A process that has no clear boundary of the end and the beginning

May 23, 2010–a rare Sunday without marking only because I forgot to bring them back home…

…and updated once again on June 5, 2010! Finally!

The best things in life are free, and so too handouts (in both senses of the word!) So if you could, give me some money now for artists are poor when they are alive and rich when they die.

I am rather pleased with the Arts enrichment session, though I had to end it rather abruptly. My right toes cramped.

But it might as well be. Like I said before the end of the session, art is a process that has no clear boundary of the end and the beginning. It’s a work in progress, and you always feel you can add a few more strokes to the final touch. But I made an error which, because my mouth moved faster than my brain and due to the exhaustion inflicted in the semester both have not been cooperative, I was not able to correct it on the spot although I thought of it at that moment. It’s not a big error–Jeff Koons’s ex-wife is not an Italian prostitute-turned-politician as mentioned, but an Italian pornography-actress-turned-politician.

Speaking of pornography, some reader of the ST wrote in and complained that the cover-shot of the two important men from Wild Rice was distasteful and it smacks of porn-peddling (I paraphrased; I just took a quick read of that letter because I was still in the process of clearing 28 days’ worth of ST at this moment–somehow such a mission reminds me of a horror flick.) I think this is an opportune time for me to highlight briefly the difference between pornography and art. The intent is a distinguishing factor, and that cover intends for a cheeky chuckle more than a seductive sexual advance, if at all. The action of the actors reveals that intent. If that cover is pornography, one should avoid the swimming pool.

This advertisement found in the ST some time ago, however, may have caused the same reader a lot more trauma (have reduced the size of the scanned image in case it causes any heart palpitation):

(Feb 26, 2010)

I have tackled such ‘sleazy’ ads in the ST in a previous post, so I shall not be talking too much about this now. Maybe later.

I was delighted that a few students managed to speak with me about the Arts Elective at the end of it. One girl was impressive with her depth of knowledge of the French culture while another pair was talking about biology in relation to the AIDS-themed Kult Magazine commissioned by the Health Promotion Board. Unfortunately, it was impossible to make the main session any more interactive than it was.

I do see the 2h-‘live’ show an art, which is why I am interested to find out what you think of it. I would very much love it to be a private affair, with just the students who are interested in the subject. Perhaps they don’t have to be the best students, but an open mind will be a prerequisite. It is difficult to break such a message to students from my class, but the invitation I sent out to the other tutors was more specific: send only the best students who are also arts-inclined. I think some still turned up because their friends were going.

This is an art-piece with an accompanying description which came right from the horse’s mouth: the artist explained the intention behind the piece a week before the work, but he guessed as much that not many were listening. So it would not be fair to levy expectations beyond what the art-piece intends to do, otherwise it is akin to expecting a pineapple when you are getting a durian as you forgot what you’d ordered from the farmer. But I should have stuck a “Keep Out” sign on the door before the show as a final sypnosis of the work.

On the flipside, the art should have been deemed a failure because it might not be accessible to the mass who turned up, or to the supposedly ideal audience for the Elective. On a positive note, everyone learnt something!

I am likely to donate the concept and the art-work to the Department since the review by peers were positive. Of course the execution of such contemporary art is vital, and not many will be able to deliver it in the manner I designed. But those future reproductions may well see a parallel with DuChamp’s Fountaine replica.

It was unfortunate that I wasn’t able to secure the film, 4 x 4 – Episodes of Singapore Art, by Ho Tzu Nyen. I think the Substation staff is still trying to secure the rights for me. The wait is very much like the wait one experiences at this blog for an update, I believe.

…But I’m pretty good at sourcing for materials, so even if that doesn’t come, it’s not a big issue. Time is an issue, but that makes this June break an adventure! I love hunting. It’s rather different from a scientific research.

 Non Sequitur, May 18, 2010

That reminds me of Iskandar Jalil, Singapore’s Master Potter. Not Hairy Potter.

