Liew Kung Yu: Cadangan-cadangan untuk Negaraku (Proposals for My Country)
Bustle Gallery, Galeri Petronas
14 Apr – 14 Jun 2009

PROLEGOMENA

This act of authoritative speech, conceptualized as an unplanned effect of the performance act is NOT about: Nietzsche’s “Uebermensch”, Kabir’s “Upside Down Language”, Adeena Karasik’s “dyssenic sleaze”, Kinski’s “Wrath of the Gods”, Drungpa Kunley’s, “Divine Madness”, Ken Wilber’s, “Atman Project”, Buddhadasa’s “Dharmic Socialism, Alester Crowley’s, “Beast 666”, Amy Weinhause’s “Rehab”, Xialou Guo’s “Lexigraphy”, Ernst Jandle’s, “Phonetics”, Karl Valentin’s, “Volkskomoedie”, Indra Sinha’s “Animal People”, Sant Ajaib Singh’s, “Anuragsaga”, Caligula’s “Orgiastic Epiphany”, Hermann Nitzche’s “Vienna Activisim”, Antares’s “Mothballs” or Khalil Gibran’s “Prophet”.

It is simply a circumvention of Liew Kung Yu’s works via an uninterested exercise of visual ethnographic deconstruction sprinkled with a healthy dose of indexicological deliberation encased within the perimeters of phenomenological hermeneutics.

HYPOTHESES

We do not wish to ………………………

We have no reason to ………………….

Why should we …………………………

(gloat over)

1. The sociocultural foundation of an artwork

2. The dialogic nature of the relationship between the artist creator and the created

3. Creating a meta-narrative

4. Delving into the intricacies of a narratological biography

5. The task of attending to questions pertaining to origin and direction, mission and strategies

NARRATIVE

Here one is often prone to extinguish creativity – I will do the same by asking:

1. What transpires when the artist confronts the obvious. Does the artist “change” things or s he/she merely “confused” by that moment of exposure

2. How does the art installation transfer meaning to the viewer who is being watched?

3. What happens in  frame – in “this” space and time?

4. When does the art picture become a narrative?

5. Is the artist working with a “photo” or a “picture”

6. Does “arting” constitute an act of hermeneutic reasoning?

7. Is there a duplicative performativity involved when a picture/photo becomes a narrative?

MIND MAP

Does Liew Kung Yu’s use an instrument to represent words, ideas and tasks that are linked and arranged around a keyword/idea? Are his maps there to generate visual structures that in turn clarify/modify ideas/concepts?

CONCEPT MAP

Can one ascertain from Liew Kung Yu’s installations, visual maps represent relations between concepts in the form of PROPOSITIONS?

What types of maps does he employ? “story maps”, “storytelling maps” or “storyteller maps”?

VISUALITY

What does Liew Kung Yu intend to tell us about his thoughts, propositions, analytic thinking, critical integrated new knowledge

OR IS

HE JUST

PROPOSING

THAT the ability to interprete, negotiate and make meaning from pictorial presentations have already “arrived” in the form of his visual images (photo installations).

LOCATION

If Liew Kung Yu’s “photos” are maps then is it so that in the process of “making a map” he could have “accidentally” stumbled upon, brief histories, population, heritage, trades, worship, food, occupations, markets, huiing memories? What does he do with these maps and why should one care? Below are further categories that could help in battling/confusing the reader/viewer even further. They appear in no particular order of importance.

METHODOLOGY I

Symbol   Reality    Metadiscourse

Map    Observation   Content

People    Rationality   Context

Space    Focus    Physical Matter

Time     Definition   Condensed Mind

Visual Culture   Projection   Expectation

Meaning/Construction  Phenomenology  Confirmation

Concept   Hermeneutics   Verification

Experience   Performativity   Toponymy

Indexicality

METHODOLOGY II

Here are a few more categories, knock yourself out (in no particular order)

Authentic methodology

Performance site

Sets of relations

Communication raptures

Reproductive condensation

Academic observation

Emotive commentary

Space within distance

Panoramazation

Poor language

Rich language

Electic randomization

Non-essentialized responses

Sub structural texuality

Theory identification

Concept creation

EXIT STRATEGY

At the end of Liew Kung Yu’s artistic exercise we are hardy left with anything except maybe the reality of the Buddhist theory of Pratitya-Samutpada (dependent origination) which states that “as long as we remain ignorant, clinging and hateful, we will continue to create karma, and so continue to be born into this world full of suffering and pain” (C. George Boeree)

SO IS ARTISTIC ENDEAVOUR NOTHING MORE THAN

1. Avidya (clinging)

2. Samskara (impulses)

3. Vijnana (consciousness)

4. Namarupa (name and form)

5. Shadayatana (the six bases)

6. Sparsha (contact)

7. Vedana (sensation)

8. Trishna (craving)

9. Upadana (clinging)

10. Bhava (becoming)

11. Jati (birth)

12. Jara-maranam (old age and death)

So in the end, there goes the much acclaimed shift of Art Theory (since the late 70’s) toward semictics, cultural theory and pan-humanities critical theory-not that Liew Kung Yu cares – (and neither does the author of this text!)

ADDENDUM

Should the dire need to continue this rhetorical polemical discourse surface, then one could be encouraged to pose the question. Is Liew Kung Yu’s work of visualizing culture an inscription constructed as an ethnographic artifact?

One could casually (Albert Secwesly) circumvent this poser by returning to the bottom of essentialist universalism, in this case the Buddhist doctrine of Samyojana (The Ten Fetter’s) which categorically states all life, work and endeavour bound to samsara (suffering) because WE ARE INEXTRICABLY BOUND TO:

• Belief in a separate personality or individuality (drishti)

• Doubt that has no desire for satisfaction (Vichikitsa)

• Uncritical attachment to rules and rituals (silabbata-paramosa)

• Sensous craving (kama-raga)

• Still will, wishing harm to others (ryapada)

• Craving for a higher material existence (rupa-raga)

• Craving for a non-material existence (acupa raga)

• Conceit or egotism (mana)

• Restlessness (udhacca)

• Ignorance (avidya)

ADIEU!

Latif Kamaluddin
Penang, 21/7/2009

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Latif Kamaluddin is the author of five poetry anthologies. He is currently transmigrating. He teaches political philosophy for a living.