No bits please, we’re American (and a shameless advert)

Hello!

Nothing has appeared here for a while because I’ve been preparing for Drawing as Form, which opens tonight. I believe it will be up for the next few weeks; do drop by Sculpture Square if you have the chance.

I’m showing a work there. Might post something detailed about it here at some point.

UPDATE: There’s a review of the show by Boon’s Cafe. So… have a look.

Also, I’ve just watched Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs. Possibly more to come about that and other films grouped under New French Extremity. One thing I will say for now, though – why is it that films with bits and blood end up filed under some sort of torture porn chic? A google search for martyrs film reviews has, in the first six hits: a review on Fangoria.com, a review on Bloody-Disgusting.com and some editorial on whether Martyrs is “the most shocking film ever made.” On the scale of missing-the-point-entirely, this sort of thing ranks about as highly as Scorcese’s remake of Infernal Affairs. Like complaining that Salo exploits the little children.

$10ish Steak: Final Battle!

Steak is made of cows. Cows hacked into pleasing shapes and subjected briefly to intense heat – all the ingredients needed for a party in your mouth!

Sadly, most steak tends to be pretty expensive – anywhere from $20ish to $150 onwards, which means that parties in your mouth will be few and far between, unless you happen to be rich. In that case, why are you reading a post about $10 steak? Go to Just Steak or Morton’s already.

For the rest of us, while you might be able to afford a good steak now and then, what if you had a sudden and untimely craving for delicious cow-flesh?

There’s always food-court hawker ‘Western’, of course, but steak from such establishments (save a few notable exceptions) tends to  be thin, seriously fried and not very nice to eat. Steak-with-ketchup style at $5-8: are you willing to suffer so, for a marginal improvement in austerity?

Today, our four main contenders in the $10ish Steak: Final Battle!

Contendre Numero Uno: Jack’s Place and Eatzi, aka Pseudo-Jack’s Place.

A venerable institution by local standards, dating back to sometime in the ’60s, with 13 outlets (and two ersatz-outlets) islandwide. It may seem strange to include them in this battle, since their steak prices start at around $18, but their set lunch specials start at $9.20 and that’s what we’ll talk about. Have a look. I believe it is called the ‘NZ Steak with Cajun & Fried Asparagus’.

First thought – we’ll, that’s a terrible thing to do to asparagus. Perhaps someone in the owner’s family was once killed by a stalk of asparagus cruelly thrust into the eye, and in their vengeful remembrance they ritually deep-fry asparagus in batter, to be consumed by unsuspecting rubes as a great sacrifice. I certainly felt like I had sacrificed something when I ate it; a small  portion of my lifespan, perhaps, or a little fraction of my soul. It was quite astonishingly disgusting, being thoroughly soaked with rancid peanut oil – cringing and grimacing with every bite, the tepid oil gushing obscenely through my teeth, I thought to myself, “I make this sacrifice for the readership, that they may never order this dish.”

Greatly dispirited by the ordeal, I attempted to revive myself by consuming an old favourite, delicious buttered corn. Sweet, crunchy, salty and buttery – right? Not here, at any rate: freakishly mealy and generally tasteless, apart from the distinct, deathly flavour of hydrogenated vegetable fat. It was quite telling that the yellowed cucumber tasted about the same.

We were now positively catatonic with despair. The world itself was stripped away in streamers of purple flowers, leaving only the void and the porcelain expanse of our stained dinner plates. Faint laughter could be heard on the wind, the acrid laughter of mockery and derision. Were we to be condemned to this formless waste? There yet remained the matter of the final test, the Steak itself, and we could already see that it appeared pale and boiled, thin and stringy, hardly any browning to speak of.

It was exactly as it appeared. Stringy. Tasting of the meat-chiller. Strangely stretchy as well – try to cut it and the meat starts separating, pulling apart. The end result reminds me of bloody tripe. I’ve also decided that Jack’s Place staff simply don’t know how to do a rare steak. The regular clientele probably orders well-done or (scandalous!) medium-well. I mean, lunch special on a ceramic plate notwithstanding, this is a place that serves steak on sizzling hot-plates – throw your desired done-ness out the fucking window.

I’m willing to submit that the establishment serves junk meat for the lunch specials, since I have in fact had reasonable steak from them at dinner. That doesn’t change the fact that their lunch steaks are simply  terrible and unworthy of consumption at any price. Junk meat or not, you can’t disguise a total absence of culinary skill, or the use of the cheapest raw materials.

Interestingly, their lunch special menu recalls vividly the military cookhouse roots of the founder – generic meats differentiated day by day with glops of different sauce, fairly standardised sides, designed to be cooked in and served from huge metal trays, along with 1-2 exceptions as suicide prevention.

Dessert was, as should be obvious by now, shitty. The coffee was the best part of the entire meal, and it was burnt. And it came with a strange, brownish milk-analogue.

Contender Number Two: Botak Jones’

I’m thinking long and hard for something cute or funny to say about Botak Jones’ as an opening line and I realise that the effort would be terribly, terribly futile – If you’ve ever had the occasion to leaf through their menu or visit their website, you would be familiar with their sickeningly ham-handed humour, the likes of which mere mortals, such as myself, could never hope to best. It is, perhaps, quintessentially American in the same way that some Tokyo cafes are supremely French.

Of course, the fact that I’m willing to eat at their outlets despite their numerous faults should tell you something about their food. The object of our salivating attention? The cheapest steaks on the menu – the Botak Jones’ Sirloin(180g/$12.8) and Lady’s Cut(100g/$10.8). Both happen to be cut from the flesh of Australian Prime Steer, and each comes with a choice of two sides.

The steaks are cut around an inch thick, give or take – quite a pleasant surprise, as one tends to expect cheap steak to be relatively thin. The lunchtime steak at Jack’s Place might be a little less than half an inch thick, for instance. About the only tradeoff is that the smaller Lady’s Cut, at that thickness, doesn’t really take up much space on the plate, making it seem smaller than it really is.

The beef is good, flavourful, well-seared and tender – quite certainly one of the best steaks I’ve ever had in that price category. About the only quibble I have is the presence of straight, regular grill-lines, which reminds me unpleasantly of Burger King and their painted-on-with-food-colouring shenanigans. I think a steak ought to be covered with irregular patches of searing, almost to the point of carbonization, under which one finds delicious raw flesh. It’s not just a matter of appearance – the searing involves the breakdown of certain proteins, which contribute additional flavour and depth. Add to that the Maillard reaction undergone by residual glucose in the flesh, which releases a whole zoo of flavourful compounds and contributes to the development of a nice crust as a counterpoint to the tender, juicy flesh – that’s where the party in your mouth really starts. So if the searing is restricted to a few lines, there’s less party in your mouth. DO YOU TAKE KINDLY TO BEING CHEATED OF A PARTY IN YOUR MOUTH? I DON’T THINK SO.

