No Contact; Disappearance

Before this blog dies for next two years from LZ's neglect, I will post my monthly post here.

I don't quite believe I'm going to embark on it myself, or that I would do something like that, or I would be ready to do something like that so soon, but I think I'm going to do it.

I read about Tehching Hsieh and Bas Jan Ader after I started teaching, so that must have been after June 2005 or later. I was never really a fan of performance art.

I don't consider what I am about to do as performance art or art at all, or 'work', or 'gesture', but simply an experiment or simply 'life'.

STATEMENT

I am going to try something new and different in life.

1. Before 31st Jan 2010, I will get a new mobile line and it will only be made known to colleagues and relatives, hence rendering it impossible for all my friends to contact me.

2. For two years starting 31st Jan 2010, I will not be on Facebook, MSN, Livejournal, and Yahoo Mail (which means if I receive an email for 100 copies of my art book I will actually miss it)

3. For two years starting 31st Jan 2010, I will not attend any gatherings (weddings, reunions, visits etc.) or meet up with any of my friends or contact them. Any meeting will be entirely according to chance or circumstance (like meeting army friends during reservist or meeting art friends at some MOE art workshop).

4. Besides the above, I will try to avoid all my usual hangouts where possible for two years, starting from 31st Jan 2010.

5. This will start on 30th Jan 2010 23:59:59 and end on 31st Jan 2012 00:00:01.

- sin

***

Besides influences from Bas Jan Ader and Tehching Hsieh (art-life synthesis, privacy, relationship/solitude), one must also remember that one of my favourite novels of all time is Soseki's "Mon", in which a man leaves home for ten days to seek satori in a Zen temple.

Believe it or not, the idea started in my university days when I was listening to an old song, Angel Hou's "Two Winters", where the lyrics go "life is quiet like disappearance, but no one would notice and it's the same, after you had left, I carried on living like this, oh this solitude, after two winters..." (video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnquqaGSNCQ)

And I thought it's a very Romantic idea to "disappear" quietly for two years...

And of course, my friend actually did something like that. (She actually "disappeared" for about three years.)

Yes, the idea is not new. No, I'm not trying to "copy" my friend...(even if I am, our experiences will be different, isn't it?)

Suddenly I realise how it all fits together in my life. People coming and going. People getting married. Friends joining or leaving the groups. My art at a standstill. Career lowpoint (at least on paper). Buddhist philosophy. And there is always Rilke: "What you need is only this: vast inner solitude."

I had also spoken about something like that to my L* S*lle friends; I'm not sure if they remember.

So it is not something so sudden after all; subconsciously I have been thinking about it.

For those who know me long and well enough, I hope you would understand me and give me your fullest support in this endeavour.

Do not expect too much; in fact, do not expect anything. I might just "keep myself alive" like Tehching Hsieh -- no sketches, no drawings, no photos, no writings...


Suggested readings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehching_Hsieh

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bas_Jan_Ader

The manipulation of images and other things

My previous series of work is entitled "Next Door", but I shan't talk about it here. Today's series is a continuation from the previous work.

I was thinking about the manipulation of images using a manual process (cutting, tearing, pasting, writing, drawing etc.) without the use of Photoshop. A physical, manual process as opposed to a clicking process. Perhaps it is about my instinct to draw, and to physically craft and make things.

In the first series of work, I cut out lines and shapes from the door and grille to explore aesthetics. In some ways, it is a violent act that I cannot (and would not like to) perform on the actual site.

After that, I explored the act of vandalism. I can vandalise on the same door infinite number of times so long as I can print the same image of the door. The interesting part is I actually 'copied' real graffiti that I had photgraphed from the streets...random sprays, loan shark scrawls...

Then I printed and cut out some suggestive images (girlie posters or massage advertisements) and tore them, and stuck them on the images of doors to make them look like street posters, to suggest the kind of activities that take place behind the doors of these back lanes.

The truth is I am still playing within the frame of the door. I am thinking of altering the environment next, instead of just the door.

There are infinite possibilities...

Made in Singapore

1. Werk magazine and Guerillazine

Theseus Chan and team.

2. Kelly Poon

Superstar runner-up. Three albums to date.

3. Volta (fashion)

Cutting doesn't fit me. Design is not bad.

4. Hooked Clothings

Designed by Singaporeans, made in China. But I loved the shirt I got from them.

5. The Resident Tourist by Troy Chin

Comics. Good stuff. As close to "A Drifting Life" as we can get.

