Macau OX Warehouse

No Cruzamento Entre a Avenida do Cornel Mesquita e a Avenida do Almirante Lacerda Tel:530026 oxwarehouse@gmail.com opening hours: 12:00-7:00/Closed on Tuesdays

Thursday, February 12, 2009

CREB


A Retake of CREB Installations’Creation
Installation Exhibition by Performers of CREB: Camp Response Element-Binding
‘CREB: Camp Response Element-Binding’ was premiered at the Macau Fringe Festival 2007. A group of ‘creative performers’ presented imaginative dance movements, creating simultaneously their first installation on a few rooftops, used as artistic venues. What on earth is ‘creation’? This is an often discussed topic. From my viewpoint, ‘creation’ stands for many incarnations, which can be serious, lovely, beautiful, resplendent, ugly, glittering, light, free or oppressive; any incarnation in any creation is always a result of the artists’ choice, judgment and expression, while reflecting their philosophy of life.This story was started by discussions between the performers and me, about installation art and their views and recollections of the city. Despite their experience being focused on the stage performance, during the creation of CREB we explored together a wide variety of different topics regarding artistic creation, the expression of concepts and themes as well as the use of materials, all of which I found personally rewarding. Through this exhibition in Ox Warehouse, we not only try to explore different expression modes, trying to show how the CREB performers look back on and look forward to their own city through their reminiscences. But we also aim to develop further the last CREB performance, so as to offer the artists a space to better express and increase their care and concern for the city.
Kan Pui Ian, Curator
‘CREB: Camp Response Element-Binding’ was my ‘extravagant’ attempt at the Macau Fringe Festival 2007. Since I missed my childhood rooftops and the old days of the city, I conceived such a performance: audience watch from a distance with binoculars while artists perform on rooftops. But the concept proved very difficult to stage. While thinking about some solutions, silly questions came to me: “why there must be ‘performers’ at all in a performance? Why must we always see ‘something’? Why must we see a performance ‘on a spot’? Can performance just be ‘done’, like recollections of memory?” After elaborating on these, I came up with the idea of a performance about rooftops and memories of the city, without performers or venues.This completely different performance approach is worth of a note: the production team found several rooftops where each performer’s individual act was filmed by the performers, the photographer Bianca Lei and me. Bianca and I then edited the films, while performers moved on to another stage – to create their own installations.On the performing day, the audience did not see the performances on the actual venues (rooftops), but instead the performers’ creation of installations (as an extension of the performance), which drove viewers into a personal feeling of the ambience. Then at night (when the daytime experience had become already a reminiscence) they would see the rooftop performances at home with DVD players (as a substitute for the originally conceived binoculars). Once finished, the performance would thus vanish, just as the former ‘rooftops’, once carriers of some beautiful things, had disappeared from the city’s skyline. The audience was witnessing a vanishing ‘performance’, reminiscent of some feelings about the city which are there no more.This was a ‘performance’ completely different from all my previous ones. For me, it meant lots of fun, as I was able to put some of my very abstract concepts into practice. The whole process was indeed very interesting. It was particularly a high moment to see the performers’ installations. Their dedicated efforts to join my testing of romantic abstractions left me astonished. This was to me a truly tangible ‘creation’, in which I was moved by the performers. Therefore, Kan (Pui Ian) and I design again this exhibition, as a retake of the original creation. The story is yet to start and the fun just begins. If every day in our city and life could be an extensible creation, how fantastic it would be!

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