"We are a collaborative," says Tuan Andrew Nguyen (furthest left), the founding member. And the group consists of another American educated Vietnamese, Phu Nam and their close American friend Matt Lucero. All in their mid 30s, they don't exactly qualify as a "boy" band as such, but they have the savvy and knowing of the "new black", ahead-of-the-curve citizens of Silicon Valley - all educated in the arts in California, referred to fondly as their "Cal-Arts days way back in 2002".
Exactly what's a "collaborative"? Their skills-set compliments each other, and they all have media background - producing music videos, documentaries and TV commercials. Formed in 2006, TPG's works stretch the world of contemporary art to its mind twisting limits. Each work forces you to ask, what is contemporary art? Or is it even art?
First off, they don't physically do the work, at each stage, they hire or commission other professionals. "Yes, you can say we are like a boy band," says Tuan. "Except we are NOT the band, but the people behind it." Confused? It gets better. They consider themselves the "creative think tank" behind every "project". So typically, on any project, the trio puts their collective and creative minds together and gets various groups as "partners" in the process.
For the Singapore Biennale 2011, which stretches from 13 March to 15 May, their contribution is "TVC Communism 2011", TVC is TV Commercial (The work is actually commissioned by the Singapore Biennale). What a visitor sees at the National Museum is a video installation that captures a brainstorming session that had gone on for five days to create "a cutting edge global media campaign promoting and gaining positive brand identity for communism". This project is done in conjunction with TBWA, the award-winning advertising force behind mega campaign successes for companies like Apple, Nissan and Adidas.
The participants in the video are the actual staff of TWBA Vietnam. The next stage (which is not part of this Biennale) involves them making a pitch to TPG, with storyboard and animatics (mock-up of the actual television commercial using images, music and voice overs). Once TPG approves it, the trio will raise funds to get the 30-second TV commercial produced. So it involves hiring professionals for it. "If we have enough money, there is no stopping us hiring an Oscar winning director or actor for the commercial, someone like Angelina Jolie?" Matt asks jokingly. But that sly smile that is almost covered by his moustache and beard seems to add, "We are serious, we want the best."
And at this stage, it is just starting to get interesting. When the commercial is produced, TPG will put on their "poor-artist" hats on again to raise funds. More money? Yes, they need money to buy airtime in TV channels, spread it virally online, produce commercials for the commercial so that the world audience will get a chance to see it.
Before you enter the room of the video installation at the National Museum, there is a text at the entrance telling you, "This installation is the first step in realising the actual television commercial and getting it broadcast worldwide." Another text below betrays the art, "All political systems and ideologies need their PR and advertising people," it says. "The Propeller Group, a collaborative art group located in Ho Chi Minh and Los Angeles, are on hand to pay tribute to the process of working with cultural producers situated outside the art realm...this video of a round table advertising brainstorming session is shot from the outside-in into an inside-out panoramic view of how advertising processes politics. The advertising campaign becomes the work and the television commercial becomes a video artwork."
"All TV commercials want you to buy something, like a watch, or try to get you to do something, like vote for someone," says Tuan. "Our commercial is like any out there in the ocean of mass media. What separates us from the commercial output is the intention of our work." More often then not, producers of mass media don't question themselves of the ramifications of what they put out there in the world. "Which is ok," says Tuan matter-of-factly. "That's how things are, whether we like it or not. But that is the distinguishing factor between art and media. The intention of the work - we want to pose questions every step of the way, at every point of the process." He pauses and then adds, "Ultimately, we try to create disorder, hoping that disorder in such particular instances can become another 'sense of order' to an audience that may be all too afraid of change, or not accepting of other possible ways of engaging with their current cultural or social structures."
All of TPG's projects swim in the real world, and are part and parcel of what the contemporary world is interested in. For instance, when Oliver Fricker was sentenced to five months in jail and given three strokes of the cane for spray-painting a MRT coach, the TPG commissioned renowned graffiti artists to paint on a wall in a street in Singapore. "The graffiti is still there," says Tuan with pride but without any trace of brag as he flips his iPad out showing a bigger than life image of a man being painted on the side of a shop house with a group of by-standers looking.
"We want to bring art out of the confines of a gallery into the real world," says Matt. "Every stage of our work involves dealing with different people and we discover different issues and problems - that's life." And that's art to them. At every phase, the "audience" is different, everyone involved becomes collaborator and/or audience of the work, and in the most successful cases they become both.
TPG uses every form of media as its medium. They describe themselves as artists obsessed with the media who try hard not to be limited by the medium. "Media controls every aspect of our lives today, it is the single most powerful form of engagement. Because of the media, people in the US protested against the Vietnam War; in Vietnam the media was used as propaganda against the Americans," Tuan looks at Matt. "And that's only the political domain. The media is even more pervasive in popular culture from music videos to drama and movies. Michael Jackson's iconography is very powerful today, like Elvis. If used strategically, you can do unimaginable stuff with it."
TPG's "TVC Communism" is aligned to the theme of the Singapore Biennale 2011, which is "Open House" - where the entire Singapore is "opened" for the public, as audience, to see the everyday and routine as "art". Says Phu Nam via email, the only part of the trio who could not make it for the Biennale, "Art isn't and shouldn't be an isolated cultural phenomena separate from life. It should not be limited and made stagnant by how it's categorised. If someone says art can't be on TV or vice versa, a TV commercial can't be consider art, well we think the opposite."
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