atelier wonderful 2006

Presentation by Chinese artist Wu Wenguang

Wednesday February 28th at 7pm

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Wu Wenguang was born in Yunnan, China in 1956. He is the most influential figure of the Chinese ?New Documentary Movement? that sprung in Beijing in the early 1990s. He spontaneously recreated the aesthetics of cinema v?rit? through his intimate mode of filming and the extended duration of his pieces. Wu Wenguang left for the countryside after graduating from high school in 1974, and worked as an elementary school teacher for three years. He graduated from the Department of Literature at Yunnan University in 1982 and later joined Kunming Television and China Center TV as a news journalist. Since 1989 Wu has been making independent documentary films and working as a freelance writer.

Wu Wenguang's films include BUMMING IN BEIJING: THE LAST DREAMERS(1990), an account of the wanderings of five young artists who came to Beijing from the provinces in order to pursue their own artistic dreams. The film has been widely praised and screened at numerous international film festivals including: Hong Kong International Film Festival, Fukuoka Asia Film Festival (Japan), Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (Japan), Montreal, Hawaii, London, Singapore, Paris, Berlin, Sydney, and the New China/New Vision Film Festival at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Additional films include: 1996, MY TIME IN THE RED GUARDS (1993); AT HOME IN THE WORLD (1995); JIANG HU: LIFE ON THE ROAD (1999) and DIARY: SNOW, 21 NOV, 1998 (1999).
Wu Wenguang's work in the theater began in 1994 as an actor in FILE O,and has continued with all of Living Dance Studio's works. Other collaborations include a short film for WORK HORSE with TheatreWorks of Singapore, and projects with Ming Low.

As a journalist, Wu Wenguang's publications include THE SCENE OF THE REVOLUTION (1994, published in Taiwan); BUMMING IN BEIJING (1995,published in Taiwan); REPORT ON JIANG HU (1999, published in Lotus Magazine, China); DOCUMENT (as chief-editor, published in Tianjin, China, 2000)

(DURING THE FALL I HAVE THOUGHT)
A theatrical performance created and performed by Karen Maldonado.

Friday December 15th at 7pm
Saturday December 16th at 7pm
Sunday December 17th at 7pm

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Texts by Sarah Kane (UK 1971-1999),
Xavier Duringer (France 1963-...),
Karen Maldonado (France 1972-...)

Karen Maldonado is a French actress who has been living for over a year in Ho Chi Minh City.
She trained at the theatre studio of CRDC in Nantes and later joined the theatrical company Royal de Luxe in 1995.
During the past 8 years Karen Maldonado has traveled all over the world with Royal de Luxe acting in all the main shows, from the famous ?Peplum? in 1996-1997 to the recent production ?La visite du sultan des Indes sur son ?l?phant ? voyager dans le temps? in 2004.
This experience has allowed her to develop a sense of improvisation and a capacity of interpretation in extreme contexts. She has performed some roles in short movies, as well as dance performances, among those was ?Nu (female)? with Laurent Garnier for the Hue Festival in 2002.
Karen has also had the joy of creating some of these performances. For the past year Karen Maldonado has pursued her acting career in Vietnam, through theatrical interventions (readings, direction) and pedagogic activities(theatre workshop with Ho Chi Minh city circus, Idecaf, Colette and Antonia schools, and the cr?che Boule et Bille).

?Pendant la chute j'ai pens?? is a work which has taken shape progressively since Karen arrived in Ho Chi Minh City. Its unreleased representation is presented by Wonderful District.

The performance will be played in French with subtitles in Vietnamese.
The text will also be available in English.

Karen Maldonado wishes to thank: Bernadette, Linh, Tai, Na, Xavier, Nha, J?rome and Wonderful District.

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Atelier Wonderful is closing...

Wonderful Moon Party on Saturday, July 1st

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Wonderful District is a project ran by two artists, Bertrand Peret and Sandrine Llouquet, who have been living in Vietnam a year and a half.
A modular project adapting to contexts and necessities, Wonderful District incarnates itself in various forms with various visions.

Atelier Wonderful is a creation within the Wonderful District project.