Well, actually, it’s an article in the ST that I was reminded of by my bloodlust for resources:

May 18, 2010

The less I have, the more I create

A surfeit of govt funding could ironically stifle the arts it seeks to support

By Cheong Suk-Wai

MASTER potter Iskandar Jalil says his most fulfilling days as an artist were half a century ago, when he would load his just-thrown creations onto his motorcycle at his home in Kembangan and then ride to Jurong Brick Works to fire them.Mr Iskandar, 71, recalls: ‘I’d pray all the way that none would be broken, but three out of four were in pieces when I arrived.’Later, he had his own kiln – which, alas, recently ran afoul of planning regulations here – but continues scouring here and in Malaysia for the right clay, and mixing his own paints. So he despairs of his young students who ‘demand a lot and accuse me of not supplying them with the right things, or asking for things the market doesn’t sell’. Where, he wonders, is their drive to discover new things – and, more importantly, to discover themselves? Might their innate curiosity have been cauterised by the myriad of funds, facilities and fora available here now for them to indulge their artistic fancies? From the School of the Arts to $10,000 grants for writing children’s books, there has been no finer time for artists to be alive here. Indeed, Ms Elaine Ng, the director of arts development at the National Arts Council (NAC), was reported in this newspaper on Thursday last week as saying that NAC had increased its major grant funding by 14 per cent overall, or to $4.8 million compared with $4.2 million previously. The NAC is the major, if not main, arts funding body here. In an interview last month, actor and TheatreWorks co-founder Lim Kay Tong, 56, told The Straits Times he thought artists here might be more creative and motivated if they had ‘nothing’. How else, he added, could one explain why, say, playwrights here didn’t seem to have a deep need to say something and then hone their skills to say it? It is a personal opinion, but as a writer and sometime composer, I too hold the view that having less is better than having too much when one is making art. Creating requires intense discipline and it is hard to have that when one has too many nice-to-haves at one’s disposal. Too often, one ends up enjoying the nice-to-haves more than the process of straining to find or say something new. The notion that great art comes only from great struggle may seem overly romantic, but then making meaningful art is harder than squeezing blood from a stone. In art, the ‘stone’ you are squeezing is really yourself and, even then, you do not know whether anything as rich as blood would spurt forth. As author Suchen Christine Lim, 61, puts it: ‘Artistic works require a ruthless energy, the courage to see the darkness in the heart – and cut deep.’ Just look at the many stories from this year’s Singapore Arts Festival, which opened on Friday and runs till June 13, including that of Sufi sage Tierno Bokar, who preached peace even as war tore him away from his family, and ConversAsians, where artists tell how hard it is to make art. Ms Lim’s friend, the Filipino man of letters F. Sionil Jose, once asked her: ‘Singapore is rich, and even the rich bleed. But do we allow ourselves to bleed?’ Some artists say that being told ‘no, you can’t’ – or, more often, knowing that the moral and material odds are against them – is the best spur to produce a thing of truthful worth. History suggests so. The time between the two world wars gave us The Wasteland, The Great Gatsby and The Grapes Of Wrath. George Orwell was a better essayist than he was a novelist all his life – and then, while duelling with depression and death on a deserted island, he wrote 1984, arguably the definitive novel of the 20th century. Of course, artists do not starve only during wars. The 19th century French painters Paul Cezanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Camille Pissarro begged and borrowed to put bread on the table, even as they jostled for space to exhibit their then unpopular art. Today, the world covets the fierce beauty, buoyant abandon and sublime simplicity they afforded despite their privation. As Ms Lim puts it: ‘I’d rather be a mongrel than a lapdog, even if it means I will be poor.’ Singaporeans who are serious about art and want to create more of it are not alone in tussling with their restless conscience amid ever-growing material comfort. In an April 2001 essay in the Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times columnist David Brooks lamented that America’s best and brightest live in a country ‘that has lost, in its frenetic seeking after happiness and success, the language of sin and character-building through combat with sin’. He added that with all their good minds, good natures and good fortune, these ‘Organisation Kids’ see evil as something to be cured strategically through education, shrinks or Prozac. Not for them the trials by fire from which their forefathers emerged, purer and enlightened. ‘Instead of virtue,’ Mr Brooks mused, ‘we talk about accomplishment.’ The years have not revised his opinion: On Wednesday last week, he worried that United States Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan was, like the Organisation Kids she once taught, ‘prudential rather than poetic’. But all this is not to say artists can thrive on art alone. Dramatist Noor Effendy Ibrahim, 37, who is the new artistic director of arts centre The Substation here, feels that the arts has become such an ‘industry’ – as opposed to a ‘journey of discovery’ – that bread-and-butter concerns have numbed artistic imagination here. At the same time, he is not in any way knocking ‘art as industry’. ‘We have to make a living after all,’ he says simply. But, he is quick to add, if artists were better paid, that would increase their standing in society, which in turn would give them more credibility and confidence. It takes years before artists have something to show for all the time, money and hope that others invest in them. Meanwhile, they may live on little – except hope. Singapore’s struggling decades gave us the art of a Kuo Pao Kun, an Edwin Thumboo, a Georgette Chen and a Goh Choo San, whose works thrum on through time, putting a genuinely Singaporean stamp on history. It would be ironic if the decades of plenty yield any less.