The major problem with Botak Jones’, though, can probably be attributed to its status as a sort of ur-American establishment; when it comes to meat and frying, they select good product and prepare it well, but almost everything else is roughly analogous to huge, steaming turds. Their house salad, for instance: utterly surreal salad dressing on Iceberg lettuce, of all things, along with miscellaneous bits that don’t belong anywhere in a reputable eating house. Similar tendencies may be observed in other side dishes and starters – I think the next time I go, I might try asking them to hold the sides. They’re terrible, but the beef is just too good to pass up. We didn’t even manage to take a picture before gorging ourselves on delicious bovines.

Contender the Third and recent recipient of the Stupidest Name Award: Fish & Chicks!

It’s so stupid I don’t have to say anything funny about it. All you need to do to get your jollies – lean back, assume a thoughtful expression, and say it slowly, “Fish and Chicks.” Something very grotty East London about their signage as well – it looks like Ladbrokes, or the BNP.

It’s up by the renovated Sembawang Shopping Centre, and gets more crowded by the day – I suspect it may soon metamorphose into some degenerate franchise, so try it before it dies a horrible screaming death.

Being located next to a pestilential fucking jungle does have its disadvantages, e.g. curious insects in many shapes and sizes. Seems like the sort of place which demands a pith helmet, handlebar mustache and staring nervously at the heart of darkness, clutching a blunderbuss and muttering evilly about those filthy brown savages whilst eating a good, civilised meal of half-burnt, half-raw cow. Port would be a good bonus, except this happens to be a Halal establishment.

That’s a surprise in itself; it may be seditious to say so, but when an existing set of dishes is adapted to be acceptable to the Islamic palate, it does tend to suffer a little. A botched conversion, so to speak; the business of redesigning dishes for sale to Muslims requires more care than cutting out the pork and using fruit juice and malted drinks instead  of wine and wine vinegar. It’s like porting food to a vegan diet – one needs to find a substitute, not just for flavour, but for the physio-chemical properties of the foodstuff in question. I am quite pleased to report that Eatery-with-a-Stupid-Name has succeeded quite admirably.

This eatery’s association with the culinary traditions of the region has some pretty interesting outcomes. On one hand, the menu suffers from a mild case of schizophrenia, offering grilled meat and potatoes alongside regional rice/noodle based dishes. On the other (more fortunate) hand, there are flavours and aromas in their marinades and sauces that aren’t quite familiar, given the milieu, but work wonderfully – a sweet-salty-sour hint to the interior of the flesh, the well-rounded, garlicky sauce for the vegetables on the side.

Overall, I’d call it above average on all counts, though it does suffer when compared to Botak Jones’. Their side dishes are certainly superior.

And the Fourth Contender, who was foretold in prophecy a score of generations past: “Yea, I say unto thee, that thou shalt keep these words well, and relay a reservation to the Steak House Astons this very night, so thine distant descendants might actually have a chance to eat there.”

Or so it was, in the past. I remember well the Queues at Astons, with a twinkle in my eye and crusty rheum all down my face: the likes of which the finest bards from all across space and time would find themselves invariably drawn, driven by mad dreams of immortal fame and renown to attempt to chronicle the Horror of this World; the vast, snaking queues, the precise dimensions and geometry of which do not bear mentioning in a decent, family-friendly blog. What could drive men to such a fiendish, recurrent nightmare of the most grotesque variety that would drive them to acquire illegal amphetamines of the most exotic kind, since even the most lethal overdoses of caffeine aren’t enough to ward off the horror of sleep; lives crashing and burning in pretty, pretty flames as friends and possessions slowly evaporate, leaving behind a shattered husk, the merest shadow of a man.

Mark well this Queue! This indistinct swarm, this menancing phalanx of blank faces and cold, clammy skin, mouths barely moving as their faint voices united in a harsh, metallic susurrus, that dread chant: “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh C’thulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn! Give to us the burnt flesh of the Dark Star-Cow of the Million Satisfied Appetites, that we might raise Great C’thulhu!“

And then came the fateful day, when we decided not to heed the warning of our own, beating hearts, when we cast aside all caution or scruple, re-joining once again the Path of the Hero! What did that steak taste like? Was it good? Endless insanity be damned, we’re going to Astons!

And… the Queue was nowhere to be seen. What happened? Very quiet. Did the ravening horde move on, having found some other flash-in-the-pan fad, like Bubble Tea and Roti Boy? Could it mean that the steak… was bad? Or did it signify some as yet unremarked flightiness of the Horde, that whether or not their chosen nexus promised disgust or delight, they simply cared not? That all that mattered… was being à la mode? A Fashion Horde, then. Not nearly as exciting as a Fascist Horde. No, not with ice cream, you filthy American.

So, my taste for epic heroism unassuaged, I had to settle for my taste for delicious cow. I believe we ordered the two cheapest steaks on the menu, in keeping with the spirit of this article, where the only drama given to us was the fact that we had to ask three times to successfully order a rare steak. A very good sign of the Fashion Horde’s recent  passage.

It did take a little while to arrive, though, which is a bit of a mystery – I mean, the restaurant certainly wasn’t crowded, and a rare steak takes no time at all to cook. But arrive it did, looking a little… yellow.

It doesn’t really come out in the light, but it really was… peculiarly yellow. And what’s that odd thing in the middle of the steak?

I’m not sure how I feel about a signboard in my meal. It doesn’t actually come out in the image, but the signboard says, rather helpfully, ‘rare’. I’m fairly certain I can remember what I ordered, so perhaps it’s an aid to the staff. Even if I didn’t remember, I’m sure matters would be perfectly clear once I cut into the steak – except it was actually medium-rare. The other steak was rare, though.

Despite these rather unusual features, along with the problem of regular grill lines, the steak really is rather decent. A bit on the dry side, due to the excessive doneness, but otherwise quite flavourful and pleasant to eat. It’s also not particularly thick, perhaps about the same thickness as was offered at Fish & Chicks; an endemic problem, which probably accounts for the failure to deliver the desired doneness – in other words, both of the major problems of this steak would be eliminated by having it perhaps half an inch thicker. Possibly purveyors of steak prefer thinner cuts, so as to take up more space on the plate and fool the customer into thinking he’s having more beef than he really is. But it would be so churlish to think that a business concern would stoop to such craven depths to serve Mammon. But hey, it’s still good beef.

