jetlag

Which I did not quite suffer from, despite Singapore being 6 hours ahead of central European time.

There is the comfort and relief of being home, and the discomfort of the weightiness of home. Travel, even for work, provides a kind of suspension. Perhaps it is because summer in Europe provided the shadiest of day, even at 9pm. Once in Singapore, gravity hits. And the heavy, moisture-laden air.

As promised, some silly comics during my visit to Art Basel, the Venice Biennale and Documenta 12- these are all I managed when I was awake on the hotel bed/train/plane. J told me his weeknights then were spent watching Matthey Barney's Cremaster Cycle (which showed at the National Museum of Singapore), trying not to cough, and working.


(1/2) J & Y appreciate art (3) Art appreciates! (4) J appreciates more art (5) Art appreciates Venice (6) J ____ work (7) Singapore artists appreciate Venice (8/9) amps prisoners of artwork

And contrary to what these smarty pictures seem to say, I did see some art I liked, remembered and learnt from. Yes, yes, besides the work - of course.

city of return

(Drawings and pics of the trip coming up soon when I get back home!)


The night before last my colleagues and I got lost in Venice. And I thought of Calvino's Invisible Cities.

As it was still early after dinner, we had taken a meandering, leisurely walk through Venice's narrow alleyways towards the city's edge to catch a ferry back to Lido island. We did not know where exactly we were, or which pier we would eventually find. And when we did hear the gentle lapping of the water against the city's edge, we did find a pier. It was not a pier we recognised, but the sign said that one of the ferries would be headed to Lido. We were surprised by our good luck.

We waited about 20mins before the ferry arrived and boarded it. It chugged slowly off and sputtered to a stop along the way at some other quiet piers. The ride was taking longer than we had expected. But the air was cool, and in the darkness, who knows where we were all going anyway?

Then each stop grew more quiet. The lights, if there were any, were lonely. It was ten and night finally relented to dark. And when we finally grew a little concerned, the ferry did a last sputter. The ferry attendant declared the name of the stop - we did not know what, except that it was clearly not Lido. We trooped off the ferry. The cool air turned chilly, and the romance of not knowing was now decidedly less charming.

"Hey," one of us suddenly exclaimed, "we are back exactly where we started!"

Of course! I wanted to laugh. There was a humour in this, this returning. In Venice, this cinematic city - more imagined than real - returning seemed an apt narrative strategy. But there were more pressing concerns, such as getting back to Lido before the ferry services stopped or, in fact, finding out exactly where we were and how we should get back.

The attendant advised "Go San Marco, San Marco -", naming the famous central square. "Follow the signs, all go to San Marco!"

We tried to follow the signs, painted on the walls of some of the buildings. Until the signs disappeared. Each turn brought us to a new small square, a new nexus of little alleys, or another bridge - and the question "to cross?" Each alley seemed similar and familiar, but never entirely. Time was a minotaur - and smaller minotaurs were the blisters on some of our tired feet.

There was no surprise ending. It was, as expected, happy - the expansive and busy San Marco square did, after some 20 minutes or so of frantic wandering, opened up suddenly before us.

In Calvino's collection of vignettes, his narrator/traveller is Marco Polo, whose home, of course, is none other than Venice. In fact, Calvino gives Marco Polo this line - “Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.”

Perhaps it is apt that Venice should host one of the world's oldest international art shows. However abstract, art returns to and is understood always in context - whether its own, its creating or its audience - immediate or distant.

Today, I left Venice and arrived in Kassel, the German city for Documenta 12 - that other contemporary art show. It is a tranquil, slow - even bland - city, so unlike the over-heated Venice. But Kassel was not always tranquil. It was the site of a subcamp of Dachau concentration camp during WWII. In 1943, it was heavily bombed, most of its city centre reduced to rubble. The first Documenta in 1955 was perhaps a response to all this - an attempt to show art amidst ruins and against the recent past.

i am

art-ed out

3 whole days of looking at art here, and it is hard to pretend that it is not about the money. While, visually or intellectually, the works have not been engaging so far. Perhaps Venice and Kassel the next few days will be different.

