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”

Saturday Morning Breakfast Comics

Anyone notice I've been blogging on a daily basis all week?

Wonder why? It's an awful habit of mine whenever I've a big writing job due. I chain myself to the computer nightafternightafternight. And aside from necessary supper and toilet breaks, I tend to distract myself with every online resource possible - webcomics, aggregators, Youtube, pornography, blogs.

This week, my big job was finishing the first draft of the opening chapters of a book for my old secondary school, ACS (Independent). As part of the deal, I've been interviewing old boys and administrators, including...

DR LEE SUAN YEW.

Actually hor, he's very nice and easygoing - he's the baby brother of LKY, a family medicine practitioner still going strong at the tender age of 74. He bought us (me and English teacher Ms Kavita) tau sar biah and Coca-Cola and met us at the Pyramid Club near Goodwood and told us a whole bunch of stories, printable and unprintable, about his Chairmanship of the Board of Management and the Building Committee and whatnot.

Candid shot! (Actually, just before I took the real shot. I like imperfect poses.)

And what the hell, one more:


He gave us a lift to the main road in his car too. Having been put in touch with me via the school, he only had a vague inkling of my other work - he knew he'd seen me in the papers before, but had no idea why. He's a big Methodist, and I didn't want to alienate him before the interview, so I politely suggested it might be because I won the 24-Hour Playwriting Competition ten years ago.

Yeah, I know some of you'll say I should have queered it up in front of him and demanded he lean on his gor-gor and nephew to repeal 377A, but 1) I don't think he's of that much political influence and 2) as a paid professional copywriter, I shouldn't sabotage the book project. Maybe at the book launch at next year's Founder's Day dinner I'll jump on his back and give him a copy of SQ21. Yeah. That'd work.

For Your Reference

Since the Substation Magazine is having trouble with their archives, I've decided to use my blog to archive my reviews of Spell#7's "National Language Class" and Ho Tzu Nyen's "Utama: Every Name in History Is I" and Jeff Chouw's "6ixth". Good stuff.

FYI, FOI

There's actually a reason why I'm not going to JB for the film fest... I have artist friends performing in the Future of Imagination Festival, and I'm gonna catch some of 'em. Singapore artists participating include Lee Wen, Lynn Lu, Khairuddin Hori and Andree Wechsler. Website here.

Below's a photo I took recently after Andree Wechsler's "Innocence 2" performance, where she http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifcovered herself with baby powder and then ate it and blew it out at us four times in a row.



Substation co-Director Audrey Wong and me, both wearing Khairuddin's Restitution T-shirts.



And - ah, what the hell - another photo from the Tunnel Party, of four very smart and socially activist ladies - Audrey, Tan Hui Yee, Yap Ching Wi and her sister Yap Ching Yi. (I know I don't have a chance in hell, but Hui Yee is frickin' hot!)

PHOENIX TALONS

Marilah kita ke JB!!!

The Freedom Film Fest in Johor Bahru is screening films related to human rights in Southeast Asia, including a number of banned Singapore films, including Royston Tan's "24 hrs", "15" and "Cut", as well as Martyn See's "Speakers Cornered".

It's on this coming weekend! Quite close to the Causeway also! Don't think I can go though... sigh.

Was alerted by Martyn See's blog.

The music videos of Mark Romanek

I've recently discovered that a number of the music videos I've admired were made by the same director. (Though I'm not really a music person, I really dig the visual poems that the music video genre is able to provide, although way too often MTV proper features lacklustre unpluggeds in a sea of adverts and reality shows).

Anyhoo, Mark Romanek - director of "One Hour Photo" - isn't just a wonderfully imaginative music video auteur - he's also an unapologetically literate one. And call me a wanker, but I lerrrrve his pomo back-references to the Masters. Consider the following works, where artists, writers and musicmakers dead and living crossbreed and fertilise the eyeballs:



Madonna's "Bedtime Story" (Bjork wrote the song!) paired with images from women surrealists Leonora Carrington, Frida Kahlo and Remedios Varo.




The Red Hot Chili Peppers'"Can't Stop", with antics inspired by Austrian performance artist/sculptor Eric Wurm.




k.d. lang's "Constant Craving", filmed against a set of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot".




Nine Inch Nails's "The Perfect Drug", featuring the live art of Edward Gorey. Also check out the Daliesque gore of their other collaboration with Romanek, "Closer".




