Cigondewah - Tisna Sanjaya (NUS Museum, 17 Feb 2011)

"Where a clean river once flowed, it is now filled with waste. Clear water has now been replaced with a rainbow of colours reminiscent of the moi indie paintings - red, yellow, green, brown, and sometimes even black, depending on the toxic discharge from the factories upstream." (Artist's statement)



Indonesian artist Tisna Sanjaya purchased a plot of land in his hometown Cigondewah which had been adversely affected by rapid industrialisation and turned into a plastic waste dump, and built the Cigondewah Cultural Centre over it. The work of the centre is to rejuvenate the area and community, providing spaces for pigeon lovers to have races, football fields, and to engage and solve the environmental problems in Cigondewah. By contexualising social action as art, this erosion between "art" and "life" is posited as a metaphor for the need for the erosion of the boundaries between disclipines, ownership of works (art market), and local bureaucracies/social networks - in order to get things done.



Official opening speeches in Singapore are often crammed with pep rally platitudes, reiteration of mission statements, and upper management truisms. The very mention of the words "global city for the arts" is enough to induce teeth gnashing in those sensitive to bureaucratic speak.

But this time I was amused to hear the provost say that NUS takes an interest in art because (and i quote verbatim) "art is that distinguishing factor that will make Singapore a vibrant place to live, work and play".

Standing in front of Tisna Sanjaya's Cigondewah project, one wonders whether he actively realises that he's talking about the "qualities" which make Singapore more "livable" (what does Singapore have to do with it? why is he bringing up Singapore now?) in front of a show conceptualizing social changes / collective action to make Cigondewah more "livable" as art itself.



"seni sebagai jalan hidup" (art as a way of life)



ART = KAPITAL (Joseph Beuys)

i am often glad that I studied literature instead of fine art because i feel like writing is the most basic way to articulate an abstract idea. and art is just one scaffold that represents that abstract concept. yesterday I read Ban Kah Choon's essay "Narrating Imagination" - about the strength of metaphors/similes especially in the context of places with insufficient physical space (such as in Singapore). Where space (or lack thereof) needs to be de-emphasised, it is useful to speak of psychological spaces and to use abstract thought to divert attention away from the development of space. One doesn't even have to look to art for inspiration, for this is a common tactic used in Singapore politics!

From a post I made in 2007:

PM Lee, on the Gardens by the Bay: It is “far more impressive and convincing than any sales pitch by a minister, or a Powerpoint presentation by EDB. A potential investor who arrives in Singapore sees the greenery on the way from the airport to the city centre. He notices not just neatly manicured areas, but also patches of thick vegetation left undisturbed to be bird sanctuaries. He senses the planning, organisation and execution that has made this happen, the social discipline and the public standards that extend to all aspects of life in Singapore”.

National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan: "We have good infrastructure. You know that we've got a very business friendly environment; we have a favourable tax regime. But at the end of the day, the decision to locate and where to do business is also dependent on individual, how people live, how their family lives, how do they feel here. Do they feel safe here; do they have a good quality of life here? This is where the garden and greenery play a part. They are part and parcel of the whole total lifestyle package”.



I think we're pretty advanced with inventing metaphors here. After all, we're an entire nation built on imaginary constructs of what we want to be. Now, to follow in that tradition...

House & Memory / Apartment Project - ruru & friends (Galeri Nasional Indonesia, Jakarta, 28 Dec 2010)

Last December, I made a short trip to Jakarta which incidentally coincided with the opening of the ruangrupa "Decompression 10th Anniversary" exhibition at Galeri Nasional Indonesia. A whole month of exhibitions, talks, shows, and performances spread out over various locations in jakarta (and scattered over numerous buildings within the Galeri Nasional compound), this exhibition was huge! so vast! it was like art/information overload for the visitor who might not be so well acquainted with Jakarta or the art scene in Indonesia.