It might not be that much of an irony more than a paradox if it indeed does happen. Such is life. In difficult times, people need avenues to relieve themselves and art happens to be one such positive expression.

Well, my casino cruise painting has not yet materialised (I was inspired by one artwork in a gallery in Ion Orchard about half a year ago), but only time will tell. I’m thinking of yet another idea now.

The eulogy of one of Singapore’s founding fathers at the morning parade actually made me chuckle and I know there were people who noticed. Well, they don’t know what my brain’s processing when I was controlling my howl of a laughter within when I learnt of the canary as an indicator of life in Jurong to inform the rest of Singapore that there’s no industrial fallout (I certainly paraphrased). I think I’ve found a real identity for Jurong Football Club! I have no idea what their mascot or logo is, but I know the colours are a shade of dirty orange and black. Let’s give Jurong a real identity! We can have the Big Yellow Bird as our mascot! (Not the one in Sesame Street, but just a canary, like Norwich City’s).

Speaking of logo and brands, nothing translates easily into a story the way Logorama did it (http://www.logorama-themovie.com/).

There are a few possible interpretations of the intention behind the short film, besides the obvious aim to entertain. Of course, with what happened to BP and the oil spill recently, the film becomes much more relevant. Brands may no longer matter if you are facing such a natural calamity as people scramble to try to save nature–or whatever’s left of it. There are apparently some brands that may live for a longer time, like Big Boy the fastfood restaurant and Apple Inc. The film also attempted to talk about moral issues surrounding zoos, and it’s strange how Mc is so frequently vilified but other fastfood brands are less prominent. Somehow I think Supersize Me had damaged Mc’s reputation a lot more than I imagined. Above all, what I like about the film came from the thought about the possible repercussions it would draw from all the companies it showcased, or misappropriated. I doubt many of those brands would allow their logo to be used in such a manner–especially not Ronald! So while thinking about how the film might well get into serious legal wrangle, especially if it doesn’t win an Oscar, I realised that they might have produced this film anyway just to challenge such an overemphasis on intellectual property rights, specifically copyrights. The filmmakers aren’t exacty rich and I doubt they have any money to pay the lawsuits should all the companies take it out on them at one go. So they probably know the risk of being fried by KFC, Mc or Big Boy is low. Or it could be all or nothing. Thus they went ahead with such a calculated risk, perhaps to prove that these companies, though ‘evil’, have a sense of humour too. Last point I want to make with regard to Logorama is its message to the audience. How many viewers feel a sense of familiarity when they see the brands they know on screen? Do you feel happy that you are able to identify with some of those brands? This film is in fact mocking us and the visual culture we live in, that such brands and materialistic mode of identification of happiness have already defined who we are.

Monday, May. 24, 2010

Love Me, Love My Brand

By Joel Stein, in TIME

The woman seated next to me on the plane told me her name was Stefanie but that she went by Adventure Girl. This was a moment I had been prepared for since I got married, thanks to Hall and Oates. But it turned out, I discovered without asking, that Adventure Girl was just her Twitter name. It also turned out that she had 1.5 million followers. Eventually, I told her that I too am on Twitter and waited for her to ask how many followers I have. When I told her I have more than a million, her eyes got wide, and she leaned in, listening closely. This, I realized, must be what it’s like to have money.

