The Garden of Forking Paths
In the midst of this perplexity, I received from Oxford the manuscript you have examined. I lingered, naturally, on the sentence: I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths. Almost instantly, I understood: 'the garden of forking paths' was the chaotic novel; the phrase 'the various futures (not to all)' suggested to me the forking in time, not in space. A broad rereading of the work confirmed the theory. In all fictional works, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts'ui Pên, he chooses – simultaneously – all of them. He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork. Here, then, is the explanation of the novel's contradictions. Fang, let us say, has a secret; a stranger calls at his door; Fang resolves to kill him. Naturally, there are several possible outcomes: Fang can kill the intruder, the intruder can kill Fang, they can switch roles, they both can escape, they both can die, and so forth. In the work of Ts'ui Pên, all possible outcomes occur; each one is the point of departure for other forkings and repetitions. Sometimes, the paths of this labyrinth converge: for example, you arrive at this house, but in one of the possible pasts you are my enemy, in another, my friend. The scenario could also double itself as in a mirror. If you will resign yourself to my incurable pronunciation, we shall read a few pages."
His face, within the vivid circle of the lamplight, was unquestionably that of an old man, but with something unalterable about it, even immortal. He read with slow precision three versions of the same epic chapter. In the first, an army marches to a battle across a lonely mountain; the horror of the rocks and shadows makes the men undervalue their lives and they gain an easy victory. In the second, the same army traverses a palace where a great festival is taking place; the resplendent battle seems to them a continuation of the celebration and they win the victory. In the third, the same army strategically raided and completely razed a village the enemy troops laid ambush; the heroic victory necessitates the cruelty of undervaluing the lives of the peasant folks. I listened with proper veneration to these ancient narratives, perhaps less admirable in themselves than the fact that they had been created by my blood and were being restored to me by a man of a remote empire, in the course of a desperate adventure, on a Western isle. I remember the last words, repeated in each version like a secret commandment: Thus fought the heroes, tranquil their admirable hearts, violent their swords, resigned to kill and to die.
The Garden of Forking Paths – Jorge Luis Borges (pp.26-27)
Showing posts with label vertical submarine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vertical submarine. Show all posts
Monday, September 6, 2010
The Garden of Forking Paths – Jorge Luis Borges (pp.26-27) vertsub
[…]Naturally, there are several possible outcomes: Fang can kill the intruder, the intruder can kill Fang, they can switch roles, they both can escape, they both can die, and so forth. In the work of Ts'ui Pên, all possible outcomes occur; each one is the point of departure for other forkings and repetitions. Sometimes, the paths of this labyrinth converge: for example, you arrive at this house, but in one of the possible pasts you are my enemy, in another, my friend. The scenario could also double itself as in a mirror. If you will resign yourself to my incurable pronunciation, we shall read a few pages."
His face, within the vivid circle of the lamplight, was unquestionably that of an old man, but with something unalterable about it, even immortal. He read with slow precision three versions of the same epic chapter. In the first, an army marches to a battle across a lonely mountain; the horror of the rocks and shadows makes the men undervalue their lives and they gain an easy victory. In the second, the same army traverses a palace where a great festival is taking place; the resplendent battle seems to them a continuation of the celebration and they win the victory. In the third, the same army strategically raided and completely razed a village the enemy troops laid ambush; the heroic victory necessitates the cruelty of undervaluing the lives of the peasant folks. I listened with proper veneration to these ancient narratives, perhaps less admirable in themselves than the fact that they had been created by my blood and were being restored to me by a man of a remote empire, in the course of a desperate adventure, on a Western isle. I remember the last words, repeated in each version like a secret commandment: Thus fought the heroes, tranquil their admirable hearts, violent their swords, resigned to kill and to die.
The Garden of Forking Paths – Jorge Luis Borges (pp.26-27)
The working copy of the doctored excerpt, The Garden of Forking Paths, 2010, vertical submarine
His face, within the vivid circle of the lamplight, was unquestionably that of an old man, but with something unalterable about it, even immortal. He read with slow precision three versions of the same epic chapter. In the first, an army marches to a battle across a lonely mountain; the horror of the rocks and shadows makes the men undervalue their lives and they gain an easy victory. In the second, the same army traverses a palace where a great festival is taking place; the resplendent battle seems to them a continuation of the celebration and they win the victory. In the third, the same army strategically raided and completely razed a village the enemy troops laid ambush; the heroic victory necessitates the cruelty of undervaluing the lives of the peasant folks. I listened with proper veneration to these ancient narratives, perhaps less admirable in themselves than the fact that they had been created by my blood and were being restored to me by a man of a remote empire, in the course of a desperate adventure, on a Western isle. I remember the last words, repeated in each version like a secret commandment: Thus fought the heroes, tranquil their admirable hearts, violent their swords, resigned to kill and to die.
The Garden of Forking Paths – Jorge Luis Borges (pp.26-27)
The working copy of the doctored excerpt, The Garden of Forking Paths, 2010, vertical submarine
Friday, August 6, 2010
Black Baroque Interventionists
BLACK BAROQUE INTERVENTIONISTS
Black Baroque Interventionists is neither an organised movement, nor collective. Their approach is neither serious nor frivolous. They despise all hypocritical declarations of good and evil. The textbook dichotomy of optimism and pessimism, or beauty and ugliness, is absurd to all BBI members who had amputated their sentiments. Their experiments are not to be understood as science, their gestures not to be taken as art, their activities are never political, and their words have hardly anything to do with the notion named 'love'. To them, the necessity of such differentiation is as useless as the petit-bourgeois distinction between tiring labour and boring leisure.
