sb2013

Hey, biennale bein’ gnarly?

The title of this post belongs to my friend L.Low, who texted it to me as a joke sometime last year while I was preparing my work ‘In The Skin of A Tiger: Monument to What We Want (Tugu Kita)’ for Singapore Biennale 2019. Gnarly is American slang for a tough, intense or complicated situation (the ‘g’ is silent).

I wanted to publish my proposal and budget, with annotations to show how projects change as they cross from idea into real life. 90 percent of how art actually gets made and shown in the contemporary art world is an opaque process. I hope this small crack in the wall will be useful to fellow artists.

Recently, Patrick Flores presented a paper about being artistic director of Singapore Biennale 2019 (SB 2019) for Conference: Contemporary Art Biennials – Our Hegemonic Machines in States of Emergency hosted by the Post-Graduate Programme in Curating, Zurich University of the Arts. In this recording he talks about taking an art historical approach to curating contemporary art in biennales. One of the threads he pursued at SB 2019 was abstraction. He mentions ‘In The Skin of A Tiger’, as well as the works of Boedi Widjaya, Alfonso Ossorio and Carlos Villa in terms of abstraction and how they sit alongside, ‘in critical adjacency’, with modernity.

Screenshot of video. To view video please click this link: https://vimeo.com/439928499

Here’s a quote from the Q & A portion of the talk [42:30]:

“I’m a trained art historian. I tried to hijack the Biennale with some art historical methods. I tried to smuggle, like some kind of contraband, some art historical methods into the Biennale structure. I think this was one way for me to discuss the colonialism and modernity through the development of modern art in Southeast Asia. It was fortunate that the National Gallery Singapore was one of the sites of the Biennale. In that site, there is a huge collection of Southeast Asian modern art. I wanted to complicate that modernity, and to find out how that modernity relates to the history of the contemporary that is embodied by the Biennale.

Hence, the transitional nexus that come in the form of the work of abstraction, not only through the contemporary works of Boedi Widjaya and Sharon Chin, but also the neglected works in America of Alfonso Ossorio and Carlos Villa, who were also responding to abstract expressionism, but can nowhere be found in the art history of that movement. It was a good opportunity for me to do that in a Biennale. By doing that, I was doing art history, but at the same time, responding to the concerns of contemporary art, which are about racism, migration, colonialism and sexuality. But all of these were inscribed and embodied in material form, through the idiosyncratic abstraction of Ossorio and Villa.”

– Patrick Flores, June 2020

Below is my annotated project proposal and budget for ‘In The Skin of A Tiger’. I hope reading it alongside (in critical adjacency with) Dr Flores’ presentation will be fruitful, prompting deeper thought about how power and material conditions affect the production and dissemination of different kinds of knowledge, across all the stories we tell ourselves about time: the time-stories of modernity, the contemporary, art history or, that gift, scarcely understood, of the present, now.

ITSOAT-SB2019-notesV3

Sharon Chin SB2019 Proposal Annotated Download

A few notes about career opportunity, privilege and ‘getting selected’ for biennales:

This is not my first time at the Singapore Biennale. I did a public performance project ‘Mandi Bunga’ there in 2013. It’s rare, though not unheard of, to participate in the same biennale more than once. Biennales are not designed for continuity. Or rather, they are designed to continue certain structural aspects of the contemporary art industry, but tracking the development of individual art practice across different editions is not one of them.

Curators have their own reasons for selecting artists, and each biennale has its own structure for deciding on curators and/or artistic directors. The curatorial process of SB 2013 compared to SB 2019 was very different. I won’t comment on the curatorial process here because it’s not my purview.

What I can comment on is my choice to take part. In the case of Singapore Biennale, both times, I was invited by curators I had strong personal relationships with. For my part, this was the main deciding factor. The other was geographic proximity and the shared history between two nations. My works in both Singapore Biennales were about important socio-historical events in Malaysia. That ‘Mandi Bunga’ was staged outside an institution in 2013 and ‘In The Skin of A Tiger’ inside one in 2019, is one way to read the trajectory across these two works.

Another reason I accepted the 2019 invitation was because I thought there could be an opportunity to talk about biennales and the selection of who gets to participate. Let me be clear: meritocracy is one of the foundational myths of our times. I know biennales represent coveted career opportunities for artists. Participation brings one into the circulation of an international art circuit, market prices may rise along with recognition, acquisitions follow, etc. My antipathy towards this structure is ideological and publicly stated multiple times. I participate selectively because I too, like Dr Flores, wish to be a smuggler. Perhaps we all do, and perhaps that is how we all justify doing what we do. The question is, what do we smuggle and for whom? Here I’ll be quiet because true contraband is usually passed around in silence.

