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A yearly affair since 1998, the "Asiatopia: International Performance Art Festival'' went on hiatus last year due to the fact that the organisers had a more impending issue at hand to address, an issue that could have serious impact on the development of contemporary art in Thailand. Chumpon Apisuk, the director of the festival, is also, incidentally, one of the main spokespersons for the movement rallying against the announcement made by the BMA concerning plans for the development of the Bangkok contemporary art museum, which included turning a major part of the planned building into a car park and shopping mall, revealing a real lack of vision as to the needs of the contemporary art scene.

Now this effort is taking a back seat, for the time being, with the resurfacing of Asiatopia. Even so, the non-official "Art Centre NOT Shopping Centre'' slogan will be splashed across the festival's merchandise and promotional efforts.

Though the art form has been practised for the last few decades, performance art, or live art as some call it, remains a conceptual platform in visual arts expression for the sheer reason that it is not easy to put the art form on a pedestal.

It's nature of unpredictability and defiance of aesthetic formation eliminates the familiar appeals of art even within the arts community.

"A lot of artists do performance art because it allows them to question and examine many issues,'' said Chumpon. "They can be related to social, political, sexuality, environmental concerns.''

As a medium, performance art centres a lot on the physical presence of the body and the representational act that comes with it. Away from the chains of established forms of art, it celebrates the immediacy and temporal provocation once the performance is over, it's highly unlikely the same action can be repeated again in its original flux.

"We are not interested in entertaining the audience,'' Chumpon remarked. "We pay acknowledgement to the audience, but more importantly, at the same time, we want to throw some kind of narratives out there to the public to challenge their own mindset on certain issues.''

And that is exactly the seductive draw for some of the practising performance artists. The direct urgency and time-based considerations challenge them to seek out the highest quality possible to relay their concepts and ideas in the period allocated. Some can be in a form of a minute, a few minutes or hours while there are those that can take as long as 24 hours.

Since its inception, Asiatopia has brought over 70 international artists to Bangkok. At the last festival, two years ago, which was held over a period of two days, there were almost 1,000 attendees at Santichai Prakarn Park on Pra Athit Road in Bang Lamphu, the same venue where the festival will be hosted this year.

Responses from audiences have been, by and large, positive and encouraging.

One of the features of this festival is that it's always held in public locations local parks, streets and boulevards in order to allow audiences to directly interact and react to the performers, and to introduce performance art as a legitimate form of public art.

Public spaces always present a challenge to performances where the boundary between performer and audience is almost non-existent. The artists learn to negotiate the limitations posed by culture, with its rules and different dictates unique to each environment.

Spread over four days, a total of 35 participants will be present this year, coming from neighbouring countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines, Burma, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Japan, and also countries as far away as Finland, Northern Ireland and Mexico. There will also be a contingent of Thai artists.

"This year, we are also introducing group performances to the festival in conjunction with our tradition of presenting individual performers,'' Chumpon, who is also the director of Concrete House, Centre for Arts and Community Action, said.

"Group performances are interesting. They destroy the perception that art is always an individualistic effort, especially in the most established forms of expression.''

Unlike a sole name attached to the creation of an art piece, be it a painting, sculpture, installation or photograph, the terrain of group performance art is impregnated with the quality of collaboration. "When you look at the very experienced artists we've invited this year, it will be compelling to witness some of them coming together [for group performance art] to try to pursue one image, one overall presentation, even if their actions might be different from each other. It's this tension I like to explore in the festival,'' Chumpon said.

Four groups have been invited, including two local groups, the U-Kabat group and Nuts Society. The two foreign groups are Black Market from Europe, and Artists Village from Singapore.

An influential group that originated in Europe, Black Market International was co-founded by Boris Nieslony from Cologne, Germany, who was here last week to give a performance workshop supported by the Goethe Institut.

Essentially a collective of individuals coming together whenever there's a "meeting'' a term the artist used for festivals and performances Black Market was born in 1986 and has performed throughout Europe and America since then. Asiatopia will be their first outing in Asia.

"The name should not represent the group, but the principal idea of our work, which is an exchange of mental movements with each other,'' Nieslony explained.

