Right People, Wrong Timing
Green Papaya Art Projects
August 14 – December 30, 2020
Right People, Wrong Timing (RPWT) is composed of 23 texts—interviews, essays, and archival documents featuring defunct or inactive Asian arts initiatives, like artist-run spaces and networks, that had crossed paths or ran parallel to Green Papaya’s own history, from the year 2000 onwards.
In collaboration with Sau Bin Yap of Rumah Air Panas and with the support of The Japan Foundation Manila (JFM), various artists, curators, writers, and cultural workers were invited to recall and reflect on their defunct initiatives, dormant networks, and oft-forgotten events they had played key roles in and which, although may not have succeeded in the goals it set out to achieve, were nonetheless fruitful in unexpected ways.
[Editorial Team] Green Papaya Art Projects and Sau Bin Yap
[Contributors]
Intra-Asia Network – A secret society for Asian artistic directors | Anne Yao
People-to-People, Case-to-Case: Email Q&A with Margaret Shiu and Norberto Roldan before Intra Asia Network, Seoul, 2006
Rethink What You Need to Do: A Conversation with Dinh Q. Lê on Untitled Space (Sài Gòn, 2005-2006)
From a Rebellious Sentiment: A Conversation with Kok Siew-Wai on SiCKL (Kuala Lumpur, 2006-2010)
Definitely Not Singaporean: A Conversation with Jennifer Teo and Woon Tien Wei on p-10 (Singapore, 2004-2008)
Who Are These Weirdos?: A Conversation with Mary Ann Jimenez-Salvador, Gilbert Sanchez, Cris Garcimo, and Jon Romero on E.X.I.S.T. and Espasyo Siningdikato creatiVEnue (Dasmariñas, 2002-2012)
Mel Araneta, Jonjie Ayson, Erick Calilan, Stanley Castelo, Cris Garcimo, Jon Romero, Mary Ann Jimenez-Salvador, Gilbert Sanchez, and Toshiyuki Seido, editorial support by Sara Rivera
A Much-Needed Bridge: A Conversation with Jay Koh and Chu Chu Yuan on NICA (Yangon, 2003-2007)
The (Unfolded) Memory of Wooferten (2009-2015)| Lee Chun Fung, editorial support by Michelle Wong
Two Short Essays on Lunâ Art Collective (Cebu, 2000-2005) | Raymund L. Fernandez and Roy Lumagbas
Mayhem in the South-East: Investigations on Curatorial and Contemporary Art Practices in Malaysia, Philippines, and Indonesia (2007) | Norberto Roldan
Minoru Inayoshi on nitehi works (Yokohama, 2010-2016), editorial support by Mayumi Hirano
Watching Them Go: A Conversation with Rania Ho, Wang Wei, and Pauline J. Yao on Arrow Factory (Beijing, 2008-2019) Wayside Stories: Nguyễn Minh Phước of RyllegaGallery (Hà Nội, 2004-2009) as interviewed by Trần Duy Hưng
Never Proper Anyway: A Conversation with Chitti Kasemkitvatana, Pratchaya Phinthong, and Mary Pansanga on Messy Sky (Bangkok, 2011)
Ora Pro Nobis: This is not a film by Brocka | Khavn De La Cruz
Shingo Yamano on IAF (Fukuoka), editorial support by Mayumi Hirano
PRAHA: From 1988 to 2005 | Hisashi Shibata, editorial support by Saeko Oyama
Just People, Just Timing (HomeShop, Beijing, 2008-2013) | HomeShop (Elaine W. Ho, Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga, and others)
The “Agents of Global Capitalism”: A Conversation with Gustaff H. Iskandar, R.E. Hartanto, and T. Ismail Reza on Bandung Center for New Media Arts (Bandung, 2001-2006)
Perhaps it was the folly of youth. | Clarissa Chikiamco, Rica Estrada, Tenten Mina, and Cheska Tañada Young
What “Future”? Which “Prospects”?: Conversation with Gary-Ross Pastrana, Cocoy Lumbao, and Mizuki Endo on Future Prospects (Quezon City, 2005-2007)
Voin Pahoin – a monthly eight-hour circus | Mayumi Hirano and Kumi Oiwa
Moving Things Together: A Conversation with Davide Quadrio on BizArt (Shanghai, 1998-2010) | Davide Quadrio and 60 of his students from the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia (IUAV)
Introduction to Right People, Wrong Timing
Many fear that COVID-19 will catalyze the violent fortification of national
borders and, on a more intimate level, erode socializing as policies on mass
gatherings and social distancing would instill unease and push us even further into individualism.
After enduring grueling periods of quarantine-imposed isolation, and currently
facing anxieties produced by the crisis, perhaps gathering stories of artist networks and initiatives—discontinued, dormant, unsuccessful, or forgotten—and how they developed and thrived despite the lack of institutional support is a humble gesture but an urgent task in these trying times.
In resistance to the social crisis accelerated by the pandemic, the Right People, Wrong Timing project proposes to look at fellow independent initiatives and their struggles within a similar time period (late ‘90s to present) and to review the networks that have come and gone, and those that still stand.
In collaboration with Sau Bin Yap of Rumah Air Panas and with the support of The Japan Foundation Manila (JFM), various artists, curators, writers, and cultural workers were invited to recall and reflect on their defunct initiatives, dormant networks, and oft-forgotten events they had played key roles in and which, although may not have succeeded in the goals it set out to achieve, were nonetheless fruitful in unexpected ways.
Every Friday until the last week of December 2020, Papaya posted brief anecdotes and interviews narrating specific moments, articulating local urgencies, and remembering sustained connections, brief albeit exhilarating convergences, unlikely collaborations, abandoned projects, rapid (or glacial) transmissions of ideas, and community care. By doing so, we hope to compile common concerns, unearth motivations, resurface much-needed alternatives, and document under-the-radar or forgotten spheres. May these stories initiate new projects, reactivate dormant networks, and assert the primacy of communication among cultural workers.
