Moving

I am seriously considering a sort-of permanent move to Penang around 2009 - 2010. This *clicky* is just one reason why. The other is the sea of course. The insane stress of KL life caps it all.

You comin'?

Painting

A friend was trying to convince me to do a painting show. (She was so persuasive) I said, ok. I'll do it. You know what I'll paint? Unicorns. That's all I'll paint. Unicorns unicorns unicorns. Unicorns drinking, fucking, dancing, sleeping, walking, dying. Unicorns everywhere. People will love it. I'll cover the city in unicorns. No, the world! Palestine. Turkey. Burma. Sydney. Kuala Lumpur.

Yes, you take my word for it. One day. Don't say you weren't warned. Unicorns are the next big thing (for me).

Comfort zone

Instead of green zones and combat zones, we should (we must) have comfort zones. A proposal: that no combat must be allowed to happen when people are sleeping. When you are sleeping, there can be no fighting; you are invisible, you are dreaming, you are given universal amnesty. Yes, be you murderous dictator or homeless thief, let there be a law unto all humanity: you shall sleep in safety, without fear.

Note to self: make a bed that is also a room. Let it be on wheels. It can move around. People can crawl inside it wherever they find one.

Yin thoughts

Am I the only one who thinks Britney's 'Piece of Me' is a really good song?

-

Frank Lloyd Wright's Monument to Haroun Al-Rashid

Caliph Haroun Al Rashid used to walk the streets of ancient Baghdad disguised as an ordinary citizen. I want to do that. I want to walk without fear in every corner of my city, not scared of murderers or rapists or drug dealers. Maybe if you're not afraid of being hurt, mentally or physically, then nothing will happen to you. Sometimes I think there are two mes in this body. One is completely crazy and reckless, I'll do anything it takes for anything or just for a thrill, I swear. Even if you're close to me, you don't now how close I am to this crazy person inside me. The only thing that holds me back is that I actually care about people. Maybe when I do crazy things it hurts others because they thought they knew you well. That's why disguise, fantasy and make-believe is necessary. I really wonder how much violence I am capable of. I don't like killing insects, but that's because of my Buddhist upbringing. I swear, it's because of Buddhism that I am better equipped to deal with the... utter solidity of reality. It's more violence of emotions that I'm thinking of. I don't want to be violent towards life or people, I don't have those kinds of kinks, but I do want to do things that are very irrational. I once told someone, who told me I was beautiful and asked me if I was a model, that I was a prostitute, just for the fun of it. He wasn't amused and walked away in disgust. Hey, that's too bad, I just wanted to play, you know? I get really disappointed when people don't get a proposed game. But then some sick people don't understand that it's only a game. Hmm. You can't have it both ways, Betta, people tell me. But fuck that. I think that you can have it this way, that way, or any fucking way you want if that's what turns you on. 'This world... is solid through and through', I remember that from a movie I watched. Sometimes I feel like I am drugged, how calm and rational I get is only a measure of a huge sea inside me that is pushing and pulling in all directions like a big storm breaking. You could probably label me 'the one most likely to run away and join the circus'. But I was born into a newer world, freaks have 'scenes' now, you know! I hate all scenes. I like freaks, real freaks. And there aren't anymore circuses... if you want you have to invent your own. You know why I like Miyazaki's films so much, because you can sort of tell that they are just like, 10 percent of this person's vast inner world that's filled with monsters, treasure, freaks, pain and pleasure. I don't have a problem being alone or being ignored at all, I can constantly amuse myself. I am not afraid of dying. Something in the world is getting darker - more lies and pain. Really sick kind of pain - torture, imprisonment. I think people just don't know what to do with themselves. Their imaginations are dead.

-

La Luna chair by Kenneth Cobonpue

The moon. La luna... she knows me, doesn't she.

Desire

Damn, Phillip Lim is definitely one of my favorite labels. He is just SO GOOD. Look at this dress!

