Friday 10 November: Cutting the ribbon on M2M

I'm back in Sydney now, trying to get my stomach to re-adjust to green leafy vegetables and coffee. Before my memory fades too much I need to get my last two days with Chobi Mela blogged and posted!

After a car ride back to Dhanmondi from old Dhaka, we started Friday at the Bengal Gallery with lightboxes to hang, labels to stick-up and Trent’s interview with the Daily Star journalist, Kavita Charanji (http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/11/12/d611121402128.htm). Kavita has a very thorough journalistic style, and followed Trent around the exhibition while he talked to her in-depth about the photographs and how they were made.

After labelling and tweaking the frames in the space (and fiddling with one lightbox that thought it was a disco strobe), Trent and I departed for the hotel for much-needed sleep and curry nourishment.

On the way though, we came across this scandalous headline in The Independent!




















Ah, yet another demonstration of the tricks of photography.




















The opening of Trent’s exhibition was a very ritzy affair with speeches by Dr Shahidul Alam, Trent Parke, Bengal Gallery Director Subir Choudhury, and Australian High Commissioner, Douglas Foskett. The High Commissioner and Trent were kind enough to hold this pose so that I could take the only decent photo I have shot on my entire trip to Dhaka. I think it is quite expressive and dynamic (not at all blurry or out of focus).















The show was a hit with the local audience and visiting photographers, and Trent gave an informal floortalk to the High Commissioner and his wife, and to all those within earshot.

It seems to be a great tradition in Bangladesh to break for tea and cake during such events, so after taking photographs of the crowd, I hung-out with Chulie de Silva (not “Julie” as I had first heard) and – revitalised by refreshment – we headed-off to the Goethe institute for the next series of talks.

Chulie works for the World Bank and has an amazing personal story of surviving the Boxing Day Tsunami. Her account of the disaster can be accessed via the World Bank website on www.worldbank.lk in their news and events section.

Friday 10 November: Into old Dhaka

Friday 10 November: Float on, first light

Thursday 9 November: 24 hour party people

Thursday was a big day. The opening street march, opening ceremony, Contact Press Images at the National Museum, talks at the Goethe Institute and finally a night-long boat ride down the river. So we flew around on rickshaw and jumped into cars between venues, braving the heinous traffic and street blockades to get across town.

Lots and lots and lots of photographs were taken today. I think that Robert Pledge and Shahidul Alam may have surpassed even Bettie Page’s record for being captured on film.

It all started-off quietly enough though. Trent and I sauntered over from DRIK to the Bengal Gallery where we waited for the arrival of a journalist from the Daily Star (Bangladesh’s main English language newspaper) to arrive for an interview. And we waited and adjusted the frames on the walls until we got a call from the journalist to say that she wouldn’t be able to make it until tomorrow morning.

So, Trent and I sauntered down the road to the shops where we thought we might pick-up some gifts and possibly some lunch. As we walked, the traffic started to dissipate and a couple of hundred male protesters holding banners ran around the corner in front of us. All of the shops and restaurants had their security grilles locked down. Being a wuss, I started to make some noises about it possibly being a bad idea to continue walking in the same direction as the protesters. Trent assured me, “Don’t worry, mate” that there would be plenty of time to “duck for cover” if anything happened. He was saying this around the time that we walked past a blockade of the main road, manned by police wearing riot gear. Nothing happened, but safe to say, we took to the back streets after finishing our shopping.

Later though, we joined a far more celebratory demonstration outside the front of the National Museum, all clad in our white Chobi Mela t-shirts. Up and down the street, the brass band played. We marched and clapped, while the younger generation of photographers went a bit wild, sending Shahidul crowd-surfing across a wave of their bodies.

Unfortunately, everyone forgot to bring their cameras. Not!






























That's me with the band.

Inside the museum, the official opening ceremony took place in the auditorium I photographed last Saturday. It included speeches by Dr Shahidul Alam, Australian High Commissioner Douglas Foskett, Robert Pledge, Trent and advisors to the caretaker government (I have to find the names again!!). I can’t describe the frenzy of photography around this event. I can show you a picture though. Trent likened it to the kind of media ruckus you get around the Prime Minister of Australia during election time.















