crack crack » great wallpaper

bluish.

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:02:34 +0000

Installation view of the Great Wallpaper series. Photo courtesy of Cemeti Art House/Sari Handayani.

When I returned, she was still drawing. On the wall. Why, I asked her. Because it is a wall, she said. But why, I asked again. Because a wall is a construct that stands between this space, where we are, and the next, where they are. I didn’t get it. So I told her, I don’t get it. She smiled. Skipping away from the wall, she was careful enough not to spill the light blue liquid in the cocktail glass that she was holding in her left hand all along. She looked at the wall carefully, as though to make sense of it. To make sense of her drawing, I suppose.

It was a big tall wall. And on it, a big tall drawing. Bluish. Vague. In her right hand was not a straw; it was a brush, its bristles wet. A mosquito flew by my ear and, reflexively, I slapped my own face. I woke up. I didn’t sleep well last night.

So why, I asked again, are you drawing on the wall. She skipped back in, with her cocktail glass, brush and all. Why do people scribble on toilet doors, she asked me back. Why graffiti, she asked me again. Why do dogs pee on lampposts. Why was Kilroy here, there and everywhere. Why do you sign letters. Why do you label things. Why do we define. And why do you want to know why. The mosquito landed on her cheek, her nose only an inch away from my face now, and I, reflexively, slapped her.

I woke up. I didn’t sleep well last night. On my palm the remaining of the mosquito, and a speck of blood: mine or hers? So why do you have to know why, she asked again. Because, I said, I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. Still not, she asked. Still not, I said, but I still really want to know why. Well, she said. It really doesn’t matter. Just enjoy it. And from that moment on, as though rescued by the baptism, I do.

At the end of the exhibition, she punched a window onto that very wall, right at the middle of her bluish drawing on that very wall, a drawing of the world according to the mapmakers. She then cut that rectangular hole that was the window into small pieces, and sold them away. I framed mine as a reminder of nothings.

terra incognita et cetera

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 18:36:31 +0000

Presented as a party game, Terra incognita, et cetera (2009, interactive performance and wall installation) is an exercise in collective painting and, simultaneously, a play of collaboration and territorial marking.

The interactive performance is an art exhibition opening party game where audience members can participate in cutting up a blank map of the world into bordered territories.

Prior to the opening, I painted a blank dymaxion world map with watercolour onto the wall.

During the opening a numbered grid is projected onto the mural. Two attendants, Daniel Wolfson and Kim Grondowski, walked around amongst the audience, serving trays of cocktail toothpick flags of five different colours and a bowl of glue. From these trays, audience members could choose a flag to stick on the mural within the grid reference that they specified, thus claiming the area, writing what they claimed as their last names with pencil to mark the area.

I then coloured the chosen territory in accordance to the flags, repainted the names in watercolour. I continued making up new rules as the interactive performance proceeded, in response to questions from audience members. When the party was over, I marked all unclaimed areas of the map as Terra nullius, and the finished mural — with the freshly marked borders, flags, and territorial names — remained as an artwork for the duration of the exhibition.

Indonesian curator Farah Wardani, after her speech that opened the exhibition, gleefully came to claim the area legally known as Malaysia. She didn’t tell me the reasons behind her choice, but from her triumphant grin it was obvious to me that she meant to refer to all the recurring territorial and cultural ownership disputes between Indonesia and Malaysia.

We also had a Jordan amongst the audience members. I don’t think she claimed the area of the geographical map legally known as Jordan, however.

Some people refused to mark a territory because they were “not into land ownership.” Some answered “I’m not that greedy,” in response to my stating the regulation that they could have as much as three boxes in the grid. Someone claimed three areas as his, Zipling, in green.

The project took territorial marking to new heights: upon a visit to the gallery’s toilet, I found a small toilet graffiti which writing (style and content) resembles one of the audience members’ (“Free Free Palestine” – “Franchez” – “bastien of Free Palestine”).

And as often found in toilet graffiti, someone actually hearts Georgie.

Almost everyone had a reason to choose a specific area. Islands were mostly on demands. Many marked their home countries or some other places they fell in love with. Others based their choice on some popular political or strategic views. Scoglio said she wanted to as much as possible minimise the possibility of maritime invasion.

