Suck it, Xiaxue.

I'm a professional blogger too, now! I'm the official textual documenter of Theatreworks's Flying Circus Project 2007: TRAVELOGUE, in both Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City over the next week and a half. Keep updated about me at http://flyingcircusproject.blogspot.com.


The list of events is as follows. To attend, call +65-67377213 or tworks@singnet.com.sg to get your name on the guest list. Also buzz them if you want to do interviews with participants or for observership.

31 Oct, 8 pm
Opening Exhibition of two video installations,
Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the Complex - For the Courageous, the Curious, and the Cowards (2001) and Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas: Battle of Easel Point - Memorial Project Okinawa (2003) by Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba

Performance by Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky

At 72-13.

02 Nov, 7 pm
Artist Presentations under the moonlight on Pulau Ubin

** For events on Pulau Ubin, the public is advised to be at the Pulau Ubin Jetty 30 minutes before the start of the event. Audiences will be ferried to the respective venue on the island.

03 Nov, 11am - 04 Nov, 1am
“Superintense”

Superintense is a marathon of personal strategies of creativity in the urban context, in our worlds. From one morning to the next, all the FCP artists will have an hour each to present their work, their practice to themselves and a public audience. A table, a projector, a microphone, an audience; which can all be recontructed into an open space – the same conditions are given to each artist. They are invited to share their practice with the audience; past work, present work, future work. It can take the form of a talk, a lecture demonstration, a performance, slides, a video, a dj session, a workshop, a discussion. Without a break, all the artists relentlessly articulate their practice, communicating an insight to the myriad ways of inhabiting, dissolving, thinking, making, living, destroying, rejuvenating. An actor, an audience, a shared space. Take a cigarette pause on the run.

At 72-13.

We Don't Need No Education

Zian Ismail asked me to be part of this exhibition a while back - I was swamped and broke then, so I said no (participants had to shell out some dough for the use of the space), but I promised I'd go for the opening at La Libreria. So I popped over last Saturday, and danged if I haven't fallen in love with the pop surrealism of young Filipino artist Maica "Reckless" Delfino:




See what I mean? Her stuff goes for $1,000+, but I'm sorely tempted to try buying something. Another pretty cool guy is Singaporean Farhan "Azrafael" Razak, with his angry conceptual photography.



Also featured are Jason Lee, Sha Najak and Mohammed Faizal.

We Don't Need No Education
27th Oct to 4th Nov
La Libreria Gallery

Cute young Chinese performance artist Cheng Guang Feng also has a nice shebang up at the Substation Gallery - it's called "The Traveller", but it's going off tomorrow on the 31st. :(

Pink Red Hot

Activist/artist Seelan Palay just did these crayon/oil illustrations against 377A. He's straight, incidentally, but his images are a wee bit R-rated.


From last night's google chat:

me: what does the tamil say?

6:19 AM Seelan: "let us struggle/protest"

me: the figure with the arrow - is he the dwarf avatar of vishnu?

6:20 AM Seelan: maybe thats who he is, but after drawing it I was thinking more like a coffeeshop prata uncle

haha

cause I knew one man like that who was gay

6:21 AM he would go to surf porn at my friend's cybercafe late at night in the corner computer

me: lol

6:22 AM Seelan: and he is supposedly holding a cooking spoon then?

me: for making prata?

Seelan: for scooping curry

6:23 AM but yes, lets stick with the dwarf avatar too

See more of his stuff at http://www.lioncitydiy.com/pinkredhot/.

Rights and Royalties

Straits Times commentator Janadas Devan roxxors off my soxxors in his incisive and rhetorically luminous analysis of NMP Thio Li-Ann's speech in favour of preserving 377A. There's a copy of his story blogged over here.

In other news, I've received my first ever royalty cheque for a book! For "last boy", no less. No kidding; every single other book I've been published in - SQ21, 5 under 25, No other City - has been royalty-free. (Some schools have sent me cheques for performances of "Hungry", though.)


$318 = 10% of total book sales of $3,180
= 10% of 212 books selling at $15 each

Let's assume that's at least 220 books, since several were bought at discounted prices. Whoop de doo; I've sold out nearly half my print run.

VISTA LAB 1.0: IMPETUS on Youtube!

Our first workshop presentation, caught in rapid-succession photo stills. That's me at the -0:22 mark, in the weird Chinese opera-cum-Rafflesian schoolboy outfit.



You can check out director Choy Ka Fai's other Youtube videos here.

