Written by lainie at 02:21 AM on June 14, 2006 in Arty stuff.

So this is about Panic Buttons.

For me to summarise the entry would require me to *think* about what was talked about in the forum. I'm not gonna chase everything together into a few paragraphs. I wrote about a paragraph worth of words, as notes, for each speaker. If you've seen my handwriting / note taking abilities, you will know that this is quite unhelpful. So what to do? Ramble ramble ramble.

[ Skipping early years of school, then refusing to do homework for the remaining years till I graduate, means I actually have very lil practice at writing. Really. I'm not even too sure how a pen is supposed to be held. And I get confused easily when I write, thanks to my massive lack of practice. Vicious cycle, that. ]

Ppersonally, I'd appreciate a follow up, I'm still unsure what they were trying to achieve here. Issues related to art, and the trouble art can get people into?

[ Some of you twats I invited said you'd get the information from the forum off me when I blog about it - you are an idiot. Blind leading the blind. ]


L-R: Sharaad Kuttan, Goenawan Mohamad, Kathy Rowland, Lee Weng Choy, John Pang, Jennifer Lindsay, Chumpon Apisuk, Yap Sau Bin.
(name spellings not vouched for)

.
=====

If you hear nasty coughing when playing the sound files - yes that's still me. I'm always sick.

I was vaguely wondering if I should put this off till Zedeck writes his article on it, then plagiarise off him (I mean, he gets paid. I blog for free). ....Well, let's just say after a brief talk with him, I figure I should write my own blog post, how hard can it be anyway? Just cause I wasn't listening, pfahhhhh. I have entire blog posts dedicated to events I didn't pay attention to, I don't see why this should be any different.

Sharaad, as emcee for that day, started off with brief introductions of the speakers, and then reads off a list of events that have happened, like many Hindu temples being demolished lately (some with molotov cocktails, which makes me want to strangle various insensitive dumbasses but....sigh), the whole "black metal thing", Last Communist being banned, Satu Kali performance art being stopped, etc etc etc etc etc etc.


When I wanted to take a picture, Kathy Rowland immediately looked up right at me. I was a bit startled, because the lights were shining on those onstage so they shouldn't be able to see too clearly what's going on in the audience.

Kathy Rowland - One of the founders of Kakiseni.com and ArtisProAktif.
Kathy introduced herself saying that we were here to talk about "Panic Buttons", and her panic buttons are pushed when she has to talk to a room of more than four people, so we have to bear with her . She talked about censorship, and moral policing.

I have a short clip, part of her talk:

On the internalisation of moral policing by the public.

[ I'd rather put this on my tabulas radio, but will have to wait till I clean up the comp / reformat. Bloody virus. ]

She will go on to mention how the minority voices that speak out against something, are listened to by the government, as opposed to the majority (case at hand: one columnist against The Last Communist, starts the ball rolling and gets a film many more want to watch banned) . And most likely, it is because what is voiced by the minority reflects what the government wants to hear.

I had a wry "Some are more equal than others" thought when she said that, and immediately thought of Zedeck. He thought I was calling him "Big Brother", but really, I was calling him "Lazy".
I swear this guy probably has an sms template typed out: "How Orwellian". It's his standard reply to every "issue" thing we talk about. We have agreed that his new catchphrase shall be "How Huxleyian", though I'm not sure how that's any less typical.

I will hereby forget to take down anymore audio clips because...I don't know why, I just forgot. I certainly had no intention of paying more attention, so it would have made more sense to record it down.

Chumpon Apisuk speaks next.

One of the things I was known for from kindergarten all the way to...actually, I might still be known for it....is my complete inability to pay attention to anyone, particularly teachers.
Any teacher stands in front and start talking, by reflex I will zone out, pick up a pen and start drawing (it doesn't help the image that when I am paying attention, no one notices, or they just assume I'm not).


Apparently, teachers aside, my attention span applies to people giving talks as well. Is anyone surprised? Like, even a lil?