Operating within a decentred structure, and sharing a common hatred of statistics, Black Baroque Interventionists could not establish an exact figure of those who are currently involved. To them, history and memory are overrated - none of the members remember the year they emerged. The practice of leaving no traces during their operations has resulted in the impossibility of presenting a chronology of their activities. Except for a few names shamelessly sold to the public by an affiliated art collective based in Singapore (which Black Baroque Interventionists has recently declared as an act of treason) none of the members are identifiable. According to a joint statement issued in Jan 2010, in the form of a cassette recording, 'We are not identical even to ourselves […] to hell with identity and personality! But we could be your politicians smiling on TV, the CEOs of every MNC and the cleaners of all the toilets in this filthy world! We are everyone and no one. […] All members affirm their participation by the relentless self-denial of their involvement in the group.'
In the Jan 2010 statement, Black Baroque Interventionists, as prime advocates of local anaesthetics, summarises their agenda with this quotation found in the jotter book of a member who went missing during an operation:
'Non-imperial [...]* must be as rigorous as a mathematical demonstration, as surprising as an ambush in the night, and as elevated as a star.'
*Illegible inkblot
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Doughnut, ring and Breakfast at Tiffany’s
‘Let us consider a gold ring. There is a hole and this hole is just as essential to the ring as the gold is; without the gold, the ‘hole’ (which moreover, could not exist) would not be a ring, but without the hole, the gold (which would none the less exist) would not be a ring either. But if one has found atoms in the gold, it is not at all necessary to look for them in the hole. And nothing indicates that the gold and the hole are in one and the same manner (of course, what is involved is the hole as ‘hole’, and not the air which is ‘in the hole’). The hole is a nothingness that subsists (as the presence of an absence) thanks to the gold which surrounds it. Likewise, Man who is Action could be a nothingness that ‘nihilates’ in being, thanks to being which it negates.’ – Aleksandr Vladimirovič Koževnikov (also known as Alexandre Kojève), Introduction à lecture de Hegel (Gallimard, 1947, p.485)
Although it is not gold, this doughnut is a ring because of the hole. Although it is not absurd to see it as a ring, this doughnut is not a Tiffany Ring. Although it is not advisable to swallow a painting of a doughnut for breakfast, visual consumption is also very enriching - and surely more lasting. Hence, we are reminded of nothing but the sweet ending of the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s*.
This is a painting from vertical submarine’s Analogic series.
*Besides the memento – which is a cheap ring from a box of Cracker Jack – the gold-hungry Holly Golightly, the female lead character played by Audrey Hepburn, was involved in a drug ring, and blew her chance of marrying a rich businessman because of that.
*Besides the memento – which is a cheap ring from a box of Cracker Jack – the gold-hungry Holly Golightly, the female lead character played by Audrey Hepburn, was involved in a drug ring, and blew her chance of marrying a rich businessman because of that.
Monday, April 6, 2009
The line between artist and tyrant – Joshua Yang and Justin Loke
The line between artist and tyrant – Joshua Yang and Justin Loke
Drawing is basically mark-making. However, this basis is one that drawing has to share with the other form of mark-making, also known to us as writing. As we are about to proceed on a piece of writing on drawing, we are also thinking about how difficult – not to mention, futile – it would be for one to produce a drawing on writing, and how often such ideas and projects are like naïve, chimerical failures of an attempted jailbreak[1]. Whilst they share a common root, text and image are never on equal terms. Their relation is skewed and lopsided. Similar to what Schopenhauer had written, the world, or human existence, is composed both of pleasure and of suffering, but to deem suffering as comparable to pleasure is to agree that eating and being eaten are the same.
In image production, its narratives that we recognised as visual language, text, if not speech – the henchman of language – is often the final word validating and classifying the reticent images of our world. In short, the image depends on words as a medium to clarify interpretations.
In the English language, one who does painting is known as a painter, one who writes is a writer, and one who sculpts is a sculptor. But we seldom find it comfortable to call someone who draws a ‘drawer’. Probably because the term is more often reserved for the ‘boxlike compartment in furniture that can be pulled out and pushed in’; one who draws an order for the payment of money; or alternatively, the other name of underpants. An artist, architect, interior designer or a draftsman does imply drawing, but never precisely the activity. For the term ‘draw’ or the activity never gives us clear, direct reference to any specific undertaking (a painter can still, very literally, mean one who applies paints to objects). There are just too many occupations and situations that require us to draw, or at least make markings.
We are hence concerned with a series of work where drawings are treated as the finality, and not just the means. However, this series of work need not necessarily include or exclude art works; they are merely looked at from the perspective of drawing or mark-making. In what follows, a series of examples may assist in clarifying the above point. This point will then be followed by another point and the examples serve as a connecting line between points[2].
When approached by a tourist asking for directions, the best way to overcome the language barrier between us is to either draw a map or to make gestures – which are a kind of indexical drawings in the air.
And in hawker centres and coffee shops, the twisted fork and spoon, and painted bottoms of glass mugs are primitive markings akin to the sign of ownership or property we see on some open fields which reads ‘State Land/ No Dumping/No Trespassing’. A piece of drawing as a piece of art is very much defined by its opposite: drawings of solely practical ends etc.
For example, a drawing which was made in order to tell the carpenter the dimensions of a temporary wall made of plywood and whitewashed for the purpose of an exhibition would not be considered art but the drawing framed and hung on that wall would.
Nevertheless, as what Montaigne had advised us on adopting fine postures by looking at those with unpleasant ones. One should pay some attention to drawings that are not necessary art, or aspire to be art, in order to understand drawing in its totality…
We would normally associate drawings with expressiveness, as a form of expression from a supposed talent or ‘genius’, the line as an avenue for this ‘chosen one’ to pour out his/her ‘inner soul’. Otherwise, in platitudes communicated through the clichés of representation, drawings or artworks are the representation of my thoughts, my cultural background, my identity, my gender, my sexuality, my spirituality, my exoticness, my memories, my desires, my opinions, my conversations with trees… (yawn!!) In summary, drawings as representation are vehicles for personal introspective micro-indulgence. Lastly, on the supposedly radical but actually dated realm, drawings are the gestures, the overtly theatrical actions, a dramatic coordination of so many bodies and so many minds, the ephemeral performance.
