Space Gambus Experiment CD insert

text by me

Cinema in Paradiso?

Perak once again rings to the unique, and some might say quite mystifying, sounds of camera tracks being laid, spotlights being erected, dollies being pushed, best boys, props masters, carpenters, costume designers, an earnest producer wrangling and an eminent director directing. Yes, the illustrious and industrious film people are back in town.

For more than a delicious decade Perak has been a favoured spot for enterprising film crews, be they TV or cinematic. Malaysia’s lushly green and mountainous state draws eagle-eyed location hunters like bees to nectar, mainly due to its immense natural beauty, and because it still has enough antique buildings left standing to represent any number of bygone ages. Though, at the present rate of ‘renovation’ and upgrading, one wonders if Ipoh and its surrounds will have any aged buildings left the next time a film company comes to call.

Back in the early 1990s, a Gitane smoking, baguette munching French film crew descended upon Perak, bringing the illustrious, and, I for one, might also say quite delectable, Catherine Deneuve with them. There they made that masterpiece of French cinema – Indochine (1992). It is rumoured that a certain Robert Raymer, Malaysian writer- par excellence, also had a cameo role in that film. Time moves inextricably on and a little later the English film Director John Boorman brought Patricia Arquette to Perak, to shoot Beyond Rangoon (1995).

Anna and the King with Chinese actor Chow Yun –Fat followed in 1999. Local film maker Amir Mohammad made his, subsequently banned, The Last Communist, here, released unseen in 2006, while another local boy, local to Ipoh that is – Patrick Teoh, TV/movie star, writer and former radio personality, starred in Kinta 1881(2007), also made around Perak. In the very same year Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon man, Ang Lee, got us all hot and bothered by filming Lust, Caution (2007) in and around Ipoh’s old town. Maybe the kopi drew him.

Now it is the turn of local film and TV director Bernard Chauly, Red Communications and Astro TV, who are making an eight-part series concerning the Second World War heroine, mid-wife and resistance fighter Sybil Kathigsu.

Filming started recently in Papan, utilising local traditional houses as well as the actual building where Sybil had set up her dispensary and, later, free clinic. Bernard Chauly, known for his recent film Pisau Cukur (Gold Digger, 2009), and Goodbye Boys (2006) has brought Elaine Daly, former Miss Malaysia (2004), known for her numerous film and TV roles, to play the role of the brave Sybil Kathigsu. This is entirely fortuitous, as Ms Daly is a dim distant relative of Sybil’s.

The Astro Citra eight piece series, of one-hour episodes, which incidentally forms part of the Suatu Ketika (a Time in the Past) sequence, has a working title of Apa Dosaku (What is my Sin). This new TV series follows Sybil from the Japanese occupation of Ipoh, to its eventual liberation, by the British. The TV series comes after the enormously successful theatre production –Sybil, which was a two-act play directed by Dato Faridah Merican (2008) based upon Sybil’s collective memoirs – No Dram of Mercy (1954).

In October of 2009 a resounding call went out for local participants to appear at auditions in November. Actors, extras, Eurasians, Chindians, Malays, Indians and an assortment of other races were needed to appear in this new production of the Sybil story. Many came but few were chosen. One local enthusiast, Audrey Poh, Ipoh book club member, part founder of Perak Heritage Society, former committee member and secretary of the Perak Society of Performing Arts answered that call. In the Red Communications production for Astro Citra, Audrey girds her loins to play Sybil’s best friend, and the godmother to Olga, Sybil’s younger daughter.

Law Siak Hong, esteemed current president of Perak Heritage Society, creator and curator of the Papan museum for everything Sybil, has been working closely with producer Anne Rodrigues, director Bernard Chauly and their hard working film crew, to make everything run as smoothly as possible during the shooting for the production.

Contrary to what I have written above, the Red Communications film crew have been diligently subtle in their approach to film making, perhaps adhering to Star Trek’s Prime Directive (Starfleet’s General Order #1) of non-interference. Despite the film crew working in the town, Papan is barely disturbed. It is only the interior ‘shots’ which require some minute disruption to daily lives, with puzzled house residents looking on, perhaps somewhat bemused by the coming and goings.