However one thing I wanted to write down was that there were two things which were quite interesting to me at that show - Arjan van Helmond's House and Memory, and ruangrupa's "Apartment Project". During that trip to Jakarta, we also happened to be coincidentally staying at a friend of a friend's place at Taman Rasuna, one of the residences discussed in the works.



The view from the balcony of Taman Rasuna (Tower 9)

A staggeringly massive condominium development by Bakrie Group consisting of 15 highrise towers, landscaped gardens, multiple swimming pools and other luxury facilities, Taman Rasuna towers over the adjacent low-rise area which is seperated from "Bakrieland" by a high wall and barbed wires. the 4th floor features an "open sky podium" which is said to be one of the few of its kind in Indonesia (but this type of condo development will probably look quite familiar to Singaporeans).



A narrow hole in the wall is the gateway between the two worlds. On one side, in the shadow of the 214m tall Bakrie Tower and in walking distance from international embassies and Jakarta's CBD, you'll find 45000rp coffees at Starbucks, the organic "farmer's market", and the other predictably glossy accoutrements of commercialism and modernity. But not more than a 10 minutes walk away, behind the fence, it is the typical Jakarta urban sprawl, teeming with muezzins wailing, ramshackle houses scattered in all directions, speeding bajajs, rubbish dumps, and parts of the cemetery upon which Towers 1-4 of Taman Rasuna is said to have been also built over.



Cemetery



Mountain of Rubbish

Arjan van Helmond's House and Memory is a collection of sketches in which residents were asked to draw where they used to live based entirely on memory, which naturally allowed people some freedom of imagination where their self-drawn maps and floorplans were concerned. Some of the sketches were by people who previously lived in the areas which had been bought over and redeveloped to build Taman Rasuna, some others were by people who were currently living in Taman Rasuna, and some others were residents in other types of housing.



In the accompanying book for the Apartment Project, they write that in Indonesia, land is seen as the source of life and power; houses occupy space and land and are also representations of power. the most obvious spatial difference between the rich/modernised areas and the less developed areas is that apartment housing is vertical whereas the dense urban sprawl of jakarta develops horizontally. when we draw maps we draw them on a flat plane, but highrise buildings do not have the same relation to the ground as the simple single-storey houses found in jakarta. so even when we try to draw our maps, the normal orientation and notion of space is altered.

The question that would be interesting for me is whether/how this spatial difference between horizontal and vertical housing affects the perceptions of social relations.

For a land-scarce country like Singapore, landed property retains its position as the ultimate symbol of power because of its scarcity and cost as compared to vertical housing such as the public HDB flats. yet in Jakarta where land is much more plentiful, it is the vertical housing developments such the Taman Rasuna which are the symbols of economic power as opposed to the rabble of small landed houses on the other side of the fence.

As a casual and transient observer, I wonder if the highrise flats have the effect of instilling the notion of social motility (or perhaps even aspirations of upward social mobility). i almost want to relate this back to the indonesian concept of "nongkrong" - which is to hang out to do absolutely nothing except hang out and sit around. one will frequently observe that labour is so cheap in indonesia that even say the bakso stall in a fancy mall can afford to hire ridiculous numbers of staff to man a simple stall - resulting in what looks to me like a massive nongkrong of bored 20-something year olds sitting behind the counter. (in this case they are supposed to be working, so it is not quite nongkrong, but it certainly seems to echo with this sense of life having come to a standstill. from my perspective as an insufferable workaholic (and perhaps also partly from my upbringing in Singapore), i find that the concept of staying still in one place (and not doing anything in particular) smacks of boredom, but perhaps boredom is not the case for people there, coming from completely different perspective; from a land where houses simply take up space on land and aren't always piled up in stacks, with every stack of houses fighting to be taller than the next.



