UPCOMING: ALLEYS OF DAMANSARA JAYA AT SEK SAN GALLERY, KL
Sometime near the end of Jan/ beginning FEB Tess and I are doing a joint show at Sek San Gallery in Bangsar; I'm posting a few preview images...
[Click on any of the following pictures to enlarge:]
The project started with moving to the suburb of Damansara Jaya about 4 months ago...the first few images are of a back alley to our house which we take to the Atria complex or SS 22/11 every morning.
Tess and I are both quite fond of taking this route...sort of like negotiating a stone platform with deep 'longkangs' (drains) falling on either side, grown over with thick moss and green sludge. Rats, cats, squirrels duck in and out of the drainpipes...once in a while there's the crunch of a cockroach underfoot or a gecko gets flattened in closing the metal door. During what they call the 'forbidden hour' – the interim period between day and night – bats unhinge from the trees and do threateningly low swipes...the mosquitoes are fucking impossible at this time.
The alleys here are quite empty (we've come across less than a dozen fellow travellers in all our months here) and unused but full of 'information'...what I mean is that by walking these routes you tend to pass by clues of the private lives of the inhabitants...wash hanging out to dry, cooking smells, water gushing out of the numerous pipes that empty into the drains...by which quality one can determine wether someone's bathing or washing dishes or emptying paint into their bath and so on, in murmuring to loud exclamations of liquid.
They switch character at night...our own alley is an eerie beast after-hours. But there's this quality of darkness --- a very deep black in the shadows --- which is fascinating, and qualitatively different in this part of the hemisphere. It's like there's all this hidden 'information' in what you can't see.
So we've been busy capturing these spaces in a series of night-photos...we're basically shooting every single alley in this neighbourhood on full moon nights. Those have been quite interesting journeys...
The last three images are stills from a video piece we're currently working on. Basically it's portraits of ourselves levitating in these spaces during that 'forbidden' hour...it's a simple, Melies-like visual 'trick' that's quite convincing...I'll post the video online after the show opens.
[Click on any of the following pictures to enlarge:]
The project started with moving to the suburb of Damansara Jaya about 4 months ago...the first few images are of a back alley to our house which we take to the Atria complex or SS 22/11 every morning. Tess and I are both quite fond of taking this route...sort of like negotiating a stone platform with deep 'longkangs' (drains) falling on either side, grown over with thick moss and green sludge. Rats, cats, squirrels duck in and out of the drainpipes...once in a while there's the crunch of a cockroach underfoot or a gecko gets flattened in closing the metal door. During what they call the 'forbidden hour' – the interim period between day and night – bats unhinge from the trees and do threateningly low swipes...the mosquitoes are fucking impossible at this time.
The alleys here are quite empty (we've come across less than a dozen fellow travellers in all our months here) and unused but full of 'information'...what I mean is that by walking these routes you tend to pass by clues of the private lives of the inhabitants...wash hanging out to dry, cooking smells, water gushing out of the numerous pipes that empty into the drains...by which quality one can determine wether someone's bathing or washing dishes or emptying paint into their bath and so on, in murmuring to loud exclamations of liquid.
They switch character at night...our own alley is an eerie beast after-hours. But there's this quality of darkness --- a very deep black in the shadows --- which is fascinating, and qualitatively different in this part of the hemisphere. It's like there's all this hidden 'information' in what you can't see.
So we've been busy capturing these spaces in a series of night-photos...we're basically shooting every single alley in this neighbourhood on full moon nights. Those have been quite interesting journeys...
The last three images are stills from a video piece we're currently working on. Basically it's portraits of ourselves levitating in these spaces during that 'forbidden' hour...it's a simple, Melies-like visual 'trick' that's quite convincing...I'll post the video online after the show opens.
posted by Kajin 'Jah Goink' Goh at 6:09 PM
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