collaboration

Trouble girls: Art for ‘Lagi Senang Jaga Sekandang Lembu’

Early in the year, my friend Amanda Nell Eu asked if I wanted to work on her short film. She sent me her script, about the friendship between two teenage girls, set in a Malay kampung. One of them turns into a Pontianak.

Some time ago I’d randomly drawn two characters. I didn’t know who they were, or where they came from, and I still don’t. I gathered they were friends, girls who were in trouble, and caused trouble. In any case, I dumped them in the ‘art for reasons unknown’ folder (an actual folder in my studio, and also, in my head) and forgot about them.

They came crawling out again this year, when my friend Wolf wanted art for his new album. He ended up using other drawings of mine, on account of them being naked ladies, and the album being for all ages. This is them making some dramatic escape to the tune of ‘I Love the Law’, my favorite song on the album.

So they were very alive to me when I became Amanda’s unlikely art director. Seeds of them when into Fatin and Rahmah, Amanda’s two characters. Despite me not knowing the first thing about film-making, AND being a total chicken-shit horror-phobe, Amanda and I worked well together. We have an appreciation for the trouble in girls. Looking at most of my work that sees the light of day, you wouldn’t call it dark, but with Amanda, I found somewhere to put the darkness.

These were my first drawings of Fatin and Rahmah.

Growing up, I didn’t see many girl-girl partnerships depicted in the culture around me. As an adult, I still don’t. It’s always two guys going off and having adventures: Frodo and Sam, Holmes and Watson, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. When I told Zedeck this, he wrote a series of stories about ‘The Adventures of Sandy and Aina’, loosely based on me and my best friend, some of which ended up published in KL Noir: BLUE, a crime anthology.

Here’s Fatin and Rahmah hanging out in the jungle after school. This was my favorite scene in the film. I got obsessed about the snacks they were eating, and insisted on having this PARTICULAR brand of neon pink cotton candy that you can only find in petrol stations. Also, a PARTICULAR brand of bootleg cigarettes, which my art team went to great lengths to find. By the way, if you’re looking for a production design team in Malaysia, MovArt are amazing, wonderful, the best.

Not coincidentally, the colour palette of the film was pink and green.

I imagined Amanda’s Pontianak as wearing a pink satin pajamas set, with long claws and long hair. Amanda wanted a monster who was also a very human girl. Fatin was all hair, all body – an animal comfortable in the world, and at the same time, a girl at war with it.

For a few months I lived with photo reference of bruises, bite marks, severed hands, and a condition called trichotillomania, on my phone.

THE CLAWS. All the better to rip your daddy’s guts out, and feast on them under banana trees, on the night of a full moon!

Before working on this film I’d never seen a story taken apart and put back together so often and in so many ways. It’s amazing that stories can go through this brutal process and come out resembling anything like an edible (sometimes delicious, and even transcendent) sausage.

It’s a constant back and forth between zooming out to see the whole sausage, like this first thumbnail breakdown of the wardrobe and set design for every scene… (I literally can’t remember how many subsequent breakdowns I did, for clothes, for props, for makeup, etc. etc.)

…and filling in the tiniest details of the sausage, like this badge I designed for Rahmah’s school uniform.

Oh I have left out so many steps and all the talented, ridiculously hard-working professionals involved in the making of this sausage (producer, cinematography, lighting, sound, continuity, editing, etc. etc.), to jump right to the end, where you wrap the finished sausage in nice packaging, i.e this poster I designed…

…and hope the people who eat it enjoy it!

‘Lagi Senang Jaga Sekandang Lembu’ will be be screened on ASTRO sometime in 2017.

Here, enjoy some production photos!

Fatin and Rahmah meet at the test shoot:

Fatin in her tree:

This cat wanted to be in the film real bad, and is probably in one of the scenes:

Best art department team a newbie art director could ask for, taking a break at the famous ‘Boyfriend’ fruit shake stall in Broga:

Ella Sandera and Timie Boy, best special effects and make-up team a newbie art director could ask for, working on a totally zonked out Fatin:

Dinner taim:

First draft of the poster, featuring Zedeck:

Update (2 Jan 2017): Here are two extra pages from my sketchbook for this film. They reveal the sometimes crippling self-doubt that is nicer to keep hidden. I decided to include them because I think it may be useful for people to know that it is not easy to be a beginner again. As an artist, context – your body of work – is everything. In the film world, I had no context, and so experienced being someone whose work is unknown, unproven. It’s not a comfortable place to be! I’m grateful to Amanda, our producer Gan, and everyone who worked on this film for taking a chance on me. With some work, some nerve, some luck, and people you believe in, who believe in you – you can forge from the self-doubt something worthwhile.

Bontot Jambu / Pink Butt: An Animated GIF Story about Cats

Created for Festival Filem Meowlaysia 1, Malaysia’s first Cat Video Festival, which premiered at Art For Grabs on 24 Sept 2016. Here is the story in BM and English, with notes and tips at the end (in case you want to make your own).

****

BONTOT PINK

Ini kucing belaan kami. Nama dia Mini-PSB.