3.1 Phillip Lim Infinitely Pleated Tulip Cocoon Dress

Oh yes, I'm sure I heard a collective sigh of desire from every girl (and maybe a guy or two - you know who you are) out there.

besfren

Just another late-night drunken conversation:

Betta: Acceptance, huh? You know, for you, I would seriously hide a body. Like, seriously. I'd be like, ok, sure. You could definitely come to me.

Godzilla: Yeah, so would I. I would give you crap about it, but I too would help you dispose of a dead body. However I wouldn't accept you using cocaine. Cos' that's like suicide.

Free lancing

Are you a free-lancer? Do you recognize this deadly cycle:

Deadline crush > Angry mob demanding completion of project > Stress levels skyrocket > Project completed by dint of miracle (with 10 more to go) > Heavy drinking

Knock back another scotch and press repeat. Watch health and efficiency levels decline steadily. Personal grooming goes to the dogs as well.

I miss making art.

MATAHATI: For Your Pleasure - unresolved thoughts

This is a long post I am writing to hopefully clear the confusion in my head.

Writing a concise review about the recently concluded Matahati retrospective is turning out to be a torturous, laborious exercise. I've heard that your brain hurting is a sign that it's working, but I do wish it wouldn't hurt so bad.

Basically I am trying to weave about 5 or 6 related ideas together, but they keep slipping through my fingers. If I compartmentalize maybe it will make more sense. Any comments are very much welcomed. Here we go:

On institutionalism and scale:
The mega scale of this exhibition and the fact that it's hosted by an institution (as opposed to being a commercial or independent endeavor) means two things: accessibility and recognition. Both mean different things to the public and the arts community.

On accessibility and recognition:
Both accessibility and recognition signify Matahati being situated in the 'mainstream'. It's important to distinguish the between the two because it gives us a clearer notion of what 'mainstream' really means - it's not some monolith center characterized by popularity, but is actually very complex.

Recognition acknowledges the importance of Matahati in an art historical context. When they emerged in the 1990s, their work (along with contemporaries like Tan Chin Kuan and Zulkifli Yusof) was seen to be a reaction against state-sponsored Malay revivalism and Islamisation. If during the 80s and 90s, forms of expression that embodied Malay-muslim culture were seen to be the 'mainstream', then Matahati's use of the figure, the straightforward expression of social, political and economic issues was seen in opposition to that - they were in the periphery.

This huge retrospective seems to indicate that Matahati has moved from being 'alternative' into the 'mainstream', but only in a limited sense! It is true that they are celebrated in the arts community, and their works are highly sought after by collectors. But what does this mean for the general public? I'm willing to wager that for the majority of Malaysians, this retrospective is their first contact with the works of Matahati.

Which tells us that this idea of 'mainstream' has changed drastically since the 1970s. Let me explain. The 1971 National Cultural Congress and resulting National Cultural Policy in effect proscribed what our culture should embody: it should be Malay and it should be Islamic. For all its flaws, it put forward a proposal that culture should be at the very center of society, that it played a vital role in the forming of communities.

The fact is that, today, due to the failure of public art institutions and art education, art has become marginalized amongst the general public. However misguided it may have been, NCP's championing of abstract and decorative art (as opposed to social-realism) was truly socially engaged. The long-lasting effect of this cultural policy on the nation's public as well as artistic psyche is testament to the possibility of artists playing a central role in their community.

The situation today: you have art that is socially engaged in CONTENT (exemplified by this Matahati exhibition), but is unable to engage with its audience. Economic, cultural and critical vitality has migrated to the former 'periphery' (evidenced in the growth of commercial galleries, private collectors and art initiatives), leaving the mainstream institutions hollow. Don't kid yourselves, however! The center remains, it's simply dead. This is no reason to rejoice. While the vitality of the art scene means great things for artists - growing opportunities coming from the international and regional scenes, as well as the private art market means that increasingly, artists can be independent - it is the audience who are losing out. The gap between the arts and its audience is widening every day. It is ironic and rather heart breaking that as the art scene grows bigger and stronger, our audience is not growing with us. No one who is an artist or who loves art likes seeing people poke at paintings, but can we really blame them?

