the2ndrule Issue 11
The 2ndRule
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Nov 2000 email edition
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Web edition: http://here.is/the2ndrule
Contents
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0. Editorial
1. Digital Compassion [Koh Beng Liang and Shannon Low]
2. Independence [Teng Qian Xi]
3. Kindergarten Snapshot [Alfian Bin Sa'at]
4. Pokemon, doraemon, hello kitty, ninja turtles, sabretooth? [Phinehas Tan]
5. seven-year-olds [Judith H]
6. Four a.m. Fight Club [Shannon Low]
7. Train Stations [Cyril Wong]
8. Feel or think? [Dustin]
Editorial
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K. told me, in one of his psychological monologues, that he really didn't want to go to work today. I was shocked. He usually is quite a robot about being punctual, even that recent morning when he had a delusion about having mutated into a grego-roach. He explained with bilingual eloquence that his aversion was not so much for the work itself, but for the journey to work. He had been having phobias, probably triggered by excessive exposure to sensationalistic news reports of accidents involving tunnel trains, sunken submarines and pulverized planes. Waiting at the bus stop, he would get visions of bright orange fireballs. The hallucinations of charred flesh were so vivid and all-sensual that he could no longer eat his favourite roast pork. He could not step into the car, the train, the taxi, the ferry... he is afraid of all moving vehicles.
I suggested that he walk to work.
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2ndRule team : Koh Beng Liang, Shannon Low, Benety Goh, Russell Chan, Alfian Bin Sa'at, Ong Ee-ing, Sim Pern Yiau, Judith H
Contributors : Teng Qian Xi, Phinehas Tan, Cyril Wong, Dustin
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Digital Compassion
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We don't usually do interviews with real people, but then again Shannon's a member of the2ndrule team, so this doesn't really count as an interview. We catch up with him at the Starbucks by the aquarium of sweating hamster yuppies.
the2ndrule: Seems like you're busy.
Shannon: Totally. There aren't enough hours in the day and I'm not a happy chicken. We're still looking for a guest-of-honour. Someone suggested calling a few people simultaneously to save time, but that would expose us to a potentially embarrassing situation, should more than one of them accept.
t2r: Kind of like getting a Saturday night date. But (peeping at the list) these don't seem like Saturday night dates.
S: No, no, these are respectable people I'm trying to get to open an art exhibition. Hey, what're you saying about my Saturday night dates?
t2r: ...(grin)... So you're an artist?
S: *sigh* (putting down handphone) One day, I'd like to make a sign that says, "Shannon is not an artist. Not even a writer."
t2r: Then you're an artist's assistant?
S: (hands over a sheet of paper) Executive brief. Check it out.
(a few minutes later)
t2r: So what is "Digital Compassion"?
S: Digital Compassion is a project about using technology for compassionate goals. It's based on the idea of remembering compassion in the digital age. Remembering that no matter how much technology advances, one thing that shouldn't change is how we ought to treat our fellow man or woman. It's about how to use technology to help those around us, and to make life
better both for ourselves and for others.
t2r: And what's this got to do with art?
S: The Digital Compassion project, if we decide to turn it into a series of projects, lends itself to a range of manifestations spanning over different fields, from art to business to publications. This year, Digital Compassion takes the form of a digital AIDS memorial quilt. Artists Lim Tzay Chuen, Joyce Ng, P. Nicolas Ledoux, Gilles Massot and Mathieu O'Neil created a
collection of artworks based on the ideas of Digital Compassion and AIDS awareness, which we then put together to form a single digital quilt. All the works are showcased in a virtual gallery (www.digitalcompassion.com), and we're putting up an art exhibition at the Alliance Francaise de
Singapour's Societe Generale Gallery from the 1st to the 6th of December to commemorate World AIDS day 2000. Opening night is on 30th November.
t2r: Sounds excellent. But where did you get the money to do this?
S: The exhibition is sponsored by Sun Microsystems and Alliance Francaise de Singapour, with additional sponsorship by ZoCard, RGB, MediaCorp and d:chotomydigitaldesign. Yahoo! Singapore helped us put up an auction site for the artworks.
t2r: But you didn't sell out.
S: No, we did not sell out. We believe in working with those around us to achieve what we want. Come down to the exhibition and decide for yourself. Proceeds from the sales of the original artworks as well as catalogues and posters will go to Action for Aids Singapore.
t2r: But seriously, why did you decide to do this exhibition? I heard you were inspired by another exhibition called "Mixage".
S: Yeah. Round about this time last year, I read a feature on the "Mixage" exhibition in a magazine. It was a collection of remixed digital artwork. It made me think immediately of the AIDS memorial quilt, and I thought, wouldn't it be good if someone made a digital AIDS quilt project into a fundraising exhibition for charity?
t2r: So was it good?
S: It's got its good bits and bad bits. I'm most concerned with the message and idea behind Digital Compassion, and it was good to do the project just to get that message out. But the lack of sleep is a bad thing.
t2r: Well hope everything goes well for you Shannon. See you on opening night!
