Eye-popping Moment

Okaaay. So we went to Bank Negara Museum and Art Gallery. And thank goodness, it's a separate building from Bank Negara Headquater, I always thought we were going to visit a bank with a lot working people sitting behind counters and couting money. Lol.

During our journey to Bank Negara, we had a mini farewell for Miss E!

Photo by Shirley 

It's an unusual thing to see Miss E putting on her usual big smile during farewell. We expected her to cry cats and dogs.

Nahhhh, kidding. Hahaha. We're happy to see her leaving joyfully to further her study.

And all the best to Miss E!! Continue to inspire people around you like how you inspire us!

Okay, and we did like ENDLESS wefie on the bus, using Miss E's ultra-sophisticated and high technology smartphone. Seriously, now we can do simple hand gestures then the phone will immediately snap photo? That's kinda coooool

Back to the topic.

So, we reached Bank Negara after an hour long traffic jam.

Their glass buildings look kinda cool (Photo by fivefeetninegiraffe)

Their interior design is super duper classy and beautiful. True la, it's art gallery mannnn. You don't see any art gallery or exhibition in rumah papan right? Art gallery is the collection of luxurious goods. It's the access to glamorous lifestyle. Certain artwork can cost sheer amount of money--- million ringgit for one artwork!!! It's quite sad that due to the whole art buying game----the fact that art carries value and brings profit----art has become a rich man game.

This doesn't only happen in painting, same goes to music. Last few months ago, my all time favourite classical pianist Valentina Lisitsa came to Singapore for live concert! And the cheapest ticket (most probably you have to stand afar and see her in ant size) is about Rm100++  and I haven't include the travelling fee to singapore. So I gave up watching her live performance immediately.

But well, fortunately we enter the galleries for free. woohooo

After taking insane amount of pictures, we went for a talk by Muid Latif. Honestly speaking, due to his attire (vest and slacks uniform), I thought they sent us an usher or tour guide to bring us around. But when he started to show his past works, I was totally amazed! They are all spectacular!!!

One thing that I found him amazing is that his passion towards exploring different things (his extensive knowledge towards astrology is impressive) but yet retaining his own styles in his work. And he talked about how we should find our own speciality, understand more about ourselves and create an identity/icon out of it.

True also la. There are so many possibilities in us, so you shouldn't fix your field of interest once you feel comfortable doing what you are doing. You should instead pick up and learn everything, grow within what you have learnt, and carve your own creativity.

After the talk, we went to visit the art gallery. I won't really talk a lot about this since Dr Carmen shared a lot of things with us.

I'll share with you all the painting that I really really like a lot.

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The Rainbow Day (by Khoo Sui Hoe, 1972)

The exact painting looks a lot bigger than this la. I instantly fell in love with this painting once I saw this. Literally love at first sight. And so I went to google about this Khoo Sui Hoe guy who painted this.

Apparently he's a rich old guy and now resides in US. And he doesn't have instagram :O

Below are some of his other works

Some of you will notice that he plays a lot with circles and colours in his paintings. (nahhh, you didn't notice that, did you? You were scrolling down and wanting to end reading this post quickly right?)

Anyway, I like his artwork a lot because of his colourful and surreal elements. I'm fascinated by surrealistic art ever since taking film study. Lol. I guess Joe Yan had too much influence on us.

The Rainbow Day kinda reminds me of a song called No Surprises by Radiohead. They all portray the same thing: pleasantly mysterious. I guess the circles, harmonious colours and nature elements accentuate the pleasant, wholeness and relaxed feeling. In a contrast, the human-like figure portrays a state of calm and somehow they all look very dumb dumb.

Look calm and dumb, Hmm

That kinda sounds a lot like me eh? Lol. Is that why I like his artworks a lot?

Anyway, art gallery is a great hang-out place I'd say. Peaceful and quiet moment with the artworks and myself. Looking at how the artists express their values, beliefs, thoughts, perspectives, emotion through just mere colours and shapes.

While you get to know them better, you are also getting to know yourself better.

I'm looking forward to our next field trip to National Art Gallery.

 :D

Conceptual Art

Sorry for not updating my blog recently, I've been hardworking and lazy at the same time. 

Hardworking because I've a lot assignments to do, lazy because I procrastinate a lot. Oh mian.. 