Which is why this exhibition is significant. To a certain extent, it bridges the vast gap between socially engaged art and the actual society it is trying to engage. It implicitly demonstrates the importance of and hitherto vacuum that has been left by public art institutions because of incompetence, mismanagement and apathy.

So, what now for art practitioners? Will you easily abandon the freedom of independent practice and channel your energy and talent towards the institutional center where it is much needed? Certainly it wasn't very long ago that Galeri Petronas was simply another white elephant hosting the occasional desultory exhibition on nature photography.

So when we talk about 'mainstream', let's just be sure we're not cutting that pie too small.

Hallelujah

Bai bai MyFace. Good while it lasted. I feel so light.

Betta talks to Mum

(A project in the works for ThisIsCurating 1 - 40, curated by Joel Mu at First Draft, Sydney)

Mum, born 1952, Kuala Lumpur
Likes gardening, Tai Chi, tea drinking, reading and writing.

On Untitled (Footballs), 2006:
Footballs…
Yes.
There’s always something about your work, Betta, that’s suspended. I’m sure that there’s some, um, some meaning to that. Looking at the short description that comes with any piece of work, going by the title itself, will already give an indication. But to actually ask what it means, that’s for each one of us to interpret.


On Drawing Machine, 2006:
Do you know what it is?
Well it can be many things; it’s um, a simple device, for making circular shapes.
That’s true.
It’s also adjustable. And it seems to emulate a clock.
It is a clock mum!
Oh! Heeheehee.
Heeheehee, you like that?


On having an artist child:
So how do feel about having an artist as your child?
A pleasant surprise…
Oh, why is that?
…And it continues to be a surprise.
It doesn’t require a whole lot of understanding, or sacrifice as a parent. We just go along with what you’re doing.
[Both laugh]


On Making Night, 2006:
The making of night itself is supposed to be very, very complex. So many things have to come together before it can happen. It was the simplicity of it that struck me most.
Is it a bit god-like, you think?
[Long pause] No.
Are you sure?
Yes, I’m sure.


On Mare Clausum (Closed Sea), 2006:
It may seem all over the place, but actually there’s a certain balance to it. And the multi levels and layers, there are so many ways of interpreting it. I don’t see it in that real sense of sailing. It’s just floating, lifting oneself, perhaps even dreaming, or daring to dream. When I actually saw it at the exhibition, it was quite astounding, the space that was taken up, and the effect was so immediate. You could straight away know that this work has something to do with spaciousness.

Veils

Like Caliph Haroun Al-Rashid
I walk the streets of my city
I go all places

In the dark alleyways
quickening heart, fear.

With my lover
a different woman entirely.

On Jalan Haji Taib
I look up a dirty flight of stairs
I am there
legs spread
eyes on the ceiling
being fucked.

At the Islamic Arts Museum
they hold an exhibition about women in Islam
I am there
skin tingling
pride trickling from an ancestral stream.
I could wear a tudung easily
and look good in it.

My mother is doing Tai Chi
pushing and pulling me
in the dim glow of dawn.

I walk into a bar
and focus all my allure
in one spot behind my shoulder blades
The gazes blaze
and elongate me:
I taste power.

When I go home my father
cooks me dinner
and lunch
and supper
in lieu of conversation.
I am my father's daughter.
He doesn't know all my names
but for love
you will submit
to the one you were given

Alone
I stare at this body:
fire today
coal tomorrow.
Set me in my grave
or even better
scatter me over the great sea
still burning hot;
but older.
Please, much older.

Oh the facetiousness of parents! The gall!

