PARTICIPATION
Virtual Breakout During the Outbreak June 6th Livestream
Bureau of Thanks
Bureau of Thanks online version:
As part of soundpedro 2020 I will be scribing Thank You notes online together with participants in my piece, Bureau of Thanks on June 12, 19, 25, and 26. I’m using Zoom for convenience but, in keeping with the original form and intention of Bureau of Thanks, each interaction will be one-on-one while other participants wait in the Zoom Waiting Room. No video or audio will be captured or streamed. This is not a group meeting or a livestream. Only Thank You notes that participants choose to give to Bureau of Thanks will be posted on Instagram @bureauofthanks and on my Facebook page @youngtsengwork. Gifting your note is optional. Please register if you would like to dictate a Thank You note to me for scribing!
Please use the web link below or copy it into your web browser to go to a registration page for Bureau of Thanks online version:
https://volunteersignup.org/D8LY3
More information is given on the registration page. Further details will be emailed to registered participants. The number of participants is limited to only 8 at the moment because the process is slow and I want to take care not to make you wait too long on hold. However, more hours or dates may be added if necessary. Feedback and comments for improvement are most welcome! DM me on Instagram, send a message to me in Facebook Messenger, or email me. I regret that I can only offer this version of Bureau of Thanks in English and Bahasa Malaysia at this time.
Credits for inspiring the form and spirit of this piece to the itinerant petition writers of my childhood, to the tradition and livelihood of escritorio publico, and to poet Jen Hofer. I am grateful to the ancestors, descendants, and people of the former villages of *Toibingna*, *Torojoatngna*, *Joatngna*, *Momwahomomutngna*, *Passinongna*, *Wapijangna*, *Weniingna* and others unknown or lost, on whose lands I live as a guest while I do this work.
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Proposed work as accepted for soundpedro 2020:
Bureau of Thanks
Bureau of Thanks is an interactive installation-performance inspired by memories of itinerant form-fillers and petition writers who plied their trade outside government offices in Malaysia where I grew up. It is also inspired by LA poet Jen Hofer’s *escritorio publico* love-letter project.
In Bureau of Thanks I set up a desk to listen and scribe handwritten Thank You notes addressed to, “a Person, a Place, or a Time.” The messages are dictated to me by visitor-participants. I request permission to retain a carbon copy of the note, a gift from the visitor-participant to me. The original hand-scribed note is then put in an envelope and given to the visitor-participant to send to its intended recipient, if they wish.
Bureau of Thanks comes from my desire to create a “listening post” in reaction to the present time and worldwide culture that privileges speaking forcefully over listening carefully. With Bureau of Thanks I want to create an opportunity for visitor-participants to experience the undivided attention of another human being for a brief moment, to be listened to. All site requirements and equipment requests are focused toward this end.
Young-Tseng makes performance and installation art, finding ways to create shifts of perspective through attention to how human beings move and perceive the space around and between each other. His interest in movement and awareness comes from apprenticeship in mime, in the techniques of Marcel Marceau and Etienne Decroux’s Corporeal Mime. He is also indebted to the concepts and forms of Suzuki voice and physical actor training and to the Six Viewpoints technique for composing space and time conceived and developed by Mary Overlie. Young-Tseng received his MFA in Studio Art from Claremont Graduate University.
Artist Location: Claremont, CA
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