The Eighth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

LU PINGYUAN Readymade 2011 Performance, ‘Taking the Stage OVER: Re-Performing History’ / Bund 18, Shanghai, 19 March 2011 / © Lu Pingyuan HUXIANGQIAN Hu Xiangqian Museum 2011 Performance, ‘Institution for the Future’ / Asia Triennial Manchester 2011 / ©Hu Xiangqian Hishamuddin Rais; and lawyer Ambiga Sreenevasan who has a theatre background. The use of visual communication and performance built momentum and a sense of a body politic, claiming its collective voice against the status quo. Artists such as Sharon Chin, Fahmi Reza, Lew Pik Svonn, Liew Kung Yu and the Lost Generation collective actively designed their own performative devices, each with their own respective agendas, to engage with the Bersih platform and crowd. After a decade of fevered performance activism in Malaysia we are also seeing these same strategies being adopted by the political right, directed back towards the political left. I watched with somewhat guilty glee as a bunch of retired army generals protesting against the Bersih rallies chose to perform morning exercises on the street in front of Ambiga’s house, standing with their backs to her home and bending up and down, with their backsides pointing at her. It seems, then, that much significant performance work is still being created outside the contemporary art context, in public space. What benefits —and risks —do you see in translating performance and actions into museum- based presentations? SK The benefit of presenting performances within museums is that it opens the chance of meeting a different or new audience, and practising a different methodology through various practices. Having a live practice inside a fossilised institution presents the audience with an ‘experience’, a chance to meet something new face to face. As mentioned above, there is the risk of performances being consumed as one-time events inside museums. Consumption of performance within museums is quite different from how it was with the New York performance space The Kitchen in the 1970s, for example, perhaps even more so in Asia where performances are deemed spectacles. Performances are more expensive than conventionally expected, so the budget is always a risk. Performances are also tricky in that while they are a short-term 216—217 APT8 ROUND TABLE