Responding to the need of a space for meeting and sharing ideas around art, where proximity between organizers/creators and the public is essential, Atelier took place in Bertrand and Sandrine?s apartment-studio beginning in February 2006.
Atelier Wonderful took place over 5 months, at the rate of at least one weekly meeting (art installation or presentation, video projection, lecture?) between a creator or an artwork and the public.
This supported rhythm of events, accommodated by a reconfiguration of the Atelier space each week, aimed to drive a new dynamic in the contemporary art field over a determined period in Ho Chi Minh city.
Free access to an art library of international books and magazines, exchanges between Vietnamese and foreign people, visual artists, illustrators, musicians, performers, film makers, architects and students, the dialog which was established?all played the role of revealing the aesthetic transversalities among different fields and cultures. This impelled the creation of new artistic collaborations independent of Wonderful District.

Today Atelier Wonderful ends. Thanks to all of you for your presence and your precious support. We are waiting for you for a last event - this time outside our walls : the Wonderful Moon party, this Saturday from 8pm at Long Phi bar with DJ ?s NS101 and JVC playing and some video projections by Migrant Media Arts and Wonderful. See you soon?

Thanks to : Delphine Trouche, Duy Th?ng, Th?nh L?n, Thao Nguyen, GF crew, G2 crew, GB crew, Nguyen Nghiem Dang Tuan, George Papadimas, Bui Cong Khanh, Julie Tselseky, Justin Barrera, Anna Tuyen Tran, Do Hoang Tuong, Nguyen Nhu Huy, Motoko Uda, Rich Streitmatter-Tran, Seiji Shimoda, Thach Thao, NS101, Bui The Trung Nam, Laure Bollinger, Gulschan Gothel, Laurent Jeanneau, Nicolas Lainez, Tam Vo Phi, Triana Hernandez, Eun Ji Chung, Hanh Nguyen, Minh Ho, Linh Pham, Dini Muana, Vikki Hill,
Damien Mazieres, Nicolas Milhe, Jean-Luc Desmond, Yann Lestrat, Bruno Peinado, Frederic Bernier, Jean-Baptiste Bressy, Discret, Antonin Louchard, Kristien Aertssen, R?gis Faller, Wouter Van Reek, Maharishi,
Nguyen Manh Tuan, Aaron Robert Toronto, Vu Lien Phuong and the translators
Quynh Pham and Robert Cianchi,
Dede

Art students from the British International School

Saturday, June 24th from 1pm to 5pm

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Triana Hernandez, Eun Ji Chung, Hanh Nguyen, Minh Ho, Linh Pham, Dini Muana, Vikki Hill

Atelier Wonderful host a show by a group of art students from the British International School. The students have been working around themes of composition and destruction, growth and redevelopment. They have chosen to base their work around the Opera House, a renowned French Colonial building which signifies a multiplicity of meanings. From an icon of harsh times, a bastion of European culture and a tourist meeting point, the Opera House is centrally placed in a down town, District 1 location. Atelier Wonderful lends itself to collaboration and discourse and the students have worked in a group to formalise and produce their ideas. Their outcome is a comment on their environment, our community? a constantly changing, evolving and developing city that heralds an exciting future whilst maintaining its strong and political history.

(Vikki Hill, art teacher from the British International School)

Tam Vo Phi

Saturday, June 17th at 5 pm

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Tam Vo Phi is a Vietnamese born architect. After working in France for 10 years, he is now continuing his carrier in Asia as a partner and a Project Manager for HBP Architecture.

HBP Architecture agency has been working in Vietnam for the past 9 months. It is composed of by French and Vietnamese architects. It centers its architectural activity on interpreting the relationship between program and context, as well as a deep contemplation between the prospective and the operational. HBP Architecture develops projects of different scales within the particular context of the exponential growth of Asian countries, especially of Vietnam.

This presentation borrows its title from the emblematic book SMLXL by the architect and theoretician Rem Koolhaas. It will illustrate the operating style and types of projects executed by HBP Architecture.

PHOTOJOURNALISM AND SOCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY
Nicolas Lainez

Saturday, June 10th at 5pm

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5pm : Presentation and slide show

?Documentary photography is an information and documentation tool that has been clearly affected by contemporary shifts in technology. Its testimony and communication fluctuate often between art and journalism. Some people say that photojournalism is having a crisis, other say that it must fight to rediscover a new identity.? (NL)
In his presentation, Nicolas Lainez? aims to offer us some keys to better understand this medium of expression. The introduction of historical reference marks of photojournalism will provide the attendees with a basis of a definition of press photography and its required criteria, from both a formal and a content oriented point of view.