Two lifetime achievement awards were presented during the ceremony, one to one of Bangladesh’s most well respected photographers. The award also takes the form of a scholarship program assisting a rural photographer to come to Dhaka to study.

We were released from the theatre into the extraordinary exhibition of Contact Press Images. The exhibition marks thirty years of Contact Press Images, but it’s not a retrospective as such. Robert has selected 30 key, important images in reportage, one for each year that the organisation has been operating and the contact sheet from which the image was selected. The contact sheets are huge (about 1.2m x 2m each) and they form the main component of the exhibition. Besides being a real treat (one doesn’t usually get to see the images that are taken before and after the one photograph we get to see in journals and magazines) the exhibition would seem to be in keeping with the broader philosophy that Robert revealed during the review with Pathshala students. The exhibition shows individual process, personal stories and something more about the nature of photojournalism. It reveals the frailties and the dangers of the practice, the way that photographers come to take particular images – some sense of a thought-process and deliberation, as well as the subjective decision-making process of editing a single frame from a body of work. A very cool show that was also accompanied by another selection of key colour work by photographers from the agency.

After the crowds vanished, we traveled to the Goethe Institute for the first in a series of talks expanding on ideas around photography and of photographic practice. The first was centred around archival practices and included a talk by Robert Pledge (they’re really working this man hard, I tell you!) on Li Zhensheng and the book he put together with Li called Red-Colour News Soldier published by Phaidon few years ago. Li’s archive as a news photographer during the Cultural Revolution was literally buried underneath his home as a deliberate act to preserve and protect not only his photographs and the moments that they documented, but also the newspapers of the time and his self-portraiture. The work and scope of the project is quite extraordinary. Being something of a lazy student of Mandarin and Chinese history, I have previously done a bit of study into China during this period and also the initiatives of the Great Leap Forward that occurred in the decade before the Cultural Revolution, and I find it so amazing that Li was able to survive it all intact. He even took his camera to the reeducation camp he was eventually sent to.

The next presenter was Jose Maria M Cruz talked about his own project of digitizing the lost archive of the Manila Times which was shut-down in 1972 when President Marcos declared the Philippines to be under martial law. He is working his way through 638,000 images covering the period 1947 – 1972. Jose is focusing on trying to reconnect images to stories and make the works available somehow online – a mammoth task. Then, using some images from the archive, he made some great demonstrations of the gap between illusion and reality when images are selected, edited and manipulated before they go to press. British lawyer and photographer Rupert Grey followed Jose by expanding upon some of the copyright issues that can be raised when dealing with archives and the steps that photographers can take to protect their work when dealing with newspapers and agencies.

This part of the evening finished with Yang Xiaogang on the explosion of photography in China and the courses that he is running at Daishan University with the university of Bolton in England (I may have some names wrong here, so apologies to all involved if this is the case).

Later: taking a boat from old Dhaka
The final part of the day was to last all night as we boarded a rather large, metal vessel at the port of Dhaka and floated down the river. There was food (of course!), singing and dancing to be had. I was the first on the dance floor strutting my stuff, I am happy to say, but it took a while for the young crew of Pathshala students and Drik emloyees and volunteers to join the melee. The entertainers were an amazing group of Bangla musicians, singing songs that drove the crowd wild!















By the end of the night, Shahidul was surrounded by cheering fans as he performed what looked like a Bangla version of Swan Lake (I’m sure it has a longer, more ancient history than ballet though).

The trip back to port is for another post though, perhaps a photo essay!

Thursday 9 November: First, a photography lesson

I haven't been able to get to my computer for ages, so for the next few hours I'll be writing my diary entries for the last two days, which have been eventful, to say the least.

But first kids, a small lesson in photography.

Below you will see a photograph taken by me using my Canon PowerShot A640 of a dragonfly hanging-out by a flourescent light.















And below, you will see the same scene photographed by Trent Parke using the same camera on the same setting.