Bulu hitam, bontot pink. Ekor pendek sahaja. Seperti udang yang dikupas kulitnya, sudah busuk lalu ditumbuhi kulapuk beroma.

Boleh kata kami berdua manusia belaan si dia.

////

CAT-BUTT

This is a cat’s butt. So pink!

Sometimes – because our cat is so black – when she has her back to us her butt is the only detail we can pick out.

This is our cat. She is black, and has a stub-tail. Her tail is like a fishhook, or a cooked prawn, that has gone busuk and sprouted black fungus fur. When our cat is nervous her cooked-prawn tail twitches-twitches-twitches.

Our cat is called Mini-PSB.

****

MINI-PSB

Rumah kami sering dikunjungi kucing liar. Banyak sangat, sampai kena guna nama kod.

Yang ni adik kepada yang tu. Yang tu, boyfriend kepada yang ni. And so on. Ada yang seekor tu, nama kod dia PSB: Penyu’s Sister’s Boyfriend.

Kucing hitam. Dia ni selalu resah gelisah. Gementar. Kalau nampak kami intai dia, dia cemas. Cepat-cepat lari.

////

MINI-PSB

Explain for you, okay? Our house in Port Dickson attracts a lot of strays. We name our strays after cats we used to have.

This is Penyu’s Sister. She was a white cat with a grey-stained face, and she looked like a cat called Penyu, a cat we used to have.

Penyu’s Sister had a boyfriend. We called him Penyu’s Sister’s Boyfriend, or PSB. He was a tail-less black cat, quite small.

He was a very, very shy cat. He only ever came to visit at night. We’d see him creep up the driveway – and then he’d see us, spying on him. He’d freeze. And then he’d zoom off.

****

CEMAS

Nama Mini-PSB sebab rupa dia bulat-bulat macam PSB. Tapi saiz mini sedikit.

Dia ni pun cemas-cemas. Dah bersama kami setahun. Dari kecik lagi. Tapi masih takut manusia. Baru hari tu I jumpa dia duduk kat depan pintu.

Rasa macam nak bermanja dengan dia. Jadi I sentuh kaki dia. Dia panik! Kuku dia keluar. Dia cakar kaki I, calar sampai berdarah-darah.

////

ANXIOUSCAT

Mini-PSB looks like a miniature, female version of PSB. We used to feed her mum, and her mum abandoned her here.

She is just as shy as her namesake. She is scared of humans. She’s lived with us for more than a year. But sometimes, if we aren’t careful, aren’t mindful enough to announce our presence, we spook her.

She jumps! Her hook-tail puffs! Her claws come out and scratch-scritch-scratches the floor as she runs.

More than once she’s run in between our feet and sliced open our toes.

****

TIGA SEKAWAN

Sebelum Mini-PSB kami ada bela kucing lain. Tiga sekawan, adik beradik.

First sekali, Pingu: kucing hitam-putih, macam burung penguin. Dia ni suka duduk dalam pasu, dalam tong sampah.

Yang kedua, Prospero: dia ni suka panjat kat dapur. Habis pecah botol, pecah gelas semua.

Ketiga, Lord Nelson: yang paling cool sekali. Bulu dia panjang, perangai dia zen. Suara dia kecil: iu iu~

////

CATLY TRINITY

Before Mini-PSB, we had three cats, our catly trinity:

Pingu the silly, with his tuxedo and propensity for sitting in rubbish bins; Prospero the fat-bellied, who loved pushing glass things off shelves; and Lord Nelson, coolest and fluffiest, tufts of fur between his fingers.

****

SEMUA PERGI

Lord Nelson teman Sharon tiap malam apabila bekerja di studio. Dia ni baik hati. Steady. Tapi mati diserang anjing liar di kawasan sekolah, belakang rumah kami.

Satu hari Pingu keluar rumah, tapi tak balik-balik.

Prospero yang first sekali hilang. Bila dia hilang, kami ada buat notis, lekat kat serata taman. “ADA NAMPAK KUCING KAMI?” Kucing kesayangan kami. Masih rindu kat dia.

////

HOW WE LOST THE CATLY TRINITY

Once, Pingu got stuck up a tree. He wandered off and never came home.

Lord Nelson would sleep in the studio, keeping Sharon company as she worked through the night. He died to a pack of straw dogs living in the school next to our house.

Prospero was the first to go. We printed out “HAVE YOU SEEN OUR CAT?” flyers. Somebody called us, saying they saw her. It wasn’t her.

****

CHICKEN

Kucing kami yang keempat, nama dia Chicken. Sebab jumpa dia kat tengah-tengah main road kat pekan Port Dickson. Nasib Sharon tak langgar!

Chicken ni gila. Betul! Perangai dia ada dua mode. Mode pertama: tidur, tak bangun-bangun.

Mode kedua: gila degil nak mampus. Cakar-cakar, gigit-gigit. Teruk I diseksa. Sampai tahap rasa macam nak buang dia.

////

CHICKEN

Our fourth cat was called Chicken. She was a dirty calico with crazy eyes.