Me: Morning work, night work. Shit la. Grumblemumble. [gulps down dinner at lightning fast speed yet again before rushing to meeting]

Parent: Yeah, wat to do, you want like dat wat. Why don't you get a life. [emphasis mine]

Me: *Speechless* 0_O

Oops!

UPDATE: Sigh. 1:40am. The essay I'm writing has all the conviction of a peanut. Nay, smaller. Pine nut, then.

----

Do you find yourself inadvertently using this phrase?

'It is a question that poses many challenging questions...'

Can we say: Trying My Darnest To Fill Up Word Allowance in an Intelligent-sounding but Ultimately Vacuous Way?

The sea in the sky

In the evening
I lie on a newly paved road
in my country

The sky
is an upside down bowl
with a calm sea hung in it

Heat of the sun
held in the road
warms my back

I'm roasting naked
on a man-made river
heading to the mountains
leading to the cities
all the way home

I hug the road
as I've never before done
As it hugs the earth beneath
beaten down by the sun
which hangs in the sea
in the sky above me

As I wait for it to fall -
the sea that will take me nowhere
because it is home,

I wonder
how did it get there?

If a curator goes shopping

... the label on me would read:

S______ C____
Age:2__ (still considered young in artist terms)
Identity: South East Asian, post-colonial
Status: Unknown-Emerging
Art: Site-specific new-media performative conceptual
Level of polity in work: Medium
Bankability: Unpredictable
Physical attractiveness: Not great, not bad either. Ho hum.

Overall biennial suitability score: about 6.5 (artist needs biennial more than biennial needs artist)

PS. Kudos to 28th Sao Paolo Biennial for having the courage to interrogate its own system, goals and function in a more than token way. Fantastique!

Things that are Beyond Pressure

Montien Booma: Perfume Painting, 1997, 100cm diameter

Evenings go beyond the day
Karma goes beyond what you are experiencing now
Friendship goes beyond betrayal
Imagination goes beyond censorship
Art goes beyond anything
Humour goes beyond anger
Kindness goes beyond harshness
Breath goes beyond everything
Water goes around everything
Dawn goes beyond night

(for G.)

Review of Bangun - Abandon Project

**This review appeared in Off The Edge magazine, MAR2008 Issue 39
***Images from Kakiseni.com



Since forming in early 2004, artist collective Lost Generation has produced projects that genuinely posit alternatives in Malaysian art discourse. ‘Alternatives’ not only as in opposition to a constructed (imagined) mainstream, but also in a generative sense that enlarges the debate for us all, especially regarding the role of independent art practice.

Their latest project Bangun is no exception. Held over three evenings in February, it was a site-specific event featuring 25 international and local artists. The site was a sprawling complex of three vacant buildings next to Lost Generation Space, a bungalow in Robson Heights that the collective rents and operates as an art space.

In an article on kakiseni.com, writer Zedeck Siew observes that ‘Lost Generation Space’s contribution was that they provided us with an excuse to explore this [abandoned] space’.¹ It is true that in a project like this, art cannot be seen independently from the context it has consciously inserted itself in. In Bangun, the former is indeed overshadowed by the latter.

Rather than critique the works individually, it may be more useful to use them as a lens through which to focus a discussion on abandoned buildings, and how they affect the way we understand and live in the city. To do this, I’d also like to refer to two texts. The first, Terrain Vague by architect and critic Ignasi de Sola-Morales Rubio²; the second, Ghosts in the City by Michel de Certeau.³

NOTICING
Bangun isn’t the first project to deal locally with the subject of abandoned buildings. From 2000 to 2003, Simryn Gill traveled the country photographing empty apartments, incomplete projects and mini ghost towns. The result was a collection of 116 images published as a book titled Standing Still. The images are as haunting and poignant as you imagine, but are also immensely, elusively beautiful. Similarly, many works in Bangun almost revel in the desolate aesthetics of the abandoned site. Ilham Fadhli Shaimy fills holes in the rotting floor with plaster from toy cement mixers. Dean Linguey frames little stalagmites formed by water dripping from a leaky ceiling with shards of found glass. Tan Wai Ding gathers broken electric fixtures and arranges them into a maze on the dusty floor. In the ultimate homage to ready-made beauty, Teh Leong Kwee simply places a makeshift frame over any picturesque surface – a mouldy bloom here, a stain on the wall there.