I did try to listen, but I honestly don't know when I started to phase out. All I know was I snapped back to reality, surprised to realise I'd been sketching, my mind got a bit overloaded on confusion so I added lines to Chumpon's face that didn't really match (when the hand is sketching, pen so near the paper, especially close to gesture-drawing speed, it's hard to abruptly stop).

Actually, kinda bizarre for me. I find that if I don't try to pay attention, it wanders. And if I DO try, it wanders anyway. Chehhh.

Chumpon is an artist-activist from Thailand (and regardless of how careful Sharaad was about "labelling" the people there....Uh. I will save you the whole tirade I made against labels earlier and....label everyone) who works with too much for me to keep track of, but Empower seems to be one of the more major ones.

He was talking about how in Thailand he is part of the anti-government, and what they do. Arts festivals, how they have to control who gets to perform in them for political reasons. He also spoke a lot about Thai politics (and how people are wearing yellow tshirts for the king).

In his closing speech, he is talking about government funding and how it can be a double edged sword for the arts. Apparently this is an issue that came up during the workshop, that Rey Buono had brought up: rewards from the government are a way of censoring AND controlling artists. Which I guess ties in with the endless ethics-and-corporate-patronage-sponsorship-in-arts / curating / museums argument.


After all, the promise of money, and the threat of taking away money given, are both VERY effective ways to censor / control someone (fuck, this is even assuming self-censorship doesn't apply), we've all probably compromised what we think is right over the $$$ factor before (me? Argue with my parents? Nawwww, never).

Actually, I lie, I argue with them heaps. Stress levels in Ipoh rise everytime I'm home. You can see a photo of Chumpon at Sharon Bakar's blog

Lee Weng Choy speaks next. To simplify, he is the artistic co-director at The Substation. I found him the easiest to listen to / understand, which means I didn't concentrate very hard, which unfortunately leads to the sad fact that I don't remember very much.

Far as I remember, Weng Choy talked about public spheres, and the loss of relevance from the face of the arts community to the general public. He said something very interesting about censorship, in that he wrote an article once and his editor had been very friendly and casual, telling him he can write it however.

His sentence "Censorship is always arbitrary" (which I agree with) was edited to "Censorship is sometimes arbitrary" (which becomes a largely irrelevant saying, like "Lainie is occasionally bored. But maybe not all the time"). Laughter all around.

He finds out later that the editor works for Internal Security. Some jokes are made about how thanks to Singapore not having anything but state-controlled media, it has dismal ratings at the World Press Freedom rankings which pulls in slightly ahead of, yknow. Countries that shoot reporters (Malaysians don't laugh okay, ours aren't much better) .

Then he bitches about funding in Singapore (which he acknowledges is an awfully ironic thing to do to an audience made up mostly of Malaysians, or people who perform in Malaysia).

Some guy reading a letter for fundraising in Yogya, organised by KUNCI, Anak Wayang Indonesia, Mark Teh and Fahmi Fadzil (they are working to attend to immediate material needs of children, and need the usual food medicine water tent mat and blanket supplies - for children in 3 villages).
After him, Weng Choy makes a brief statement about public spaces (and accompanying politics) and what they can be used for, to wrap up his part of the dialogue.

Weng Choy's actually referring to a point Yuen Mei had raised earlier on question of the public - Yuen Mei had referred to identity, and how it is fluid and there are so many labels such as feminist, activist, artist, female, chinese, malaysian, buddhist, and that identity should not be racial (because of something Fadli said, more on tha tlater). She was also addressing how she felt some issues about identity had not been dealt with in the forum (if I recall correctly anyway).
Until she spoke up, I had been under the assumption that this was the first event I'd been to where I didn't see anyone from Katagender ever since I went for the protest. So much for that. I wanted to say hi to her after the forum (which is pretty amazing if you know how anti-social I can get), but she disappeared pretty fast.

Aieee. I checked my gmail to see if I got her name spelled right, and I forgot to reply her last email -_-". I'm terrible with remembering stuff.