The projection of ?The other side of the dream? is a slide show of photographs shot in Cambodia by Nicolas that will give us an example of work usually classified as ?social photography? or ?author photography?. In this particular form of documentary the photographer must engage in a long immersion process into the heart of the matter of his subject, while resisting against endangering the project with misinformation caused by his subjectivity.

7.30pm : Projection of the documentary film ?War photographer,? about war photographer Jim Natchwey.

Nicolas Lainez was born in 1975 in Barcelona. After graduating from Film School, he completed his photography studies with internships at Magnum Photo, Agence France Presse, Rapho and Vu a Paris.
As a photographer, he has produced ?The other side of the dream?, social photography project dealing with immigrants, human trafficking, and prostitution in Asia. This was done in collaboration with numerous NGOs.
His work has been presented and exhibited in Europe and Asia. He has published a book with the NGO ?Pharmaciens sans frontiers?. His pictures are distributed by On Asia Photos agency.

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How images and sounds of tribal reality of North East Cambodia are beeing transformed through computerized system.
Laurent Jeanneau

Friday, June 9th at 6pm

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Laurent Jeanneau aka Kink Gong is an electronic music composer, currently based in Cambodia. This sound recorder specialized in Tribal Music, ethnographer/sampler of the jungle has travelled the world to record sounds and songs which characterize the life of ethnic minorities. His compositions emerge from this raw material incorporating free-jazz, electro-acoustic, tribal and electronica influences. His experimental sounds transport us to dreamed horizons where machines are transformed into tools for impromptu meetings.
He will present on friday some sound pieces and video clips linking together tribal rituals and electronic music.

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Gulschan G?thel

Saturday, June 3th and Sunday, June 4th from 10am to 6pm
From Monday 5th to Wednesday 7th by appointment

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Month of photography, part 3

Gulschan G?thel is a photographer and an architect. After spending many years in France, she has been living in Ho Chi Minh City for 9 months where she persues her photographic career alongside her work at HBP Asia Architecture Agency.

Comprising 4 collages specificly realised for, and starting from, views of Atelier Wonderful, Wonderful in 25 details is part of the series established by Gulschan titled Episodes in 25 details.

Episodes in 25 details is a pictoral research which aims to provide a fresh interpretation of the photographic space. The technique developed by the artist necessitates the manipulation of a tool created by herself. It affords, by a fragmentation of the space photographed, to exercise the vision of the viewer by obliging them to constantly switch from details to the entire tableau and back. Destructured landscapes with multiple vanishing points are shaped, where the duration of the shooting gives a quasi-cinematographic dimension to the work, including notions of movement and time.

Sunday May, 4th at 3pm : artists talks with artists participating in the month of photography at Atelier Wonderful : Bui The Trung Nam, Laure Bollinger, Gulschan G?thel).

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Laure Bollinger

Saturday, May 27th and Sunday, May 28th 2005, from 10am to 6pm
From Monday, 29th to Wednesday, 31th by appointment

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Atelier Wonderful's photography month continues?with a selection of works by French artist and photographer?Laure Bollinger.

The result of her random ramblings through a?variety of locales, Bollinger's work?attempts to?appropriate the territory.
In contrast to the?the heaviness of the world and the? frenzy of the city, she offers a light, fluid poetry, where time is suspended--allowing?local inhabitants and objects?the chance to reveal themselves.

The artist's vision is intimately revealed to us in the form of two small books.
The "I learned? to love the city?in the same way one who hates cats eventually learns?to love them," and the "Hems"?series?takes us back into?Saigon's?alleyways, residential refuges where each object and every silhouette seems to offer its own?sweet resistance to the surrounding chaotic universe.

Under the form of two small books vision of the artists is intimately revealed.
?I learned how to love the city like we learn how to love cats when we don't love cats.? and ?Hems? drive us through privileged refuges where each object, each figure seems to oppose a sweet resistance to the around universe.

"Ville Nouvelle" - a series of photographs taken in Con Dao Island's newest?district?? reveals the town's attempted occupation of nature, stopped in its tracks even before the former has had a chance to populate itself. On these ghostly streets, nature takes its revenge step by step...

Laure Bollinger?studied at the Cergy Pontoise School of Fine Arts and has been?living?in Ho Chi Minh City for nearly two years.