"To be free of style, to be free of self-development. It's an open system. That's our principle of performance.''

Highly anthropocentric and concerned with exploring the subtleties of human behaviour and interaction, Black Market has kept a semi-regular stable of artists performing under the namesake.

For this festival, seven will be present. Nieslony will also perform a solo piece titled Dis Paradise.

"My basic interest is to understand the daily movements and gestures of human beings. The ethnology of cultures draws me to form questions like how do they do this? or what it's purpose? and I've been researching this for decades now, and this work is, more or less, the culmination of my self-education.''

From the multi-racial isle of Singapore, Artists Village will present a performance piece titled SINGA Dance, which explores the notions of inter-nationalism, global tourism and commodities in "cultural'' identities.

More concerned with the everyday manifestation of social-political engendering, the critically provocative U-Kabat group comprises performance veterans such as Vasan Sitthiket, Paisan and Mongkol Plienbangchang, Sompong Tawee and Jittima Pholsawek, among others.

Not to be outclassed, expect to witness a multitude of invigorating performances from individual performers, each with their own relevancy and interests.

Liliane Zumkemi, a Swiss artist currently based in Bangkok, will explore the commonality she has observed during her stay here these past two years.

"What strikes me is that when you go to the park in the morning and evening, there's always an amplified broadcast of the news. And there's always foodstalls around with a lot of ice. I notice news and ice are freely available.''

Re-constructing this observation in her performance piece called Yen Chai "indifference'' in Thai she said, "What I want to do is to bring in a strange combination and create a new picture.''

Even though new media such as photography and video are taking a more prominent position in the works of a lot of contemporary artists, the performance art circuit has been kept alive by individual organisations who continue to singlehandedly facilitate the presence of this oft-misunderstood art form.

Performance art can be a four-letter word to some of the more conventionally-minded art practitioners, and yet it's also this vague uneasiness that provides a non-codified synergy that sometimes the more established art forms sorely lack.

The "Asiatopia: International Performance Art Festival'' is being held now until Sunday at the Santi Chaprakarn Park, Phra Sumen Road, in Bang Lamphu.

PROGRAMME

Name: The 4th Asiatopia: International Performance Art Festival 2002 in Bangkok

Organiser: Concrete House, Center for Arts and Community Action

Supported by: Rockefeller Foundation (Bangkok events); Heinrich Boell Foundation-Thailand & SE Asia (Chiang Mai events); Goethe Institut (workshop programmes in both Chiang Mai and Bangkok).

BANGKOK PERFORMANCE PROGRAMME

Locations: Concrete House & Santi Chaiprakarn Park, Phra Meru Fortress.
From today until November 24.

Today :
- From 7 to 11pm. Black Market International, at Santi Chaiprakarn Park, Pra-Meru Fortress.
Friday
- From 3:30 to 5pm, a performance by the U-Kabat Group.
- From 7 to 10pm, performances by Hoang Ly and Bui Cong Khanh, both from Vietnam, Aung Myint from Burma, Sangjin Lee from Korea, Alastair MacLennon from Northern Ireland, and Elvira Santamaria Torrens from Mexico.

Saturday :
- From 2 to 5pm, performances by Yuan Moro Ocampo from the Philippines, Arai Chin-Ichi from Japan, ML Saksin Kasemsanti from Thailand, Liliane Zumkemi from Switzerland-Thailand, Julie-Andree Tramblay from Quebec, Canada, and Roi Vaara from Finland.
- From 7 to 10pm, performances by Montri Taemsombat from Thailand, Surapol Panyavacheera from Thailand, Kaori Haba from Japan, Mimi Fadmi from Indonesia, Aye Ko from Burma, Norbert Klassen from Switzerland.

Sunday:
- From 2 to 5pm, performances by Ko Siu Lan from Hong Kong, Tomoko Takahashi and Fumiko Takahashi, both from Japan, Boris Nieslony from Germany, Nuts Society from Thailand.
- From 7 to 8pm, performance by the Artists Village from Singapore.

CHIANG MAI PERFORMANCE PROGRAMME

Locations: Chiangmai University Art Center
and the Ta Pae city gate.
From November 28 to 30.