But what about those territorial aspects of drawing? The possessive and exclusive, violent and bloodthirsty, roots of this activity that these days are introduced to tame, and add grace to, the infants; and seem as the pinnacle of innumerable civilisations.[3] Does this seemingly negative and malicious image refer to all drawings? In a way, yes, because the ink applied the by the most innocent hand somehow unavoidably claims and marks out its place on the piece of paper, just as blood spilled on foreign soil marks out a conquered province. Even as an art form, drawing is condemned to impose, just as the painter is often ‘condemned to please.’[4]
Like the Kings, tyrants, conquerors, or whatever you call it, who sacrifice lives and limbs in order to shift the lines on a map, sacrificing lives and limbs in order to infringe[5] (The tyrant is a two dimensional cartographer). Does this not remind us of the doings of Adolf Hitler? An artist turned dictator, his parallel obsessions with war and art, his emphasis on war machines and cultural monuments, his needs for tanks and architectures. In addition, it reminds us of a paragraph from Yukio Mishima’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.[6] This common nature is where the difference between the inks for drawing and the blood needed to exchange for territories weakens. Even, one of the best anti-war novels All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, requires the two basic elements of war and art to complete the tragedy – the blending of the two seemingly opposing flavours is crucial to stir the kind of sentiments that we love to hate.
But no! No, no, no! Artists are not tyrants who wasted lives or ambitious conquerors, but peace-loving, sensitive, soft, benign beings. They are the so-called masters of innovation, the challenger of traditions and rules – the next da Vinci to be (yawn). The embodiments and personifications of the beauty of my foot… They should be the morally healthy creative romantics – the cream of the cultural crops (that is at least how we think they should be here) – the avant-gardes who enjoys the brain-numbing 12 o’clock sun of this clinic garden. They are the ready-made libertines who walk the beaten tracks of manufactured transgression shone, all year round, with the blessed rays of Apollo.
However, artists are always trying to impose their ideas onto other minds, force feeding their opinions, their points of view, practicing an eternal insult to the taste of others.
The similarity between art and tyranny is obvious from the common practice of art. Art is never democratic, which is why it is usually a solitary project, or collaboration that seldom last. It does not entertain compromises because the very act of compromising then diminishes the singular vision of the project. Even if the project requires a team effort, the hierarchy remains feudalistic. Even for a film director who works with a team of thousands of crews, casts and cameramen, the hierarchy is clear. Voting never takes place on the set. We only see a tussle of different levels of positions. Of course, maybe the producer with his financial power could influence the decision. So, cash does represent democracy.
There is non-negotiable stubbornness that drives one to expand his empire, to accept his opinions, to make his voice louder, the loudest to be heard, to impose his ways on others. The only comparable stubbornness of a tyrant is the unrelenting temper of a child. Stubborn is the will of the child that kicks up a fuss when refused a toy and rolls on the floor of a shopping centre while the parents try to pry the child’s fingers from that toy.
There is a certain stubbornness found in the child who only draws cars and nothing else. The child will not colour them, the child only draws with pencils, and the child will not try to use another medium. But this child prefers routines to randomness and the teacher who is aware of the child’s preference plays on this fondness of routine and repetition and forces the child to produce black and white drawings of cars done in pencils within ten minutes. The line is drawn between these ten minutes and the next ten minutes, the child produces and produces something which the child enjoys over and over again, exerting a childish stubbornness on paper but subjected to the tyranny of the teacher who curbs his infantile tyranny. A form of tyranny the child, the society, and the education system actually yearn for.
Having said all this we urge you, seemingly passive, reader, to come to terms with your own tyranny, your own desire to impose your ideas upon others. Your interpretation to what we try to impose with lines of words - conflicts once again. In truth every one of us has their noble idea of an artist, idling or working quietly – or perhaps to the sound of lovemaking in the room upstairs – in a rented studio with paint-stained rags lying on the bare cement floor, sheets of empty canvas stretched across pieces of wood.
Honestly speaking, who wants to work? Who wants a nine to five job, Mondays to Fridays, stuck in an air-conditioned office when one could be pursuing one’s own – romantically inspired – endeavours? These endeavours include spending time with your spouse. However, some of us may be comfortable with that nine-to-five job which pays the bills and puts food on the table. But to give all that up would mean having to rely on the meagre sum of sponsorship allowed for, budgeted for, apportioned for by your sponsor, to whom we apply yearly or every time we gather enough works to exhibit. Admit it, dear reader, you would rather tell that sponsor to hang every one of its members – just as you would hang paintings – and go it on your own than to squirm and beg at their feet for one measly portion, a crumb from their table of abundance, and because of that crumb, you are obliged to print their logo on every piece of poster and invite and publication related to your exhibition or show or project. To hell with all that! Do it the tyrant’s way! You need to prove to all that you are an industry in yourself; an industry worth investing in. More than that, you need to gather enough mass, as a snowball, to build your own gravity, until you become a life-sustaining planet with your own atmosphere. Then, things will start to gravitate and crash into you and you become a collapsed star; a black hole which nothing, not even light can escape. But if all else fails, you can still switch to the sex industry. In a way a whore tyrannises desire.
The purpose of a scarecrow is to frighten birds from the field where it is planted, but the most terrifying painting is there to attract visitors.[7]
[1] The prisoner, who attempts to escape from jail, even if he succeeds, only expands the size of his cell. From the physical concrete walls of the cell, he is now out in the open where the entire world is his jail. Even if he succeeds in transforming his face, his name, he will not escape from the fact that he is now a fugitive, running away from the prison that has already gone inside him. As the saying goes, ‘You can take the jailbird out of jail, but you can’t take the jail out of the jailbird.’