S: Yes. Thursday, 30 Nov at Alliance Francaise de Singapour (1 Sarkies Road), Societe Generale Gallery (4th floor), 7.30pm. See you there!
- Koh Beng Liang and Shannon Low
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Fighting crime/Trying to save the world/
Here they come just in time.../The Power Puff Girls
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Independence
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(portrait of a GEP child)
There is this Chinese immortal who rides a donkey facing backwards,
the poem says. There was some moral
about few being able to reflect on what is past,
but what you think is that no matter who portrays him,
he will always ride a thousand miles in a day
carelessly, arse to the horizon,
and wish you could face the wind like that.
But you feel more like the effigy of the Catholic Lady of Sorrows
in a movie you once saw - in sky-coloured robes
and bowed under a wire halo
as you were launched into the open sea
with your face turned always towards the shore.
- Teng Qian Xi
(The Gifted Education Programme or GEP puts intelligent children into special enrichment classes from the ages of 10 to 16.)
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Teacher : What virtue would I display if I stopped a person from beating up his donkey?
Students: Brotherly Love.
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Kindergarten Snapshot
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Tumblers of Ribena, with tooth-marked caps.
Lined up by the window, where sun-drugged
Haywire ants navigated marshes of syrup.
The abacus was a grid of necklaces,
And the globe the offspring
Of roulette-wheel and beach ball.
The Malay boy who brought tea to school
Was considered strange. So were those
Who came with squares on their sleeves--
Some black, some blue, for Ah Gong
And Ah Ma. And other bewildering relatives
Who bequeathed to them the badge
To the night school of mourning.
But no grief on their faces.
Not a trace, during afternoons
Of two-by-two, the teapot song,
And being called monkeys in the
Playground. We out-chorused one another
Through whistle-gap teeth. National Day:
Pom-pom hands and hula-hoop hips.
Other days: fractured crayons, a pencil
Sharpened on both ends, like a hex.
The girl who stared at the shut windows
Wishing for X-ray vision or a clock
With no hands. A puddle of shame-shame.
Sleeping time. Lay your head
On your arms. The wood of the table
Humming like underwater. If you opened
Your eyes you could see who else
Was disobedient. You could also drift
To the secret tapping of a friend,
Senseless Morse, galloping fingernails
Like firecrackers from a far-off holiday.
- Alfian bin Sa'at
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Penguins do not show signs of illness until they are near death.
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Pokemon, doraemon, hello kitty, ninja turtles, sabretooth?
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Does the child of yesteryear still live within us?
Nostalgia often gets me down. I think of the toys I have held long ago. My favourite Optimus Prime figurine and MASK(tm) vehicles. The box of dearly beloved Lego(tm) blocks.
Look Ma! I can fashion a skyscraper, an airplane, a woman, even, out of these coloured pieces of plastic! I can be god! Wait a minute. I am god! I dictate if the plane should crash into the skyscraper, which would then crash into the woman and kill her, blood all over the place, arms and legs flying everywhere. Barbie(tm) would be an entirely different matter of
course. She's a Babe.
Now who ever said that taking kids away from the new-fangled computer games like Mortal Kombat and Diablo would reduce the effect of violence on lil' kids? Blood and gore on screen are nothing compared to the "real-thing" that your mind conjures.
Are warped psycho killers thus by-products of an overly active childhood imagination. Are rapists the same, with the addition of a fair bit of horniness? Maybe they matured earlier than the rest but were so butt-ugly that they constantly got rejected. Perhaps living in their colourful imagino-worlds left them unable to deal with the reality of life where not everyone can fuck a supermodel.
I've got a pretty decent imagination. Am I going to be Jack the Ripper II? Adrian Lim ver 1.1? What about being the rapist of Bukit Ho Swee's understudy? I'll readily admit I'm as horny as the man next door, maybe even hornier than ten of them put together. Why do you scoff at me when I say this then? Is it because I'm "stable", "sane"? "Only insane people do stuff like that". You mean to say I wouldn't possible throw away my future for a tumescent thrust at stardom between the legs of Faye Wong? Wouldn't I feel the same perverse satisfaction in the phallic analogy of plunging a cleaver into some fella's chest and feeling the warm gush of rusty life-liquid pulsing out onto my hands? What's to stop me? Who's to stop me? I am, after all, living these dreams in my head already. And I'll bet I'm not the only one.
Fear is a living thing. It feeds on your soul.
- Phinehas Tan
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Palm trees in the place/Melon in the race
Bananas in the case/Shades on my face
- The Wiseguys, "Caribbean Breeze"
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seven-year-olds
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These are the wide-eyed nymphets
with eyes too large for their petite faces
and fruity roundness fleshy for their
sinewy limbs, almost bloated but arching
their little backs far enough to make up for smallness,
tiny rosy fledglings so suddenly beautiful in their
laughter, I cannot believe that I was once
one of these.