Jakarta City Map

Ang Song Ming + The Observatory (The Substation Theatre, 29 Jan 2011)

"No Man’s Band is an ongoing project by Song-Ming Ang, consisting of audio recordings of school band rehearsals before they formally begin. In some recordings, the individual warm-ups coalesce into collective improvisations. In others, cacophony ensues. To date, fifteen school bands have been recorded. For this presentation of No Man’s Band, Song-Ming Ang will collaborate with members of The Observatory – Evan Tan (turntable, lapsteel guitar, mic), Dharma (guitar) and Victor Low (bass, guitar, contact mics) – in which the trio will respond spontaneously to Ang’s samples in a free improvisation concert."

There was a portion I quite enjoyed in near the middle section which sounded like a UFO rising up from a golden, cloudy sky at sunset, on top of which an antennae then extended, noisily with the clattering of a tin can, and a small monkey or child scurries up to the topmost point of the antennae, and then screws on a light bulb at the very top of the floating structure in the clouds. Well that was just my interpretation.

Ang Song Ming + Evan Tan, Dharma, and Victor Low of The Observatory
Live full set (40 minutes)

zai tang + zai kuning + amino acid orchestra (The Substation Gallery, 27 Jan 2011)

Amino Acid Orchestra, Zai Kuning, and Zai Tang play an improvised set together in the Substation Gallery.

This one is a gem:

Amino Acid Orchestra, Zai Kuning, and Zai Tang Live Improvsation - Excerpt 3:


Other excerpts from the set:

Amino Acid Orchestra, Zai Kuning, and Zai Tang Live Improvisation - Excerpt 1:


Amino Acid Orchestra, Zai Kuning, and Zai Tang Live Improvisation - Excerpt 2:


Amino Acid Orchestra, Zai Kuning, and Zai Tang Live Improvisation - Excerpt 4:

Andy Yang + The Observatory (Earl Lu Gallery, Lasalle, 24 Jan 2011)

Live improvisation by The Observatory to Andy Yang's ritualistic and sometimes rhythmical painting on a large canvas with various materials and mediums.

From Andy Yang's site: "Borrowing from the Buddhist mandala ritual, Singapore art-rock band The Observatory presents Anitya, a performance series exploring the relationship between music and a non-musical art form.

In the first instalment, The Observatory and artist Andy Yang enact this ritual with sound and painting. From start to end, the musicians and the artist search for inter-connectedness and synchronicity. There is no script, no rehearsal, and no grand design. Everything is created instantaneously and destroyed as soon as the point of completion is reached."

Under the Velvet Sky + Zai Kuning (The Substation Gallery, 23 Jan 2011)

Under the Velvet Sky plays with some guest vocals from Zai Kuning, and projections by Wu Jun Han. Held in the middle of an exhibition of random works from Zai Kuning (which adorn the walls of the gallery), this is the first time a gig is held in the Substation Gallery itself, in the absence of the Blackhole...

Under the Velvet Sky & Zai Kuning Live Excerpt:

The Pearly Gates (Post Museum, 15 Jan 2011)

A collaboration between Marc Gabriel Loh, Clare Marie Ryan, Jon Stahn and Jes Brinch.

"THE PEARLY GATES is a collaboration between 2 Singaporean and 2 Danish artists. It is an installation incorporating murals, landscape paintings, sculptures, objects, lights and music, integrated into a total experience. The theme of sexual liberation has fueled a series of humorous artwork that equally depicts and transcends the conventional stereotypes of both art and sexuality."

The merlion dick is a personal favourite.

There is also a story involving us standing outside Post with cans of GODFATHER when a strange, possibly slightly drunken arabic man from yemen carrying a bottle of gin walks past and insists that me and Ivonne eat this box of mexican chili with him immediately. We determine that the food is not drugged after inviting more people to eat (and no one falls over dead). I ask him, "would you like to come in to see the art?", but to our great confusion he seemingly mishears it as "would you like to smoke a joint", because he suddenly bursts into a diatribe as such: "YOUNG GIRL YOU MUST NOT SMOKE WEED IN SINGAPORE!" "No no I did not say anything about drugs, I said, would you like to see the art inside?" "NO! DRUGS ARE BAD FOR YOU! STAY AWAY FROM DRUGS!" "Sure, but I said, art, not drugs..."