We started with around 150 flags, and almost every one of them was taken. Some audience members glued their flags onto the wall without approaching me, so they didn’t know the rules of the game and didn’t inscribe their names next to their flags. I pulled out these illegitimate flags to allow newer, legitimate ones.

The piece was as ephemeral as the world’s geopolitical boundaries: when the exhibition closes, following art galleries’ tradition — as I had done with the interactive performance at the opening of the exhibition — I had to repaint the whole wall back to white.

(Terra incognita, et cetera was part of Kompilasi group exhibition, curated by Kristi Monfries, Georgia Sedgwick and Tim O’Donoghue in Bus Gallery, Melbourne, 24 Feb – 13 Mar 2009.)

Photos courtesy of the artist and Lindsay Cox.

Many thanks to:
• Daniel Wolfson for his role as an attendant in the performance.
• Kim Grondowski for her role as an attendant in the performance.
• the audience members, including Farah Wardani, Fiona Jordan, Zipling, Franchez, Atticus, and Zoe Scoglio.
• Ruth Wolfson-Solomon for rolling up lots of little flags with me.

next.

Tintin Wulia — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:13:31 +0000

Great Wallpaper series was conceived during the Cemeti residency. My next plan is to make the fourth in the series with video.

I have noticed how during the process of doing the murals, the OHP projection would also fall on my ladder and on the pedestals that I use to put my watercolour bowl. Imagine that there’s one white pedestal put in a distance off the wall, and imagine that there’s a hole in the pedestal, facing the wall. In the hole there’s a TV monitor playing something. The lights coming out of the TV monitor will illuminate the wall – you might only be able to read the mural with the help of this illumination. The back of the white pedestal (where there’s no hole) will have part of the mural.

The hotel where I stayed in Clermont-Ferrand was quite interesting. My pinoy friends, perhaps being so obsessed with gangster films (somehow I always think of Khavn like this, I have no idea why), pointed out that there’s a bullethole on the glass window right above the entrance.

Most interesting for me was, in fact, my room. I played around with the phone – an old-fashioned phone where you drag and release your numbers around a wheel (instead of push-on buttons). It looked so nice with the brownish carpetish wallpaper design. I have some footage of this.

A footage that I wish I would have taken was a footage of my arms’ shadows on the wall, dancing to the French music-videos. Movie trailers during the break. Then black French hiphop rappers with female vocalists. With those on TV, I turned the lights off, positioned my body in a way that I could see only the shadows of my arms on the wall, and just moved to the music. It was really interesting to study how each cut in the music video casted a different colour and shade of light onto the walls. With each cut, each movement of my arms was translated into a different location and a different angle on the wall. It looked as though I was always moving around.

Maybe the video in the white pedestal for my next Great Wallpaper mural would simply be such shadowplay. It would be interesting that the shadowplay will in fact create another shadowplay on the wall that the TV will be illuminating.

Let’s see.

the most international artist in the universe.

Tintin Wulia — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:23:53 +0000

If I would have been born exactly where I was born — approximately 4400 kilometres away from where I currently reside — but 100 years before, people might have called me a Chinese Dutch East Indian. If I would have been born exactly where I was born but 30 years before, my birth certificate would have been — like my mother’s birth certificate was — written in the Japanese year 2602.

Luckily I was born exactly where I was born in 1972 Anno Domini, in a world where printing machines have been discovered centuries ago and the Internet is therefore eventual. This has consequently enabled me to start a collection of passports from all the existing nation-states in this world.

At this stage, I have 129 passports. Doesn’t that make me the most international artist in the universe?

great wall.

Tintin Wulia — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:31:19 +0000

Great Wallpaper series, installation view at Cemeti Art House. Photography: Sari Handayani.

packing.

Tintin Wulia — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 01:18:14 +0000

Packing now, after 3 months in Jogja.

In the exhibition I showed Invasion (was Almost Cut when still in progress), Great Wallpaper No. 211/1940, Great Wallpaper No. 12/2602, Great Wallpaper No. 470/I/Sbki/67, (Re)Collection of Togetherness – Stage 2 which included Pulang (was Sobron Sehari-hari until the most recent draft – this is also still in progress), and Study for Wanton.

