WANTED: Someone to restore Arteri and give it 2nd life. Interested? Email: mail.sharonchin.com
by SHARON CHIN
Over drinks last night, a fellow wurator (writer/curator) asked me, in the context of the local art scene: “Whose work do you like?”
The simple question took me aback. I sat there, mouth open and eyes blank, long enough for my colleague to venture (gently): ‘no…body?’.
Which is untrue. I admire the work of a number of peers, among them: a photographer whose sense of pathos blows me away, a poet/illustrator whose drafting skills fill me sinful envy, perhaps Malaysia’s only contemporary minimalist painter and someone from the slightly older school whose range of work I find exciting, provoking and a continuous source of inspiration. Of course, it can’t be a love-fest all the way, and there’s alot of work that leaves me puzzled, depressed (yes, you know that bad art depresses you too), and often panting with apathy.
Bottom-line, I’m deeply engaged with the art that’s being made here. Talking about it, however, is another matter altogether. Indeed, my colleague revealed that her conversations with other artists had indicated a similar… reluctance, shall we say, to comment on the work of their peers, whether in praise or criticism.
Why do we find it so hard to engage with each other? I find that years go by in a flurry of exhibition openings, at which you hear and answer the same questions over and over: so what are you working on now? What are you doing now? Any upcoming projects? Etc, etc. Honestly, it’s like a broken record. Our community seems characterized by a shallow civility, in which one feels genuine good-will towards one’s peers – we are pleased when someone advances professionally, but we won’t delve too deeply into the ideas behind their practice.
If all our efforts go towards just maintaining this civility, it is impossible to move forward. Our true opinions float in the air as rumours, gossip, and hearsay, causing hurt feelings and wrongful assumptions. Thoughts and opinions should be the backbone of our community, not a source of shame and guilt. I believe this to be a true crisis in the arts, and must be acknowledged as such.
Don’t want to get all Oprah on you, but it is essential that we sit down and talk to each other. ARTERI hopes to be a platform for the sort of mud-slinging, food-fighting and intense discussion that we need to have… civilly, of course.
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I agree. It is almost like an unspoken rule. Criticism from an older/more experienced artist/mentor is fine though. Among peers, not too common.
I also suspect it has to do with a deep-seated (though barely hidden) anti-intellectualism amongst local artists that has led to this ‘crisis’ that you’ve described.
Not too long ago, when questioned about relevance or limitation of his vision of unity, a local songwriter who composed some lazy form of Malaysian kumbaya played up the ordinary folk hero card by denouncing the critique as a high handed snobbish form of intellectual deconstruction that missed the point of his project.
This brand of politics and art is also sadly prevalent in the visual arts. By translating muhibah’ism’s forced sense of neighbourliness into discourses surrounding our artistic output, we lose an indispensable channel for thinking through art- that of art criticism. It fosters an undercurrent of ritualised empathy and reserve, producing composures that are sensitive to any form of assault. To vocalise is then to transgress the courteous code tacitly agreed upon by a communal amity.
This is what I believe to be a culturally fostered aesthetic of congeniality that is highly problematic.
The belief that ‘everyone has their own interpretation’ or ‘art is subjective’ or even that ‘art is an emotional experience’ is the laziest and most uncritical form of response in any dialogue about art, and it misrepresents the intelligence of our aesthetic experience too!
I am surprised at how often these statements are invoked in order to stave off any forms of confrontation or provocation.
Well done, Arteri, on your third entry. I’m sure many art-loving Malaysians will be following the developments of this site with much curiosity. Having said that, could you make the setting for comments slightly larger? They are a tad bit small!
Perhaps it would be good to also have, in the course of an exhibition for instance, a critique-discussion-sharing session, where people can come together to discuss what the artist’s ideas were, what her/his trajectory is/was, and how all of this played out (well or for ill) in the current works exhibited. Kan best!
I remembered Matahati’s ‘retrospective’ recently, where they had a talk at the Annexe, but unfortunately it was such a feel good event that I think it missed out on talking about how the group had actually grown (or not; artistically/financially as well) over the years. More forthrightly-ness is in order!
