Out of the box
THE COLOSSAL Images Of Asia Festival (IoA) opens this week in the Danish capital of Copenhagen: the touring art and cultural festival's aim is to shatter all preconceived notions and stereotypes of Asia in Danish society.
The lineup of 450 Asian personalities includes a strikingly contemporary cast, including British-Indian dance genius Akram Khan, Abida Parveen ('the uncrowned Sufi queen of Pakistan'), Japan's hi-tech, multi-media dance act Leni-Basso, Indonesian writer Goenawan Mohamad, the Chinese kite masters from Weifang, and Yat Khu 'throat punk' from the Republic of Tuva in southern Russia.
In addition to these dazzling performers, the festival is geared towards drenching Danish society in contemporary Asian culture and values at street level with more than 600 events. And a Hong Kong project known as the 'Black Box' is taking centre stage in the process.
It will be launched at next Friday's grand opening at Copenhagen City Hall, when Hong Kong-born Princess Alexandra oversees the opening celebrations. Instead of snipping a red ribbon, she will be presented with a 30cm square wooden cube with 'Just Breathe It' inside - an installation by Hong Kong student Sam Lo Ming-shum featuring a collection of polythene bags filed with photos of the city and captured 'Hong Kong air'.
This is a feature of a major visual art exhibition at the festival, entitled 'Sars In Asia', and organised by the Hong Kong-based art collective Zuni Icosahedron. A group of 70 Asian figures, including artists, government figures, academics, medical doctors and students from Macau, Taipei, Bangkok and Hong Kong have been asked to create installation works within their own Black Boxes. In the exhibition the boxes will be lined in rows - identical on the inside, but peer in and you'll see a wealth of visual representations and reactions to the atypical pneumonia outbreak.
'I think Sars was, for the world, a reminder that we are all connected,' says IoA festival director, Olaf Gerlach Hansen, who was in town last week to take part in the 'Image Making and Image Makers in Relation to Civil Society In Asia' conference, co-organised by the Conference of Asian Foundations and Organisations and the Hong Kong Institute Of Contemporary Culture.
This isn't the first time the Black Box has made it big. It was a feature at Berlin's 'Vision Festival' in 2000 as a dialogue between German and Hong Kong students. What makes it work, argue the inventors, is the sheer simplicity.