[2] In this essay we shall discuss typically the line which separates. However, it has not escaped our attention that a line may be seen to connect two points as much as it divides two sides. Popular and common phrases come to mind: ‘Where do you draw the line?’ ‘It’s a fine line between…’ ‘The line is blurred…’
[3] Being civilised often requires one to regulate noise, coordinate body movement as well.
[4] Georges Bataille, The Cruel Practice of Art, 1949, p.1.
[5] Can the king who expands his empire be compared to the prisoner who escapes from jail? The prisoner breaks down the walls but in doing so, the prison is now in him. On the other hand, the king while conquering other lands erects walls to keep the barbarian hordes from plundering his empire. In a way, he is also imprisoning himself within those self-erected walls. Both desire impunity, but one requires breaking down walls whilst the other requires building walls. In a way, one is Napoleon and the other is Dostoevsky’s Raskonikov in Crime and Punishment.
[6] ‘As can easily be imagined, a youth like myself came to entertain two opposing forms of power wishes. In history I enjoyed the descriptions of tyrants. I saw myself as a stuttering, taciturn tyrant; my retainers would hang on every expression that passed over my face and would live both day and night in fear and trembling of me. There is no need to justify my cruelty in clear, smooth words. My taciturnity alone was sufficient to justify every manner of cruelty. On the one hand, I enjoyed how one by one I would wreck punishment on my teachers and schoolmates who daily tormented me; on the other hand, I fancied myself as the great artist, endowed with the clearest vision – a veritable sovereign of the inner world. My outer appearance was poor, but in this way my inner world became richer than anyone else’s. Was it not natural that a young boy who suffered from an indelible drawback like mine should have come to think that he was a secretly chosen being? I felt as though somewhere in this world a mission awaited me of which I myself still knew nothing.’ Yukio Mishima in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, 1956, p. 6.
[7] Bataille, op. cit.
Drawing is basically mark-making. However, this basis is one that drawing has to share with the other form of mark-making, also known to us as writing. As we are about to proceed on a piece of writing on drawing, we are also thinking about how difficult – not to mention, futile – it would be for one to produce a drawing on writing, and how often such ideas and projects are like naïve, chimerical failures of an attempted jailbreak[1]. Whilst they share a common root, text and image are never on equal terms. Their relation is skewed and lopsided. Similar to what Schopenhauer had written, the world, or human existence, is composed both of pleasure and of suffering, but to deem suffering as comparable to pleasure is to agree that eating and being eaten are the same.
In image production, its narratives that we recognised as visual language, text, if not speech – the henchman of language – is often the final word validating and classifying the reticent images of our world. In short, the image depends on words as a medium to clarify interpretations.
In the English language, one who does painting is known as a painter, one who writes is a writer, and one who sculpts is a sculptor. But we seldom find it comfortable to call someone who draws a ‘drawer’. Probably because the term is more often reserved for the ‘boxlike compartment in furniture that can be pulled out and pushed in’; one who draws an order for the payment of money; or alternatively, the other name of underpants. An artist, architect, interior designer or a draftsman does imply drawing, but never precisely the activity. For the term ‘draw’ or the activity never gives us clear, direct reference to any specific undertaking (a painter can still, very literally, mean one who applies paints to objects). There are just too many occupations and situations that require us to draw, or at least make markings.
We are hence concerned with a series of work where drawings are treated as the finality, and not just the means. However, this series of work need not necessarily include or exclude art works; they are merely looked at from the perspective of drawing or mark-making. In what follows, a series of examples may assist in clarifying the above point. This point will then be followed by another point and the examples serve as a connecting line between points[2].
When approached by a tourist asking for directions, the best way to overcome the language barrier between us is to either draw a map or to make gestures – which are a kind of indexical drawings in the air.
And in hawker centres and coffee shops, the twisted fork and spoon, and painted bottoms of glass mugs are primitive markings akin to the sign of ownership or property we see on some open fields which reads ‘State Land/ No Dumping/No Trespassing’. A piece of drawing as a piece of art is very much defined by its opposite: drawings of solely practical ends etc.
For example, a drawing which was made in order to tell the carpenter the dimensions of a temporary wall made of plywood and whitewashed for the purpose of an exhibition would not be considered art but the drawing framed and hung on that wall would.
Nevertheless, as what Montaigne had advised us on adopting fine postures by looking at those with unpleasant ones. One should pay some attention to drawings that are not necessary art, or aspire to be art, in order to understand drawing in its totality…
We would normally associate drawings with expressiveness, as a form of expression from a supposed talent or ‘genius’, the line as an avenue for this ‘chosen one’ to pour out his/her ‘inner soul’. Otherwise, in platitudes communicated through the clichés of representation, drawings or artworks are the representation of my thoughts, my cultural background, my identity, my gender, my sexuality, my spirituality, my exoticness, my memories, my desires, my opinions, my conversations with trees… (yawn!!) In summary, drawings as representation are vehicles for personal introspective micro-indulgence. Lastly, on the supposedly radical but actually dated realm, drawings are the gestures, the overtly theatrical actions, a dramatic coordination of so many bodies and so many minds, the ephemeral performance.
