Wednesday, October 31, 2007

My residency project

How to Talk to Strangers – A strategy

Sit facing each other on two chairs. Listen to each other’s heartbeats through stethoscopes as you imagine the conversation you are having. Do not say a word, although you may find yourself smiling or frowning involuntarily. Make sure to maintain eye contact.

Sit back to back from each other on two chairs. Listen to each other’s heartbeats through stethoscopes as you imagine the conversation you are having. Do not say a word, although you may find yourself smiling or frowning involuntarily. Be sure to concentrate on the conversation.

This is a strategy proposed for any social, political or cultural situation. In a public setting, conversations between two strangers may be broadcast through speakers. But the important thing is that everyone listens.

Sharon Chin
Nov 2007
Sydney

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

The bridging of selves

Utterly inebriated, I passed out a few hours ago at the foot of God, exorcised of demons, a contented smile on my face. Possibly finding me a hindrance, God has nudged me with God's ineffable big toe and I'm wide awake, staring back at the face of the moon outside my window. The past has caught up with the present and the future is strolling along at a comfortable pace. It seems everything is holding hands with everything. I'm bound by some compulsion to draw the shape of this container, although I know this means disturbing the sweetness of the condition. It can't last long anyway, I might as well chase it with words.

"Never in action had I known the chilling satisfaction of words; never in words had I experienced the hot darkness of action" - Yukio Mishima

The rest of that quote comes back to me in snatches and it's a great quote; so sublime, but I know it ends with Death, and for Mishima, in Death.

I realize now that the night is so full and peaceful. We've never been great friends, because I sleep uneasily and am shamefully afraid of shadows. Right now it is really quite satisfying to tap into the dark; the glow of my screen has become the face of the moon; Oh Sharon, I mean Betta... I'm sure that analogy (simile? metaphor?) has never been used before...

This word: isthmus. Land bridge. It's a great word, one of my favorites. For so long, I've thought it the ideal condition. A place that is able to relate two land masses to each other is very special. It's just so cool! But I wonder now if souls or bodies are meant to remain in transit, or in my case, to revel in it. Isthmuses come and go with the tides. I begin to suspect that my fascination is a symptom of a certain malaise, one that is not life-affirming. I've yet to explore this further.

Mishima was searching for the unifying principle. From memory: "Floating ten thousand feet above the ground, the silver phallus of the fuselage glinted in naked sunlight..." The rest I can't say for certain. But he saw a great circle coiled around the earth, one that united man and woman, art and action.

The isthmus is my unifying principle and I know it is a false one. It's the position of one who wants to savour all the chaos of life, but only at a distance. Mishima's unifying principle was Death. He was right.

If I'm becoming unclear it's only because I don't know what I mean. And that's the worse condition to be writing in.

Good night.

Friday, October 26, 2007

High on life


Warning: anyone easily sickened please look away now.

I just feel so happy right now. My body feels like shit of course, I think I still have some alcohol swishing around inside me. Being here, I just get to be Betta. I get to meet people and talk to them as Betta who happens to make art in Kuala Lumpur, not Betta the Malaysian artist. Soon, I'm getting my tatt done, and the best part is that I'm so sure of what I want it to be. I've waited a long time for that certainty. It's finally here.

x and kisses.

Fall from grace

NEWER UPDATE: I started to do it and then I got distracted by the thought of avocado on toast with butter and cheese (that's three layers of fat on some carbs - mmmm). Hahahah. Facebook I have escaped your clutches once again.

UPDATE: I realize now it is actually because I am sexually frustrated.

I am weak. Weeeeeaak.

I woke up this morning and knew that I must join facebook.

I cannot say what it was that did it. It could have been all that drink-mixing last night (beer (1pm), martini (5pm), white wine (6 - 9pm), beer (9 - 10pm) REALLY BAD champagne (10pm onwards)) or it could have been the huge pie I ate (as well as smeared on my white top) after.

I am a broken woman.

See you on there, bitches! Hope you're happy now. Grrrowl. Purrrr.

Monday, October 22, 2007

Sacredness

Woke up with the spirit of contradiction depressingly strong in me this morning. The sun is shining outside, sparkling on the water, laughing at this indignant little Malaysian in her foreign, all-expenses paid studio, as she tries to soothe and tame that useless frustration and turn it into something useful.

The immediate source of my agitation is visual, as it so often is. Underneath probably gurgles something much more pathetic, like mild sexual frustration. But the immediate source, the immediate itch, is a picture of Malaysia's first man in space. There he hangs in his cockpit, a Jalur Gemilang on himself, a Jalur Gemilang hanging in the background, grinning like an idiot - the whole scene is an obscene insult to the great ineffability of the cosmos itself; the very last frontier not conquered by our tacky, shallow, pathetic Malaysia Boleh LIE is now reduced to another feather our cap. And henceforth whenever I (and later my and your children) think of space, it will be with less humility for our insignificance in the universe, and worse, far worse, is that we will be less curious about looking up. The sky has always been the one place I look to for the source of all magic and mystery, no matter what is happening on the ground. Putrajaya, the billboards, the Visit Malaysia 2007 ads - they have all been visual assaults. Now the vision of this spaceman, this space mascot, has invaded my sacred place of wonder. I, who floated on air for days after seeing an image of the sun through a telescope, laugh and cry at the man in space who performed his daily prayers facing earth or the Kiblat, who spinned a top and tossed "batu seremban' (five-stone game), who painted a batik motif and made a teh tarik.

WHAT A FUCKING WASTE.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Dice

At last! I write this, my first post on my new, pristine, perfect computer. It is unsullied and virginal. It feels like sleeping with someone else's wife - uncomfortable but immensely lovely. Well it came late enough! Problems with the shipment, problems with the tax, problems at every juncture.

