AIR Exhibition
What We Believe In
by Susanne Bosch
When German artist Susanne Bosch arrived in Kuala Lumpur invited by the local Goethe Institute for a three months residency, it was the 23rd March. The MH370 had been gone missing for 15 days and did not appear again during her stay in Malaysia. Instead Barak Obama came for a visit, water was rationed in parts of Malaysia, the nation demonstrated against the GST tax in May and the unrest in the Ukraine, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan happened.
Responding to and engaging in context through her work, Susanne Bosch engaged in the situation she “landed” in. Based in lostgens art space and therefore Chinatown, she witnessed the momentary “holdup” of the area: She found herself between massive construction sites on the one hand, Malaysia’s futuristic development in form of urban redevelopments with the tallest building in Malaysia (596 m), new train-stations and more high-rises and a 150 year old urban structure on the other hand with wet markets, temples, traditional shops and housing.
She explored in her time in Malaysia various forms of this local transformation: Meeting “alternativists” who promote change-making through collaborative lifestyles and subsistence economies, public free service, urban gardening and permaculture, questioning the cycle of consumption, exploitation and destruction by practicing other models. She made video portraits of these movements. Otherwise, she witnessed the local parallels of realities between mega shopping malls and living as squatters on dumps, the struggle of civilization expecting to gain happiness somewhere between materialism and spirituality in multi-ethical, multi-religious and multi-cultural Malaysia.
Bosch responded to her first encounters with Malaysia in various forms. She created a multi-media installation in the lostgens space. She further invited the public and the singer/composer Anna Chong for a collaborative work in creating a song about this vanishing, holdup moment in time in Chinatown, where the old is not yet gone and the new about to appear. The lyrics have been collected from the streets, asking people who live or work here or visit.
Bio
Susanne Bosch is a German artist who recently returned to German after living in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for 7 years. She works predominantly with and in public. Her work addresses long-term questions around ideas of democracy. Bosch has taken on issues of money, migration, survival, work, societal visions, and models of participation. She formally uses site- and situation-specific interventions, installations, video, drawing, audio, dialogical work, but also writing, speaking, workshops and seminars.
A German Artist Residency Project collaboration with Goethe-Institut Malaysia
Date of Exhibition
12th – 29th June 2014
Opening
12th June 2014 , 8.00pm
Venue
Lostgens’ Contemporary Art Space
AIR project Initiated and financed by
Goethe-Institut Malaysia