But what about those territorial aspects of drawing? The possessive and exclusive, violent and bloodthirsty, roots of this activity that these days are introduced to tame, and add grace to, the infants; and seem as the pinnacle of innumerable civilisations.[3] Does this seemingly negative and malicious image refer to all drawings? In a way, yes, because the ink applied the by the most innocent hand somehow unavoidably claims and marks out its place on the piece of paper, just as blood spilled on foreign soil marks out a conquered province. Even as an art form, drawing is condemned to impose, just as the painter is often ‘condemned to please.’[4]
Like the Kings, tyrants, conquerors, or whatever you call it, who sacrifice lives and limbs in order to shift the lines on a map, sacrificing lives and limbs in order to infringe[5] (The tyrant is a two dimensional cartographer). Does this not remind us of the doings of Adolf Hitler? An artist turned dictator, his parallel obsessions with war and art, his emphasis on war machines and cultural monuments, his needs for tanks and architectures. In addition, it reminds us of a paragraph from Yukio Mishima’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion.[6] This common nature is where the difference between the inks for drawing and the blood needed to exchange for territories weakens. Even, one of the best anti-war novels All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, requires the two basic elements of war and art to complete the tragedy – the blending of the two seemingly opposing flavours is crucial to stir the kind of sentiments that we love to hate.
But no! No, no, no! Artists are not tyrants who wasted lives or ambitious conquerors, but peace-loving, sensitive, soft, benign beings. They are the so-called masters of innovation, the challenger of traditions and rules – the next da Vinci to be (yawn). The embodiments and personifications of the beauty of my foot… They should be the morally healthy creative romantics – the cream of the cultural crops (that is at least how we think they should be here) – the avant-gardes who enjoys the brain-numbing 12 o’clock sun of this clinic garden. They are the ready-made libertines who walk the beaten tracks of manufactured transgression shone, all year round, with the blessed rays of Apollo.
However, artists are always trying to impose their ideas onto other minds, force feeding their opinions, their points of view, practicing an eternal insult to the taste of others.
The similarity between art and tyranny is obvious from the common practice of art. Art is never democratic, which is why it is usually a solitary project, or collaboration that seldom last. It does not entertain compromises because the very act of compromising then diminishes the singular vision of the project. Even if the project requires a team effort, the hierarchy remains feudalistic. Even for a film director who works with a team of thousands of crews, casts and cameramen, the hierarchy is clear. Voting never takes place on the set. We only see a tussle of different levels of positions. Of course, maybe the producer with his financial power could influence the decision. So, cash does represent democracy.
There is non-negotiable stubbornness that drives one to expand his empire, to accept his opinions, to make his voice louder, the loudest to be heard, to impose his ways on others. The only comparable stubbornness of a tyrant is the unrelenting temper of a child. Stubborn is the will of the child that kicks up a fuss when refused a toy and rolls on the floor of a shopping centre while the parents try to pry the child’s fingers from that toy.
There is a certain stubbornness found in the child who only draws cars and nothing else. The child will not colour them, the child only draws with pencils, and the child will not try to use another medium. But this child prefers routines to randomness and the teacher who is aware of the child’s preference plays on this fondness of routine and repetition and forces the child to produce black and white drawings of cars done in pencils within ten minutes. The line is drawn between these ten minutes and the next ten minutes, the child produces and produces something which the child enjoys over and over again, exerting a childish stubbornness on paper but subjected to the tyranny of the teacher who curbs his infantile tyranny. A form of tyranny the child, the society, and the education system actually yearn for.
Having said all this we urge you, seemingly passive, reader, to come to terms with your own tyranny, your own desire to impose your ideas upon others. Your interpretation to what we try to impose with lines of words - conflicts once again. In truth every one of us has their noble idea of an artist, idling or working quietly – or perhaps to the sound of lovemaking in the room upstairs – in a rented studio with paint-stained rags lying on the bare cement floor, sheets of empty canvas stretched across pieces of wood.
Honestly speaking, who wants to work? Who wants a nine to five job, Mondays to Fridays, stuck in an air-conditioned office when one could be pursuing one’s own – romantically inspired – endeavours? These endeavours include spending time with your spouse. However, some of us may be comfortable with that nine-to-five job which pays the bills and puts food on the table. But to give all that up would mean having to rely on the meagre sum of sponsorship allowed for, budgeted for, apportioned for by your sponsor, to whom we apply yearly or every time we gather enough works to exhibit. Admit it, dear reader, you would rather tell that sponsor to hang every one of its members – just as you would hang paintings – and go it on your own than to squirm and beg at their feet for one measly portion, a crumb from their table of abundance, and because of that crumb, you are obliged to print their logo on every piece of poster and invite and publication related to your exhibition or show or project. To hell with all that! Do it the tyrant’s way! You need to prove to all that you are an industry in yourself; an industry worth investing in. More than that, you need to gather enough mass, as a snowball, to build your own gravity, until you become a life-sustaining planet with your own atmosphere. Then, things will start to gravitate and crash into you and you become a collapsed star; a black hole which nothing, not even light can escape. But if all else fails, you can still switch to the sex industry. In a way a whore tyrannises desire.
The purpose of a scarecrow is to frighten birds from the field where it is planted, but the most terrifying painting is there to attract visitors.[7]
[1] The prisoner, who attempts to escape from jail, even if he succeeds, only expands the size of his cell. From the physical concrete walls of the cell, he is now out in the open where the entire world is his jail. Even if he succeeds in transforming his face, his name, he will not escape from the fact that he is now a fugitive, running away from the prison that has already gone inside him. As the saying goes, ‘You can take the jailbird out of jail, but you can’t take the jail out of the jailbird.’
[2] In this essay we shall discuss typically the line which separates. However, it has not escaped our attention that a line may be seen to connect two points as much as it divides two sides. Popular and common phrases come to mind: ‘Where do you draw the line?’ ‘It’s a fine line between…’ ‘The line is blurred…’
[3] Being civilised often requires one to regulate noise, coordinate body movement as well.
[4] Georges Bataille, The Cruel Practice of Art, 1949, p.1.