I agree that an anti-intellectual impulse part of the problem. And perhaps, the feeling that critique equals an attack on an artist’s rice bowl. Which relates to the thorny question of entanglement of art criticism and galleries in our small scene. The lack of a shared vocabulary might also inhibit fuller dialogue (I include polemic in this category). In this regard the arts scene mirrors larger/ national deficiencies. Its great that Arteri is addressing this deficit.
Sarah – I agree. I have someone from the older school who regularly puts me under the harrow about my work. It’s not exactly pleasant, but it sure is useful. He’s not really a mentor though, more a senior colleague. Which makes me wonder if this ‘anti-intellectualism’ is a relatively recent development. Were people… smarter, then, in the not so recent past?
Fahmi – in the spirit of constructive critique, I hereby undertake to tweak the css code to enlarge the comments text.
Sharaad – “feeling that critique equals an attack on an artist’s rice bowl” = bullseye, IMHO. I think this comes from two directions: 1) none of us want to come off as sour grapes. 2) in a
‘developing’ scene, any sort of advancement for an artist is taken as an advancement for the community that ultimately will benefit all. Explains why I can be genuinely happy for someone’s professional success while simultaneously not give a rat’s fart about their work. This outlines the condition… but how do we go beyond it…? It seems that having more forums won’t work, unless the way they are constructed actually breaks down the HABIT in which we’re used to talking to each other. Throw me a theoretical life-line here…
My opinion is that the lack of intelligent discussion is probably universal thing. 80% of any comment sections on any website is more or less mini statements of approval or disapproval, which to me seems alligned with the general marketing opinion that humans are usually operating using their reptilian brain, where ‘feeling good / not good’ about something or someone is basically how we make our final decisions on many daily choices.
Another way to look at this issue is to just observe the visual dialogues that goes on between artists. During my VWFA days, the gallery had already brought back figurative into the scene and I noticed some kind of portraiture craze, later a charcoal fad emerged, canvases got larger and larger, etc. For awhile everyone was just making all these creepy monumental faces.
I think artists maybe all smiles and cheers at social gatherings but if you know how to place their works together, some kind of visual shouting match is definately going on, similar to the way Maxis and Digi ads compete with each other’s campaigns. So for me its the curator and writers who has more responsibility setting up these matches.
For more written debate online, it appears that civilized and nice boh-juah settings are not really helping these days. I suggested in our discussion mail that we might make adaptations to some typical trashy forum tactics like trolling, flame wars, and anonymous grouped attacks to provoke reaction (ala 4chan boards). Once the room becomes lively, it gathers even more traffic and posters. Sure, it can descent into slews of immature remarks but there’s more chance of posters who will have to sharpen their wits and give better arguments or interesting posts.
Since most people here are already part of a choir, I propose we gang up and prowl some local or international artist/art blog/forum instead. We just have to sit down, set our agenda, structure our posting character and style, gather a bag of typical arguments and trawl for suitable forums. Once the comment section gathers momentum, we move on and seed more comment sections and go back to ones that have bloomed for watering and trimming. I don’t see why we must let marketing ppl use this straegy to plant viral videos and sell brands.
MUAHHAHAHHAHAHAAHHA Maybe we can start at Deviant Art. Its cruel fun crushing the hope of kids but those who truely want it will not be deterred. Those whose doubts grow will be spared wasting precious time and resources at art/ design school and go do something closer to their calling.
Think of it as a kind of Judo tactic, whereas advertising and politics present you with something that looks or sound smart but is actually simply after blind emotions, we must somehow (through the above strategies or another)push people’s emotions so that they can spill their brains out.
Hahaha I think it’s okay to have ‘mini statements’ of disapproval or approval, snap judgments however should be supported if pressed later on.
On another note, how exactly can a writer or curator create a remotely exciting match between a painting of buddha statues and another drip painting of carnival clowns? :p
Don’t we have some right to demand for more? Hahaha
If comments box were simply for stating ‘cool/not cool’ a simple vote up/down box should be enough but unlike many populist media websites, I don’t think there’s any contemporary art institution/organization/magazine out there that would really dare to let their art be judged by netizens. ‘Contemporary’ Art stubbornly attaches itself to really conservative values and protectionist behavior.
