Almost Annabel

Register with the Esplanade and chat with Loretta Chen, the director of 251, my upcoming play on the life of Annabel Chong!

Is censorship doing our society more bad than good? In an increasingly liberal Singapore, what constitutes pornography and what constitutes art?

Engage in a Live webchat with director Loretta Chen about the controversial themes of her new play, 251, inspired by the infamous story of Annabel Chong, who burst into history in 1994 in a world-record 10-hour gangbang with 251 men.

Log on to www.thestudios.com.sg on 28 Feb 07 (Wed), 8pm and join in the chat.

This discussion will be moderated by Audrey Wong, Co-Artistic Director of The Substation.

251 is presented by Toy Factory Productions in collaboration with Esplanade as part of The Studios.

For more goofy pics of us, click here.

Guess what? I can write prose!

Or at least a six-word long short story. I've just found out I won Culturepush's Very Short Story Competition.

This was my winning entry:

“Thanks, Singapore – the experiment ends now.”

Others that I sent in include:

Singapore colonises Britain. Speak good Singlish.
LKY Clones himself. Global domination!
Actually, Soon Juan, You’re the Messiah
Fuzzy logic air-conditioners take revenge!
“I loved you, Kuan Yew. Goodbye.” [my favourite]
Bomoh creates zombie army: no NS!
Haw flake ingredient: soylent green.
They said I was gifted, once.
Huh? You mean I’m a robot?
Astronomy’s a hoax: green cheese, anyone?
“Guess whose cock you sucked, Papa!”
Don’t be silly, pontianaks don’t exi-
Lesbian pontianak! Quick, throw your tampons!
Sentosa’s independent! (Led by waxwork LKY)

I know, it really was a case of data-bombing. So sue me. Actually, sue them. It's been almost two weeks since they uploaded the results and they still haven't e-mailed me - nor did they print my name in the report. (shrug)

UPDATE: They've made the updates and sent me my $50 Books Actually voucher. Hooray! (Apparently they wrote and dated the article about a week before uploading it, so their sin of forgetfulness is not quite so grievous.)

Not Net-Nanny 'Nuff?

Since I'm suddenly the Ban-Censorship man, I might as well mention my surprise today when I discovered that we're not on the Reporters Without Borders list of 13 Internet Enemies.

In other news, I watched Game Play and Secret Love in Peach Blossom Garden at the Esplanade today. Both very good Chinese plays with less than comely titles. Of course, I'm not going to review either of them because I didn't get a press ticket, but I am pasting a first impression of the ETCeteras' Game Play on the Flying Inkpot.

Surreal anti-drug video mashup

Found this on boingboing.net!

Portrait of the Artists

For the hell of it, I'm uploading a few photos I took at Comparative Contemporaries last year.

Simon Petre of P-10 and Rizal of the Substation.

Andree Wechsler, the performance artist, and Khairuddin Hori, the founder of Wunderspaze and - well, he's just been everywhere, hasn't he?

Huh? How did this get in here? It's a photo of Luyi, one of my nieces, wearing a Venetian chirurgeon's mask. (Hey, if Mr Brown can post photos of his family on his site, so can I.)

Wtf??? I've been tomorrowed!!!

http://tomorrow.sg/archives/2007/02/21/censational.html

Seriously. My blog went from 21 reads on Tuesday to 564 on Wednesday. And that was for a badly formatted post with no pictures, mostly plagiarised from Alf. Scared already!!!

Censational!

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"last boy" and other autopornographies

Happy CNY! These are slides from the presentation I did last week at Rojak, discussing my career both as a writer and an exhibitionist.

1. last boy, my first book of poetry, drawing on my sexual history in New York, coupled with some extremely passionate poetry readings.



2. My experimental drag in university.


3. Which I also engaged in at the opening of the Singapore Biennale Opening Party for the sake of celebrating the carnivalesque. Components: Japanese oni demon mask and green vintage dress found in an old closet in Columbia.


4. Coverage: A wearable art intervention performed Friday, 10 November at Encounters 34: Beginning Belief, LaSalle-SIA School of the Arts. Materials: Singapore Biennale badges (X 92), Singapore Biennale tote bag, black tights, blazer and marker pen inscriptions of local contemporary artists not included in the Biennale. Reprised Saturday 11 November at the official closing party for the Biennale. Amanda Heng said she liked it. :)


5. And more recently, a grumpy protest against the proposed retention of section 377A, the Penal Code article against gay male sex, at the SQ21 blog.


There are other slides, but I'll curb my sluttiness for now. :)

Rojak!

I'm doing a presentation this Friday night on my work at the next Rojak. It's an evening of talks by artists and designers, held quarterly at a cool new location every time. This time it's at Pearl Bank Apartments, near Outram MRT, where I was born and grew up.

My talk's entitled "last boy and other autopornographies". Below is the proper invite:

09.02.2007 Fri 08.00pm till 09.02.2007

Welcome to ROJAK 07. This time, it is held in Pearlbank Apartments, part of the "Save the Modern Buildings" series. The Pearlbank Apartments, like our previous Golden Mile Complex venue, is in the midst of en bloc and possibly sold away. These architectural pieces contains many unique spaces and it will be a shame if they disappear from our local landscape. We hope that ROJAK can bring our local creatives from different disciplinaries to experience these spaces and hopefully, works can be inspired from them.