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Bui The Trung Nam

Saturday, May 20th, Sunday, 21th from 10am to 6pm
From Monday, 22d to Wednesday, 24th by appointment

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Bui The Trung Nam was born in 1978 in HCMC. After graduating in photography at the The College of Culture and Art in HCMC, he studied at the prestigious Ecole Nationale Superieure de la Photographie (National College of Photography) in Arles, France.
Now back in Vietnam he is developing his individual photography projects and coordinating with other French and Vietnamese artists up-coming visual art projects.
He exhibited recently in Rome (Italy), Pnomh Penh (Cambodia) and is currently working on his new project named ?The Ghost? which will be exhibited this year in Montpellier (France).

Nostalgie du pr?sent puts face to face two series of photographs.
The first, realised by the artist in France, draws up a stirring portrait of the vietnamese diaspora where we discover, through faces and snatches of humble interiors, traces of a culture anchored geographicly and temporaly far.
Shot in HCMC, the second is a series of portraits, witness of mutations operating within the vietnamese society. The artist freezes this present instant of the real where signs of ?vietnamity? disappear to divine a global standardization of human appearances.

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The month of photography

A cycle of three photography exhibitions will take place at atelier wonderful from Saturday, May 20th to Wednesday, June 7th 2006.
For the occasion, the atelier will be open on saturdays and sundays from 10am to 6pm and from monday to wednesday by appointment.
Vietnamese photographer Bui The Trung Nam will open the series on May 20th, followed by the work of Laure Bollinger (France) ? from May 27th to 31st. Gulschan G?thel (Germany) will show her work from June 3rd to 7th.
The series will end with a talk mediated by the three photographers about the practice of art photography.

digital fashion show / electronic music mix
Maharishi (London), Sandrine Llouquet, NS101

Saturday, May 13th, from 5 pm to 9 pm

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Maharishi's brand (London) has been extremely influencial in the proliferation of camouflage and combat trousers in civilian fashion over the past decade. Atelier Wonderful models will present selected pieces of Maharishi's new collection this saturday.

Co-founder of Atelier Wonderful, Sandrine Llouquet is a french vietnamese visual artist. She settled in Ho Chi Minh city one year ago to develop her personal art work and collective projects.

NS101 is a french DJ and electronic music composer. Now living in Ho Chi Minh city, he is still playing in many festivals and clubs in Europe. NS101 uses also to compose and play music for fashion shows in Paris and Ho Chi Minh city.

At 6 pm : digital fashion show made by Sandrine Llouquet / music composed by NS101.

At 7pm : apero mix with NS101.

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Thach Thao

Saturday, May 6th, from 10am to 6pm

Thach Thao is a student in her 1st year at Fine art University in Ho Chi minh city. She will show a work especially created for Atelier Wonderful.

At 3pm : Thach Thao will give a talk and present other video pieces.

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Tuesday, april 26th 2006 at 7pm

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Seiji Shimoda, Director of NIPAF (Nippon International Performance Art Festival) gave an informal presentation at atelier wonderful

Seiji Shimoda http://www.asa.de/magazine/iss3/18seiji.htm

organized by :
r. streitmatter-tran / diacritic media art culture / hcmc, vietnam
rst@diacritic.org
www.diacritic.org

Fr?d?ric Bernier, Jean-Baptiste Bressy, Nguyen Nhu Huy, Sandrine Llouquet, Bruno Peinado, Bertrand Peret, Rich Streitmatter-Tran, Do Hoang Tuong, Motoko Uda

Saturday, April 22th, from 10am to 6pm

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Fr?d?ric Bernier

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Jean-Baptiste Bressy

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Motoko Uda

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Nguyen Nhu Huy

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Bruno Peinado

Around illustration

Saturday, April 15th 2006, from 10am to 6pm

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(flyer illustration by Delphine Durand)

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"PRIMARY COLORS" : Around illustration

Installation : illustrations by Antonin Louchard (France) and by Kristien Aertssen (Belgium), drawings by Do Hoang Tuong (Vietnam)
On line : Polo by Regis Faller (France), Keepvogel cartoons by Wouter Van Reek (Holland)
Slide show : selected works of international illustrators

At 3pm : Talk by Anna Tuyen Tran, art director of two magazines for children in France (Tralalire and Les Belles Histoires). She will present her work and her relationship with illustrators in the process of creating stories for children.

