WANTED: Someone to restore Arteri and give it 2nd life. Interested? Email: mail.sharonchin.com
M.A.D is brought to you today by the letter B.
It is the blindingly brilliant, bestest, bit of balderdash ever! Today’s entry, has perhaps the most used, abused, loved, co-opted word in the Malaysian language. Please send us your comments on this one. Can wah?
Beauty: adj: is in the eye of the beholder. To possess beauty, is to be desirable, coveted and admired. Can allude to purity and often found in nature. Not just about women either ok? No big booty versus skinny model comments. In contemporary art beauty is a bit of a loaded term, and not the most prized element of art production these days. Big is beautiful.
Billboard: noun: Large outdoor structures often found on highways and urban centres displaying advertising imagery and slogans. Also the site for guerilla interventions, by cultural/political types looking to make a statement. And boy can these babies help make a statement.
Black: adj: the absence of colour, although often described as a colour. Everyone looks good in this, slimming, but also can cause panic and worry amongst authority when worn en masse even though it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white. (RIP MJ). Used a lot in Abstract Art.
Blog: noun, verb. Short form of Weblog an online personal page for thoughts and recollections by an individual/group that can be accessed by the public over the internet, now a massive phenomenon which has turned into a verb, ‘to blog’. Everyone is doing it. Arteri is a ‘blogazine’, ‘blogging initiative’ or something like that. Someone who blogs is considered a blogger and the best sources of information in Malaysia come from our bloggers!
Blue: adj. Primary colour, mix it with red you get purple, mix with yellow = green. But how to describe a colour? HELP US READERS!
Boleh: verb, to be able to. Apparently Malaysia can do everything. What can artists, writers, curators and YOU do?
More words we need help with:
Bauhaus
Bohemian
Boho (not to be confused with bomoh)
Brutalism
Bronze
Brush
Bland
(EM)
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Blue also sang “Sorry seems to be the hardest word” with Elton John.
Blue – Apparently, Yves Klein’s International Klein Blue cannot be accurately reproduced by computer graphics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Klein_Blue), which I guess lends a stronger halo of authenticity to the originals or print reproductions (cf. Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, http://design.wishiewashie.com/HT5/WalterBenjaminTheWorkofArt.pdf).
Balai: (noun) Balai Seni Lukis Negara (BSLN) or the Natioanal Art Gallery of Malaysia.
If you wait till the letter N, you will get the antithesis of Balai which is ‘Notthatbalai’ – an art festival in Kuala Lumpur mainly associated to the Lost Generation Space (see L).
Bebalism(e) – ‘thick-ism’/’ígnorant-ism’/’stupidity as elite groupthink’ coined by the late, great sociologist Syed Hussein Alatas to refer to the inability of Malaysian politicians and pseudo-intellectuals to grapple with the forces of social change. Can be extended to the cognitive processes that produce much of the material for the ‘Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things’ series. A ‘bebalist’ being an exponent of this form of privileged idiocy.
Bolehism – an unfaltering optimism that Malaysians can do anything (Westerners can do). Usually informed by and reactive to bebalism (q.v.). Stems from a mix of leftover colonial inferiority, a desire for status and recognition, and untempered by common sense. A bolehist typically has frozen joint syndrome around the thumb area, resulting in permanent digital optimism.
Bohemian = Hishamuddin Rais. ‘Nuff said.