THE DORSET JOURNEY, 2011 : LAO LEG

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[Top, K H at Wattay International Airport, Vientiane; April 8th, '11; second, KH perusing Rasi's photographs at French Centre, Vientiane; third, KH at the Living Museum, Vientiane. Snaps by Cathy O'Brien.]
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PROEM


April 7,'11
Approaching departure. The aisle seat chosen at STA this morning has mysteriously become a window seat. This is OK as long as no one takes the middle of the 3 seats. (I'm praying!)
Neatly attired businessman (from the look of his newspaper, Vietnamese) installed in my aisle seat. Stiff neck installed like a javelin down my right shoulder. I've struggled with it for two weeks and though i enjoyed my sessions with the osteo, it's distressingly present.

*

The flight begins. Suddenly remember i was writing The ABC Book [prose pieces] back in '75, to & fro London. Day-time flight window-seat view revealing plains of cloud -- frozen seas -- glaciers -- fantastic. Discover head-phones. Select 'Western Classical' : Chopin, Mazurka in C Sharp Minor, Op 63 # 3. No such facility 36 years ago. Allowed to be a 29 year old 'student' one enjoyed the modest service -- sometimes, for example, when menu didnt facilitate, cheese sandwiches etc brought by hostess angels.
Can i revive one of the characters of my book back then? Minovlar Ed? -- my hommage to John Riley (he was alive then).

*
Dinner is served! Potato salad thank you! Perceptively the hot meat dish is removed by the hostess. Wine sir? I'd like a red wine too (like my neighbour, the Vietnamese businessman, who fell asleep as he read his newspaper -- would that that was a dream! -- i mean, what sleep wld follow Ho Chi Minh City stock-exchange?) -- Ed says, I never had kids myself but... He's moved --not "to tears" but an absolutely sympathetic amusement. The baby (he's a toddler, son of Indian couple) has the widest brown eyes -- Ed wld talk to him with extended blinks & smiles, on the edge of telepathy -- but the toddler has other thoughts -- I wanted to call him Sachim -- a compliment, madame -- no, thought as much, wldnt know Tendulkar from Boycott -- But, not so fast Ed, --Tendulkar is a national hero, more than --& i loved him too --our Geoffrey, -- especially as a commentator let alone man in boater in South of France, notorious romance? -- someone (Melbourne poet Nick Whittock perhaps) will know.

*
Steal another red wine. Present the G & T plastic cup wch is twice as big as the little glass the first one came in. Chopin's Largo in C Minor through the headphones. Ed says i'm walking on those pompety-poms -- left leg, right leg. But now it's Trois Ecoissaises # 2, G M Op 72 # 4 -- Ah, trippity, trippity. Listen up : he was never a hippy. Who we talkin abaat? (is that Eliot enough for you?) Ed or meself, Christy?

*
Dark -- lights out -- I can see by the light of the tiny screen -- Ah, Fantasie Impromptu in C -- all my life -- whenever i hear it, "all my life" --
Anthony Bourdain's in me now. I want cognac! The perfect nightcap -- & cheese & biscuits -- NOW!

*
What's the difference? Nocturne in E Flat very similar to which track?
Ed's been to the galley -- brandy? -- cognac? -- Cheeky hostess asks wld you like them mixed together? --
Last time i fly so high, Ed thinks whilst smiling enigmatically --

*
Oooh he's got a nerve -- he can hold a note -- Nocturne in C, Op Posthume -- an insult to say 'trill'? --
Thin arms hidden in big jacket -- fingers with long nails poking out of sleeves --
Chopin for a day & a night --

*
But where are we now? Which jet-liner captain's porthole of the Earth?

*
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik -- we've changed (Karajan : Romance) -- The concert's only in my ears -- You can la-la-la to Eine Kleine, but... An adamant Ed : Whatabout Thais? Sacrilege! --

*
Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok

What else but Thai massage -- head & shoulders, 400 baht or $US18. Not the severe work-out of 2009 but recalcitrant muscles required some punishment. Foot massage beside me was in dreamland as the masseuse stroked & kneaded his feet & calves. Clients three times as many women as men, & only one male masseur.

*
Hmong woman in turban-hat & something like a dreadlock marks out her territory, walks around like a rooster or the vainest sentry -- walks in & out of other people's conversations, participates in their hilarity but finally sits by herself, laughing at a joke that's on the rest of the world.
Years pass. Little whore in zebra-stripe one piece, silver heels, lies across two chairs, thighs parted, & the unsuspecting Frenchman, content to watch BBC World News, is suddenly aware of the gesture meant for whomever is sitting where he does. He turns away, drinks from water-bottle. The little whore sits up, looks around, lies down again, peekaboo -- perhaps catch a fallang in Bangkok, albeit at the airport. A touch of Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday in the apparent naturalness of this theatre. She's doin what she's doin & everyone's just getting on with it...

*
WW2. The propellors of Lao Air are giving the blitzed Englanders another shiver. Third World patch-up is the rare contradiction to contemporary western-style slick. The propellors are like hornets at the edge of my eye, window-side. Plane taxis forever around immense Suvarnabhuni. The little plane shudders like a bomber. Ho Chi Minh trail here we come.
Canals? Paddies? Wonderful waterlogged segmented farmland. Above the clouds. City's radial design. The Infinite City.

