proposed installation of "Mandala-tanque" at the DUMBO Arts FestivalMandala-Tanque invites participants to destroy a sand mandala by playing one of France's most popular sports
NEW YORK, March 28, 2011 -- For a good part of the past two centuries, France had a large presence in Southeast Asia. Laos was ruled by France from 1893 to 1954. Vietnam was part of French Indochina from 1885 to 1954. Cambodia was a protectorate of France from 1863 to 1953. As a result, pétanque is played in those nations, as well as in Thailand, which acted as a buffer between the French and British interests in the region. Buddhism is practiced widely throughout the region.
New York-based experimental production studio MomenTech considers this spiritual dimension through the application of sportsmanship and sports theory with Mandala-Tanque, a proposed site-specific, audience participatory installation that invites viewer to play a game of pétanque on a pitch upon which a Tibetan Buddhist sand mandala has been created.
The sand mandala is a Tibetan Buddhist tradition in which an intricate, painstakingly-created design made with colored sand is ritualistically destroyed once it is completed, a symbol of life's fundamentally transient nature.
Mandala-Tanque continues MomenTech's ongoing exploration of transnational progressivism through sports and game theory, and expands on an earlier pétanque project, Ped Tanco.
MomenTech's other sport- or game-related projects include Scotch-Hoppers for Sol Lewitt (a conceptual site-specific hopscotch installation using a LeWitt approach that was exhibited in January 2011 as part of "An Exchange with Sol Lewitt," a dual exhibition curated by Regine Basha at Cabinet in Brooklyn and MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, and will be exhibited in the forthcoming exhibition "April Fools' Show" at SpaceCamp MicroGallery in Indianapolis, Indiana; Invocation and Offering to Unkulunkulu, an audio work utilizing live recordings of the vuvuzela, the ubiquitous horn instrument of the 2010 World Cup; and 2012 Olympi-Mobs, an audience participatory, site-specific public space project that will beckon the London public to engage in a flashmobs to explore the connections between political protest, meditation and sports, during the 2012 London Olympics.
A full installation of Mandala-Tanque consists of a regulation-sized, competition-ready pétanque court upon which one or more sand mandalas have been created, two sets of official boules, instructions on how to play, an educational component (e.g., booklets, brochures, online resources, photos of of the history of pétanque, etc.), workshops led by pétanque players and professionals and a single- or multi-day public pétanque competition. MomenTech has been in discussion with the New York pétanque club La Boule New Yorkaise (LBNY) about logistics and planning for both the Ped Tanco and Mandala-Tanque projects.
According to Wikipedia, "pétanque is a form of boules where the goal is, while standing inside a starting circle with both feet on the ground, to throw hollow metal balls as close as possible to a small wooden ball called a cochonnet (literally "piglet") or jack. It is also sometimes called a bouchon (literally "cork") or le petit ("the small one"). The game is normally played on hard dirt or gravel, but can also be played on grass, sand or other surfaces. Similar games are bocce and bowls.
By illustrating the success of a game whose history has crossed so many national borders throughout Western civilization, Mandala-Tanque underlines the possibilities of transnational progressivism, which endorses a concept of post-national global citizenship and promotes the authority of international institutions over the sovereignty of individual nation-states.
MomenTech's other sport- or game-related projects include Scotch-Hoppers for Sol Lewitt (a conceptual site-specific hopscotch installation using a LeWitt approach that was exhibited in January 2011 as part of "An Exchange with Sol Lewitt," a dual exhibition curated by Regine Basha at Cabinet in Brooklyn and MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts; Invocation and Offering to Unkulunkulu, an audio work utilizing live recordings of the vuvuzela, the ubiquitous horn instrument of the 2010 World Cup; and 2012 Olympi-Mobs, an audience participatory, site-specific public space project that will beckon the London public to engage in a flashmobs to explore the connections between political protest, meditation and sports, during the 2012 London Olympics.