(WHAT?)

“Is that a temple?” (Evil Empire, 17 Dec 2010)

itat-exhibition.tumblr.com: "The Society of Independent Artists was an association of American artists founded in 1916 and based in New York. Based on the French Société des Artistes Indépendants, the goal of the society was to hold annual exhibitions by avant-garde artists. Exhibitions were to be open to anyone who wanted to display their work, and shows were without juries or prizes… The first show in 1916 displayed 2,000 pieces from artists around the world."
– Wikipedia

As part of an exhibition to be held at the end of the year, part of “Is that a temple?” is a re-enactment of the Society of Independent Artists exhibitions of the 1910s, as a platform for artists of any style, any caliber, to present their work in an exhibition format for no monetary cost. As mode of validation, this portion of the exhibition revolves around artists contributing their own work in the construction of a mode of presentation that can be replicated and redesigned for years to come in Singapore."



Salon style arrangement of works



Closeup of Siah's map of Geophysiological Locations



Is that a Temple? An investigation.

2902 Retrospective (2902 Gallery, 17 Dec 2010)

selection of images which i particularly enjoyed from 2902



lim thian leong - liminality

a series of night images of empty billboards, "exploring the dislocation of the structure beyond intended utilitarian meaning and function". in my perspective though, perhaps because singapore has no billboards, my only visual reference of such billboards would be the ones i've seen in KL and Indonesia. therefore an image of billboards exhibited in singapore is immediately foreign to me.



ang song nian - and now, like sleeping flowers

a study on "human intervention in nature".



samantha tio - concrete euphoria

urban kaleidoscope taken entirely in camera on large format. easily mistaken for digital compositing, somehow the knowledge that the manual process in which this image has been made makes the image more special.

Supersonic Sound Fest 2010 (Home Club, 10 Dec 2010)

Supersonic Sound Fest! I really liked Under the Velvet Sky and MellonYellow (Jakarta) in particular, who played first. Stellarium was also quite good but the sound seemed not so clear during their set (resulting in muddy bootlegs - is this why they call them bootlegs? because the sound is sometimes muddy?). and as it frequently turns out, just hanging around outside Home Club by the river is always a blast - colliding with strangers and meeting old friends, trading ridiculous stories, peoplewatching, sipping a cool cider and hatching new schemes deep into the night... the rain came and the crowds ran for cover. we walked down the river in the rain, and the lights were shimmering bright red from the bridge on the bay.

The Observatory Live at Enter Twilight (Esplanade Outdoor Theatre, 3 Dec 2010)

The Observatory played three sets of their songs from over the years at the waterfront on 3 Dec 2010. Sound seemed a little muddy at the venue, with volumes peaking during the harsher noisier songs, but the softer, acoustic numbers were a delight to listen to.


The Observatory - Another Passerby (Live, Esplanade Outdoor Theatre, 3 Dec 2010)


The Observatory - Time of Rebirth (Live, Esplanade Outdoor Theatre, 3 Dec 2010)


The Observatory - This Sad Song (Live, Esplanade Outdoor Theatre, 3 Dec 2010)


The Observatory - Live Excerpt (Live, Esplanade Outdoor Theatre, 3 Dec 2010)

Leslie Low + Yuen Chee Wai + John Hegre + Lasse Marhaug - Norwegian Seamen's Mission, 27 Nov 2010

We climbed to the top of Pasir Panjang Hill, to a homely chapel building, overlooking the port and the sea, to listen to improvised music by John Hegre (Norway), Lasse Marhaug (Norway), Leslie Low, Yuen Chee Wai, as part of a series of gigs played in Norwegian Seamen's Missions all around the world. Strong coffee (no sugars), waffles, and jam. All four had begun the set together with an epic half hour jam, followed by two duets. I particularly enjoyed Leslie Low and Lasse Marhaug's duet - Leslie's melancholic guitar song underscored by crackling glitchsounds set off by Lasse Marhaug's giant hands crushing circuit boards together. Yuen Chee Wai and John Hegre's set was somehow not as cohesive, the elements seeming more disparate, and certain sort of sine waves, beeps and clicks seeming a bit out of place when played in a warm, organic church.