*

Vientiane notes

Friday, 8th April, '11
At I:Cat Gallery. Five oclock pm. Cat excuses herself to ride bike to pharmacy 10 minutes away. I'm left 'in charge' of the Gallery. I will take my job very seriously. When we arrived here by taxi from the airport around midday (--wonderful to be met : Catherine waving from upper level window as i looked up instinctively, on my stroll from runway to airport building --i waved, continued walking with red backpack & brown shoulder-bag, suddenly normal as off the train from Melbourne to Bendigo) --fatigued as i was from the flight & the frustrations in transit at Bangkok & again at Vientiane, couldnt resist inspecting everything she had up on the walls not to mention the tables & shelves of publications (books, cards including Bernard [Hemensley]'s Stingy Artist ephemera) --"Somerset Maugham, eat yr heart out!" i exclaimed --perhaps Mr Patrick not Somerset Maugham -- : an art gallery wch has its own integrity (well, art & literature's), but situated here in up-market (?) area of quintessential ex-colony --bustling & post-colonial but not sufficient to alter the basic vibe. Even now, with the home-time traffic --mostly motorbikes, old cars, small trucks-- one's able to take it easy --the warm temperature, the country-town atmosphere.

*

Saturday, 9th April, '11

*
C O'B : The temptation of a breeze... but then it withdrew...
K H : The Church of Latter Day Somerset Maughams...
[Late morning drink at the French bar whose reputation is for dinner but not lunch, tho' the young manager wearing Ramones t-shirt, offered us 'le snack' of crab sandwiches. We declined, explaining that for us snack would be bowl of peanuts to accompany the beer. He was somewhat miffed which we attempted to mollify by enthusing about his non-stop playing of The Doors in the bar!]

*
2pm. At I:Cat. Already a busy day. First stop, the French doctor --but the famous physio, Max, renowned for his sore-spot patches, wasnt there. In Thailand for the weekend. When he returns i'll be in the air again! The very nice Lao doctor gave me her opinion (muscular rather than malignant) but stressed she wasnt a physio. She offered a steroid which i superstitiously declined. She didnt charge me a fee though i offered. Conclusion : suffer until England (and it is pinging!) & consult doctor there.
Visited the "Living Museum"/ temple. Cathy tells me that a colleague recently claimed the normal temple protocols didnt apply, but she contradicted her : this museum still facilitates worship, it's a living museum. When the official at gift table roared at visitors one of whom was flashing her camera, scaring them out of the prayer area beside the magnificent buddha (where i'd awkwardly followed Cathy in her oblations, stiff legged, sore backed, even dropping my candle at the alter), the point was proven!
The only exhibition we saw today was by Lao photographer Rasi, at the French Centre. I thought the images were aerial shots --motorway, landscape, at night from aeroplane window. But Cathy laughed at me : they are lotus plants, without flower, modelled on Monet's water-lillies! Hmmm --of course!

*
Sunday, 10th April, '11

Sitting up in bed within the mosquito net pyramid (remembered from my '09 stay). Two comfortable nights so far except last night for maybe an hour, awoken by the loud drone & roar of --what? --low flying aeroplane? trucks? I imagined army trucks racing through Si Meung, which is Cathy's district, to the airport or the border --a war or coup or crack-down! --perhaps inspired by conversation with Cathy's German friend, writer & photographer Martina Sylvia Khamphasith, about the world political situation and her estimation of Laos "open hand" strategy --taking something from everybody so that nobody takes precedence thus keeping them all at bay.
Not long after we'd returned from morning walk, yesterday, in search of galleries, none of which were open just like '09, including what used to be Mr Patrick's gallery, now even more of a joke than it was becoming then (says Cath) --we'd sat down at I:Cat for a little peck of bread, olives, fetta, the large pot of Vegemite i'd brought her from Melbourne, & the inevitable pot of tea, when we had a visitor. Second of the day --Cath's gallery is open between 4 & 6 this weekend, as it was on Friday --(first visitor was Kate who'd picked book up from Collected Works for Cathy a year ago) -- Martina, who stayed for the rest of the day.
They had their photos (haiku-photos for postcards) to discuss, and Cat showed her the new phone recently purchased in Bangkok. Martina wanted our photo then modeled Cat's blue sun hat -- G & T, snack, photos & laughter.
We decided on Martina's recommendation to eat at French place she knew well. Lao & S.E. Asian has been her daily fare for twenty years so European at every other opportunity! Villa-style --veranda, where we sat, + inside restaurant. Pleasant if not sensual humidity; sandles, t-shirt, three-quarter pants; palms, bamboo, cigars : introduction to the Indo-Chinese novella... Cathy & Martina ordered pumpkin & cheese souffle respectively; i had mushroom & garlic pasta. We shared 2 tall bottles of Beer Lao. Gregarious & voluble French, British, Indian, Lao diners around us. Teachers, families, NGOs. Beautiful service from local kids learning the haute-cuisine restaurant ropes.
On long walk back to Si Meung --more or less in straight line with the French consulate dominating the streetscape, Cathy darting in & out of illumination & darkness with her camera like a rudder or persicope while Martina & i walked slowly beneath the rain trees. I asked Martina if she thought she'd ever return to Europe. She described the same dilemma as i've experienced : one could never afford such a lifestyle back home, not in Europe, not in England. Although Oz far dearer than S E Asia, it's also cheaper than Northern Europe. And Cathy confirms it for Laos vis-a-vis Australia : on less pay than a beginner Australian teacher she can afford her palatial apartment-gallery in Vientiane which would be impossible in Melbourne. Are we fortunate or doomed?!

