The artist relates power with language. Language is power, and language forms civilization, civilization needs power from society. The human mouth has a weapon called language that produces absolute power. Power never changes but the form changes. Form can change by time and place but the characteristics never change. The individual creatures that exist inside cannot be ever free in that society.

Action Poetry is unusual activity made up from the unsual world. It could be read as multi-interpretable text. Thereby, it takes the risk of becoming "something" or "nothing at all" For me performance art is a, 'Action Poetry', "can be viewed as one of contemporary arts belonging to non-representational genre. It does not only come up from subjective conciousness as ideological response towards socio-cultural problems, but also a manifestation of the artist's interior self-exploration

W Christiawan is a Lecturer in the Theater Departement, Sekolah Tinggi Seni Indonesia (STSI) and Artistic Director of the Asbestos Art Space in Bandung, Indonesia

PhD in Culture Studies at the University of Padjadjaran Bandung, research on performance art in Indonesia (on going)

W Christiawan has performed in many cities in Indonesia, Australia, Thailand, Singapore, Japan and Europe

W Christiawan: www.wchristiawan.blogspot.com

MIMI FADMI [INDONESIA]

Performance Art is the extension of the self. It helps me to articulate all the tacit, thoughts and feelings including critical thought.

Director, Asbestos Art Space: Asbestos was founded in 2002 by Mimi Fadmi and W. Christiawan, who were inspired by local artists’ desire to organize and challenge one another’s creativity. In the beginning, Asbestos was a performance art group whose activities included, among other things, inviting artists to collaborate on projects, and managing a performance art tour to big cities in West Java. In mid-2006, Asbestos changed its name to Asbestos Art Space, and is based in Bandung, Indonesia. Its activities have expanded to include the presentation of exhibits, courses, workshops, and discussions. These days, Asbestos Art Space is a place where artists share experiences and introduce new art world phenomena to the local community.

yuenjie MARU is a Live Performance Artist and Art Workshop Facilitator. He gets in touch with installation art in 1995. From the time onward, he explores in different art media such as writing, theatre, dance, happenings and art performance. He is very active in art workshops and he is a jamer in contact improvisation and environmental improvisation dance. He started his solo performance since 1999 and then being so called as performance art and live art. He now call his works as "MARULIVEART" which concern about love, human being, social issues, environment and so on. He has performed in Mainland China, Macau, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Germany, Austria, Swiss and UK. His book "yuenjieMARULIVEARTenYearsPerformances" has been published in June 2010. He is currently the artistic director of a post-modern dance group “Danotcers” and an inclusive dance group “Symbiotic Dance Troupe of Centre for Community Cultural Development” in Hong Kong. 

ARAI SHIN-ICHI: I am a 42-year old unmarried man. I get up at 8:30 a.m. and leave home. (60,000 Yen/month: 6m x 8m, telephone bill: 5,000 Yen/month. Heat, light and water expenses: 10,000 Yen/month) Note: 1 USD = 120 Yen, 100 Yen = 0.83 USD ) at 8:50 a.m.. After a 10-minute ride, I park my bicycle at a parking place (2,500 Yen/month) in front of the station. Buying a ticket (400 Yen), I take the Chuo rapid train to Nakano, Tokyo. Even during off-peak times, the train is so crowded that one is unable to hold open a newspaper. After a 20-minute ride, I reach Nakano and switch to the Tozai subway line. As it starts at Nakano, I can get a seat. And another 20 minutes, I arrive at my workplace for the day, a publishing company. At work I read the proofs of computer magazine (20,000 Yen/day). At lunchtime, I eat a plate of sliced raw fish (800 Yen), buy a pack of cigarette (250 Yen) and a can of tea (120 Yen). I get off work at 6 p.m., call the head office of the employment firm by mobile phone (5,000 Yen/month) and learn that I have no job the next day. I step into a book store and buy the book, "Conceptual Art" (4,400 Yen), which I have been wanting to get though somewhat expensive for me. I go to Budo-ya, which is my favorite bar, and order a bottle of wine (2,400 Yen). Complaining to my barmates about my job, other's art performances and so on, I am getting dead drunk. At 0:30am, I pay the tab (5,000 Yen) and take the last train home (450 Yen) which takes an hour. The last train is crowded with many other drunken people like me, and as a matter of course, I cannot get a seat. Though I declare that I am an artist, basically I set off for work on a crowded train to earn money, like the average salaried worker. The only difference between them and me is that the total number of days I work varies between 5 and 20 days a month, which I have no control over. "My home town is very country side so 40 years before around my house were almost all rice field and some petolol station. But nowadays there are no rice fields but are McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, 24 hr open convenience store like "Seven-Eleven", and USA style road side restaurant. Also our Japanese kitchen there are no Azinomoto now. but all food we buy from store exactly contain it already."