I am getting ready for Europe.

watercolour.

Tintin Wulia — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 10:55:56 +0000

My grandmother Tan Tjit Nio was born in 1912, in Pangkalpinang.

She didn’t have any birth certificate.

What she had was a acknowledgment of birth letter made in Batavia in 1940, signed by the Assistent-Resident of the Dutch India government of Batavia.

It says:
dat Tan Tjit Nio voornoemd niet in het bezit is van een geboorte-acte, sangezien er tijdens haar geboorte neg geen Burgerlijke stand voor Chineezen bestond[.]

is.

Tintin Wulia — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 07:37:13 +0000

When we went to the Ngasem pet market to look for some sand to put in the kite pots, Ratna saw this baby mosquitoes for fish food. She immediately and excitedly asked me whether I still was collecting mosquitoes. I said yes, bought one plastic bag of those baby mosquitoes and brought them back to my studio.

The next day I could see some mosquitoes in the plastic bag already. I thought I could put them in transparent jars and just put surveillance camera in front of them.

I also continued sewing the books for the passport.

I still have some unedited covers. This is such a lot of work. But it’s fun. And funny too.

Rani gave me back my Maneki Neko. I found at Tita’s place a dead dragonfly and brought it back as well.

Caught some local mosquitoes with my electric racket. Krijn realized today that sometimes the racket would only give them an electric shock and after a while they will just fly around again. I knew this – it has happened to me quite a lot.

Joselina showed me her passport – it’s valid for travel all around the world except for Iraq.

I also met a lot of other people who told me they could send me more passport. I wish for more passport cover for Christmas.

And I started to experiment with the watercolor mural – the first thing I tried was a simple passport-size photograph taken from my mother’s proof of citizenship card.

And so on.

ants.

Tintin Wulia — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 11:55:25 +0000

Last night was the first time I discussed more about Sobron Sehari-hari again with Marie. She has seen the first draft in Singapore when I presented it at Theatreworks/72-13 a few years ago.

Today started really hot. Midday, the big rain began.

I sketched some to think about the frame for Almost Cut and then tried to write about it here verbally, but found that, still, sketches tell more and better, and differently.

My maternal grandparents’ birth certificates were issued by the Dutch government in Benkoelen, part of Dutch India. That should make my grandparents Dutch Indians. Now, Dutch India is known as Indonesia. What does that make me?

A lost kite. Blown by artificial wind:

My table is full of ants – going in and out my laptop keyboards, walking over my passport covers, in a tidy row and in panicky scatters.

I shot some. Mostly close up of the passport cover processes, for (Re)Collection of Togetherness.

Demistifying power. Debugging the myth of control.

Border security is simply a response to volatility. The wish to live forever.

So far I’ve found the Sheffield Special razorblades made in Sheffield, England (bought these in Melbourne); the Zorrick razorblades – made in India; the Tatra – made in Czech Republic; the London Bridge and the Gillette Goal – both manufactured in Shanghai under license from The Gillette Company USA.

The wall which I stuck the banana leaves onto has some metal in it. Perhaps in the paint. The magnet sticks there in an awkward, magical angle.

Ariel Heryanto visited with Samuel Indratma. This is the first time I’ve met both of them and I felt honoured, so much that I’ve just realized I didn’t show them my studio (we were into a brief discussion about Sobron Sehari-hari).

Anyway, I then joined Samuel and Ariel to visit Kunci (met with Andari – whom Prima has mentioned to me, Ferdy, and Ninot), and Kunci’s neighbour Yayasan Pondok Rakyat (met with Yosi, and Widi whom I’ve met at JiFFest before). I’ve been to Mes 56, their other neighbour.

I’ve had a bit of intro discussion about Sobron Sehari-hari at Kunci. Andari mentioned the national archive. Ninot mentioned Hersri Setiawan, and Yosi gave me Inilah Pamflet Itu, a collection of Hersri Setiawan’s poems that YPR has just released.

Political power is manmade, and industrial.

Video excerpted from (Re)Collection of Togetherness: nicking the papers, part of behind-the-scene of the passports. Thanks to Dale Nason.