‘Apa Dosaku’ (What is my sin) airs on Astro Citra channel in March 2010. It is an eight-part series, of one-hour episodes, under the Suatu Ketika banner .

Who knows, maybe, someday, someone might make a film of Tash Aw’s The Harmony Silk Factory, set in and around the Kinta Valley.

Expressions in Three Angles?

The Malaysian National Art Gallery – Balai Seni Lukis Negara, which might otherwise be called a museum of modern art, currently hosts a retrospective of one of Malaysia’s most esteemed artists – Syed Ahmad Jamal; celebrating his eightieth birthday, and almost sixty years devoted to art and art criticism.

Born in Muar, Johor in 1929, Syed Ahmad Jamal, like many Malaysian artists of his generation, studied arts in England. Syed Ahmad Jamal studied architecture in Birmingham, England (1950), and later painting in the renowned Chelsea College of Art, London, notable for having Leonora Carrington and Edward Burra as alumni. His resume extends from teaching art, art teacher training, through to heading up the National Museum of Art (now National Art Gallery), as director (1981 – 1993). In 1995, Dato Syed Ahmad Jamal was honoured with the National Art Award and has become known as the Malaysian National Art Laureate.

Pelukis, the current Syed Ahmad Jamal retrospective, affords the National Art Gallery visitor with an uncluttered view of the artist’s professional and individual progression. The exhibition reveals paintings from the artist’s cubist and expressionist inspired 1950s works, through his more abstract phase in the late 1960s, and into the 1970s, right up unto the more spiritual, yet still expressionistic works in the 2000s. The artist’s work spans a time from Battersea Park II (1956) to M50 (2007).

This major retrospective does what retrospectives tend to do best – give the exhibition/gallery visitor a chance to witness, for themselves, the artists’ progression/growth into his craft. It allows the caller to observe the roads not taken, and the paths followed with the ‘becoming’ of a painter such as Syed Ahmad Jamal.

From the painter’s early works, executed during the 1950s, the links to both Cubism and Abstract Expressionism are self-evident. In Battersea Park II (1956) the colours and forms of German Expressionist and Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) founder Franz Marc are quite clear. Nipah Palms (1957), Mani Laut (Sea Bathers -1957) Padi Field Morning and Padi Field Night (1958), emerge from a fondness for the later cubist works, which slip quite easily into Abstract Expressionism, reminiscent of that father of Cubism Georges Braque.

A few years later, during the 1960s, Syed Ahmad Jamal is seen experimenting with more obvious forms of abstraction, edging out of Cubism with the neo-Expressionistic Hararpan – Hope (1962), until in 1967 he produces Pfft and in 1968 Windows in the Sky, then in 1970 - One Fine Day. To some extent both Windows in the Sky and One Fine Day are painterly breakthroughs leading the artist into fresh mode of expression, ground zero for the next thirty plus years of the artist’s image making. By the time Syed Ahmad Jamal has completed One Fine Day, the artist is forty years old.

Forty is a reasonable age, in some it is the age where they start to settle down, lose the anger of youth and approach life from a more considered, perhaps even philosophical viewpoint. It is a time when we stop searching for who we are. Instead, we begin to become who, and what, we are. We become aware of the differences between what we know about ourselves, and what others observe, what we present and what is hidden, as revealed in the Johari Window. We begin the true process of what Jung called ‘individuation’, or making ‘whole’. What we can observe in Syed Ahmad Jamal’s work from the age of forty onward, is a predilection for images of triangles and a growing visual, spiritual, symbolism.