Anyway, if you’re an artist and want to increase your chances of being selected for biennales whatever your reasons, these are my suggestions:

At the very least, have a website that archives your work. Social media accounts are good, but not enough.

Language privilege is real: Write about your own work, invite friends or other artists to write about your work. Write about other people’s work. Interview fellow artists. Archive this writing together with your artwork. Do this relentlessly. If you’re not good at networking or forming relationships with powerful people, this is how you create currency around your work and your name.

Language privilege is real, part II: most of this writing should be in English or translated into English. I’m sorry, it’s not fair, none of this is fair, but as of now, that’s how it is.

Take every opportunity you’re given, whether it’s in speech, art or writing, to say and do what’s truly in your heart and mind. Treat it like there will not be a next time. Yeah, be too much, it’s fine, that’s your job. Be brave and rise to the occasion.

Catatan tentang Mandi Bunga dan Bersih

Sebenarnya, karya Mandi Bunga tentang proses membentuk politik peribadi saya, terutamanya melingkari soalan ini: bagaimana individu berhubung dengan kolektif?

Mandi Bunga video – Through The Lens

Pada 26 Oct 2013, sempena pembukaan Singapore Biennale 2013, saya mempersembahkan ‘Mandi Bunga’ bersama seratus orang di laman depan National Museum Singapore.

Persembahan itu pendek, selesai dalam masa 10 minit. Nasib baik juga, sebab hujan sudah dekat. Saya ingat ada antara penonton yang tanya: Was that it? Itu saja?

Untuk memahami karya ini saya mesti mula dari awal sikit. Kuning, kuning sana situ sini – maklumlah ia merujuk kepada Bersih, iaitu satu gerakan gabungan badan-badan bukan kerajaan (NGO) yang menuntut pilihanraya bersih dan adil di Malaysia. Pada masa itu, saya dilarang sebut nama Bersih apabila bercakap dengan media Singapura.

Sebenarnya, karya itu tentang proses membentuk politik peribadi saya, terutamanya melingkari soalan ini: bagaimana individu berhubung dengan kolektif?

Poster untuk Bersih2.0 – Sharon Chin

Bersih pertama saya adalah Bersih 2.0, pada 9 Julai 2011, dan kali kedua saya turun ke jalan. Kali pertama pada 2009, untuk protes menentang Akta Keselamatan Dalam Negeri (anti-ISA).

Beberapa hari sebelum Bersih 2.0, segolongan aktivis dan penggiat seni muda telah berkumpul di Kelab Bangsar Utama. Kami merancangkan sebuah festival jalanan bernama ‘Yell-OH!’ yang akan berlangsung di Bersih 2.0 – flash mob, aksi kilat, bawa props dan sebagainya. Kami menubuhkan team keselamatan, team scouting dan team info. Akhirnya, semua tidak jadi. Sampai sahaja di tempat berkumpul, suasana terus huru hara, kucar kacir. We couldn’t even find each other.

Bagi saya itu satu pengajaran – protes bukan sesuatu yang ikut jadual atau arahan. Ia spontan dan organik, bagaikan sebatang sungai: apabila air pasang, kita harus peka kepada arusnya, kita adalah sebahagian daripada arusnya. Arus itulah yang dimaksudkan ‘people power’. Dan kita harus mempersoalkan mereka (termasuk kita sendiri) yang ingin kawal arus itu. Ke manakah mereka hendak arahkan kuasa itu? If you try to control something, you are no longer part of it. You become something else.

Bersih 2.0 dan Occupy Dataran yang mengikutinya beberapa minggu kemudian memberi kesan yang besar pada saya. Saya seperti dilanda krisis persoalan peribadi.

Occupy Dataran – Loyar Burok

Antara branding atau mesej yang didorong oleh Bersih adalah ia suatu gerakan rakyat, a people’s movement. Tetapi rakyat tidak pernah terlibat dalam proses membuat apa-apa keputusan. Masa menyertai Bersih 2.0, saya ujar kepada diri sendiri: saya akan jadi sebuah nombor, satu lagi tambahan pada barisan perjuangan. Tetapi selepas itu, saya sedar, itu tidak cukup bagi saya. Untuk apa dan siapa saya sanggup jadi sebuah nombor? Demi Dato’ Ambiga? Demi Bersih? Saya tahu saya hanya pengikut, tapi tidak pasti apa yang diikuti!

