Call it the seven-year itch. In as many years in this city, I'm finally making a go at a dedicated space. DIA/PROJECTS will serve primarily as my studio, and be a semi-public contemporary arts space with a library and archive, and a planned framework for a series of personally selected and commissioned artworks by visiting artists produced in Ho Chi Minh City.

6 meters wide. 20 meters long. 3 meter high ceilings, sunshine-o-plenty and a nice breeze.

Curators will no longer have to bear looking at drying undergarments in my room. No more meetings in noisy coffee shops. Yessir! I'm going to have my very own studio, and if you're wondering, i can barely afford it. I'll be working on getting the space into shape during Tet and will hopefully be inviting guests over by March.

Tactile Text
Singapore Management University (SMU)
LKCSB Seminar Room 2.5 (Room 2012)
Friday, October 9, 2009
1 - 4:30 PM

Continuing on some of the experimental work being done for my Concept Development course at RMIT University Vietnam, I've decided to expand the visualizing information exercise into an arts workshop during my arts residency at the Singapore Management University.

Beginning with the poetry of Singaporean writer Cyril Wong, workshop participants will interrogate the text for information and inspiration that will carry on into the development of art projects. Given the short time frame of the workshop, it will be extremely condensed and I don't know what to expect. I suppose that we could develop prototypes and sketches for art works that might be realized later and/or devise scripts for performing the text.

On Saturday, I'll be giving a presentation on some recent projects including The Mekong at the Asia Pacific Triennial.

Welcome to the Jungle, Jim!
An artist talk by R. Streitmatter-Tran
Singapore Management University (SMU)
Seminar Room 3 (Room 3005)
School of Accountancy/School of Law
Saturday, October 10, 2009
1 - 2:30 PM

'APT6' Exhibition | Zhu Weibing, Ji Wenyu | People holding flowers (detail) 2007 | The Kenneth and Yasuko Myer Collection of Contemporary Asian Art. Purchased 2008 with funds from Michael Simcha Baevski through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation | Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

For the last year Queensland Art Gallery curator Russell Storer and I have been collaboratively developing a special platform for the latest Asia Pacific Triennial, it's 6th incarnation, launching this December in Brisbane, Australia. Simply called The Mekong, the project looks at connections among the Greater Mekong Subregion nations: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar - some transnational, others culturally specific, and others imagined.

I'll be writing more on the Mekong project, but a quick description of the project can be found on the QAG website, and is pasted here below:

The Mekong
Artists: Bùi Công Khánh, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Pich Sopheap, Manit Sriwanichpoom, Svay Ken, Tun Win Aung & Wah Nu, Vandy Rattana
Co-organised by Rich Streitmatter-Tran (Vietnam) and Russell Storer (Curator, Contemporary Asian art, Queensland Art Gallery)

The Mekong River is one of the longest rivers in Asia, running from its source in China, through the countries of Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Difficult to navigate, the Mekong has historically formed connections, as well as a border, between the peoples who live along its course. In recent years, with the growth of trade and investment, the development of roads and other communication networks and increased migration and exchanges of people, information and ideas, the region has become more integrated than ever before. The Mekong platform within APT6 presents a vivid, multi-layered view of a complex and rapidly transforming region, a place that is becoming increasingly prominent culturally, politically and economically. Key themes include changing societies and cultures, including tensions between tradition and modernity, and between Buddhist teachings and Western values. The shifting dynamics of nationhood and how this impacts on individuals and society is another concern for artists. The presentation will feature a range of media, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography and video.

Asia Pacific Triennial (APT6)
A general description of the Asia Pacific Triennial (also taken from the QAG site):

'The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art' (APT6) will profile new commissions and recent work by more than 100 artists and filmmakers from over 25 countries across the region.

APT6 will include for the first time contemporary artists from North Korea (DPRK), Iran, Turkey, Tibet, Cambodia and Myanmar (Burma). Australian artists presented in APT6 are the Philippines-born, Brisbane-based husband-and-wife team Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan; the Melbourne collective DAMP; Raafat Ishak (Melbourne); and Tracey Moffatt, who lives and works in New York and on the Sunshine Coast.

APT6 will include three groundbreaking presentations: The Mansudae Art Studio project, co-curated with filmmaker Nicholas Bonner (UK/China), the first presentation in Australia of contemporary art from North Korea (DPRK); Pacific Reggae, co-curated with broadcaster Brent Clough (NZ/Australia), showcasing for the first time music and music video by reggae artists from Hawai'i, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Australia; and The Mekong, co-curated with artist Rich Streitmatter-Tran (Vietnam), featuring painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography and video from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar (Burma).

Internationally acclaimed directors Ang Lee (Taiwan/USA), Rithy Panh (Cambodia/France) and Takeshi Kitano (Japan) are the filmmakers to be featured in the Australian Cinémathèque at the Gallery of Modern Art.

Information
QAG: The Mekong
QAG: The Asia Pacific Triennial (APT6)

My recent photo installation at the Singapore Art Museum, as a part of the TransportAsian exhibition.
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Richard Streitmatter-Tran
The Jungle Book - The Terrain of the Real Fake
Photo installation, 2009

The pair of photographs contribute to an ongoing series of works called The Jungle Books. A long-term project, borrowing its name from Rudyard Kipling's famous collection of stories, is basically a conceptual framework for art works that speak to life in the Mekong sub-region. Each work will draw inspiration and information from diverse sources and issues such as early colonial travelogues and fiction, early anthropology, the natural sciences, popular culture and tabloid trash, current news, local beliefs and mythologies and politics.

In this series, we find the endangered Giant Mekong Catfish washed ashore and expired as the people come to term with the unexpected arrival of a big problem. In the other photograph, Vietnam's first ever satellite has returned home, smoldering as people gaze upon the symbol of national ambition from the safety of their homes.

While the series speaks to the fluidity between fact and fiction, the photographs are fictions themselves, composited using 3D models. No attempt is made to be convincing. The artifice is to be celebrated.
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Also, Gilles Massot (LaSalle College of the Arts) and I delivered a short artist presentation titled "Constructed Images: Simulacra in Southeast Asia) on May 29th. He brought up an interesting point that if the ecological conservation of the Mekong is not taken seriously, the Giant Mekong Catfish, like the Tasmanian tiger, will soon be as much a fiction as the photograph, and people will be flocking to Mekong theme parks to take photos and buy stuffed animals of the catfish, then existing solely as a simulacrum.