There endeth the lesson.

Wednesday 8 November: Crash landing, then taking-off

My day started really early with a call from Trent Parke at about 3am. I had finished publishing my last post at about 2am and in the hour between had been savaged brutally by many mosquitoes. Trent was stuck at the airport having not been met by anyone from the hotel and was duly concerned about being the last man standing, facing-off about 15 taxi drivers and many more hangers-on who wanted-in on a ride to the city.

I phoned reception to let them know that Trent was on his way, but was stirred again about 30 minutes later by a ruckus outside the gate. Whatever it was, I thought, I’d better bring my wallet and my phone. To cut a long story short, there had been a mix-up with the bookings and Trent ended-up having to stay the night at another hotel around the corner, which I was later to hear, evoked certain unpleasant memories of Calcutta in the mid-nineties.

But Trent Parke is a robust sort of fellow whose marvelous constitution allowed him to join us for breakfast at The Ambrosia in the morning. Laughs and sweet tea all round. By this time though, he was lunging at mosquitoes like an attack dog. Robert Pledge emerged from his room in fine form and appeared completely relaxed about his next 24 hours at the National Museum. A cool dude is Robert Pledge. We were joined by Reza and also Violet, a journalist from the Philippines (whose luggage had been accidentally redirected to Arizona) and made our various ways to DRIK.














No wonder things get crazy here at night time. We’re living on the hell-mouth, people!! I can’t believe I didn’t notice this before! (That one was for “Buffy” fans only, sorry)

Fortunately, the beginning of the day didn’t set a template for the rest of it. Hanging the work at the Bengal Gallery with their lovely staff was fast, efficient and punctuated by a couple of rounds of lovely Bengali tea. I am happy to say that all but two of the works in the show are now hung, and Trent and I await the delivery of these lightboxes tomorrow morning. I revisited the Bengali restaurant that Khairul took me to earlier in the week with Trent for lunch, and we prepared ourselves for the press conference at DRIK at 4pm.















“Ten days ago, our city was in flames”, Shahidul reminded the audience during the press conference. And it’s true that Chobi Mela has come together as a stimulating program of exhibitions, events, lectures and workshops, through extraordinarily adverse circumstances. Trent and several other artists, as well as participants from other organisations and fields of endeavour (including myself) spoke to the crowd about our particular interest in attending the festival.















For me Chobi Mela is not only a festival that celebrates photojournalism but also challenges photojournalists and photographers to look at their practice from another place and another viewpoint. It also takes the work of internationally renowned artists to the streets, outside the exclusive zones of museums and galleries. It is therefore fitting that the theme of the fesival is "Boundaries". It is not easy to show this work here in Dhaka, either fiscally, practically or politically and yet it happens through the work of so many artists, workers, volunteers and supporters.

Later:
I have just arrived back from a function at the Australian High Commission in Gulshan. Gulshan is a suburb that looks like it’s quite close-by on the map, but being Dhaka and heavily congested with traffic, we found ourselves embarrassingly late by over half an hour (as almost comatose from the carbon monoxide we inhaled on the city’s fly-over).

The AHC and especially the Deputy Commissioner, Richard Rogers have been incredibly helpful with assisting Minutes To Midnight on it’s passage from Australian Centre for Photography to Bangladesh. After being here these few days, I fully realise how essential this support has been to the exhibition. Richard is a pretty easy-going bloke who shared a lot of interesting stories about his work in Dhaka, his moves from diplomatic posts in Perth, Adelaide, then Canberra, as well as the trials of recently contracting dengue fever which he described as a “a week in hell” and (less unpleasantly) of working a “10 kilo post”, which of course refers to the amount of weight that one gains eating a diet that consists of mainly Bengali curry and therefore, ghee, for three years.

Besides taking care of Australian and Bengali relations, the High Commission also runs aid and cultural programs in the country. Trent and I met a former photographer, Peter (have to look-up that second name again!) who coordinates one of these programs with street kids. The High Commissioner, Douglass Foskett gave a great speech congratulating Trent on his work and also acknowledged the work of invited artists and arts workers from Bangladesh who were present at the function – many of whom had already exhibited in Australia.















