World Class Society
Installation, video, soft sculptures, survey, etc…
dimensions variable
“Nokia Singapore Art 1999”
Singapore Art Museum, SINGAPORE
Sep.1999 to Feb 2000
“Critical Response”
exhibition at Ivan Dougherty Gallery,
University of New South Wales, Sydney, AUSTRALIA
May 2000
Video, an Art, a History 1965 – 2010
A Selection from the Centre Pompidou
and Singapore Art Museum Collections
10 June to 1 September, 2011
Welcome to the Jungle:
Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia
from the Collection of Singapore Art Museum
Yokohama Museum of Art
13 April to 16 June 2013
This work was first installed in 1999 and 2000. The work was brought out again for the exhibition “Video: An Art, A History”, at the Singapore Art Museum. The bulk of the exhibition was originally from Paris, in particular from the prestigious Centre Pompido. They wanted artists from Asia and co-presented by the local museums when shown had also added into the Collections some Asian art works. Thus together with video art from Western Europe, the Americas, the inclusions of course helped to quell any accusations of unfair representation if not imperialistic tendencies .
The museum staff were around much more this time while i was installing and especially the ever smiling curator Ms. Patricia Levasseur de la Motte. I wished I knew her earlier, as I have seldom come across working with such positive people inside our museums here before. Her optimism and attitude helps make a difference just by being there gives us the confidence and assurance that we do belong in this history indeed. How often do we get to be in an exhibition with our work standing shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Nam June Paik, Jean-Luc Goddard, Issac Julien, Bruce Nauman and Bill Viola, Not to say Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, The Propeller Group and Dinh Q Lê.
As I recalled doing the installation the first time, when I was left alone almost in a blind pot wing of the museum where no one bothered what was being done actually. But I was blessed with the help of Satoko and my son, Ma-kun, who was still a baby then. Kai Lam was helping me too. Kai actually shot the video and helped designed the logo for the badges. I remembered we did three takes and the first one was still the best. Always. Guess that’s why its my performance art nature; whereby ‘rehearsals’ don’t actually work for me. And I guess this experience taught me too that an installation can never really be ‘repeated’ just like performance art can never be repeated. So each time it is being installed it is a revisit really. The change in terms of time and site is significant to re-contextualize the work into something else although much of it remains.
When I went to the press conference on the morning of June 7 all I could think of is if I should let out my “silent scream” of remembering 6/4 and Ai WeiWei’s predicament. While waiting for the panelists giving the keynotes to start, I distracted myself by talking to the other artists present and sitting next to me Wah Nu (Myanmar) and Dinh Q Lê (Vietnam). As they began I debated internally about making an intervention but decided against it.
Some of you may see it as self censorship. To me it is deciding by weighing the pros and cons, and the maximum benefit possible from one’s actions. The ‘push or knock’ dilemma of Tang Dynasty (618 A.D -907 A.D) poet, Jia Dao. Oh yeah I hear your sneers about selling out, you who make capitalistic deals in your own secret deals are surely holier than me, the “Art is Dead” singer song writer, “Bob Dylan wanabe” playing bad timing guitar with the squeaky voice, claiming self-victimization, in silent protest while wearing a gold medal awarded in line with the propagandistic plans of political technocratic partners in authoritarian social engineering systems of bureaucracy in the name of the ordinary people. And no wonder I cannot sleep at night cause your voices echo in my mind like rain of bricks and bones blackened by blood of those who were masacred. Who needs to sleep when nightmares are in the air-conditioned hums of pretty school halls of the palaces of glorified dead art? Talk about ability to see ghosts? My cynicism disengages me from guilt, my consciousness pushes the pain out in order to maintain sanity and hold back unnecessary tears.
Laughter. Enough of tears my dears. Go to the yellow river someday and we will remember this story as only one in the millions past and flow in the swiftness like angry facebook entries ever generating radiated waves of inconsiderate judgements. In the name of radical thoughts, in the name of progress, in the name of self preservation,in the name of culture, in the name of empire, in the name of World Class societies.
