oh victor!

J and I finally heard Mr Yew Hong Chow play the harmonica live this at the DVD launch of Tan Pin Pin's Singapore Gaga this evening in Substation's Timbre cafe. A small man who with his hands over his mouth, the harmonica invisible from where we sat, made sounds I've previously thought came from other instruments. Yet he amazed us with his humility. When called on stage to be thanked, Mr Yew thanked the director instead - for raising interest in the harmonica. (Mr Yew's CD will be released next week.)

Despite there being a stage, mics, a host, a reception table and a gift for guests (an old skool condensed milk tin used for takeaway kopi), the event was great for feeling more like a family reunion party of sorts than a DVD launch.

At a large table before the stage were several "uncles" with their Tiger beers, and at a far corner 2 middle-aged ladies and their cautious Cokes. When one of the "uncles" who was featured in the video for their nationalistic songs went on stage, he decided impromptu that he would serenade the crowd with a verse from a 30s Chinese song. And - wait - is that man standing there who I think he is? Victor Khoo!

Ventriloquist Victor Khoo was one of the folks featured in Singapore Gaga. Well, he and his puppet Charlie. Every kid who grew up in the 80s knew Victor and Charlie. They had a one-hour show every Saturday morning. Kids would call in, banter with Charlie, answer a quiz question and win a prize. No villain-crunching mutant hero. No candy-coloured crime-fighting girls. No pocket monsters. Just the voices of Mr Victor Khoo and kids were captured. (Ah, I must confess I called into the show when I was already 10 or 11. How excited I was to be on air! And chatting with Charlie - oh, Victor!)

What remains for me to say now at 2am is this: Go buy The DVD, available now at Kinokuniya bookstore, Objectifs, and Earshot at the Arts House/Old Parliament.

P/S - You can read tym's review of it here, the director's thoughts here, and what us amps felt when we watched it last year.

guise

The late playwright Kuo Pao Kun is often quoted, and in particular, this phrase - "a worthy failure is better than a mediocre success." A carpe diem kind of phrase, which I guess explained its attraction.

This week, I heard someone use it in trying to convince a large and powerful entity to forge a collaboration with a smaller artist-type organisation. The stern-faced representative from the former was all teflon-coated. Everything he did - including his silence - suggested that he thought the speaker was merely trying to disguise failure. He was certainly not in the mood to reflect or question what was of worth or value, he would rather contemplate success.

That day I sketched a fellow train commuter on my way home. J suggested that he be transformed into various superheroes taking a break. But perhaps when superheores take a break, they are probably less like superheroes on a break and more like nameless train commuters.

the future in print

J and I made time to drop by the National Library because we thought today was the last day of Imprints of the Past: Remembering the 1966 Woodcut Show (the exhibition has been extended till 31st October, but the library will be closed this Hari Raya Tuesday).

Curated by a good friend CT and art researcher Koh Nguang How (Koh was behind Errata), this exhibition resurrects a 1966 exhibition by 6 woodcut artists first held at the old Stamford Road National Library.

Of course, the old National Library is now a vehicular tunnel. But 40 years ago, this post-independence exhibition was held at a site symbolic of Singapore's post-independence future, a public institution of learning built withboth government funds and donations. The 1966 exhibition was a decided writing of art history. 6 artists presenting art grounded in the realities of Singapore in their time, its streetscapes, its trades, its people. A fresh page of art history.

Today, of the 6 artists - Lim Mu Hue, Tan Tee Chie, Foo Chee San, Choo Keng Kwang, Lim Yew Kuan, See Cheen Tee - 5 are alive. Most are in their 70s or 80s. It is an exhibition to remember and preserve. And remembering is certainly as important as learning for the future.

The woodcut had been an important art because it was the art of the vernacular. It was relatively inexpensive, compared to oils. Its art was reproducible, allowing everyman to possess one. And perhaps owing to the starkness of dark versus light, expressions of a people's daily suffering were particularly dramatic. Gaunt faces were more so. Dirty streets and hovels more dilapidated because of the harshness of the lines. It was a democratic art, used in magazines and the illustrations of essays and books. In fact, its prints could be produced without a mechanical printing press, but anywhere - in homes.

And for all these reasons, it was convenient as an revolutionary art, an art of protest. In modern history, if printing presses were legally governed and regulated as potential sources of incendiary information, then the woodcut allowed the artist, the revolutionary, the student, the publisher etc to circumvent inspection and produce quantities of an underground pamphlet or poster. For example, Lu Xun's woodcut movement was as instrumental as his writingin in forging a new ideological art.