And of course, Johnny Cash's cover of Trent Reznor's song "Hurt", the last video of his life, created when he had already been diagnosed with Shy-Drager syndrome and his Museum had recently been damaged by flooding. Video mashup meets Baroque still life/memento mori meets country meets metal. Brilliant.

There's a review of a DVD compilation of his best videos here. Not so crazy about the big-budget ones he did for the Jacksons, Audioslave and Lenny Kravitz (although it turns out "Are You Gonna Go My Way" is patterned after Fellini's "Satyricon"). Gah, and it turns out that he also did that amazing "Do Something" video with naked furries for Macy Gray, only no-one else likes it but me and it's nowhere online.

Post-Impetus

Our run's over! And we got generally good responses! (Although the ones who couldn't quite grasp the concept didn't stick around for the talkback, so we really don't know what proportion of the audience was receptive or not.

Here's a Photobooth pic of me in my Confucianised schoolboy costume:


Sorry about the colour: I was in the dressing room and it was only 20 min to house opening by then. More photos at the VISTA blog.

Feeling really good about the way we collaborate - we're all really quite unconventional artists in our fields, and we work rather well together in terms of exchanging ideas and being willing to interpret each others' art forms. Ich bin ein Interdisciplinarian, already. :D

Next workshop's in early October, in prep for a further presentation in December. I also get my first paycheck at the end of the month (I know! We get paid to experiment! Gnarly, huh?)

V.I.S.T.A Lab 1.0: IMPETUS

An installation/performance by Choy Ka Fai, Zulkifle Mahmod, Ng Yi-Sheng, Torrance Goh/FARMWORK, Patricia Toh and Joavien Ng


Haven't really splashed it around yet, but I'm part of an interdisciplinary art collective now under Theatreworks. We've been collaborating on a performance piece about history/memory of Singapore in the 1980s, and that's going up on Friday and Saturday night - 21 and 22 September - at the Theatreworks home, 72-13.

V.I.S.T.A stands for Visual.Interactive.Sound.Text.Architecture, and I'm especially lucky to be chosen to participate because the director/curator/multimediarian Choy Ka Fai rarely works with text. He said he chose me because he knows I won't write a conventional scripted play - in other words, I've been chosen because I'm a bad playwright. :D (The truth is, most of the writing I've done for this show comes closer to poetry than drama.)

The other collaborating creatives are Zulkifie Mahmod (Sound Artist), Torrance Goh/FARMWORK (Architect/Set Designer), Patricia Toh (Actress/Performer), Joavien Ng (Choreographer/Performer), Mohd Fared Jainal (Graphic Designer) and Andy Lim (Lighting Designer). For our next installment we should be joined by Khoo Eng Tat (Interaction Engineer/Designer), Lim Hock Siang (Musician) and Grace Tan/Kwodrent (Clothing Designer).

Here's the brief:

Conceived and created by Ka Fai, V.I.S.T.A Lab is a series of workshops that encourage interaction among the collaborating artists, who each produces unconventional works in their respective fields. Besides IMPETUS, two other productions under V.I.S.T.A Lab will be staged in December 2007 and February 2008.

Date : 21, 22 September 2007
Time : 8pm
Venue : 72-13 Mohamed Sultan Rd (located next to The Pier) Singapore 239007
Admission: $5

To book seats, ring: 6737 7213 or email : tworks@singnet.com.sg

THE RIGHT HAND

(being a performance poem from Impetus, to be presented in garbled form)

Build.
Progress.
Build language.
Build happiness.
Build language of religion.
Build people of religion.
Build the languaage of
happiness.

Build religion
And nation
Build religion and society.
A society of people.
One nation, one progress.
Build religion and the language
of the democratic society.
Build happiness:
Our democratic religion.

The people of one religion of our society
build society of one religion on our society -
one nation based on people of our nation of our people
build a language, build a democratic language; our society as

Regardless.
We build,
Regardless.
We progress,
Regardless.
We race,
Regardless.
We progress,

Regardless,
We race united citizens of happiness, we
Regardless
Build,
Achieeeeeeeeeve....

The people achieve ourselves, so as to
build religion!
The nation, we the nation, we the
democratic justice!
And equality for people
And for justice for religion,
We the people, for citizens of ourselves -

We pledge ourselves one united people for religion.
We pledge our nation to our language, one race united
We pledge ourselves to religion,
Pledge our nation to religion
Pledge the citizens, pledge society, happiness to religion -

Regardless of race, language or society
Regardless of nation, regardless of prosperity
Regardless of equality, based on democratic happiness
Regardless of justice

JUSTICE.