6. Invisible City

By Tan Pin Pin. Her two other documentaries are good as well, but this is her best.

7. Singapore Dreaming

By Colin Goh.

8. Films by Eric Khoo

'Mee Pok Man', 'Be with Me'. Generally okay.

9. Dharni

Beatboxer

***

Wolfnotes exhibition is not bad.

Only stretch your foot to the length of your blanket.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20091013/ttc-digital-exclusion-hitting-savings-e1d36ba.html

what i tried to do, one could probably called it stalled. it was about collecting written off computing hardware and (refurbishing it if needed) giving it away. what i figured was that most people do not need much more than a p3-800 to do 80-90% of what they do on computers. kids needing a pc to learn about computers and the internet could use such a machine. better yet, such a machine precludes them from playing quite a few pc games, which their teachers and parents wouldn't want them to spend time on anyway. but such machines , along with internet access, would enable these kids to get google, wikipedia, various forums and blogs, facebook, webmail, youtube, maps and street directories..etcetc. Access to these services would level the schema playing alot among kids, be they well to do or not.

anyway, what happened was that there was a government run project to give away computers to the poorest families. my problem with it was that i didn't think they needed to buy anything to give away and by having a higher cost than necessary, they could have set the means bar too low, excluding too many families from getting that free pc. i thought, many organisations and even private individuals are throwing away working or salvageable computers away all the time - they just needed to be re-directed from the landfill to those who didn't mind slower computers.

anyway, in any case, what i was trying to do is practically stalled. a student help group has the understanding that they can approach me if they needed help of the i.t. kind, but i think they may have forgotten about it.

anyway, the linked article lends some research to back up what i thought was the problem.

*
*
*

on another note, at the other end of the spectrum..theres this...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/technology/12data.html?_r=1

the article talks of the need to teach students how to think on a larger scale..not just think. but keeps using 'data' and 'information' as if the two were synonymous. ha.

and..

this is a tit,


























while these are a pair of boobies.

satirizing yourself

from http://serendipity.ruwenzori.net/index.php/2009/10/08/french-presidency-makes-400-unauthorized-copies-of-dvd

The French satirical investigative journalism weekly “Le Canard Enchaîné“ reveals that our holier-than-thou presidency is in fact a pirate’s lair. In a stunning display of hypocrisy, the presidential audiovisual services produced 400 unauthorized copies of the 52 minutes documentary “A visage découvert : Nicolas Sarkozy“.

The editor, Galaxie Press had only shipped 50 copies, but the propaganda plan required more so the Elysee went to work, going as far as modifying the cover and replacing the Galaxie Presse name and logos with “Service audiovisuel de la présidence de la République”.

Isn’t is deliciously ironic that the same executive power is the main force behind the latest disgusting bungled piece of French legislation regulating and controlling the usage of the Internet in order to enforce the compliance to the copyright law ?

It is even more appalling that we are dealing with repeat offenders : last spring, while the Hadopi law was discussed, U.S. music duo MGMT received €30,000 as a settlement for a copyright infringement by French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party who used one of its songs at a political rally without permission. Those who led the charge against Internet users are not the most respectful of copyright.

Hadopi is also known as the “three strikes” law because it after a certain number of warnings a copyright infringer’s Internet access would be cut off. Hadopi has just been adopted. Nicolas – one more of those antics and your Internet access is toast !

The real point is not 'one more of those antics', its 'one more time it is alleged that you have commited these antics'. Hadopi in its original format is supposed to automatically suspend your internet access if you've had content owners complain about you 3 times - no judicial review or oversight - guilt upon accusation.

Jan Dibbets

Jan Dibbets is a Conceptual artist that I know for two series of works, namely the perspective corrections and the time-based photographs. He probably has a series dealing with light and shadow as well, which is usually dealt with using photography, but occasionally not.

Perspective corrections:
http://www.synesthesie.nl/images/dib1.gif
http://www.flickr.com/photos/amaripe/2844039340/

Time based photography:
http://wd.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/dibbets_shortestday.jpg

In his "perspective corrections", Dibbets alters an environment such that when viewed through a camera, viewers experience a change in perspective.

In his time-based photography, Dibbets would photograph the shadows from a window or the lighting of a window at different time intervals.

His interests in these two series of works clearly lie in perception, as well as time and space.

Apparently, he seems to be pretty serious about photography as a medium, but in a Conceptual rather than conventional way.