Then Yap Sau Bin started off with a lil trivia about Taiwanese cabbies and their politics. Role of media, which is how we know about "Panic Buttons" or "crises" that emerge, and who are the representatives "chosen" to talk about these events that happen (eg Amir, Yasmin, black metal (the panel?) spokesperson). So obviously the media is also a powerful ideological state apparatus, and that we need to know how to deconstruct mainstream media into "anti-government" and "government". I was just vaguely wondering where this "anti government mainstream media" is. Malaysiakini? Har.

He also points out language hegemony, and the alienation of artists from the public due to language / jargon. To illustrate the point he briefly spoke in Mandarin and Cantonese and probably DID alienate a fair bit of the audience. I thought that was kinda unnecessary, aren't we all aware of how tricky language can be? Just me? You too?

So he's calling for larger cultural expressionisms (I thiiiink) from the people who are the "connecting agents" (artists / activists?).


Yap Sau Bin wrapping up his talk.


Jennifer Lindsay (I assume an activist / feminist of some sort based in Indonesia) does the same thing as Kathy - looks right at the camera, which makes me wonder about the women, really.

She spoke about the Anti-Pornography Bill and how it presents obstacles against art. There was a bit about Islam and local culture, and how these two clash. Sounds familiar..........For example, a form of dangdut that is sensual, against more "religious" dances.

Also, confusion amongst the public over what constitutes public / private behaviour. Sounds familiar..............

So basically, the Anti-Pornography bill limits the art, in that the performance / exhibition of art becomes relegated to specific situations. I can't really remember, but mostly it was like....They don't tell you "You can't have this performance", but rather, "You have to perform this under certain conditions, eg venue, specific events only". Hwaliao wei. That is damn sneaky.

So what if you print sexy art? Does it become porn? Literature? Is Anais Nin porn there then?

Then she talks about the importance of media, and how the media can bring the "indecent" into homes / public spheres. Eg: Displays of sensuality from locals, being brought into tv programs. Abd how this garners reactions that may not be such in different contexts, such as face to face in theatre.


Jennifer wrapping up her dialogue at the end of the forum. She is talking about the arts community, solidarity vs hegemony, as the issue was raised by some from the audience (more on that later).

John Pang spoke next.
He spoke a lot about the notion of ideology, and "nationalism". I don't know about you guys, but the word "nationalist" creeps the fuck outta me. Patriotic people, I can deal with. Fanatically patriotic people are..........Well, I associate

Patriot = Love country. Sometimes, drinks teh tarik and eats too much mamak food to prove a point.
Nationalist = Love country, hate everyone else. Usually, an asshole.

Just my overall impression *shrug*. By the way, I forgot to write down anything most of the time, most of all for his, so what I say from now on might be very salah okay? I should have recorded what he said :/

Anyways, he talks about the need for an alternative vocabulary to think of the issue of censorship. And how nations are defined ethnically or culturally, and therefore, people in them make claims based on the ethnicity / culture. This leads to the question, Who is the Malaysian nation? Or rather, Siapa bangsa?, and in our constitution, is bangsa ethnically or religiously defined. (Sensitive Issue?). Because really, identity is not an easy thing, it being situational / fluid/ blablabla.

[ Culture / Identity in a ten minute talk? Who can hear the essayists choking on their blood? By the way, it was pointed out that Malaysia is low on essayists. Well. No wonder, they all became bloggers who talk about...... themselves....Hah. ]

Uh. Then he kinda jumped to self censorship and how people police themselves for fear of saying something that may be perceived as seditious. I might (probably) have forgotten what was said in between. The NST was brought up, and how when this paper went through some changes, it received flack not so much on its merit as a newspaper (journalism standards? columnists? angles?) but for not following traditions. Then he ties this in with how a letter is sent to NST as an indirect(?) attack on Badawi for not selecting someone of more traditional religious history.

Which led to talk on the attacks of particular assemblies, because they place Islam on a platform with other religions (hence inviting comparisons?), which is seen as an attack on Islam and it's 'implied primacy'. This leads to the Islamic revival, and the systematical structures that restrict artistic / political freedom that artists / activists / whoever should have.