Hmmm, actually a Buddha head painting would look pretty interesting next to a carnival clown. Both are sign of the times, the popularity of the decapitated Buddhist head is a sign of society’s desperate need for a piece of serenity in an increasingly chaotic city life. The clown is popular in Western society but these days its happiness is often twisted into a nightmarish form,i.e Stephen King’s IT or Batman’s Joker. So yeah, it would be nice to see two such paintings together. But why would one go through such a costly and local art exhibition when so much of these remixing goes on so fast and furiously on the net?
hahaha…or lolz?
Oh this just came into my head…
The way the articles appear here so far are really traditional in the way they isolate one artist/art work with another. Sure the writer mentions its connection with x or y but why not paste in the actual images when there’s such an abundance to link from in the internet. The visual conversations can be made right here right now with anything and everything. Comparing and contrasting art with art is just to last century…
Hey Daniel,
Thanks for all your feedback. A buddha head and a clown put together is so not interesting! And I’m sure if we look hard enough in the recent history of figurative exhibition in Malaysia, it’s bloody there somewhere.
Actually do you really see the point of art magazines/organisations pandering to populist views as something progressive? I find it hard la, honestly. Maybe, I’m conservative after all. Why would I want to have 200 sixteen year olds and collectors tell me Damien Hirst is an amazing artist? I’m so over it.
Actually this business of finding images is harder than you think. I would have love to have an inexhaustible library to just pull images from but it’s really not the case with contemporary art in this region. Most of the time I have to write to the organising bodies to get them images. Unless you’re working with popular visual culture, then it MAY be a bit easier.
So when are you ACTUALLY contributing? You do know you’re a contributing editor right??? :P Quick, Sharon and I are running dry!
I did exactly what Daniel suggests in a lecture I presented in the Philippines last year titled “looking in / looking out” – Looking in: The Alice Complex and Looking out: Alice hits an iceberg. Both are a fraught minefield of criticism – despite location.
I juxtaposed images such as Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan’s floating boxes of found objects with those of Tony Cragg; Navarro and Nevelson’s timber constructions; Wire Tuazon’s text paintings with those of the young aboriginal artist Tony Albert; Robert Chabet with Goh Ee Choo’s conceptual installations and Lynyrd Paras with Xiao Hong’s portraits.
The whole modus operandi was that we don’t exist in isolated bubbles and while these are not examples of appropriation they do trigger dialogues about how we see, and local / global nuances. In most cases the artists didn’t know of the connection – partly as you suggest due to the lack of images being throw up and knowing what to look for them on the internet more aptly. The Filipino artists were curious to learn more about how these other artists had arrived at visually similar work, despite different cultural framing.
These kinds of conversations act in broadening ones own art practice and collective dialogues about the construction of global culture, rather than the prickly perception that it is a personal criticism as ‘copying’. I encourage ARTERI to continue on this path of probing questions about what we make – rather than just do in isolation or just gloss with glory.
Hi Gina and Daniel,
Thanks for the comments. When posting on ARTERI we do try to draw connections between the subject at hand and other artists/visual culture/social conditions. The point is well taken about inserting images besides the main subject of the post. On Chuah Thean Teng for example, I wanted to draw a parallel between him and Japan’s master woodblock printer, Hiroshige.
In fact the ‘image jamming’ that both of you advocate might make for fascinating posts. We’d like to start a new segment featuring just that. Can we enlist both of you to start it off for us? Email me (you know where I live) or arteri.malaysia AT gmail DOT com.
All that said and done, I might come off as passe or conservative, but I do find pleasure in exploring something in-depth. I find that when something is looked at in ‘isolation’, you get a better idea of the writer’s particular point of view. I think this is equally important in today’s world where we are bombarded with an overload of images and media all day long. Since when did finding the relationship between things become a substitute for having an opinion?
Following the zeitgeist ain’t everything.