AN EMERGENT ENTRY

Coming out from long radio silence...

Last entry more than half a year ago, and impossible to summarize all that's been going on since then...

So, I'm picking up the thread again...a late night at the console, just finished reading Ondaatje's 'Anil's Ghosts', a stunning and heartbreaking piece of work, almost shimmering in its emotional clarity. Lay in bed sifting thoughts, unable to sleep, and then decided to put in this entry, a way as it were of reigniting this project started so many months ago in KL.

For a while I considered wether or not to 'retire' this blog, so long unkempt and un-nurtured. And going through a rethink...mostly a consideration of purpose, from being the public 'face' of reporting from the frontlines of last year's travels and adventures/misadventures to what I think will become an entirely different kind of beast. Mostly I was thinking, how personal do I want to get with this thing without going outright into simply fullblown, indulgent confessional? Meaning pondering a little at the nature of this business...how much disclosure, how much does one reveal, and then realising that till now the idea of even a modest broadcast has entailed for the most part a formal observation of 'conduct', more rightly a kind of self-censure for formality's sake – just the news, sir!, when there's much more than just news going on.

I think that's all going out the window. What started as an untidy journal for friends and family will still continue as just that, perhaps even more untidily, for friends and family, with a sort of fundamental redirect. And all this lengthy preamble just to say that if I'm ending radio silence now (and I state the obvious just because I've left so many friends and contacts languishing in this silence for quite a while now) then it's for the sake of hitting an entirely new frequency...so a journal, yes, as well as notes and thoughts on works and life in-progress, less armchair reading/writing (and probably less visuals since I regretably returned that Nikon camera to its rightful institution).

I guess most of this stems from a nature of always probing the 'why' of any given situation...and the idea implied in what's essentially a form of open address (as opposed to writing in a private journal, which I don't practice) is of relationship, both internal/external, and I feel there's a potential merit in that I haven't explored yet, which might very well touch on something real, and not merely polite or anecdotal.

So, what has been going on? Well, Tess and I came back from the East in late February, on short notice, for my Dad's surgery in March, which thankfully went well. But a sort of tectonic process, that had started showing signs while we were still in KL, raised its head in a very sudden way, along with a number of other life crisis situations. The short of it was that we both woke up, in a very sharp and painful but necessary way, and this has been a long summer of transitioning and realigning lives, and personally, of figuring where to strike the next root.

I'll probably come back to this...as I'm still sifting through a lot of the experiences of being away (and back) and what it was like to be back 'home', and all the stuff that brought up...complexities of feelings and emotions that I'm still trying to understand.

And for the last few months I've been sort of adrift on the surface of the day-to-day...a kind of amorphous, all-subjective emotional 'soup' which I'm just now finding the paddle to steer out of. Have a job presently, with a 'branding'/design firm, which pays decently (after months of percunary weightlessness) but, knowing full well is really not my 'bag', am also trying to reroute from to something in which there's greater reaturns (in terms of value). So considering a shift, not only of occupation but possibly of place.

Right now Vancouver's sliding into mid-fall. Bright days, cold nights...a new pinch in the air. Soon the town's going to get heavy-lidded with rain and grogginess...

It's late now...will end with an ubiquitous 'to be continued'...

K

HOME...

Home, though 'home's an increasingly fugitive prospect...

Sorting through impressions of the last week...still in the midst of this quantum space-time jump plus atmospheric pressure drop.

For those not yet in the know, we received notice two Sundays ago of my dad's operation for cancer; had the tickets booked two days later, then the packing and shifting and cancelling and arranging and scheduling to see friends on abrupt notice. Sudden time to 'balik kampung'...

Was squished against the window as the plane took off, watching KL's bright constellation of messed up streets and highways...a wholly different pattern materializes several thousand feet up in the air. Saw Putrajaya briefly hovering like a dayglo crop-circle (with extruding staff) before the clouds took over and the cabin lights came on, throwing back only my pale reflected mask against the outer dark...

So now the journey shifts the other way – hard not to see a narrative current to it – and maybe this journal's readership will transmigrate to our motley crew of new-found friends. Too numerous to name, but we're sad to leave you so soon...and we can't thank you enough for making our stay in KL the warm and wonderful experience it's been till a few short days ago: Hamir, Nani, Peter, Ahri, Aswad, Nazim, Sharon, Daniel, Hisham, Intan, Aisya, Ajez, Jai, Ray etc. etc. We hope you're all well and enjoying the heat

We touched down in Seoul...wished I'd taken a picture from the plane: a sort of Bladerunner-esque mirage of smokestacks piled high against misted mountains. Slept in the visitor's lounge, then picked up a carton of cigarettes for the long haul...

Exited the Vancouver airport as if through a double-negative...almost exactly twenty years ago my clan huddled out of immigration to a pristine view of cardboard-cutout mountains. Sunny and unreal cold...passing through streets that are exact phantom replicas of their former selves. The old family house on Victoria Drive now sporting a new coat of grey-green paint...couldn't place it at first.