If you ask me, I think his concepts and how he expresses them are quite good. He is one of the few Conceptual artists that I don't really mind.

I do borrow from other writers shamelessly!

I can only say in my defense, like the woman brought before the judge on a charge of kleptomania, 'I do steal; but, your Honor, only from the very best stores.'

Conceptual drawing

If the idea is the art in Conceptual Art, then is it possible to have Conceptual drawing? Yes -- and when I say Conceptual drawing I do not mean sketches or proposals of an idea, but where drawing is the act/performance of illustrating the idea itself. Without the drawing, the idea cannot be communicated.

Lately, I took a photo of a grave and did a drawing of it, but the drawing was less than satisfactory, even though the process was thoroughly enjoyable -- but that's another story.

Today, I returned to the photo of the grave, and I did a drawing on a photocopy of the photo. Drawing is the act of marking, and what I essentially did was to draw over an area of the grave. The area which was covered with grass is now a black void, and what I did was to photocopy my 'drawing' so that the work becomes a new photo/drawing.

The work is Conceptual because I was trying to hide existing form/space with my drawing, which turns the photo-image into a void/open grave. I was trying to question the idea of shape/space in a drawing, as well as to hide something...

what is hidden becomes an unknown (horror)...and the viewer does not notice (I hope) until I reveal what my 'drawing' actually is.

View works at http://solitudeandmemory.wetpaint.com/

do you reference wikipedia? why is it useful?

Creative Commons Deed

This is a human-readable summary of the full license below.

You are free:

• to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and
• to Remix — to adapt the work

Under the following conditions:

• Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work.)
• Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same, similar or a compatible license.

With the understanding that:

• Waiver — Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
• Other Rights — In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license:
  • your fair dealing or fair use rights;
  • the author's moral rights; and
  • rights other persons may have either in the work itself or in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights.
• Notice — For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do that is with a link to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

full article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License

Loose writings on Conceptual Art 1

"When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.." (Sol LeWitt)

"What the work of art looks like isn't too important... No matter what form it may finally have it must begin with an idea." (Sol LeWitt)

"Conceptual Art is good only when the idea is good." (Sol LeWitt)

Welcome to the world of ideas. Welcome to a world where thinking is valued and doing, unfortuantely, is more or less essentially useless, if we agree with Weiner that "the piece need not be built".

We have a very big problem here.

Why is a good idea = art? Why is a good idea not simply a good idea? We have a group of people who claim that art = a good idea or a good idea = art without making it clear to us why and how so. Perhaps (just perhaps) it is a reaction to things that came before.

Assuming that art = a good idea or a good idea = art, we are not given the slightest idea of what makes a good idea or what makes a bad idea. We are not told why or how one idea is more interesting or less interesting than another.

To quote my teacher, it's "navel-gazing". However, in the spirit of the book "But Is It Art" (I can't remember who the author is...a certain Cynthia-something), I am going to explore Conceptual Art by referring to actual artworks themselves.

***

Before I begin, I want to talk a little about what I dislike about Conceptual Art. Firstly, it places too much emphasis on the intellect. It has little regard for emotion or expression. Secondly, it is somewhat detached from life. (Think Sol LeWitt's cubes and Joseph Kosuth's investigations.) It reduces the role/function of the artist to an idea-generating machine. Of course I'm making generalisations here; things get more interesting with time.

***

Steam cloud, Robert Morris, 1966. I mean seriously, what does releasing gas in a gallery achieve? What does it mean? What does it say?

LeWitt NEVER proclaimed that ANY idea is art or ANYTHING can be art. He actually tries to suggest that there is good art and bad art (i.e. good ideas vs bad ideas), although he does not tell us how he makes the distinction.

... ...

I actually agree with one of Lucy Lippard's artists' cards, which might just give us an idea of what good Conceptual Art might be:

"Deliberately low-keyed art often resembles ruins, like neolithic rather than classical monuments, amalgams of past and future, remains of something "more", vestiges of some unknown venture. The ghost of content continues to hover over the most obdurately abstract art. The more open, or ambiguous, the experience offered, the more the viewer is forced to depend on his own perceptions."

The sad truth is, you can say the same thing for Duchamp's urinal or any of Joseph Beuys's drawings as well. (Then what's the point of saying it?)

***

From Wikipedia:

"Seedbed is a performance piece first performed by Vito Acconci on 15–29 January 1971 at Sonnabend Gallery in New York.