Masa itu, saya tidak tahu asal-usul Bersih: bahawa ia dibentuk sebagai satu gabungan rapat antara parti politik pembangkang dan NGO. Ada ramai yang anggap gerakan Bersih direbut oleh politikus, tetapi, sepertimana seorang sahabat wartawan pernah sebut: lebih tepat kalau kata rakyat yang merebut Bersih daripada agenda politikus dan pemimpin-pemimpin NGO!

Selain Bersih2.0 dan Occupy Dataran, saya juga ikuti perkembangan Occupy Wall Street, yang bermula pada 17 Sept 2011 dan akhirnya dipaksa keluar dari Zuccotti Park pada 15 Nov 2011.

Occupy Wall Street – Photo: Brendan McDermid, Reuters

Antara tulisan tentang Occupy Wall Street yang sangat memberangsangkan saya pada masa itu dihasilkan oleh Quinn Norton, seorang wartawan independen di Amerika Syarikat. Apabila dia cerita tentang Mohamad Bouazizi, saya rasa itu kunci kepada soalan-soalan yang buat saya sangat kacau selepas Bersih 2.0.

Mohamad Bouazizi seorang penjual buah-buahan di Tunisia. Beliau ditindas dan dikasari oleh pegawai tempatan yang merampas harta barangnya. Pada 17 Dec 2010, beliau membubuh api pada diri sendirinya dan terbakar sehingga meninggal dunia. Perbuatan itu cetuskan revolusi di Tunisia dan Arab Spring di negara-negara timur tengah. Ini pula jadi pemangkin kepada gerakan 15-M di Spain, Occupy Dataran di Malaysia, Occupy Wall Street di New York dan sebagainya. Quinn Norton gelar Bouazizi seorang wira. Katanya: ‘Tiada siapa di dunia ini yang tidak disentuh oleh api yang dinyalakan Bouazizi.’ There is no one in the world who has not been touched by his fire.

Setem rasmi mengingati Mohamed Bouazizi

Dari itu, saya bentuk satu hujah: Individu sesuatu yang murni. The individual is sacred. Hanya individu yang mampu bertindak seperti Mohamad Bouazizi, dan tindakannya dapat mengubah dunia.

Di dunia ini, ada yang ikut, ada yang mendahului, tetapi kita tidak boleh melihat orang lain atau diri kita sebagai ‘just a number’. Itu adalah logik kapitalisme, juga logik politikus profesional. Bagi saya, jalan itu adalah jalan buntu.

Kulit depan The Dispossessed oleh Ursula K. Le Guin

Pada tahun yang sama, saya baca The Dispossessed oleh Ursula K. Le Guin, cerita science-fiction tentang masyarakat anarkis di Annares, sebuah planet kecil yang dekat dengan Urras, atau bumi. This book changed my life. Ia mengambil soalan saya tentang kelas, revolusi, autonomi, hiraki, kesetiaan, kebebasan, tanggungjawab, dan baginya bentuk yang jelas dan nyata, yang saya boleh pegang.

For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.

Maklumlah setiap kita layak memperoleh segala-galanya, semua barangan mewah yang pernah terunggun di dalam makam-makam diraja, dan setiap kita tidak layak menerima apa-apa, walaupun sesuap roti dalam kelaparan. Tidakkah kita pernah isikan perut ketika orang lain kebuluran? Akan kamu menghukum itu? Akan kamu mengganjar kami yang sanggup kebulur ketika orang lain mengisikan perutnya? Tiada siapa yang layak dihukum, tiada siapa yang layak diganjar. Bebaskan mindamu daripada idea kelayakan, idea keperolehan, dan kamu akan mula boleh berfikir.

Change is freedom, change is life.

Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to go unbuild walls.

Perubahan adalah kebebasan, perubahan adalah kehidupan.

Mereka yang membina tembok menjadi tawanannya sendiri. Aku akan pergi tunaikan perananku yang wajar di dalam organisma social. Aku akan pergi turunkan tembok.

The individual cannot bargain with the State. The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself.

Individu tidak boleh tawar-menawar dengan Negara. Negara tidak mengenal mata wang selain kuasa: dan ia sendiri mengeluarkan mata wang itu.

The thing about working with time, instead of against it, he thought, is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.

Ertinya bekerja dengan masa, bukan mengejar masa, dia fikir, adalah masa itu tidak disia-siakan. Malah kesengsaraan pun bererti.

You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.