The presentation will also start earlier this time at 8pm and do come rest casually and comfortably :)

Due to the nature of our venue, there are a few things to note this time:

1. Please bring drinks to share for the ROJAK dingy. Previously, FARM always try our best to refill the drinks during ROJAK. But as this venue is far from any possible replenishment, we requested that all audience to bring something to share with the rest. It's the least you can do with all the sharing going around on ROJAK night.

2. The owner has requested that there is absolutely no smoking within the space, no sitting on the balcony ledge (which is 37th floor! yikes!!) and please do not touch the antique mirrors hung in the kitchen as they are quite reactive to water and stains (but yes, stare into yourself with them)

3. This is a private event. Please subscribe to FARM FEED for the invites and instructions on how to get to the venue (through the security).

See you soon.

See Website

Depression

If depression were a houseguest, it'd be a ruthlessly polite one. It warns you ahead that it's coming, it doesn't take up all your time and it even lets you work (some of the time).

But when you come home, it's still there. And it gets into bed with you and buggers you silly.

And you don't know why the hell it's come knocking. Oh, okay, maybe there's some direct influences (say an actor called you up to criticise you directly for aspects of your writing you can't control, or none of the young men who purport to be interested in you are ever actually available on a Saturday night, suggesting that they were never that into you to begin with).

But even when the majority of things in your life are going right - even when you've got every other reason to clap your hands and say hallelujah - it's there. And you would very much like to politely step out of its way and die.

I've become obsessed with the miracle fruit. Have you heard of it? It's a West African berry that contains an active glycoprotein molecule that masks your tongue's sour taste buds. Which means that within half an hour of eating it, ever sour thing you eat tastes great. An account online says that it makes limes taste like lime candy. Every time I've seen a lime, or any other citrus fruit since then, I think lime candy.

I was at the Jendela gallery at the Esplanade today - caught Tim Etchells' short films which were part of the M1 Fringe Festival, final showing - and I ended up pouring out my woes to the beautiful young volunteer gallery sitter there, an IT kid between jobs, pale blue T-shirt and white scarf and retro specs and floppy hair. I realised I didn't have anything to lose, and I asked him if he might be free to watch a play sometime if I had comps - which I've been doing with all my friends lately, being such a review-maniac. The kid said sure, we exchanged numbers.

His handphone had his girlfriend's face on it. So much for my dar. His name was Zahir, anyway - being the Borgesian boy that I am, I should've smelt trouble.

I really am fantastically lonely these days. I thought I'd weaned myself off my desperate days of unrequited love in university, but despair just resurfaces, fuck it. I like my body but I know it's not as attractive as it used to be, and I still don't know the first thing about dating and having relationships.

I don't hate my life, but I do hate how I'm such a slave to random self-generated chemicals in my bloodstream. Eventually it'll all go away. Till then, maybe Xanax?

Your

Cut hair.
Dark skin.
Pierced ear.
White teeth.

Deep voice.
Small eyes.
Red heart.

Absence.

Culturejam documented!

On Tuesday, someone went and vandalised the Wikipedia Entry for the father of our nation. Shocking! It's been corrected already, but thank God for printscreen.

January texts

I hope the French feminists are happy, 'cos I had to invent a whole new category for them.

*POETRY*
+"Li Sao and Other Poems of Qu Yuan"
Paul Celan's "Romanian Poems"

*FICTION*
+Yukio Mishima's "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea"
+R. K. Narayan's "The Abduction of Sita"
+C. S. Lewis's "The Magician's Nephew" [reread]

*UNCLASSIFIABLE PROSE*
Marguerite Duras's "Écrire"
+Hélène Cixous's "The Book of Promethea"

*DRAMA*
+Dario Fo's "The Accidental Death of an Anarchist"
Nicole Quinn and Nina Shengold's "War at Home"
Eng Wee Ling's "Confessions of Three Unmarried Women and Other Selected Plays"
Benny Lim's "Existence"
+Verena Tay's "In the Company of Women"

*NON-FICTION*
Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate's "Introducing Freud"
+ Maggie Hyde and Michael McGuinness's "Introducing Jung"
"The Da Vinci Notebooks"
+Hakim Bey's "TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism"

*GRAPHIC TEXTS*
+Timothy Greenfield-Sanders's "XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits"
+ David Wojnarowicz's "Memories That Smell Like Gasoline"

*PERFORMANCE*
Buds Youth Theatre's "From Scratch"
+STAGES's "Forbidden Chestnuts: Portrait of a Brokeback Geisha"
+Action Theatre's "Everything But the Brain"
Chinese Theatre Circle and ACJC's "Intrigues at the Qing Court"
Cake Theatre's "Survivor Singapore"

*FILM*
+"Stranger Than Fiction"
Zhang Yimou's "The Curse of the Golden Flower"
+Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth"
Larry Charles's "Borat"

*EXHIBITIONS* [new category!]
Brian Gothong Tan's "Omens, Relics and Signs of Faith"
Tang Ling Nah's "Send Me an Angel"
Chen Wen Hsi's "Centennial Exhibition"
Daniel Libeskind's "Reflections and Key Works: 1989-2014"
+National Museum's "Singapore History Gallery"
National Museum's "Maria Theresia: Mother Empress of the Habsburg Empire
Singapore Art Museum's "Art of Our Time Part II" including "Chua Ek Kay and Srihadi Soedarsono"

P.S. I'm a little sour 'cos I thought I could do 20 books this week. Gah. But at least I've also finished my third draft for 251. Phew.