Nonperformance art

Oh my. I made a fool outta myself. It seems that Enshrine 377A, along with the whole non-march that failed to happen, is a liberal hoax. (It doesn't say so explicitly on the blog, but the follow-up articles make it quite obvious).

Of course I love pranks as performance art, but I'm wondering if this ended up discrediting the activist community rather than helping us? Gah, I'm too addicted to irony; I see two sides to every question and can't commit to either.

Enshrine 377A!

There's an anti-gay march being held tomorrow. And this time, they're wearing ALL WHITE. The coloured T-shirt cycle continues. :)

http://enshrine377a.blogspot.com/

As a gay man, I'm worried that the impact of this will hurt the Repeal, but I do believe they have a right to freedom of assembly, and of course I can't help being amused at the rhetoric:

Walk for Jesus Action

Jebez cried out to the God of Israel, "O that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me , and keep me from harm and so that we will be free from pain" And God granted his request. 1 Chronicles 4.10.

It is time to claim on God's promise to keep our country from the harm of having 377A repealed and from the pain of our children being corrupted.

It is time to take action and witness for Jesus!

This Sunday 21 October 2007, we will do a prayer walk around the civic area.

Walk around St Andrew's Cathedral and pray for the soldiers of Christ

Walk around the Singapore River, where our ancestors came to build a new land of hope for their children, and the Repeal of 377A will destroy their dreams. [... huh? my ancestors only come here to make money leh...]

Walk around the CIVIC areas where many large corporations have policies that encourage alternative lifestyles.

Walk around SMU and pray for our youths.

Walk towards the Parliament House and pray for the members of Parliament.

What to do:

Start walking around the CIVIC area after church and do prayer walks.

It is good if we synchronize at 12.30p.m. to start.

Wear all white - the colours of saints - so that we can identify each other. [One comment online suggested they add pointy caps and hoods while they're at it.]

When you see one of us, get in pairs (this is how Jesus sent his disciples out to witness and so we won't go against the laws of the lands about illegal gathering.

When you see other pairs, greet them but keep to your group.

When you see someone who is against you, tell them lovingly that even though you hate the sin, you love the sinner and offer them God. [Oy, that's gonna be irritating!]

When you see someone friendly, explain why you are doing this and what damage 377A can do to our country.

As you approach the Parliament House, keep in your pairs.

If anyone tries to disband you, stay for a while, say a prayer and then move on peaceably.

If the police asks for your cooperation, move into the Sanctuary of Saint Andrew's Cathedral and continue praying. The prayer of the faithful availeth much! [Gay people can go inside and pray for the Repeal too, right?]

You shall march around the city... thus you shall do it for six days... then all the people will shout with a great shout ... and the wall of the city shall fall down flat (Joshua 6:1-5) [Aiyoh! terrorist action! They want Shenton Way to fall down!]

Tell your friends about this prayer walk. Refer them to this site. [Done! I posted it to the artscommunity list. Of course, I can't quite bring myself to tell the police, but they're monitoring our list so they'll find out anyway.]

To encourage each other, leave a name or a pseudonym if you are participating so others can also take heart and be counted!

Leave us also words of encouragement!

[I'm really not a very good activist, am I? I find this FUNNY. Well, especially considering that this is more of a priority to us than Myanmar.]

Wondermark rocks!

Walt Whitman-headed Bat. Heehee. Click on the above comic to expand, see his other stuff here.

No Repeal

Since we've got celebs trampolining to repeal 377A, I thought this item might be of interest - an article on non-prosecuted laws in America, including copyright and pornography rulings.

American Lawbreaking at Slate V

It's honestly rather bewildering that everyone's so gung-ho about repealing this law that's not going to be enforced and hardly anyone's talking about correcting 389A on marital rape, which may possibly affect about half the bloody population, dammit.

I think I actually see 377A's repeal as the first step towards a few positive rights - I want to marry and adopt kids, dammit, and there's no way I can do that if my bedroom activities are still banned on the books. So sign the letter already, if you haven't done so yet.

The Subject of Language

From "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. This is absurdism at its best.

REPEAL 377A SINGAPORE!

Sign here: http://www.repeal377a.com/letter/

Steve Terada

Hybrid martial arts. This guy was featured at the beginning of the Black Eyed Peas' music video "Pump It", where he had to make it look like they knew kung fu by losing to them. :P

Curious Robot Maneuvre

Worth a try.

