Shuffle End Start Betta's life is undergoing some reshuffling. This blog has been both pleasure and crutch but will be laid to rest for the moment. Some old habits need to be unlearned. Thank you for reading.

But don't be disheartened, dear reader. Look forward soon to Neo-Betta, with renewed attempts at personal and public war-fare.

xoxo and peace be upon you.  ¶ 3:16 PM 0 comments

  A twilight scene A little girl wearing a dark turquoise dress stood at the edge of the pool. In her hand she held a small bottle from which she slowly drew forth parade after parade of bubbles of different sizes. Each one seemed to be a separate dream, a transient, transparent miniscule world - and we both watched, endlessly enthralled, as they floated into the warm melting evening. Inevitably, these perfect spheres, formed of nothing but a thin membrane of water, held together by surface tension, drifted downwards to the surface of the pool. And at the touch of that surface, as if in some recognition of the source of their being, they dissolved back into nothing. We might have been the same person, that little girl and I, for all the cares of the world shut out, shrunken to fit individual bubbles, nothing but shapes, memory turned graphic, abstract, fascinating - fragile. Eventually the bottle ran out, the spell broke, and we left. Me to my work, the little girl to... what? Growing up?  ¶ 11:06 PM 0 comments

  Misguided white men who want Asian peacocks What a bore it is to be in the company of someone who has a stiff and brittle mind. A more dreary way of passing time cannot be conceived. Conversation with such a person is like dropping stones into the water - all hope for some reaction only to see it sink to the bottom, dead with scarcely a ripple to show for it! How much worse is it when they proclaim themselves to be of an open mind, and when they boast of their wide travels and high education? And they insult one's nation - listing one minor vexation after the other - oh the roads are not symetrical, oh the food is too spicy, oh the weather too hot and humid, oh the assistants (locals) who do not bow and scurry at the click of their fingers. They say (with not even the grace to be sheepish about it) that they are here only for the money and 'better opportunities'. Why don't you put on some khakis and sit on an elephant and build yourself a tree-hut, you stinky, one-balled, mysogynistic, racist, condescending, uncivilised, uneducated idiot. Colonialism ended in this country half a century ago. Growl.

Labels: men

  ¶ 8:37 PM 0 comments

  Housekeeping This house has fallen into some disarray and shall be put right. The comments (such as they are) are back. Some replies:

D.C. - I stand corrected.

Anonymous - Folding bikes are too wee for true whizzing

Lizard King - I would hardly call it an INTELLECTUAL dissection of House of The Dead!!! More like geeky obsession. Pray learn to tell the difference. When we go again? When? When?

G. - Thank you for the trail of poetry you leave me. I will follow...  ¶ 8:27 PM 1 comments

  3 Young Contemporaries 1997 - 2006 at Valentine Willie Fine Art What a bloody herculean effort it was to get this done. I'm getting soft. It is a review for next month's issue of the Off The Edge, posted here mostly for G.'s benefit. (Withering enough for you, dahlink? Or you want more?) A skill you maybe want to perfect - when editor makes a suprize call at night to enquire as to the progress of your article, tell a bald lie and say you are at home writing it as of that moment, in lieu of watching World Cup, WHEN IN ACTUAL FACT YOU ARE IN THE CAR ON YOUR WAY TO THE AUST - JAPAN MATCH AT PUB UP THE ROAD! By the way, the 'intellectually sexy' part makes me cringe a little. Wonder what I was thinking? One down, ten more tasks to go...

-

Being contemporary is a little like walking in the present with two pairs of eyes - one looking in front and the other behind. It is an engagement with what is happening right now, by examining how things have come to be, with a commitment to influencing what will happen in the future.

Intellectually sexy, isn’t it? If we linger a little on its Bahasa Malaysia counterpart, ‘sezaman’ - which even more clearly indicates the idea as ‘of the times’ - we can see that ‘The Contemporary’ is indeed pleasurable, not least because of this reason: relevance to now.