We met Koh at the exhibition today and besides his many stories about the artists and their works, I asked him briefly about the relevance of woodcut today. I said that with print-making being institutionalised in art colleges, it has lost some of its immedicacy. Today, it is either one of the art forms more closely aligned with craft and design, or elevated to some exclusive side-dish for the more established artist. Koh agreed that with the internet and the computer printer, there was really no issue of disseminating information anymore. But he said that even today, in countries like Thailand and Indonesia, the woodblock/print strangely retained its relevance during periods of protest.

For me, every time I meet Koh, I learn something new. I remember the first time I met Koh was with CT at another woodblock exhibition at the then Singapore History Museum (now National Museum) in the late 90s. The image above is from the exhibition brochure. Then, both CT and Koh told me many more stories behind the prints and their blocks, especially those pre-independence prints. Later, wandering around the dusty bookshops of Bras Basah Complex, I found 1 last copy of fellow-Hainanese Tan Tee Chie's 1975 book with a limited run of 1000 that CT had recommended. Its preface was by Tham Hean Chow (haha, perhaps, he too came from the same Hainan village as my grandfather) and the English text was edited by Georgette Chen. I have sat it fondly on my shelf of favourite art books.

My friends, ampulets present here our own toast to the woodcut - its past, present and future!


we dare you, raffles! - er, actually it's a lino print made at night class

soon you'll see it, now you don't

image by J!

Well, actually, now you can see about 2mins of it here.

It being Tan Pin Pin's (Singapore Gaga) new documentary Invisible City. And if you like her work, you can even consider being a film investor donor - which is, I assure you, not quite the same as being a blood or kidney donor.

the power(lessness) of 1

What appears from the trailers as a "heart-warming", charming film set in a Chinese kindergarten and fronted by a whole troupe of adorable, peach-cheeked kids paints actually a depressing picture of society. Little Red Flowers by director Zhang Yuan is still showing at The Picturehouse, and despite this grim introduction, I must say it is a film worth watching.

Warning: spoilers ahead

Given director Zhang Yuan's previous films - the earlier Mama, Beijing Bastards, East Palace West Palace - I should have expected Little Red Flowers to be not just a straightforward narrative of a boy's mischief and how the odd man will always strike a deal of mutual respect and tolerance with his community. Because even if the odd man wants to, chances are the community will not.

Fang Qiangqiang, a 4 year-old, is sent to a boarding house kindergarten because his grandmother has returned to the countryside and his father, we gather from the brief shots of his workmen clothes, has other worries. There is no mention of a mother. Young Fang Qiangqiang is introduced to the factory-like environment of the kindergarten - the long straight rows of long tables in the dining room, the 2 long rows of concrete drains that serve as latrines, the uniform cots in the dormintory, and the giant building blocks in the indoor playroom are geared towards efficiency and uniformity of process and production. What more, once outdoors, you realise that the kindergarten is set in a complex not unlike the Forbidden City - old but previously grand and palatial chinese architecture with their stone balustrades, courtyards, lush gardens and miniature stone bridges (perhaps this is alluding to the phenomenon of "Children Palaces", a name given to kindergartens in a China that so loves its children). You learn through a few happy scenes of play amidst this complex of buildings and gardens that part of it is used by the military as a parade groud and another by a hospital.


The audience may notice these troubling images, but our suspicions are at first distracted by 2 things. First, we may think that this being a Chinese film, such seemingly surreal juxtapositions and suggestions of oppression could just be part of life in China. Second, the cinematograhy and art direction cleverly disguises these settings and images with nostalgic pinks, baby blues, beige and the occasional reds. The film is nothing if not beautifully shot and composed, with colours and images belonging to a 50s children's book. In the same way, even if the Head Teacher Li may seem a tad controlling, she gamely plays with the children and her teachings are always about personal hygience and independent living - lessons which most parents will not doubt the "usefulness" and "correctness" of. There is even a pretty, kind and generous younger teacher to give the audience hope. As such, we may be tempted not to romanticise too much Fang Qiangqiang's rebelliousness.