[5] Can the king who expands his empire be compared to the prisoner who escapes from jail? The prisoner breaks down the walls but in doing so, the prison is now in him. On the other hand, the king while conquering other lands erects walls to keep the barbarian hordes from plundering his empire. In a way, he is also imprisoning himself within those self-erected walls. Both desire impunity, but one requires breaking down walls whilst the other requires building walls. In a way, one is Napoleon and the other is Dostoevsky’s Raskonikov in Crime and Punishment.
[6] ‘As can easily be imagined, a youth like myself came to entertain two opposing forms of power wishes. In history I enjoyed the descriptions of tyrants. I saw myself as a stuttering, taciturn tyrant; my retainers would hang on every expression that passed over my face and would live both day and night in fear and trembling of me. There is no need to justify my cruelty in clear, smooth words. My taciturnity alone was sufficient to justify every manner of cruelty. On the one hand, I enjoyed how one by one I would wreck punishment on my teachers and schoolmates who daily tormented me; on the other hand, I fancied myself as the great artist, endowed with the clearest vision – a veritable sovereign of the inner world. My outer appearance was poor, but in this way my inner world became richer than anyone else’s. Was it not natural that a young boy who suffered from an indelible drawback like mine should have come to think that he was a secretly chosen being? I felt as though somewhere in this world a mission awaited me of which I myself still knew nothing.’ Yukio Mishima in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, 1956, p. 6.
[7] Bataille, op. cit.
Anti-photography
From: Victor Subramanium [victorsubramanium@yahoo.com.sg]
To:Justin Loke Kian Whee
CC:
Subject:A project on Anti-photography[Scanned]
Hi Justin,
How are you? How's Fiona and Joshua doing? Have not heard from you guys lately. Just want to share something with you, an idea that has been brewing for many years, and finally, after attending my friend's wedding it was the last straw, I must let it get off my chest and stop thinking about it.
From our conversation I know you always have a dislike for photographers, not personally I believe, but just general, like how society hates trigger happy people. I have an idea for a project for you guys, to add to your already unattended shelves of ideas, I won't be disappointed if it isn't materialised.
A Project that dedicates itself to the anti-photography cause: Truth, Immortality and Banality
Parties and Individuals to attack:
1. Event photgraphers/camera man for weddings, formal dinners, parties, event etc. To me they are human beings that behaves like you say outside the situation, the moment, like the incidents you mentioned to me moving around, talking, adjusting their cables during the solemn moment of silence of the memorial for the deceases of 911 in order to telecst the 'event'. And the photographer who went in to the bride's room before the bridegroom to photographed that moment of greatest significance. To me this is the most lowbrow of attention seeking. Actually I feel that you are like them, because you are not that involved, not paying attention to the wedding ceremony or the moment of silence. But that is another story on documentation in general I guess.
2. As usual, heard and read it often in books and drama series: the attitude or belief in using photos as documents and evidence. But besides the suspicion of Photoshop manipulation, there is something I noticed recently. In last saturday's 'live' telecast of an EPL match a player was foul by another, as always, we can't really see what happened. Should the penalty be given? After replaying from 5 angles, the sixth did show contact between them, whereas the other 5 looked like the player being foul dived. The commentator upon seeing the sixth angle, in clipped British accent said 'Yes indeed, there was a foul', I was wondering why when we have 5 angles (of no foul) against 1 angle (of foul) we deem the last as factual. I know it isn't judged on quanity, but there is something undemocratic, unfair about the rationale, something that's too inductive, they are all points of view, but why that is decisive. It;s like a faulting act than judgment.
3. The lousy photos that pretends to be art. But only lousy ones where the medium did not function beyond itself. Narcisstic posturing. Banal.
4. Tourist, be they hip backpackers or tour group aunties, slr or dummy digital, they are crazy about trapping moments once they step out of their own country. And the self-obsessed teens who love to photograph themselves. This are down right banal creativity.
5. Our over reliance on photography, for existence, traces, memories etc. For example, if this event/project were to actually happend out of habit and neccessity we would photographed it for docmentation or memory, for further fundings, like how I was impressed by VS's portfolio; photograph art works for catalogues. This point is important because if you were to allow photography for this project, for any purpose, then the whole idea is ruined.
Lastly, I would like to add, that photograph is the instrument that creates the illusion of the never never gone land, eternity, immortality etc. The device that uses light to colour the superficial sense of eternity. I belong to those who believe Time is finity, infnity is non-time, and Time is experience etc. Embracing photography is anti-Time, anti- progression. Photo-graph, or light, the anti-thesis is vulgar abstraction, cowardice, cheap thrill (porno), non-experential (compare viewing the scenery from busy taking pictures of it), non-intervention (think war photographer, busy taking pictures of the wounded while others are busy helping the wounded, or the quasi-God's view of camera man for documentrary who uses the excuse of 'letting nature takes it cause' while the lion tears the deer, we don't do that we see man to man assualt we call 'murder') I think this is an ethical issue which affects the Aesthetic of not just art but LIFE!
Man is finity, and woman is infinity. We understand this proposition once we understand how the sexual organs of the male and female function.
- Lance Lesslar, (1745-98)
The Anatomy of Discontentment
I think this guy is right, I can't erect the whole day but woman can fuck thru' the night. If capitalism feminises the society, then I think photography is one instrument that help perpetuate this eradication of masculinity. For the celebration of infinity, through photography, is a feminine activity.
The equation:
If photography=eternity, and eternity=infinity, and inifinity=feminity
then photography is feminine.
Only females or the feminised want to 'stay young forever', or believe 'diamonds are forever'.
I think I am too long winded, must be your bad influence. Let me know what you guys think.
Best Regards,
Victor
To:Justin Loke Kian Whee
CC:
Subject:A project on Anti-photography[Scanned]
Hi Justin,
How are you? How's Fiona and Joshua doing? Have not heard from you guys lately. Just want to share something with you, an idea that has been brewing for many years, and finally, after attending my friend's wedding it was the last straw, I must let it get off my chest and stop thinking about it.