*
Monday, 11th April, '11

Cat & i had recouperative day yesterday on eve of journey to Europe. One outing & that was to Qung's around the corner for a late lunch (declined invitation for breakfast there with Mai & friends, whom i first met here in '09 & saw last night at the French restaurant). Cathy's well known there of course. The old owner, "J.B.", Vietnamese, sat with us, told us his life story & also a prophecy perhaps from our lady of Lourdes --the Earth will almost be destroyed by another planet in 2013. Other elements of the prophecy have already ensued, e.g. catastrophes, wars, diseases. A complex man tho' perhaps similar contradictions are the rule here. In '09, Cathy showed me the free school he had for local kids, at the back of the laneway cafe, which he's given up now. He hasnt been well --heart did he say? Worked for the Americans, & the British (& the French?), speaks five languages in addition to ("my native tongue") Vietnamese. Invaluable.
Superb food. I had noodles & veg; Cathy, the sticky-rice she adores & veg. Shared. Another tall bottle of Beer Lao, two glasses. Changed places around little table --J.B. brought us special chairs --Cat didnt want the full blast of air from fan but no worries for me! In fact, the temp. around 30C throughout my stay has been perfect. I experienced the heat once, the day of the visit to the Living Museum/Temple (Wat Phrokeo) --the sudden sting after hours of exposure. But next day i didnt show any sign of burning, though yesterday i had less energy (pun : burnt out). Dragged myself around. Content to be in the I:Cat gallery most of the day.
*

Bangkok

Pleasant flight in the little plane from Vientiane. Apparently Australian Embassy would once advise against travelling on Air Lao. But it's OK now, Cathy adds. Hostess forgot my breakfast box & obviously didnt hear or rejected my request for cup of tea. Very Lao.
We werent confident of finding a tuk-tuk so early in the morning but there they were --walked around the corner from I:Cat, past the temple (the first Cathy took me to in June '09). Brief exchange with workers she knew then a tuk tuk found us. Cat bargains dramatically --the fare is agreed. A long drive to the Airport. Early morning Vientiane --many people walking, exercising --unheard of a few years ago Cat says --health-conscious Western model (or Chinese?) amusing to us obviously in need of same!
No one in the airport concourse --graciously received & ushered through the immigration & embarkation controls --kop jai & Happy New Year! --Pi Mi Lao has begun --everyone in good mood. Before we left I:Cat the monks walked past on their alms trail. Auspicious.

*
Here at Suvarnabhum went straightaway to Thai International desk --got our boarding passes and then Cathy had her return flight times (Heathrow to Bangkok) changed. No fuss. She has a certain way & the luck goes with her! The later flight means we have all of next Saturday to get to London from Weymouth-on-the-Nod!
Last night Cath insisted we go to the temple to have the buddha we bought for Bernard [Hemensley] blessed. Initially thought we'd missed the opportunity for a blessing --the temple proper had closed --but then we saw the old monk (large man, abbot-like) sitting in his pavilion to the side of the temple in the forecourt. Cathy knows exactly what to do --exemplary courageous!
She steps up into the small pavilion facing the decorated or covered Buddhas alongside the temple wall. Drops to her knees, bows head, gives the sleeping buddha statue, which we bought at the Living Museum/Temple previous day, to the monk, an old Buddha himself. She makes her request or it is implicit in her actions. He examines the statue, turns it over, then launches into talking/singing chant. Halfway through the ceremony a Lao family joins her, --they pray, make their offering to the monk. He takes their gift, continues chanting over the buddha statue. Cathy comes away happy at task acquitted. She's scrupulous about custom/tradition. Lao convention that artefacts must be blessed to retain significance. My understanding is that the statue is an icon, a reflection of God, a palpable connection to the divine. We feel blessed too for our journey to England. Actually, the wish or prayer I made at the Living Museum (Cathy prompted me) was that our visit to Bernard in his house would be a happy one.

ART & ABOUT IN VIENTIANE

[July 25th, 2010]

Kris Hemensley : I'm keen to update our previous conversation about art in Vientiane [see Art & About in Vientiane, August 2009] and a good beginning might be to thank you for The Learning Photographer (Scholarly texts on Hans Georg Berger's art-work in Laos & Iran) [Anantha Publishing, Luang Prabang, Sept. '09]...
There are numerous cues for discussion in this nuggety little book's articles & interviews, for example (and it's crucial to what he & his critics believe he's doing) Berger's involvement with the people & place, making portraits of interaction & for his subjects. This causes a "surprising symbolic inversion. (...) he clearly defined the subject, that is himself, in the role of 'the Other' and in consequence consciously worked to overcome his condition of exclusion." (Campione, pp18/19).
I wonder if this is more semantic than substantial --not doubting for a moment that he lived there, the modern specialist with his Hasselblad, a student of the Traditional way, or that he was anything but wholeheartedly sincere --but how does one know from an image how it was philosophically informed or constructed? Campione says, "The best proof of the validity of his assumptions is the fact that the monks of Luang Prabang keep his photographs among their few personal effects, that they use them for reflection and introspective meditation. They take spiritual advantage of what Berger's photographs represent." This amplifies a previous comment about the distinction between viewers --who one is in relation to subject or photographer. But whatever its relevance to the ethnography/photography/documentary discussion it clearly confronts the idea of the (imaginative) freedom of image & artist which both in East & West in our time opposes art's status as ideologically subservient & instrumental.
Have you actually seen Berger's work?

Catherine O'Brien : Yes. In Luang Prabang --the monks doing vipassana in the forest...

K H : What was its effect?