Kamu tidak boleh membelikan revolusi. Kamu tidak boleh membuatkan revolusi. Kamu hanya boleh menjadi revolusi. Revolusi berada di dalam semangatmu, atau tidak berada di mana-mana.

Kita mencapai politik peribadi kita dengan pelbagai cara. Ada melalui musik punk, teori, parti politik, atau NGO. Politik saya – seorang budak kelas menengah yang membesar di pusat membeli-belah – ditempa di simpang antara protes jalanan dan buku cerita.

Dengan itu, seni jadi landasan atau makmal di mana saya dapat menguji, menyatakan dan menerangkan politik itu.

Sin Chew Daily, 29 April 2012

Sebelum sampai di Mandi Bunga, ada pula Bersih 3.0 pada 28 April 2012.

Kali ini saya buat dan pakai baju kuning yang dihias berpuluh-puluh bunga kuning. Saya ada ura-ura bagi bunga itu kepada orang ramai pada hari itu. Tetapi sebelum sempat buat, pemerintah menyerang rakyatnya dengan gas pemedih. Walaupun tidak dapat dilaksanakan, aksi itu mencerminkan perkembangan politik peribadi saya – saya mengambil bahagian sebagai seorang individu, bukan sebagai pengikut. Semua soalan, ketidakpastian dan pegangan sendiri dibawa ke jalan raya dan dikongsikan bersama mereka yang ada di sana.

Bengkel Mandi Bunga

Seperti apa yang dikatakan, apa yang disaksikan oleh penonton Mandi Bunga cuma beberapa minit saja. Mereka tidak lihat proses yang membentuk persembahan akhir itu. Kerja sebenar adalah dalam proses.

Sepanjang dua minggu, saya buat bengkel dengan tiap-tiap sukarelawan yang terlibat dalam Mandi Bunga. Mereka menghiasi sarong kuning yang akan dipakai dalam persembahan nanti. Saya minta mereka melukis bentuk minda sendiri, dan penuhkan bentuk itu dengan motif daun, limau dan bunga – iaitu bahan-bahan yang digunakan untuk mandi bunga.

Proses ini merupakan persiapan mental, dan memberi peluang kepada setiap orang untuk fikir dan renung tentang apa yang akan dibuat bersama-sama nanti. Apa motivasinya, apa kegentaran atau soalannya, apa maknanya simbol dan upacara ini, dan apa hubungan peribadinya dengan semua ini.

Zine Mandi Bunga

Apabila mereka tanya: kenapa warna kuning? Saya jawab dengan terus-terang tentang Bersih dan politik saya. Saya juga hasilkan satu zine yang menjelaskan tujuan dan pendirian saya, yang dibagi percuma pada hari persembahan.

Akhirnya, walaupun secara rasmi saya dilarang sebut nama Bersih, saya tetap dapat sampaikan mesej saya dengan terus, tanpa melalui arus media yang begitu disekat dan dikawal bukan sahaja di Malaysia, Singapura, dan negara ASEAN, tetapi di seluruh dunia.

Pada dasarnya, Mandi Bunga tanya tiga soalan:

What does it mean to do something alone?

Apa ertinya bertindak berseorangan?

What does it mean to do something together?

Apa ertinya bertindak bersama atau secara kolektif?

How can we be ourselves with others?

Bagaimana kita boleh kekal diri kita apabila bersama dengan orang lain?

——–

I’ll be showing a series of jackets that chart the development of my politics in Between States, an exhibition curated by Goh Sze Ying, 21 Sept – 7 Oct at Our Art Projects. The one below is about Bersih and Mandi Bunga:

Mandi Bunga non-epic blog, or, The Opposite of Monumental

It is my birthday! [ARgh. No, it is not. I did not actually finish this in time. Two days late. But I did spend my birthday writing it!]

I swore to myself that I’d finish the Mandi Bunga epic blog by my birthday. Not for any special reason except maybe people would want to be nice to me and would probably read it if I asked them, compared to any other day. Also, because I know, with a terrible certainty, that if I don’t do it by today, I won’t do it at all.

So! I give you the epic Mandi Bunga blog, that’s turned out to be not really epic, but a collection of 10 fragments, sewn together by luck and sweat into something meaningful. When I think about it, that’s exactly how this project happened. It is the opposite of monumental.

1. Super Mind Enzyme

Somewhere along the way, I stopped keeping proper sketchbooks. I can probably trace it back to when I started telling myself I couldn’t/didn’t want/didn’t need to draw.