She was called Chicken because we found her as a kitten in the middle of the main road. Sharon almost ran her over. When Sharon stopped the car Chicken climbed into the engine. We had to see a mechanic to get her out.

Chicken was legit crazy. She had two modes. Murderous – to toes, fingers, soft-toy mice; and dead-to-the-world asleep.

****

CHICKEN MATI

Tapi dia mati dulu. Jangkitan Feline panleukopenia virus, atau FPV.

Virus ni menyerang sistem pencernaan. Usus-usus dia lebur dibaham penyakit itu. Muntah-muntah, mati kesakitan.

Jenazah Chicken dibalut pakej empat segi, tapi ada satu kaki terkeluar, macam drumstick. Doktor kata sebab kaki dia ni degil sangat. Oh, Chicken.

////

HOW WE LOST CHICKEN

Chicken died of feline distemper. She caught it, fighting other strays.

The virus attacks a cat’s digestive tract, dissolves its intestinal lining. A cat dies starving, and in pain.

We cried when Chicken died. We buried her underneath our mangosteen tree. I dug her grave myself.

****

PENYU

Penyu kucing kami yang kelima. Pagi itu, Sharon jumpa dia dalam rumah. Mengiau lapar. “Hello,” katanya. “I lapar. Makanan di mana?”

Lepas makan, dia akan mengorek-ngorek keliling mangkuk. Macam nak menyimpan makanan yang berlebihan.

I ada baca: perangai ni sering dilihat pada anak kucing yang kebuluran.

////

PENYU

Penyu was a kitten who Sharon found indoors, one morning. “Hello,” it said. “I’m here now. Please feed me.”

Sharon tried to kick it out, but it kept re-appearing. “Hello,” it’d say. “Please feed me.”

It was mangy and starving. After eating at its bowl of kibble, it’d paw around the sides, as if trying to bury the food. Later, I read that this behaviour is common in strays, when food is hard to come by.

So Sharon fed her, and we named her Penyu, and that was that.

****

PENYU MASIH ADA

Satu pagi Penyu hilang. Entah kemana, tak pulang-pulang.

Tapi roh dia masih ada. Tiap malam sebelum tidur, di ruang antara bantal kami, tempat dia selalu lelap. Semangat dia masih di ruang itu.

Pingu dalam pasunya. Prospero di rak dapur. Lord Nelson di dalam studio. Chicken pengsan tengah-tengah lantai, tak bangun-bangun.

////

GHOST CATS

One morning Penyu left, and didn’t come home.

She is still with us, though.

Whenever we go to bed, we look at the gap between our pillows, that little nook in the middle there, and we see her white furry body. Her head, heavy-lidded, slowly nodding off, as she always did. Purring, purring.

Lord Nelson in his corner, Prospero on her shelf, Pingu in his bin. Chicken, conked out, belly up, sleeping.

****

KEMANA KUCING MATI PERGI?

Syurga untuk kucing macam mana?

I rasa tempat itu penuh dengan flora berbentuk tangan manusia. Jadi bila kucing lalu dia akan sentiasa dibelai.

I rasa tempat itu ada tikus, burung dan serangga kecil. Ada tupai dan cicak. Takut-takut, tapi tak mati-mati. Dijadikan mainan si comel. Sebab kucing ni memang haiwan kejam.

I rasa tempat itu mesti ada hasil-hasil laut yang disediakan atas dulang emas, ikan dan udang yang berbau tapi tak pernah busuk.

////

THE CAT AFTERLIFE

What is the heaven for cats like?

There must be rows of catnip, and fields to frolic in, with green grass shaped like human hands. The grass will scratch you behind your ears if you lay in it.

There must be stocks of mice and hopping birds; insects, squirrels, lizards. These must be afraid and immortal. Because cats are really quite evil.

There must be wet kibble served on silver spittoons that never goes dry and stinky.

****

BONTOT PINK LAGI

Mini-PSB sudah lompat atas meja, depan komputer, atas papan kekunci. Dah memanggil-manggil, mengiau-ngiau manja.

Jadi kami berhenti di sini, okay? Sorry. Faham-faham la kan? Si kucing ni tak boleh ditidakkan.

////

CAT-BUTT

Mini-PSB has climbed on our keyboard, a sign we should stop now, and pay attention to her.

So we have to, you know? Sorry and bye-bye.

****

NOTES & TIPS

1. I saw these two animations on the internet. Both times, I turned to Zedeck and said: let’s make something like this, give ourselves 3 – 4 days limit, see what comes out!

The first is by master Iranian animator Noureddin Zarrinkelk:

The second is ‘Bat and Hat’ by Becky James:

2. Hazri Haili and Amanda Nell Eu asked us to be part of Festival Filem Meowlaysia, so we decided to make something about our cats. Zedeck wrote a script, and I did a rough storyboard:

3. For each scene, I drew the background first, then the moving elements, or ‘assets’, which were cut out. The backgrounds I did in color pencil, and the assets with crayon so they would stand out.

4. I did everything freehand, no sketches. This was hard, because I am a perfectionist. But I like the result of my imperfect hand making imperfect marks.