Well, for this week, we have Tan Zi Hao as our guest lecture. 

Dr Carmen introduced Zi Hao as one of the few artist who makes conceptual art in Malaysia. This is my first time coming across to this term. Basically, it means art that involves "idea", where the idea itself becomes art. 

At first, I felt like this whole "conceptual art" thingy is not my cup of tea. I even felt that conceptual art is a fraud, because it seems like it doesn't need great skill to produce art if art is all about conveying an "idea".

I can just literally put a blank canvas in a posh looking space, with good lighting and say this is an art. And believe it or not, people actually did that. 

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Or this? 

A display feature pieces of wood at Birmingham's Icon Gallery

It feels like the artist started this work and eventually got bored and left his or her work unfinished. Lol. 

Most of the conceptual artwork makes the viewer feels uncomfortable, because it is too "modern" to understand it. 

For traditional art, you need skills to draw, and you need GREAT skill to actually make people to appreciate your artwork. But, there are people who have great MIMICRY skill, who can draw anything that is able to be visually seen by human eyes. They are just basically making a copy of the object or photographs as close as it can be.

Painting of a city
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That fellow who sings Let It Go. Lol. I don't remember her name.

This kind of art work, becomes less meaningful, because it doesn't convey anything but a painstaking skill only. We can call this as "mute art"---- art that doesn't speak for anything. 

This could mean that good visual art requires great skill, but great skill doesn't necessarily make good art.

This brings to the question --- What is art?

I was quite confused when Zi Hao was passing one of his conceptual art - The Soil (I don't quite remember the name) for us to have a look. I was confused as my own definition for art is completely destructed when he claimed that this packet, contained a handful of soil, together with a few random materials, including of his own sperm (seriously?) is an art work he made to convey his ideas and thoughts about our country.

This artwork, literally makes me uncomfortable, frankly speaking. Uncomfortable because it causes me to think a lot instead of enjoying it like how I enjoy appreciating traditional visual art (sometimes it is so well painted and drawn that you can "feeeeeeel" the emotion in the artwork).

Looking at Zi Hao's artwork, I had questions like: Is conceptual art about conveying idea regardless of any aesthetic properties? 

If it requires no aesthetic value, what distinguish conceptual art from non art? 

What if the idea proposed by the artist fails? 

Can failure be accepted as part of the art? 

Can idea fail?

As I had these questions racing through my mind, suddenly, I thought I understood something---- I think I know what is this guy sitting in front, trying to do with all of these art works.

The conceptual art work, obtains meaning by questioning.

Questioning what is the limit of art. What is the role of people instead of the role of artist.

First, Zi Hao questions about the limits of art by revealing a whole new mechanism of art. He put ticking alarm clock in British Council, he sat outside of his class, he obstructed his lecturer's view, he shook hands with the audiences and so on. 

This kind of art initially makes people feel uncomfortable as it moves people out of their comfort zone by destructing the mechanism of traditional art, and people tend to have many questions as they experience this, just like how The Soil did to me. 

When you questioning about it, you are actually throwing a catalyst into a debate. In this case, the artwork itself is the catalyst, and then people will debate over the artwork or the concept behind it.

Eventually, the concept proposed by the artist is said to have impact on people. So, conceptual artwork is meant to be uncomfortable, it's not meant for entertainment or escapism purposes. 

I've got to say that many Malaysians are very syok sendiri kind of people. 

"I got a stable job, I got nice food. I got a nice family. My life is perfect and I don't have to care about the government and politics."

The first step to solve a problem, is to not hide from it. 

And how do you make people to not hide from the problems? You make them question about it, and through questioning, you are forced to see different sides of a matter (in this state, you probably will feel discomfort as your conservative way to understand everything is destructed).

When you are exposed to a whole new perspective, you are curious what is truth. Then your curiosity towards finding the answer requires you to have confidence towards your own culture belief and values, and requires you to have courage to overcome challenges, and constancy to keep moving forward despite of our fears.

These 4Cs eventually leads to change.

(Feels familiar? Dr Carmen mentioned about it in one of our class) 

Our country desperately needs a change, but first we need to make people to realize the need to change. We, as the future generation of our country, and potentially to be working in creative industry in the future, what we can do is to make people question about the circumstances in our country by producing art that conveys idea.