C O'B : Since I've been travelling I look at a lot of photos --by people who take them to record their travels, & by professional photographers --and it rang a bell for me when I remembered from Susan Sontag, "everyone is a photographer" (from her Essay on Photography) --And so it seems to be that every Westerner who has something to say or show has an exhibition! --from any or all of those perspectives. I think of this all the time when I look at photography exhibitions.
The first time I saw a body of Berger's work was in The Quiet of the Land project in Luang Prabang --the documentation of the monks... a permanent exhibition in Luang Prabang, in the old palace...
When I looked at it it stood out from all others I'd seen. Everyone takes a picture of a monk! Tourists, photographers... Yet it seemed to me he'd captured the monks as though the photographer were invisible. The monk is deeply in meditation, or the monks in walking meditation seem completely unaware of his presence. Where is he? Behind a tree?!

K H : But the claim for Berger is that the photography records a relationship...

C O'B : I didnt know that before I read the book...

K H : This returns me to my point that one only sees what one sees, from the only perspective one knows, whatever that is... descriptive (ethnological), exotic, aesthetical...

C O'B : Responding to the photograph, it was the tone of the black & white... I responded to a situation one doesnt often see --in contemplation, meditation. Not the usual alms-giving scenario! And the forest context is different again.

K H : This was a clue to you that something else was going on?

C O'B : Yes... You look at this big body of work --at the stillness of the forest, of the moment the monks are in... Some of them seem to be floating or levitating in a sea of fallen leaves... as if the group of monks in walking meditation are a mirage in the forest... Looking at this, responding to it -- as though the black & white photo has created a transparency over the forest...
Then you come across coloured photographs. One --a blue piece of fabric, a mosquito net. The other, the orange of the monk's robe... Two close-ups of fabric --sky-blue & orange... And suddenly it's as though one feels the breeze moving --the fabric is an aspect of the monk's life-- The details of colour & movement take one away from the etheriality of the forest and into the life --the clothing, sleeping...
Every time I've been back to Luang Prabang I've looked at it --and I always wondered, how did he do it? How courageous to go into the forest and photograph the monks... Until I read the book...

K H : This leads beautifully into that wonderful disclosure by Berger --here he is, the contemporary Western artist, whose most important formative experience was collaboration with Joseph Beuys, sensitively explaining the potentially positive role of photography in the (vulnerable) traditional context to the Vientiane abbot, without whose blessing he couldnt work with the monks --getting the nod, working for two years, and then one day, at their regular audience, the venerable Abbot reveals his own immense collection of photography!
p.61, "(...) at a sign from the abbot, the young monks present in the room got up and began to open the doors of the dark cupboards lining his reception room: they were filled to the ceiling with boxes, frames and files, they were full of photographs! Photographs of monks, of ceremonies, of visitors who had come to Luang Prabang, going back to the time when photography was invented. All sorts of different technical processes, hundreds, maybe several thousand historic photographs. the elderly monk was a photograph collector! He had hidden his collection away, protecting it from the war, from the revolution and during the isolation. Now he was offering it to me, who had come from afar, and who could perhaps understand. The abbot became my most important referee and analyst..."
For me this is another example of the danger of stereotyping tradition vis a vis modernity, and also shows the collaboration with colonialism to the extent of re-skewing the post-colonial! That is, they've been there, with us, all along!


[Photo by Cathy O'Brien. from The Off : International Photography Festival, Luang Prabang . 2010. Photo from a series of works at Café 56 : Light in Motion , “An exhibition of performance arts” by Phoonsab Thevongsa.]


K H : Was the changed appearance of Mr. Patrick's gallery, which we witnessed in June, '09, symptomatic of a general stasis or even degradation of the 'new art movement' in your opinion?

C O'B : Hard to tell... For example, trying to explain to someone who asked me about Lao art, I revisited the gallery and it was similar & even more of a mish-mash. I've since heard it intends opening a cafe there which means reduced art space. The several times I've been to the 5 Arts gallery I felt work had been sold but not replaced, and there seemed a lack of the excitement I'd encountered there before.

K H : Replaced by the same artists or new artists?

C O'B : Less work there and the themes seemed tired...

K H : It was "recognizable" now?

C O'B : I need to revisit... When I visited my friend Sabre in a S E Games hotel she was staying at, I was amazed to find 5 Arts & Mr Patrick's gallery's artists hanging there. Instead of copies of, say, Van Gogh or Vietnamese Realist style, there were the contemporary Lao artists... Maybe they're there as a consequence of the showcase provided by the S E Asian Games... This was considered to be a major achievement for Laos.
I notice more tourist artists selling on the street --one I saw was really lovely.. . I've seen a couple of new boutique galleries. It's something I'll investigate when I return to Vientiane. I'm aware of a few Lao photographers, some of whom were included in an exhibition curated by non-Lao people in Luang Prabang.

K H : Do you think photography & the new technologies might gazump the new painting?

C O'B : Definitely there's great interest in photography & the arts of the new technologies... New Lao films at the German Centre for example.--they were excellent --technique & subject (considering the censorship that must operate) : some lyrical, comedy, social realism...

K H : No matter where you live there's no getting away from the new technologies! Is there any point, then, in protecting the traditional cultures? Can it or should it be done? (Ironic that painting in the West is now tantamount to a traditional culture! It's affected by the very same questions --except perhaps that its larger & deeper history is an in-built protection. I imagine Lao artists coming of age in the globalized culture & technology in which painting, art history, fine arts, aesthetics are the hang-ups supposedly transcended by the new technologies' place/time simultaneity!)

