Friday, December 01, 2006

Out Of The Internet

Multimedia Art Asia Pacific (MAAP) hosted an opening for its new art show "Out Of The Internet." The avant-garde of Brisbane was out in force, particularly the Asian wing.

One nice thing about an art show on the Internet is that if you miss the physical show, you can still see everything in the show via the Internet.

There was a Candy Factory film called "G'day G'day", which kinda looked like an out-of-control Australian version of Max Headroom.

Pressed for time, I quickly scanned the monitors, looking for a hook, which, for me, was people. Among the artwork featuring people, there seemed to be a theme of frustration and debility. Three films caught my attention:
  • a man explained about a proposal for an art work that was never funded;
  • a woman placed a large block of styrofoam over her head and flailed away at the styrofoam with a knife, attempting to carve something, but making little progress (Hyunjoo Kim - Korea, Styrofoam Head - here is a related Japanese review); and most interesting of all,
  • a man attempted to eat a bowl of noodles with cutlery, and prepare tea, all the while wearing boxing gloves (Takayuki Hino, Japan, Boxing Man - here is a related Japanese review).
There was also something called Manhua Wonderlands, which also looks interesting:
Incarcerated in their own karaoke ward room, Karaoke Bedlam presents the work of a series of artists exploring karaoke and music video clip culture as it can be channelled through the lens of hallucination and surrealism, chaos and nihilism, subconscious and the unconscious, sanity and schizophrenia. From delusions of grandeur that surround the cult of the pop-idol celebrity, to booty RnB strip-tease role-playing, to fantastical visions of mermen singing sea shanties, Karaoke Bedlam invites audiences to enter the Karaoke Bedlam wards and become voyeurs into claustrophic worlds of audio-visual madness and karaoke induced psychoses.
I hope to return to this and see more of what they have there.....But if I fail, there's always our friend, the Internet.

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