5. This is the DIY lightbox we made. We taped Zedeck’s Samsung phone to the the top of the box which had a hole cut in it. To animate, we moved the assets a little, took a picture, and repeated until we got the motion we wanted. Afterwards we put together the photos in Photoshop and made animated GIFs. Here is a simple tutorial on how to make animated GIFs in Photoshop. If you don’t have Photoshop, you can use Gimp, which is free and open source.

6. Some advice from our friend Choen Lee: use LED bulbs instead of normal fluorescent bulbs, and you won’t get the different coloured stripes you can see in the GIFs above.

7. Here is Zedeck performing ‘Bontot Jambu/Pink Butt’ at Festival Filem Meowlaysia 1. He read the story in BM while the animated GIFs played on screen.

Can’t believe we made this silly thing. So happy we did.

Animals! Animals! Animals! Prints! Prints! Prints! (in progress)

Here is a taste of what I’ve been working on for the past few weeks, in a little attic studio at the top of Hotel Penaga, where I’ve been artist/parasite-in-residence since mid-May.

These linocut illustrations for Zedeck’s ‘Local Fauna’ story collection have been in progress for two years. I checked the date of the very first sketch I made, and it was 2 Dec 2014:

In 2015, we pasted the first 10 linocut designs that I finished on bus stops around Jalan Pudu, and later some of them were collected in Little Basket, the new anthology of Malaysian writing published by Fixi Novo.

Now, I’m at 20 linocut designs, and we printed editions of all of them! There is no part of these prints that my (and Zedeck’s) hands haven’t touched. We pulled them by hand, with pitch-black oil-based ink on handmade Thai mulberry paper, and a ton of elbow grease. Both ink and paper are beautiful. I caught myself wondering if making linocuts was just a way to show off the raw beauty of those age-old materials… you get weird thoughts during the long hours of printmaking.

So we are doing an exhibition! It’s at Run Amok Gallery in Georgetown, which is an art space and collective run by friends we love. It opens tomorrow. There are 20 linocuts, and we’re selling some editions to raise funds for a book. Yes, we are making a book, tentatively called ‘Local Flora, Local Fauna’. It will have 50 animal stories and 25 plant stories by Zedeck, and each of them will have an illustration by me… so 20 linocuts down, 55 to go…

Here are some of the prints in the exhibition. Interested in buying a print? Email info AT runamok DOT my for the full catalog. We’re taking international orders too.

Update 25 July 2016: The full catalogue of prints is now online. Please visit: http://runamok.my/localfauna/

Maybe after all the prints are gone we will finally be able to get some sleep? Until the next round of printing…

The Coming Flood

“These souls, fleeing the Sultan’s cruelty, sadly they cannot live with us. To live a life of piratical liberty, one must have sea-worth, able to court and cower before Mother Ocean.”

“In their souls they are uplanders. They have hill-shaped hearts. They can neither read star-charts nor savour the taste of spray. They’re simply not made that way!”

Having justified themselves, the pirates of the island prepared a care package — a barrel of beer; a netful of fish; twelve blankets, folded, lowered by crane onto the outcasts’ largest raft. Along with a letter, saying:

“Ho there travellers! Unfortunately, you may not settle here. Sorry! Have these gifts, no strings attached, with our sympathies, and this whale-bone recorder,”

— at which point a flute fell out of the unfolded page —

“with which you might use to attract a dragon-spirit’s pity. Hopefully! Thank you. Please go.”

I made illustrations for ‘Whalebone and Crabshell’, a fable by Zedeck Siew. It was spurred by the Rohingya refugee crisis, or rather by our shameful response towards said crisis.

Some notes that might be of interest:

The floral motif decorating the landmass in the first picture is a Thazin orchid, royal flower of Burma. The most prized come from mountains in Rakhine state, on the west of Burma bordering Bangladesh, which is also the traditional home of the Rohingya people.

The gilt borders feature the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) emblem, where ‘the stalks of padi in the centre of the Emblem represent the dream of ASEAN’s Founding Fathers [sic] for an ASEAN comprising all the countries in Southeast Asia, bound together in friendship and solidarity’.

Solidarity and Subversion – Making ‘My Samsung, My Best Fiend’

Q & A between Sharon and Maryann about their collaboration ‘My Samsung, My Best Fiend’ for Samsung Masterpieces digital art platform. It was rejected based on legal grounds. Read about it here.

Sharon: When I approached you with the idea of collaborating, I’d already done some research and found out about Samsung workers getting cancer. I remember you being skeptical about being anti-corporate and anti-Samsung because that was an easy position to take. Actually it was your natural skepticism that made me want to collaborate with you in the first place! What was the progress of your thoughts and feelings as you researched and developed the script?

Maryann: I think the more accurate description of my feelings then would be wariness. When we criticise actions of others, if we’re not careful we let our fervour take over and then it becomes a battle to win the argument at all costs. I feel responsibility to think carefully about the messages we put out there; whether we’re perpetuating false ideas, especially since these bits of information are given material form and will presumably survive forever or at least for a much longer time than ink and pulp. Like conspiracy theories, some ideas become so convincingly burned into people’s imagination that no amount of reasoning and evidence can persuade them to consider otherwise.

