Microcosmic Orbit - 'Wrapping'

The Bagri Foundation is delighted to announce news of Noel Ed De Leon’s Microcosmic Orbit, one of the five commissions for its At Home in the World open call. Set up in April 2020, it invited artists to create works in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, offering £1,000 for the winners to realise their proposals.

De Leon, who won in the ‘Lectures & Courses’ category, has created a work that takes the form of three digital conversations and live-stream performances, in which he invites a series of guest artists, research- ers and cultural activists to undertake a virtual tour of his personal collection of historical artefacts. These are staged from the attic of his home — recently converted into an exhibition space.

Curated by Eva Bentcheva and working in collaboration with Berlin-based artist Pepe Dayaw, cultural anthropologist/activist Tran Thu Trang, and London-based artist Erika Tan, De Leon has drawn together aselection of objects to which they respond. These range from original equipment from the First and Second World Wars collected in Britain and the Philippines, to found objects, tribal artefacts and remnants of artworks, and he’s chosen three core themes directed at each guest respectively.

Through this project it will reveal how objects reflect histories of exchange, conflict and interdependence between Southeast Asia and Europe. Also, during these attic ‘visits’, De Leon and the collaborating artists will jointly conceive three live-streamed events around the aforementioned themes. This could be anything from the building of a temporary installation in the attic, to spoken commentary, debate, poetry, music or even cooking, and will be shown online over the course of July to September.

The dates are as follows:

• 17 July 2020, 1pm – ‘Sheltering’ with Pepe Dayaw will delve into the deeply symbolic and aesthetic nature of interiority, housing and survival.

• 14 August 2020, 1pm – ‘Wrapping’ with Trang Thu Trang will explore the dynamics of visibility and invisibility which migrants often face.

• 18 September 2020, 1pm – ‘Temporalities’ with Erika Tan will probe into the importance of coincidental survival of historical objects in shaping the writing of fragmented and layered histories.

Microcosmic Orbit will be streamed via the following link: https://www.facebook.com/bagrifoundation/live/