It is interesting how the sad dilapidation of this site been treated with nothing less than celebration and reverence. Note how LGS positions the event: ‘Bangun in Bahasa Malaysia means Wake up! Attention! In this project the artists are saying - Wake up and notice the abandonment of buildings (bangunan) in KL!” The word used here is ‘notice’, not ‘save’, or ‘halt’, leaving the motives of Bangun richly ambiguous and open to debate.

Why this attraction to the aesthetics of decay? Could it be that we do not in fact look at abandoned buildings in an entirely negative light? This is what Sola-Morales Rubio suggests in his essay Terrain Vague. He writes that these spaces are ‘places where the city is no longer’. They do not house anyone, they are not monitored, they do not produce anything – in short they are everything that the city isn’t, a ‘negative image’ of the city. Not negative as in ‘bad’, but more like the inverted mirror of our beloved and fragmented KL. This inversion produces a void or absence, which also represents possibility and potential – that of things happening differently than what we have been made to believe by those who chart the development of this country.

Walking through Bangun on a rainy evening, the whole place seemed porous – some corners letting in the rain and sun, holding both in rotting wood and plaster; other corners underground blanketed by an irredeemable silence and darkness. As Sola-Morales Rubio suggested, this porosity seemed to me ‘as much a critique as a possible alternative’ – to the steady proliferation of this or that jaya, to the highways and shopping malls and the whole sterile time-space grid of Malaysia Wasasan

REHABILITATION
While some artists let rotting chaos creep up and become part of their works, just as many seemed to devote energy towards caring for their space. Tobias Richardson’s hanging sculpture revolved silently in a little room the artist spent a substantial amount of time cleaning and repairing. Haley West did likewise to what appears to have been a former kitchen – wrapping up debris in plastic as ‘gifts’ for viewers to take away, as well as hanging golden tinsel off a creeper on the wall. Aliza Ayob planted bright pink plastic flowers on a piece of barren lawn.

These efforts may be seen as attempts at rehabilitation. But for what sake and for whom does this rehabilitation occur? Just as an abandoned building may not be seen in a completely negative way, so rehabilitation cannot be taken only to mean something good. To rehabilitate something is to not only love and care for that thing, it is to also change it irrevocably. Certeau writes that spaces like Bangun’s site do not only have a history, they ‘function as history’. ‘Ghosts in the city’, indeed. Like ghosts these spaces exist in the present, yet elude it. Like ghosts, what does it mean to take them and turn them once again into places for the living? How should we go about it?

Both Certeau and Sola-Morales Rubio agree that these ghosts should not be exorcised violently, but be placated with continuity. Why? Let us put it this way: why, if they cared so much about its disrepair, did the Bangun artists not invade the site like an army of ants and make it habitable again? Could it be from a barely grasped suspicion that to fully ‘rehabilitate’ (clean, clear, renovate, improve) the place would mean returning it once again to the homogeneity of the city – to the real estate market hungering for ‘heritage rich’ sites, to the empirical logic of progress and development?

Certeau: ‘Whatever framework in which this ‘salvational’ will is inscribed, it is true that restored buildings, mixed habitats belonging to several worlds, already deliver the city from its imprisonment in an imperialistic univocity. However enamel painted they may be, they maintain there the heterodoxies of the past. They safeguard an essential aspect of the city: its multiplicity.’