A cool little, hand-painted, natural gas CNV to say goodnight.

Tuesday 7 November: Portfolios at Pathshala

I woke up today feeling terrified. I must have had a nightmare that crept into my waking life just a little. It’s exhilarating to be here though, and I guess that the flipside to that kind of heightened emotion is fear. Just walking to Drik and back to the hotel gets the heart racing, but I’m gradually getting more accustomed to the sights and sounds of Dhaka.

Today I called Reza to see if I could scam my way into Robert Pledge’s car for a lift to Drik, but instead Robert and I were met by the lovely Snigdha Zaman (who can be seen in the photo below with Robert and Reza). Snigdha is a photographer involved in organising the workshops for Chobi Mela that take place at Pathshala, the South Asian Institute of Photography. So Snigdha hailed us a couple of rickshaw, and we were off.
















As Trent’s images had not yet arrived from the framer, and the public holiday decreed that the gallery was closed anyway, I was offered the opportunity to accompany Snigdha and Robert to Pathshala where Robert was already running late for a portfolio review with eight 3rd year photography students. So back on the rickshaw we clambered and made haste.

Going to this portfolio review at Pathshala turned-out to be an eye-opening experience for me. Robert has a very generous way of approaching reviews, which is not to say that the work required his generosity, but rather that he set-up a platform for open discussion about practice in general. He made personal enquiries about each photographer, their perspective, why they were interested in taking photographs and what drove them and influenced the decisions that they made. Many of the students hadn’t yet questioned why they were taking the path they were on with photography, so I think that the session will have some longer-term effects down the track.
















The review was such and education for me mainly because of the kind of subjects these young photographers were tackling in Bangladesh and the issues that they now face with their practice. All of the students were men, and mostly in their mid-twenties. About 5 of the 8 were employed as feature article photographers for newspapers in Dhaka. They have to work pretty hard for their money, with 5 or 6 assignments to complete each day. On top of this they have no expectation that any of their personal projects will ever see the light of day in journals and other publications because there aren’t any that would be interested in touching the work (and there aren’t really any around in the first place).

One of the photographers, whose first name is Oviek (I have to get Snigdha to send me the list of names) has, for the last few years taken photographs along the banks of the Buriganga River. At first, I thought he had taken a series of photographs of a boating catastrophe, but as the slideshow progressed I realised that what he was in fact documenting, was daily life on the Buriganga. The river is shown to be full of life as well as death. Survival and pleasure are juxtaposed in this series. Robert was keen to encourage Oviek to explore the diaristic side of his practice and involve himself more in the narrative and with the people he meets.

Another photographer was looking at the institutional care of disabled people in hospitals in Bangladesh, while another examined the living conditions and the trials of Bangladesh’s indigenous people against the government. One student, who has been selected to exhibit in the Chobi Mela festival, had traveled to a Burmese refugee camp to take photographs of the kind of life people live there as well as interview its inhabitants. In one quotation, the Burmese camp’s leader asked him (from memory, so I may have this slightly wrong) “…don’t just scratch this down and leave us like others have done before you.” Perhaps a chilling caution against using the disadvantaged merely as photojournalistic fodder. Throughout the portfolio review, Robert asked all the photographers, “What are you doing it for?” and “Why?” These are important questions not only for the students in the room, but for anyone who picks-up a camera with the intention of representing, documenting or illuminating struggle in our world.

What also came to light in the review session was that many of the students had decided to take-up photography as a direct result of seeing the first Chobi Mela festival which centred around photographs of Bangladesh’s fight for independence in 1971. The importance of Bangladesh’s independence and the survival of the Bengali language was something that many of the students individually expressed during their presentations. The first Chobi Mela festival was five years ago, so the fact that these men have become such accomplished image makers in that time is pretty amazing, as well as being a credit to Pathshala as a school.
















In case you can't read the sign, it says "Please leave your excuses in the bin before entering the classroom".
