*

[July 31st, 2010]

C O'B : An example of them moving into the new technology is how they took on the mobile-phone without first developing land-lines. In the same way, painting begins after the founding by the French of an art school --before that was the painting for the temples, which continues. So you've really only got a handful of painters coming out of the art school --and I dont see anything new happening...

K H : Is this because there isnt new energy & ideas entering the art school?

C O'B : I dont know... however I was impressed in Luang Prabang by a project --a photography workshop --during a photography festival -- and the photos emerging from the workshop, about their lives & the culture, were impressive. You dont get this kind of content in the painting which tends to be conservative & sentimental...

K H : Even though there is interesting painting --the 'hyper-real' for example, & the surreal cartoon type of thing?

C O'B : Yes, but it's not so significant...

K H : "Significant" in what context?

C O'B : There hasnt been much development since the first work of the "opening up" period. They're copying one another's styles...

K H : Why isnt that productive?

C O'B : But they're still derivative of Marc Leguay --you can still, in the contemporary painters, see the Marc Leguay flame tree...

K H : But, so long as it's their own 'story', whatever the style...? Seems to me that the challenge to painting of photography in Vientiane is that photography's influences are contemporary (state-of-the-art), and being photography the 'mechanics' are abundantly available & amenable to whatever the practitioner wants to do...

C O'B : I think the young people have had access to t.v., film, technology unlike previous generations. And their influences via computer & DVD come from everywhere. And they're not seeing any other visual art...

K H : Yes. But the point I'm making is only because of a devotion to a particular form of visual representation, that is drawing & painting! And an abiding attraction to what I call the local or regional against the juggernaut of 'international style'. international influence, & now the global technologies! That's all!

C O'B : Well, as long as there's an art school people will paint and as long as there are temples there will be artists needed to paint the stories on the temple walls... On the other hand there is a Lao mind-set which says, knock down the old temple & build a new one! There's a horrifying incident in the '90s, I think, when a very historically & religiously significant temple, whose art had, as it happens, been photographed, was pulled down... And they though that was fine!
Anna Karlstrom in Preserving Impermanence : The Creation of Heritage in Vientiane, Laos [Studies in Global Archaeology, 13; Uppsala Universitet, 2009], describing the destruction of the Vat Ou Mong in Vientiane, says "The temple was not identified as valuable heritage until it was demolished." However, as she also says, building a new temple earns great [Buddhist] merit! The temple is only a "shell for spiritual values" [Karlstrom] --but it's still shocking to me!

K H : This is an example of an enormous collision of values isnt it?!

C O'B : Absolutely!

K H : I'm tickled by all of that --it's at the heart of the Buddhist lesson after all-- but I'm also happy with my Western fetishising & privileging!

C O'B : And I love that title, Preserving Impermanence!

K H : That says it all, for East & West! It's at the pith of the very notions of culture & history --of ourselves as historical people --as people who remember, or seek to remember -- A wonderful, fantastical futility --yes?

C O'B : Yes!


oOo

[Bendigo & Melbourne]

_____________________________________________________

ART & ABOUT IN VIENTIANE

KRIS HEMENSLEY & CATHERINE O'BRIEN


THE "ART & ABOUT VIENTIANE" INTERVIEW


*

[Ever since Cathy mentioned Mr Patrick [Dr Patrick Gay] to me --in 2003? --I've created an image of him in my mind. Sometimes he's a French Rumpole, his equivalent of a Pommeroy's --anise?-- perpetually on the go! Or he's a Somerset Maugham or one of his characters, or even Malcolm Lowry's vice-consul from Under the Volcano --a mature-aged man who loved Laos as he'd been educated to do by French colonialism though not at all a lording-it colonial. Indeed, I imagined his Frenchness had given him the character to recognize the necessity of a local painting which could take its place in at least Asia's contemporary art, a contemporary art which was recognizably Lao though no longer traditional, all of which is probably true. I was crestfallen, however, when Catherine described him as younger & slimmer & hipper than me --no tropical white jacket & pants or cigarette in holder & et cetera! Even so, perhaps he nurtures such a character within his jeans & t-shirt facade?]

*

Kris Hemensley : At last I've been to Mr Patrick's Treasures of Asia Gallery [on Setthathiroth Street], except that he's not there!
Catherine O'Brien : He's in Singapore, & he does seem to go there at this time of year...
KH : Yes, but didn't you say you noticed a different director's name on his card?
COB : No, it was when I entered the gallery I felt it wasn't a gallery anymore. It was an art shop. There were Hmong textile bags readily available at the market, containing buffalo horns or maybe goat, and the girls hammering the frames on the floor seemed incongruous. Another thing : I noticed piles of Vietnamese art (water-colours, tourist paintings), not that there's anything wrong with Vietnamese paintings but a whole pile of them, also effigies you can see at the Talet Sau market... and then, most surprising of all were the dolls--
KH : The faceless dolls?
COB : No, they're not faceless... they're made by a Hmong lady at the Night Market in Luang Prabang... my friend Daniel, who's now returned to Canada, first told me about them, and then Kris Coad & I collected them...
KH : Don't I recall you describing them as magical or shamanic?
COB : They're spirit dolls, some had two heads-- They're a folk art coming from somewhere we didn't know, nothing like the stuffed animals also sold there-- These were naively made, badly stitched-- And I was surprised to see them in the gallery because obviously someone thought they were sellable in a gallery context--
KH : Do you think Mr Patrick...?
COB : I don't think so... Previously he's promoted a certain kind of Lao artist & the occasional passing Frenchmen...
KH : Do you think Patrick isn't the director anymore?
COB : Well, why is another name [Phimphone Vilaydeth] on the card? ...Patrick was the first one to tell me of a French artist, Marc Leguay, who lived in Lao & probably Thailand as well -- The Lao artists copied his style --red flowers from the flame tree, beautiful Lao women bringing offerings to the monks... It was a style from which the young artists got the idea of painting traditional subjects. But now it's what we saw there today--
KH : The Delaunay, Cubist kind of thing --which I quite liked--






COB : Patrick also showed the older painters --the academy professors --art only came from the art schools.
KH : Do you think an era has ended?
COB : I think Patrick was the first person to have the idea of bringing all the Lao artists together in a gallery. Some of these artists were hanging at the gallery today.