We, the citizens pledge ourselves as one united,
build a democratic society based on justice and religion,
So as to achieve race or language our prosperity based on people
On our nation as a race to build to progress to equality

And
To

RACE!
RACE!
RACE!
RACE!

LANGUAGE!
LANGUAGE!
LANGUAGE!
LANGUAGE!

BUILD!
BUILD!
BUILD!
BUILD!

CITIZENS!
CITIZENS!
CITIZENS!
CITIZENS!

PROGRESS!
PROGRESS!
PROGRESS!
PROGRESS!

ONE
ONE
ONE
ONE

NATION!
NATION!
NATION!
NATION!
NATION!

Regardless of our democratic society.

Nation.
Based.
Ourselves.
United.
One nation.
Based
One religion.
Our happiness.

Citizens
Based.
We the citizens
Of regardless.
We the citizens
of religion
of one.
One.

We the citizens pledge so as to achieve prosperity.
To progress.
To democratic society.

The religion regardless.
The society regardless.

The happiness
of the people.

The language
of one.

re: Impetus. GAH

National Archives refused to give us permission to use Teh Cheang Wan's photos in our performance. Also, MDA has refused to approve my rhythmic poem using only the words of the Singapore pledge based on late submission.

Very, very upset. It's definitely not funny anymore.

(Clarification: MDA refused to approve the pledge poem because we submitted it late, not because of content. Wouldn't even look at it. Still, it turned out for the best - I performed it gripping a pen between my teeth to garble the words, and that heightened the violence of it.)

Misgivings - a short film by the Video Renegades

See more of their work here: http://youtube.com/user/videorenegades

Oh noes!!! I kena censorized agen!!!

MDA contacted Theatreworks and asked for us to remove one line of my Confucian timeline poem/monologue from our "Impetus" performance.

The line cryptically referenced the 1982 death of Wong Ming Yang - Lee Hsien Loong's first wife, who had a fatal heart attack 3 weeks after giving birth to their albino son Lee Yi Peng. (Hey, I printed the official version - I never even mentioned the rumours of what kind of pressure caused the heart attack.)

Mood: grumpy.

It's Ramadan.

These shots were actually taken before Ramadan, in Geylang, where my Arabic classes are taught. Were taught. We're taking a break between basic and intermediate level.

I am the dictionary definition of overcommitment.

I don't know how exactly I ended up getting involved in so many... odd projects and activities. In the last coupla weeks, I've been:

1. Studying for my Arabic exam at Jamiyah business school:

(The hawker centre near the Muslim converts' association has very good duck porridge).

2. Rehearsing for Impetus, the first production by art collective V.I.S.T.A (more on that later)



3. Doing nude modelling for a life drawing class at NTU:

(Someone drew a smiley-face!)

4. Babysitting my niece Kimberlyn.



(I actually took her to the Museums, but because of upload problems I'll just show this monstrous Care Bear dance that was going on at Compassvale Point. Gawd, isn't it hideous how animated figures are small and talkative on screen and then huge and mute in meatspace?)

5. Attending my capoeira batizado workshop.



6. Meeting ACS (I) administrators and old boys regarding a commemorative book I'm doing for them

7. Eating frogs' legs porridge and sting ray with my parents in Geylang (which is not so strange unless you have parents who love to ogle the sex shops together. Also, I don't think I've walked through the colossal noise and richness of it before... phonecards being hawked in Mandarin and Tamil, old men spitting in the street, giant plaster models of crayfish hanging from the doorframes... the sex workers are the least of it. Great food, btw.

Flemish Blemish

A really goofy phonetic translation of a kids' song from Belgium. Enjoy!

Barbie Doll Electric Chair Science Fair Project

I wanna marry this girl. Link

ROJAK 09!!!!

Like I said, Torrance and Willie from Farm.sg invited me to design the invite for Rojak 09. And here it is:
The design's based on Chua Mia Tee's "National Language Class", of course. The event'll be held at the Central Green Patch of the new LaSalle campus, with socialising from 8pm and presentations from 9pm till late. Bring drinks!

