PETANG RABU LALU

OBJECTS OF DESIRE

" SENI : APA ? KENAPA ? & SIAPA ? ".

There wasnt need for a gentle breeze on a balmy afternoon in the old city of KL.

Words flew off the pages , audience rapt in attention ; a session looking for an audience became Engagingly Noisy & Loud : the portable PA system must have had a cardiac event. Good Stuff , indeed.

These guys , two poets & thespians , one social activist are just Climate Change in persons : they probably need thermostats when slacking off.

Rahmat & Khalid are poets & actors , did their gigs right on cue , unhesitatingly clear , their craft of assembled words rhymed with the heartbeats of those who listened.

One sensed the words bleeding through the pages , as the two poets lamented the festering wound of their people and the nation , a call to resist the slippery slope while peering into the Abyss of the Unthinkable. Sad , but we have to take the positives of Ambition and Hope : of Change.

Hisham went on full steam , proposing the Art for Resistance , almost Bolshevikian , then raising the spectre of the Wounded Generation of Maoist artists when the Gang of Four was incarcerated : " There was No Art during the Cultural Revolution , it was art for the party ".

Do the Malaysian artists , in the broader sense , will want to be described , in future , as the Wounded Generation ?

Art Critics would have balked at his proposition , a call of arms , to choose and pick sides of the political & ethical divide , else the artists , autonomous beings they like to be , will succumb to " Bodeklogy " .

He didnt go far enough in taking potshots at gallerists , bureaucrats , collectors and others within the fanciful ecosystem of the arts , who are quite capable of influencing the aesthetics and practice of artists : the elements within the equation of Bodeklogy dodged a couple of bullets.

The Mercantilist Imperialism by the emerging Asian superpowers , the invasion from the cold north , was an obvious concern to watchers of Cultural Landscape : as voluble as Hisham is , there arent prescriptive suggestions other than expressing a distaste that " Art will be made for the Cukongs , to the colours of capital ".

Hisham , whose life is almost Performance Art itself , offers no fast answers to issues raised ; no quick fixes other than encouraging artists to be True to themselves and not succumb to the temptation of The Fatal Embrace : Resist the Erosion of Ethics & Morality.

Art is after all , a Celebration of Life.

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