Journey

June - July 2010

Strategic sites: Ho Chi Minh City, Phnom Penh, Vientiane, Hanoi, Hue, and a segment on the Ho Chi Minh Trail

Participants: Ten writers and thinkers invited as participating artists; ten artists invited as participating thinkers; four Long March staff members; and four media representatives and volunteers. This team of 28 travelers also engaged with local participants along the way.

The June program will be a journey realized through walking, rehearsing, artistic and textual production, dialogue and recording. Throughout the journey, local and international participants will be invited to perform a process of confessing and flushing-out to explore issues of globalization and local, Empire and The Third World, ideology and politics, art and theory, and other critical questions that concern us today.

To achieve this state of existence we would rather admit our position as cultural travelers - we will not pretend a romantic level of interaction and interjection or seek to reach the impossible ‘goal’ of being on the same page with the locals (any imagined success on this aspect will nevertheless be a mirage). What we will be facing along the journey will be something beyond China and Southeast Asia, beyond artistic production and other realms of activity. Every local and international participant will be simultaneously host and guest to engage with subjective and local interpretations of geopolitics, historical and war memories, and cultural and ethnic conflicts encountered along the way, thereby revealing the absurdity and futility of political correctness. The continuous, intense, and physical process of confessing, discussing, walking, and recording along the way will thrive to transform the act of acting into actual action. While the journey will be realized mostly by bus transportation, there will be a walking segment through a critical Ho Chi Minh Trail portion in Laos.