Unless I'm mistaken, Gubra is also briefly mentioned here.

Later on some dumbass will confront John and say that identity is not a problem at all. Hwaliao. Big claims, brother. Sure a not? He was quite rude about it, I reckon he pissed off quite a few people in the forum.

He bluntly asked John what his identity was. John smiled, and said it depended on who was asking, and why. Then he said "My name is Fadli, can you guess my identity?". John refused to label him with an identity, but Fadli insisted John came up with a conclusion of his identity based on his name. Fadli.

[ General gist ]

John: Well. I don't know. It sounds like an Arabic name. You are probably, in Malaysia, legally a Malay.
Fadli: You're right. It's obvious. So, no problems there.

.....(General "was this guy listening at all throughout John's presentation" feeling).......

As a respnse Yuen Mei pointed out, there are many different types of identity. John will later say he was trying to make a point, that identity is situational, hence it depends on the context (eg: who is asking, and why?).

Then he talks bout the difference that exists between someone who is legally Malay, and someone who is ethnically / anthropologically Malay (basically, identity is complex). And that Malaysia places a lot of emphasis on racial identity (as Fadli happily demonstrated), when there are so many ways to look at it. And this goes back to how identity in Malaysia implies political status and interests, AND, is this form of identity useful?

[ Please note my blogging-memory is severely strained by natural factors (I mean my mind's capacity, not that I've been smoking up marijuana, combined with my attention span), the amount covered that day, and that I'm writing about it a few days after, so who knows what I've screwed up by now ]

John then said he feels pity for anyone who feels their identity can be stated in two lines (My name is Fadli, can you guess my identity?). Zedeck and I will have a lil debate over this later.

I will later find out, after the forum, that Fadli is the editor of UiTM's student magazine. Siiiiiiiiiigh.

I recorded both Kathy and John in the same file:

Kathy's closing speech, she will talk about different examples of artists coming together to help out....Well, seemed like "prominent / well known" people in local arts community to me. Oh irony. Jo is one of the examples she uses. Har har. Har har.

John Pang is actually wrapping up what he had said earlier, and commenting on some of the issues raised by the floor. He talks a lot about cultural identity in Malaysia, and the artist's role in challenging identity norms and presenting new views on the meaning of culture. Of course, I did not record any of that down, so you'll just have to.......take my word for it. Which is Not Wise.

The fear Kathy talks about, that artists are scared of saying stuff because they might end up in jail, and that it's not true....Hmmm. I know of a Satu Kali performer who was seriously intimidated / traumatised after being threatened with "menghina Islam" or whatever in his...Well, he called it performance art. Anyhow.

Jo Kukathas voicing up on solidarity within the arts community. Rey Buono (lecturer from Sunway -I think he was the one who said this) had earlier commented on the lack of solidarity within arts community. For example, Amir Muhammad is outside selling tshirts for his banned movie, but where were the other artists? Why weren't other indie filmmakers beside him?

[ I was wondering, who would be there to see this "show of solidarity"? A whole bunch of people probably already backing up Amir anyway? And judging by the crowd, he probably knows it. ]

Jo had then said she wasn't comfortable with the idea of a monolithic arts community, because of the hegemony that would come along with that (which I thought was a bit Ironic coming from someone in Instant Cafe Theatre, and if you drew a diagram of "prominent / well known people in local arts community" (anti-labelling be fucked), she'd be smack somewhere in the middle.

[ Kathy's talk about artist community solidarity comes up after this ]


I don't think they were reeeeeeeeeally talking about the same thing at all, though it was linked with the idea of community.

Goenawan Mohamad from Indonesia, speaks next. Hmm. What what what. Far as I recall, spoke on the totalising of certain norms / values, that these ideals are not just the result of state manipulation but something from society too. Fetishism of identity.