Then Adventure Girl asked me what my brand was. No one had ever asked me that before. “My brand used to be ‘Finding the adventure girl in you,'” she said. “Now it’s ‘Living life’s adventures.'” After a career as a model for tool companies and as a freelance writer, she became “funemployed” in 2009 and trademarked the name Adventure Girl™. Now she’s paid for speaking gigs, for public appearances and by the Cherry Marketing Institute to brand cherries as a natural cure for jet lag. Meanwhile, I was running around yelling random stuff like a brandless idiot, sleeping in and paying for my cherries.

So Adventure Girl™ tried to help me find my brand. She started by asking me what my passion was. Now I didn’t have two things. “Until you figure out what gets you up in the morning, you’re throwing money away,” she said. I had no idea I was already throwing money away on this. I was getting scared.

Back at home with my baby and lovely wife Cassandra, I realized that I was sometimes funny, sometimes serious and a lot of the time staring at the television. This was not a brand. So I called Adventure Girl™, who was in Rwanda giving the tourism authority advice on rebranding the country as a tourist destination instead of a genocide destination. She had already come up with an angle: “‘The Switzerland of the African countries.’ It’s incredibly clean. There isn’t a paper on the ground.” If it was this easy for Rwanda, I was sure I could do it too.

Adventure Girl™ suggested I ask my Twitter followers and Facebook friends to help me find my brand. This, it turns out, was not a good idea. Many people thought I was looking to create a line of products to sell, and one woman suggested toilet-seat covers with people’s faces on them, like Sarah Palin’s. Another guy came up with “Joel the Mole.” The nicest observations anyone made involved the words snark and self-deprecating. I hope for Rwanda’s sake that it didn’t try the same experiment.

I called Sandra Carreon-John, senior vice president at M&C Saatchi, the advertising and public relations firm that handles Coke and Reebok, for advice. She thought I needed a handle, like Bill Simmons’ Sports Guy or Howard Stern’s King of All Media. We came up with the Sultan of Snark™, since we both felt sultan is way underused. If I branded myself correctly, I’d soon be selling a line of Sultan of Snark™ T-shirts, hats and key chains that said things like “Yeah … in 1997!” The first step, Carreon-John said, was to call myself the Sultan of Snark™ a few times. Once the Sultan of Snark™ had done that, the Sultan of Snark™ should try to get other people to call the Sultan of Snark™ that too. “Insult someone on Fox, like Bill O’Reilly, so he’ll say, ‘The Sultan of Snark™ talked about me in his column,'” she said. The Sultan of Snark™, I let her know, has no interest in starting a fake fight with a balding, jowly gerbil whose job has been reduced to wiping Glenn Beck’s whiteboards.

To get my brand out there, I consulted Amy Jo Martin, whose company, Digital Royalty, creates social-media strategies to increase the reach of people like Shaquille O’Neal. Martin wanted to define my brand further and asked me to describe myself. I told her I was lazy, self-involved and sexually frustrated. Martin, who is very good at her job, turned “lazy” into “needing stimulation,” which she then turned into “dynamic” and finally “rock star.” She transformed “self-involved” into “open.” Starting to get it, I suggested that “sexually frustrated” is really just “sexy.” “I think the first two for sure,” she said.

By the end of our conversation, Martin had convinced me that in the age of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, putting out an exaggerated version of your personality is necessary. Sure, we want the people in our lives to have a full understanding of us, but controlling our shorthand is a good idea. It’s like our superhero costumes, only not necessarily supergay. If you don’t give your brand some thought, you become the guy whose funeral is all about how much he loved the Mets. “A funeral is the ultimate brand evaluation,” Martin said. Luckily, it’s not hard to find a rabbi who is into snark. 

Wthdrawal symptoms

May 13, 2010; 8.30pm

…and it’s been four days since I last spent any red ink.

Meetings after meetings, and they zapped the life out of most people/ Looking ashen and with bloodshot eyes, focus dissipated.

(Which is the reason why this post is being edited now.)