Therefore, the question is, how relevant is this ten-year retrospective of the annual 3 Young Contemporaries (3YC) series at Valentine Willie Fine Art (VWFA)? What purpose does the show serve in simultaneously reflecting and shaping ‘The Contemporary’? And in turn, what effect does contemporary art have on the fabric of our cultural society?

In order to justify this exhibition as a fairly significant cross-section of contemporary art practice, it is necessary to situate VWFA within the Malaysian art scene. The gallery plays an extremely significant role as an active nodal point for the intersection of critical, commercial, and popular audiences. Its links are diverse – private and corporate collector-based, institutional, regional and international. Likewise, works shown in the gallery range from pioneer Malaysian paintings of the 1930s to those of emerging artists from the South East Asian region. These are reasons why a place on VWFA’s exhibition calendar is very valuable to a young artist. Although, no doubt that place is as much coveted (and criticized) for more abstract associations with prestige, elitism and a high profile.

3YC has been held every year since 1997 (except in 1999 and 2002), which means this retrospective features over twenty artists. It would be unproductive to talk separately about each work, as most seem to be quotations of larger bodies of work. This makes the exhibition far from coherent, and broad themes can be picked out only with difficulty. Is this reflective of contemporary art practices that are patchy and un-even, or of an exhibition that has been hastily put together with little evidence of having been curated, or of both?

One of the themes that can be identified seems to be a self-reflective critique of the art scene itself. Probably nothing causes more frothing at the mouth than art about art, a textbook example of which would be Gan Siong King’s I was once told, “It’s not what you show, but where you show, that matters”. The work is a little piece of board that has been meticulously painted to resemble exactly the label that VWFA uses to identify works in their exhibitions. Work like this invariably polarizes opinion: subversive statement, or supreme masturbatory gesture? Just how useful are these questions regarding an artwork’s validity? While it cannot be denied that the work encourages discourse, it does little to widen it.

Susyilawati Sulaiman’s installation-sculpture is a more specifically directed criticism towards the power structures at play in larger institutions, namely, the national one. Extraordinary Beauty From the Neighbour consists of a wall dismantled from one side of the artist’s house (which is located next door to the National Art Gallery), then reassembled in VWFA. It is laden with obscure signifiers – a clock, bad portraits of ex-directors of the NAG, text, empty frames. It is an ambitious work that unfortunately cannot decide between subtlety and explication, and so, hovers irresolutely between the two. Whatever inherent messages get lost, only to leave a vague, weak and somewhat bitter comment on the dysfunction of the national art apparatus.

Courage must be applauded here, because to levy criticism towards the dominant institution in the miniscule circle of the Malaysian art scene requires some strength of will and vision. Courage is not enough, however, especially when that institution currently falls so dismally short in its role as national custodian of the visual arts. If we are to take it on, we need stronger, more resolved statements.

Art about art like Gan’s and Sulaiman’s are problematic in the way they utilize the very power structures they are trying to critique. They are important however, and indicate a healthy art scene that allows criticism of itself. That is why I dwell on these works at length. But when this criticism is used as a hip aesthetic code, as in Saiful Razman’s painting Segar, Sihat, Sesat, it begins to lose its meaning and becomes a ‘style’ that only signifies rebellion, but does not engage in it.

Another thread in the show is an exploration of Malaysian identity. Fariza Azlina Isahak’s Wanita Bertudung, Vincent Leong’s Tropical Paradise AG32 and Chai Chang Hwang’s Tak Halal all take visual symbols familiar in our society and manipulate them into different contexts. In terms of creating work that resonates, the success of this strategy depends on how well the familiar symbols are simultaneously a) exposed as being deeply embedded in our national consciousness; and b) absorbed into a new, undefined form that forces us to re-examine the way we look at things.

Isahak’s potentially incendiary subject - the Muslim head-scarfed woman – is made palatable by turning her into a sexy, yet cute cartoon figure. This taboo and ‘sensitive’ subject is exposed, no small feat in the current social clime. However, as she perches on a washing machine or leans seductively over the oven, Wanita Bertudung does not overtly challenge our gaze and continues to submit to it as a passive object. Leong’s kitschy appropriation of kitschy national iconography (kampung house, chicken, hibiscus, kite, etc) into wall-paper is one of the more resolved works in the show, mostly because it does not attempt to be anything other than what it is – surface treatment of shallow symbols. In fact, it is a celebration of such. And lastly, Chai’s spoof of a BN campaign poster seeks to expose the link between political agendas and cultural assumptions of what is allowed and not allowed in society. These include Chin Peng, babi, and kissing in public. Here again, though – a brave, sound, exceptionally relevant idea is let down by poor critical resolution and artistic production.

