Posts tagged with politics
On my long weekend in Kuala Lumpur last week, I spent an afternoon wandering through the music shops, fashion boutiques and organic cafes of the various Telawi streets of Bangsar. I also managed to track down the Valentine Willie Fine Art gallery where the ROCK KAKA group show had just opened. It was a show borne out of a solidarity and love for rock music and its values of counter-culture.
The most visually arresting piece was undoubtedly Fahmi Reza’s “NAJIB’S Head Stolen From Billboard” (2009), a giant tarpaulin print of Malaysian Prime Minister Mohd. Najib with his suited upper torso filling most of the parquet floor and head raised erect against the wall. The piece is so large that the top of his forehead crumples over on to the ceiling. In homage to punk iconography, in particular the image of Queen Elizabeth used on Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” single, Najib’s eyes are plastered over by black “censor” tape while yellow police tape forms a neat X over his mouth. Provocative as this image is, the YouTube video playing beside it is even more sensational: a shaky amateur video purportedly showing a group of vandals climbing up a billboard over a busy Malaysian highway and cutting out the Prime Minister’s head!
“Charles Windsor who’s at the door/ At such an hour who’s at the door/ In the back of an old green cortina/ You’re on your way to the guillotine/ Here the rabble comes/ The kind you hoped were dead/ They’ve come to chop, to chop off your head”- Lyrics from “Charles Windsor” by McCarthy
That the artist is also known as a political documentary filmmaker highlights the work’s questioning of truth and reliability in the context of not just traditional forms of Malaysian mass media, but also the new mediascapes of the digital age. Knee jerk reactions have been sparked (such as here and here), which while expected, is still mildly annoying/depressing, some 30 years after the Sex Pistols. Johnny Rotten himself had said: “You don’t write a song like ‘God Save The Queen’ because you hate the English race. You write a song like that because you love them, and you’re fed up of seeing them mistreated.” Fahmi’s work captures the essence of what one may call Malaysiakini patriotism.
“We need a powerful cementing force to strengthen our resolve: That is the Goddess of Democracy. Democracy…You are the symbol of every student in the Square, of the hearts of millions of people. …Today, here in the People’s Square, the people’s Goddess stands tall and announces to the whole world: A consciousness of democracy has awakened among the Chinese people! The new era has begun! … Erect the statue of the Goddess of Democracy in your millions of hearts! Long live the people! Long live freedom! Long live democracy!”
Doing the Tank Man Tango at the Substation. Shortly after taking this picture, I put down my camera and bag, then picked up my own pair of red plastic bags to join in. I really liked every aspect of the piece, from the concept (Deborah Kelly) to the video (Sven Simulacrum), choreography (Jane McKernan) and dance/performance (Teik Kim Pok). I was thinking of asking organiser May Ee why they didn’t have guestbook-sort things like in other memorial services, but then it occurred to me that, just like Tank Man himself, it wasn’t necessary to leave a word or name at all - the act was more important, and for us, the fact of having participated among others - strangers probably, but who shared something a little more in that moment of synchronised movement. Link: http://www.forget2forget.com/