For Mandi Bunga, I picked the cheapest blank notebook with a hard cover lying around and used it throughout. It became the single most important tool I had, a super enzyme for my compost pile of a mind. Scraps of ideas, doubts, anxiety, fear of failure, fear of success – the notebook took it all, and broke it down into little nuggets of useable gold.

2. Lynda Barry, or, Farewell Art World, Hello Myself

I went to her work again and again, a thirsty hyena looking for water, and drank deep from two books in particular – What It Is and Picture This. It looked and felt like the art I wanted to be making, bringing back all the excitement and wonder that my 7 years in the art world had sucked dry. I rediscovered drawing, not as a proof of talent/skill, but as a way to access what she calls ‘the unspeakable mind’ – that well of pain and joy that makes us who we are.

The realization that I’d spent years making art defined by the dry artspeak of project proposals and curators’ essays was devastating to me. Why, why had I done that? Because it’s what I learned in art school? Because that’s what the ‘art industry’ is, and I’m just a miserable worker making its cogs go round and round, in the hopes that one day I’ll rise to the top?

It was like waking up from a long, drugged sleep. It helped me to understand why participants in my workshops were so afraid to pick up their brushes and paint. It mirrored my own estrangement. I swore I would not spend another moment making things that pushed people further away from art and themselves. I held on to the feeling that Lynda’s work gave me, and used it as a guide to shape everything.

3. Comma-rades

Commas & Industry is a PR and events agency started by my ex-housemate Ying, and manned by a fantastic motley crew: Stephanie, Liy, Maryann, Sue and Julia. It is small but mighty. I hired them to help me with WEEDS, which was the first time I admitted I needed proper help and actually did something about it. The result: holy sweet working chemistry, Batman!

There’s incredible value in working with people who are exactly your wavelength, but not necessarily from your field. It has to do with different tracks of thinking coming together to produce unexpected solutions. The reality is, without Commas, Mandi Bunga would still have happened, but it would never have achieved the same polish and coherence.

It’s like hitting a target. All artists know that every artwork will only ever be an approximation of their vision. You never hit the bullseye. You only hope to get as close as your skills and resources allow. This time, for various reasons, I got as close as I could have. One of those reasons is Commas & Industry.

4. Repeat after me: only ever an approxmation…

I had the idea for Mandi Bunga way before I was asked to be part of Singapore Biennale. It was dreamed up for the streets of KL – people were to stand side by side and pass water, bucket brigade style, from point A to B. It was to be the most public spectacle imaginable, open to any person from the public to take part.

Early on, Zedeck predicted that I if I did this project at Singapore Biennale, I would struggle mightily with its context – the limitations, requirements and politics that come hand-in-hand with such a government-backed, institutionally-run blockbuster art event. Sure enough, I did.

The venue changed from a public park away from the city center to the lawn of the National Museum, a stone’s throw away from Singapore Art Museum (SAM), both right smack in the CBD. I wanted to bring it out of the center, where it would encounter more communities, but I failed.

I wanted people who are less visible in society to take part, like the elderly and migrants, but I also failed. I’d been allocated 20 days in Singapore. No time to meet people, no time to go to the ground. I pushed it as far as the parameters would go, but in the end, the context defined me and my work.

Still. To be able to walk in a parade, waving a yellow flag, on the streets of Singapore… I think of that, and a satisfied smile creeps over my face. This wouldn’t have happened if the National Museum wasn’t so close to SAM. Honor for choosing the right site goes to my friend and comrade, Biennale co-curator Khairuddin Hori. Sometimes the context gives you something you never dreamed of, and you’re left standing in a tiny, momentary space of freedom that wasn’t there before.

5. The Network, or, Mandi Bunga beats Facebook’s Edgerank

We launched the project online with a call for participants, focusing almost exclusively on Facebook and Twitter. There was no Plan B, and without participants, Mandi Bunga basically… wasn’t going to happen.

Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm ensures that what you share will only reach 15 percent of your subscribers. For the privilege of being connected to your own network, you must pay. I decided that we were NOT going to pay to promote the open call. No, I’m not a masochist. This isn’t about ego.

To me, the Network is more than the number of my FB fans. Like cycling and gardening, it’s a tool that bears the seeds of a peaceful and permanent revolution – one that’s not based solely on political victory, but on developing living, breathing connections.

When we pay for connections, we exploit human relationships as currency – all that matters is that there are eyeballs attached to the person on the other side of the screen. Instead of being the great leveler, the Network becomes another place where the rich get more and corporations grow fat.

