THE EXCHANGE (2021)
THE EXCHANGE (2021)
"How can we really know another person's experience?"
"How can we really know another person's experience?"
Platform Exchange is a program designed to foster an ongoing, global dialogic interaction through the facilitation of artist exchanges between Platform Arts and international organisations. In its first iteration with LASALLE College of the Arts, virtual collaboration and methodological cross-pollination aim to contribute to international contemporary art discussions, by providing Australian and Singaporean artists with the opportunity to link to an international audience and experience a new global context and network.
The inaugural digital, artist-led exchange connected artists Samantha Taylor (Djilang/Geelong) and Kar-men Cheng (Singapore). From 17 May - July 12 2021 they met in exclusively online spaces to explore each other's contexts, artistic practice and research. Their conversations and findings from these digital encounters are documented below.
ARTISTS
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Samantha Taylor is a Singaporean-Australian multidisciplinary artist who lives and learns on Wadawurrung land. Her research-based practice involves crafted objects, personal effects, diaristic text, performative gestures and photographic documentation within the vicinity of a central, sculptural installation. Samantha addresses the necessity for preservation of cultural customs and the discourse regarding the diasporic consciousness—reflecting upon subjective fluctuation between Singaporean-ness and Australian-ness.
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Kar-men Cheng is an artist whose work explores how identities define themselves in dialogue, and the cultural, phenomenological, and practical barriers between different forms of communication. She likes interviewing people, while slowly drafting a landscape of values, looking for the interactions, practices and systems that rewrite boundaries of social control.
DATES
17 May - 12 July 2021 | Digital Exchange
31 July - 01 August | Artist Instagram Takeover
“How peculiar, that I have not breathed the same air as Kar-men nor heard her voice without the crackling of Zoom interference. Yet, through digital collaboration and virtual conversation, we merged our creative practices—the essence of a successful residency. Nevertheless, we are continuing our collaborative work beyond this exchange.
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Kar-men and Sam’s window panes, condensation on opposite sides belying the vastly different settings.
KAR-MEN CHENG:
I came into this residency without any specific goals. I was just excited to see what it could open up in my practice. I was delighted that Sam and I found chemistry effortlessly. This was in part through our love for questions and a shared curiosity about the different facets through which we could *feel* each others’ points of view.
We experimented with a sort of abstract dialogue, in the format of score and response. The scores were instructions expressed in various media– text, video, sound…totally open to interpretation– and the responses in the other’s chosen creative language, also completely open to interpretation.
We’ve also taken time to try to understand our respective sociocultural contexts and how we derived meaning from the things in our lives. I’ve been able to engage in my interest in Singapore’s gentrification as I walk Sam through the fast-changing spaces around me. Through our exercises, I sometimes observe them in a much more sensitive way. For instance, as I recorded the “air score” for her, I spent more time on certain street corners and picked up on a multitude of buzzes and hums I hadn’t noticed before. It’s clear that introducing yourself to someone faraway introduces new internal receptors into your own space.
SAMANTHA TAYLOR:
Prior to commencing the Artist Exchange, I too had little expectations or objectives. I was curious as to who Kar-men is; how our practices could harmonize and merge; what conversational topics we could ruminate upon; why, we were paired...
Kar-men and I developed an intimate connection through digital collaboration—screen-based conversations alongside a shared Google Drive and the act of ‘screen-shotting’.
We are similar, in many aspects:
Our ‘slow-ness’ in practicing lends itself to a consistent tempo—never delayed, never hurried.
Our preciseness results in endless refinement and rearrangement.
Our (in)ability to decide, is a result of our polymathic tendencies and intrinsic desire to push our creative capabilities
It is difficult to define the intangibility and ephemerality of our shared contemplations and real-time performative acts.