Gunung Ledang (Legendary Mountain [Mount Ophir] 1978) may not be the first use of the triangle in the works of Syed Ahmad Jamal, but, without doubt, it is the most significant. Perhaps Catch a Falling Star (1967) is the first. In Gunung Ledang, using a triangle device, the artist presents his viewer with what may be described as a mountain, hence the Gunung of the title. Yet the triangle stretches from the base of the canvas through to the last third. Bars construct the triangle, which may be perceived stretching into the perspectival distance, representing a ladder. The ‘window’ device from ‘Windows in the Sky’ is now green. At the top of the canvas small green triangles ‘float’. This is one of a series of works, which the artist has painted about his birthplace, the myths and legends pertaining to there, while maintaining the depth of symbolism within the artist’s expressionism.

A Malay myth informs that the mountain - Gunung Ledang, previously known as Mount Ophir, in Johor, was where a beautiful princess (puteri) lived. Having rejected many suitors she eventually married Nakhoda Ragam, only for the marriage to end in disaster, the death of Nakhoda and the return of the princess to her mountain - Gunung Ledang.

The triangle from this point on, in Syed Ahmad Jamal’s painting, becomes a leitmotif, a recurring theme throughout his work. Symbolically, of course, the triangle may come to represent any number of things. Visually the triangle may depict stability, power, strength, inverted may denote dynamism. The triangle is the simplest figure to which all polygons may be reduced, and, for some, a representation of harmony because of that.

The artist’s use of the triangle may be an allusion to the Islamic symbol of consciousness incorporating the ‘knower’, the ‘act of knowing’ and the ‘known’. Further speculation may arrive at the triangle as ‘Taqwa’ (God consciousness), Ramadan (fasting) and Qur’an (guidance), the vital trilogy to lead a spiritually healthy and rewarding Muslim life. On the other hand, it may simply be, as others have noted before me, an image etched into the artist’s mind, forever forming part of his consciousness, growing up, as the artist did, under the shadow of the mystical mountain.

Of course, there is artistic precedence for overt use of the triangle in painting. From the works of Kandinsky (Composition IV, 1911), Kazimir Malevich (Suprematism with Blue Triangle And Black Square, 1915), Paul Klee (Ad Parnassum, 1932) the triangle is prominent. To some extent, this is also true of the father of them all – Paul Cezzane; when he demonstrates the harmony of the triangle with Large Bathers (1899-1906), with trees and ground arranged to form a triangle, in which the bathers sit.

It seems poignant that the triangle should appear, and keep reappearing throughout the body of Syed Ahmad Jamal’s work from his own middle age, in the late 1970s, until the present. As life slips from youth, into older age, spirituality plays an increasingly larger role in life.

Endau Rompin (1985) (one of Malaysia’s national parks, in Johor -the artist’s birth state) features a triangle of foliage with a rainbow highlighting one of the triangle’s sides, another is delineated by what appears to be rain, the third is marked by a river – the River Endau of the name.

Sirih Pinang (Penang’s betel leaf) (1986) comprises of four triangles, meeting at the canvas centre. It would be mischievous to try to explain the triangles as representative of the four elements, though without too larger stretch of the viewer’s imagination earth, water, fire and air could be discerned. Art Nouveau betel leaves tumble in the foreground while the sky is punctuated by small variants of the triangle.

In a similar mode Palestin is dominated by a central red triangle, the canvas a tricolour of black, white in the centre and green at the bottom. In the black third are red triangle shapes. Mercu Wawasan (1997) although dominated by the concept of the Petronas Towers, also reveals triangles, one bottom centre canvas stretching to the bridge linking the two towers, while another reaches from top right canvas down to one third of the distance from bottom left to bottom right. Semangat Ledang (1999) has as its centrepiece a triangle, though partially obscured with flashes of yellow and red light. The tip of the larger triangle is revealed out of ‘cloud’ while a burst of white triangular light is emitted from the large triangle’s center.

There are many more, but I should like to leave you considering this one last painting by Syed Ahmad Jamal – M50 (2007). M50 as its name denotes, is a celebration of Malaysia in its fiftieth year. Unlike other paintings M50 has more of a Miro feel to it. There are two triangles, neither too dominant in the picture, surrounded by the apparatus of technology and prominent symbols – a number 1, question marks and a fragment of the British Union Jack (flag). Has the triangle of harmony, strength, God-consciousness finally been eclipsed by modernity. Is the triangle mountain, and its legends, being overwhelmed by man’s technology. I will leave that for you to decipher.