As with Botak Jones, there are a few problems with the side dishes. Not nearly as severe, but they bear mentioning nonetheless. Firstly, the proffered pot of sauce was just weird – a bizzarely tangy mushroom sauce. It was just… strange, perhaps some sort of illegal synthetic acidifier derived from the tanned skins of boiled infants, I don’t know. I believe there may have been a similar ingredient in the salad dressing, which was left pooled like leftover jism in the centre of the bowl, coating  a few shreds of red cabbage and carrot atop a bed of green leaves, the variety of which I can’t quite remember. Unremarkable, though.

On the positive side of things, the coleslaw was pretty good; tasted fresh, seemed handmade. I won’t say anything about the baked potato, because, seriously – how bad can you fuck that up? Something about tinfoil-wrapped potatoes makes me think of some unthinking convention, though, rather akin to the neon pineapple ring on ham steak, or the little sprigs of plastinated parsley that appear on your food for no particular reason.

And look! Actual milk in a little pot, emphasized for rarity. Take that, Jack’s Place.

Verdict!

You need a verdict, an executive summary after reading something? No, you need to work on your reading comprehension. Well, alright – whatever you do, don’t go to Jack’s Place or Eatzi.

EXPOSED: Totally secret transcript of a recording of some proceedings in some hellish Capitaland Office, no lie.

EXPOSED: Totally secret transcript of a recording of some proceedings in some hellish Capitaland Office, no lie.

“Ta-da!”

“What is that? …it smells a bit… familiar. And unpleasant.”

“The model. For the new mall, ION.”

“It’s a turd, isn’t it? A whole bunch of turds glommed into a thing, which you have brought in on a piece of plywood.”

“If you insist on being obtuse, yes.”

“What about the architects?”

“What about the whatwhatwhat? Huh?”

“Wouldn’t the architects we hired… object to being undercut by a giant, dried turd?”

“We only hire them to stick their names on the project anyway, make it atas. Who cares what they think? I’m the goddam Towkay.”

“Well, it is a turd. Why is it a turd?”

“It was so simple! It came to me one night as I was having Tiger and durians at the coffeeshop. The Esplanade is totally cool, right? What am I saying – it’s a goddam national icon. And it’s a giant durian. So, I thought, ‘I will design our new mall by eating lots of durian and shitting the results on a piece of wood.’ I started that very night.”

“Don’t you think the public might… notice?”

“Notice what?”

“That it’s a giant fucking turd. What else?”

“Of course not. I did the same thing with Vivocity, before you were hired.”

“…I see.”

“Anyway, their sad pathetic lives revolve around waiting for the next ludicrous mall we hurl in their faces. They fucking beg for it. So of course they’re not going to notice. Look at the Tampines Supercluster! Three practically identical malls, they eat it up and ask for second helpings. Anyway, this time we’ll distract them by covering it with bright, flashing lights.”

‘As always, sir, I bow to your superior experience. It reminds me of why I joined this industry; it’s such a worklife-balanced learning experience.”

“Synergising?”

“Synergising.”

“Ta-da!”

“What is that? …it smells a bit… familiar. And unpleasant.”

“The model. For the new mall, ION.”

“It’s a turd, isn’t it? A whole bunch of turds glommed into a thing, which you have brought in on a piece of plywood.”

“If you insist on being obtuse, yes.”

“What about the architects?”

“What about the whatwhatwhat? Huh?”

“Wouldn’t the architects we hired… object to being undercut by a giant, dried turd?”

“We only hire them to stick their names on the project anyway, make it atas. Who cares what they think? I’m the goddam Towkay.”

“Well, it is a turd. Why is it a turd?”

“It was so simple! It came to me one night as I was having Tiger and durians at the coffeeshop. The Esplanade is totally cool, right? What am I saying – it’s a goddam national icon. And it’s a giant durian. So, I thought, ‘I will design our new mall by eating lots of durian and shitting the results on a piece of wood.’ I started that very night.”

“Don’t you think the public might… notice?”

“Notice what?”

“That it’s a giant fucking turd. What else?”

“Of course not. I did the same thing with Vivocity, before you were hired.”

“…I see.”

“Anyway, their sad pathetic lives revolve around waiting for the next ludicrous mall we hurl in their faces. They fucking beg for it. So of course they’re not going to notice. Look at the Tampines Supercluster! Three practically identical malls, they eat it up and ask for second helpings. And Illuma – modelled after some horrible flesh-eating disease? No problem. Anyway, this time we’ll distract them by covering it with bright, flashing lights.”

“That is a good plan. As always, sir, I bow to your superior experience. It reminds me of why I joined this industry; it’s such a worklife-balanced learning experience.”

“Synergising?”

“Synergising.”

FRESH RHYMES FOR PROGRESS: Singapore’s Civil Service vs. KOMPRESSOR CRUSHING POWER

Is it a steaming pile of shit? Is it a delicious blend of idiocy and incompetence? NO! It’s the Civil Services’ repeated, laughably pathetic attempts to appear ‘with it’ and relevant, their horrifically misguided attempts to appeal to a younger demographic. It’s like watching a blind, leprous paraplegic in a funny hat try to pin the tail on the donkey with his blackened, cavity-ridden teeth, moaning incomprehensibly as foamy saliva dribbles past his ruined lips, further inflaming his innumerable sores, racking his body with terrible, terrible agony. Your joyous mirth at this cheerful sight, however, begins to slide and crack, deep fissures with tragic horror at their heart; the laughter catches in your throat, choking you before you realise it, as the full weight of the horror crushes your faith, hope and boundless dreams – you paid good money for  someone to get the job done and this is how it’s spent:

If you watched both videos and failed to cringe, gibber, moan or cry, there is something very, very wrong with you.

Of course, I don’t mean to cast aspersions on our indubitably dedicated Civil Service (and GLCs). I’m sure they perform, in their central responsibilities (e.g. getting trains from place to place, making sure our water supply isn’t inexplicably replaced by shoe wax every other thursday at 2 AM), with a calm and assured competence. It’s just that when it comes to tackling the media, especially for the purposes of public awareness and education, it quite often seems as if they hasten to blast good sense and reason out of orbit with giant railguns, outsourcing decision-making to a specially trained troupe of howling baboons. Horrible, horrible howling baboons.

Is it some sort of eldritch rite, sacrificing the odd media campaign to the Ineffable Lords of Fervid Chaos in order to ensure the success of all other endeavours? A cheap way to make their other media productions look even better? Or even an elaborate, sinister reptilian conspiracy of some sort? 