I needed to know that the Internet isn’t just another media outlet controlled by new corporate gatekeepers who are mining our human attention spans like raw minerals.

Despite Edgerank, the Network shared and spread Mandi Bunga. By the second day, the list of sign-ups was overflowing. The Internet had generated more than likes and retweets and bitchy blogs about things that don’t matter. It had helped me Make Something Happen.

6. Hey! Themesong time! The former Captain James T. Kirk will take us there:

7. Bersih

Yes, Mandi Bunga was inspired by Bersih. The colour yellow, besides looking super cute and cheerful, is a direct reference to the movement. But people looking at Mandi Bunga as a political statement will be disappointed.

Hell, even I’m disappointed! I wish it WERE as simple as staging a Bersih-like demonstration in Singapore and getting away with it under the guise of art. Maybe it would have made politicians sit up. Maybe it would have caused more ripples than it did and made me a fucking famous controversial art-revolutionary.

The thing is, it wouldn’t have been very good art. Or good thinking. Or good politics. But most of all, it would have meant using over 100 people for my own ends without giving them anything in return.

My experience with Bersih left me both energized and confused. It called itself a people’s movement, but didn’t consult with the people. Instead, it had charismatic heroes and leaders who negotiated with kings – the ‘people’ were alternately the bargaining chip or trump card in a high stakes poker game. And yet, the experience of being on the street with a sea of fellow citizens was indescribable… a glimpse of human solidarity and brotherhood, mingled with the smell of sweat and blood.

For a long while, I didn’t know what to do with my contradictory feelings about Bersih. I was ashamed of them. I wanted the easy narrative. I wanted to be a Righteous Warrior for Urgent Change dammit!

In the end though, I couldn’t hide from the doubts. They ate away at me until I took them and turned them into Mandi Bunga.

8. People, Part I

“Despite the horse race elections, manifestos, and movements, the truth is most of the time for most people, political systems don’t mean much. For all activists and politicians see excitement and power in their bloodsports, most people, and probably the healthier sorts, prefer to get on with their lives regardless of who’s in charge. They spend their time with family and meeting friends for coffee and trying to understand what makes a good life. And it is these people, not the power players, who keep us fed and warm in winter and give us the soft curve of a ceramic cup in hand, who make the memory and fabric of a place. It is details and human labor that give the name of home to the cities and towns that earn that name inside of people. Society is mostly built away from power, by the politically distant and ideologically vague.” – Quinn Norton

9. Giving up ownership, not authorship* (*borrowed from The New Rules of Public Art)

One criticism of the performance was that it looked sloppy. It’s true, people kept coming in and out of the ‘sacred’ performance space, taking pictures and interacting with participants. In fact, when I arrived with the last group at the National Museum, I panicked a little when I saw the bathers weren’t neatly in position ready to perform – they were sitting around, chatting, selfie-ing, tweeting, laughing. I remember thinking for a split second: oh my god this does not look like an artwork.

But I came to my senses, and realized this was exactly what I had meant it to be.

Consider this: Sometimes ‘sloppiness’, open-endedness and lack of polish (I prefer ‘informality’) is not an accident, but an intended outcome. The thing looks the way it’s supposed to feel.

What does giving up ownership feel like? It feels like letting go of control. It’s risky and vulnerable and hard to trust people to make their own decisions. Like, what if people didn’t show up? Well, that’s that. Gotta accept failure as an outcome.

But it can also make things easy: people kept asking what would happen if it rained. I said: I don’t know. If it rains, we’ll discuss and decide together what to do. Somehow, this answer was enough for them, and for me. It helped us endure what none of us could control.

What does keeping authorship (I prefer ‘stewardship’) mean? To me, it’s this: doing your utmost to encourage the conditions and maintain the bonds that made people want to do this in the first place.

10. People, Part II

Have you ever watched someone making art? Their face changes. Concentration and relaxation comes over them at the same time. They open up, become easy to talk to.

Three observations from interacting with close to 140 people who took part in the sarong-painting workshops:

1. Most people (unless they’re working in the arts) have lost their relationship to making art. It’s unbearable to witness. Over and over, I heard things like: ‘I haven’t picked up a brush in 20 years, except to paint my house’ ‘I’m not creative’ ‘I don’t know how to draw’ ‘Never thought I’d be doing this’. Heartbreakingly, they felt the need to apologize: ‘Sorry *nervous laughter*, I’m bad at art lah’. I do not know how this has happened. It was like encountering a forrest that had lost its leaves.