Pelukis, a retrospective of the work of Syed Ahmad Jamal is on at the National Art Gallery, from 6^th October 2009 to the 31^st January 2010, Gallery 1A.

What is my Sin

The rain had stopped. My aging jeep eased into the quietly forgotten street of Perak’s Papan. I had expected to see the town inundated with the paraphernalia of filmmaking – tracks for cameras, huge spotlights threatening to fall on unsuspecting bystanders and a dictatorial director bellowing out instructions/orders vis-à-vis Cecil B. Demille.

Bernard Chauly, of Red Communications Sdn Bhd, is a much quieter director, who seems to believe in keeping the filmic disruption to a bare minimum. He, his producer Angela Rodrigues, their team of talented actors and crew came together at Papan, to reveal the story of that town’s Second World War heroine – Sybil Kathigasu.

TV channel Astro Citra (available in the Mustika pack) commissioned Red Communications, as part of their ‘Suatu Ketika’ (a Time in the Past) series, to make an eight-part drama, of one hour episodes. This story follows the extraordinary account of Sybil Kathigasu (played by Elaine Daly), from the moment she hears of the Japanese invading, through her experiences in the anti-Japanese resistance movement, and beyond. The series closely follows her collective memoirs, first published in 1954 as ‘No Dram of Mercy’.

Sybil Daly, a Eurasian mid-wife, born to an Irish-Indian planter father and French-Armenian mother, was married to Dr Abdon Clement Kathigasu, in 1919. She ran a clinic at 141 Brewster Road (now Jalan Sultan Idris Shah), Ipoh. When the Japanese invaded Ipoh (December 1941), Sybil escaped to run a shop-house dispensary at 74 Main Road, Papan. It is there that Sybil’s story really begins.

As time, and the Japanese occupation, wore on, Sybil’s dispensary, which by then doubled as a free clinic, eventually gained access to a shortwave radio, tuned into BBC broadcasts. From that time, the dispensary slowly became the central point for information and local dissidence.

Over time Sybil, in her husband’s absence, tended injured guerrillas, brought to the clinic at night. She was pro-colonial and disagreed with the ethics of the burgeoning communist guerrillas, but was a staunch humanitarian and realised that the guerrillas and she had a common enemy – the Japanese occupation force.

First her husband was arrested by the Japanese, next came Sybil. Expert Japanese interrogators, who were trying to extract vital information about the Chinese communist guerrillas, tortured Sybil. She was beaten, malnourished, sleep deprived and generally maltreated in the Japanese quest to learn more from her.

As if was not enough, Japanese interrogators arrested and tortured Sybil’s children too. In their quest for information, Sybil’s youngest daughter Dawn (aged 7) was hung from a tree, suspended over a fire while Sybil watched and was severely beaten. Luckily, Dawn survived her ordeal. Sybil, sentenced to death, had her sentence commuted to life imprisonment in Batu Gajah Prison - her husband, and adopted son William, imprisoned in Taiping Prison.

The British liberated Malaya in 1945, releasing Sybil from her incarceration, her near fatal wounds treated in Batu Gajah Hospital, Perak. Still in pain, Sybil spent her last days in England, undergoing operation after operation to salve her pain-racked body. Sybil Kathigsu, awarded the George Medal for bravery in 1947, died in England, still in pain, June 1948.

It is only fitting that the actress who plays the role of the heroine Sybil in the eight part TV series, is none other than Elaine Daly – a well-known Malaysian actress, former Miss Malaysia Universe, and a distant relative of Sybil’s.

I drove away thoughtfully. I was considering my day - whether to take director Bernard Chauly up on his offer of a one-line speaking role, or not. On reflection, maybe Malaysian TV is not quite ready for me – yet.

Working title – ‘Apa Dosaku’ (What is my sin) airs on Astro Citra channel in March 2010

Shadow Play

Rhythm of the 21st Century -Monologues of Raja Shahriman, Galeri Petronas, KLCC
29th October 2009 to 24th January 2010.