Improvised set by Leslie Low + Yuen Chee Wai + John Hegre + Lasse Marhaug
(Live, Norwegian Seamen's Mission, 27 Nov 2010)


Improvised set by Leslie Low + Lasse Marhaug (Live, Norwegian Seamen's Mission, 27 Nov 2010)


Improvised set by Yuen Chee Wai + John Hegre (Live, Norwegian Seamen's Mission, 27 Nov 2010)

Digi Daub (Post Museum, 21 Nov 2010)

two images which I particularly liked at the small show at Post Museum - creating organic shapes out of purely digital medium. the show consisted of digital painting works from students from School of Art Design and Media (Nanyang Technological University).

Trans-Cool Tokyo @ 8Q Singapore Art Museum

Trans-Cool Tokyo is a show which needs little introduction, with big and easily recognisable names such as Ryoji Ikeda, Yayoi Kusama, Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, and Kohei Nawa. Over 40 works have been brought over from the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, many of which are practically icons of contemporary Japanese art and "superflat".

(Even the general Singaporean public might be aware of Yayoi Kusama since the "Ascension of Polkadots on the Trees" in 2006 (at the 2006 Singapore Biennale) when all the trees along the popular shopping area near Orchard and Scotts Road were covered in polka dots, prompting fervid outcries of "WHAT? POLKA DOTTED ROAD DECORATIONS ARE ART? HOW ABOUT I POLKA DOT YOU TOO?")



Standing innocently in the front of the exhibition, this well-taxidermied and baubled deer is the star of the exhibition. Yes, I know all of you came here just to see Kohei Nawa's famed Pixcell Deer (#17). The concept is brilliant (buying taxidermied animals on ebay), and best of all it is shiny and mesmerizing. Is that fur I see, supermagnified by the crystal balls? Why yes, I do like shiny things, and I do buy very many shiny things on the internet as well.



Ryoji Ikeda's Data Matrix [no 1-10] is a great epilepsy-inducing experience which I think could have been improved with either louder speakers or the addition of MIRRORS! Eitherways it is a physically enjoyable experience!





Out of all the works at the show, I really liked Michihiro Shimabuku's "Tour of Europe with One Eyebrow" and "Then, I decided to give a tour of Tokyo to the octopus from Akashi"; it is easy to see why its my favourite amongst all the works, because his work is focused on social awareness and in the process of making his works he also makes a documentation of local communities. I approve!

The Spectacular Spectacular @ The Substation

Zul Othman (ZERO)'s The Spectacular Spectacular has been showing at the Substation - replete with glittering outdoor signboards, bright lights, a couple of huge designer dolls sitting in the centre of the gallery, a rack of t-shirts with graphic prints, and a cash register. ZERO's work are a statement on how graffiti art has been co-opted into advertising and branding strategy today, himself being one of those street artists who have been approached to make works for large brands. His big and lovely caricature dolls were apparently hand-sewn, but like all the other things in the exhibition, they are well-constructed enough to exude the illusion that they might have been mass-produced. With a topic like this, it is hard to say that this work is anything groundbreaking or new; this is also a popular concept with japanese pop artists such as Takashi Murakami (who is incidentally currently showing at TransCool Tokyo at 8Q/Singapore Art Museum).

However, I recalled seeing that one of ZERO's works was titled "Heineken Green Room", in reference to the largely successful and popular HGR nights held here in Singapore and KL. I suppose they don't call it "Heineken Green Room" in any other parts of the world, but I could be wrong. Perhaps some might even think of it as a "local reference" but of course it is all an illusion. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against HGR; in fact I myself have actually been going to nearly all the Heineken Green Room nights in Singapore, and they have been bringing some really brilliant overseas acts down including Kode9 and Gaslamp Killer. But to some extent that is still globalisation for you. Even local Singaporean music and music tastes are heavily influenced by sounds from outside rather than within. Is there even any "Singaporean sound" left?