And since we're at it, I'll show you some of the other pastiche designs they turned down:
Based on Raphael's "The School of Athens" (with Leonardo and Diogenes as our interlocutors).
Based on Rembrandt's "The Anatomy Lesson of Nicholaes Van Tulp". I liked this one best, personally.

National Language Class

Hey guys. A brief history of my misappropriation of Chua Mia Tee's 1959 oil painting, National Language Class.

I was approached by Torrance Goh of Farm.sg to design an invitation for Rojak 9 (in spite of the fact that I'm not a card-carrying artist or designer. I decided to borrow from a few real artists (as well as bucking the photographic and cartoon genre of the previous Rojak invites) by using National Language Class as a basis for my advert.

It's a social realist painting of Chinese Singaporeans studying Malay in preparation for their new role as citizens of an independent Malaya. Spell #7's done a dramatic interpretation of it, P-10 and Koh Nguang How used it as the impetus for their conceptual art series "Errata". I found the image through Google Images, added a few cartoonish lahdidahs, and showed them to Torrance and Willie. So far so good.

But I knew I'd have to approach Singapore Art Museum to officially request legal use of the image. Thankfully, my request ended up the hands of the young and very generous Seng Yu-Jin, who's just curated a great little gallery show called "From Words to Pictures: Art of the Emergency 1949-1960" about this very period of Singapore art and its place in politics. He invited me down for the curatour the very same day he received the request.

(Yes, that's National Language Class just behind Patricia Goh's shoulder.)

Y'see, Yu-Jin had watched "Georgette", and he's studied Lichtenstein, so he was rather amicable to my pomo machinations on early Singapore art. He did, however, believe I should approach the artist himself. And although Chua Mia Tee was once a prominent member of the socialist-linked Equator Art Society, he's now the court painter for the PAP - he's done glory-hallelujah paintings of Lee Kuan Yew and all six of our Presidents, and his work's terribly commercially collectable

So he's got a nice swank bungalow where he lives and paints with his wife, floral painter Lee Boon Ngan. And that's where Willie and I went on Monday, to ask him permission to use the painting.


It was like walking on eggs - me pulling off the stammering-humble-good-kid routine, Willie explaining everything in biaozhun huayu about the unimpeachable projects of Farm.sg, before getting round to my explanation of why I was using his painting in connection in ka-tong-pian style. He wasn't too happy about this - he said that his piece was "yuan lai hen yan su" and I agreed that my design was "wan pi" but that was the whole point of a younger perspective - we have to pay homage through our silliness.

And eventually, Mr Chua told us, "da shuan shi ke yi."

And we breathed and drank our milky coffee, and he showed us around his living room. He pointed out his wood carvings from Zambia, the prints he sells with oil brush textures added because the originals are just too expensive for collectors, his design on the old two-dollar bills and his koi paintings - people were doing knockoffs of his koi, so he started drawing hungry, angry koi in turbulent water, gaping and shutting their mouths to break the surface. No-one else does that. It's become his signature.

Willie was marvelling at how hard it must have been to learn to paint water. Mr Chua told us it was all a matter of studying and practice - he told us about the old days, when they channeled all their energy into focussing on their technique and polishing it till it shone - and how today, all of us young people want everything to be done fast, efficient, and clever.

Guk. I'm guilty as charged. Things like "Lee Low Tar", they're written with wit because I don't have the craft.

Anyway, Mr Chua gave both of us copies of this book from one of his recent exhibitions.


I'll have to post him a copy of "last boy" - I figure he'll find it less suspect than "SQ21".

He also told us a bit of trivia about National Language Class - how it was done within a week, 10 hours at the easel a day, and how when S. Rajaratnam saw it at the show and said he liked it, the young Mr Chua just *gave* him the painting, like that. I should have that sense of charity. I should.

Btw, it's just been confirmed - Rojak 9 will take place at the new LaSalle building, on the green, from 8pm onwards on Saturday 15 September. Be there!

Non-fiction

I dreamt I had a ghost-wedding
to a man with the face of an antelope.
I woke up and the cat was riding my butt.

I Am the Biggest Blurfuck Ever

On Friday morning I lost my mobile phone in the bus. (Strangely enough, although I checked with the bus company and home before cancelling, I didn't think of *calling* the number to see if someone who'd picked it up might answer...)

Saturday night I get a replacement SIMcard. The Hello shop guy tells me the SIMcard will only get activated tomorrow.

Ten minutes ago, a friend instant messages me to check if I'm okay.

