean Linguey (Australia) and students from USM University in Penang.
Workshops
The art workshops are held for the community’s members to develop performances and artwork concerning their histories and living experiences. Art workshops are held daily (10am-2pm) and the works by the participants were presented during the three-day festival.
1. Poetry Creation Workshop – George Wielgus (UK)
2. Installation Art Workshop – Dean Linguey (AUSTRALIA)
3. Chinese Opera & Folklore – makeup, music and song
4. Oral History- collecting local folk music and folk songs- The Classic Accent Team (MALAYSIA)
5. Creative Body Dance – Elaine Pedley (MALAYSIA)
6. Pirate Mural – Aisyah Baharuddin (INDONESIA)
7. Chew Jetty Multi-sensory Tour – Naima Dell‘Ava (ITA)
8. Drum Percussion – Paul Lau (MALAYSIA)
9. Live Museum: Life on Water – A workshop on mapping, field installation by Project Connect -Tan Hui Koon, Patricia Low, Fairuz Sulaiman, Nurul Hamizah Mohamad
Jetty Music & Performance Art
Bringing communities together through performances, poets and theatre makers , the Jetty Performance includes street poetry, action theatre, Chinese opera and performances by local youths who attended the workshops over the last three days.
Highlights: A dynamic street performance of opera makeup (presented by the Chinese Accent Team), a jetty solo by the famous Japanese soprano Ranka Kurano; George Wielgus and The Lost from the United Kingdom Poets recitation performance, impromptu art performance by poet painter Rahmat Haron, The Fallen Leaves People’s Theater consisting people recovering from drug addiction presenting their original devised production “Jangan Main”(Dont Play), interactive Tugu percussion performance, creative body dance workshop performance directed by Elaine Pedley, cooking workshop and performance by Aisyah Baharuddin, and more art performances by Nurul Hamizah Mohamad, Hoo Kiew Hang, Chan Lai Kuen, Mary Tang & Naima Dell’Ava (Italy).
Photo credit: Joseph Teo, Jess Cheng, Ricky Sow & See Tho Chee Seong
Photo credit: Ricky Sow & Douglas Ho
Art on Sea
an unplugged live music performance on a fish farm
Stepping into a sampan at Penang Chew jetty, visitors to the music concert swayed in the sea 500 meters offshore, heading to a platform hosting live musical performances and art exhibition. The air filled with the sounds of blues, folk songs, unplugged electronic psychedelic music and experimental music intermingled with the laps of the wind and wave greets the visitors.
Music performed by Dean Linguey and Dinesh De Silva from Australia, Silent Keat, DJ Rainf, Azren Azimuddin, Metahingar-Tengku Azhari Tengku Azizan and Shafiq Samad, Avroco, Wolf and many other artists and musicians from Malaysia.
The team hoped that the project would lead to the development of skills and ideas for future art programs to be run annually. This in turn would sustain the “living museum” and unique cultural heritage of the Clan Jetties.
Looking back on the project, we could have been more organized. Although the community has been supportive and heavily involved in the festival, especially logistically, we hope to have the community engaged artistically, especially in the creation of artworks and programming of the festival. It warms the heart that the children enjoyed the workshops. What started from a workshop of four increased to thirty as the children brought their friends and families. The festival also had a few moments of delight, one of the many is the discovery of a distant family living in the same community by one of the residents showing us around the Clan Jetties.
The residents engaged with the artworks, especially in the performances and installations, created a rousing atmosphere. Some highlights were residences spontaneously adding onto Aisyah Baharrudin’s cooking recipe, bringing their ingredients and flavours from their kitchen, into the dish, creating a communal dining performance. A broken boat, thought to be abandoned, had a livid owner carefully watching the artists create an installation in the middle of the sea with his boat. Daily watching the progress of the said installation, an old lady would comment and start telling stories from her past reminding us of our narratives placed within oral history and how far removed we are now from our own people’s histories.
The community too experienced a shift in perception from other parts of society. Initially, the volunteer students had reservations entering the Clan Jetties but today the Chew Clan Jetty is the most tourist-friendly with stalls selling souvenirs.
Special Thanks to:
Anak-anak Kota (Penang)
Chew Kok Wah & family
Janet Pillai
Julia West
Penang Chew Clan Jetty President
Penang Chew Clan Jetty Residents
Tengku Azhari Tengku Azizan (USM)
Project Team:
Yeoh Lian Heng, Dean Linguey, Ong Boon Keong, Gorge Wielgus, Tsuji Lam, Allen Ng Boon Choong, See Yee Wen, Mooza Mohd.
Volunteers:
Avroco Nasir, Skye Walker, Marc Martin, Elizabeth Phun, Jocelyn Tham, Jude Burley, Suzy Sulaiman