Gibbering madness aside, why rap? Why appropriate the forms and tropes of this particular musical subculture? It seems that if the question of how to appeal to contemporary youth is posed, the mind of the bureaucrat leaps effortlessly, by some limbic, chthonian response, to Hip-Hop, Rap and Graffiti. It’s not  just the public sector; I once observed the Killer Gerbil doing a billboard for Volkswagen, or some other car showroom near Redhill.

If anything else, this phenomenon should serve as a ridiculously clear sign that this subculture has no claim to any sort of alterity or counterculturality, nor has it for around twenty years. I mean, the National Youth Council is covered in officially sanctioned graffiti. Practically every time a bureaucratic entity decides to jazz up its image, they go for sanctioned graffiti, hip hop dancers, or maybe a rapper.

Online commentators are often accused of proferring only criticism and slander, but no suggestions for concrete alternatives. Therefore, regarding the use of rhythmic music to propagate good social habits, I hereby suggest (concretely) for all future public awareness campaigns, that the Government of Singapore and its linked Companies engage the services of one Andreas K., who rejoices in the stage name of KOMPRESSOR, and who is sometimes referred to as ‘Drew’. Though he has retired from the hectic musician’s life, I am sure that a suitable financial inducement would bestir this accomplished extra-terrestrial entity from the torpor of retirement on his homeworld, in the Bremen system.

As you may see from the videos above, KOMPRESSOR has an established track record of  music-based instruction, exhorting us to better ourselves through the use of good penmanship, warning children of the dangers of strangers, using alliteration to teach the alphabet and stressing the joy of arithmetic. KOMPRESSOR even warns of the dangers of club drugs!

It’s not just KOMPRESSOR’s sound sense of social justice which should endear KOMPRESSOR to us. In what could be described as the finest known rendition of the award winning ‘The Girl from Ipanema’, KOMPRESSOR’s vocals display a keen sensitivity for the melancholy of unrequited yearning; a stirring paean to the ebb and flow of the human condition – truly, a remarkable achievement for such a strange-looking alien being. His acuity would truly be an asset to the consciousness raising efforts of our government agencies and linked companies.

KOMPRESSOR’s philosophy of instruction is simple: If you do not do as KOMRPESSOR says, KOMPRESSOR will drive to your house in a Trabant and crush you with hobnailed boots and gloved fists  while ants pour from KOMPRESSOR’s mouth to eat you alive; if the sheer efficacy of such an approach does not convince, well, KOMPRESSOR happens to be a much better musician than the incontinent lemurs that composed and arranged the music for the first two videos in this post.

KOMPRESSOR: Right for Progress, Right for Singapore.

Better Living Through Caffeine

Coffee-drinkers of the World, unite! You have nothing to lose but negative amounts of money, which means that you will save money. A lot more secure than a Collateralised Debt Obligation, with delicious coffee to boot.

Let’s face it: your choices concerning the conspicuous consumption of caffeine are starkly limited in this city, to the point that there’s hardly a choice at all. Of course, we might say that the very choice offered to us by consumer society is no choice at all, only the appearance of such. You could always opt out of coffee, but that would be unwise; here, I direct you to the first rule of Lee Scrivner’s How to Write an Avant-Garde Manifesto: DO drink coffee.

Excited? A-quiver with anticipation, ready to fulminate against the old world of 1, 2, & 3? How does one begin this noble quest of subjecting one’s nervous system to rude and unpleasant shocks? To answer your impassioned query, I give to you a brief yet handy Field Guide, WHAT THE FUCK WHERE SHOULD I DRINK COFFEE (in two parts).

PART THE FIRST (help I’m lost in the city)

1) Settle for kopi of unpredictable quality, typically stewed to a crisp, watered-down and over-sweetened. Alright, that does sound a little harsh for something hardly so – it’s the cheapest option and widely available, making it, in truth, the closest equivalent we have to cafe culture. Despite its shortcomings, it’s really the best option when considered in terms of deliciousness vs. cost.

There’s a certain degree of customizability offered, which would allow one to ameliorate some of the defects present in the kopi, though all the customization in the world can’t change the basic kopi. You could obliterate it by adding obnoxious amounts of sweet, condensed milk, which seems to be the preferred option, reserved only for those poor souls unfortunate enough to have been formed by God without a single tastebud. Strange, but true. I prefer to have a basic kopi ‘O’, and sometimes I might be moved to ask for less sugar.

2) Settle for overpriced kopi from ’60s revival kopitiams. Pretty much the same stuff you get in a normal kopitiam, except it comes in a tiny cup at a ridiculous price. It tends to be a little more predictable, quality-wise, when compared to your neighbourhood kopitiam, but it’s not really fair to compare the relative standardisation of dozens of independent operations to a handful of franchises.

I find the recent proliferation of these establishments terribly discouraging; it signals the fact that there are legions of people out there, perfectly willing to be robbed blind. Sadly, I fear that these franchises will eventually come to dominate our indigenous coffee culture, cashing in on a generated, mythic past of wooden stools and marble-topped tables. I suppose there will always be retards ready to be fleeced for the sake of asinine pseudo-nostalgic values.

3) Settle for stunningly overpriced muddy water from major coffee-chains. While I might characterise the patrons of ’60s revival kopitiams as a gibbering band of credulous rubes – or perhaps disaffected gourmets with a keen sense of irony, those who would willingly subject themselves to coffee-chain swill make them look like the most discerning of coffee connoisseurs.

It seems surprising, given their usage of expensive-looking espresso machines operated by ‘trained baristas’, ostensibly using varietal beans ground to order, or at least daily. One suspects a colossal sham, a deliberate theatrical obfuscation – in plain sight, no less – of the simple pleasure of coffee.

The output of this dramaturgical masterpiece, the espresso shot, varies in quality (depending on the chain) from perverse blasphemy to, at most, merely tolerable: No great surprise, then, the extreme measures employed to mask the flavour – a vast panoply of artificial sweeteners, flavouring agents and other adulterants; towering, priapic confections eliminating any possibility of tasting actual coffee, lovingly (if a bukkake star’s face could be lovingly spattered with man-butter) crowned with a faecal mound of whipped supposedly-cream. Doctor Frankenstein would certainly approve.

The performance doesn’t stop there, of course – the spectator here is no passive watcher; complicit collusion is the order of the day. I believe the MacBook Pro is an important prop here.

Incidentally, did you know that Gloria Jean’s Coffees is co-owned by members of the rabidly Dominionist Hillsong Pentecostal Church (which has links to our own posse of incompetent steeplejackers, the Church of Our Saviour), and is a major sponsor of Mercy Ministries, an anti-abortion, anti-homosexual ‘counselling organisation’ with an alleged history of physical, emotional and mental abuse. It’s a bit more entertaining  than the grotesque greenwashing employed by some other chains.