Found my father looking better than expected, with family calm(er than usual) and everyone getting along quite nicely. The operation's scheduled for the 24th of this month, and Kas and Kim, my two other brothers, will be here shortly.

So...now shaking off jetlag (sometimes the world dims uncontrollably around 9 pm) and coping with the cold (it's usually only about a balmy 4 degrees) as we've gotten soft in the skin with nothing much in the way of warm clothing...no mits, scarves or thermonuclear underwear to tender the post-tropical shock. Weather ranges between bright chill (that clear and wondrous wintry light I must confess was beginning to miss) and constant needle points of rain raking across the streets. Waking daily to parchment-dry skin stretched taut over hands and face (from the hot air heating, sucking all available moisture from the air)

Tess is now in Kelowna to see her folks; just got a job helping to build A-Frame houses... gets to wear a hard-hat, plaid lumberjacks jacket and boots --- the works! Plus lunchtime delivery on a houseboat on the lake, one of the perks of hard labour in the Oky-nagan. Anyway, she's one up on me on the business of cari makan, what with about 50 bucks on myself with the smoke rations quickly dwindling.

Stayed late into the am editing video for the April show at Sek San's gallery; new footage spliced, replete with bats and lightning. Also reading my dad's in-progress family history of the Goh / Lim clan, which he's hoping to get serialized somewhere in the Malaysian press. Spent the morning engrossed in tales of my great-grandfather, Lim Boon Beng: sold into farm labour in Fujien province, only to run away to the Nanyang as indentured labour, living in a Kongsi house, learning to read / write, and eventually becoming foreman then partner/director of a building contractors, building the road up into Fraser's Hill, before succumbing to opium addiction. Rich stuff...not TV soap opera at all but real life

We'll keep you posted as to what develops here...more art or mischief as the case may be. Take care...


– K

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Raining most of this first day of 2006...spent the count-down with the multitudes at KLCC, downtown KL...first time we've seen people milling about in the streets, actually WALKING to destinations. Rivers of people, including hundreds of gangs of stylishly punked-out children huddling on the steps. The air was noxious with the fumes of some party 'spray' the kids were unleashing cans of on each other (and less vigilant passers-by) which the cops moved in to bust up when they managed to jostle through the crowds; there was a huge phantom fireworks display that was closer to a spectacle of the imagination as everything ended up wreathed in smoke and nobody could actually see anything...

Rounded off the night at a friends party watching a gang of gay Chinese boys get lost in the fancy Christmas lights display...the first time Tess and I remember being stone-cold sober at the final crank of the minute hand...

YIPEE CUP IS GO

Writing from a bubble tea cafe called 'Yipee Cup' in neighbouring SS 2, our favourite new digs. The food around here is unbelievable, the pirate DVD stores first class. And its another one of those areas here that truly never sleeps (lots of the hawker stores actually open at 11pm)...very, very Chinese, loads of neon and HK-style cafes

SLACKING OFF

The above picture was taken in Klang many, many months ago. As anyone who's bothered to check in here recently knows we've been complete slackers with this blogging thing of late...so this is going to take a decidedly non-linear turn for a while as we sift through pictures of the past few months and pencil in the details...our trip up north to Perlis, Penang, stuff we've been working on etc. etc.

WHAT ELSE NEW

So what else is new? We both abruptly quit smoking which frankly is sometimes quite sad and even a little boring. We're both a little shocked to realise that we've been here just about 6 full months and so now the 'period of enchantment' is over, partly because we can see the cracks in the floor and partly because we need to get down to the business of making money. We'll be having another show in this new year, sometime near the end of this month most likely (read below)...and hopefully scoring a residency and maybe other exhibition opportunities. We got awarded a prize for a video we made a few months ago, from the Malaysian Video Awards...no cash money but funding for a future film project. Christmas without family and friends felt a little odd and we were simultaneously hit with strong feelings of nostalgia and home-sickness, but there'll be some visits this year which should alleviate the itch...

In any case, we wish everyone a Happy New year and if we haven't talked to you lately we hope to fix that situation soon...

Kajin

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.

GUDANG SHOW NOVEMBER

Here're some images from our show, IKAT BATU, a one-night 'open studio' at Gudang which was chaotic and intense but good though exhausting. Putting up some preparation shots...unfortunately the photos taken by the hired photographers on the opening night came out somewhat crap but we'll post those later. Also some shots of work, which will be better documented in another website. There's a review which describes the show in total (with 4 other artists) on a Malaysian arts portal:

Kakiseni review

There's also more info on the Gudang website:

Gudang

Descriptions of the work are at the end of this post; you can click to blow up these images...


Tessa and Aswad preparing hammock piece


Sek San's red block installation, which cut a series of grids through the entire warehouse

Hammock group tug-of-war to determine hanging position
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HAMMOCK

Measuring about 8 by 18 ft, Tessa's hammock hangs about 30 ft from the rafters. It took about 3000+ feet of string and unknown numbers of laborious weaving. It's a communal piece that can accomodate about 3 adults (maybe more but that makes us nervous)...unfortunately, on opening night a bunch of kids climbed in and used it as a trampoline while we weren't looking, which tore one of the ligaments so we had to put it out of commission for the rest of the night. It's fixed now and perfect for group napping...

