Lost in transmission

WITH MAJOR ARTISTS like Tsai Ming-liang, Romeo Castellucci, Toshiki Okada, Tim Etchells and our own Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook attending the opening last month, all signs point to the brand new Asia Culture Centre (ACC) Gwangju being an immediate success.
Set up by the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in the town where the democratisation movement started decades ago, the new centre seems likely to attract not just important artists but also culture-starved crowds, especially with a programme designed to cover several months.
With the opening festivities now a memory, regular programming has commenced and in the centre’s inaugural season lasting until May, it’s divided into two major sections, “Asia Windows” and “Our Masters”. The latter includes works by Hikikata Tatsumi and William Kentridge while the former invites five Asian curators to share their thoughts on Asia now. First up is Indonesian curator Helly Minarti. Her “Gaze. Project. Myth” project, based on her research on orientalism, comprises an exhibition “Traversing Trajectories: The Oriental – Other and Mythical”, running until Sunday, on how Asian cultures have been presented in world expos and how orientalism has affected European and American artists’ perception of Asian arts. This is in addition to new performance works, on the same theme, by German dancer and choreographer Arco Renz and his Japanese counterpart Zan Yamashita.
In the 518-seat Theatre 2, Renz’s “East” figuratively showed the relationship between east and west. He used a long bamboo stick in the first part and shared the stage with many inflatable balls in the second. With his long years of collaborating and creating works with Asian artists whose backgrounds range from Western classical ballet to Asian traditional dances, he didn’t attempt to merge any of them. And with help from the live and vibrating soundscape by Vietnamese DJ Phu Pham present at the edge of the stage and riveting LED lighting design by Fujimoto “Kinsei” Takayuki, “East” was engaging from start to finish and left much for the audience to ponder on.
In the more intimate “Atelier”, Yamashita was in front of the two split screens – one showing a live image of his teacher, Bali-based Yukie Hirota, with whom he studied Balinese traditional dance, both in person and via Skype, the other Korean and English surtitles. A dance dialogue documenting Yamashita’s struggles in learning the movements, “Evil Dance” was an insightful and humorous dance dialogue that reminded us that in this age of information technology, really learning another performing culture is not any easier. It showed too that in this vast continent, we still have a lot to learn from one another.
 Yet on opening night, both performances saw only about one fifth of the seats filled and “Atelier” just one third. The following morning, Minarti led a tour of her exhibition and joined the two artists in a discussion in the afternoon. Again, only a few dozen people were in attendance.
With four floors underground and four above, giving a total area of more than 150,000 square metres, ACC, in addition to the large, flexible and separable space of theatre 1, also consists of several other sections. ACC Creation ACT (Arts and Creative Technology) is designed develop interdisciplinary works; ACC Children, provides educational experience and play; ACC Archive and Research has a large database on various disciplines of arts and several temporary exhibitions; while ACC Culture Exchange, which needs no explanation, is located in the former Jeonnam provincial office,
In other words, there are many reasons to visit ACC, which aims to be “Asia’s cultural window to the world”, even when there’s no performance scheduled. Of course, the number of people attending “Gaze. Project. Myth” was indeed alarming but given the track record of Korea’s cultural management, ACC’s audience development and connection to the local community, will
 probably solve this soon.
The writer’s trip was part of MCST’s K-Fellowship: Invitation. He wishes to thank Korean Cultural Centre in Bangkok, Suna Choe and Kim Chamseul for all assistance.
 On the Web:
www.AsianArtsTheatre.org.