MIAO JIAXIN

MIAO JIAXIN From his early practice, starting as a street photographer tracking Shanghai prostitutes to the development of a pseudo-transvestite web celebrity, Miao Jiaxin has evolved an edgy and protean practice. Beginning in Shanghai, Miao then immigrated to New York, expanding his view of urban streets towards a more conceptual public stage, where his works travel across different media. He often documents his performances and installations, then converting the documentation into photographs and videos that stand on their own as works. Initiated from universal themes of existentialism, Miao's works tend to be politically participating in contemporary events, yet still expressing the universal theme of urban angst. Among his performative practices, he has blended his naked body into the bleak streets of a midnight New York City, traveled inside a suitcase hauled by his mother through urban crowds, did live-feed erotic performances on an interactive pornographic broadcasting website, and dressed as a Chinese businessman for a year when working towards his MFA at School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Miao's works often express the ambivalent and sometimes antagonistic tension that always exists between the individual and governing or cultural authorities, questioning assumptions about power in relation to individual identity, race, gender, sexuality and social class. He posits the artist's nature as one who transgresses boundaries, challenges consensus, and stays distance from authorities. www.miaojiaxin.com/

HEERAN LEE

HEERAN LEE: create performative sculpture, solo body-based installations, time-based durational performances, and sculptural endurance events. In my body-centered work, I explore the private and public manifestations of the female Asian body where isolated actions transform into symbol, metaphor, metonym and formal structures within the larger context of socio-cultural power relations, particularly as they pertain to imbalance, inequality, and injustice in Korean and American society. As a woman growing up in the patriarchal power structure of South Korea, my personal experiences have incited an active engagement with feminist discourse; moreover, as an alien, living an extended period away from home, my awareness as “the other” has provoked further research into the subject of cultural marginalization.  heeranlee.com/home.html

+ Special Sound Guests:

SHIRAISHI TAMIO [NYC/JAPAN] Shiraishi Tamio is a sax player. He was born in Japan , and now he lives in N.Y. He has taken part in various avan-gard movernent in japan. For example he took part in 1st generation of "Hushitusya ",organaized by Keiji Haino. He took part in "Night of heavenly enema" the hisorical japanese avangard album and he plays in many japanese avant-garde groups, He often plays sax outdoors in the city. He has performanced in N.Y, Berlin, and in Tokyo. His sax improvisation is quite different from jazz or audinary "free" musical performance, it is not so loud like the usual avan-garde . His play is rather similar to sound of wind , water, and any other natural "noise" sound. www.shiraishitamio.info/ 

JEREMY SLATER [NYC] is a multi-disciplinary artist working in the areas of sound, video, computer art, performance, and installation. Performances include sound and live performed video that is ambient and sometimes interactive/reactive. He is currently chief curator of a sound and video performances at Front Room Gallery. He has curated numerous performance events and gallery shows in New York received a Computer Art Fellowship from New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA), was awarded the Experimental Television Residency, was guest musician at Watermill Center with Cave/Leimay, and was an artist in residence at Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon in Seoul, South Korea. www.jeremyslater.net

The Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival (BIPAF) is conceived of and formally constructed as a mass performance.

Taking place across 11 spaces in Brooklyn and involving over 150 artists from all over the world, BIPAF is posited as a form of “constructive institutional critique” by its artist-organizers, as demonstration against the increasing capitallization of performance art, as a self-analysis of the current performance art resurgence and index of the discipline, and as an attempt to relationally construct new economic and social contexts for performance art. www.bipaf.net/bipaf/

ABOUT GRACE EXHIBITION SPACE!

Grace Exhibition Space opened in 2006 and is devoted exclusively to Performance Art. We offer an opportunity to experience visceral and challenging performance works by the current generation of international performance artists, whether emerging, mid career or established. Being a Brooklyn loft, our events are presented on the floor, not on a stage, dissolving the boundary between artist and viewer. We believe this is how performance art is meant to be experienced.

"There is no designated stage area, blurring the line between audience and performer, and seating is sparse, as participating in the performance is encouraged. The unknown terrifies you, and yet something, maybe this very feeling, pushes you inside. Welcome to Grace Exhibition Space." Terri Ciccoe. Bushwick Daily January, 2013/

"On each night, and in each performance, the human body is redeemed from the mundane and made anew." David Lagaccia, Williamsburg Greenpoint News+Art (June, 2012)