The value in Bangun lies not so much in a rallying cry to ‘save the buildings!’, but in calling attention to, and subsequently adding to this multiplicity of the city. It opens up many spaces – both physical and metaphoric – to questions, debate, thought, perhaps even action. This is how art acts.

Bangun – Abandon Project, 1 – 3 Feb. Produced by Lost Generation Space. For more information: www.lostgenspace.wordpress.com

1. Zedeck Siew, Houses on the Hill, 2 Feb 2008
2. Ignasi de Sola Morales Rubio, Terrain Vague, Anyplace, ed. C.Davidson, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass, 1995, pp118-123
3. Michel de Certeau, Ghosts in the City, The Practices of Everyday Life Vol2, Uni of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1998 pp133-143

Tibet II

Interesting how China, the world's growing superpower, seems equally as intent as the USA has been on murdering language.

Yu Heping, spokesperson for the Chinese office of public security says: “In Tibet and surrounding regions, armed groups are preparing themselves to battle for independence. These, at the instigation of the Dalai Lama, intend to use suicide bombers to carry out their attacks and destroy our nation’s social harmony”.

So now the Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, is instigating suicide bombing attacks. Note in the above short statement: 'armed', 'battle', 'instigation', 'attacks', 'destroy', 'suicide bombers'. Make no mistake, this is the slow churning of language against reality - like water against rock. Already the world will begin to see the rock as something that it isn't. Suddenly the Dalai Lama is a terrorist. But worse, far worse, is when the rock begins to believe itself to be something it isn't - that's when it changes shape. That's when a peaceful, pacifist people strap explosives to their bodies and walk into crowds.

John Berger: 'it takes about six half-truths to make a lie.' That's on our side of the wall, I guess. What happens on the other side of the wall (the side of Superpower) is inversion: 'it takes about six half-lies to make a truth'.

I have heard the Dalai Lama speak. Every word sounded like a clear bell in troubling times. I have no doubt he knows the way - he will wait, or act, or speak, with his customary wisdom and compassion. Superpowers believe in the politics of profit and power - they will attempt to divide, in order to rule. They set the limits of power and room to move. But in the politics of truth, there is no need for division between religious doctrine and political will. To resist Superpower, we must become water, not rock.

Today, when you're feeling stressed, remember the Dalai Lama's pragmatic advice: "Try to slow down, breathe in happiness, and breathe out suffering".

Does that sound like someone who instigates suicide bombers to you?

Maturin the label

Sigh, this blog is becoming the repository of all the things I really want to do. But sk'rang, mana ada masa? And headspace? Furgeddaboutit.

My label, my little baby that I'm nursing, is 'Maturin'. The few moments in the day not taken up with work or worrying about work is spent designing (mostly in my head) a line of limited edition bags. There will be one unisex shoulder/messenger bag, one women's shoulder bag, 2 clutches, one soft purse and one wrist-strap purse for when you go out but don't have any pockets (we've all been there, eh girls?). I have little sketches on bits of paper everywhere, and I find I tune out of less-than-scintillating conversation to continue my idle constructions, which have spilled out to an even more limited edition clothing collection - a short skirt, a t-shirt dress, a dress, a shirt and a t-shirt. The dresses have hoods on them. I like hoods because they protect and look pretty fly. The bags are all plain cream canvas on the outside, and lined with highest quality navy blue satin. Topstitching, pin-tucks, piping will feature heavily. Also handmade ceramic buttons, dice hanging from zippers, knots and braided rope for the handles. A 5-piece line of jewelery consisting of ceramic knots joined with braided silk rounds out Betta Sim for Maturin's first collection called 'Galapagos'! Secret evening launch party by the seaside - only dorks and geeks allowed, a certified un-cool event. Free-flowing rum. Best-dressed mermaid gets a Maturin dress for free! OMG. All 100 percent hand-made in Malaysia. No outsourcing to China! When when when? I know you want it too.

Second collection is 'Traveling Circus'.

Sigh. Someone get me a second life.