Just like how Zi Hao did.

So, to answer this week question assigned by Dr Carmen, what did you learn from Tan Zi Hao?

I've learnt

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The art of questioning. 

Getting Heard

Admittedly, I was quite an ignorant kid back then. I wouldn't care about politic, history or any current issues that most of the grown up people would be discussing in the most emotional manner. In fact, I believed there were many peers out there were like me, had no clues about what's going on.

Why?

Because we are now living in the generation where our voice don't matter and will not get respected.

I had a really bad experience back in my secondary school where I raised my hand (it took A LOT of courage for me to do this) and asked my Pendidikan Moral teacher why should we memorize definitions of 36 moral values. How the heck people who wrote the text book define and categorize moral into 36 terms?

That teacher was extremely upset by my question and began to give us a long rant on why should we study Pendidikan Moral. I remembered students in class apparently were quite unhappy about it and probably blamed me for wasting their time.

We all experience the moment where our voice is belittled. Look at our education system, we don't get to decide in what we learn or how we should learn it. Yet, we are asked to absorb them like a robot. We know nothing and we are expected to face the real world.

We will only feel obligated to participate in making a change in our country, only if our voice matter. That's why we become ignorant. 

You will then ask why do I bring up this.

This is because Dr Carmen talked about May 13 tragedy extensively during last lecture. May 13 tragedy was a traumatic experience that haunted Malaysians especially people among older generation.

It may exert fear and emotion to the older generation. But for people like me, who apparently have lived my life not knowing what's going on during 1969 and even have trouble to remember in which year Malaysia gained independence, will not ever feel like how the way older generation people felt. I was trying really hard to imagine how the people living in fear during the riots.

Then I realized we, the younger generation, often can't really relate ourselves to their anger towards racial riots, racial discrimination, government's incompetency. One of us may occasionally show his or her outstanding personality and maturity by posting rants towards politics on facebook, but when we ask ourselves, do we truly have the ability to empathize with those who became the victim of corruption, unfair policies, and poverty?

We can't. All these while we have been worrying if we are still keeping up with the trend, or how many followers we have in instagram, or which episodes of Running Man you are watching. I had no idea back then why people protested over Teoh Beng Hock's death. Well, you won't walk up to the street and protested over the stranger you read in newspaper who died in the hit and run accident right?

This is all because we never experience what the vulnerable minorities have experienced. People who protested over Teoh Beng Hock's death, probably are the same victims of our corrupted government. They understood how painful Teoh's family was undergoing, that's why they took the risk of getting caught just to stand up for Teoh's family.

This whole May 13 thing made me realized that there's actually another group of people in our country, that eager for a change. 

While you are watching running man, there are people crying for a change. While you are taking photos of the food, there are people hoping for a change. While you are scrolling through instagram, there are people holding the hope that miracle will happen in our country.

I'm not saying we are all not allowed to enjoy doing what we like, but the idea I am spreading now is, let us stop being so ignorant and selfish. Pick up the newspaper and start to read. It's true that we won't understand politics right away and probably fewer and fewer people will stop voting.

But with a loss of vote, we are losing democracy. When this happens, those people who suffer, will remain suffering.

At least, make us valuable to the society alright?

Another Country

Another Country and the casts

First of all, this is my first time watching a theatrical performance. A professional one. And it's kinda sad (and funny) when I told my friends that I'm going to see a play directed by Singaporean and Malaysian directors, because they were all like:

"That play is produced by local ppl? You sure or not? Not by ang mo meh?"

"Har? We can watch theatre here in KL one ah?"

"I think it should be something like wayang kulit, right?" (this is very saddening, I know)

LOL. Their response towards Another Country, really truly shows art especially performing art can never be a local thing, it's ALWAYS another country thing. I guess we have too little exposure to art, especially local arts. That's why all my friends are dumbfounded to know we can actually watch theatre in KL. 

After getting all discouragement from my friends and they'd convinced me it would be as boring as hell even though they had no idea how a play should look like, I kinda had zero expectation towards it. Frankly speaking, I felt sluggish and no excitement at all when we were on the way to DPAC. Not to mention that we were even late for 15 minutes for the show. 

But as the play had ended, I thought that my friends were totally wrong about the play, because it was awesomely performed. 