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Julie Tseselsky and Justin Barrera

Saturday, April 8th 2006, from 10am to 6pm

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Migrant Media Arts presents a screening and discussion on the historical and contemporary roles of cultural documentation in our society. Thanks to the Internet and advances in digital technologies, the significance of documenting cultural, personal and political events has shifted from historical conservation to media empowerment. Average people are able to lend the world their own perspective on information previously dispensed by corporate media organizations..

Video work by Julie Tseselsky will serve as examples of current types of cultural documentation for different purposes. These will include Weapons of Mass Attraction, a video about the most documented event in history, and a rough-cut of The River Goddess, a documentary work in progress about Vietnamese traditions faced with a modernizing Vietnam. Justin Barrera will give a brief lecture and host a discussion on the topic, with simultaneous translation to Vietnamese by Aaron Robert Toronto.

Screening at 3:00 pm: The half-hour documentary Weapons of Mass Attraction was filmed in New York city in the months leading up to and during the Republican National Convention of 2004. It documents a movement of creative resistance, outraged Americans combining art and protest in response to the Bush Administration. The documentary also gives evidence of the civil rights abuses that took place in NY during the convention itself, when over 3000 people were arrested during the course of a week and held in toxic facilities for 48 hours without due process. The documentary was a collaborative process among independent videographers who risked arrest to capture these events, which were perhaps the most documented events in history...

migrantmediaarts.com

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experimental film by Bruce Nauman

Saturday, April 1st, from 10am to 6pm

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At the end of the 1960s, Bruce Nauman was using film and video to record certain activities systematically and in minute detail. He produced these works during the period when he finished his studies and took a studio in San Francisco. He then began to examine the artist's role and genuine function. He spent much of his time walking up and down in his studio and sought the best way of documenting this behaviour. He would subsequently turn t his obsessive attitude into a method of working.
(Cristina Ricupero)

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Bui Cong Khanh

Saturday, 25th March, from 10am to 6pm

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This Saturday, Atelier Wonderful is hosting a proposal from visual artist Bui Cong Khanh. His work, presented many times in Vietnam and abroad (Busan Bienniale in Korea, Asiatopia in Thailand, NIPAF in Japan, Vermont Studio in the US...) takes simultaneously two main directions.

The first direction shows the artist's deep anxiety about a world being dominated by profit. Via performance and obvious symbols of capitalism using (bills, Coca Cola), he communicates his message in a extremely direct way.

The second direction Bui Cong Khanh follows is more classic - drawing or painting on canvas. It's another approach, more spontaneous, in which the artist grants himself the freedom to express his actual feelings and emotions, immediately and without hesitation. In this manner he strives for the merging the concerns of the first as he undertakes to draw on the wall itself, with charcoal, thus maintaining the possibility of a non commercial art ? as fleeting as a performance itself.

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At 2pm : Bui Cong Khanh will present and comment the performances he did these last years in Cambodia, Thailand and Japan.
(translation : Tu?n)

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SESSION 2 : FROM GRAFFITI TO WALL PAINTING
Duy Th?ng, Th?nh L?n, Thao Nguyen, GF, G2, B
Julie Tseselsky
Nguyen Nghiem Dang Tuan, George Papadimas

Saturday, March 18th, from 10am to 6pm

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Studio :
For this second session centered around graffiti, Atelier Wonderful has offered up its walls for the use of some local graffiti artists : they are BOO? group (Duy Th?ng, Th?nh L?n, Thao Nguyen, students from the Fine Art University of Ho Chi Minh city) and GF, G2 and B crews. All have been invited to re-think graffiti, adapted to a new context ; this reflexion means research of materials and supports dedicated to the presentation of a traditionally outdoor work in an interior place. Beginning from codes belonging to the practice of graffiti and after two weeks of conception and realization of their projects, BOO? , GF, G2 and B are presenting works on different supports (wall, canvas, video) created with a number of techniques.

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Library corner :
Urban Expression, New York 2003-2004 (Movie) - Shot and Edited by Julie Tseselsky

At 2pm :
A talk on the topic of graffiti will be lead by Nguyen Nghiem Dang Tuan, vietnamese artist who took part to the graffiti movement in Los Angeles (US) during early 90's and by George Papadimas, Australian artist who belonged to the first wave of graffiti artists during the middle 80's in Melbourne (Australia). The talk will be followed by a projection of the movie Style wars.
(translation : Tu?n)

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