*

[The paintings to catch my eye were, firstly, Cubist style, in which the figures rise from ornate surfaces or are one element of the ornate swirl, &, secondly, the depictions of monks. I suppose the latter puts me right in the post-colonialist gunsight! The exoticised subject, integral to our orientalist repertoire, they'd jeer. Except that the monks are at the heart of these societies too. The monks chanting & eyes-closed praying --simultaneously realistic & idealized as the monks are in the everyday. Another painting, same artist, has them in rows --a phalanx of backs of heads, each figure emerging from the golden brown --the geometry, perhaps, met before their identities.
The series of monks juxtaposed with Buddhas is obviously devotional, symbolic, but given a certain sensibility or ideology not fanciful. (I remember my first time in Glastonbury, UK encountering numerous paintings & prints of Arthurian & British mythological subjects, sometimes in the recognizable Somerset or Cornwall landscape, and I would also have ignored it all as kitsch except for the emotional, aesthetic & cultural investment I'd latterly made in those subjects & landscapes!)
A third category were the flower paintings --not botanical studies, though they owned that genre's veracity, but floral tributes (as it were), something of the French Impressionists &, of course, Georgia O'Keeffe.
Thinking then, after Catherine's reminder of the existence of censorship in Laos, it's probable that such subject-matter is also opportunity for painting pure & (not so) simple. The genre's main exponent, at least in Mr Patrick's stable, is Keomany, the painter Cathy's bought, and it doesn't detract from our proposition that her current work is a series of children studies. Perhaps it's similar to Chinese folk or genre painting, although the examples I have in mind, from the 1970s, had that heroic aura in which stylization cancels personality & transparency is the stamp of official approval. And its naivety reflects the affection for the subject & precedes its expression.
Where Modernism isnt the gauge it doesnt mean there isnt a gauge. But even when there are modernist forays, genre resumes its traditional or pre-modernist importance --that is to say, painting is propelled by the subject into whatever expression & modernism isnt wholly characterised by the dominant expressionism or abstraction.]