But by the middle of the film, you must be terribly blind not to know that the kindergarten is but a guise for the larger systems of society. At first, individual agency is first to be cajoled and bought with the promise of "little red flowers" (paper flowers stuck handed out to the child, and correspondingly stuck against the child's name on a board) - a reward for the obedient child who performs as instructed. Fang Qiangqiang, despite his rebellious streak, is not immune to this reward system. When his little pigtail is cut off by the head teacher because it risks harboring lice (an ironic reference perhaps to the cutting of pigtails during China's supposed escape from Manchurian monarchic rule into a modern, democratic republic), he is denied his little red flower because Head Teacher Li believes more in negative motivations than positive encouragement. Perhaps hoping to break his rebellious spirit (all 4 short years worth of it!), Head Teacher Li continues to ignore Fang Qiangqiang's attempts to conform.

And because Fang Qiangqing does not receive his rewards soon enough, he learns instead to find the loopholes in the rules and to make the best of his disobedience and resultant punishments. For a while, he finds friendship in a pair of sisters, but 2 is stronger than 1, and they too, turn against him when his mischief gets them into trouble. (The scene where they play doctor is really funny, but in retrospect, this metaphor of illness - real or pretend - is discomforting)


As the film progresses, Fang Qiangqiang grows more and more anarchic (well, as anarchic as a 4 year old in a kindergarten can be) and more and more lonely. But he does not realise this. The poor boy even hallucinates! At first he finds power in sharing his suspicions that Head Teacher Li is a child-eating monster to the other children and seeds a semi-revolution to "catch the monster" one night. When his role in this disturbance goes undetected, his belief in his own disruptive power grows and he starts being a bully. Finally, when his rebellion culminates in his swearing at a teacher, he is subjected to solitary confinement. Unconvinced that all this is punishment enought, this is followed by a period of isolation among peers who are instructed to ignore him.

Throughout all this, the audience roots for the adorably rebellious Fang Qiangqiang. We associate with him because he is the very picture of the boy who tells the naked Emperor he is naked. It is an honesty that is both rebellious and innocent. When a girl sings a song about apples as taught by the teacher, Fang Qiangqiang deliberately reverses the lyrics to sing "The big apple I keep for myself, the small apple I give to my friend." At night, he himself runs out into the snow-lined playground naked and plays with his shadow, whispering - "Who are you? Can you please don't follow me?"

As such, right to the end of the film, we want his peers and teachers to recognise his creative independence. But we are inadvertantly wanting to see him surviving untouched in the highly regimented world. Zhang Yuan tells us that ours is but wishful thinking. Something must give.

At the abrupt end of the film (abrupt because we are nowhere near what we hope to see), we are left with the image of an 4 year-old who has strayed from his group and is perhaps lost. What we see is that he is so exhaused he cannot even respond when his name is called. And more than exhaustion, perhaps it is because he does not want to be found, perhaps it is an insistence on being apart... or perhaps it is because he no longer recognises his name.

>> Indiewire Interview with Zhang Yuan

========
p/s Elsewhere on the blogosphere, forty calibernap sings the song of the creative individual in his loved-hated city.

Me I and Myself

first coloured pic of the train sleepers series

Perhaps owing to the inauspicious date that marked its end, this week has been incredibly painful - my day would end at 2 in the morning and start at 8 to a mad rush of "papers" (by others and myself), bosses' queries, hospital visits and home to an equally busied J. The best parts of my day now are herefore my morning and night rides on the MRT train. There I am my own.

Once J and I had overheard a train commuter - a man in his 50s - describe animatedly to his female companion how "the worm" is digging its way through the earth towards them, how it has in its body the undigested whole bodies of men and women, and how soon they will also "be eaten". He gestured, he laughed, then he and his wife (?) were consumed.

Well, there in the worm's digestive tract, I am thankful and privileged to have the company of the following for the past 2 months ever since J stopped joining me on these daily rides. And good company deserves a larger party! So here goes...


>> 2007 Man Booker Prize winner Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss has been so widely reviewed, I'm going to be lazy and point you to these reviews instead in NYT , Hindustan Times, and the Guardian).


>> The next stop was Edith Wharton's House of Mirth (online Gutenberg version here), a very cheap "Bantam classics" edition so brown it looked like I had soaked its pages in coffee, so old it wore dark liver spots of age.

>> And this week, having resisted reading Henry James for years (a Korean friend at Cambridge was writing her PhD thesis on James, and she was both so enamoured and tortured by him I thought it best him to her care), I finally succumbed to thought Henry James' The Bostonians (online version here).

For me, besides the sheer pleasure of words, these works shared an acute awareness of the smallness of the societies and villages we move in - the ticks and quirks, rules and exemptions - and the largeness and span of the world possibly open to the individual. This expanse is not only the space covered by the pioneering go-west exploits or the fetishised European tours of the early American, nor is it the equally pioneering,but more tragic go-west dreams of modern India. This expanse could possibly be the individual's own narrative space. There is the romance that, whether stayers, lovers, emigres or gamblers, the individual could plot, connive and embellish our own stories.