- Judith H
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What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing?
And what do we think we might see?
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Four a.m. Fight Club
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She believes that you fight your own fight. She believes that you give what you can. She believes that you do what you have to in order to do what you love.
I believe in soap.
She believes that knowledge broadens and broad is good. That fear marginalises and the margin brings pain. That empathy is the key and it comes from understanding. And everything is a continuum.
I believe in soap.
And it's four in the morning and conversation flows on. From people to causes to crises of conscience. She knows the constraints and the trouble she'd face, but she picks her fight and fights it.
So much belief that could turn the world round, like how I believe in soap.
- Shannon Low
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"What are you doing here honey? You're not even old enough
to know how bad life gets."
"Obviously, doctor, you've never been a thirteen year old girl."
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Train Stations
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At Aljunied, he was middle-aged and
a Chinese businessman, who would offer
a cup of Milo and some conversation,
after the earlier violence of his bedroom.
At Eunos, he was a French manager
of some computer company. At the end
of fucking one night, he suddenly expressed
a desire for permanence, and for somebody else.
At Kembangan, he was Indian and in sales,
who insisted he really loved me and loved me
every evening at his tiny condominium. I left
because he had asked his roommates to join in.
At Bedok, he was closer my age, Malay and
in the same university. But he was becoming
too fond of me and too insistent. I talked to him
for the last time one evening after school.
At Tanah Merah, he was two years younger
and Malaysian-Chinese. I gave love first and
he took it with his lips from my open mouth.
One morning, he lost interest.
At Tampines, I step out of the train.
Night rising slowly to the surface of the city,
I walk back to where I live a few blocks
from the station, to an empty flat
that remains that way long after I am home.
- Cyril Wong
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Everyone's a little queer/ Oh can't she be a little straight?
- Weezer, "Pink Triangle"
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Feel or think?
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Share knowledge
but let it not cloud your capacity to feel.
For feeling is the luxury of emotion
without the filter and preclusion of thought.
A man with no emotion is not a man
but a living spirit who walks the Earth
watching and judging but not feeling.
Pity not those who know not, for they can learn.
Pity those who know, and revel in it,
for unlearning is harder than learning,
and egotism is the blight of compassion.
Where living in a meaningless existence is sad,
the ignorant live in temporary moments of materialistic happiness
while the knowledgeable live in contempt for all its artifice and routine.
Then, three paths present themselves, activism, apathy and acceptance.
Activism is admirable and heroic.
Its purpose is to rid the world of ignorance.
However, without ignorance, what is knowledge?
Two interdependent entities that are relative to each other
theoretically cannot exist without the other.
Without sight, what would be blindness?
The co-existence of the opposite entity,
inevitably verifies the existence of the other.
I do not claim to say seeking knowledge cancels itself out.
Just a theory, chill.
Apathy, root word of apathetic.
Just one letter short of the description of
how the people in this group might feel.
The agony of knowing something better might exist,
but subjugating oneself to the convenience and ease of materialism.
Poignant pontificators I call them.
Having just turned up my membership to this club,
I have to say I never thought I was apathetic.
I had issues, I talked about issues, I had dreams.
I complain about government policies
while I study film at 10% of the original cost
thanks to a government subsidy.
I complain about censorship and bureaucracy in the school
Then, readily practice self-censorship to receive a film grant.
I am a hypocrite but my egotism which stems from
knowing these all so important issues
makes me blind to my own ennui.
I espouse critiques of hamster-like human behavior and
am so contemptuous of routine
but let me get back to you
after I go for my weekly climbing session
which is after my afternoon class
where I learn more monotonous technical information
about how to encode a DVD.
Information which I am not interested in,
but am aware of its monetary incentives
as it would make me and my compatriots
one of the first 50 people in South East Asia to be qualified to do it.
Acceptance was only used in search of a better phrase.
Also because it made the three paths all start with A but I digress.
My theory of what acceptance is,
is that you are all knowing,
yet compassionate.
Similar to what is referred to as the 'acid moment of clarity'
Why is compassion necessary?
Everything that life throws at you
with the exception of acts of God (that's a debate for another time)
and other animals,
most of your sources of distress
would come from your own species.
To understand where they are coming from
goes a long way in tolerating their shit.
Pardon my French.
To those who still feel that
it is weak to just 'lie down and take it',
some food for thought.
Are you trying to prove yourself?
To yourself?
Feel or think?
- Dustin
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Ride on and turn the people on
- Finley Quaye
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Independence (c) 2000 Teng Qian Xi
Kindergarten Snapshot (c) 2000 Alfian Bin Sa'at
Pokemon, doraemon, hello kitty, ninja turtles, sabretooth? (c) 2000 Phinehas Tan
seven-year-olds (c) 2000 Judith H
Four a.m. Fight Club (c) 2000 Shannon Low
Train Stations (c) 2000 Cyril Wong
Feel or think? (c) 2000 Dustin