I was also feeling a bit strange that as a regular smartphone user, and of a Samsung, at that, that I would be hammering the company. I felt like a hypocrite. I still do. I’ll admit to being very seduced by these devices. Have you seen the new-generation flexible screens? They are fantastic.

Sharon: Can you list some of the info sources, like news articles and documentaries, you looked at?

Maryann: This story has been big news for several years in South Korea so finding sources was not difficult. We have Bloomberg Businessweek, the Wall Street Journal, a documentary by Al-Jazeera and of course the very vocal, SHARPS (Supporters for Health and Rights of People in the Semiconductor industry).

I also searched the chemicals used in semiconductor manufacturing to look for other opinions. I found an article by Elizabeth Grossman to be fairly objective. The direct link between cancer and clean room conditions is still being debated although there certainly is an unusually high number of cancer cases with Samsung. Some of the chemicals used like benzene, are known human carcinogens while others like trichloroethylene are strongly suspected to be carcinogenic. Some epidemiologists note that the cases in Samsung fit a pattern observed in a study of IBM workers but the Semiconductor Industry Association contend that those studies were flawed. Another study commissioned by the SIA and conducted by Vanderbilt University found no conclusive evidence of a causal link. It may take a really long time before we know for sure. But even though we can’t be unequivocally certain of the cancer link, Samsung still acted in bad faith as evidenced by underhanded moves like intervening in workers’ claims from KCOMWEL, a quasi-government worker compensation agency.

Thumbnail layout during first discussion.

Sharon: Why was it important to make the story personal as well as a very blunt critique of Samsung’s labour practices?

Maryann: I think that’s related to the conflicted feelings. While I’m unhappy to know that people are suffering to make these wonderful things that I enjoy as a consumer, I’m also very dependent on it and I don’t wish to discard it. As much as I’m criticising Samsung, I’m also criticising myself and observing how bewitched I am by modern technology. I think many of us will feel this dissonance if we’re aware of what happens in the supply chain and production line. When it’s personal and relatable the story becomes more meaningful.

I remember asking you: ‘what am I to do as a consumer?’ If we bring attention to this through art, what are we telling people to do? You pointed out that it is enough to raise questions, which seems to reflect the thinking of the 19th Century Russian author, Anton Chekov. In a letter to A S Suvorin, he writes:

“You are right in demanding that an artist should take an intelligent attitude to his work, but you confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for the artist.”

What’s great about this information age is that news travels quicker and it’s harder to hide bad behavior. However, I think this problem with Samsung would have remained a domestic issue if not for the relentless campaigning by the families of the victims, and worker groups.

As for why be blunt with Samsung, well, this is a Samsung campaign which we know is an effort to associate the brand with creativity and positive attributes. But then here’s something not so positive that they did and it deserves attention. If we want things to change in the manufacturing of smart devices the best place to start is with the world’s largest maker.

Sketchbook page. With most projects, I start drawing without a plan or much research, to see what images come up. This process is important to find the emotional thread of the subject, which I can never get by thinking. I have to find it with my hands. – Sharon

Sharon: The three victims you choose for the memorial portraits section happen to be all young women. Was this a conscious decision?

Maryann: No. It was driven by the availability of their portraits. We needed the faces. There were a lot of faceless names. There were also suicides reported of male workers working in different plants, not in semiconductor lines and not necessarily due to exposure to hazardous chemicals. I also wanted to pick from the category that represented the large number of people who died from cancer induced by exposure to toxic materials.

Historically, more women than men have been hired to work in the assembly and routine work of electronics factories, for a variety of reasons (that also raises an interesting discussion). So I think having more women was just circumstantial.

One thing that disgusts me now that I’ve learned about this, was the sort of positive perception of chip makers that media and advertising had impressed upon me. I was reminded of the “Intel Inside” campaign featuring people in “bunny suits”. It was paraded as cool, geeky, intelligent, and high-tech. I knew vaguely that the suits were meant to protect the chips from contamination, but I had no idea that the people inside were handling carcinogens and breathing recirculated toxic fumes every day while on the job. It’s easy not to care when no one kicks up a fuss and you don’t feel compelled to investigate if there really is any link. I think the people in Korea did the right and brave thing. I wonder if I could be as devoted as Hwang Yu-Mi’s father in demanding accountability. Seven years is a long time. Most of us would’ve buried the cause or settled for money.

Sharon: Why did you use the brand name ‘Samsung’ instead of the generic word ‘smartphone’ in the script?

Maryann: Samsung is a special noun and I wanted to give the device a persona to illustrate the relationship. We’re getting close to making artificially intelligent smartphones which may know us better than we do ourselves. I think it’s remarkable that in future that there will be apps that are capable of predicting our emotions, maybe even offer some kind of therapy. “Samsung” in this case represents everything that combines to integrate technology into our lives.