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KH : Reading La Peinture Contemporaine Lao (2007), I see that art & artists runs in families?
COB : Yes --for example, P. Noy's husband is an artist --specialises in ethnic women --Isabelle showed Noy at L'etranger in Luang Prabang... Vilay, untrained, amateur, P. Noy's brother-in-law... I met him at the Art School exhibition --I leant him a book on S.E. Asian art. He came round to get it --I was going to buy one of his paintings --one of his first... But I returned to Australia, didn't get my book back, haven't seen him around since, though his paintings are at Patrick's... Patrick used to buy most of the paintings --
KH : Is Mr Patrick's interest aesthetic? commercial? personal?
COB : He told me he did his PHD on Lao history. He helped set up an ethnic museum in Phonsilly-- I told him that's funny --every time I've been there it's shut! He bought a huge number of historical photographs of Asian people & places including many Lao subjects ["The gallery also owns the most important collections of iconographic reproductions from Asian countries dating from 1860 to 1940...", p14, La Peinture...] -- he obviously has an interest in preserving the culture-- He's more than a collector--
KH : Where was the gallery to which you took me where your Keomany painting is still waiting for you?
COB : Five Arts Gallery in central Vientiane--
KH : It was funny when the guy, one of the artists looking after the gallery that night, didn't understand that you'd already purchased her Golden Lotus! It was wrapped in newspaper, upstairs, --you showed him & apologised for not yet picking it up & he was saying that of course you could buy it if you wanted to! What attracts you to her flower paintings? (I note that, according to La Peinture..., her husband, Bounepol, a graduate from the same Faculty of Fine arts in Vientiane, similarly paints in the 'hyperreal' manner --the monograph describes them as forming 'a couple in the same artistic domain' & Keomany's style as 'vegetal hyperrealism'...
COB : I first saw them at the International Women's Day Exhibition in Vientiane, in 2006 --a big show of women artists... Looking at such an exhibition you have to set aside all your modern art preconceptions but you're hoping to find something really fine --It's an old building, unfortunately it's going to be turfed --It's a building with a history --Behind a curtain there's a painting by Leguay, I think --At the counter, a group of women, smiling, happy for anyone to come --None of the shows I've attended there get much attention --You know these women are the artists --Looking around I saw very large canvases of flowers --the dok chompa (frangipani), the national flower --huge close-ups, glistening with dew --sensual -- They reminded me of Georgia O'Keeffe but I doubt these artists have encountered Georgia O'Keeffe --I'm not a lover of flower paintings per se --It's the form, the colour I like --The painting I've bought is quite different to the others --the Golden Lotus --Because it's set on a black background it has an abstract quality --At Five Arts, next to her new children studies, were one or two brown flowers studies --like seaweed --which are even less naturalistic...
A lot of the pictures in La Peinture Contemporaine Lao belong to Patrick. They form the basis of the collection represented there. Perhaps because they were reflecting what I'd been seeing in Laos, I responded to pictures of women going to the temple --for example, by Anoulom, one in particular, Women Going to the Temple in Phon Si (which means 'colour mountain') --and one by Chandavong, Procession in Luang Prabang. Anoulom's painting has the Marc Leguay red flower motif in the corner; you can see the influence through Leguay of Gauguin --the romantic figures of women, bathed in soft light...
I like Monkan... I talked to him one day... the thickness of the paint, the colours...
KH : Yes, they're both stylized & fluid, energetic --
COB : Mick Saylom perhaps hasn't found his style yet --a young painter --I'm not into his string paintings --he traces the figures with string, perhaps jute, builds the painting around the outlines --The catalogue calls it 'vegetal string'...
KH : They're keen on the 'vegetal' aren't they?!
COB : I liked Chandavong's blue hues --in particular one portrait, a face, at Patrick's gallery for ages but surprisingly not in the book --I feel very affectionate to the group of paintings & painters I saw at Patrick's gallery which coincided with my first years in Vientiane --I'd also seen them at the National Faculty of Fine Arts collection --I got to meet some of the painters & to match the paintings with the painters-- I could then identify them in cafes or hotel foyers, knew who they were by, where they came from --For example, once at the Spirit House, the hotel restaurant on the road by the Mekong, as I was walking home by the river, I saw an exhibition of paintings by Monkham --So I recognized that period --There's a particular Lao cafe which had somehow collected paintings --At the Lan Xane Hotel there is a collection of an earlier period of paintings --Those two places have very interesting collections --Now, when you see the Five Arts paintings at the "M" Gallery, and the perhaps changed scene at Patrick's gallery, there's a sense of new artists, different styles --There seems to be an increasing romanticism --temples, Buddhas, gods, stars!
KH : Are they creating a mythology?
COB : I don't know --maybe --and maybe they know those subjects will sell!
KH : So the door is well & truly opening but onto what one's not really sure...?
COB : Yes!
One painter, Mr Vithaya came round to see me --His brother is Anousa & his sister-in-law is P. Noy --He's self-taught --I saw these wonderful paintings of monks carrying umbrellas shaped like discs --You could say comics style painting --very unusual perspectives--
KH : Like a camera, filmic?
COB : Yes --and he makes the characters from geometrical shapes --for example, seven monks, a parabola --I almost bought it --lost his phone number. As a naive painter with an unusual perspective on traditional subjects, pethaps he's one of the new wave...
The Maison de la Culture exhibition was a big one --I saw the group of painters I'd discovered at Mr Patrick's in a larger context of contemporary Lao art --Their themes were similar but they had their own styles --as if they were a development from the larger, traditional painting...
Mr Vithaya also made the Dreaming About a Departure ('07) --
KH : That painting struck me looking at the book --It had that Casper David Friedrich feel of the individual facing the Absolute --
COB : I was surprised, but then not because he's such a thoughtful person --I had an interesting conversation with him about Lao cosmology, so why should I be surprised by this strongly symbolist picture? The figure has left his thongs under an umbrella, so I imagine he is still beneath the umbrella while his dreaming self walks into the clouds carrying his tong pai (his travelling bag)...


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[The traveller's experience of censorship is muted by the general absence of signs of authority. One's ready to observe the local requirement for modesty in dress & the sanction upon affectionate or sexual expression, not because of statute but in accordance with the gentle nature & rhythm of that society. Although the term 'open door' doesn't appear in the pages of the widely distributed La Peinture Contemporaine Lao, it occurs to me that the art represented there is its official confirmation. Thus the importance of Mr Patrick's gallery & vision.
Coincident with or perhaps part & parcel of the phenomenon is the cultural activity of the foreigners in Laos. I'm intrigued by the potential for interaction, on the level of both non-Lao representation of indigenous subjects and of the continuation in Laos of the work of foreign artists. Parallel reality, world within world, collaboration. The foreign art isn't only European (French of course, German, British etc.) or North American but also Asian (Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese etc.) &, dare one say, Australian.]


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COB : There's a Lao artist who has his own 'shop', full of paintings & drawings --he told me he'd trained in China. What I liked were large charcoal drawings of figures influenced, I think, by Chinese calligraphy. His other work was of Lao subjects.
KH : Once again this reminds us that influence isn't always the big, bad West. For Laos there's also the not insignificant links with the old Communist states of Europe & current Communist regimes in Asia.
COB : Yes... earlier on there was the influence of Vietnam --Lao artists studying there --but not so much now, although there is still official cultural exchange between Laos & Vietnam. In Luang Prabang there's probably more inter-relationship & exposure than in Vientiane...
The Quiet of the Land exhibition, curated by France Moran --which included film by British-Lao installation artist, textiles by French-Lao & European anthropologist, painting, photography, very significant installation work (e.g., Anne Hamilton) --has to have been tremendously significant...


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COB : I have to say I'm not involved in the wider circle of Lao art & artists... What I'm interested in is the Vientiane art as I came across it in town --in galleries but also in shops & cafes (cafes which show certain periods of painting)... There is a gallery, relatively recently opened, Maison de la Culture de Ban Naxai, like an 'approved' gallery, whose opening I attended, which shows the work of many of the artists I've seen at Mr Patrick's gallery. He actually gave me the invitation! I didn't see him there... I looked at all the work & saw the artists sitting together at a table, but I didn't stay...