Laughter yes. So we may sing with a sting some day. Ditch your escape plans. Don’t mourn your losses my friend, stand and laugh with me and let’s make art that may resurrect our dead life again with your vision to reclaim the world with the impossible dream of one class less we become a nation made by power who may only see it through the barrel of a gun. Let us do one better and steal take beyond with interventions of poetry and laughter, yes the spirits have wings that shall lift us out of here!
dimensions variable
“Nokia Singapore Art 1999”
Singapore Art Museum, SINGAPORE
Sep.1999 to Feb 2000
“Critical Response”
exhibition at Ivan Dougherty Gallery,
University of New South Wales, Sydney, AUSTRALIA
May 2000
Video, an Art, a History 1965 – 2010
A Selection from the Centre Pompidou
and Singapore Art Museum Collections
10 June to 1 September, 2011
Welcome to the Jungle:
Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia
from the Collection of Singapore Art Museum
Yokohama Museum of Art
13 April to 16 June 2013
This work was first installed in 1999 and 2000. The work was brought out again for the exhibition “Video: An Art, A History”, at the Singapore Art Museum. The bulk of the exhibition was originally from Paris, in particular from the prestigious Centre Pompido. They wanted artists from Asia and co-presented by the local museums when shown had also added into the Collections some Asian art works. Thus together with video art from Western Europe, the Americas, the inclusions of course helped to quell any accusations of unfair representation if not imperialistic tendencies .
The museum staff were around much more this time while i was installing and especially the ever smiling curator Ms. Patricia Levasseur de la Motte. I wished I knew her earlier, as I have seldom come across working with such positive people inside our museums here before. Her optimism and attitude helps make a difference just by being there gives us the confidence and assurance that we do belong in this history indeed. How often do we get to be in an exhibition with our work standing shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Nam June Paik, Jean-Luc Goddard, Issac Julien, Bruce Nauman and Bill Viola, Not to say Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, The Propeller Group and Dinh Q Lê.
As I recalled doing the installation the first time, when I was left alone almost in a blind pot wing of the museum where no one bothered what was being done actually. But I was blessed with the help of Satoko and my son, Ma-kun, who was still a baby then. Kai Lam was helping me too. Kai actually shot the video and helped designed the logo for the badges. I remembered we did three takes and the first one was still the best. Always. Guess that’s why its my performance art nature; whereby ‘rehearsals’ don’t actually work for me. And I guess this experience taught me too that an installation can never really be ‘repeated’ just like performance art can never be repeated. So each time it is being installed it is a revisit really. The change in terms of time and site is significant to re-contextualize the work into something else although much of it remains.
When I went to the press conference on the morning of June 7 all I could think of is if I should let out my “silent scream” of remembering 6/4 and Ai WeiWei’s predicament. While waiting for the panelists giving the keynotes to start, I distracted myself by talking to the other artists present and sitting next to me Wah Nu (Myanmar) and Dinh Q Lê (Vietnam). As they began I debated internally about making an intervention but decided against it.
Some of you may see it as self censorship. To me it is deciding by weighing the pros and cons, and the maximum benefit possible from one’s actions. The ‘push or knock’ dilemma of Tang Dynasty (618 A.D -907 A.D) poet, Jia Dao. Oh yeah I hear your sneers about selling out, you who make capitalistic deals in your own secret deals are surely holier than me, the “Art is Dead” singer song writer, “Bob Dylan wanabe” playing bad timing guitar with the squeaky voice, claiming self-victimization, in silent protest while wearing a gold medal awarded in line with the propagandistic plans of political technocratic partners in authoritarian social engineering systems of bureaucracy in the name of the ordinary people. And no wonder I cannot sleep at night cause your voices echo in my mind like rain of bricks and bones blackened by blood of those who were masacred. Who needs to sleep when nightmares are in the air-conditioned hums of pretty school halls of the palaces of glorified dead art? Talk about ability to see ghosts? My cynicism disengages me from guilt, my consciousness pushes the pain out in order to maintain sanity and hold back unnecessary tears.
Laughter. Enough of tears my dears. Go to the yellow river someday and we will remember this story as only one in the millions past and flow in the swiftness like angry facebook entries ever generating radiated waves of inconsiderate judgements. In the name of radical thoughts, in the name of progress, in the name of self preservation,in the name of culture, in the name of empire, in the name of World Class societies.
Laughter yes. So we may sing with a sting some day. Ditch your escape plans. Don’t mourn your losses my friend, stand and laugh with me and let’s make art that may resurrect our dead life again with your vision to reclaim the world with the impossible dream of one class less we become a nation made by power who may only see it through the barrel of a gun. Let us do one better and steal take beyond with interventions of poetry and laughter, yes the spirits have wings that shall lift us out of here!
