IN SPITE OF…

In the maelstrom of COVID-19, arts activities globally have come to a standstill. Faced with interruption, forced to virtualise or succumbed to damage, everything is on hold, in absentia, on a wait list. 

LASALLE’s Tropical Lab – an annual international art camp – is no different. A site for exploration, exchange, collaboration and informed platform, Tropical Lab was a signature event on the global arts calendar for student-artists and this year, it had to succumb to extreme social distancing.

To remain connected and nurture continued engagement with artists and art institutions in the Tropical Lab network, Image and Sound In Spite Of… is an opportune platform to share LASALLE’s creative response in this time of closure and silence. 

Artists live between people and communities, in self-isolating quarantine as their natural habitat. Even if environments, atmospheres, time, social lives, methodologies and working media change, artists continue to consume, digest, deliver and revel in their creative practice, fuelled by imagination, dreams and ideas as their main creative activity.

In this regard, LASALLE staff and alumni as artists, artist-educators and artist-thinkers, did not pause in creating work these past months. Image and Sound In Spite Of… is a culminating showcase of their work – image, sound, text – created in the time of extreme social isolation. 

This is not a gallery, white cube or a stage. It is a space filled with the content of image, sound, movement and text. It is a sharing, a connecting point. 

This is only the first of iterations. The second will feature Tropical Lab alumni.

Milenko Prvacki
*Tropical King*
Curator, Image and Sound In Spite Of…
Convenor, Tropical Lab
Senior Fellow, LASALLE College of Arts