A low wooden ramp merging with the floor - it extends across the width of the room, beginning two feet up the side of one wall and slanting down to the middle of the floor. Acconci lay hidden underneath the ramp installed at the Sonnabend Gallery, masturbating. The artist's spoken fantasies about the visitors walking above him were heard through loudspeakers in the gallery."

How this kind of crap can pass off as art is beyond me. How is this a GOOD idea? Now, in any debate, the onus is on the proposition to explain why something IS, the onus is not on the opposition to explain why something iS NOT.

Nevertheless, I shall try to explain why I think it is NOT a good idea. I mean, isn't there any law against this? Well, maybe there isn't, considering that people like Akon can sing a song like "I want to f*** you" and it gets aired on radio. Try saying this to the next stranger you see. Very soon, the law will have a hard time deciding what is sexual harassment and what is not.

Under types of sexual harassment, Wikipedia includes the following:

Great Gallant - This mostly VERBAL harassment involves excessive compliments and personal comments that focus on appearance and gender, and are OUT OF PLACE AND EMBARASSING TO THE RECIPIENT. Such comments are sometimes accompanied by leering looks.

Unintentional - Acts or COMMENTS OF A SEXUAL NATURE, not intended to harass, CAN CONSTITUTE SEXUAL HARASSMENT IF ANOTHER PERSON FEELS UNCOMFORTABLE WITH SUCH SUBJECTS.

a social good

in japan, legions of manga fans attend their comics convention every year.

a large portion of the work on display is fan created. maybe its a manga done by a secondary school's manga club. maybe its a group of friends who are manga fans.

who got together to make their own manga thats based on their favourite manga. it could have been samurai X. and their version could have a black girl as samurai X. or maybe it could have been a homosexual version. or an hentai version. or one with a different take altogether - maybe its told from the view of kauru instead of kenshin?

and all that culture would be impossible in a normal copyrighted world. because they would not have permission from the creators of the original works to base their derivatives on.

in uk, morrissey had this to say about EMI :

"Morrissey does not approve such releases and would ask people not to bother buying them. Morrissey receives no royalty payments from EMI for any back catalogue, and has not received a royalty from EMI since 1992."

we do not know how much of what we pay when we buy a cd from hmv actually goes to the artist. it'd help if every artist had his or her own website to sell their work directly to fans.

all in all, we have to realise that a copyright is a temporary distribution monopoly granted by the public to the artist to help him or her fund the next creation. the moment a work is copyrighted, it belongs to the public - the copyright grants only the distribution rights to the creator for a limited time - when the time is up, the work will be fully owned by the public. so that society will gain from the enjoyment of more creations. note that people created works even before copyright was invented. and artists who did not want to relinquish ownership of the work to the public can choose not to publish a work. copyright is supposed to encourage more creation.

if copyright starts to fail to encourage the creation of more works, then society should look at whether copyright is useful at all in its current form, and change it, or even remove it.

The Drain Cover Discourse

It began one morning when I decided to take a picture of wide open spaces. Next to the school where I teach, there is a large beautiful canal, and to one side of the canal, there is a grass area about the size of the canal. It is somewhat smaller than a soccer field, but it is nevertheless a wide open space. I began shooting, but after about twelve shots or thereabouts, what really caught my eye was a drain cover overgrown with weeds and grass.

The simple drain cover overgrown with weeds reminded me of many things. It reminded me of Duchamp's "Why Not Sneeze" and Tapies's "Palla i fusta" (translated into "Straw and wood"). The drain cover itself reminded me of the Minimalist Japanese window screens, while the grass and weeds were like the strokes of a Huang Binhong painting. I thought that it was the chance meeting of three great men, namely Duchamp, Tapies, and Huang Binhong.

Of course, I did not begin with the intention of producing an artwork which combines these influences, but I don't see anything wrong if I say the drain cover reminded me of these things. Indeed, it could be all these and more. Then again, a drain cover is just a drain cover.

This brings to mind a Zen saying: Before you study Zen, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. While you are studying Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers, but once you have had enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and rivers again rivers.

To me, the drain cover is simultaneously both a drain cover and not a drain cover.

And so I took a photo of the drain cover, for the angle I wanted was impossible to draw from. Then I printed the photo and drew from the photo.

At this point you say, "Stop! Wait a minute. Why can't the photo be the art? Why is there a need to draw?"

So, is my drawing art? What is the art and where is the art? Where does the art begin and where does it end?

Honestly, I have no answers to these questions... ...