Galeri Petronas, at KLCC, is currently (at the time of writing) holding an extensive exhibition of Raja Shahriman b Raja Aziddin’s more recent work, including the paintings and sketches which help form a body of knowledge regarding his contemporary dynamic black metal sculptures.

The gallery visitor will see that Raja Shahriman’s sublimely martial black painted metal sculptures, in their concreteness, exist somewhere between the German H.R.Giger’s alien grotesques and those mythological sculptures of the British artist Michael Ayrton. It is between the menace of Giger’s fantasy grotesques and the forceful beauty of Ayrton’s mythological sculptures that Shahriman’s figures are allowed to exist, beautiful, but deadly, bullet bandoliered, starkly creatures of violence and destruction, extant in a poignant anti-war epiphany.

Yet Raja Shahriman’s forms, differing from those of H. R. Giger, replete with cartridge belt spines and masks, which render them terrifyingly anonymous, seem to represent, more accurately, the frighteningly vicious nature of man, against man, in brutal warfare. And, although Raja Shahriman’s constructs, to some extent, bear a mythos and a weight similar to those of Michael Ayrton – Ayrton’s minotaurs, or figures of Daedalus, show a gravitas and groundedness not apparent in those of Raja Shahriman, where cold steel is twisted to depict nightmarish warriors of evil.

There is an undeniable uncanny grace to Raja Shahriman’s sculptures’ lethal poses. At times, they appear as ferocious manga ninja, frozen in violent combative acts, twisted black metal shards and spikes piercing into the visitor’s subconscious, bringing, perhaps, the minutest of shivers down spines composed not of braces of bullets, as are those of Raja Shahriman’s figures, but of fragile flesh and bone. At other times, those figures resemble warmongering metal automatons; contemporary Robocops; Star Wars Battle Droids or bizarre metal skeletons, constructed perhaps by Ray Harryhausen for some, yet, unmade film.

The obvious strength of the sculptures, their hard metal musculature, their surreal/art noveau curvatures, poise, bandoliers of bullets all combine to impose their obviously martial nightmare imagery onto the innocently unsuspecting audience, with great success.

While the actual weighty metal sculptures stand, rooted to their plinths, the interplay of gallery lighting throws (Jungian?) shadows onto the gallery floor, and across grey painted walls. They are impossible to miss. A discerning visitor might get the feeling that is where the real story lies, not with posed metal, but with stark, projected, contorted shadows.

Creative shadows cast from Raja Shahriman’s commanding sculptures, born literally of light and dark, creep as dark figures rising from Disney’s Night on Bald Mountain (Fantasia 1940), or Ring Wraiths from Ralph Bakshi’s animated Lord of the Rings (1978).

In Disney’s Night on Bald Mountain, a huge dark-winged figure rises from the mighty mountain, spreading shadow over a sleeping village, drawing souls into Hell. Once there, silhouetted figures cavort, dance until the winged figure gathers them up, once more, and then casts them down, into Erté-like smoke and Faust-like furnaces.

Raja Shahriman’s shadows give the appearance of cavorting, dancing, twisting, curling, bending to reveal the archetypal black soul of war mongering sculptures. A slightest movement of light, a tremor, shudder, has shadows squirming, shifting, and moving across the gallery, shape shifting in their own repressed delight of nascent evil.

Wandering the Galeri Petronas there is the shadow of the object – Wira Perkasa (Brave Hero), creeping, peeping over its plinth, seemingly ready to make an attack on the hero who stands profound, unaware that his legacy of violence forever ties him to the shadow, and to his spine of war. Then, again, with Kancah Kashmir (Kashmir’s Arena) (2008), but this time three subconscious shadows break out into the gallery, unnervingly piercing, thrusting towards the other plinths, stealthily feeling their dark way towards them, but, then, also towards the innocent visitor, writhing in some deathly surreal dance towards them.

