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Lost Rivers was a workshop and research project curated by Gantuya Badamgarav, founding director of the Mongolian Contemporary Art Support Association (MCASA), Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. It was to run from 4-14.07.23 and I was invited to participate through the invitation of artist-film maker and past collaborator Shu Lea Cheang. However, with welcomed support from the Goethe Institute, I took the opportunity to go to Mongolia for long as I could. In total 53 days. One of the best decisions I have yet made.
Before leaving Berlin, I’d loosely planned a recording project in and around Ulaanbaatar and then down south to the Gobi sands. But during the Lab, I met Mongolian artists from Blue Sun Contemporary Arts, who, realizing how long I’d be around, invited me to come join their International Artists Residency, ZUUN Art 2023, to be based in a Ger camp in the temperate landscape up north by the Russian border. What an invitation. To seal the deal, it’s timing also gave me the right interval to realize the Gobi desert dream before we embarked including a couple of weeks in Ulaanbaatar on either side.
All in all then, these 53 days came about in three projects, each blogged daily with many sounds and photos as listed below.
PLEASE FOLLOW the ‘newer post link’ at the end of each entry.
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Project ONE.
Lost Rivers, SOUND AND MOTION Lab.
Lost Rivers involved 39 artists from Austria, Australia, Germany, Mongolia, Taiwan, the UK and the USA, each engaged in various disciplines including sound, media, performance, dance, music and film. Curated by Gantuya with Tuvan vocal artist Sainkho Namtchylak, the program aimed to re-establish a resonance with ancient wisdoms through contemporary practice, as well as re-educate our eyes and ears towards nature through workshops, performances, media and sound experiments.
It’s program was facilitated by 976 Art Gallery with Blue Sun Art Center and supported by the International School of Ulaanbaatar; the U.S. Embassy, Ulaanbaatar; the Goethe Institute, Munich; the Taipei Trade & Economic Representative Office, Ulaanbaatar; as well as individual artists.
Lost Rivers began with six days in the city including 3 days at the large black box theatre Zaishan Funkhaus making installations and performance , followed by a days’ Mongolia style bus travel to the countryside of Dungobi Province for five day, co-living in gers in a new silence only found in vast space. Unfamiliar space too. Extreme rock formations sprouting out of the ancient ground, one day creating a sense of being on another planet, the next day, an ancient seabed.
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Project TWO
Sand Dunes and Camels, 26.07 – 3.08.23
A recording project in Omnögovi province, south Gobi, where the air is hot and dry, there are camels and massive sand dunes on the plains, ancient ice formations and extraordinary geologies, with hard working families infrequently dotted about in gers, with animals, solar power, wifi, motorbikes and a variety of dogs.
Enabled by Mongolian artist and translator Tseegii Bayarmunkh and driver and navigator Tsoodl Bazar, who lived in Dalanzadgad which was the nearest bus accessible town from UB to the sands. He was also a friend of a friend and had been driving and guiding random individuals around the area for 25 years, knew local families who could host us, even one even with camels who were currently in the areas I wanted to explore. The project was ON.
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Project THREE
ZUUN ART International Artist Residency 2023. 8.08 -16.08.23
Project concept and participating artist information
The ZUUN ART project began in Ulaanbaatar in a partially disused meat factory, and then five days in the Selenge province by the Russian border where the climate is more temperate and Siberian fir trees grow in thick grained pink sands amongst the hills.
To get to Selenge involved a nine hour train journey in an old Soviet built train, living in gers and researching the land to make interventions and performance. We were also asked to take sleeping bags, mosquito repellent, ID, special food as needed, eating utensils and solar power chargers. There were 12 participants from Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Inner Mongolia, Outer Mongolia (China), UK and Germany with documentors and writers from Hong Kong and Siberia too.
Living in gers and being in the Selenge countryside with ZUUN artists was new. With neither the drama of vast space and rock formations as in Dungobi and Omnigovi, the collective experience of being hosted by this group of generous, kind and dynamic people was welcomed. The technique was no schedule but a freedom to explore solo and collective ideas for the duration, and every day gather around food and music, discussion and often sudden and spontaneous performance.
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