Silly me brought a camera, but did not bring the wire to download. But if you are keen to see some pictures of Art Basel, click here.

cities to be seen

love-hate doodles

I'll be going to Venice, Basel and Kassel late tonight - for work (yes, hard as it is to believe, there's work to be done in these cities!). But it must be yet another sign of growing old, that despite the seemingly exciting destinations, us amps are dreading being apart.

Such cringey stickiness aside, we are happy to share that there's an Invisible City you can actually see (ah, loveliest of oxymorons!) without having to leave these shores -

So go get your tickets to and check out the trailer for Tan Pin Pin's latest documentary Invisible City here!

The much anticipated newest work from Tan Pin Pin Invisible City opens 19 July 2007 with free screenings at NUS followed by a commercial run at The Arts House. Tan Pin Pin, one of Singapore’s best known filmmakers, directed the critically and commercially acclaimed Singapore GaGa as well as the multi award-winning Moving House. She now turns her sharp and witty eye to the subject of memory.

Invisible City chronicles the ways which people attempt to leave a mark before they and their histories disappear. From an avid amateur film director trying to preserve his decaying trove of Singapore footage to an intrepid Japanese journalist hunting down Singaporean war veterans, Tan Pin Pin draws out doubts, regrets and the poignantly ordinary moments of these protagonists who attempt immortality. Through their footage and photos rarely seen until now, we begin to perceive faint silhouettes of a City that could have been. Quiet, elegiac and memorable, this is a singular cinematic experience not to be missed. (Taken from the film's website)

a light spirit

light spirit - from an old sketch

Walking home after lunch today, we saw 2 boys walking toward us, one holding a can of lemonade. We did not know them, but they were - without doubt - neighbourhood boys.
Y: Hey, did you smell that?
J: Yup.
Y: Those boys just sniffed glue huh?
J: [turns around] He's still sniffing. See.
Y: I wonder why...what on earth can be so compelling about that smell? And the damage to your brain cells!
J: I don't know. It's the same for people who wake up and immediately start to drink beer, or need to have a smoke. Maybe it numbs or relaxes, leaves a good feeling.
Y: I guess, I can understand how having a smoke can be relaxing... but things at the human level - they're strange, aren't they - smoke, glue, alcohol. Whichever government or culture, for all the talk the big time folks do at parliament, it can seem so removed from these smaller realities.
J:...

So this explains the empty tins of tiger brand glue or some other solvent by the large monsoon drain, their contents poured into less conspicuous lemonade cans.

Later that day, J and I overcame our dislike of musicals and watched Georgette, a musical by a young writer and a team of "volunteer"/amateur performers. It was surprisingly enjoyable - well-paced, clever funny lyrics, and a spirited performance by the cast. Of course, that it was about one of Singapore's pioneer artists that had probably the most dramatic biographies helped. (Picture on the right is a Self-portrait of Georgette Chen from the SAM collection)

There's a song I'll call "a bowl of fruit" - this being the refrain. Anyway, "a bowl of fruit" is sung when Georgette Chen is at her own gallery show in New York and she introduces a painting done in Malaya of rambutans and jambu fruit. The artist, apart from her husband Eugene Chen (a Chinese foreign minister - picture on the left is Georgette Chen's portrait of him), had wanted to preserve a slice of her Malayan experience for him. Fruits may rot, but a painting of them will not. But there is nothing really striking or radical about it - it is, after all, just another still life. In the play, however, her husband, upon seeing the painting, launches into song about "a bowl of fruit" -praising the solidity and assurance of the painted "bowl of fruit" against the chaos and confusion of the impending war between China and Japan.

OK, so it's really rather corny. But I wonder if a part of modernism was this - a belief that the artistic form is of an enduring reality and meaning, even if it cannot hold off a war. And that war itself, not art, was the ephemeral one, its devastation will be powerless and can eventually be overcome.

A can of lemonade, a bowl of fruit - intoxicants all.

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See some of Georgette Chen's works here.

the day after...

a quick colour exercise

If you were a day in a week, and you were a tuesday - ah, what a nondescript day you would be.

You would not have the distinction of being blue and black to salaried slaves who take the morning train. You would not bear the mid-week exhaustion. You would not even have that slight anticipation, that borrowed happiness of being just a day before - yes, thank god! You certainly won't enjoy any dates or get mentioned with the late night movies. And there'll be no rest - holy or otherwise - attached to your name.