It turns out I missed one of my best friend's weddings because I thought it was in December instead of September. Everyone's been trying to call me to find out where I am since the church service in the morning.

GAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! How can I make up for a blur fuckup like that? Plus, it was going to be the first wedding of a friend my age I'd attend - not too many of my friends can actually *get* married.

August Texts

17 books in a 31-day month. Decent speed considering that I was busy with IndigNation for most the month... as well as a bunch of other research projects.

Incidentally, I really would check out the Singapore Art Museum's two new displays - curator Seng Yu Jin's got a great little gallery that looks at both the Singapore Art Society and the Equator Art Society in the light of the anti-colonial upheavals of the '50s, and the UOB Paintings of the Year are, while of uneven standard, rather charmingly arranged in a new niche gallery on the 3rd level.

*POETRY*
+Davis McCombs's “Ultima Thule”
+Anne Carson's "Men in the Off Hours"
+Jacob Sam-La Rose's "Communion"

*FICTION*
+Neal Stephenson's “The Diamond Age”
+Anita Desai's “The Zigzag Way”
+John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men"
+Jeanette Winterson's “Weight”

*DRAMA*
+Sarah Kane's “Complete Plays”
Stella Kon's "A Breeding Pair"

*NON-FICTION*
Anglo-Chinese School's “Hearts, Hopes and Aims” and “On His Wings”
T K Sabapathy's “Configuring the Body: Form and Tenor in Ng Eng Teng”
Constance Sheares's “Bodies Transformed: Ng Eng Teng in the Nineties”
+Judith Helmer and Florian Malzacher's “Not Even a Game Anymore: The Theatre of Forced Entertainment”
Confucius's "Analects" (reread)
+Ding Wangdao's “Understanding Confucius”
+The Promote Mandarin Council's “Huaren.Huayu.Huawen”/“Mandarin: The Chinese Connection”
+Chua Beng-Huat's "Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore"

*PERFORMANCES*
Toy Factory's “Big Fool Lee”
+Jochen Roller's "perform performing"
+Action Theatre's "Hitting on Women"
+The Theatre Practice's “If There're Seasons”
Action Theatre's "Real Men, Fake Orgasms"

*FILMS*
+Tan Pin Pin's "Invisible City"
+Royston Tan's "881"
+Adam Shankman's "Hairspray"
Rajendra Gour's "Labour of Love: the Housewife", "My Child, My Child", +"Eyes" and +"Sunshine - Singapore"
+Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava's “Ratatouille”

*EXHIBITIONS*
+IndigNation's “Idiosyncrasies”
NAC's "Singapore Art Exhibition"
Ming Wong, Lynn Lu and +Ho Tzu Nyen's "Word of Mouth: Curating Lab"
Victoria Dunn's "Now”
+Singapore Art Museum's ”From Words to Pictures: Art of the Emergency”
+Singapore Art Museum's “The Best of UOB”

fuck us on family

You know how bad it is? Last Saturday morning, I was at Newton MRT and a secondary school girl was fulfilling her compulsory charity work by collecting money for this:



She approached me to give money and I told her that while Focus on Family does undoubtedly conduct some positive affirming programmes, asking me as a gay man to donate was like asking a Jew to donate to the Neo-Nazis.

I'm not sure if I should be more disturbed by the fact that she had no idea that she was collecting for an anti-gay organisation, or by the fact that her friend knew and was collecting anyway.

Of course, the main point is that an actively bigoted group is able to receive funding through Ministry of Education programmes like this. Big heave.

I mish my shishter.

She's flown off to do her PhD at Yale, leaving me as the only one in my generation left in the family. Which is just great.

Before she left, our auntie Rose Oh stopped by and delivered these cheongsams she'd made for her (she's a tailor, you see:)

Disgruntlement in white and gold.

Levitation in red and gold.

Levity.

We also went crazy and took some R-rated shots which I'll have to get approval for before I upload. My mum was very intrigued by the visual possibilities of the slits.

Gua eh didi wu chia

My brother's gone back to Virginia. :(

He wrote us this e-mail:

Dear family,

I am now a proud owner of a Chrysler sebring 2002 gun metal blue 4 doored sedan. I'm trying to find a good name for it, but its either "shiok" or "chio bu". I think chio bu is a good name.


