Dialogue: Seeing and Being
“To know oneself, one ought to know others. In order to know the society that we live in, we ought to know other society. Knowledge is something that is able to transform into “possibility” that moves along social interaction: conversation, exchanging viewpoint and the interchange between private and public space.”
Phya Anuman Rajadhon or Sathirakoses
“Relations are more real and more important than the things they relate.“
Ernest Fenollosa
The Dialogue: Seeing and Being is an ongoing and interactive performance based drawing project which jiandyin initiated since 2010. It was created under the hypothesis “Can one portrait bring us to…?” The work process mainly conducted in public space. Passers-by randomly participated the free portrait activity by sitting in between jiandyin. Each time, the result was a set of front and back portraits of participated people. The front portraits were given to each individual participants for free while the back portraits were collected for project’s archive. The project began in New York, followed by San Francisco and continued in other countries, subprojects include: “Dialogue : Seeing and Being – We Are Going to Taipei”, 2012, “Dialogue : Seeing and Being – We Are Going to Berlin”, “Dialogue : Seeing and Being – We Are Going to Umbria”, 2013, “Dialogue : Seeing and Being – PPC (People’s Party Center)”, Myanmar, 2014, Changwon Asian art, Ohm’s law Resistance, South Korea, 2017 etc. Since 2012, Dialogue : Seeing and Being has developed to interrelate with each site’s context and randomly requested a visit to participants’ homes/residences, documented where they placed the given front portraits in their shelters and develop into multi-dimensional artworks.
This project was firstly made possible by the Fellowship Grant Award of the Asian Cultural Council, New York in 2010.
Dialogue: Seeing and Being – We are going to America, 2010 (Battery Park, NY)
Photo by: Jaturakorn Pinpech
The project had exhibited its progress between 2010-2017 at: The Taipei Artist Village, Taipei, Taiwan, 2012, Civitella Ranieri’s Castle Gallery, italy, 2013, Cartel Artspace, Thailand, The Gallery of Seescape, Chiang Mai, 2017. Work results included live performance and installation of charcoal drawing of participants’ back portraits, artists portraits in crayon, sculptures, video on monitor, Photographs, etc.
Article by Dr Sebastien Tayac, on occasion of the Dialogue: Seeing and Being exhibition at Gallery of Seescape, Chiang Mai, 2017
Site: The Battery Park, NYC, September 2010
Dialogue: Seeing and Being – We are going to America, 2010
Site: Powell Station, San Francisco, CA, November 2010
Photo by Keiko Kuramata
Dialogue : Seeing and Being – We Are Going to Taipei, 2012 (Tamsui, Long Shan Temple, National Taiwan University and Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall) Taipei, Taiwan
Dialogue : Seeing and Being – Chance, 2012, Bangkok, performed on occasion of the Asiatopia #14 The International Performance Festival with 8 participants, on the sky-walk of Pathumwan sky train station in front of the Bangkok Art and Culture Center, 17-18 November 2012, the work result was exhibited in ThaiTai : A Measure of Understanding exhibition, Bangkok Art and Culture Center, November 2012 – February 2013.
Dialogue : Seeing and Being – We Are Going to Berlin, 2013 (Treptower Park, Berlin, Germany)