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/10/curious-robot-m.html

The Beast is Yet to Be

I've finally identified that animal in the ACS crest!

It is a CHIMERA.

As per Wikipedia: Homer's brief description in the Iliad^[1] is the earliest literary reference: "a thing of immortal make, not human, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle,^[2] and snorting out the breath of the terrible flame of bright fire".^[3] Hesiod's Theogony follows the Homeric description: he makes the Chimera the issue of Echidna: "She was the mother of Chimaera who breathed raging fire, a creature fearful, great, swift-footed and strong, who had three heads, one of a grim-eyed lion; in her hinderpart, a dragon; and in her middle, a goat, breathing forth a fearful blast of blazing fire. Although some myths tell us that it was the serpent or either the third head which in some discriptions is a dragon would breath a most dreadful blaze of fire. Here did Pegasus and noble Bellerophon slay."^[4] The author of Bibliotheke concurs:^[5] descriptions agree that it breathed fire. The Chimera is generally considered to have been female (see the quotation from Hesiod above) despite the mane adorning its lion's head. Sighting the chimera^{[citation needed]} was an omen of storms, shipwrecks, and natural disasters (particularly volcanoes).

Courtesy of Students' Sketchpad:

UPDATE: According to Michael Wee, a current Year 4 at ACS (Indie), Alistair Chew H.O.D. of the Science Department identifies the creature as a WYVERN.

As per Wikipedia: The wyvern can be regarded as a type of or similar to a dragon. Depictions often include two legs and two wings[1]. Sometimes there are eagle's claws on the wingtips. The rest of its appearance can vary, such as appearing with a tail spade or with a serpent-like tail.


Um, no. No wyvern image I've seen features anything but a dragon's head; admittedly it does better than me in the wings and talons department, but these wings are mad scaly. The ACS mascot is indubitably a chimera wearing fluffy angel wings (which are of course the scratchiest part of the angel to eat).

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Or maybe it's a COCKATRICE?

HOT.

September 2007 Texts

It's a little fucked up that I'm still going on this spiel about texts I've consumed when there's a bloody revolution (or even sadder, failed revolution) happening next door and Singapore's mollycoddling the lapdogs of the ancien regime. But still, ritual:

*POETRY*
+Wislawa Szymborska's "Monologue of a Dog"
+“The Song of Roland”
+T.S. Eliot's “Selected Poems”
Aaron Lee's “Five Right Angles”

*FICTION*
+Cyril Wong's "The Boy With a Flower That Grew Out of His Ass"
+Margaret Atwood's "The Tent"
+Truman Capote's “Summer Crossing”
+Philip Jeyaratnam's “Abraham's Promise”

*DRAMA*
+Moliere's "Tartuffe"
+Ntozake Shange's “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf”
+Christopher Durang's “Laughing Wild”
+Dumbtype's “S/N”

*NON-FICTION*
Gunalan Nadarajan, Russell Storer and Eugene Tan's "Contemporary Art in Singapore"
+Malcolm Gladwell's “Blink”
+Tan Shzr Ee and Desmond Foo's “Lost Roads”

*PERFORMANCES*
+V.I.S.T.A Lab's “Impetus”
+W!ld Rice's “The Campaign to Confer the Public Service Star on JBJ”
+The Theatre Practice's “
+Spell #7's “Tree Duet”
+performance art by Kim Kang and Kim Youn Hoan, Lynn Lu, Lee Wen and Jason Lim at “The Future of Imagination”

*EXHIBITIONS*
+STPI's “Ahmad Zakii Anwar”
National Museum's “The Prince of Gowns: A Selection of Benny Ong's Works from 1988-1989”
+National Museum's "Empire of Nature: The William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Paintings"
+Infrared Photography Collective's “Infrared City”
STPI's “The Singapore Print Society's 16th Annual Show”
+Raghu Rai, Prabir Prakasthaya and Prabuddha Das Gupta's “L.E.N.S”
+Vitric Thng and Mauricio Alejo's “Small Talk”

*FILMS*
+Anthony Chen's “Ah Ma”
+Loo Zihan's “Embryo”
Kan Lume's “5 Steps To Becoming An Actor”
+Boo Junfeng's “Katong Fugue”
+Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's "Jesus Camp"
+Adrienne Shelly's "Waitress"
+Jacen Tan's “Zo Gang”
Lynn Lu's “Inadequate Reality Adaptation”
+Gek Li San's “Heave”