Observing the dark of the shadows springing from objects they had once been bound to, is thrilling, but unnerving. The gallery dances to a very different dynamic. Objects posed for visitors while shadows free themselves to challenge, question and, ultimately like the gladiators they undoubtedly are, fight in the new arena of Galeri Petronas.

Like vicious wayang kulit (traditional shadow play puppets) rhino- horned shadows, thrown against grey walls, pierce into the gallery. Others stab, cutting into the space between plinths, between walls, floors and visitors - nowhere seems safe from the forms, formed from fractious footcandles of light.

Gejolak Api (Fire’s big flames) and Maharajalela (Rampage) stand, opposing each to the other in one small offshoot from the main gallery. Sculptural Daliesque hands/arms extend, one challenging figure towards the other, twisted shadows displaying root/tendril-like curvatures thrusting writhing towards each other.

A startled gallery visitor, seeing the combative challenge might expect an engagement at any moment, and the spewing of black metal amidst the dark gallery flames, yes; it was to come, but only in our enriched imaginations.

Further around the gallery, with some nameless victory won - the figure Panji Hitam (Black Flag) mightily raises a flag to strike into its own wooden plinth, no doubt symbolising an ending of warfare, its bandolier of bullets, so pronounced in the figures of others throughout the gallery, absent.

The formerly repressed shadow of Panji Hitam , however, reveals that the flag is no full stop to conflict. It is simply another weapon, for the blackness is throughout, regardless now, of whether there are, or are not bullets, for now any weapon will do, as the formerly repressed shadow becomes liberated. For humanity, long suckled on war and violence has become addicted to the trill, the power and, ultimately - the mayhem.

Raja Shahriman b Raja Aziddin’s work, exhibited at Galeri Petronas is a triumph, not just in the creation of the works themselves, but also in the craft of their display. It is the carefully considered display of these sculptures, especially, which enhances the poignancy of the works, with deftly placed lighting, which adds the extra dimension and final touches to the overall exhibition, and reveals the soul of Raja Shahriman’s works.

Talented Perak

If you look very, very carefully there is a long list of very talented people associated with the enigmatic silver state of Perak. From the ubiquitous literary talents of Tash Aw (writer) to the eminently delectable actress Michelle Yeoh, their stars forever shine in the heavens of the international firmament.

Aside - In my haste to impart this, I am not, of course, forgetting either my old mate, the silver-tongued Patrick Teoh (broadcaster, acerbic writer and thespian), or fellow writer, and thoroughly nice individual, Preeta Samarasan.

However, what you may, or may not know is that there are still many mega-talented people, who actually prefer to live in the silver state, rather than write about it from afar. They are brave, hearty souls who shun the bright lights and big cities to live in the comparative quiet of a rural setting, wherein they may listen to their hearts and comprehend their muse – not read the SMS screen and facebook themselves out of existence.

It was recently, having well girded my loins - not lions you notice or any other predatory feline, I actually got out from under a whole herd of water buffalo; stepped out from my misnamed studio, kick-started my monolithic jeep and reached out to the cowering world at large, to meet with some (hopefully) fellow humans.

In my questing I was hugely fortunate enough to meet with two charmingly gifted sons of Perak – Raja Shahriman b Rja Aziddin (aka Raja Shahriman), sculptor, painter and all round nice guy, and, equally as nice, contemporary artist, musician and academic Kamal Sabran.

To be fair, I only met Raja Shahriman en passant as it were - while he was accompanying my buddy, the artist Rafiee Ghani, in Kuala Lumpur, but shortly excused himself to return to his beloved state and family. I sincerely hope to meet more fully with Raja Shahriman at a later date, perhaps in his residence at Kuala Kangsar, where he creates the sculptures he is known for. Kamal Sabran I met, in Ipoh, at a makak restaurant to talk about his forthcoming music CD entitled The Space Gambus Experiment - more of that later.

Raja Shahriman currently has an exhibition of his profound sculptures, paintings and sketches at the Galeri Petronas, KLCC, Kuala Lumpur; profound, in the sense that within the painted, twisted metal forms lays a greater depth of meaning, and signification too.