4) Find a restaurant or small cafe – By no means a guarantee of quality, but the lower threshold of quality tends to start around ‘tolerable’. I’ve had pretty amazing coffee in restaurants and small cafes, and I’ve also had fairly poor coffee as well. One might feel a little silly dropping into a full-service restaurant at the end of the lunch service for a quick afternoon pick-me-up, so something with outdoor seating might be nice. One also supposes that better luck might be had at a French or Italian estabblishment.

PART THE SECOND (starbucks hasn’t set up a branch in my living room what should I do)

1) Dissolve freeze-dried coffee-granules. And maybe you’d like a little acesulfamate K, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, sodium caseinate and other strange things while you’re at it. I will admit  that I do partake on occasion, when possessed by the strange sort of fey mood that results in McDonald’s cravings and such.

2) Buy your own expensive espresso machine. I understand that these things come in smaller, more affordable varieties as well, but why bother? You want the hulking, barely restrained beast of brushed steel and  rubber gaskets. You want to dick around with buttons, knobs, levers, dials, blinking lights, nozzles and strange meters labelled with indecipherable Isotype.

Indeed, perhaps the Espresso Machine will never be truly complete save in some imaginary Giger-esque monstrosity, all pitted iron plating, steam hissing from crude rivets;  a belching, clanking, roaring horror the size of a house – some gustatory analogue of the Difference Engine, or ENIAC.

I’ve always had a bit of a bias against complicated espresso machines for home use; such machines just don’t figure in my imagined pre-20th century coffeehouse. I’m willing to submit, though, that a good machine could make excellent coffee.

3) Submit to the will of the Bialetti Moka, or one of its descendants. I, for one, welcome our new coffeemaker overlords. Well, certainly not new, but a definite contender for overlord status. Simple, cheap and kind of fun – the very antithesis of the image that coffee-chains seem to present.

Despite its simplicity and affordability, the coffee produced can be absolutely delicious – not quite coffee-house espresso, but a good, strong and well-balanced drink. I first encountered them in my recent travels, where they were common to the point of ubiquity. It was… puzzling, to me, that such reliably good coffee could be procured with such little effort, and yet I had not heard of such a thing in Singapore.

If I recall correctly, there isn’t a single Starbucks outlet in Italy. I certainly remember none in Milan; I would speculate that a strong affinity for delicious coffee, coupled with the ready simplicity of the Moka pot in the home and affordable espresso in public, has resulted in a definite resistance to the noxious scourge of the international coffee-chain.

4) Filters, percolators, French presses, the aeropress and other assorted methods – I wouldn’t know. I’ve never tried them. Maybe they’re really awesome.

And that concludes our entertainment. You may now brew yourself some coffee.

Spageddies

Franchises offer an assurance that appeals on some deep, inchoate level, a balm of similitude extending from their food’s standardised quality and presentation: a guarantee that tomorrow will be much the same as today. A fluffy pink cloud of cotton candy in which we are comfortably ensconced, easily reversible to Sartre’s description of absurdity as the same thing, repeated over and over.

I’d readily admit that there are chains and franchises I enjoy, willing myself to ignore the madness of repetition in order to ride the fluffy pink cloud for a little while – but standardised repetition doesn’t count for much when what’s being repeated is mediocrity and incompetence; at which point you find yourself locked into a fire-engine red rollercoaster (with go-faster flames) hurling you nauseously through the Nine Circles of Hell in some infinite refrain of the wonderful sightseeing opportunities of Pandemonium delivered in insane corkscrews, cobra rolls, cutbacks, top hats and vertical loops, designed and operated by some inbred tribe of gibbering, chattering imps, rollercoaster components and the dismembered extremities of your former coaster-companions hurtling past in intermittent showers of various mechanical and bodily fluids. You’d hope for death, but you’re in hell and you can’t exactly die again and go somewhere else – it just grinds on and on in mind-wrenching terror for all eternity.

 

This is where Spageddies comes in. For Gods’ sakes, that’s not how you spell the bloody food! Is it supposed to be cute? I’d hate to meet an animal that was cute the same way their name is, I probably wouldn’t survive the massive blood loss. Perhaps I exaggerate when I compare this chain to some fiendish rollercoaster – there are worse chains out there, much, much worse. It’s not as if you suffer some sort of dysenteric explosion upon contact with the food, but there’s an edge to the place where the fear creeps in, a scent of effusive dishonesty readily consumed, failed aspirations, blind assumptions; the taste of some illusory respectability, an unconscious celebration of mediocrity – it’s not so bad to go there once, but imagine being trapped in a Spageddies for all time.

It’s not that it’s bad bad. It’s astonishingly banal and ham-handed, like some sort of industrialised canteen food operator, except here it’s dressed up in the trappings of some sort of magical ‘Italian-ness’(what the fuck is a Sizzleini? Whose ‘Mama’ is responsible for ‘Mama’s Specialities’?), some formica-veneered chipboard ‘restaurant-ness’. All impressions and suspicions are irrefutably confirmed upon the first bite of your order – in my case, Spaghetti Meatball. Which is not actually a single ‘meatball’ composed entirely of spaghetti sitting delicately on a large porcelain dinner plate (which would have been kind of fun) but spaghetti with meatballs in a tomato-based sauce.

Sauce: Bland, lacking depth – the flavour largely dominated by garlic powder, bay leaves and some sort of stingingly acidic tomato paste; oversauced, but that’s such a common fault that you almost get used to it. The pasta itself was completely lacking in bite – and for some strange reason, each noodle had a faint coating of some slick, almost slightly substance. I think it may have been additional starch, perhaps due to being cooked in re-used water, or left to sit too long in its own water after cooking. Whatever it was, I’ve never encountered it before and never want to again: the mouthfeel is quite discomfiting. The alleged star of the show, the paired meatballs (ooh, double entendre) taste flat and mealy, the same sort of mystery-meat flavour as the earlier industrialised canteen illustration would suggest – completely without any sort of browning, as if quickly boiled in plain water.

The coffee and ‘Italian’ soda were quite alright, but don’t let that fool you into a false sense of security. That’s when they’ll drag you ’round the back and chain you to a stove.

 

Interlude

Hello! We apologise for the brief hiatus, but we were rendered catatonic for some time by an exploding can of Surströmming.

Actually this is not true and we were just busy. Expect new gibberish soon.