So awesome that I had a totally new perspective towards performing art.

Okay, let me tell you the awesomeness about this play.

Why performed texts?

The beauty of Another Country is they perform a compilation of Malaysian and Singaporean literary or media texts. So, the first half of the play had Malaysian actors performing Singaporean texts, second half vice versa. And I've got to say this is a wise way to address issue that is very difficult to discuss.

Why?

Because usually all the political articles that we read on newspaper or on the Internet, they tend to be more critical, or biased to one side and stay WITHIN politics only. Well, it will still somehow create impact to certain extend, but not as much as how Another Country impacted me.

I guess this is because the texts used in Another Country are more personal, emotional and individual. The writers and authors address certain issue but with less critical manner, rather affectionate and funny. This is way BEYOND politics. 

Then, I came to realization that politics often draw borders and divide people, but arts portray emotion and unite people by making connections in between audience, actors and the content of the art. It's fascinating to think theatre plays a crucial role in changing the way how the society think.

Another thing that interests me is that although Malaysia and Singapore were separated for so many years, we still share many common similarities and cultures. I may not know the history background of Singapore, but we all laughed at the same thing during Singapore segment, when they mocked about their culture, because BRO WE FEEL YOU!

 It's just as if Malaysia is the shadow of Singapore, and vice versa. And you can never step on a shadow, nor destroy it. The similarities between us are so deeply rooted that the separation can never undermine our common bridge. See, the play did not only successfully made me feel affectionate towards my own country, but also the neighbouring one!

lol

About the performance 

There were certain scenes where the whole theatre was in complete silence, no sad orchestral background music, no close up shot on actor's tear rolling down the cheek, only the actor/actress saying out the lines, and they still successfully created tension and emotion. Not to mention that they have to say all the lines out loud (so loud that the voice must be heard clearly in last row) while portraying emotion. 

Just imagine yourself shouting your lung out but still need to express grief, sadness, tension, joy and other kinds of emotion through every words spoken. 

Their every slight change of facial expression and that trembling in their voice must be noticed by all of the audience. And we were all sitting on a fixed place, we had a fixed view on the stage, which means there won't be any low angle or high angle or oblique shot to heighten their emotion expressed. 

Without the help of techniques used in films, effects or excessive use of props, now we're all forced to focus on the text only. This is how art should be like right? It shouldn't be a form of entertainment that provide escapism from our reality, but to convey values or perspectives believed by the author which can make a change in our painful reality.

Favourite scene?

My personal favourite scene would be Ang Tau Mui. It's where one of the actress humbly squatting down and eating pork, describing how tasty it was and putting up a satisfying look in her to have pork in every of her meal. 

No matter how people around her reminded her that pork is super unhealthy and she should be more health conscious, she didn't care any of it. 

"Eat pork also die, don't eat pork I also will die, of course I will choose to eat pork la"

We all may laugh at her ignorance, but deep inside our heart, we all know we admired her courage.

The courage to live a life we want when we are bounded by all kinds of commitments and responsibility. 

While living in this painful reality and not given an option to escape from it.

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A side note to what Kaili mentioned on her blog:

It is so sad that in our society, the LGBTs are always the helpless minorities. And it is always a debatable and sensitive issue to discussed about. Why is it sensitive? Because to most of us they are still the abnormal ones. This has rooted in the our society for a long time. So I wish to be alive to see the fading of this boundary of normalcy and abnormality one day.  

She made a really good point over here where our society is ruled by the majority in which we often see it as the truth. This so-called truth should be demolished one day. We should accept one another.

But, I always believe that there are truths that hold our world in place. Truth that forces us to do the right thing, truth that defines how a human being should behave, truth that sets evil and good apart. I'm not saying that LGBTs are evil, who am I to judge them when I am just a human being.

I just want to make a point that, sometimes, there's a necessity to have a boundary that defines what is good (what we see as normalcy) and what is wrong (what we see as abnormality). The fading of this boundary of normalcy and abnormality may not be a good thing and when this happens, it's when we have lost humanity.

For example: Stealing, for now, we see it as something abnormality, if one day we have lost the ability to draw the boundary of normalcy and abnormality, stealing will be an absolutely normal act to do and there will be nothing wrong about it. Just imagine how chaotic our society will be by then

Well, I'm not trying to argue about LGBTs, I'm just posing another perspective of how we should see truth.

