M.A.D is brought to you today by the letter C and Pacman. Pacman looks like a ‘C’ ok? (Pacman explained: surrealist story of an astronaut hooked on anti-anxiety medication in order to escape his survivor’s guilt which manifests as the ghosts of his deceased comrades blaming him for their deaths see pic here, and you thought it was just an arcade game.. ok you thought it was just the BEST arcade game in the world)

All comments, new words, redefined words welcome.  

Colour: noun, adj categories of light found in the spectrum. Primary colours are red, blue and yellow, which when mixed in pairs make up the rest of the rainbow. ROY G. BIV (how I learnt it at school, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. My favourite colour is blue, the blue you see at dusk just when the sun has slipped far beneath the horizon. Malaysians are a little confused by colours especially when driving, yellow means speed up, red is subjective to how closely it came after yellow, it can either mean cooly not stop and go through, or screeching halt behind the car in front who you hoped would go but didn’t and green, well green just means go lah, beep beep! 

Contemporary: adj, referring to the immediate present, or living in the now, for the moment. Noun: referring to a colleague or person who is in the same line of work, generation, ‘my contemporary’. Impossible to actually define what is contemporary in any given moment, because everyone is trying to out do each other, and world moves way to fast to fix a notion of contemporary. Therefore, actually a hollow term. 

Comic: adj, to be humourous or funny, often with an element of the absurd, a common strategy in art to diffuse serious issues so viewers do not feel threatened, alienated or bored. People have such short attention spans these days, everyone needs to be entertained!  Noun a comic, graphic collection of images in narrative sequence, also know as comic book, usually containing characters that act as heroes, heroines, anti heroes, villains, enfused with drama and bizarre proportions and weird S&M like costumes in day glow colours or sleek monochrome if we are talking about right now. Would that be contemporary?

Conceptualism: ism, noun, its all about the idea on this one, doesn’t matter if the artist never even touches the object, the idea makes it his/hers. Irritates many traditional art lovers who often refer to this art as bollocks, sometime it is, sometimes its pure genius. Started in the 1960s and now tends to misleadingly encompass all contemporary (there is that word again) practice that is not traditional painting and sculpture. 

Cool: adj, hmmm if you have to define cool, then you are automatically not cool right? So if you don’t know, then you never will. Bummer for you. 

Critic, noun: someone with perceived knowledge/authority on any given subject who proceeds to share opinions, insights and criticism on modes of production from books, plays, exhibitions, albums, dance, art, fashion and life in general. Can act as the arbitrator of taste, and potentially ruin careers and make people cry or want to hide. Everyone’s a critic these days. 

Curator: noun oh where to begin. A person (male/female) who can instigate or is a part of the process of exhibition making, normally the individual who edits, develops and project manages exhibitions, and who acts as the  punching bag, carrier of Vitamin C, and artist’s special friend during times of crises, ‘but is it really good? What do you think?”. Also fund raiser, administrator, manager, publicist, academic, punching bag for museum directors and board of trustees if based in an institution, writer, critic, part-time alcoholic, and often anxiety ridden. Failed or wannabe artist, that’s why they come up with such obtuse weird concepts for shows sometimes (this is normally the independent curator).  This word is still not actually in the dictionary! Why? Because we should all be thinking about a proper job and not some made up word to validate our make believe stuff. Also spelt with a K. 

Can someone try and define culture?

(EM)