Some works in the exhibition show concerns with art history and medium. Lau Mun Leng’s spare, quiet works, for example, are an on-going conversation with minimalism. The Gleaner by Phuan Thai Meng is an admirable attempt to explore the post-modern treatment of images (ok, you jargon-junkies, the word is bricolage) in a local context. His light box appropriates the composition from Millet’s famous historical painting, but the imagery consists of a photo-collage of local signifiers, ala British pop art of the 1960s.

Beyond this point, as an exhibition, 3YC 1997 – 2006 begins to slide into little glimpses and sketches of each artist’s own artistic pre-occupations. Some of them are well-crafted statements, both in concept and execution. One of these is Sidney Tan and Crystal Woo’s charming short film Its Not About Everything, It’s About Anything. But the work is not given a context to anchor it in the myriad of different approaches, and so floats around, a little lost, or irrelevant, as it were.

Perhaps the purpose of the exhibition is predominately celebratory, explaining (but not justifying) a half-hearted showcase on the part of most of the artists. It would have made a better show if fewer but more resolved works were represented. Less inclusive, certainly, and yet surely the nature of being contemporary is not merely to be representative of it, but to also actively play a part in shaping itself, pushing itself. We spend much time trying to define the contemporary (and everything else); at some point we must decide to drive it forward.

In light of the range of artists and audiences that pass through the gallery, the 3YC series at VWFA has been a valuable stage upon which to negotiate issues of contemporary culture. This retrospective unfortunately does not do it justice.

Labels: art writing

  ¶ 10:18 PM 1 comments

  1.30am - under duress Deadlines are snapping at my heels! But:

This city's hard on the heart and head
At the end of the day you find both dead
But one thing doth redeem it all
And it is known, my friends, as football

Australia to Japan 3 - 1, I cannot f888king believe it. Why? How?

Labels: sweet misery

  ¶ 1:30 AM 0 comments

  Workaholics Anonymous Oh Buddha. 24 Hours a day. It is non-ending, and irritatingly, mostly non-paying (immediately, anyway). Depressing, yet strangely comforting thought : If I was in an office job I'd be a millionaire by now.

Bicycle and teeth and blog must all now shift to the back seat where they wait patiently like dawn on the horizon. I go a'diving. See you at the surface and I leave you with the best present I have received all year - a poem sent to me from G. I have never loved a poem so much or so deeply.


The City In Which I Loved You
by Li-Young Lee

And when, in the city in which I love you,
even my most excellent song goes unanswered,
andI mount the scabbed streets,
the long shouts of avenues,
and tunnel sunken night in search of you...

That I negotiate fog, bituminous
rain rining like teeth into the beggar's tin,
or two men jackaling a third in some alley
weirdly lit by a couch on fire, that I
drag my extinction in search of you...

Past the guarded schoolyards, the boarded-up churches,
swastikaed
synagogues, defended houses of worship, past
newspapered windows of tenements, along the violated,
the prosecuted citizenry, throughout this
storied, buttressed, scavenged, policed
city I call home, in which I am a guest...

a bruise, blue
in the muscle, you
impinge upon me.
As bone hugs the ache home, so
I'm vexed to love you, your body

the shape of returns, your hair a torso
of light, your heat
I must have, your opening
I'd eat, each moment
of that soft-finned fruit,
inverted fountain in which I don't see me.

My tongue remembers your wounded flavor.
The vein in my neck
adores you. A sword
stands up between my hips,
my hidden fleece send forth its scent of human oil.

The shadows under my arms,
I promise, are tender, the shadows
under my face. Do not calculate,
but come, smooth other, rough sister.
Yet, how will you know me

among the captives, my hair grown long,
my blood motley, my ways trespassed upon?
In the uproar, the confusion
of accents and inflections
how will you hear me when I open my mouth?

