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| Journey to the interior of a grain of sand |
| After a week of work in Belize |
| Yasser Musa (Photos by Eugenia Montalván Colón |
“All artists maked their artistry are so different. Attitude of "everthing is possible" that me very surprised. But I enjoyed in it. Maybe it’s a good way to learning for me.”
Unedited excerpt from an email by Lu Yun-shan (呂昀珊),
Taiwanese art student, assigned to landings 8 exhibit, Taipei, May 2008
Belize City, September 8, 2008. Atexactly 9:00am on Monday August 25, 2008 we gathered in the small coolwhite space of the Image Factory Art Foundation in the heat of BelizeCity for the start of landings 9 the forum, an exhibition of ideas. And for four days we reflected,reminisced, and deliberated on our orbit; those fragments of threeregions – the Caribbean, Central America and the Yucatan Peninsula–shards of our ravenous reality. It took us four years and four monthsto reach this moment. We were all holding a one way ticket to a newway, a new approach, and a distinct orbit in art.After welcoming the participants on Monday, some twenty of them, we got down to the business of reviewing the first 8 landings.Sharing personal insights and experiences it took us almost eight hoursto capture the memory of fire, the trajectory of executing such acomplex project involving so many institutions and their own uniqueinternal systems of managing art projects. We all agreed that the game was not about nostalgia, but about trying in inflict a new energy into a almost complete project.
The landings process has been jagged and raw. For so many years we struggled in our isolated national spaces humiliated by the over arching arrogance of USA’s hate for our cultural manifestations. It took these four years and four months to prove to ourselves that a warrior attitude is what it takes to move forward. As Joan Duran, the anti-curator said to our Belize media on Friday:
“Who is supposed to fight for art? Engineers? The guys from public works? Health workers? No, we the artist are those that are supposed to be fighting and fighting, it means to create. Yesterday (we) were talking about (we) must define a kind of a manual of what to do for young artists to confront society and get away with, to try to bend society to make sure that society understands that art is important.” – Channel 5 television, Friday August 29, 2008
For four years and four months we flew our own artistic flags in a kind of oblivion, unaware of each other’s work and life. For example I grew up thinking Guatemala was a big fucking monster full of blood and bullets. I could never imagine my brother Benvenuto could be in his highland village thinking about the same art orbit as I was, watching the Oscar awards and wondering how he could construct his own symbols of identity and survival.
At the first landings in May 2004 I ate tacos and drank Pepsi with the Cuban duo Elsoca & Fabian. They constantly spoke about McDonalds as we watched the evening sun set atop a makeshift bullfighting ring. They were taking a break from a monumental construction of a one meter high cylinder made of cockroach legs. Conkal’s XVII century Fransiscan Convent was being attacked, by the warriors of art.
landings artists have this sense of being on a magical mystery tour. Adán Vallecillo who lives in Honduras and grew up near the border with Nicaragua speaks with a dignity and an elegant presence. He’s a socially conscious artist whose objects come from closets inside a house of the flying daggers. In an emotional answer given to a Belizean journalist Adán revealed some of his innermost thoughts about the legacy of war and the marks of an unresolved history in this region still recovering from bombs and bayonets. But when he speaks his peaceful voice echos the hope of an artist engaged with the post-modern life we must confront in 2008.
The Orbit of landings
A young Australian journalist, James Donald who writes for the The China Post states, “The four-year-young Belizean-born landings cell is a nomadic art-explosion, touching down on foreign shores with a mission to “cross-fertilize” cultures and identities. All attempts to define landings fail short.” I agree with him 100%, but because I’m locked in the process I’ve been struggling these past four years and four months to find meaning. I get glimpses of truth when I see a former student Sean Paul Taegar get up in the
landings 9 forum and demand time to express his ideas about the future of contemporary art. I get a hint when I see a Cuban journalist Maité break down in tears when the landings forum ends and she is overwhelmed by the love and joy that art can bring to the lives of people across borders and languages.
It would be safe to say that over 150,000 people have visited the first 8 landings exhibits. I say this confidently because 59,291 visited the Taipei Fine Arts Museum alone. These numbers are astounding, a measure of the enormity of the effort. It proves that systems and societies are ready to take on the voices of a new generation.
The orbit of landings has internalized a set of attitudes inspired by the curator Joan Duran. A few of them:
1. Fight the power of the institution, no matter what!
2. Prepare, prepare, prepare. Prepare your art to the last minute, and even then, be prepared to change it.
3. Push absurdity to the maximum.
4. Document, catalogue and file – build the record.
landings by numbers
9 exhibitions & 1 forum in 5 years / 1 curator – Joan Duran / 9 full color catalogue-books (landings 6+7 in Havana in 1 book) / Over 50 artists participating / 14 countries / 3 regions – Yucatan Peninsula, Caribbean and Central America / Over 150,000 in attendance. The highest visitation came at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum from May 16 – July 6, 2008 with 59,291 visitors.
Moving like a laser butterfly
This week Fajri Bajar died. He was my mathematics teacher in High School. He was a philosopher and math warrior. Math is a laser and art a butterfly. The landings project must be seen as a process. Fajri always insisted that in math if you can’t internalize the process of a problem then the product will always remain out of reach. This is the same lesson Duran has been pounding in us.
With brutal honesty we must now accept that the post-landings life is there for the taking. We are no longer the next generation. We are in the moment of our making.
“We are not artists, we are warriors. Yes - we are warriors of our ideas. I think we artists –slash- warriors, are very smart people because we have ideas that somehow transcend into the society. So these ideas should not be put in this kind of highway to the heaven of New York, Tokyo and London. These ideas and these efforts should be put in a kind of a “picado” in the bush… in a kind of a dirt road that somehow one day will become a highway.” Joan Duran, on Channel 7
The title of this blog was borrowed from Belizean poet Sean Paul Taegar from his poem
SIETE VIAJES TIENEN QUE IR EN SUS VIDAS!
(take a trip) For Omar y Mariela
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