At the PWC meeting (if only it were a PriceWaterhouseCoopers AGM!) on Wednesday, the last meeting of the day, something shocked and saddened us, I believe, to see one of the old guards–a seasoned guide and a caring soul–‘behaving out of character’ suddenly. Both of us are in the same functions workgroups this year and I know the kind of pressure (some warranted, some unnecessary) we are facing currently.

And I am thankful for having wonderful pupils once again who are generally understanding. A few have also shown their quiet, emotional support over the past few weeks: that particular situation is like a barbecue by a playful kid fanning the flames too enthusiastically, deliberatey sending ash and smoke to the neighbouring pit watched by another playful kid. The playful kid at the second pit, in retaliation, fanned the flames at his pit with more vigour, and the result is “chao tar”. I was only there in the middle of the smoke and flames because I was trying to teach them how to barbecue responsibly in a civic-minded manner, but someone thought that the barbecue was a contest and it was rigged so the kid added paraffin before fanning the flames further. I think my hair caught fire. I guess the stars were on my side and I was largely unharmed, but I hope the misunderstanding in the kids around the neighbourhood will be resolved.

I am also glad that I have magnanimous colleagues across the departments. And above all, in the place where I spent a large part of my daily life, I am blessed with great friends (one of whom is facing a barrage of problems).

I was calculating the ratio of time spent on activities per day after a sharing during an elective programme on Wednesday, and I realised that for me, after so many years, there’s actually an improvement in my (work-)life! It’s now 5 (h of sleep): 5(h of fun, reading, writing, chat): 11(h of work): 3(h of meal). It used to 5: 2: 13:4 and thereabouts. I think the ratio misses out on travelling time and many other things that ought to be done, like an hour’s worth of bath to smell nice and fresh. In any case, you get the sum (or not, because they don’t make sense when you try adding all the figures and facts!)

Now I am going to complete the previous post on 4d = 3d + d!

4D = 3D with Details

I can’t believe my eyes when I saw that explanation on the labels of educational toys sold at the Science Centre! Even if I was not sure what the fourth dimension is, I know it is not algebraic where 4d=3d+d. But the first thing that came to my mind was what could possibly in that toy egg: are there 4D numbers in there?

The Pixar Exhibition was rather insightful and it took about 2h for one to finish most parts of the exhibition. I was looking forward to some souvenirs, like a programme booklet, but the beautiful postcards were only available to some privilege card-holders, while the welcome shoot didn’t look convincing with Woody Photoshop-ped in with his arse on the hands of the main subjects of the picture against the dreamy backdrop of Ratatouille‘s Paris (which looked really 2-dimensional in the photograph). It was quite a pity because I really like Ratatouille, and the next best alternative to embrace the memory is to purchase a ‘youth’-size T-shirt at about $25 or the commemorative edition coffee-table book on the exhibition at $60. Perhaps if the ticket price was less than the $22 I paid per head (internet booking fee included), it would have been an easier decision to buy the book! But in all honesty, having a first hand look at the sketches of Pixar’s treasures was a pleasure and a revelation: the paint reminded me that art is hardwork and art demands time for one to be freed in thought, alleviating the pain of blood and sweat.

Time is hard to find for one to be freed in thought and sometimes we are lost in the madness and flurry of work. It is with great relief that on Labour Day, I managed to attend the Chinese Orchestra concert. It was a great performance and I was transported to the various lands created by the harmony of the music. From the second row, I can feel the power of the soundwaves and it makes the experience really “4D”, in all senses of that acronym! I love Sai Ma (Horse Racing) and I think (if I remembered correctly!) it was an encore piece. Lovely. But too bad there was no official recording of the whole performance. Well, here’s the Carnegie Hall performance by Lang Lang and his father: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSYRABNbFdQ

I wish I had gone to the Band and the Choir’s performances, but like Dali’s clocks, time is somewhat warped these days.

Ed: (May 18, 2010) I just learnt that there is a video recording available for the Chinese Orchestra’s performance! I wonder if there’s one for the Band and the Choir too…but the beauty of live performances lie not in the recording but in the live performances themselves; the recording serves as a memory in a less tangible form.