From our conversation I know you always have a dislike for photographers, not personally I believe, but just general, like how society hates trigger happy people. I have an idea for a project for you guys, to add to your already unattended shelves of ideas, I won't be disappointed if it isn't materialised.
A Project that dedicates itself to the anti-photography cause: Truth, Immortality and Banality
Parties and Individuals to attack:
1. Event photgraphers/camera man for weddings, formal dinners, parties, event etc. To me they are human beings that behaves like you say outside the situation, the moment, like the incidents you mentioned to me moving around, talking, adjusting their cables during the solemn moment of silence of the memorial for the deceases of 911 in order to telecst the 'event'. And the photographer who went in to the bride's room before the bridegroom to photographed that moment of greatest significance. To me this is the most lowbrow of attention seeking. Actually I feel that you are like them, because you are not that involved, not paying attention to the wedding ceremony or the moment of silence. But that is another story on documentation in general I guess.
2. As usual, heard and read it often in books and drama series: the attitude or belief in using photos as documents and evidence. But besides the suspicion of Photoshop manipulation, there is something I noticed recently. In last saturday's 'live' telecast of an EPL match a player was foul by another, as always, we can't really see what happened. Should the penalty be given? After replaying from 5 angles, the sixth did show contact between them, whereas the other 5 looked like the player being foul dived. The commentator upon seeing the sixth angle, in clipped British accent said 'Yes indeed, there was a foul', I was wondering why when we have 5 angles (of no foul) against 1 angle (of foul) we deem the last as factual. I know it isn't judged on quanity, but there is something undemocratic, unfair about the rationale, something that's too inductive, they are all points of view, but why that is decisive. It;s like a faulting act than judgment.
3. The lousy photos that pretends to be art. But only lousy ones where the medium did not function beyond itself. Narcisstic posturing. Banal.
4. Tourist, be they hip backpackers or tour group aunties, slr or dummy digital, they are crazy about trapping moments once they step out of their own country. And the self-obsessed teens who love to photograph themselves. This are down right banal creativity.
5. Our over reliance on photography, for existence, traces, memories etc. For example, if this event/project were to actually happend out of habit and neccessity we would photographed it for docmentation or memory, for further fundings, like how I was impressed by VS's portfolio; photograph art works for catalogues. This point is important because if you were to allow photography for this project, for any purpose, then the whole idea is ruined.
Lastly, I would like to add, that photograph is the instrument that creates the illusion of the never never gone land, eternity, immortality etc. The device that uses light to colour the superficial sense of eternity. I belong to those who believe Time is finity, infnity is non-time, and Time is experience etc. Embracing photography is anti-Time, anti- progression. Photo-graph, or light, the anti-thesis is vulgar abstraction, cowardice, cheap thrill (porno), non-experential (compare viewing the scenery from busy taking pictures of it), non-intervention (think war photographer, busy taking pictures of the wounded while others are busy helping the wounded, or the quasi-God's view of camera man for documentrary who uses the excuse of 'letting nature takes it cause' while the lion tears the deer, we don't do that we see man to man assualt we call 'murder') I think this is an ethical issue which affects the Aesthetic of not just art but LIFE!
Man is finity, and woman is infinity. We understand this proposition once we understand how the sexual organs of the male and female function.
- Lance Lesslar, (1745-98)
The Anatomy of Discontentment
I think this guy is right, I can't erect the whole day but woman can fuck thru' the night. If capitalism feminises the society, then I think photography is one instrument that help perpetuate this eradication of masculinity. For the celebration of infinity, through photography, is a feminine activity.
The equation:
If photography=eternity, and eternity=infinity, and inifinity=feminity
then photography is feminine.
Only females or the feminised want to 'stay young forever', or believe 'diamonds are forever'.
I think I am too long winded, must be your bad influence. Let me know what you guys think.
Best Regards,
Victor
Graffiti in Youth Park Vandalised
'My hubby told me about the report he saw last evening on CNA. It was about how the local graffiti artists were infuriated: their murals on the ramps and walls being painted black. Now the skate park is all black scrawled with huge white letters that says "This is graffiti". He said that it seems the 'neo-minimalists' here have decided to intervene into other spaces. What does 'neo-minimalist' mean, I can't stand his habit of throwing theoretical art jargons. But what to do, I chose to marry someone who majored in art history.
Anyway, I just read from the papers this morning that the vandals have been apprehended. They are not those kids with weird and funny hairdos, smoking and wasting their time doing nothing, hanging around town; but from a renowned school, about a class of them. The reporter used the word 'nerdy' to describe them. That perhaps explains how painting the whole skatepark black overnight is acheivable. It seems the name of the school is left undisclosed intentionally. It is reported that there is a possiblity of them being led by their teacher, who is also a practicing artist known for 'Neo-Marxist inclination' (commented by a museum curator who wish to be anonymous). The police investigating are treating this as a serious case of vandalism, though incomparable to the Michael Fay incident 14 years ago where cars were defaced.
It is also quite funny how the reporter mentioned the way one of the kids wiped his tears with fingers between his eye and glasses. It reminded me of my son, when he cried for getting 72 for Mathematics when he was primary 6.
I am really beginining to totally lose my faith with the education system here, how could a teacher instigate such a thing. The quality of the teachers here is really terrible. I am really sick of the people here, it was their lack of appreciation for art and culture, and now destroying works of art.
I am really looking forward to our move to Melbourne next month. '
Anyway, I just read from the papers this morning that the vandals have been apprehended. They are not those kids with weird and funny hairdos, smoking and wasting their time doing nothing, hanging around town; but from a renowned school, about a class of them. The reporter used the word 'nerdy' to describe them. That perhaps explains how painting the whole skatepark black overnight is acheivable. It seems the name of the school is left undisclosed intentionally. It is reported that there is a possiblity of them being led by their teacher, who is also a practicing artist known for 'Neo-Marxist inclination' (commented by a museum curator who wish to be anonymous). The police investigating are treating this as a serious case of vandalism, though incomparable to the Michael Fay incident 14 years ago where cars were defaced.