All Last Saturday’s Parties for a Conspicuous lack of Autumn

Strange looking down at the Children’s Crusade (for Edgy Fashion) having a flea-market in the brief lulls in Agnes Yit, Kai Lam and Paisan Plienbangchang’s performance. Does any of this really register? Is it all some sort of window-dressing for them? Are they perhaps our window dressing in hopes of attracting more people to art events? Stranger still the neat row of merchants hawking (mostly) overpriced comestibles in the other section of the courtyard – shall these events succumb to this malignant homogenisation of light refreshments, much as the contemporary Pasar Malam will, without fail, feature Tako-yaki, Doner Kebabs, Taiwanese Fried Things and Soups etc? Are we to be haunted by the same jolly crew of polystyrene mannequins serving Tiger Beer in limited edition bottles? Anway, to business:

Six artists enacting three performances in three distinct spaces within the museum. Different number of artists comprising each performance, different subject matter and different approaches, each adopting a different roadmap of audience interaction. Almost as if the curator, in making these selections, meant to showcase differences within performance art. Pedagogical, perhaps.

Agnes Yit, Kai Lam and Paisan Plienbangchang’s performance immediately calls to mind the theatrical in its staging, in the apparently specific roles played by each performer, and the wealth of objects/props cast in flowing narratives of possible interaction – an association I would draw would be a tropical fruit-bazaar staging of Bataille’s Story of the Eye, with Agnes as Simone, Kai as the narrator and Paisan as Sir Edmund. Maybe it was just the pineapple blowjob, I dunno. The role of the Eye would then be inhabited by the multitude of objects assembled in the informational snow of shredded documents – governed less by a chain of contiguities and similitudes than a dispersed network of interactive possibility, its dispersion and lack of focus continuously generating new interactions. The individuals, then, serve not as the protagonists traversing their informational field, but as accessory or emotional intensifier to this fecundity of object interaction.

It seems to me that exceeding these possibilites rests largely on accepting as true the symbolism and meaning which the performers have invested into the objects, evinced by some fairly loaded objects; fruit as sexual metaphor, say, or a Merlion statuette for… something about Singapore, I suppose. The same would go for the slogans and truisms shouted by Paisan. I’d suppose the use of such loaded signs would permit, basically, two directions – the observer investing (similar or not) meaning into them, and thus constructing a narrative of some sort based on the interactions between the objects and performers, or an alternative of using the sheer connotative weightiness of the objects to explode the possibility of meaning; Kai holds aloft a shattered watermelon with a Merlion inside, Agnes shreds paper and dismembers fruit, Paisan bites an inflatable tiger or screams slogans – a strange triumph.

In contrast to the sheer wealth and density of materials, Sophia Natasha Wei and Sabrina Koh’s performance comprised, materially, only themselves, a large white cloth, the fountain in the courtyard and some background sound. It became rapidly apparent that the only elements that really mattered in this performance were the performers themselves, locked in a solipsistic self-flagellation – a strange sort of self-flagellation which turned out to be inflicted more on the observers than the performers, like being embarrassed on behalf of an eccentric uncle with a diaper fetish who tells wildly inappropriate jokes to your friends. I think there was supposed to be some sort of symbolism involved with the water and the wrapping of Sophia Natasha Wei with the cloth, but it was just too irritating to really watch the performers turn vulnerability and apparent emotion into a lofty plinth to which we were, in some sense, expected to bow.

On the subject of vulnerability in performance, Ezzam Rahman’s performance offered, in contrast to the exhibition of a represented vulnerability in Sabrina Koh & Sophia Natasha Wei’s performance, something resembling actual vulnerability – a resemblance in the sense that Ezzam still exerted a sort of control over the situation. While, technically, there were points at which the future direction of the performance seemed to be wholly in the hands of the observer, Ezzam had already defined (if sketchily) the variables in play, the field in which the observer could move. As if the role of the observer in developing the narrative of the performance had been anticipated and charted in advance, a trajectory plotted with object-cues to make the observer want to fulfil the role.

Still, those instances still carried a certain amount of risk – the risk of the performance taking a direction completely unanticipated, which makes for an almost-vulnerability that, while laudable, shouldn’t be mistaken for anything but. However, as much as I might pedantically insist on the distinction between vulnerability and almost-vulnerability in performance, I would have to say that the points where the audience was supposed to jump in were really quite enjoyable – there was a certain sense of collaboration, not with Ezzam, but with the rest of the audience who had decided to jump in and do something. In that sense, those points in Ezzam’s performance could be said to form a focal point or catalyst for collaborative action, which is rather nicer than a performer demanding a certain sort of interaction.

The denouement of the inverse-horticultural ritual was strangely protracted and unfocused, though, with all of the elements of the performance expiring and folding in on themselves, generating or giving way to further elements to fold in on themselves. Weirdly exhausting.

Jason Lim’s performance at Supperclub

I’d hardly heard of this place and I’d heard even less about it, except that Jason would be performing that night, and that several other performances had already come and went. I probably wasn’t expecting to be greeted at the door by an enormous drag queen, which was the first of several impressions that led me to decide that this place was decidedly lush, exuberantly peculiar and really quite nice. But there’re probably several other reviews of the club so that’s not what I’ll do.

Like the rest of his performances that I have seen, there is a curious union of an application of formal, technical skill and palpable risk/anticipation in his iterations of ever-increasing physical/material strain, with each iteration bringing an additional layer of complexity, further branching paths of possible action. We are taken to limit after limit, each time assuming or hoping that it’s peaked and will go no further, and each time we are dragged forward, or thrown on an entirely new tangent. Like an infinitely nested series of waking dreams/nightmares, or some pataphorical escapade. All grown from a fairly basic set of initial principles and starting conditions. Cool. Do we watch in the same way that we watch car crashes or bull-fights, secretly seeking gloriously graphic failure? I’m not sure.

Where this performance differs significantly is its unforunate brevity. Ten minutes, I think? Not enough time for a proper development; rich red wine for two seconds and mouthwash the next. This is apparently a limit imposed by Supperclub – I have an impression of a plate with a variety of appetizers for the terminally indecisive. Surfing the shopping channels for the bucolic herd that seemed to be Supperclub’s crowd for the night. Rather than an unfortunate shortcoming, it could also be a variation on the scheme of iteration and successive development – an abrupt denial, a sudden refusal of further development. The matador throws down his cape and walks away, leaving a suddenly quiescent bull and a perplexed crowd. While I think confusion and denial are just as interesting and valuable as satisfying complexity, and might actually turn out to be more interesting, I believe Supperclub is catering to the herd, or perhaps a tight schedule.