The 'moment of truth': first test seating in the hammock



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MOTHS

MOTHS is a form of group portraiture depicting each Malaysian prime minister from independence to the present. An obscured image of each PM is patterned onto the wings, while the wingspan is determined by the amount of years each figure spent in office (in which Dr M. Mahathir measures 22 cm across each wing, and Badawi 2 cm).

Five moths rest on the ground beneath naked incandescent bulbs, ranging from diminutive to grossly enlarged in scale. On approach, the largest begins to nervously test its wings. The moths are all 'inventions', meaning they're not real species, but constructions made from photographs taken at Gudang and at the butterfly museum in KL, printed on paper and folded into shape. The largest, 'Mahathir', is mechanized and attached to a sensor, so that it moves whenever anyone moves closely into range.

Pat of the idea comes from this belief in the east that the moth signifies a visit from an ancestral spirit. So MOTHS presents the ‘founding fathers’ as a kind of lingering presence in the idea of 'nation', while also operating as an historical to current index of power.

'Abdul Razak'

'Mahathir'

'Badawi'

'Tunku Abdul Rahman'

'Hussein Onn'
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IT'S OK WHAT'S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW

IT’S OK is the result of a collaboration with a local artist called Nazim Esa, commissioned / curated by our friend Nani Kahar for the 2005 Hannover Film Festival.

In the fall of 2005, Tessa and I moved to the suburb of Damansara Jaya, in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. The project is our response to continual late night ramblings through the neighbourhood, during certain ‘dead’ hours when both nothing and everything seems to happen.

IT'S OK was shot entirely with digital still cameras in the dead of night, a laborious process which involved shooting multiple exposures in very low light while holding one’s breath in front of unpaid performers (both friends and solicited strangers) straining to make as little movement as possible. No video or moving film cameras were used. Tens of thousands of images were processed in post-production and re-framed to produce the effect we were looking for.

We won an award at the Malaysian Video Awards for this short (about 6 mins long).



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PLAYING WITH MYSELF

You all probably know I can't play tennis to save my life but that's not really the point of this piece, which uses two televisions spaced a short distance apart. The same figure occupies left and right court, the gap is the unseen net, and they are hitting balls at each other.

Both wear short shorts, brilliant white. One has the full gear: sweatbands for wrists and head, sunglasses, socks pulled up. The other’s plainer and fatiguing: falling socks, one soaked sweatband (on wrist), no shades.

It's a slightly cheeky piece but was difficult to coordinate at the show as we had two different DVD players that we couldn't program to loop the videos simultaneously. Will try to work thyat out for future projects.

Pictures from Pulau Tioman






Ryan at our favourite mamak stall, Bukit Bintang




Tree near the airport on Berjaya - hundreds of rather large bats, hanging like heavy fruit off the bough, continually tussling with each other and spreading an occasional wing against the sun. Sound when they come off the trees at night is enormous...with wingspans up to 3 feet.

Tioman was lovely but the coral reefs are a mess, from tourists like us, the constant encircling of high-speed motor-boats, and the ocean's warming currents. Would snorkel often over acres of collapsed dead branches, like hovering over a cemetery. Visibility was poor because of the plankton, and we were being eaten both on land and in water --- sea-lice, sand-flies, bed-bugs. Ryan sprouted these horrible, festering, pus-sy wounds and we had to hit the clinic in Berjaya for antibiotics and calamine lotion.

Spent the first few days on ABC beach, where we made friends with this towering, flamboyant Australian documentary screen-writer who'd wear hot pink numbers to the local restaurants and had posted these mysterious signs we'd see everywhere for swapping mp3s. David had just worked on a doc in Indonesia about the local trannie culture.

Was aching to go snorkelling. Saw these three enormous hump-head fish...sort of proto-prehistoric looking, the largest almost four feet across. Followed a young giant turtle on the second day. Saw lots more dead coral.

Left ABC the day we discovered bedbugs swarming all over us in our bargain-basement hut. Plus, I almost shat on a lizard in the sunk-in toilet. Went after to the swarming tourist trap known as Salang. Terrible food. Got sick. More dead coral and awful but deadly catchy music in the local bars (the best of Bon Jovi would run about 6 times a day). There were a couple of quite butch trannie waitresses at the local makan place. Bright red lip-stick and hair tied in a bun without the frills.

Then we went up the other side of the island to Juara Beach, and all was well except for the sand-flies. Saw a school of cuttle-fish when we went diving. Got stung. Got eaten alive, actually. Drank beer which would go mysteriously flat from Sung Dynasty bowls (from a merchant ship that got wrecked hundreds of years ago).

Next time...Hujong! I hope...

Indian temple, near Jalan Wong Ah Fook in JB. Ceiling motifs painted by a company from Missassuaga, Ontario!