Lost and Found

Contemporary Voices

“I think the main thing as an artist is that you realize that art leads a life of its own, that is, quite independently of the reality of social life, or work, etc. And realize that art cannot intervene in life, irrespective of whatever heroic ideals you may entertain… To pretend that art itself can make life better is a lie. And this lie is useful to certain ideologies, and is indeed required by them. So you pretend that if we could all go out an do a lot of painting then the world would be a better place. The reality is that if the world were a better place, then we wouldn’t need to do such senseless things as painting pictures, making pottery, that sort of thing. Absolute utopia is a world without art because living itself would be the art: a liberated form of work, a liberated form of life. If you want to try and imagine pure happiness, art wouldn’t have any place there any more.”

“Albert Oehlen in Conversation with Wilfred Dickhoff and Martin Prinzhorn,” Kunst Heute 7, Cologne 1991; in English in C. Harrison and P. Wood, Art in Theory 1990-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.

Value? Justice?

Our value of live was a lot affected by how we value the money aren’t we?

Admit it. A hell lot of examples could be made just to prove this point.

We human like to categorize things by judging how much it’s cost, or more directly, how big the numbers is on the price tag. From food to material and everything.

Take an example. When we were consuming something, the time when we’re almost full, and there are still a lot of leftovers. One thing that strike our mind first is that we should finish the “meat” first, if there are meat in your meal. If you’re a vegetarian, then most probably you’ll finish all the so called “expensive” food first. Our parents used to tell us to do that isn’t it, because “meat” are known as expensive food compare to those rice or potato or so on and so forth. So we recognize food as expensive food and cheap food. Expensive food have to finish it and should eat only once in a while, cheap food can eat everyday, so if we had a choice to waste food, those so called cheap food will be the priority to been thrown in the dustbin.

Another example. One saw a tissue on a floor, and if another one picked up. They will say all sort of thing like “Ew, you’re disgusting, that’s very dirty”. But if one saw a fifty dollars bill on a floor, or even in a drain. I think there will be a bunch of them rushing to grab it up. If one was told to bite a hundred dollar bill in the mouth and that hundred dollar bill will own by them. I think there will be a bunch of fella willing to do so as well. They just didn’t realize that hundred dollar bill that passed through thousands or millions of people’s hand which might be even dirtier then the rat in the drain. When there is something relate about money, hygiene wouldn’t be the first thing to concern about. Human are hypocrite.

I thought every thing that exist in the world are equally the same value, or even we shouldn’t judge them by value, because it’s so unfair. Humans shout for equality, that’s bullshit since they themselves don’t even treat the things in the world equally. So in the end, if there are god exist then we are the god, since we human just like to categorize every things in the world according to our own preferences aren’t we? From colors, which I mentioned in one of my previous post , black colors are evil, white colors are justice. And in general, things that were tag with an expensive price tag are good stuff, things with cheap price tag are lousy stuff.

So I watched Taken. It’s just another James Bond, Bourne, Mission Impossible kind of movie. There is one thing common about all this kind of action movie if you try to notice it. So, the movie moral is to tell you that those so call “evil guy” will deserved what they did in the end of every movie, they’ll either being caught, or shot and died, or death sentence. While the so call “good guy” will have a happy ending, finding back their love one, get rewards, so on and so forth.

So, does that means that anyone that hold a justice and get over with anything? Did you realize that all these so call “good guy” can just shoot and kill anyone in the movie, destroying stuff without taking any responsibilities. They are just like god, or being sent by god, to punish all those so call “bad fella”, and anyone that relate or help the “bad fella” will equally get the same consequences.

This is just like a metaphor for those advance country like United state of America. They are just like justice, punished all those third world country like nobody business. :)

If we bring this back to reality. There are nothing such as “good side” or “evil side”, it’s just about different standpoint or different point of view. You might say I take this too serious since it was just a movie, but I’m just pointing out the message that might mislead the audience.

Okay maybe for god sake I should just enjoy all this blockbuster show instead of ranting about their cons :).

Bread and butter

I went two highlands within 4 days. After the day I came down from Genting Highland with my buddies, I had another trip to Broga Hill with my college fellas. Broga Hill is located at Kajang, near University of Nottingham. For further details of the location, check this out.

I was attracted by the photos that were taken up there which were posted up on Facebook. So, on that day, we woke up 345am in the morning because we wanted to catch the sun rise. Reached there around 530 and start climbing. It was pitch black. Luckily some of us brought torch light.

Some of us were really exhausted when we reached the summit, but it paid because the view up there was really nice, so do the cooling breeze. Imagine yourself sitting on the rock, feeling the morning breeze and watching the sun slowly rise up. It was awesome. :)

For city kids like us that hardly spot a ‘green’ among those skyscrapers and shopping malls, it was really a memorable trip. My advise is better check out this place as soon as possible before the place start to get crowded. As we known, we Malaysians have some wonderful habit which we like to bring some artificial stuff there and leave it there, or express our outstanding artistic sense by craving our names on those woods or rocks.

When was the last time we run in the bushes and chase the swallow? Or is it happens only in fairy tales and story books?

