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23rd Annual Bali Arts Festival

June 14 - July 16, 2001

"Pariwisata Budaya" (cultural tourism)

In the city of Denpasar the whole of Bali comes together for a month of cultural and commercial activities.

Each year, the Bali Arts Festival is based on the theme around which new "dance choreography" is produced and old village dances and activities revived. It is month of famous classical dances such as the legong, gambuh, kecak, barong, baris,the whole range of classical Balinese stories - Ramayana, Mahabharata, Sutasoma, Panji and "kreasi baru" (new creations).

In the villages, the seka or cultural groups vie with each other to perform at the Arts Festival and the chance to proudly exibit the uniqueness of their village of birth and resting place of their ancestors.

The festival is Denpasar's most extensive cultural expression, and a most memorable time for the whole of Indonesia.Tourists are welcome, but as the Balinese put it: "Tourism should be for Bali instead of Bali for tourism." If you have the opportunity to experience this incredible display you will be witnessing a genuine living part of local village culture.The villagers though, cannot afford to continue performing for their sakes alone and here the Tourism Industry can play a major part in the support and preservation of such a unique cultural event.

International Installation - Performance Art Collaboration

This event was held at Sika Gallery and Gallery Sembilan on 6th - 26th April 2001 in Bali. Please note the involvement of AIAA member Victoria Cattoni.

Title of Event -"Shul"

Concept

If 'shul', the Tibetan word for 'track', is the indentation where the deer laid its body to rest, then Shul is also the hollow, the impression left by the artist once the work and the maker have moved along.

This is especially true in the case of Installation art and its sister Performance art. Although the work no longer exists in a material or concrete sense, except perhaps in the form of a documentation, the "impression" becomes even more pertinent, even more fundamental to its condition. Installation and Performance Art engender the "impression", anticipate it, actively accounting for it within its form and short life span, before the works'physical demise.

Installation and Performance Art by its very nature, asserts a politic that differentiates itself from art as the consumer product. It boasts the value of artistic experience and response, and all the dimensions that this can encompass. Installation and Performance art require that you engage with the work - Now.

Objectives

Shul is a joint venture into contemporary art within an internationalcontext. Sika Contemporary Art Gallery and Gallery Sembilan both in Ubud,will come together for a collaborative project encompassing Installation and Performance Art.

This project is also an artistic collaboration,bringing together a group of young, though established and highly experienced artists from major centers in Indonesia - Jakarta, Bandung,Yogyakarta and Bali, and from abroad - Britain, Eastern Europe, Japan and Australia. All the artists will meet together in Bali in late March, and here they will begin to share their ideas through a series of discussions which will eventually culminate in their artistic collaborations in the two venues.

By showcasing Balinese artists alongside their national and foreign peers,we can firstly begin to identify and articulate characteristics that are unique to the visual arts in Bali and to individual artists in Bali. And secondly, we may open our eyes to those elements of Balinese uniqueness that outside perspectives can reveal, those particularities that we have already taken for granted, for the ordinary, that we have stopped seeing.For it is within the power of art to uncover and focus on what we would otherwise fail to see.

To complete this collaborative event, Shul will host an artists' forumprogramme to be held on site, at the galleries. All will be welcome, and we hope to attract not only local artists, but also cultural commentators and those members of our communities who are interested and committed to the development of the contemporary arts in Bali so that they can contribute their ideas and responses to the work. These discussions will act as a means to identify and evaluate issues and themes concerning contemporary art in both local and universal contexts.

It is an opportunity for all those in the wider arts communities to come together and support dialogue and examples of artistic models that can foster pluralistic responses to the diverse means of artistic expression available in the contemporary world.

The project Shul aims to leave an impression, as a path is worn into rock.

List of the Artists

Pande Ketut Taman	Peliatan, Bali, Indonesia
Wayan Karja	Penestanan, Bali, Indonesia
Sudamala Group	Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia
Agoes Jolly	Jakarta, Java, Indonesia
Hendrawan Riyanto	Bandung, Java, Indonesia
Midori Hirota	Japan
Michael Pinsky	Britain
Sigitas Staniunas	Lithuania
Victoria Cattoni	Australia