Look for me, one of the drab population
under fissured edifices, fractured
artifices. Make my various
names flock overhead,
I will follow you.
Hew me to your beauty.

Stack in me the unaccountable fire,
bring on me the iron leaf, but tenderly.
Folded one hundred times and
creased, I'll not crack.
Threshed to excellence, I'll achieve you.

but in the city
in which I love you,
no one comes, no one
meets me in the brick clefts;
in the wedged dark,

no finger touches me secretly, no mouth
tastes my flawless salt,
no one wakens the honey in the cells, finds the
humming
in the ribs, the rich business in the recesses;
hulls clogged, I continue laden, translated

by exhaustion and time's appetite, my sleep abandoned
in bus stations and storefront stoops,
my insomnia erected under a sky
cross-hatched by wires, branches,
and black flights of rain. Lewd body of wind

jams me in the passageways, doors slam
like guns going off, a gun goes off, a pie plate spins
past, whizzing its thin tremolo,
a plastic bag, fat with wind, barrels by and slaps
a chain-link fence, wraps it like clung skin.

In the excavated places,
I waited for you, and I did not cry out.
In the derelict rooms, my body needed you,
and there was such flight in my breast.
During the daily assaults, I called to you,

and my voice pursued you,
even backward
to that other city
in which I saw a woman
squat in the street

beside a body,
and fan with a handkerchief flies from its face.
That woman
was not me. And
the corpse

lying there, lying there
so still it seemed with great effort, as though
his whole being was concentrating on the hole
in his forehead, so still
I expected he'd sit up any minute and laugh out loud:

that man was not me;
his wound was his, his death not mine.
and the soldier
who fired the shot, then lit a cigarette:
he was not me.

And the ones I do not see
in cities all over the world,
the ones sitting, standing, lying down, those
in prisons playing checkers with their knocked-out
teeth:
they are not me. Some of them are

my age, even my height and weight;
none of them is me.
The woman who is slapped, the man who is kicked,
the ones who don't survive,
whose names I do not know;

they are not me forever,
the ones who no longer live
in the cities in which
you are not,
the cities in which I looked for you.

The rain stops, the moon
in her breaths appears overhead.
the only sound now is a far flapping.
Over the National Bank, the flag of some republic or
other
gallops like water on fire to tear itself away.

If I feel the night
move to disclosures or crescendos,
it's only because I'm famished
for meaning; the night
merely dissolves.

And your otherness is perfect as my death.
Your otherness exhausts me,
like looking suddenly up from here
to impossible stars fading.
Everything is punished by your absence.

Is prayer, then, the proper attitude
for the mind that longs to be freely blown,
but which gets snagged on the barb
called world, that
tooth-ache, the actual? What prayer

would I build? And to whom?
Where are you
in the cities in which I love you,
the cities daily risen to work and to money,
to the magnificent miles and the gold coasts?

Morning comes to this city vacant of you.
Pages and windows flare, and you are not there.
Someone sweeps his portion of sidewalk,
wakens the drunk, slumped like laundry,
and you are gone.

You are not in the wind
which someone notes in the margins of a book.
You are gone out of the small fires in abandoned lots
where human figures huddle,
each aspiring to its own ghost.

Between brick walls, in a space no wider than my face,
a leafless sapling stands in mud.
In its branches, a nest of raw mouths
gaping and cheeping, scrawny fires that must eat.
My hunger for you is no less than theirs.

At the gates of the city in which I love you,
the sea hauls the sun on its back,
strikes the land, which rebukes it.
what ardor in its sliding heft,
a flameless friction on the rocks.

Like the sea, I am recommended by my orphaning.
Noisy with telegrams not received,
quarrelsome with aliases,
intricate with misguided journeys,
by my expulsions have I come to love you.