It cost a total of about 11,000 USD for the car and for insurance. Insurance was 545 USD for 6 months. Based on mom's directive to go to a respectable car dealer, I went down to Carmax, the auto superstore near my roommate's place. I already planned to buy a Chrevolet Malibu 2003 at 9,998USD, and saw it. Wah, really lor, it looked very "value" and sad. Everything was "value" about it, and it was quite sad to look at. Plus safety wise, the thing was even sadder. Had no ABS brakes (which is quite uncommon for a "newer" car). Forget about power steering too. Then i saw its cousin, a Acura, which was built a few years later than the Malibu, and cost a good 2,000USD cheaper. And wasn't all that different really. So i was quite set on buying that 7,998 USD car.

But while looking at the sad cars, my room mate brendt went walking around, and came back with a very broad grin on his face, and beckoned me to come.

And then i met Chio Bu. Chio Bu was the most attractive car under 10,000USD in the entire lot. And she's still pleasing to the eye without looking at the price tag. But when I opened the car door, FWAH! Got leather xia! And got nice dashboard! And the windows are electrically powered! And the seats are LEATHER! (oops, did I mention that already) PLus the car did not stink, unlike the other 2.

But what mattered the most, were its amenities. Good airbags, and ABS brakes, and powersteering make me a happy man. Then I brought it on a test drive, and wah! The car doesn't like to go slow. Probably a result of its V6 engine. (most pok kai cars have 4 cylinders, this one got 6 man!) Once you drive to 50miles per hour, the "chio bu" don't want to slow down.

Oh yes. So i was quite set on buying chio bu already. Since a) price wise, it was competitive. b) I couldn't believe i could get that good a deal on a car below 10k that looked decent. c) the alternatives were really a bit sad. d) shiok shiok shiok.

So i happily said "lets get it", and was introduced to the "sian'ness" of the american "shopping experience". Took ages to buy the car. Insurance (which is damn exp. since I'm a college guy under 26yrs of age) took a big chunk, and the stupid dealer who listed the car wrongly in terms of category. (which I managed to catch while jet lagged and sick)

But I walked out with chiobu, which was all waxed and washed before I got her. And thereafter chiobu and I had our first adventure. Brendt drives like a crazy man. That is for certain. Trying to keep up with him on the freeway was do'able, since chio bu and I have a very close bond. But a pickup cut brendt off from me, and I ended up following another car which was the same color as brendt's honda to god know's where, and was stuck waiting on a gravel road for brendt to find me. Luckily he did, and chio bu and i continued to follow crazy black man brendt. (he drives like he's in the video game grand theft auto)

It was interesting following him, since I actually drive pretty responsibly. Sagely advise from my US driving instructor to obey the driving rules makes sense, since in the US when u accelerate from one traffic light to another, you'll just end up getting stuck in the next light. But when you have to follow a mad man, you have no choice but to be double'y mad to stick to his tail. The joker basically floors the accelerator once the lights turn green. Amusingly, he remarked that I had "skills" for keeping up with him.

I have resolved to not follow mad men again. Chio bu doesn't like it.

I will be driving down to charlottesville tomorrow. It should be a nice pleasant drive. Of which i will be a "guai" singaporean and follow the road rules.

Oh, and ah pa. Yes the TT went through. Funnily, I owe them 15 USD, of which i will pay via check.

Oh and ah ma and ah pa, don't worry. I will drive safe and responsibly. Must keep chio bu safe and pretty and not give her an "extreme makeover".

Best,
yix

Socratic Dialogue in Progress

Plenty to write about, but no time, so for appearances' sake I'll upload a pic from David Chew and Vince Ong's farewell party. That's David looking philosopher and me looking like an obedient disciple.

z0mg "881" r0xx0rz!!1!1!

Just came back after a family film outing to Royston Tan's new movie "881"... my mum (CEO), father (retired financial consultant) and big sister (forthcoming PhD student with focus in Old English linguistics) were ALL singing along to the Hokkien songs in the getai. And so were a whole bunch of other people in the audience (not too loudly, but audibly enough to make me realise what an impact this show is having just by *recognising* that getai is valuable cultural art form).

There are some films that exoticise Singapore for foreign audiences (cf. Chicken Rice Wars), and our automatic response to that as artists is to push for films that represent Singapore as it really is (cf. Singapore Dreaming).

Royston's picked up on a new route - he doesn't care about the reality of Singapore; he'll glamourise us above and beyond believability to give a Singapore audience what it wants (and never really knew it wanted) - a soul-swinging, heart-wringing, singalong smorgasbord of light and colour and campy costume.