It is also quite funny how the reporter mentioned the way one of the kids wiped his tears with fingers between his eye and glasses. It reminded me of my son, when he cried for getting 72 for Mathematics when he was primary 6.
I am really beginining to totally lose my faith with the education system here, how could a teacher instigate such a thing. The quality of the teachers here is really terrible. I am really sick of the people here, it was their lack of appreciation for art and culture, and now destroying works of art.
I am really looking forward to our move to Melbourne next month. '
Excerpt from Chapter 9 'Distant Star' by Roberto Bolano
Vertical Submarine's latest project is not only unoriginal but mild in comparison to St. Martin's School of Art's Sculpture class of 1969 or the story below by Bolano:
In 1968, while the students were building barricades and the rising generation of French novelists were putting bricks through the windows of their school or losing their virginity, he decided to found the sect or movement called "the barbaric writers." While intellectuals were taking to the streets, the ex-legionnaire shut himself up in his tiny caretaker's flat in the Rue des Eaux and began to hatch a new kind of writing. the apprenticeship consisted of two apparently simple steps: seclusion and reading. In order to take the first step, one had to purchase provisions sufficient for a week or go hungry To avoid inoppurtune visits, it was also neccessary to make it clear that one was not to be disturbed for any reason, or pretend to be away travelling for a week or to have contracted a contagious disease. the second step was more complicated. According to Delorme, one had to commune with the master works. Communion was achieved in a singularly odd fashion: by defecating on the pages of Stendhal, blowing one's nose on the pages of Victor Hugo, masturbating an spreading one's semen over the pages of gautier or Banville, vomiting onto the pages of Daudet, urinating on the pages of Lamartine, cutting oneself with a razor blade and spattering blood over the pages of Balzac or Maupassant, in short, submitting the books to a process of degradation which Delorme called "humanization." A week of this "barbaric" rituals resulted in a flat or room full of filth, stench and ruined books, with the apprentice writer wallowing in the mess, naked or in underwear, drivelling and wriggling like a new-born baby, or, rather, like the pioneering fish that had decided to make the break and live out of water. The barbaric writer, said Delorme, emerged from this experience with a new inner strength, and, more importantly, a deeper understanding of the art of writing, a wisdom acquired through what he called "real familiarity" with and "real assimilation" of the classics, a physical familiarity that broke all the barriers imposed by culture, the academy and technology.
In 1968, while the students were building barricades and the rising generation of French novelists were putting bricks through the windows of their school or losing their virginity, he decided to found the sect or movement called "the barbaric writers." While intellectuals were taking to the streets, the ex-legionnaire shut himself up in his tiny caretaker's flat in the Rue des Eaux and began to hatch a new kind of writing. the apprenticeship consisted of two apparently simple steps: seclusion and reading. In order to take the first step, one had to purchase provisions sufficient for a week or go hungry To avoid inoppurtune visits, it was also neccessary to make it clear that one was not to be disturbed for any reason, or pretend to be away travelling for a week or to have contracted a contagious disease. the second step was more complicated. According to Delorme, one had to commune with the master works. Communion was achieved in a singularly odd fashion: by defecating on the pages of Stendhal, blowing one's nose on the pages of Victor Hugo, masturbating an spreading one's semen over the pages of gautier or Banville, vomiting onto the pages of Daudet, urinating on the pages of Lamartine, cutting oneself with a razor blade and spattering blood over the pages of Balzac or Maupassant, in short, submitting the books to a process of degradation which Delorme called "humanization." A week of this "barbaric" rituals resulted in a flat or room full of filth, stench and ruined books, with the apprentice writer wallowing in the mess, naked or in underwear, drivelling and wriggling like a new-born baby, or, rather, like the pioneering fish that had decided to make the break and live out of water. The barbaric writer, said Delorme, emerged from this experience with a new inner strength, and, more importantly, a deeper understanding of the art of writing, a wisdom acquired through what he called "real familiarity" with and "real assimilation" of the classics, a physical familiarity that broke all the barriers imposed by culture, the academy and technology.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
'Love will tear us a part'
What brought us together?
Apart from money, from our cash cow that is only growing leaner by the day,
it is Hatred.
Not what we love. Definitely not.
We drawn together by our common Hatred, by what we bitched about.
We don't know why many people like to say that they are brought together by the common love of something.
To us, love separates .
If two close friends were to fall in love with the same person, that usually the end of their friendship. In history, we have the Facists who capitalized on Hate to unite a nation.
Wrong, some might say, but we could only see how Love is ephemeral like fireworks during hilidays and festivals.
Whereas Hate is eternal like the bombing and gunfiring of the ceaseless wars and battles between nations.
Apart from money, from our cash cow that is only growing leaner by the day,
it is Hatred.
Not what we love. Definitely not.
We drawn together by our common Hatred, by what we bitched about.
We don't know why many people like to say that they are brought together by the common love of something.
To us, love separates .
If two close friends were to fall in love with the same person, that usually the end of their friendship. In history, we have the Facists who capitalized on Hate to unite a nation.
Wrong, some might say, but we could only see how Love is ephemeral like fireworks during hilidays and festivals.
Whereas Hate is eternal like the bombing and gunfiring of the ceaseless wars and battles between nations.
Friday, February 20, 2009
on being difficult
Qn: Why must you make it so difficult for the viewers? Allowing only one person at a time... locking out those who are slightly late... ART should be free for all, right?
Ans: Sorry, but we didn't aspire to be Michael Jackson.
Ans: Sorry, but we didn't aspire to be Michael Jackson.
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