After the review, we all posed for photographs in the Pathshala courtyard and grabbed a quick bite to eat. Then I accompanied Snigdha to her office where she runs a photographic studio and editing facility. The company that she and her colleagues own is called IKON, and they also do commercial photographic work. There I stayed for a lovely cup of sweet Bengali tea and we were off again.
















After dropping into DRIK to pick up Julie (second name’s gone again!! I’ll update later) who had just arrived in town, we headed-off to do some late-night shopping – first and last opportunity before the installation of Minutes to Midnight tomorrow. After a whirlwind tour of Arrong shopping centre and a few crazy rides in various rickshaw, I arrived back at the hotel only to realise I’d made some pretty heinous fashion decisions. I don’t know how this has happened, but I think I’m going to rock-up to the grand opening of Chobi Mela looking like Jemima from Playschool. I selected a yellow and purple outfit with two kinds of stripes (the voice in the back of my head was saying “You’re in your thirties, choose the black, choose the black”, but I didn’t listen). Julie, on the other hand selected some rather glamourous sari out of a fully comprehensive range.

Monday 6 November: Situation under control

Well, it turns out I’m a bit of an ignoramus when it comes to politics in Bangladesh (and Australia for that matter). The caretaker government here are currently preparing for a general election which will then decide the next government. At the end of October, the BNP government collapsed after 100 leaders left to join another party, the Liberal Democratic Party. So the new party is going to stand against the BNP and the other major political parties in the next election, due in January. Adding to this, the Awami League have not accepted the caretaker government. If Chobi Mela had been scheduled earlier, I don’t think we international visitors would have been able to get into the country.

In other news, French head-butter Zinedine Zidane has arrived in Dhaka to rebuild his profile as a caring, sharing sort of fellow, Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death by hanging, and Bangladesh is now the number one supplier of denim clothing to Europe. Now that’s something to think about when you’re contemplating your next pair of Tsubis, fashionistas.

Today I felt like a bit of a fifth wheel at DRIK and everyone looked a little more frazzled. I accompanied Robert Pledge to the office and asked Reza a few questions about the installation. There is a problem at the National Museum because the caretaker government has made Tuesday a holiday, so being bureaucrats, the museum staff naturally can’t come in to work. So Robert is also naturally a bit concerned about the turnaround time for the installation of Contact Press’ show. When I left he was working with Reza and other members of the team towards ironing-out a few issues about the space before they get into it on Wednesday.
















The framed works for Trent’s show are due to arrive at DRIK tonight, by “midnight express” as Robert commented, and we could possibly start to install the work tomorrow. Reza (who is being incredibly helpful, despite all of the stress around him) is using phrases like “the situation is in control” and then running around talking to multiple staff at once and answering two phones that never stop ringing. I am wholly assured by his affirmations…not! In Bengali, you use nā at the end of a sentence to make it a negative. So you can sound like a Valley Girl if you leave enough of a pause. Āmi bānglā jāni… nā!

So I took a walk back to Ambrosia via some main streets and I’m plucking up the courage for a solo shopping adventure early morning.

Sunday 5 November: Slow moves

I’m taking my time this morning. I’ve been going-over the photographs that I took yesterday and lingering a bit longer in the Ambrosia guest house’s living room.














Love a good tea set! I had to take this picture of my breakfast, just so you all get a sense of the kind of simple luxury I’m experiencing here. Toast and eggs, cornflakes and a bowl of melony fruit that kind of melts in your mouth. The tea here is really strong which is exactly how I like it. I may have to take some back with me.

So, as I reported in yesterday’s post, Bangladesh is going through a change of government. I am told that the new government is expected to take power in about three month’s time. An interim government is now in control of the country. From what I can discern from the newspapers, this government is being pushed and pulled by the outgoing BNP (Bangladesh National Party) and (I think) a rival party, the AL (Bangladesh Awami League). In the New Age paper today, the BNP was described as being at the “fag end of its tenure”. Love that turn of phrase. Shahidul explained to me yesterday that DRIK had fallen somewhat behind schedule with Chobi Mela due to the political collapse of last week which disrupted just about everything.

