today's paper was so bad. walter benjamin, work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, came out in the exam. i didn't read him at all...so i blabbered on about, "what is art?" pfft.
anyway, it's funny how one can use words to compose an entire something at the moment in time...and you can make it all seem believable, that even you yourself might immerse in it and actually think it to be fact, when on the otherside of the grey matter, it could be completely false and disconnected from reality. but i'm quite sick of writing, to be honest. it's tiring trying to keep a firm grasp on the mind and catalogue, categorize things, so that you can have some degree of eloquence and consistency on paper. it doesn't work like this at all. the brain's all jumbled up with the simultaneity of events, sensory overload, waddle, woad, muddle.

i pray for my uncle who is in hospital now. and for karen, kelvin, and ahyi. i know we can't foresee nor control the things happening around us, or whatever that might occur next. but if a man has the will to live, why should he be denied this right?

i've been pretty antisocial these days. threading on a mill which says increase speed each time i look at it. in the mirror, there's the desk of jerky awkward prose, stacks of papers, and an orange glow. above it tackboard of dutch milkmaid, moma identification, guanyin prayer, grande fete postcard, chinese calendar - my birthday, horizontal invitation, dog looking and listening to a gramophone, tacks. why get out of this? why push me? why suppress my hacking coughs?

Clowning as a form of resistance

I'm doing a module on Arts of Southeast Asia and for the final term project, we've to come up with our own individual art project with a topic related to what we've learnt. So I think the clowns of wayang kulit, precisely because they have bellies, penis fingers, black skin etc, are really interesting characters to work with. But of course noone can write that as a valid reason. To sum it up, clowns in SEA shadow puppetry are part divine-part human, they can exist in both epic time and modern time, and most importantly, they are representatives of the common people. Because of the nature of the clowns and the humor they create, village folks identify with them, and in effect, puppeteers use clowns for social critique and commentary on modern life - thus forming a kind of resistance against mainstream ideals.

Probably noone will be interested in reading that whole chunk so anyway. I did three versions of the clowns of Javanese wayang kulit doing everyday stuff in the format of paintings.





Semar, Petruk and Gareng smoking, drinking coffee and talking politics




Petruk teaching wayang kulit to children










Semar, Petruk and Gareng visit man of importance




SEA art is very different from Western art...so don't judge with the same eye. Although you can judge my poor skill of watercolor painting. But lookie the batik sarongs! I painted them with utmost details!



Some extra thingies

juggling 2 essays and 1 art project within a week is shit. ideas hanging like threads in the black hole. i just want to lie on the grass and watch the night sky turn from midnight blue to purple light. seriously man. okies soon my paintings will be done and i will proudly present them. they're an amateurish mess.

This architecture module I'm doing called "Ideas and Approaches in Design" is super fun. I love all classes that inspire and engage the imaginative mind; I love the visual aesthetics above all else. Although I don't fancy the bald lecturer's philosophizing because while philosophy can be useful, I don't like the way it tries to define life, or art. And I really prefer not to have the space of design imbued with an overspill of meanings or abstractions. Naive as it seems, I like design to be a flight of the imagination not held back by discourses or bookish concepts but only by the very thing itself that you are trying to create.

Today's lectures left me a cold mucus baby.