Blazing the trail for innovation in art collaboration

By Carla Bianpoen

JAKARTA (JP): In the world of art, collaboration is not an unusual phenomenon. It generally takes the shape of joint exhibitions. Recent endeavors reveal an urge to go beyond the usual routes.

This means sharing, communicating and mitigating the boundaries that hinder access to international recognition for certain artists.

An amazing breakthrough can be recorded following Dutch artist Rienke Ennghardt's introduction of her Weather Report, currently on show at the Erasmus Huis Dutch Cultural Center in Jakarta.

Weather Report is an exhibition of works in which works of art from different countries are united in one work, where a center piece is provided by the initiating artist. The works speak of the participatory collaboration of artists from the Netherlands and various countries in Southeast and East Asia.

The idea of participatory collaboration among artists may well mean the beginning of new avenues in art creation; a trend that would be in line with the current thinking in development.

Process

Weather Report started in the Netherlands and was shaped along the tracks of Southeast Asian countries. Unlike the usual collaborative efforts in the arts, the concept of Weather Report was based on sharing, communicating and participating in a way that leaves participants free to carry out their creativity as they themselves feel fit.

Linking emotional communication between artists from different parts of the world, the enterprise responded to an overall need for sharing and communication between artists. This is particularly tangible with artists whose national situation has kept them from having dialogs with colleagues from other regions.

Rienke Enghardt set off for her first trip to Asia in 1991. A train journey took her from Europe to China. She continued on to Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. In each country she visited she put her feelings and experiences into drawings, which she then cut into four pieces. Two pieces were sent home to the Netherlands and two were handed, or sent, to artists in Asia, one of which would be from the country where the drawing was made.

Each artist was asked to complete their part of the drawing as they thought and felt was fitting: no assignments and no guidelines were given; only the name of the country in which the drawing had been made, and the format in which they had to send it back, as well as the information as to which part of the work it made out. This creative undertaking resulted in 78 works of art, made by 38 artists from 10 different countries.

Rienke's vision of global collaboration in a participatory manner emerged in a moment of enlightenment, when seeking to address her inner urges. For her, sharing and communicating should bring about something creative, in which more than just one or two artists could take part.

"Creating a point where roads meet," she said, adding that when she started the project, she had only her intuition to count on. Nobody could tell whether the fragments would come back at all. It was "connecting between what you know and don't know," she explains.

Artists' reactions

At first sight, the works on show look like puzzles cleverly put together. A central piece with four quarters encompassing it make up each work, with styles that differ because of the artist's regional origin. Sometimes this can confuse. Nevertheless, the works are intriguing and, after a while, the enriching aspects of different styles and color mixes open up new visions.

There were participants who did respond to Rienke's fragment, by the same intuition that had led Rienke to invite them to participate. In fact, some artists from different countries came up with the same thought of mind, expressed in similar symbols and color shades. Others could fill in where Rienke's fragments were reflections of the emptiness she felt. Like the work in which Rienke's center piece features a hand, a teddy bear with arms outstretched, as in desperation, and some sketching of apartments, all separate from each other.

"I did not have any feelings that I could relate to in Laos, I felt completely alien," Rienke complains.

Kongphat Luangrath, who received the piece with part of the hand on it, filled the whole of his part with drawings that are like a narration of all the undercurrents in the Laotian city; that only a native of that country could feel and understand. Kongphat admits that "we can only dream of the other fragments". For Pinari Sanpitak from Thailand, it provided a way into freedom. "Modern-day ways of life do not provide you with much freedom," she says.

Nardy Stolker from the Netherlands found it very "confronting" to work on something not initiated herself; something of which she could not predict the outcome. Feng Bin of China found the contact and cooperation between individuals "a good beginning for the future".

From Indonesia, two artists participated, Eddie haRa and Nindityo Adipurnama, both from Yogyakarta. Nindityo admitted that he was, at first, somewhat irritated by the request, received together with a quarter piece of Rienke's drawing. Why in the world would I work on something that Rienke has finished already, he wondered. He was not used to creating an artwork with someone else. Nevertheless, he overcame his initial reluctance and started looking at what he had received. Unable to make out anything of the fragment, he decided to just follow his own flow of imagination.

"The fragment had something that I saw as a strong hand," he said. Not surprisingly, a strong hand was then associated with Margaret Thatcher, and, since she is a woman, it brought Nindityo to his bias of women (Javanese) having to wear the (for him) unbearable chignon. The chignon, as a symbol of violating women's rights, has been an obsession in many instances of Nindityo's artistic career.

What next

Indonesia is the fifth country of exhibition, after the Netherlands, Thailand, Myanmar, and Malaysia. Vietnam, China, Singapore and Hong Kong are on the list, before the exhibit returns to the Netherlands in April 1996. The exhibition is traveling to all the countries which had artists participating in the project. This allows the participating artists to have a look at the completed works, Rienke says.

More than that, the works of Weather Report will continue to bring together artists of different cultures. By April 1996 the decision will have to be made whether to tear apart the fragments that have been united, or keep the works as they are.

According to Rienke, most artists would love to keep the works as they are. Who knows, maybe a museum or some other art institution may be interested in keeping safe the first steps of a possibly expanding movement.

The exhibition at Erasmus Huis Jakarta runs until Nov. 8.