Straight from my father's wrath,
and long from my mother's womb,
late in this century and on a Wednesday morning,
bearing the mark of one who's experienced
neither heaven nor hell,

my birthplace vanished, my citizenship earned,
in league with stones of the earth, I
enter, without retreat or help from history,
the days of no day, my earth
of no earth, I re-enter

the city in which I love you.
And I never believed that the multitude
of dreams and many words were vain.

Labels: sweet misery

  ¶ 7:51 PM 0 comments

  Pilihan Terkini Imagine : finite ammount of funds.

Now, answer:

Wisdom-teeth removal, or spanking new bicycle (with carrier basket, bottle holder and electric-blue frame)?

Enforced, traumatic stasis in dentist's chair, or joyous, free-wheeling movement whizzing down roads on wheels?

Ultimate encounter with recurring nightmare, or fulfillment of long-held dream?

Pain, or pleasure? (Not that I am not in pain as of this moment)

Oh what to do, what to do... ?  ¶ 1:12 AM 1 comments

  Jaws I am sorry for the somewhat depressing previous post. It has come to my attention that certain people think I am in 'a funk' - this observation derived solely from my blog posts. I do not mean to be funky. I want to be happy like a pink bunny who has corn. And I wish to make you happy, dear reader. But the truth is I am in some physical pain at the moment. My left jaw is rather swollen and it is quite painful to eat, speak, smoke or drink. I am subsisting on pieces of toast and all manner of cold liquids. Alchohol seems to numb everything so I partake liberally. I wait patiently for things to subside, but feel generally blah.

This reminds me of an essay Paul Auster once wrote about the relationship between eating and speaking. Both activities being centered in the mouth. Eating is about entry, whereas speaking is about escape, and the mouth forms a sort of portal that fascilitates them both. The body has more than one orifice (for some reason I disklike this word intensely) of course, but only the mouth is...

*at this point Betta felt too tired and miserable to carry on*

Labels: sweet misery

  ¶ 11:17 AM 0 comments

  The Unknown Man There was a man who was not known. That is to say, in the building in which he worked, he went to great lengths to ensure that others should not know him.

He worked in a building with 26 levels.

Allow me to describe this building for you, for it was quite interesting in the fact that it was utterly mundane. It was a non-descript squarish block that offered no concessions whatsoever to aesthetics, only functionality. It was not very big, yet not very small; not very old, yet not very new. It had windows, I suppose, but they were never opened. Little rectangular air-conditioning coolers clung like strange parasites to its grey stone exterior. Inside, the air-conditioning was often far too cold, and the air smelt damp and stale.

We will not go too much into the man's profession, only assume that it was dreary beyond words and that he had the slight greenish tinge of a person who is bathed in the hard glare of florescent lights for weeks at a time.

You may wonder why any body should choose both an environment and occupation quite so depressing, but the truth was that when he entered the building of his workplace, he felt that all the distinguishing features of himself - his name, his secret longings and fears - were stripped away. From being some one, he transformed into no one at all (except to himself), and this condition was very agreeable to him.

Now, it might seem as if I have painted a portrait of a rather unhappy person, perhaps suicidal, perhaps abnormal. But really, he was quite happy. He read books, went to the theater, was interested in wine, swimming, golf. True, his social life was somewhat sparse, but it did exist. The anonymity of not being known was refreshing to him. He felt he did his best thinking whilst he was at work.

Then one day, a woman came to work in the building. She was not particularly beautiful. She was however, quite animated and spoke a great deal of her interests, her likes and dislikes. She fancied beach holidays, she said. She claimed she was quite spiritual and was reading a book on Buddhism.

Also, she wore a most alluring scent. It was one of those abstract oriental varieties, that are usually better carried off by an older person.

She being new, she worked on the first level. He was somewhere in the middle.

The man who was not known avoided her.

She however, seemed intent on pursuing an aquaintance with him.

'I shall give her a lie', said the man who was not known to himself, 'and then I shall be safe'. For he did like her, and he thought her figure very attractive. He was not driven by moral compulsions to be truthful.

And so the man and woman became close. He invented a persona of himself for her. He made it charming and thoughtful, considerate and kind. He made her quite happy, except for the disturbing fact that whenever he entered into the building with the 26 levels (which was every day, except sunday), he ignored her completely. He did not do it any coarse manner, for he was never violent towards her, whither in word or action. He simply pretended that she did not exist.