We cannot know how this loss has affected our ability to relate to ourselves, other people and our world, but I will say this: almost every person who left the workshops told me it was ‘relaxing’, ‘therapeutic’, ‘I really needed that’, ‘I wish I could do this more’ and that it made them happy.

2. People are fragile and vulnerable. They get hurt and worried and anxious about everything, like… they don’t have enough time, or they’ve had a really hard year, they don’t know what they’re doing, their father has cancer, they want to spend more time with their mother, they’re worried about their daughter, they’re insecure about their body… it goes on. Does this sound like you? Hey! It sounds like me.

But they’re are brave and beautiful too, in the most everyday, ordinary way. They care. They hope. They abide. They’re funny.

3. It seemed to me that what was most important to people, besides themselves, was other people.

At the end…

There is a feeling that lies at the end of every project, that has very little to do with whether it was a failure or success. It’s a kind of satisfaction… a peace of mind. I’ve been chasing it like an addict for years. That feeling is what I live for, the moment when I can sit down and say: I did it.

This time, that familiar and beloved drug had a new dimension: we did it.

I’m only starting to grasp what that really means.

The Mandi Bunga Zine

Hello dear human beings. Greetings from the strange floating world of post-project purgatory.

In which I count the days since Mandi Bunga happened (2 weeks!), and wonder when it’s no longer acceptable to feel disoriented and just sorta… lame and stupid. I’m off the turbo charged art-making hamster wheel and having a hard time adjusting to the speed of everyday life. This always happens. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but it still frustrates the hell out of me. The bigger the project, the longer the lag. I can’t get anything done, but I can’t rest either. My energy’s completely depleted, but my mind’s running around like a rat on speed.

Ahhhhhhhh. Dammit. Onwards. Onwards through the fug and the fog.

I’m working on an epic blog about Mandi Bunga, but I honestly don’t know how long it’s going to take. In the meantime, I’m going to share the zine I drew for the project.

Can’t see the reader above? Try here. You’ll also see options to download as PDF.

I’ve never made a zine before. It turned out to be a strange artist statement/mind-map/activity sheet mash-up. I finished penciling the night before leaving for Singapore and inked it in my hotel room in a 36-hour caffeine-fueled marathon that killed my eyes. I wouldn’t recommend this as standard practice. If you love to make stuff and want to do it for the rest of your life, as much as possible please try to do it with proper posture and good light.

I’m proud of this little zine. It almost didn’t get made because I thought it’d be one of those bonus art things, you know, nice to do if I had the time (and I never have the time, being a terrible last minute crammer and perfectionist), but unnecessary. Yet the moment I held it in my hands, all fresh from the printer, I knew it was really important.

In all its tactile hand-drawnness, it’s something that can only fully be experienced as a zine, as a thing you can touch and pass from person to person. No amount of Facebooking, blogging or Instagramming could have extended the aesthetics and ideas of Mandi Bunga in the same way. I suspect I did it also to get out of answering ‘what’s your work about?’; I could just hand the zine to any critic, journalist, auntie, uncle or little kid and say: here. It’s all here.

The original size for this is A2, folded into an 8-page booklet, with a poster on the other side. But you can print it in A3 and get a cute pocket version, like this:

If your grubby little hands yearn to fondle this zine in the flesh, here are hi-res files (click to embiggen) you can print out:

Poster on the back:

This is the text:

Mandi Bunga is a project I dreamt up in 2012. It came from my experiences taking part in Bersih2.0 and 3.0, two momentous street rallies calling for free and fair elections in Malaysia. Bersih means ‘clean’; yellow is the colour adopted by the movement.

This project has nothing to do with Bersih. I can’t deny that Biennale has allowed me to realize my dream; that I am here at the pleasure of the Singaporean goverment, and financed by the taxes of its citizens. To export my politics as if they are consumer goods would be both stupid and meaningless.

Yet it has everything to do with Bersih — without the experience of being part of a huge movement, and struggling not to lose myself in its flaws and contradictions, I would never have arrived at the questions that lie at the heart of this project.

Mandi Bunga consists of 3 simple parts: Gather 100 people to bathe together in public. Before that, everyone makes their own sarong to wear during the bath. Finally, an exhibition documents the process and outcomes.

All 3 actions ask the same questions:

“What does it mean to do something alone?”

“What does it mean to do something together?”

“How can we be ourselves with others?”

I believe these questions are ones we must all struggle with, in the face of rapidly changing times and a challenging future.