[June/July/August, 2009
Vientiane/Bendigo/Melbourne]

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ART & ABOUT IN VIENTIANE

CATHERINE O'BRIEN


Two Pieces, 2008


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……."at the gates of a labyrinth, ready to lose myself in the city and this story."
Sophie Calle.

Back in VienChan red leaves falling, falling through the shadow’s night… into the everlasting season… riding my bicycle along the dusty streets; the poetry book in my basket is a tenuous thread which connects me to that other city, another home: Melbourne… MAKING LISTS FOR FRANCES HODGKINS (Aukland University Press, 2007) by Paula Green; placed in my hand when I leave Collected Works Bookshop. I am inspired by this New Zealand poet who names artists I have been reading about (and sometimes viewing their work) while I have been in Victoria….. Frances Hodgkins, painter ( at Modern Britain, NGV) Sophie Calle, performance photographer, Anne Hamilton, installation artist. Reading REPOSITIONINGS by Frederick Garber, the essay on Sophie Calle. The title of her photographic, performance piece, Suite Vienna, I read as Suite Vientienne… Who is following who? ...I imagine Sophie Calle following me about the quiet, and at night the very quiet, streets of Vientienne…..clicking her camera……
I ride down and around a lane to locate an art gallery after I see a new sign. Houses enclose the narrow dirt path. Children play. People watch me from their doorways. Saturday afternoon clear sky blue quiet. Khamsouk Gallery 1; the work of one “Senior Artist”, Khamsouk Keomingmuang. The subject, Lao people, Lao culture, in a style best described as impressionist, a popular form here. A gallery for one artist; a life time of paintings, sketches, hand held images on mulberry paper. I am the only visitor. Lone Gallery hideaway …riding away, retracing my path I meet another cyclist where the lane turns….I wonder if he is the senior artist! Late afternoon dreamy light reflects back the rust red colours of the laneway houses……the cyclist turns his head to watch me disappear as I ride out of the lane.
Early morning light I notice a wall graffiti, the first I have ever seen here...in other cities called Graffiti Art! I stop and try to read the muted text of green and yellow embellishments on peeling plaster over brick. The artists sign off in a blue cloud….floating away… Mack, Rip, Abfa, Awnsk…is crew; Toronto , Canada..from the rose, red, white, blue I can only decipher ASK THE QUESTION. So silent in this morning air, clear white, writing in my notebook, I am aware someone is standing by Ong Teu Temple wall, watching.
The thread unwinding all the way from Melbourne to Vientienne...me riding around wondering about the interconnectedness of cultures...looking for connections… Paula Green writes for Anne Hamilton, "the words that wound off as a continuous line to be rewound"….. the more I unwind………another new sign : prefaced with the phrase, oriental bookshop…a Lao bookshop appropriating the language of the colonialists.
The old police station I liked as it always was from when I first arrived in this city; a shutter- windowed, faded curtained, faded charm has succumbed to the Vientienne building construction site mania... now reduced to a rubble of concrete blocks…sculptural blocks... a Rachel Whitehead building imprint….
At the Monument Bookshop yet another photographer portraying another version of “ethnic" adhering to the exotic…. I have tried to take in all these exhibitions...recording the photographers' names in my note book...but this day when I see yet again the nameless portraits of faces staring out...I decide to not even register the photographer’s name…..(in taking time to photograph these portraits why do they not ask for the subject's name?)... the photographers mesh into one...the faces into one.... Walking away...behind me the camera clicks....
Riding on into the sunlit colours of the dust, walls….absorbing the sun…age old sun on age old doors, windows, bricks and palm trees near the temple….. My head in Victoria, Melbourne…I make the threads as I wind back into this place.....….


0O0


The art of luminous night fire flying fairy lights along the Mekong….
I live on the last stretch of bumpy, pot-holed, muddy, dirt, dark at night road along the Mekong River, which is only a fast twelve minute walk from the ‘city centre’ of Vientienne. A rare patch of riverside vegetation it is also one of the remaining habitats (endangered) for fireflies. When I step out of my gate in the evening, the nearby Mongol Riverside Hotel and restaurant, beyond my patch of dark, seems to be even more festooned with tiny fairy lights, and the acoustic singing, coming from the restaurant balancing over the river, seems even more romantic …being some type of off shoot of the local Issan/Mor lan music which can be narrative, fast, at times almost hysterical but more than often a romantic, lilting, longing song from far away in time as voices across water…. Before I reach the corner where the Mongol is and all the fairy lights, I pass through the darkness by the vegetation on one side which skirts the river's edge and the other side a silent, empty house with a scrambled abandoned garden and an even more abandoned spirit house. It is while walking through this dark patch, dodging pot holes and bumps, and sometimes stepping into a muddy puddle, in the midst of this darkness, I see the first firefly...then another...and another..in and out of the abandoned garden, along the river's edge… The fairy lights form a beacon towards which I walk... One night, walking along this stretch, I heard a most exquisite voice coming from the blackness of that garden. A voice that seemed to have fallen out of a Mor lan music song, a lost voice…but in that moment an ancient song from across the water. Once I heard a recording of Lao voices, songs which had been collected in the 60’s by David Fanshawe; he had heard these voices singing one night down by the river… It was a faraway sound…and here was this one voice...an opera voice, Mor lan style…with the fireflies… When I later described the voice to my Lao neighbours they said they were feeling shivers down their spine and assured me that it could only be a ghost.....


[NOTE:
"Mor lan music is essentially flexible melodies tailored to the tones of words. Traditionally the tone was developed by the performer as an interpretation of poems and accompanied by Khaen instruments (bamboo pipes)." from article in The Vientiane Times, August, 2009.]

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