Man & God | Joseph Foo | TEDxPetalingStreet

"Man + God ' is Joseph's latest project. It is a visual representation with art installations, which explores the relationship between Man and God, a visual journey and a study of Man's interpretation, understanding and acknowledgement of God through different faiths and cultures.

(Video)

[神 = God 人 = Man]

[我 = Me 人 = Man]

[Man&God Visual Feast
Since 2003]

[Does God exist?]

Yes, He does.

In my mind, He does.

Yes, sure.

I believe that God exists.

I don't think so.

I do believe in some kind of
meaningfulness.

[Do you believe in him/her?]

Kind of. I think, but not sure.

Yes, sometimes.

I don't believe.

Sure, I believe in Him.

I don't believe. I believe in myself.

Not really.

I don't know whether
I should call it God.

I would say it's a force that exists.

I certainly believe in
all eternal stuff that it stands for.

[Who/what is God to you?]

The thing I depend on life.

You, me, everyone, him, everything.

Faith is --, I believe it's trust,

and it's happy.

He is invisible,
but He is always close to us.

There're different perceptions on
what is good and what is bad,

what is right and what is wrong,

so that's why we have God and devils.

[Who is God?]

[What does God look like?]

["If God did not exist, it would be
necessary to invent him" - Voltaire]

[When man makes a mistake,
it is sin.]

[When God makes a mistake,
it is nature?]

[Thought Provoking]

[Incredibly Unnerving]

[and Powerful...]

[The journey started in April 2003]

[in the capital of multicultured,
multireligioned Malaysia - Kuala Lumpur]

[before travelling around the world
to various locations...]

[Since then it has attracted
contributions from more than]

[100 artists and designers
from over 20 countries]

[and been exhibited in as many as
10 different venues across the globe.]

[God creates, man imitates.]

[Man & God,]

[an intense visual experience
exploring the relationship]

[between Man and God
through the eyes and ideas of]

[creative minds of
different faiths and cultures.]

[In God we trust.]

["Let Man be Man, let God be God."
- Martin Luther]

[我 = Me]

[人 = Man]

[神 = God]

The idea in the beginning,
13 years ago,

it all started with
questioning and debates,

and discussions among friends,

especially a photographer
friend of mine, David Lok,

we always travel together on jobs,

and we are really interested
in the issue of spirituality.

What we do is more on the creative bit.

We thought that
it'd be really interesting

if we can use art and design,

or even eventually use
performing art or installations

to present the idea of God.

It's something rather heavy,

but we thought, "Hey, it could be fun!"

We started with a book project.

We spent about three years

from year 2000 to about 2003,

where we worked with a lot of students,

and we worked with a lot of interns,

and even my colleagues,
probably more than 40 of them,

accumulating ideas
and different executions

to put that into a book.

As you can see,

we started from a very basic question:

If God made Man,

then Man are making God as well,

and we're continuing making God,

and there're many of them.

I used to show this when I was in China,

where I know that I'm not allowed to,

but this is what Mao Zedong used to say:

Man can conquer nature.

I'm sure the crowd today
knows what happened.

Eventually, he submitted to time,

which is the nature.

We continued the journey,
accumulating ideas, discoveries.

We discovered that even chromosomes

and the idea of bar code

is pretty much the same.

Well, it's actually the same.

If you look at these pictures of mine,

These are pictures of my aunt.

Without planning, she had 11 children.

With planning, of course,
with the man's intervention,

she may have just one child.

We actually explored a lot of ideas

and a lot of ways to explore

how Man, or how we rather,
coming from our culture,

look at the idea of God.

For example, this one,

you'll see that we always
prefer a pretty thing,

we like to deal with people
who smile at us

or more beautiful than us.

God is basically once and for all.

He showers rains to the good ones
and the bad ones as well.

The journey started in 2003

when we launched the book.

The book sold out eventually.

We have no more.

We never went to print
because it's very expensive.

But the journey becomes
a visual experiment,

not just from a print point of view,

not just posters,

it also comes into
moving images and installations.

There're many ideas that
have been accumulated.

Each place that we go,
we work with the local artists,

and we work with the local designers,

we collaborate with them,

not just with the designers,

but also with the musicians.

As you can see, these are all ideas

coming from different parts of the world.

Of course, there are also

interactions during the exhibition,

where you can write anything to God,

if you believe in God in that case.

If you look at the picture on my left,

God is having tea,

whereas men are going to war

in the name of God.

It's ironic and presented
really well in such a fun way.

Over the past eleven years,

we really had fun
promoting the idea of God

through the visual arts.

The culture of the show,

we always go into universities,

and we always go into communities,

we have dialogues,
we have discussions,

and friends who participated in the show,

they flew from America,
Europe, Hong Kong,

or even from Taiwan, Singapore.

They came in on their own as friends,

and they presented their ideas as well.

In 2008, when we moved
our show to Beijing,

we started to explore the Russian dolls.

Here, you see the babushka dolls.

There's no particular reason,

but we thought
that it's a good way to tell stories.

You open one and
you have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 dolls.

It's like frames for you
to tell a story a little bit better.

We accumulated,

we sent all the dolls out,

and within a couple of months

they all came back,

and we started one show in Beijing.

The show in Beijing
happened to be in a bar.

Imagine if you go to a bar to have fun,

to have drinks with friends,

but there is something
really heavy, philosophical,

but presented in design or art medium.

So, it's quite interesting.

There's something spectacular
over the past journey

where we have a friend,
a really good friend of mine,

he started to be a part of us
about ten years ago,

and had our first ever
performance in Singapore.

After that, he was with us

for almost every show

in different parts of the world.

Keong is a very talented Butoh performer.

I've seen him grow,

and he's seen me grow as well.

To me, he is probably
one of the masters outside Japan.

Keong has a surprise for us today.

(Music)

(Butoh performance by Keong)

(Applause)

Thank you, Keong. Amazing.

So, the discovery, at the end,

what strikes me

is the process of thinking,

and we discovered grace,

we discovered what we
normally will take for granted.

For now, this is a good friend
of mine, Caecar Chong.

He did the last project with me
in 2009 before he passed away.

This is a project, again, for Man & God.

It's about what's essential to us,
which is the air.

He did an experiment
of him not breathing

to see the effects
and the results of it.

Of course, once you show all that,

air is something that we
should give thanks to every day.

Of course, not just the air, but also
the sun, the water, the rain.

Don't try that at home.

Thank you.
(Laughter) (Applause)