I offer this project as a way to ask them, to give them form, to make flowers bloom from the clouds of tear gas.

Photo by Yee I-Lann

Hope you enjoy it as much as I loved making it, and see you when I get out on the other side of fug.

All of the things… happening at once

I’m in Singapore, posting this from a hotel room that’s too cold, while the sun burns the pavements outside.

I crossed the airspace two days ago in surreal zombie-dream mode. Losing track of sleep trying to keep track of all the things…

Litres of fabric paint…

200m of yellow cloth, sewn into more than a hundred sarongs by the awesome Mrs Lee of Merlin Tailor, Seapark.

Cutting up whole raft of manila cardboard for a special part of the workshops…

Compressing it all into tiny boxes…

Landing in Singapore, catching a cab to the hotel being all like… ‘hell yeahhh, I got here and I’m ready to rock!!’…

Then realizing that I forgot to buy duty free booze because I was worrying about all my boxes…

Then getting this photo from Ying and Julia who were arranging to send the basins over from KL…

Look at these rockstars. They wore yellow… BY COINCIDENCE!

And FINALLY…. drumroll… you heard it here first, dear people… FINALLY seeing the confirmed venue for the performance on 26 Oct:

Meanwhile, at home, Zedeck tells me the monster pumpkin plant that was taking over the garden has two fruits.

All of the things… happening at once…

Somehow it all fits together.

Love,
me

Making the Mandi Bunga stencils

So in between sending personal emails to over 100 people who signed up for Mandi Bunga, finding yellow basins, dippers, flowers, limes, ordering 200m of yellow fabric and and and etc… I also need to do actual art stuff.

As in, shut off from the list-checking logistical wrangling email email email go go go go go go get it done adrenaline whirlwind… sit down, and MAKE THINGS. It’s like stepping into the one quiet room in an increasingly crazy house. I don’t know whether the tiny quiet room is keeping the whole house going, or vice versa. All I know is that I’m jumping back and forth, between the making and the MAKING IT HAPPEN, dragging, pushing and pulling this thing into existence.

Art. It’s a bloody process.

Ok, where was I? Actual art. Making things. Yes.

So here’s a look at how I designed the stencils that will be used in the sarong making workshops.

First, draw draw draw. Maybe it’s because anyone with access to a screen today is drowning in images, but lately I’ve found that if I want a visual outcome that has texture and quality, I have to base it on something real. I don’t draw because I’m married to the drawing process, but because there’s no other way of finding shapes that mean something to me. I know googling ‘Chrysanthemum flower vector‘ would get me thousands of hits, but none of them would look like this – my shape is the product of time and observation; it comes directly from my world.

Drawing is a good way of finding out what a kaffir lime really looks like. The puckered skin and that little hill where the stem shoots out is what makes it different from all the other limes:

To get an outline for the stencil, I traced over the original drawing:

Faber-Castell PITT artist pen = magic on tracing paper. Pitch black and doesn’t smudge:

All done. My friend Aishah told me that the number of items in the flower bath has to be an odd number – e.g. 3, 5 or 7. That helped me decide how many stencil designs to make:

Scanned into the computer and vectorized:

And finally sent to these talented people: Ijat and Tasniim of Awang Cutter Projex. They’ll be cutting out the stencils from lino (the stuff we use to line our floors and cupboards. Totally Malaysian material) with their magical laser machine. These guys are doing awesome things out of their light-filled studio in Ara Damansara. If you need anything engraved, or cut out to perfect precision, they’re the ones to meet!

Errhhhmerrrgeerrd I can’t wait to see (and show and USE) the stencils when they’re done!

Now, I need to open the door and step out of the quiet room…

… into the rest of the crazy house…

… and out into the world…

…where it’s all happening…

and where I have high hopes of colliding with you, dear reader and human.

Update (1 Oct 2013): The stencils! They are finished. And they are beyond awesome. Here they are hanging out to dry in the evening sun:

Pretty shadows:

Professional stencils are usually made out of mylar, which is hard to source and quite expensive. You can get this lino stuff all over Malaysia. It’s cheap, strong, and flexible – the perfect alternative. A sharp exacto-knife will cut this stuff beautifully. Try it!

DIY Flower Shower

This is a little hint of what’s going on for “Projek Mandi Bunga”. Been experimenting on our house guests.

I can confirm that the project (and our shower) smells of limau purut (kafir lime). The other ingredients are pomelo leaves and limau kasturi (calamansi lime), all picked from Azharr’s farm nearby.

Gonna be needing alot more of this stuff.