On closer inspection of the photographs I took yesterday, the men at the protest that we drove past appeared to be demonstrating against the deaths that occurred in the protests of last week. The men were wearing placards that showed portraits of people on the top, which were contrasted against the graphic photographs of their dead bodies beneath.

Later:
I took a walk to DRIK today following the suggestion of Shahidul that I should challenge myself a bit and not call for the car. I think that the inference there was that I might be a bit of a girly wuss (“wuss” is Aussie for girly coward, or Mummy’s boy and is usually applied to boys who object to playing sport), which of course I am not, as my dear friends and colleagues will attest to. I am just slightly directionally challenged (I still can’t find my way around Melbourne despite having visited about a dozen times in the last two years, because I always forget to buy a map). I only took two wrong turns which added about 30 minutes to my 15 minute journey. I remembered some graffiti from walking with Reza yesterday which helped to guide me to my destination. Then I kind of fell-into DRIK HQ after tripping on some concrete. Smooth.

I am now taking-up office space, which is at a premium and I’m sure I’m getting in everyone’s way.

Later still:
Khairul has just taken me to lunch at a Bengali restaurant. At first we headed to another American style fast-food joint at which we sat down and I asked “Do you eat this stuff normally?” to which Khairul replied “No” (thank goodness). I don’t eat that stuff at all anymore. So, to my delight we headed via rickshaw to a local restaurant for rice with lentils, a mustardy bean dish, chicken curry, vegetable curry and a savoury yoghurt drink that Khairul told me EVERYONE likes. Well, I wasn’t prepared to go the whole way with this lassi. I thought it might test my karma a bit too much stomach-wise. Had a few dainty sips though. The food was great! I have been told that Bengali curry is the best, and it's true.

While I was eating, Richard Rogers called from the Australian High Commission and it seems that they’ve organsied a function for Trent on Wednesday night which will be cool. Now I have to find a nice dress to wear. I might have to convince one of the lovely ladies here to take me shopping at lunchtime. Not a priority I think though, as the place is going wild with 30 new volunteers just taking a tea-break from working all day on the construction of frames and installation.

The DRIK multimedia crew have just finished a 34 second television advertisement for Chobi Mela, which is an incredibly up-beat ad with drums and a sequence of moving images from the last festival. I think this will be a pretty successful campaign. Chobi Mela looks like the festival to see.

Much later, back at Ambrosia:
I just had the experience of getting lost on a rickshaw. I knew this would happen despite the fact that I learned all the appropriate phrases before jumping on board. It was another karmic punishment for being lazy and deciding not to walk back to the hotel.

At Ambrosia, I met Robert Pledge, the Director of Contact Press Images in New York. The exhibition of Contact Press images is the centrepiece for the festival and will be installed in the National Museum's exhibition space. Stephen Dupont is with Contact Press so it will be great to see his work among that of his contemporaries from around the world. Shahidul is now on his way to Singapore to pick up the Contact Press exhibition prints from the printer. There was some difficulty here with getting the exhibition into Dhaka, so the solution has been to print in Singapore, and Shahidul to personally collect them. Everyone seems to be taking this with a great degree of calm. Most of the time I've been there, DRIK is so calm that you would hardly know that the building was teeming with workers and volunteers. Maybe folks will start losing it by around Wednesday - fortunately by that time I should be hanging Minutes to Midnight, out of the direct line of fire.

Saturday 4 November: Welcome to DRIK

I got picked-up from the guest house by DRIK Director Dr Shahidul Alam in a car he says was reconditioned in 1982. Works pretty well, as far as I can tell.

It’s really interesting the whole traffic thing in Dhaka. Everyone seems to be very aware of one another’s personal space, with a keen predictive sense of where multiple vehicles are going to go. There are lots of paint scrapes on the cars and rickshaw, but not half as much as I would expect after experiencing the driving. Despite all the horns honking and ringing of bells, there is an undertone of quietude here, because the noise isn’t made with aggression as far as I can tell. In Sydney, you know that if someone honks at you, it means they want you dead. You might even get the shaking fist, or the angry fish-mouth.