I super<3 Royston now; he can have my ass anytime he wants (unless I have Arabic or capoeira class, in which case I have to reschedule).

ContraDePiction

I've stolen some photos of ContraDiction III from the IndigNation website - probably taken by Alex Au himself. Looking back, I'm gladder than ever about how it went (it may be the first time that I've been put in charge of curating a literary reading too, which makes me feel all grown-up, teehee).

That's Qian Xi and me, opening the evening with our poems (we were sacrificial lambs lah)


Chan Sze-Wei had a brief play-reading by SRT Young Company and read two poems (she said it's her virgin reading some more!)

Next up were Zhuang Yisa and Yak Aik Wee (who did a combination of music and text).

This is a shot from the back of the stage (where the sexually suggestive snacks table was) so you can get an idea of the setup.

Jonathan Lim and Jasmine Seah made an astonishingly good pair - they alternated their pieces, and Jonathan read all these sultry, sexual poems whereas Jasmine read poems of detached sensation and restraint. Camp men and stone women on love - very nice how the gender parity of the evening worked out too.

Could I just show off my rainbow dhoti again? Along with Indu's amazing cheongsam? Indu read from her blog (very powerful rendition; the piece we picked was nice and rhythmic). Maia Lee and Lee Gwo Yinn also did blog entry readings (see below).


And Amannda Teee (I'm misspelling her name to reduce googlabilty, since she's still in JC) was a really good performer - guitarist and songwriter. Hope she doesn't give up music; she wowed the crowd.



And can I just boast that thanks to Stephanie Yap, we were the only IndigNation event to get press coverage without getting banned first? She couldn't mention it was queer, though. It must be tough being a mainstream arts reporter in a Renaissance city - all the artists are queer except Raphael.

Mali kita Yaya

Ich bin ein Media Hur

I'm in the papers again. Tuesday August 14, "Fluid body: envelope stuffing and nude dancing get message across", Life! p10 - June Cheong's dance review of Jochen Roller's "Perform Performing".

Honestly, I didn't volunteer immediately. I looked around, saw that no-one else had the courage to be an entertainer, and then plunged in (despite having very sore muscles). $10 for 3 min of boogie - wouldn't you do it? Why derive a moral about the incestuousness of the arts community because I'm naturally hyperactive? Grump grump grump.

ContraDiction aftermath and Pink Run

Phew! About 100 people turned up for ContraDiction (maybe more; we ran out of seats!). Iris had an inflamed throat so we had a replacement singer, I lost my peanut butter cookies and Tupperware on the bus, our reader for Johann S. Lee's novel extract couldn't make it, and Maia Lee lost her way... but it all turned out extremely well! Great mix of voices! Will upload photos once people send them to me!

In the meantime, here's a photo by Ian Lee of the Pink Run on Saturday morning... I'm fourth fom the right in the back row. 37 people in the photo, not counting the ones who turned up late, and not counting the 10 plainclothes police officers who advised us to cancel the run (we cancelled it, took the group photo, and allowed everyone to run in a non-organised fashion if we chose... and most of us did choose to).

I ran 4km, did my Cold Storage Shopping, watched Ovidia Yu's "Hitting (on) Women", attended my capoeira class and then went to watch Jochen Roller's "Perform Performing", in which I volunteered to go onstage to dance for 3 minutes in exchange for S$10 to demonstrate the economic opportunity cost of art.

So on Sunday morning my ass was very sore indeed. Sex is overrated as a full-body workout.

ContraDiction 3: A Queer Literary Evening

An evening of queer writing - including poetry, drama, blog entries and songs. Readers will include myself, Teng Qian Xi, Chan Sze-Wei, Zhuang Yisa and Maia Lee. Also featured will be original music composed and performed by Iris Judotter and Yak Aik Wee.

Licence from MDA approved. Rated R18.

Date: Sunday, 12 August 2007
Time: 7:30 - 9:30 pm
Venue: 72-13 Mohamed Sultan Road

Let's talk about love

The third ContraDiction event will focus on lesser-known poets and musicians.

Ftw! Stephanie Yap actually managed to get ContraDiction 3 advertised in the Sunday Times! 12 August 2007, L25. Sappy headline, but that's ST branding apparently. :P

Love will take centrestage at poetry and music event ContraDiction – including its myriad joys and heartbreaks.