Sketchbook page

Sharon: We knew from the the start that didn’t we want to make this a piece of self-righteous agitprop. You talked about the guilt that comes with inconvenient truths, and the impossibility of squaring the ‘moral balance sheet’ in the age of capitalism. What are some of the questions that go through your head about this?

Maryann: To be honest, I had to look up “agitprop” when you first mentioned it 🙂 Goes to show how unacquainted I am with the history of art as propaganda.

Yes, the impossibility of being non-complicit in the destruction of the environment and the exploitation of people becomes apparent when we examine how we live and the things we consume. It brings to mind the calls to abstain from palm oil products because of the destruction of rainforests. Is that even practicable?

Sometimes it’s easier to just not think about it or slip into a sort of moral-licensing, like being careful and conscious with waste or doing charity to “pay” for other vices or indulgences so that we feel better about ourselves.

Maryann: From the very beginning you wanted to tell the story about the Samsung workers. What moved you to do this?

Sharon: Solidarity, and subversion. I felt that being invited by Samsung to make art on a Samsung device for a Samsung sponsored digital art platform was a rare opportunity to explore how we’re connected via our magical smartphones to a web of labour, manufacturing, marketing and consuming. Not only is this expressed through the art, it’s also happening in the real-life meta-level context of the Masterpieces project. In this case, the context and the art are like a call and response – they echo and amplify each other. Drawing the memorial portraits of Samsung workers on the Galaxy S Note was a mini mindfuck. I kept thinking about the human who’d assembled my device. It wasn’t just telling the story of the workers, but showing how that story is part of the technology we use every day. That story is more than something that happened to people in another country – it’s sitting there in our pockets; we’re holding it in our hands.

First rough of Panel 3. We did two photoshoots at a friend’s apartment. The first was just playing around and seeing what shots could be interesting. By the second shoot we knew the composition of the images we needed.

Maryann: What does the Kraken signify?

Sharon: The invisible tentacles of corporate capitalism, reaching into every aspect of our lives, from our bodies to our minds – gripping tightly in some places and caressing lovingly in others. Hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. It’s all connected.

Maryann: That’s a fitting choice, a cephalopod’s tentacles have minds of their own which sense and react to their external environment. What do you hope this piece of work will achieve?

Sharon: For Samsung, I hope it sparks an internal conversation about what they can expect from artists when they choose to initiate digital art projects like this. The optimist in me asks them to consider how cool and truly innovative they’d be (or appear to be) if they accepted outcomes like our collaboration as part of the open-source digital culture of the Internet, which is so heavily biased towards sharing and exchange; to see that we are not trying to ‘bring them down’, but to initiate a true conversation that could lead to technology that isn’t destroying people or the earth.

I hope workers in the semiconductor industry who see this will feel that their struggles are shared.

I hope people will connect to the emotions and ideas in the work, and realize that we are not limited to using these devices (or services) in ways that the companies that made them want us to use them. These are powerful tools that can help us imagine and construct a more just, less destructive civilization.

First rough of Panel 7. The final script was developed from these roughs. We needed the images to see how much text was necessary to tell the story. The roughs also helped me learn to how to draw on a tablet, which is so different from pencil and paper. The best thing about it is being able to experiment wildly with colour. The worst thing is that it’s very hard on the eyes. – Sharon

New brog! Internet + Me + Commas + You = ALL SYSTEMS GO

I left Facebook for a reason. Now I’m back on it – also for a reason.

I didn’t ‘give in’. I have a purpose. I am strong – I can break my own rules.

I’m back on Facebook because that’s where people are. I like people. Art minus People = NOTHING, MOTHERFUCKERS. We make the meaning together. Constant collaboration.

I think this is how it’s gonna be: me uploading shit, mainlined straight from my mind with minimal ‘ohhhhh noooooo how is this gonna make me sound *delete delete rewrite rewrite sighhhhh fuck this*’, then Commas&Industry taking it and pushing it slowly out into the world.

Make and ship, make and ship. Repeat endlessly. This is how we work, and grow.

I’ve never had a collaboration like this. For me it’s unprecedented level of trust and just… letting the fuck go. Doing what I do best, leaving what I don’t do well to people who can.

And I can’t describe the sense of relief. It’s freeing up so much of my brain, which is why the ideas to MAKE THINGS are coming thick and fast.

I wish I could be honest and tell people about the real deal – how this is gonna work – I mean the mechanics. That there IS someone else behind the Facebook page and Twitter account (in fact, I HIRED them! OH MAI GAWD, WHAT A SELLOUT) but that ultimately, it’s all me. In fact it’s MORE me than if I had to do it myself.

Maybe other introverted artist/creative types would find this encouraging. To know that it doesn’t have to be one or the other – we don’t have to be completely off the grid OR drowning in the sea of connections. We can find ways that will help us do AND share our work.

This recently super connected world means nothing short of a social-communication revolution. For a long, agonizing time now, I was worried that I just wouldn’t be able to make the most of this incredible opportunity. That it would pass me by before I figured it all out. I don’t think it will last forever… every single word I type, every digit, costs something – whether in carbon fuel or some big corporation somewhere selling and mining my data.

