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Dialogue Between Lothar Goetz and the Theatre Space

Ruyang theater is located in NanlingNnational Forest Park, the theater was used to be a public space for the local community and was abandoned for a few years. With the changing of the economic of this area, the theater will be considered to reuse as public space and play its function but in different form. Artist Lothar Goetz is invited to make a dialogue with the history and space of the architecture through the color installation work. His installation is like a few temporary walls to re-create a public space with open structure and functions. The colorful installation is giving new birth to the abandoned theater.
Lothar Goetz is a German artist who uses color installation as his language to respond to the architectural space. For Goetz, the understanding of the architectural space is not only the physical space, he always responds to the history and function of the physical space, plus his personal emotion on the physical space, to use the color to transfer the physical space into an social and emotional space.
The Time of Installation for the Public/16th April, 2005, 2:00pm
The Time for the Film/16th April,2005,7:00pm
Location/Ru Yang Theater in Guangdong Nanling National Forest Park

 
TWIG project Together We Integrate Growth - Malaika Sarco & Richard Thomas

TWIG means Together We Integrate Growth. Travelling overland sustainably from Devon, England to Guangdong, China by foot, hitching and rail, the TWIG project aims to take every opportunity to contribute to the greening of human sensisbilities toward nature. By planting trees, dancing with trees and climbing trees along our route we will create a map of public performances that mark our journey across Eurasia. Daily performances, interactions with people, and trees commemorated, danced with and planted, will be logged here. Once in Guangdong, follow our community-based art project in the Nanling National Forest Park where we bring together our findings to create a pathway of folklore, musical instruments and treehouses and gardens of new growth accessible to all.

 
The following article is from their travel blog, talking about their six weeks experiences in Nanling:It's been six weeks give or take a week or so since our last blog entry and plenty has happened upon and around us. but for the most part this should be about the children. to begin with we posted some information about our project plans in the town and along with it a kind of registration day date, and sat back and waited. we expected maybe forty or so kids to attend. we decided to give them a form they could give to their parents and return if they were interested. two days before the big day we already had one hundred and thirty two applicants. word travels fast among the children of nanling. so we divided the children into four groups: red, green, blue and yellow and began to run around sorting art supplies, cleaning and decorating the space and all kinds of other organizational stuff too . on the first day we contended - and i say contended because it was more like a scrap than a lesson- with the greens. well actually it was more like an argument you were having with forty or so people, one in which the objective was to hold the themselves and my memory and writing skills aren't up to much either. but this is life.

 
i think it was somewhere in week four that we both realized we'd never have enough time to try half of the ideas and activities in our note books and that we had to make difficult decisions about exactly what it was we wanted to communicate in these seemingly short weeks we had left. this is what we came up with:

 
human ecology: what is it, what can it mean

respect: the idea that to respect all things is self respect

perception and awareness: what are they, what could they be

integration: or non separation of the senses

fun: the idea that implementing these ideas and questions can be a fun and exciting way to live and learnthe final sharing/performance went down a storm and we packed the theater, the kids were all fantastic and for nearly two hours the local community got a jazzed up staged version of the children's time with twig. the theater was decorated with the artwork produced by the kids and we had running slide show and video footage during intervals.

it's some thing i'll never forget and leaving the mountains today was also momentous.

children saw us off with homemade gifts and we shared some tearful minutes with them before being driven to the city by huang xing hai. we passed through the familiar main street of the town i glanced back and left and then right again and again, trying to catch sight of children i know for a last goodbye. we spotted a few before the town limits approached. and so from there on to the highway all the time the memory flashing and the emotions pulsing.

From July - August, 2006
Photo by Malaika Sarco, Richard Thomas
Location/ Guangdong Nanling National Forest Park