In any case it is here. Warning: I'm writing this two bottles of champagne in. Fellow resident artist S. has had some wonderful news: she is heading to New York soon on a wing of opportunity. Naturally, we celebrated.

Yesterday night, three of us met D.G. at an opening, who not only pointed the way to some authenticated Malaysian-Asian Food but also invited us to his studio in Chinatown! What a space. He lays a new synthetic oriental style carpet on the floor each time he begins a new set of paintings - a ritual after my own heart. He is surrounded by his own art as well art from friends and colleagues, either bought from or bartered for.

But the best part is that he lured us into a new, sinfully addictive game: DICE. Yes, dear reader, let it be known that dice is a sailor's game - long ago banned on HMS Royal Navy ships, where the sound of them clinking together would mean a flogging of 50 strokes or more. One names their dice before the game and mine was... 'SNAKE EYES'! Hah. I knew you'd love it. Especially as I was the winner. I felt some remorse at squandering my good luck on a game (every person's store of good luck is finite) but it was the best fun I've had in years. When I see you next, I will teach you and you too shall be infected with the evil but oh-so-good dice vice. Perhaps it may even replace some unfortunate Facebook addictions...?

Oh, I can post pictures now! I'll do that tomorrow. You shall see the ships and the harbour and strange, incandescent quality of daylight here. Sleep now - tired, missing home and friends, but quite happy to be here...

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Congratulations!

Sometimes you think of a big project, and then when you jump on it you realize how tough it's going to be. Most people jump off, or think smaller. Some freaky, very special sort of people grit their teeth and see it through and you get something like LAMU - Let Arts Move You! An art project with real movement and a seriously different audience.

Let Arts Move You (LAMU) art project brings together the artists, the public transport and the commuters on a visual art event taking place in Kuala Lumpur. It aims at presenting the dynamic and creative situation of urban life in KL, drawing the connections between the rapid city development and the artistic interventions.

http://www.blog.letartsmoveyou.com/

Visit the blog. Support support support!

Azure

This is a post to displace the melancholy one below, if anything else.

I finally went to Bondi Beach the other day with fellow resident artist B. Stepping off the bus we were greated by the most amazing blue azure sea I have ever seen. It was magnificent. The water from the shore to the farthest horizon looked like a sheet of silk dyed blue by God. And on the horizon line, a single oil tanker was cruising on the edge of the world where it meets the sky. Over excited, I dragged B. from one end of the beach to the other, skipping like a monkey. He humoured me, bless him.

In the two weeks since I have been here, now and again I feel a wholly gratuitous sense of happiness and independence. Soon I'll start making work again.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Fare thee well

...Sarah. (1994 - 2007)

UPDATE: Rest in peace, dog. You'll be missed. Thanks for everyone's kind thoughts.

Godzilla has written a far better tribute than I can.

My dog is not gone yet, but is fading, according to missives from back home. Distressed not to be there, but this is the way it is.

The Buddha teaches that death isn't the end and worldly attachments are the source of suffering. I try to practice but it is difficult.

Even though I appear indifferent and harsh to her, I really love my dog.

It's been a good life.

Selamat Hari Raya

May peace and goodwill be upon you! Wish I was there soaking up the atmosphere like an absorbent ketupat dipped in kuah. Instead I am eating sandwiches. Consider me there in spirit at all your respective buka rumahs, eating until I collapse in ecstacy. Screw the sports, economy, etc. Malaysia really is and always will be numero uno in the food game. All others can pack up and go home. This is my objective and considered view.

I'm reading Rumi. His words have captured my soul:

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow
a thousand times
Come, yet again, come, come.


-From Masnavi (The Teachings of Rumi) Book 1
Jalaludin Rumi (translated by E. M. Whinfield)

Monday, October 08, 2007

Message in a bottle

Landed a week ago on the shores surrounded by water. The air cold and dessicate, so my skin is shedding like a snake.

I live in a room with a paint-splattered cork floor. The view outside is of the harbour with the navy's battleships berthed there. Don't tell anyone but I sneakily smoke cigarettes by leaning outside the window.

I've walked more than I have in my entire life, I think. The other day I had blisters and thought maybe I was overdoing it but I have purchased some in-soles and these will allow me to trek even further.

I miss rice, yesterday some of us went in search of it and we found it! We had dinner together, that was nice.

My favorite thing is the Observatory at the top of the hill. A big fat man who looks like he can control the cosmic railways let me look into a very expensive telescope. I saw the sun, but the image was 8 minutes old - the time it took to reach the lens and into my eye. I also saw Jupiter and Mercury. As you can imagine I was thrilled beyond anything. Anything. On October 20 there is Astronomy Night at some far away location and I am going to go and be a nerd. Apparently there will be 20 telescopes there. I might burst with happiness.

The other day I went to the Maritime Museum and I looked at ships old and new. There were original anchors bigger than you can imagine, looking very much stranded on their platforms when they really belong at the bottom of the great ocean. There was a figure head of Lord Nelson, with his one eye and his one arm. I paid silent homage as I have wanted to do that for the longest time.

I bought maps to put on my wall.

I am missing home a little of course, but there so much here to see and do. On Wednesday a local will take me around to some openings.

No computer yet, which is terrible! Hopefully it comes soon and I'll post some pictures in the privacy of my own room.

For now, my abode is:

43 - 51, Cowper Wharf Road
Woolloomooloo
2011 NSW
Sydney
Australia

And my life-line is

+61410256858

Salty kisses,
Betta in Sydney

PS. I will not open facebook I will not open facebook I will not open facebook (according to everyone I know it's inevitable and resistance is futile)