So, the time is now.

It’s not really about the number of likes, for me it’s about finding the people who will take what I want to give. The retweets are just a trail of ghosts… somewhere there’s a real person behind the screen.

Fertilizer Fridays: Varsha Nair

Roadtrip departure is happening today, but I still wanted to squeeze in a Fertilizer Friday.

Fertilizer Fridays are interviews with artist friends. It’s about honest, casual conversation, sharing ideas + busting myths about being an artist/making art.

Let me introduce a good friend and awesome artist, Varsha Nair. We met a few years ago in Myanmar, during the 2nd Beyond Pressure performance art festival. Since then, we’ve collaborated on a project and sent each other lots of emails – about art, life and everything between.

Varsha was born in Uganda, studied in India and now lives in Bangkok. She’s travelled wide and made alot of art. So settle in and enjoy her insights on feminism, collaboration and charting your own path…

Performing When Two Words Fell at National Art Gallery of Malaysia during Buka Jalan Performance Art Festival in 2011. Photo by Raphael Olivier.

Just like everyone else, artists have good days and bad days. Could you describe what your working day is like, a good one and a bad one?

a) GOOD:

When things happen unexpectedly, totally unplanned and you don’t even know where or which depth of one’s self something emerges from, but you feel the excitement building deep within. Ideas fly around and perhaps one of them gets put down as a small drawing or scribble.

Or, when I experience working collaboratively – like when Karla [Sachse] and I first talked about the Meridian | Urban project, Monday2Monday with Lena [Eriksson], receiving your initial note about developing our recent proposal, Shore Lines and having that set my mind racing – literally thinking and voicing (or writing) on my feet/on the spot, just letting it emerge from the gut. I guess it’s a day when I am totally absorbed by the process without being aware of it.

And, if something has been swirling in your mind for days, months or even years, and one fine day it materializes, comes together. That’s a great day at work, I’d say, because some sleeping seed has become strong enough to germinate.

b) BAD:

When ‘other’, ‘outer’ workings of the art world shake one’s belief in oneself, even slightly, and I let that preoccupy my mind, it can throw you off the path for days. It’s not easy, and it takes time to right one’s balance again.

A day when one tries to force things, to make work, is a bad one. You always have these forced ‘objects’ hanging around – in your sketchbooks or wherever, and then you come across them later and you think – “ugh”. That’s yet another bad day experienced – a double cringe-whammy!

A Proper Place, 2007, collaboration with Jerome Ming, Ryllega Gallery, Hanoi

You recently moved into a new studio in Bangkok. Having a studio seems central to being an artist – even people who might not have a clear idea of what I do are always curious about my studio. Tell us about some studios you’ve had.

Years ago, I had this mental picture of a large, high-ceilinged space that was light and airy, nestled amongst lush old trees – a little island of my own. It was a bit romantic, but it recalled the art school where I studied in Baroda; our shared studios were cavernous spaces and the campus has many old trees.

The reality of spaces I’ve had is quite different – from an apartment, a brief stint in a lovely old building at the edge of China town in Bangkok, to my current space which is above a café on a main road near my house. These spaces are very much part of the din and dust of the city. The view outside my studio now is a jumble of electrical and other wires – if I lean out the window far enough, I can touch them. No tree in sight.

From the time of being a student to now, the idea of a ‘studio’ has also changed. A modest sized room works well enough. It is primarily a space to think.

LOOC: Line Out of Control, 2009, performance collaboration with Lena Eriksson

I get this question all the time: ‘what kind of art do you do?’ It makes me really anxious because I don’t have a specific medium. Looking at your work, you’ve done so many different things over the years – performance, sculpture, video, installation. It doesn’t fit into a neat box. Varsha, I’m trying to get over this crazy anxiety about ‘what kind of art I do’! What do you think is causing it? How do you answer that question?

It always throws me when people ask that and I find myself thinking, ‘Yes. What sort of art do I do?’ My reply is usually, ‘oh, a bit of this and a bit of that.’ If I add that I ‘play’ mainly, people look confused.

Sometimes I have this strong urge to say: ‘Art? I don’t really do that…’, because definitions fix things. People have certain fixed ideas about ‘art’ and ‘artists’. But I often say that I do a lot of drawing, and leave it at that. People can make what they want from that, from their own understanding of drawing. Essentially I think that’s what I do – drawing – whether it’s on paper or explored through performance and installation. It’s open to various interpretations.

Are you a feminist?

As a woman asserting my way of being, claiming my space and ‘freedom’ to think and do what I want, rooting for women to make/get their own way in our male dominated world (and I say ‘world’, not just India/Thailand/Asia) – if that’s what it means to be a feminist, then I am.

Drawing from September Quick Fix, a dual show with Jerome Ming at Conference of Birds Gallery, Bangkok in 2009

You and I have had some heated conversations about the power imbalances and lack of accountability in the art world. The issue with greatest impact on me is galleries and collectors consistently delaying payment for works that have been sold. I’ve chosen to focus on that, and I’m now collecting data to help me take the next step. If you had to pick a specific problem you’ve encountered professionally, what would it be? What can be done to improve the situation?

