Rogue Shadow

For those of you who don’t know what is performance art, well, too bad, I don’t exactly know what the fuck it is either. However it is different than mainstream performing arts, such as theatre and film. All I can say to attempt at defining performance art is it is expressive, interpretive, personal to the artist, and downright fucking weird.

On the 7th to the 9th of April, the first performance art symposium was held in Malaysia. The festival was called Satu Kali which means One Time. Held at MFX in Jalan Ampang, performance artists from around the world gathered for their presentations. Myself being a student of performing arts, am currently taking a course of performance art. My lecturer, Dr. Ray Langenbach, had made it compulsory for us to attend the workshops on performance art in the daytime (held at the Australian High Commission), and encouraged us to attend the presentations at night. I figured that this experience was necessary for me to better understand what performance art is all about.

We were told that the symposium was an underground event. Apparently the licenses for the event as well as the visas for the international artists were taking too bloody long to process, the organizers decided to just go on with the show. Publicity was through word of mouth. The audience were mainly artists and students of performance art. I invited my mum to come along to watch the presentations. 

I should’ve known better. The performances were very abstract and expressive. In fact some were thought to be provocative. My mum was appalled at one point when a Muslim performer had himself tattooed. She walked out and was very emotional about it. I was thankful that she didn’t make me go home nor banned me from attending the other presentations for the next 2 nights.

But she did make my dad go with me. On the excuse that she already bought the ticket for all the 3 nights, my dad was made to replace her. On the 2nd night, my senior in college was one of the performers. He spoke about the hypocritical Muslims in Malaysia. Now, although I thought his speech was very truthful and brave, and I agreed wholeheartedly with the points he made, his manner of executing his speech was in my opinion, unsuitable for our local audience. (Due to legal matters, I cannot disclose the physical content of his performance.) Our audience, who are mainly of the Muslim/Malay society, are not yet ready for a performance so bold and direct, especially when the subject that was being dealt with is religion, particularly Islam. I, too, though I consider myself to be somewhat of a liberal Muslim, found the performance offensive.

Apparently, a lot more were disturbed by the performance, mainly the ones that touched on religion. A complaint was made to the police, and when I arrived at MFX the third night for the last of the presentations, I was told that the show was cancelled because the authorities found out. JAWI was expected to come by MFX that night also to ensure that there were no performances. I called up several people to clarify, and true enough, many were terribly upset with some of the performances. One even shared his deep disappointment with me about my senior’s presentation. "I will back him up for his freedom of speech, but his execution was just irresponsible."

Just that afternoon, at Seksan in Bangsar, there was a round table discussion on performance art. The main topic we discussed on was the censorship that we’d have to deal with should performance art become mainstream. I voiced out that theatre itself has a lot of censorship problem to encounter, some are sensitive about the most mundane of things. I confessed that the presentations I watched were too overwhelming for me to analyze my opinion just yet, it was something very new to me.

Based on what happened the 3rd night, I’m not entirely certain about the future of performance art here. personally, I was disappointed that some of the Muslim/Malay performers entahlah, nak tunjuk terer,kot and ended up embarrassing ourselves in front of the international artists, whose performances were very peaceful. I wonder how they look at us now.

Mum shared with me that freedom is as much as how far you can swing your arms about without hitting somebody’s nose. Guess the symposium was aptly titled- Just Once.

p/s: As for the police case there is yet to be an investigation and defintely noone has been charged with anything. My college is in no way involved in this, except that fact that the moderator and one of the performers happen to be from my college.

Haven’t written in a while. A lot has been going on. You grow up everyday(in my case, only mentally. My physical side is not co-operating. Bah.).

Anywho, the reason i’ve not been writing for a while is coz I was involved in the production of M! The Opera. Ok, so I was just assisting my mum, but trust me, that is NOT an easy job. I’m there everyday, every hour, for every fucking rehearsal. I know the play by heart (Fuck, days after we wrapped the production, I’m reciting the whole bloody play in the shower!….Kakak!!!). The experience was…EDUCATING. The cast was amazing! They’re fabulous people, with a mind blowing team spirit. Even when drama was shoved in their face, no matter what challenge, no matter what obstacle, they stuck together like my lips to a Viggo Mortensen poster. The creative crew…well, were very creative. Probably too creative. Ideas kept coming till the very last minute, for the very last show, dammit! Some worked, most fell flat on their faces, at least from where I was standing (which was backstage, lugging 3-4 bags, a big bottle of water and mum’s slippers, while trying desperately to record the stuff going on backstage for my college project. Yet some actors [no need to mention names but- USAMAH!] came up to me to take care of their stuff. Guess I was either doing my job really well, or people liked looking at me walking around like a fucking coatstand). Speaking of which, I much preferred watching the play from the backstage. I preferred watching them PUT ON the play than the play itself when I was sitting in the audience. And the audience! Damn those corporate bookings! The bloody companies buy like 100 tickets for their people, and only 30 show up! Meanwhile, the common art lover out there can’t come watch the show (although, in retrospect, that could’ve been a good thing), because the tickets are sold out! To an EMPTY HALL! I don’t know if the producers were thinking about the profits, but that didn’t do any good for the actor’s morale. Not that the audience who WERE there were that responsive either. They’re like dead and afraid to live. I’m applauding at deserving scenes and half the time,i was the only ONE! I saw some of them wanted to join me, but they decided against it because they weren’t so sure. It’s a SHOW, dammit! If you like it, just bloody express it, lah! But over all, the M! experience was one I wouldn’t trade for the world(well, maybe for Viggo Mortensen). I learnt so much about the strength of people and of faith. So to the cast and crew of M!, thanks from the very bottom of my heart. I love you guys!