Sightings is a new series of posts based on curious specimens of visual culture collected around Malaysia.  If you see any worthy examples, email us at arteri DOT malaysia AT gmail DOT com.

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Description: A giant inverted teardrop, white lower-case “k” on a field of blue, approximately four feet tall and a foot deep. Set atop a cube, also blue, with the following inscription:

“Kenny Sia

has chosen

The Daily Grind
Bangsar Village

as one of his favourite places in Kuala Lumpur.
Visit google.com.my/favouriteplaces to see more.”

accompanied by the Google Maps Malaysia logo.

This ensemble sits on a field of Astroturf, in a triangular void space previously devoid of advertising. Accompanied by two spotlights.

Location: The Telawi-side entrance of Bangsar Village.

Notes:

That curious, faux-lawn-ed triangle, probably a vent for underground parking levels, was my favourite feature of Bangsar Village – precisely for its useless, trying-to-be-ornamental idiosyncrasy. Alas, adorned with Google’s intervention into reality, it is a favourite no longer.

Google’s “Favourite Places” ad campaign encompasses 16 cities. For Kuala Lumpur, the Internet superconglomerate got Malaysian 17 celebrities to mark their preferred hang-outs. Amber Chia likes Tropicana Golf & Country Club, which she calls “exclusive, secure, and all-inclusive” (???), Yasmin Yusoff reveals that she saw Yehudi Menuhin in the Dewan Filharmonic Petronas, and Kenny Sia is partial to The Daily Grind’s RM30 burgers.

Some of Amber Chia’s favorite places, marked by pins with lips on them.

Some of these locales get personalised monuments, like Kenny’s bukan-Burger-Ramli place. Seeing the oversized pin for the first time, I walked away slightly perplexed. The blue erection is too close to a Wilayah Celcom billboard, or a Tugu Peringatan, to say much more than just how cluttered real-space has become with conventional propaganda.

You’d think Google, with its groomed image of Internet benevolence, would settle for mid-size stickers or graffiti tags, affixed to sidewalks or walls. Something like that would have been a more modest probe from the Outside realm where they reign supreme. These, disappearing more than eye-catching, would have been more subtle – therefore more powerful – reminders of the parallel universes across which we straddle daily.

(ZS)