Today was really great. I was shown around DRIK HQ with Shahidul and Reza who is coordinating everything. DRIK has many facets including a painting department, photographic department, internet and multimedia. They also run a photographic studio from the centre taking portraits – a commercial interest servicing the area. Maybe it brings a bit of dough to the centre too??














Then we went around to the gallery that Trent Parke's show is going to be exhibited in, the Bengal Gallery. It’s a pretty amazing space and we (ACP) are lucky to have it for Minutes to Midnight because the separate narratives will work well in the space within its multiple rooms.

I had lunch with Reza and Khairul at a restaurant specializing in American-style junk food. It seemed a bit expensive, and Reza complained that the service was usually pretty poor. The captain of the Bangladesh cricket team was hanging-out on the balcony with some serious looking dudes wearing appliquéd jeans. I have found out that Khairul is really into cricket, so I’m hoping that Trent will come through with some tales of sports photography and cricket gossip.

Back at the centre, everybody is working frantically to put together the 49 shows that comprise the festival. I think I am going to be recruited into proofing text and doing other things while the works and the spaces are prepared. I am pretty confident that everything will happen according to plan. Shahidul and the many staff here are working 24 hours a day to pull everything together. They all seem to be pretty calm though. Shahidul may have to travel to Singapore to pick up some prints for an American artist this week. Faster than trying to get the work couriered it would seem.














After lunch we got into the car for a drive to the city to check on the lightbox construction and the printing of the Chobi Mela catalogue. First stop was the National Museum, an imposing-looking behemoth from the outside - could use a lick of paint on the inside of the gallery though. Reza needed to take a measurement for a backdrop they are creating for the theatre on opening night. The museum’s theatre is an imposing place, as you can see from my pictures. It feels and smells like a cavern.














At the signmaker’s shop, we decided that the lightbox unit they were suggesting was just a bit too big and clunky to be used in Trent’s exhibition. The framer here at DRIK is going to fashion something instead. Then we went to the printer’s, which was abuzz despite its being a Saturday (I don’t know if this is supposed to be a day off or not yet) and also a public holiday of sorts. There were seriously a lot of young men working the machines in this place. There were about 5 printing presses going gangbusters at this time. It looked like very physical work. I very much wanted to take photographs of the room, but held-off because I was focusing my attention on trying to be inconspicuous. I need to adjust my attitude for the sake of illustrating my blog, I think.

The children at the traffic lights I find really disturbing. They weave between the cars looking extremely small and vulnerable. I have been trying to take a picture of the sign that appears on the back of the motorized rickshaw (there’s an acronym that they go by but I can’t remember what it is). It says “For traffic complaints, please call…” This has to be a joke, right? I imagine a whole row of phones with their receivers facing an impenetrable brick wall, or a very large hand.
At the moment, it’s interim government time in Bangladesh. We drove past a protest in the middle of the city. The guy on the microphone sounded like he was auditioning for a hard-core, death-metal acapella band. There was a line of young men wearing placards, and armed police standing-off to the side. I think that folks were shot in the street last week. It takes some guts to stand in the middle of all that traffic, but to stand in the middle of all that traffic and know that there’s the possibility you might be shot and killed? That’s something else.














Back at DRIK Shahidul, trying to find a use for me, asked me whether I could report on the performances on 9, 10 and 11 November. I said I could do better than that – that I’m already writing for the purpose of making a blog.

Friday 3 November: Flightpath

Overland:
I don’t think that I’ve flown over this part of Australia before. Towards the Kimberly in WA. The landscape looks etched-out, like rivers of acid have flown along it on one direction. Like a pool of red snakes traveling west. I guess it must have been underwater at some point, like everything, but maybe it’s thousands of years of easterly blowing wind that has fashioned its appearance. I can imagine it better as an underwater landscape - it is all folds and softness from this perspective. But imagine being lost there. Never-ending waves of dry ochre and clay.