The main problem is lack of (or withholding of) support from some people in the art world, accompanied by a kind of sneaky-ness. I’ve experienced a 2-tiered way of working in large shows, where some artists get all and more (in terms of help and finances) and some get little or nothing. There is no transparency, of course, so one learns about these ‘things’ later and it drives me mad. It’s highly unprofessional and, I think, insulting. It’s like they have set a criteria to judge you by, of what you are worth.

The other issue I face is this. I have lived in Thailand for a long time now, since 1995, and been part of that scene. I always felt, or indeed was ‘included’ in the past. In the last few years, with some players from ‘outside’, from foreign lands, starting to curate, write and somewhat define things in the Thai art scene, I am suddenly regarded or judged as an outsider. As a result, I am often not considered or left out of things. Ironical, isn’t it?

With both of the above points, the one way to improve things is to have more transparency – via debate and discussion. Also, people could do more research when they curate or write, and really go into detail rather than skim the surface. Both transparency and engaging in proper research are seriously lacking in the environment I work in. The skimming of surfaces, as it is, simply makes people look and feel ‘sexy’, or ‘with it’.

An Elixir Realigning, 2011, collaborative performance in Berlin with myself, fellow artist Karla Sachse, curator Deeksha Nath and students Lilian Kim Lukas, Aaron Schwagerl and Simon Troll.

A lot of your work comes from collaborating with other people. When I was in university, I was forced to do a collaboration unit. Students from different creative departments were thrown together and asked to ‘make something’. It was a nightmare, and incredibly unproductive. We’re taught to think collaboration is automatically good, but what are some of the pitfalls? What makes some collaborations useful and others not?

I love working collaboratively. Mainly it’s been with other artists, but I’ve also worked with people from other fields – an architect, botanist, etc. Each one adds different expertise and knowledge into a mixed pool, and it’s not only useful for a specific process but is also exciting to explore. The pitfalls, or I would rather say ‘challenges’, are many.

Here’s an excerpt from a paper I wrote recently, which focuses on multi-disciplinary collaborative practice. I talk about working with artists and community-based projects:

Engaging in collaborative processes requires commitment, trust, and ability to let go and negotiate with the other(s), whilst keeping an open mind to explore interests, be they shared or completely new ones.

Furthermore, collaborations between artists fall into somewhat a grey area, and, as I have experienced first hand, the act of collaborating is often not fully comprehended by art professionals including artists, gallerists, writers and, at times, even curators.

Along with questions of ownership and individual authorship, working collaboratively presents many challenges including willingness to pool skills and ideas, and, most importantly, considering a plurality – the larger picture, rather than individuality.

And, in terms of collaborating with communities by placing one’s own practice firmly within a network of social and working relationships, the artist’s preparedness to let go of control and allow for outcomes to evolve, and to accept that their role as artists may somewhat diminish, is essential to enter into and establish meaningful discourse.

Free Parking, 2002, collaboration with Savinee Buranasilapin at the 7th floor Art Gallery at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. The space was marked all over with architecture plans that turned it into a car park.

I remember whining to you about how I felt I was not doing enough to further my art career, in terms of networking, getting shown by the right galleries, meeting the right people, etc. ‘The Hot Young Artist ship is sailing by and I’m not on it!’ You told me to keep doing what I was doing. It was good advice. Where do you think this insecurity comes from? Why is it important for an artist (or anyone, really) to ‘keep doing what they are doing’?

Which ship and according to whom is it sailing by?? Why should one be on it? Today’s ‘hot young artist’ is tomorrow’s….. what? Of course, I thought about this and still do at times, and decided I’d rather chart my own path.

The way [the art world] is today, and you and I have discussed this, I do not want to be ‘managed’. I’ve felt the effects of ‘being managed’. In one of my collaborative works, my collaborating colleague ‘belonged’ to a hotshot gallery in Mumbai. These so-called important people in the art world had, and still must have, zilch understanding of collaborations, and they ‘managed’ me pretty badly. I don’t need that, as I have always managed, to use the word again, to show and be part of things by getting to know others, via my own network, which is mainly made up of like-minded people. So, one can always find a way to show one’s work, or even establish our own ways of showing.

After a very long time I am now facing the next few months ahead without an invitation to show or to be part of a project. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand I wonder if this is bad, should I panic? On the other I look forward to ‘doing’ – tinkering in the studio, maybe inviting an artist or two, or a designer who I spoke with recently, to come do something in the space. The ‘doing’ can also be ‘doing nothing’.

You’ve worked in the arts with people from all over the world, from all walks of life. What is power?

… feeling rooted within one’s self.

What’s next for you?

‘doing’….. ‘nothing’ 🙂

Thanks, Varsha.

Everyone, please check out more of Varsha’s work on her website.

Documentation from 2011 community project NR1 Wadhwana, a 3-way collaboration between art + community + science. Workshops were set up in seven schools in the villages near Wadhwana Lake. Children and teachers took part in activities that observed and recorded the ecology of the lake. For more info on this project, go here!