Then, you will ask, what is truth?

I do believe in God, I'm a Christian. And I do believe in the truth that has always been holding me in place, and sets me free. :D

Apaden?

First of all, I've got to admit that Malaysian Media and Culture was my least anticipated subject during this semester. I've even joked to my friends hopefully I can stay awake throughout this class for the next few months.

But I changed my mind right after having my first lecture class.

I was so engaged and impressed by how Dr Carmen taught in the class. Just for your information, I ALWAYS have problems to concentrate during most of the classes. It always starts with the lecturer talking in lengthy speech, showing endless slides congested with information and texts. Then my mind will start to wander around the castles I built a moment ago in the air, in the end I have to struggle during the final exam. Sounds familiar right?

Anyway, I'm not trying to condemn their way of teaching, it's just that the way they teach, eventually kill creativity and deliver zero inspiration. It's like literally throwing a huge piece of cake in your face and asking you to eat it yourself. Wouldn't it be better if they provide all the ingredients, and give you directions to bake one yourself by asking you questions like: Think of what kind of cake you want to bake today? How do you want your cake be different from the others?

During the end of the day, you will receive enough essential information from the lecturer and be able to create new ideas from it.

And yes, I'm glad that Dr Carmen asked a lot of questions for us to ponder on. I also understand that many lecturers they actually like to ask questions too, it's just that Asian students are more timid and conservative when it comes to speaking out loud in the class. I'm one of those who has a lot of things to say but expressing through speaking is something that I'm really bad at. Really really bad. So, I'm actually very touched by how much Dr Carmen values our opinions, so much that we're all required to blog about each lesson and anything related to this unit, which is why you are reading this now.

I guess the reason why she does this is because: a good lecturer doesn't only convey ideas and information, but also inspire and create passion in us. To inspire, first, you really need to know whom you are dealing with, isn't it? Well, this is just the first lesson, more to go. Who knows during the next lecture she will start to speak in lengthy speech and 'inspire' more castles to be built in the air?

Anyway, to answer the question she posed for this week:

Do you identify as a Malaysian? Why? Does it matter?

Well, if owning an identity card and living in this bolehland for 21 years straight on can be solid proves that I am a Malaysian, then I can proudly say that Yeahhh Apaden, I'm Malaysian laahh.

BUT

Let me remind you a few things.

A few years ago, Nordin Mohamad Top who was killed as a terrorist and was believed to have masterminded a few bombings in Indonesia and Australia, also owned the SAME Malaysian identity card and resided in the SAME bolehland for many years.

Do you identify him as a Malaysian?

That Malaysian rapist who got away from getting arrested and received no punishment, and may pose a threat to you or your family members.

Do you identify him as a Malaysian?

That quiet and introverted guy in your class who complains and condemns Malaysia in every of his Facebook posts.

Do you identify him as a Malaysian?

To me, to identify someone as a Malaysian, other than simply owning an identity card, you also must have a heart of hoping and believing this bolehland will be better. It's alright to complain a bit about the politics, or GST, or whosoever that bought expensive cincin or hermes bag. But provided that you have the desire to make a change, or at least start doing something meaningful to the country.

And so, I can conclude by saying I'm Malaysian. Because I do really envision someday, in this bolehland, we all can proudly call ourselves as Malaysian. :D

Does identifying myself as a Malaysian matter?

Not really at the moment, because we are still now categorized by our skin colours, religions and our social state. Sadly speaking, we are still bounded by many uncivilized discriminations. For instance, many independent filmmakers have been excluded from Malaysian film industry just because they freely use other languages commonly spoken in Malaysia rather than just Malay.

Seriously, you speak hainan, hokkien, foochow, hakka, cantonese and not speaking Malay in the film doesn't make it a Malaysian film?

How can creativity blossom in Malaysia when we have all these censorships to judge and discriminate? Creativity should have sufficient of space and freedom to move around so that it can stretch itself into something awesome and beautiful. So, until the day when we can freely enjoy our rights regardless of our skin colours and religions, it doesn't really matter if you identify yourself as a Malaysian. 

Hahaha I apologize for writing a little bit too much here. That's all for this week's blog entry. Please do comment if you disagree or agree to anything I wrote. Have a nice day.

:D