—————————————————————————————————————-

My best buddy came back from Japan recently. :D It was so sudden because we all expect that he wouldn’t be back for at least 3 or 5 years. Therefore, we decided to had a trip to Genting Highland because the place means something to us. Hah. These were taken a year before.

Haha we were so young. *ahem* okay it was only 2 years ago, lol. However, this time we chose a very unsuitable day which is Awal Muharam to go up because there were no other choices. Therefore, every damn place were crowded. The cable car, the theme park, the food court, the hotels. We didn’t went for the theme park, imagine queuing for 2 hours and play for 60 seconds. We went up more like enjoying the weather.

The weather was really misty and cooling. For us that are having summer for 365days, we really appreciate the weather up there :)

Hope we’ll have this kind of trip more often :).

———————————————————————————————————————-

So, I watched Avatar like everyone else. I don’t want to do reviews or even rate for this movie since it is a very personal opinion, but I will just write some thought for this.

I wanted to like this movie like everyone else, but something is just not there yet. Okay as an art and design student, I truly appreciate the graphic and production for this movie. Please check out the making of this movie to further understand how this movie was made then maybe you will like it even more, or another way of saying is to respect and appreciate the hard work of those who made this happens.

So. The story is predictable, a very standard storyline that will please everyone else. Audience tends to seek entertainment and joy from a movie, so basically a movie that brings a great visual or it somehow create something that is unreal or so call fantasy will able to cheer most of the audience. Sometime, storyline become the second issue to be concern. People normally would have a mindset that a theater with big screen which equipped with full surround audio system should use to screen those movie which able to fully utilize those luxury equipment. So, movies with epic scenes, beautiful visual (We’re not touching cinematography yet, but just from a very standard perspective) will tends to attract more audience. Even if they knew the story going to be sucks but they will still risk their money to watch it because at least there is something beautiful to see it. While films which is more into story telling will tends to give an impression that

“Uh, I might not able to understand this”

“The film involve too much talking until it is so boring”

“These are for artsy-fartsy people, not us. We just want to get entertain”

I came across two harsh review for avatar. One is from Kai, the well known digital artist from Imaginary Friends Studio. He saw things that we normally wouldn’t notice, which more like the aesthetic and functionality of the design. Another is a pretty sarcastic review from Alex Pardee. Alex Pardee is well known for designing the album cover for The Used.

————————————————————————————————————————

We people in this generation are mostly narcissist. This could be easily proved by the amount of blog appearing, and just simply browse through a page of Facebook and Twitter. We could just spot a lot of random people telling the whole world what were they doing, what is their needs, how bored are they, nobody invite him/her for a date at Christmas, and so on and so forth. We all are so desperate for attention. The worst are those who wrote how depress are them, how sad are them, or some unintentionally-going-to-suicide-message, but then when people around start to ask or concern about them, they will say like “Oh, nothing, write for fun” Yeah Right, for FUN.

Besides that, the misused of certain words by lacking of understanding or using some self-generate short forms to write those message ended up deliver a totally different message or sometimes it becomes hilarious. Yesterday, I just saw one of the epic fail facebook status “waiting hubby cum bek=p”. I would like to ask the girl whether she understand the word “cum” before telling the whole world about that.

Okay, so what’s the point for me to write all this shit. Nothing. I was just all in the sudden wanted to type something so badly so I decided to blog.

Thanks for reading until here. :) My next entry will be a few decades later. hahahaha

p/s: Comment can be write at my old blog, or can someone teach me how to enable the comment here? haha

Cheers :)

Notes

-I actually had all these small yellow sticky notes to remind me stuff since I’m not good in memorizing things. I often wrote some motivational quotes or lines on these notes to sort of move me slightly forward, although it doesn’t seems effective. Why am I talking about notes? I’ve no idea. It’s 3 in the morning and this is not the first day that I felt empty throughout the whole day. That’s the sign of the holiday. Sigh.

-I always had tons of plan and milestone before the holiday hits, and I always made empty promises. I knew that I’m going to regret very soon for what I’m doing right now. “It’s not right to do this right now, I shall be doing this and that..” I keep on telling myself the same thing but my body just don’t give a damn. I’m still slacking.

-Holiday hit. 2 weeks. Nothing. Literally nothing. Besides participating in junior life drawing classes which is the only productive thing that I did, nothing else.

-Anyway, I had a trip to Kuantan. Thanks to Jo and his parents for the accommodation and treat. Despite the monsoon season which caused a lots of rain, we still have fun :D. A vacation does not have to be at some luxurious place or need to spend a fortune just to go for it, the right company is always the priority.

-You drives me crazy.

-I’m still feeling awkward to face your family members since that day they found out. But I’ll get through it soon, very soon.

-One of the holiday benefit is that I’ll had a chance to organize all my songs and album covers in Itunes which is part of my OCD (Obsessive-compulsive disorder). Staring at those nicely and accordingly organized album covers just made me couldn’t stop smiling :D

Perhaps.

Staring at the white space just wouldn’t make me fell asleep. One big part of brain cells are still functioning, thinking stuff that are unnecessarily, or maybe just to let me feel less guilty. Sometimes when thing just turns out flawless, it ain’t a good omen. The bubble theory? Perhaps so.