Laugh until can die

Watch this first -- the serious version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjO_VXHxsRw&feature=related
The sublime part is at 1.07.

Then the spoof is here:
Laugh until can die

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9leJO0kajDs&feature=related

Damn interesting...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTdWm3F8L8A&feature=related

1.25 onwards blew my mind away, haha.....

Quite power also:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMm2CZ-2kzk

Lunarin

http://www.myspace.com/lunarin

Drawing Discourse

Coming up next...

sin X Actually Actually

Actually Actually Drawing Discourse
Actually Drawing
Actually Discourse

sin, mid July

Still on

Next Saturday

8 things to celebrate

1. http://www.singstat.gov.sg/stats/themes/economy/ess/essa22.pdf

ok, productivity did not fall as badly as i made it out to be. i wonder what the base population is though. since singstat does not report the singaporean population, but instead reports /singapore residents/, which is citizens + PRs. whatever the case, the increase in the number of people living in singapore seems to be the source of the gdp growth, not improving productivity.

“Over time, Singaporeans have become less hard-driving and hard-striving. This is why it is a good thing that the nation has welcomed so many Chinese immigrants.”

2. http://business.asiaone.com/Business/News/Office/Story/A1Story20100105-189718.html

we work longer hours than the taiwanese, japanese and south koreans.
the evening news has gone from 6pm to 10pm.
but still not productive enough.

3. you know, people who live in potong pasir are singaporeans too. they also pay taxes and serve NS.

“You vote for the other side, that means you reject the programs of the PAP candidate… If you reject it, we respect your choice. Then you will be left behind, then in 20, 30 years’ time, the whole of Singapore will be bustling away, and your (housing) estate through your own choice will be left behind. They become slums. That’s my message.”

4. theres a fancl ad on channel news asia, in japanese. but local dialects are not allowed on air.

5. durians are a south east asian delicacy. singaporeans eat durians. but its not allowed on our MRT trains. though beer breath, salted fish, belechan, coconut hair oil, and medicated oil are all ok.

6. http://www1.internationalliving.com/qofl2010/#Singapore

we're higher up Quality of Life Index than malaysia!

7. http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/107980/countries-with-the-biggest-gaps-between-rich-and-poor

2nd highest gini in the world!

“If native Singaporeans are falling behind because the spurs are not stuck into the hide, that is their problem,”

8. http://www.happyplanetindex.org/learn/download-report.html

bottom half of the table here...

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...