THE FIRST CONTEMPORARY ART STUDIO IN HANOI - VIETNAM, ESTABLISHED SINCE 1998

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Ba Dinh, Ha Noi, Vietnam
House on Stilts - Street address: Nhà sàn anh Đức, Ngõ 462, Đường Bưởi, Quận Ba Đình, Hà Nội, Việt Nam --- email: nhasananhduc@gmail.com Telephone: 84 (0) 4 762 5452 This stilted Mường ethnic minority house (nhà sàn), relocated from Hòa Bình Province to the western suburbs of Hà Nội, is one of the capital’s most active centres for installation and performance art. The upper storey is a treasure-trove of old statues and other artefacts, many of which are on sale to the public. The ground floor area beneath the house is used for exhibitions, installations and performances by contemporary artists.

Sunday 2 August 2009

"in transit" - Kimbal Bumstead

"In Transit" is a self organised project by Kimbal Bumstead in which he is making performances as part of an overland travel from Berlin to Bangkok. In the places he goes he makes performances in galleries and also in people's houses. The performances he does all follow the same basic format but change and develop depending on the productivity of the audience. He is aiming to build up a body of work in the form of documentation which will be presented in an exhibition in the UK in October 2009.
Along the way, the audience members present become the characters of a story and during the performance they will contribute to the making of an installation.

The performance is about physical contact with audience members and Kimbal as the performer using the audience as his tools, or props in order to create this installation.
The performance is not directly about anything specifically, its the product of Kimbal's ongoing research into audience participation within performance. It alludes to human issues such as dehumanisation, objectification and power. Each audience and social context leads to a different perception of what the meaning is; this is the main concept of the 'In Transit' Project, as Kimbal physically progresses overland, the concept of the performance is also changing (in transit)."

The actual performance takes different forms but for example, his performance in Beijing involved Kimbal preparing a dinner where one of the audience members was the meat for the dinner. He prepared some sauce to marinade the body of the audience member whom he had stripped and taped onto a table. The rest of the audience were then invited to draw the piece of the body they would like to eat, He then prepared the vegetables in a wok which he poured onto their drawings. The audience received their drawings with meat and vegetables packaged in a plastic bag for them to take away with them. (English perception of chinese take-away food)

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