Asmita’s approach:
The sky-installation „Between orient and Occident“ is a personal statement, based on my Real Life experiences with travelling, living and working as an European in Asian countries. In RL I process my impressions and experiences in a more intellectual way and with this sky-installation in Second Life I took the chance to focus more on the emotional, associative and intuitive side of my mental and physical experiences. In the developing process of the art installation I found at last five categories, which I like to present and those are: 1. Travel&Trade; 2. The TaleTower; 3. Color&Shape; 4. Urban Standardization; 5. Meditation&Healing. These are the topics of my five virtual areas, open for exploration. The areas are accessible through teleport-doors. If one area is finally explored, one door with the label “EXIT” will lead to the next place. There is a guidebook available, that can be worn as a hud in a corner of the screen. It gives short introductory explanations and contains a puzzle, which can be solved just for fun and with the aim to get a gift-box at the end. In every area the visitor has to find a special word and in this word one or two certain characters. The six found characters add up to a solution word and this word terms a symbol, used in the European mythology as well as in the Asian, insofar “between orient and occident”.
I want to thank the jury of the UWA-sky-series to give my colleagues and me the chance and the prims for this art challenge.
Thanks also to my colleagues and friends Louly Loon and ChapTer Kronfeld for the motivating and inspiring partnership during the past weeks of preparation. Everybody of them has found an individual perspective on the topic.
Louly’s notes say:
“When I started to work around that topic, "between Orient & Occident", I first decided to let me inspire by extreme-orient culture. I made the Geisha Butterfly (2d-platform). It was like an evidence, it was the center of my work, just an impulse. As usual in my art works, femininity and the conditions of women were at the beginning... intuitive source of inspiration. Then I built the other platforms: one material, the other spiritual. But I felt frustrated, no guideline, just inspiration. And then it appeared to me as an evidence! Last year I was always listening to Madam Butterfly, the Opera, an old version sung by M. Callas with the Karajan orchestra. A version I have been offered by a friend. That's it: my vision of the meeting between Orient & Occident, an opera one of the most beautiful versions that I ever have heard! Such a beautiful love story, and so dramatical one! The developing process of this art installation is three parts (as the Opera)
1.At the beginning Cio-Cio-San gives her mind and soul to Pinkerton and denies her culture.
2.She waits for his return, at my eyes one of the most beautiful aria of the opera history: "Un bel di vedremo".
3.She prefers dying than leave without him. "Who can't leave in honor, die in honor". I always cry when I listen to that part, I feel overwhelmed...
I build it as theatre decor. As scenes, just missing singers...”
ChapTer Kronfeld’s description sounds as follows:
“Die Installation „The Route from the Occident to the Orient“ zeigt meinen subjektiven Versuch, einen Zugang zu den inneren Strukturen des Morgenlandes zu finden. Als mit toleranten abendländischen Werten und Ansichten aufgewachsener Mensch, begebe ich mich suchend, mit offenem, Wissen suchendem Geist, auf den Weg, die Welt des Orients annähernd zu begreifen. Je näher ich einem vermeintlichen Ziel komme, desto unklarer wird die Erkenntnis. Der Weg muss das Ziel bleiben und nicht ein statischer Endpunkt. Wir alle müssen und werden bemüht bleiben, immer und immer wieder Schritte zu dem Andersartigen und Neuen zu erwandern. Nur durch solch stetiges Bemühen entsteht Toleranz und gegenseitige Achtung“. (Free translation by Asmita: The installation „The Route from the Occident to the Orient” shows my subjective way to find an access to the inner structures of the Orient. As a person, who has grown up with tolerant occidental values and point of views, I set off in search and with an open mind for roughly understanding the world of the orient. The closer I approach my alleged target the less clear becomes the perception. The journey has to remain the reward and not a static end point. We all have to care and to make an effort continuously in approaching step by step the culturally different and new. Only this permanent effort creates tolerance and respect of each other.)
We all three together hope, this variety will be enjoyed by the visitors in the same way as we have enjoyed the creation process.
In December 2011, Asmita Duranjaya