Landing in KL:
I could hardly hear anything at all on descent, cocooned in my own head. Hands cupped around my eyes in order to look out of the window. I kind of liked this deafness because the descent soundtrack to me sounded like a twinkling music box while KL sparkled beneath. I always want to record these moments on my camera, but there’s no point really in trying to articulate the feeling by appropriating the sum of its parts. It’s so personal to be so within your own head and transfixed by the scenes and sounds playing in front of you. These moments are better than any cinema because they feel like they’ve been designed for you, and they’re for you alone.

KL Airport:
I think that the KL airport must have been designed by Santiago Calatrava (sp). I’ll have to look this up. Repetitive tree-like columns and arches creating a scalloped roof. KL airport itself is too quiet, like a too-bright mausoleum. It was about midnight when I arrived so I shouldn’t have been surprised by this. I wanted desperately to buy stuff – sunglasses and lipstick. I really have to stop wanting these things at some point. I feel like a small part of my brain becomes lost forever for another pair of shoes etc.

Flying into Dhaka:
Everyone seemed to be surprised that I was traveling to Bangladesh by myself. The guard at the gate wanted to redirect me. He he. I realised half way through the flight that I could have just stretched-out and fallen asleep for the entire journey as there was no one sitting next to me. I think I was just a bit too tired and anxious at the time. Everyone else seemed to be with their families, acting like they were at home in their lounge rooms, which was nice.

Touchdown in Dhaka:
On the descent into Dhaka I was looking out of my window not really sure what I was seeing. It was dark of course and the street lighting wasn’t like KL, it looked like pinpoints of weak sulfurous yellow casting a faint glow, not really penetrating. There was a lot of low-hanging mist and we appeared to be passing over a river with paddy fields or something. Maybe they were flood walls. I had no idea (I still don’t. I really need a map).

Dhaka airport is pretty basic. No one much talked to me, and it seemed like people were actively trying not to engage. Customs was a breeze. My bag was scanned more as an afterthought. I think Dale (my number 2 boss) was right to have flown me in at this time. It was so quiet. I got some money changed by an enthusiastic pair of gentleman and I have no idea if I was being ripped-off or not. I was met by a friendly man from the guest house who escorted me past some kids and a whole bunch of people hanging-out by the taxis, and into a pretty beaten-up machine.

Ride into the city:
My first impression is that there is so much carbon monoxide in the air here. So much. I don’t think I’ve ever breathed air like this before. The place is thick with it. I remember arriving at Perth airport as a teenager from England, and my first impression was that the place smelled like slightly minty, freshly-cut hay. This was the scent of the Eucalyptus trees. Dhaka has a lot of trees lining the streets, particularly where I am staying, but they have their work cut-out for them.

So we drove with the windows down because it was hot, and I had the warm, suffocating envelope of carbon monoxide wrap around me on the journey through the city. It’s quite a spectral introduction to the place, coming here at night because you get a sense of the chaos that might pervade during the day through these pictures that form in the headlights out of the smog: big colourful trucks with overflowing cargo of massive logs that could totally crush you if they were upturned; dudes with massive cargo pedaling rickshaw; herds of cows in the middle of the city street; someone riding what looked like a penny-farthing while holding a 5m length of plywood (I could have hallucinated that one). Traffic lights and roundabouts seem to be something that you just honk your horn louder at, on approach. It’s just a suggestion really, that you might want to stop, but you could just barrel-on through.

We drove past the national parliament designed by Louis Kahn in the 60s. That man has done great things with bricks. He’s one of my favourite architects. I think the national parliament is a concrete job though. Looks icy and imposing when lit-up at night.

I have this lovely room at the Ambrosia Guest House on Road 3 in the Dhanmmondi (residential area). I think it’s one of the nicest places I’ve stayed in anywhere, ever. Beautifully clean, white walls and terrazzo. It’s like a nun’s quarters. The house is surrounded by an enchanting garden filled with pots and flowers and butterflies cavorting etc. I am alone in the house at the moment, as the other artists are yet to arrive. So I have about 4 blokes attending to me.