Critical Art in Southeast Asia

Eileen Legaspi Ramirez, Heru Hikayat, Ray Langenbach

Performance art began in the 1960s in Manila and the state of documentation greatly improved from the 1970s to 1990s. What we are doing actually counts, but the question is, how do we let it count? Formations are required to debate critically about it. Ray showed Ho Tzu Nyen’s 4 x 4 (on Tang Da Wu ) to the audience. (Mental cognitive gap between video and performance art) Has performance art always been mediated? Is performance art a product from the mediation and the body in the streams of life? Looking at everyday, everyday becoming a spectacle? The commodification of the body. Did performance art come into form because of globalization? Is it a continuation of daily performance and activism? Performance art it seems, that it has turned conservative to become radical. Taboos remained. Radical because of the issues addressed? Performance art is anti-commodification and anti-capitalism. Weng answered to this by saying that the question is not about whether it is radical, but the fact that it is not contagious, therefore, no possibility of a universal crisis.