The space itself provides quite a contrast to the spaces in which I have previously seen Jason’s performances, which were either fairly serious in character or unassuming and comfortably cluttered. The duration of the performance is thrown into stark relief by the vivid spotlights, prompting a somewhat different angle of approach to the performance. The materials involved are apparently commonplace and Jason himself (unlike the club staff) wears no costume, suggesting that the physical/material tension and readily apparent risk are expected to carry the weight of the limelight.

An interesting possibility which results from this staging: rather than an increased focus on the tension and risk, the harsh focus instead renders the commonplace-ness of the materials and the lack of costuming intotheatrical elements. They are then either an active camouflage which disarms us, rendering us susceptible to the other elements in the performance, or instead the stars of the show, for which the other elements are the stage, the pretext.

I’m told that for the forseeable future, Supperclub intends to continue with a series of regular performances (I think) every night at ten. Maybe you’ve seen Jason’s performance or maybe you’ve missed it (in which case too bad, hope that something else equally interesting will turn up) but it’s still a neat place where you get to see interesting stuff. It’s at Odeon Towers.

8Q-rated

Sidestep the meta-jeepney. It is not part of 8Q-rate, but of the permanent collection. You could, of course, decide to take it as part of the same experience, given that it inhabits the same location. Much could be said of it; perhaps another time.

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I have mentioned that I do not really see 8Q-rate as a single exhibition; given the layout of the building. I suppose they used to be classrooms – structures inherently divided and compartmentalised based on an underlying hierarchy. More appropriate, perhaps, to small, experimental projects or workshops – a lab space. Maybe not so much a flagship, inaugural exhibit.

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So, to recap, we have approximately five distinct zones, inhabited by the following artists: 1) :phunk studio and Jason Wee 2) Jason Wee and Grace Tan 3) Ahmad Abu Bakar and Jahan Loh 4) Donna Ong and 5) Tan Kai Syng. Lurking in the corridors is Chong Li-Chuan.

It’s a tiny, tiny schoolroom! Well, not a specific schoolroom per se, but a generic reference to a trope of schoolrooms, a deliberate attempt to reference a diffuse nostalgia term. At the same time, having a blackboard for a facade – a sop to some sort of interactivity, covered with the banal sort of communal scratchings that provide an excellent foil to the interior blackboard, which prates about the concept of universality. The half-scaling of the interior is sketchily effective, if kitschy; still, it’s pleasantly contemplative to sit inside a very small manufactured environment within another one – matryoshka spatiality. The images hung on the walls, though, result in the dissolution of the school references. Apparently, they’re supposed to ‘evoke our adolescence’, but I’m not sure whose adolescence was dominated by monochromatic, highly detailed graphic prints of ‘nostalgic’ pop-cultural mash-ups. Maybe those individuals who are only now coming into adolescence, but they wouldn’t really get the nostalgic reference – in other words, it’s not the nostalgia which is being evoked or referenced, but the graphic re-appropriation of its historicity. In some other, less guarded words, it’s all their own bloody phunkiness.

Cue hurried walk to next exhibit. A loading bay, air-conditioning not entirely working, some construction workers still engaged in tasks hermetic and secretive. The immediate association I drew was something of a cross between funerary goods and re-appropriated discards – a network of interlaced, approximately cuboid lashings of bamboo and raffia, differentiated according to a bold colour scheme in cellophane and paper. Fluorescent light diffuses through the structures, resulting in a neutrally atmospheric play of illumination, translucency and opacity: a coolness that instigates an approach, but resists a definitive analysis.

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The entire thing rests on pallets of old, white-painted doors; a paper figurine and car confirm the funereal reference, while lending a suggestion of architectural scale. A conceptual structure that put me in mind of someone who decided that what his dearly departed ancestors really needed in the stygian depths was something that Sol LeWitt might have made, if for some reason he’d been born in Singapore. But it can’t quite be discussed in full without mentioning its companion piece, up on the second floor.

It’s fun. You can wander around in the little webwork of bamboo strips, play a one-man game of multi-directional limbo, things like that. Or maybe that’s just sad. However, the ability to play individual multi-directional limbo (sans alcohol since the guardian robots will gesticulate at you) implies interactive possibilities quite different from those offered by the work in the loading bay. Whereas the work in the loading bay prompts a more or less visual exploration due to its suggestion of architectural scale and roughly monolithic form, the second floor work permits a traversal of its interior space; the rigidly confined coloured polygons arranged in a complex interaction with themselves set in contrast to a contingent installation that expands into the space allocated, permitting interaction with fewer restrictions – but boundaries nonetheless.

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It’s much cooler than its companion piece – nothing but the bamboo and its situation, performative as it might be. In opposition, I suppose, to the minefield of associations available to its more colourful sibling. As such, I wouldn’t agree with the supposed conflict of context in siting the works as they are: craftier and unformed in the proper gallery, finished and proper in the loading bay. What I see instead is the cool interactive performance in a cool gallery, set in opposition to a associative, appropriative object in a rather cluttered space. Fits nicely.

Adding to the reserved, asymptotic coolness in this particular gallery are Grace Tan’s specimens of textural fabric variations. Something of an exhaustively reductive dissection of the formal and technical aspects of various apparel embellishments. The entire layout of fabric specimens is specifically annotated, numbered paper tags referenced to carefully handwritten lists on the wall. However, the care taken in preparing such clean, orderly annotations suggests that they were prepared after the fact, rather than being documents of a dissection in progress. Which may or may not be relevant. The conjunction of sterile clinicality and the textural/formal richness forms a pleasant contrast; but is there really a dichotomy between sterility and textural complexity? ; I would  venture  to say that the degree of annotation is excessive and superfluous to the point of exploiting annotation as a formal medium – in which case, the apparent use of fashion’s tropes and materials would then be an alibi, disguising perhaps a sourceless, circular play of annotation.

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Making my way from gallery to gallery, I noticed a keening, high-pitched modulated sound dispersed throughout the corridors and stairwells, seemingly without location or source. I could discern snatches of what might have been vaguely familiar melodies. Like having your own personal soundtrack, but basically it was up to you to decide what sort of film you were starring in. It alters, shifts, conditions your perception as you make your way through the gallery space; highly suggestive. I was rather dispirited by the massive splashes of text, which ruined the entire thing for me. Why create something so diffuse, ephemeral and sourceless, and then tie it down with such efficient brutality? What is this defanged, caged animal? Without the text it challenges us, perhaps even seduces us. Instead this quite interesting thing has been compartmentalised, indexed, assigned a space, frozen.