Now in its third year, the annual event celebrating gender and sexuality will be held at arts venue 72-13 this Sunday.

Curating the event this year is poet and playwright Ng Yi-sheng, whose recently staged works include the musical Georgette and the play 251.

Ng, 27, who participated as a reader in previous years, says that this year's event differs from past ones due to its even gender distribution.

While five women and five men will be performing on Sunday, including STOMP star blogger Maia Lee, Ng says the event was testosterone-driven in previous years.

"There are more published writers and poets who are male than female, so I'm glad we've got more women readers this time," says Ng, himself a published writer who will read from his debut poetry collection, Last Boy.

Another change this year is the absence of established writers like Cyril Wong and Alfiaan Sa'at, who both participated in previous readings.

Says Ng: "I want the focus to be on lesser-known artists, as well as people not traditionally considered writers."

Thus, he has rounded up budding poets like Foyle Young Poet Teng Qianxi, musicians like singer-songwriter Iris Judotter, and even bloggers like Maia Lee and Lee Gwo Yinn.

Another participant is civil servant Chan Sze Wei, who works at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Chan, 27, will be reading "two little love poems" – one about falling
in love and the other about breaking up.

An extract from a play she wrote last year with the Singapore Repertory Theatre Young Company, about teenage depression, will also be performed.

She hopes the audience will be touched by the stories they hear: "I hope that for each audience member, there will be something in the stories and ideas that will resonate with them, something that they'll take away with them as a new gift."

ContraDiction is on this Sunday at 7:30pm at TheatreWorks, 72-13 Mohamed Sultan Road. Admission is free. Rated R-18.

--

Pink Picnic!!!

I went today. There were over 100 of us there! Not including the plainclothes policemen!

And this is what I wore. (The T-shirt is pale pink... doesn't come out so well in photos).


For more photos by Saltwetfish, click here!

Think our National Day is spectacular?... well, just check out our Communist inspirations

Interestingly enough, Faithless has an alternate video set in Brazil. See here.

I'm 22!

Poodwaddle.com

Your BBQ is illegal.

UPDATE 07/08/07: Turns out these events are not as cancelled as they appear. ;)

The National Parks Board has just told us that the Pink Run (an athletic run around the Botanical Gardens) and the In the Pink picnic on National Day have both been banned. Probably some homophobe wrote in to them to complain.

It's staggering to me that they could do that - all we were going to do was turn up in pink and eat food and talk cock and run - it's not a rally or parade at all (if we were that organised, then we'd either have legal recognition or be exiled to Sentosa by now).

The Illegal Assemblies Act has never struck home so hard before. Every meeting of - four, five, what? - people, even to roast chicken wings or study or pray, is against the law without a permit. We are living in a police state - they can arrest us for so many things (and God knows, they don't even need a reason to lawfully detain us).

Very upset. Oh, and the "Tall Tales and Short Stories" reading went fine, thank you.

Lee Low Tar aftermath.

Yay! My banned short story "Lee Low Tar" got Tomorrowed. For better or worse, many people think it's a genuine letter from the MDA... fail English compre already!

This is me at MDA. The posters in the background warn that if you let children watch violent and sexy movies, they'll become axe-wielding serial killer kids who have oral sex in the classroom.

I was at their office today to pick up our completely approved licence for ContraDiction 3, our queer literary reading. I met Veronica Looi, who's a small, very nice-looking woman with a big smile, long hair, and a black scarf. I gave her a print-out copy of "Lee Low Tar", telling her she'd probably be offended by it, but since her name was being used in the censorship of so many things, I thought she should know what it was she was censoring. She smiled, apparently without pretense, and said she'd read it.

It's also of interest that I have a good friend who actually works at MDA - Leon Lim, who's in Strategic Planning (not any censorship board; he likes culture too much for that). We were in French class together back in secondary school. Watched Toy Factory's "Big Fool Lee" with him tonight and we agreed that it was a mediocrely written idol-worshipping paean to a Chinese cultural centrist that was more suited to TV or film than the stage.

I suppose my point is that as fun as it is to joke about MDA - how it seems to use its authority to deprive us of rather than to develop media - no institution is homogenous, and the corporation that kicks you in the knickers will very often contain people who are very nice but uninformed, or who are actually sympathetic to your cause but not yet in positions of influence.

Have plenty to say at the talk I'm giving on Sunday in lieu of the short story reading. Seeya there.

B).