The woman was eager to please, and so she did not complain. But inside she seethed. For every woman wishes to be acknowledged that she is superior in a man's thoughts at all times of the day. She may know this is physically impossible, but she will still wish to be told of it as a certain fact.

Then one day a little while later, as they were walking side by side to the building of their workplace, she muttered, quite out of the blue: 'I know you, you are the man who is not known'.

The man who was not known was caught in a most awkward position. The glass doors to the entrance of the building had just slid open and he had taken a step through. He turned and stared the woman in astonishment. He felt as though he had experienced his death by her naming of him, and she was the figure of death who stretches out its hand to those who have no more time left to live.

For her part the woman was quite shocked to see that her chance shot had hit home. And then of course she felt not a little self-satisfied, for it was the first time she had seen this particular expression on his face.

The woman opened her mouth to say something simultaneously witty and conciliatory, but the man had turned and was striding away from her into the building. He entered the elevator and closed the doors without waiting for her.

He sat at his desk and immediately began methodically to work. But although he was in the building, he was now known as the man who is not known. The name haunted him from morning until sunset.

At sunset, he climbed to the roof of the 26th level of the building of his workplace. The last rays of the sun soaked his skin in a warmth that was unbearable to him. He could not find it in himself to look for another building in which he would not be known. The city spoke his name, and he whispered it back to the orange disc that hung low above it in the sky. He then flung himself from the roof of the building into the air and his own death, which he had recognized in the woman the moment he saw her.

Labels: men

  ¶ 7:50 PM 2 comments

  House of the Dead IV I do not know how correct it is, but wielding a toy machine gun and shooting at zombies on the screen is one of the great joys in life. I highly recommend this stress-busting activity to all high-flying executives, stressed-out gallery directors and individuals hanging on to the proverbial corporate ladder. Imagine how sexy you will look in your suit and tie and other office attire, as you blast your way to final victory (or ignoble defeat).

I was happy to see some dear old friends come back to haunt no. IV. : Barrel-throwing rotting blubber-man, giant maggot wormies with jaw (think mini version of sand-worms in Dune), and Axe-wielding Stan (a classic zombie if there ever was one).

New dead things include : strange stripper-type policeman (complete with hat - quite sexy) and rotting skeleton (not very successul, in my opinion - don't think skeletons are able to be in a state of decay).

Missing : Chain-saw carrying maniac. I really adored this sweetie from HOD III. The way he rushes at you and invokes that last scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre completely freaks you out.

Still no sign of female zombies. It appears glass ceilings continue to exist in the genre. Someone should write a firmly-worded letter to SEGA and demand for a bit of equality. The sistas should be recognized. I think a kampung-style pontianak would be a wonderful Malaysia Boleh moment for us...

Bosses : more than disappointing. We had the cliched over-sized spider, possibly a mediocre rip-off from Shelob in Lord of the Rings. I suppose it DID spew tiny little spiders, which was quite creepy. In my opinion the best boss was actually at the end of Chapter One - a really horny looking phycho with a giant rotting tongue. You felt that if he caught you he would lick you and cover you in a rash of Herpes or something equally non-social. Last boss (i.e. Goldman - the man just won't quit!) I didn't like at all. Half his body was trapped in the ground, and he looked like an oversized fly. If you have ever played God of War, it reminds me of the head of the serpent at the end of Level One, except that the serpent was much better, and quicker.

In my opinion, HOD III is still the eternal classic. The new machine guns with shaking mechanism to reload are a bit silly. Although they are a little heavier, thus easier to control. One of my problems with HOD III was that the handguns were too light.

I would love to make a similar game called the House of Dead Ministers - now that would be truly terrifying. Mahatir would be a brilliant Final Boss. There would be five levels, each one named after a Rukun Negara, ending at last in a glorious shooting rampage through a decaying Parliament. Imagine the theraputic benefits. But I don't think Malaysia is ready for zombie-love.

ZOMBIES!!!!!!  ¶ 10:06 AM 1 comments