【M+Presents】Avant-Garde Now：Performing for the Camera

Description

‘Performing for the Camera’ offers a day-long immersion into performance art on film, demonstrating how contemporary artists create at the intersection of performance and moving image. Featuring screenings, talks, and live performances by Eisa Jocson (b. 1986, Philippines), Florence Lam (b. 1992, Hong Kong), Melati Suryodarmo (b. 1969, Indonesia), and Kawita Vatanajyankur (b. 1987, Thailand), this lively programme explores the body’s relationship to spectacle, labour, capitalism, technology, endurance, vulnerability, and failure. A roundtable discussion involving all the artists unpacks the creative processes, inspirations, and intentions behind their practices.

Schedule

11:30–12:35: Eisa Jocson | Performance lecture (House 1)

12:35–14:00: Lunch break

14:00–15:00: Melati Suryodarmo | Screening and in-person conversation (House 1)

15:20–16:20: Kawita Vatanajyankur | Artist presentation, screening, and live interactive performance (House 1)

16:25–16:55: Coffee break

17:00–17:30: Florence Lam｜Live performance (Moving Image Centre）

17:40–19:20: Artists' Roundtable (House 1)

Eisa Jocson | Performance lecture

Time: 11:30–12:35, House 1

Eisa Jocson presents Corponomy (2017), a live performance lecture that reflects on her major works made between 2009 and 2017. The performance traverses a range of dance forms, including pole dancing, macho dancing, hostess studies, and princess studies. By blending the vocabularies of these various movements, Jocson explores how the dancing body can embody and challenge the expectations and constructs associated with service labour, gender, and cultural identity. Through a layered multimedia approach, the performance lecture combines Jocson's physical presence, projected shadows, and recorded imagery.

The performance lecture will be preceded by introductory remarks by Chanel Kong, Curator, Moving Image, in English.
Screening Credits

Corponomy

2017 | Digital | Colour | Sound | 60 min.

Melati Suryodarmo | Screening and in-person conversation

Time: 14:00–15:00, House 1

This screening features a selection of video works documenting the durational performance art pieces created by Melati Suryodarmo between 2000 and 2014. Exergie—Butter Dance (2000), from the M+ Collection, depicts the artist dancing sensuously on slippery blocks of butter while wearing red stilettos. In I Love You (2007), Suryodarmo repeatedly utters the titular phrase while carrying a fragile glass pane within a small, red-lit room. Transaction of Hollows (2014) sees the artist firing arrows from a Javanese bow near her audience, creating a palpable sense of danger. Lologue (2014) takes place on oversized white stairs, where Suryodarmo's black bell-covered costume rings loudly, mediating between human and spiritual realms.

The screening will be followed by a talk with Melati Suryodarmo, moderated by Ulanda Blair, Curator, Moving Image. This talk will be held in English.

Screening Credits

Exergie—Butter Dance

2000 | Digital | Colour | Sound | 6 min. 29 sec.

I Love You

2007 | Digital | Colour | Sound | 5 min. 53 sec.

Transaction of Hollows

2014 | Digital | Colour | Sound | 14 min. 45 sec.

Lologue

2014 | Digital | Colour | Sound | 6 min. 28 sec.

Kawita Vatanajyankur | Artist presentation, screening, and live interactive performance

Time: 15:20–16:20, House 1

Kawita Vatanajyankur presents a selection of her performative moving image works that explore the concept of physical labour. The screening is followed by a live interactive performance, Voting Theatre II (2024), developed in collaboration with AI specialist and MIT researcher Pat Pataranutaporn. The work invites audiences to participate via their smartphones in a provocative Q&A designed with the usage of artificial intelligence. Voting Theatre II interrogates invisible psychological labour in cyberspace.

This programme will be preceded by introductory remarks by Kate Gu, Associate Curator, Digital Special Projects, Moving Image, in English.

Screening Credits

Domesticated

2020 | Digital | Colour | Sound | 12 min. 42 sec.

Shuttle

2018 | Digital | Colour | Silent | 3 min. 27 sec.

The Scale of Injustice

2021 | Digital | Colour | Silent | 8 min. 19 sec.

Florence Lam | Live performance

Time: 17:00–17:30, Moving Image Centre

Florence Lam restages a condensed version of Implantation (2022/2024), originally a five-hour performance in which Lam struggles, carries, and wrestles a heavy CRT television displaying a compilation of archival footage shot in Hong Kong in the 1960s. Framing the body as a vessel for history and memory, this performance explores the sense of wistful displacement that arises when confronting historical narratives of one's hometown.

This performance will be preceded by introductory remarks by Eunice Tsang, Associate Curator, Moving Image, in English.

Artists’ Roundtable

Time: 17:40–19:20, House 1

This roundtable brings together Melati Suryodarmo, Eisa Jocson, Kawita Vatanajyankur, and Florence Lam, the four participating artists in ‘Avant-Garde Now: Performing for the Camera’. Based in Surakarta (Solo), Manila, Bangkok, and Hong Kong respectively, these artists play a vital role in championing interdisciplinary performance art in Asia. The discussion will explore both the connections and divergences between their artistic practices and cultural contexts, offering a valuable regional perspective on the evolving relationship between performance art and the moving image.

This talk will be moderated by Silke Schmickl, CHANEL Lead Curator, Moving Image. The talk will be held in English.

"Avant-garde!" is supported by M+'s main partner CHANEL.

Photo Credit：Melati Suryodarmo. Exergie—Butter Dance, 2000. Photo: Courtesy of the artist; Eisa Jocson. Corponomy, A Performance Lecture, 2019. Photo: Courtesy of Esplanade photo by Bernie Ng; Kawita Vatanajyankur. Domesticated, 2020. Photo: Courtesy of Nova Contemporary and the Artist; Florence Lam. Implantation, 2022. Photo: Courtesy of the artist