The depressing reality, however, is that the possibility for this latter space to be limitless and free is constantly threatened by the former's encroachment - from social ambition there is competition and exploitation, and today, globalisation.

The comfort is that however small or large this space we singularly possess - the size of a page or the inside of a train - there is a chance that we need not be alone.

food so tasty you want to hug it - part II

Want to tell someone he/she is the apple of your eye, but don't quite know how to do it with words? ampulets present here 9 easy steps how you can do so in a silent way.



All you need now are these materials:
(1) Red cloth
(2) Thick brown felt
(3) Acrylic or oil paint, or any other kind of fabric paint
(4) 2 wooden or black beads (if you don't have any, you can also embroider the eyes or use small buttons)
(5) A handful of green/red beans...or styrofoam beads
(6) Cotton wool
(7) Thread, needle, scissors
(8) bonus: Styrofoam "netting" for fruits

After some 30mins (or 1 hour if you are watching the TV at the same time), you should be able to have your own Fuji-san to declare your sweet love for you.


image by J- aren't I lucky his favourite fruit is not the durian!

If instead you wish to tell him/her that you like him/her regardless of how ugly, stinky and high in cholestrol he/she is, try this instead. Unlike other top chefs, ampulets tell all in our recipes.

just wanna shout about it

design by J

The old lady whose hospital bed is diagonally across Ma J's is a 94 year-old with a hell lot of lung power.

Shrivelled as a burnt out matchstick, she demonstrated her strength by smacking the hand of a visiting granddaughter and push away her grandson, all the while shouting in cantonese 你走！你走！你不要來!(Go away! Go away! You don't come here!). Her voice rang through out the normally silent hospital ward, mocked the barely audible moans of the lady next to her and Ma J's defeated murmurs.

Later, in order to restrain her, the nurses trapped her in an armchair secured with a tray table by the corridor. For the next hour, she shook her the stand that held her drip and shouted to a world immune to her cries: 我要吃煙! 喂,我要吃煙啊!(I want a smoke! Hey, I want a smoke!)

Another old lady who lay in the bed directly across from Ma J was tubed up, feverish and helpless. All through the afternoon her middle-aged daughter sat at the foot of the bed silently reading a yellowed booklet. J told me it was a buddhist sutra. When the old lady suddenly threw up, she sent the woman into a panic.

"Ominah," the daughter shouted and the maid ran out to call for a nurse. Ominah, however, was accousted by the 94 year-old loud hailer in the corridor, her arm in the grip of the old woman's claws. When Ominah finally escaped and returned to the bedside, a nurse was already tending to the patient.

"Ominah, where did you go?" The daughter shouted. "Why you so busybody go look after that Ah Poh? Is she your Ah Poh? Your job is here! You want then I ask that Ah Poh to employ you lah! You have cigarette you give her lah!" The daughter went on and on, her shouts at Ominah took turns with the corridor cries for cigarettes 我要吃煙! 喂,我要吃煙啊!



That night, despite the haze, the Taoist temple just round the corner from where we lived went ahead with their plans to burn man-size candles and giant piles of hell-money. The fires blazed as high as the 2nd storey of the nearby flats. As it burnt, the devotees and temple staff shouted in Hokkien "發啊！發啊！發啊!" (Prosper! Prosper! Prosper!), sending their desires with the ashes up to our 15th floor flat.

Of course, it need not be that the louder we shout, the more our words and wishes would be fulfilled or even heard. The audience may be deaf, hardened, powerless - or even absent. Because if he was listening, gracious and able, even the slightest whisper would be answered.

happy belated children's day

Lelong lelong, amps fresh and chip-chip - collage by J

watermelon man: The washing machine broke.
persimmon girl: Huh, what's a washing machine doing in a melon patch?
wm: And my laptop screen, it broke too.
pg: That's tough luck.
wm: Not to mention 2 weddings to make even my wallet broke.
pg: Ah, fruit mating season.
wm: Oh, it's tough - so tough -[he cries, black melon seeds falling down his face]
pg: Cheer up watermelon man, stop crying...look, you are getting your pink protective styroforam packing all dirty -
wm: Oh no, oh no, and my washing machine's broke!

This year, adult-type problems almost threatened to keep us from saying this, but - amps wish you, especially you folks who have laundry to do - a Happy Belated Children's Day!