A cartoon creature with a branded face that resembles a Heineken logo is still something that has had the local culture first sucked out of it and then replaced by a faceless approximation of "globalised youth/popular culture", indistinguishable from one city to the next. Beware the ultimate postmodernist horror, of one day stepping into a town where everyone says that they are all selling the same type of "vintage" goods. It's all the rage now.

See also:
Substation Associate Artist Showcase: The Spectacular Spectacular by ZERO
A Spectacular Zero - Interview with Zul by Chris Ong

Trappole (Art Trove, 15 Nov 2010)

Trappole was a exhibition curated by Daniela Beltrani, featuring works by Ezzam Rahman, Kenneth Feinstein, Matthew Bax, Rajinder Singh, and Zaki Razak. Although I sadly did not take any pictures at the exhibition, it is still worth a note here, being one of the more unusual exhibitions I've been to here.

The gallery Art Trove, while situated in what seems like a naturally popular area for commercial galleries, had not yet formally opened for business yet, so one had to locate this venue first. And it was not quite the conventional exhibition either, as finding the works within the space was yet another feat in itself. Audiences arrived with an expectation of seeing works but instead were greeted by a scene which was "still under construction"; Rajinder's large broken concrete walls in the centre of the space, Ken Feinstein's ants crawling over the walls, Ezzam's video next to a kettle, Matthew Bax's Construction signs, and not forgetting Zaki Razak's subliminal smells of Laksa in the room (which was sometimes interpreted as various other food smells, such as mushroom?). In any case, a simple but elegantly conceptualised exhibition by Daniela, and I look forward to more daring things to come!

Rooted In the Ephemeral Speak (R.I.T.E.S) (8th) - Post Museum, 5 Nov 2010

The 8th installment of Rooted In the Ephemeral Speak (R.I.T.E.S) featured Jittima Pholsawek (TH), Eric Scott Nelson (US/KP), Alice De Visscher (BE), Cheng Guang Feng (CN), Lynn Lu (SG) and Him Lo (HK). I was a bit late so I missed the first two performances by Jittima and Eric Scott Nelson, but I arrived just in time to see a massive spectacle forming on the street.





Hong Kong performance artist Him Lo had meticulously covered himself in black paint - so strikingly dark that one could have been forgiven for having mistaken him for being of african descent if one had not looked at his facial features. Rowell Road is always especially busy on Sunday night, and a huge crowd of indian workers soon thronged around Him Lo on the side of Rowell Road as he crawled across the street to fetch boxes and then dragged them together to make a cardboard house which he then sat inside. Even the police came over to have a check on the huge crowd situation at the street, but they did not infer and just stopped to watch the performance for a while too. An apt location for such a piece, since Little India is particularly full of overcrowded flatshares for transient workers.





Belgium performance artist Alice De Visscher used sponges and her body to build a wall in the corridor of the building, and then to explode it as well. Interesting use of materials.



Cheng Guang Feng collected items from audience members in a big bucket, and then dropped them one by one on to a microphone to make a sound. From small ezlink cards, to books to buzzing radios, he played with them to get sounds out of them, and eventually dropped the items back in the bucket as well. Guang Feng ended off by saying: "The sound in here comes from everyone." I liked the concept of this, although it was not necessarily very melodious. Seems like a natural extension of his other work, for example the piece in which he mic-ed up his chest and got people to hit him to make a sound (circa 2006?)



Finally there was Lynn Lu's piece, which featured a man sitting in the middle of a candle lit table, reading a very thick encyclopedic book. Lynn came in and periodically extinguished a single flame, until all the candles were out and reading became ostensibly impossible for the man.