Body of Light: Open studio with artists Din Chan and Prumsodun Ok
Monday, 4 June 2018, 2pm - 8pm
In English with Khmer translation
Sa Sa Art Projects, #47 St 350 (off 95)
Sa Sa Art Projects is pleased to welcome you to an open studio by our current Pisaot artists-in-residence Din Chan and Prumsodun Ok, who have spent the last six weeks exploring an experimental collaboration.
Body of Light explores dance and photography as vessels of human memory. The interdisciplinary project sets movement-sensitive light technologies onto dancer Prumsodun Ok, revealing the body as an instrument and expression of illumination. Writing and drawing with air and space as canvas, the dancer responds to residual experiences, states of being, and images living in his body. Through text, sound, and light, photographic imagery and live performance, he manifests and meditates upon timeless experiences of life, love, and death.
During the six-week residency, Chan introduced Ok to the lighting technology. They explored how different forms of dancing affect the sensors, and how certain physical gestures and vocabularies may be used to express certain ideas, emotions, themes, and narratives. They also investigated how movement can be an improvised and “pure” response to these things, and how this might result differently on photographic paper and in physical space.
Throughout this process, the artists researched how photography and the body have historically been used to “write with light.” Ok conjured his most visceral memories and articulated them in text and sound. He then created short dances as a response and articulation of these isolated experiences. Ultimately, these memories and dances of light were captured as tangible photographs using the technology.
The open studio will come in two parts: Chan’s workshop and Ok’s live performance. At Chan’s workshop, the audience will experience the ability to paint with light. Light source will be loan out or you can use your mobile phone (screen at maximum brightness) to paint with. This will be an open ended session and there will be no guidance from the artist. Experiment and have fun!
OK’s live performance will feature images made in relation to these fragmented recollections. They will be accompanied by titles that provide a narrative seed, and possibly text and audio recordings that are diaristic in nature. The hallmark of the evening will see these stories and disciplines all come together in a thirty-minute performance, the audience witnessing an intimate portrait of an artist, his dancing body a source, medium, and expression of light.
As one of Cambodia’s leading dance artists, Ok is keen to expand the possibilities of Khmer dance both locally and internationally. This project will push the intersections of performance and visual art in a local context, encouraging young practitioners to explore the possibilities of their native artistic idioms as well as hybrid expressions. The combination of an ancient dance form and innovative technology is nothing less than a metaphor for the contemporary state of Cambodia today.