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Up the stairs now – oh dear. Monochrome graffiti spilling out into the corridor – doesn’t bode well. The ’spilled-out’ graffiti is apparently an extension to a very large graffiti mural inside the gallery itself, meant to serve as a simplistic visual metaphor of the idea that the youthful exuberance and rebelliousness of graffiti just can’t be contained within any boundary, in an apparent engagement with the whole ‘School’ theme. Setting aside the banality of the metaphor, did Jahan Loh somehow forget that the entire building is an institutional space, rendering this attempt moot? Or is this oversight ironically intentional? I would vote the former.

The graffiti itself is little more than a direct application of existing stylistic conventions and thematic tropes of ‘graffiti-art’, a mind-numbing piece of self-important silliness that suggests either total mediocrity or a very effective application of absurdity. Voting former again. Complementing the wall of graffiti are a number of large canvases executed mostly in vectorized day-glo pink and blue, comprising a frenetic adolescent fantasy of pop-cultural references. Appropriations and exhumations ultimately circling back to point to how cool Jahan Loh would like you to think he is. Curiously similar to the work by :phunk studio – bland enough to be readily absorbed by existing institutions in an attempt to remain relevant and appeal to a specific demographic. There was a remarkable creak in the door on the way in which I found to be rather more interesting.

Let’s ignore it for now; there’s another work in this room, after all – a series of ceramic-based mixed-media pieces by Ahmad Abu Bakar. The immediate impression, as one approaches from a distance, is that you’re looking at eight identical stylized red flowers. Upon further observation, it becomes apparent that they are in fact different from each other in every detail: the number and shape of the radial petals, the curves of the ceramic central body, the textural treatments of the ceramic surfaces. Everything conforms to an exhaustively rigorous formal variation.

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Despite the effusion of formal variation, it possesses a quiet simplicity, in stark contrast to its noisy room-mate. Possibly a focal point for a kind of reflective contemplation, much like religious chanting. I’m led to suspect that the eight objects do not, in themselves, say anything in particular – instead, each of the eight is a trace, an allusion to a form or concept that bears a certain resemblance to each of the eight objects, yet not something as simple as a normalization of the eight forms. Perhaps it is a ritual site.

The air in here smells odd. Maybe it doesn’t any more, some residual artifact of installation or construction; strangely familiar yet hard to place – wood varnish? Some aerosolized metal? Whatever it is, accident or not, it works perfectly with Donna Ong’s carefully orchestrated set piece – either as an incidental suggestion of newness in contrast to the abundance of temporal residue, an ephemeral foil to the harmonised elements, or another chord in the overall harmony.

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Another transient element that somehow fitted with the work was the curious mutedness of construction sounds from neighbouring buildings, coupled with the clear sound of the room’s ventilation, merging into a suggestion of introversion and occultation, either a sinister lair or a comfortable hiding place; either way, strangely womb-like and isolated.

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This atmosphere revolves around the two possible focal points within the space; the workbench, laden with scattered fragments of historical reference, commonplace tools, aged gewgaws, tiny snapshots of dolls and a small CCTV monitor (blurry, soft-focus) depicting a mirrored, claustrophobic space. Taken as a whole, it alludes to the absence of a character; some notional figure who would sit at the workbench. Perhaps he is someone reclusive and unsavoury, the mumbling school caretaker discovered to be a child molester and serial killer. Or possibly something less lurid. I sought confirmation, decided to try the cabinets at the back of the room.

As suggested by the CCTV monitor, it’s pretty close in here. I think a barely audible, scratchy loop of Kraftwerk’s Hall of Mirrors would be a nice accompaniment, really. Anyway, the first time I was there, the digital photo-frames appeared to be on the fritz; if I recall correctly , I think they were displaying a default screen, prominently displaying the brand of the photo-frames. Which seems completely at odds with what has been established by the other elements in play, but I can’t discount the possibility of its involvement; the idea of having digital photo-frames in a period environment doesn’t quite fit, either. So let’s run with the idea that it’s meant to be jarring, that it’s a significant disconnect with everything else we’ve run into – here at the heart of the nest is its own disruption. Running with that, I like the fact that I’m looking at a default logo-screen, lacking the presentation of some idea of malfunctioning electronics. No sparks, no flickering, no glitching. Just the smooth coldness of a mock-assuring placeholder, somehow emptier than static.

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However, the second time I visited 8Q-rate, the screens were up and running, displaying what at first appear to be still images of pairs of dolls (one Japanese, one American) seemingly meeting or having conversations in strange, sparse spaces. Looking closer, the light shifts slowly in the images, lending a sense of time and loneliness, under the overriding presence of the one who watches this strange representation of social intercourse.

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Accompanying this, we find an array of these grainy, black and white photographs of dolls, accompanied by little boxes listing a name, an index reference, a point of origin and destination (either in America or Japan), and (for some) a date. There doesn’t seem to be a direct relationship between the arrangement of photographs and the arrangement of boxes, but the fact of their arrangement suggests some sort of complementary order. Maybe I just find most dolls, as misshapen homunculi, just plain grotesque (with a touch of deranged sadness and loss) but their accumulation, coupled with the claustrophobia, the paranoiac awareness of being observed and the obsessive indexing comes together as a dissociative unease.

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This entire space has absented itself, a vanished imaginary point in an exchange between America and Japan, inhabited perhaps by some invisible architect of transference between the two points; some forgotten matchmaker of encounters in monochrome deserts. As you leave the cabinets, you may catch a fleeting glimpse of your CCTV-self departing. Perhaps if you remained too long you would undergo some transubstantiation and take your place at the workbench.

Wow, loud. Someone has certainly turned the knob to eleven. She enacts a glitchy, self-conscious dance/journey through the construction site to the accompaniment of sampled construction noises; the multiple feeds splashed across the walls seemingly lacking any sort of causal link between them. As the videos loop on and on, subjecting you to a deluge of Tan Kai Syng, it seems that you are not being engaged with the temporary environment of a school in transition to being an art space, or a negotiation of anything, really. The background of supposed meaning fades away; it seems like the only thing left is a document of her, all else being an accessory.

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There’s more to the installation through a door at the back of the room, leading you to an open corridor with an associative, really quite annoying text in atrocious font glued to the floor. Further up, there’s a second room with more of the videos. About the only differences I observed in the brief time I was there were that it was slightly louder, not air-conditioned and she rolls about in the video.

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As a postscript, on my second visit to 8Q-rate, I noted several disturbing changes to the spaces – you can’t enter :phunk studio’s work and sit around, you can’t walk amongst Ahmad Abu Bakar’s contemplation objects, so on so forth. It’s been tightened, buttoned up, calcified. It’s really not a good sign at all when your interaction with a work is increasingly tightly prescribed, and it’s not fair to the artists affected when the manner in which the public is allowed to interact with your work undergoes a stunning reversal shortly after the opening night.