[ I have a lil paragraph of notes - I'm just trying to figure out what the fuck I wrote. The only thing I can make out is "Totalitarian regime - controls private & public spaces". Why the HELL did I bother to write that down? I don't get me. ]

That when religion comes into play, it implies control over your lives with absolute values that cannot be challenged. I think he's bit of a Marxist dude, talked about colonisation being something that's not done from an ethnic point of view, but class.

Then he speaks on the state of Islam in Indonesia - and how it is not a stale religion. Diversity, in practice more free than conceived by the state. That diversity makes the idea of a "Nation" problematical, since idea of "Nation" is created by forgetting certain particularities, hence universality of the concept? By logic of pure difference within communities, apartheid results. Then, you get laws that prevent you from talking about other communities (hmmmmm. now why does this ring some bells).

[ That Indonesians constantly question their identity - as opposed to Msians who seem to settle comfortably into their four categories of Malay Chinese Indian and Others - I can't remember if Goenawan brought this up or someone else]

He also mentioned media being instrumental in disseminating these differences, reinvention of these ideas becomes more visible, meaning identity becomes something that is no longer contnigent (even though it is).

[ Actually, frankly, he speaks with a lot of gaps between every few words, so somewhere along his talk I must have drifted off because I started sketching sculpture ideas instead. ]

Then the artist and his role is to challenge all identity fetishism, because art has the capacity to do so, to present our ideas and challenge others to think. That we have a problem because artists are not provocative, possibly because they don't want to be seen as in violation of "our culture" or worse, "public expectation". Ei, you artists should not suck up all the time, okay?


Goenawan actually fell asleep, and after Kathy was done wrapping up her talk, and handed him the mic, he woke up. Everyone laughs.

Somewhere during the talk something was mentioned that I found interesting. Artists can be hard to mobilise because they like their individuality. Hahahhahahahhahahahahhaha. That would imply a lot of "original" artists. Oh hell. Just be grateful that unlike my close friends, you're not one of my whine-dumps*.

*Ironically enough, I choose to say this in what is turning out to be a very long blog post.

And that, was done. We clapped. We went off.

Overall - it felt kinda scattered. I'm not sure they said anything new.

I mean, it's kinda good to organise everything into one talk and give it all at one go, but judging by the crowd, I think they were saying stuff most people already knew - except, perhaps the small group of Sunway performing arts students dragged there by their lecturer.

Most of them looked either lost or bored (exception of Raz who had much to say) and I think one of them actually fell asleep. Ah well, never mind. It's good to forge connections with neighbouring artists.

But? I typed so much, but really now, was anything new said? Or did I miss something?

[ Update ]

And of course Pang calls me and makes me justify my lazy writing on my blog. He seems under the impression I dismissed the entire forum (no dearie, no).

Like I said, I think it's good to organise a talk like this. But I don't think it reached the audiences that it could have. Most people there probably knew mostly what was happening, so this seemed more like a cohesion exercise, bringing all the topics together at a go.

Were we there to be informed? Or to spread the information and publicise the forum, kickstart the discussions in mamaks and websites? If we were, why wasn't information / issues for discussion from the forum printed out and distributed? Not enough time?

If we can't get people to GO for these things, maybe we could get websites (eg: Think Online) to publish these topics, reach more people, generate more feedback.

My issue, if I were to call it that, was not the forum, but

1) The audience it received (not entirely its fault)
2) After much talk about the importance of media and dissemination of information there seemed to be a lack of planning on their part to spread what they had to say to more people,
3) Lack of follow up to the forum (no mailing lists either, but I reckon people who found this one can find the next).

I mean. Not even a Yahoo group? No space was provided for the people invited to further discuss the issues after the time allocated for the forum, although there has been a flood of opinions (read: bitchy comments) in Kakiseni.

[ /Update ]

TV Smith's Dua Sen: Off-Course Discourse. TV Smith is not as long winded as I am. Heh.

Kakiseni.com: Talk is Action. Even longer than mine. Woah. But covers much more.


Tiu. Damn long post. I won't be checking anything okay, I'm not that nutters yet. Gahhhh, blog about today, tomorrow.

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