Tag: photography

Koboi Balik Lagi

~ The Koboi Project

The main component of the Pokok Pauh Janggi installation is the Kobol Balik Lagi series of photographs (Duratrans). This 3rd series of the Koboi Project is based on photography done during the Seni Di Kota Symposium and Exhibition curated by Zanita Anuar at the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur in December, 2015. In the original Koboi Balik Kampung series, I presented the Koboi within the vast panorama of the Malaysian culture, politics and life, photographed in and around Kuala Lumpur over a time span of three weeks. In the Koboi Balik Lagi series, I take on the challenge of finding and presenting the same significations, metonymically, within the reduced narrative time and pictorial space of one morning at the National Art Gallery. Koboi Balik Lagi is thus a more narrowly focused and self-reflexive Koboi narrative. The photography for this series was done by Zuraini Anuar who is the award winning art director and production designer in Malay cinema

Pokok Pauh Janggi

~ The Koboi Project

EXTENDED TILL 8TH OCT 2023

In December 2019, The Koboi Project presented Dari Pusat Tasek at the Percha Artspace, Lumut, Perak. This presentation was realized as an installation in the gallery accompanied by a performance in the public space of the Lumut waterfront. Dari Pusat Tasek addressed salient themes of contemporary Malaysian society while also engaging with the forms and meanings of traditional Malay ritual and folklore. Documentary images of this earlier Percha Artspace performance forms the content of the Panji Pauh Ulung photographic series of the Koboi Project. The Koboi now returns to Malaysia again, to present Pokok Pauh Janggi, a related performance and exhibition at Kapallorek Artspace, Bandar Iskandar, Bota, Perak. The exhibition features the Koboi Balik Lagi series of photographs and runs from 5th Aug – 30th Sept 2023. OPENING EVENTS on 5TH AUG: Performance 6pm, Reception 8pm, Artist Talk 9pm.

7 Telinga Keling

~ The Koboi Project ~ Leave a comment

Keling Maya: Post-traditional Media, Malaysian Cyberspace and Me, presented at the Aliran Semasa Symposium, 2013, at the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur.

0 Performance
1 Keling Maya
2 Cyberspace
3 Model
4 Heterotopia
5 Rajinikanth
6 Heroes
8 Keling Babi
9 Duchamp
10 MGG Pillai
11 Pantun
12 Praxis
13 Dochakuka
14 Post-tradition
15 Philosophia Perennis

Conceptualism Podcast

~ The Koboi Project ~ Leave a comment

A marathon podcast with Afraaz Mulji. We had a great time, 3:05:33 worth of talk! Can you handle it!

Relevant Links

Koboi Balik Kampung
https://koboibalikkampung.wixsite.com/series

Berhijrah
https://koboibalikkampung.wixsite.com/berhijrah

The Failure of Marcel Duchamp
https://niranjanrajah.wixsite.com/marcelduchamp

A Fish in Formaldehyde is Fine
https://niranjanrajah.wixsite.com/fishinformaldehyde

11 Cukur Janggut

~ The Koboi Project ~ Leave a comment
11 Cukur Janggut, Koboi Balik Kampung, 2015

The Koboi Project begins with the Koboi’s return to Kuala Lumpur in 2013 after a decade away in Vancouver. This homecoming was treated both as lived experience and as an enactment. This return was photographed and became the first Koboi series, titled Koboi Balik Kampung, published in 2015.

My essay contextualizing this project, titled The Koboi Project: diasporic Artist… diasporic Art, is included in Interlaced Journey: Diaspora and the Contemporary in Southeast Asian Art edited by Patrick D. Flores & Loredana Pazzini-Paracciani.

http://pcan.org.ph/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Interlaced-Journey_E-BOOK.pdf

The Eclipse

~ The Koboi Project ~ Leave a comment

blackAnd then …. at the height of the offering, as I was deep in my incantation of Kata Prha Rahu Kam Duang and just as I was placing my  Black Jelly Suriyan down on the altar of Phra Rahu the lord of eclipses, I heard a loud crash. It sounded like an explosion as it echoed under the umbrellas that protected worshipers from the sun (Suriyan!)

I was shaken out of my immersion in the moment and, as I turned towards the source, I was shocked to find that it has been the sound of my photographer, Durga Rajah’s massive 24-70mm Nikon lens crashing to the floor…. falling off the camera body … mid-photo! Durga speedily returned the lens to the camera body and tried to resume the shoot as I carried on with the proceedings but the first few images were black, the next set were overexposed and finally she got the damaged lens working, albeit performing poorly.

The whole temple crowd had been startled and Durga and I were deeply disappointed. We left the scene after completing an otherwise wonderfully successful performance, wondering how two serious professionals had been so unprofessional, … wondering if indeed events had been beyond our control … if, in fact, we had experienced the wrath of Rahu, who might have been displeased by our antics!

As I reviewed the images from the shoot late that night trying to salvage a series, I found my hands going up, almost autonomously, in a gesture of prayer … an epiphany …. I got it … Rahu had accepted my offering … He had eaten the sun! And in my realm of activity … in my medium of representation … in the photography of the event … there had been an eclipse … and a return of a queer penumbral light,  and that, only as Suryian passed through Rahu, as we always knew he would!

 

Koboi Project Masterclass

~ The Koboi Project ~ Leave a comment

portugal pav

The Koboi Project will be the basis of a Masterclass at the International Ismaili Jubliee Arts Festival at the Portugal Pavilion in Lisbon on the 6th July 2018. This class is part of an extensive visual arts programme which runs from the 6-9 July. I shall be presenting the praxis, poetics and politics that constitutes my work by sharing and explaining my preparation for street interventions that will take place in Belem between the 7th and the 11th of July. I will lead the workshop participants on a search for a meaningful action at the junction of art and everyday life, between performance and photography, and between intervention and conviviality. I will articulate a theory of performance without proscenium and a methodology for enacting contemporary rituals. We will begin the Masterclass within the designated presentation space of the Portugal Pavilion and finish outside absorbing the architecture Pavilion itself into the spectacle of the event.

https://prodesk.jubileeartsfestival.org/artist-events/

 

Cowboys & Indians:Tokyo 2

~ The Koboi Project ~ Leave a comment

truth

Cowboys and Indians: Tokyo Edition, to be presented at Courtyard Hiroo Gallery on 11th May 2018, is the sencond installation/ performance of ‘Cowboys and Indians’, the 6th series of the Koboi Project. The first edition was presented at the Burning Man Festival in the Nevada Desert in 2017. The overarching Koboi Project is photo-conceptual work involving installations, traditional icons, story telling and performance elements. It is a transnational epic, presented as the adventures of my persona – the ‘Black Hat’ Cowboy, through whom I present my life as my art, as I explore my identity as a Malaysian, as an Indian, as a British Columbian and as a citizen of the world.

https://koboibalikkampung.wixsite.com/momo/proposal