While it is the three dimensionality of Raja Shahriman’s sculpted forms which greets the visitor at first glance, on second spine tingling glimpse they notice the intricate play of light on the works, and, obviously, the vividness of the shadows. For it is within the forms of those pronounced shadows, spread from the sculptures that give them life, which the artist’s greatness comes into play. Through Raja Shahriman’s mastery of his medium, he deftly reveals the vicious shadow creatures, which inhabit the rabid consciousness of the brutal warrior - his martial spine a bandolier of bullets.

People of a nervous disposition might stand in the corner of one of the galleries, staring at Raja Shahriman’s sculptures, waiting for the blatant shadows to come to life, so eerily real are they, in an abstract way. These same visitors, out of the corner of one eye, may see shadows, as if in a wayang kulit play, engage in their incipient warfare, rising out from curved metal flames and doing battle with tendril-like hands and protuberances, which may in our imaginations, be fashioned as swords.

While the shadows of Raja Shahriman’s sculptures eerily poise for battle, Kamal Sabran’s music CD soothes those parts that other music CDs cannot soothe, with its unique blend of sounds from space and music from the traditional Malay gambus (a lute like instrument).

Just back from Kuala Lumpur, promoting his short film – LUMPUR, for 15 Malaysia, Kamal Sabran spoke with me about his collaboration with Mohd Zulkifi Ramli, and the unique music they have created for the CD The Space Gambus Experiment.

An observant reader will have noticed the word – Space in the title of this CD, as in The Space Gambus Experiment, and maybe scratched an itchy follicle or two on its significance. To put your inquisitive minds at rest, I am not referring to some post-hippy, pseudo-psychedelia, but in this case – real Space, as in ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’, the National Space Agency and the planet Jupiter.

Kamal Sabran developed ‘Sonic Cosmic Music from Outer Space’, while he was ‘artist in residence’ at the National Space Agency and some of that celestial material, along with the more traditional gambus music, graces this present album. It is therefore a credit to both Kamal Sabran and to Mohd Zulkifi Ramli, that together they have been able to create such a distinctive and richly melodic sound.

The Space Gambus Experiment

A new music CD, launched December 2009, introduces the mesmerising sounds of The Space Gambus Experiment to an expectant audience. This landmark work is the result of a unique collaboration, not only between the two presenting musicians – Mohd Zulkifli Ramli (Gambud/Oud) and Kamal Sabran (electro – acoustic) but also between the traditional and the contemporary in modern Malaysian music.

For this ‘experiment’ Kamal Sabran has engaged the talents of Mohd Zulkifli Ramli, to bring the uniquely symbolic music of the Malay gambus (a lute like instrument), into play, perhaps with the intention of playing point, counterpoint to Kamal’s adventurous sound making.

An observant reader will have noticed the word – Space in the title of this CD, as in The Space Gambus Experiment, and maybe scratched an itchy follicle or two on its significance. To put your inquisitive minds at rest, I am not referring to some post-hippy, pseudo-psychedelia, but in this case – real Space, as in ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’, the National Space Agency and the planet Jupiter.

Among Kamal’s many projects as an artist and musician, and following his partiality to meld science with art, Kamal had worked as an ‘artist in residence’ at the Malaysian National Space Agency, between 2005 and 2006.

There he developed ‘Sonic Cosmic Music from Outer Space’, which was later performed at the planetarium. It was at the National Space Agency that Kamal began experimenting with radio waves, received through the radio telescope, from the planet Jupiter as it was orbiting over Malaysian skies. Some of that celestial material, along with the more traditional gambus music, graces this present album.

With a world rapidly churning out the latest talking blues gangsta rapper, wannabe TV starlet/singer or bootilicious boy/babe dressed hot to kill, it has become a case of never mind that he/she cannot actually sing but look at that boy/girl go.

It therefore comes as a great relief that artist/designer/musician/academician Kamal Sabran quests on the fringes of ‘noise’ and ‘melody’ to bring us this unexpected gem of a CD – The Space Gambus Experiment. Co-incidentally, Kamal, rapidly becoming a Malaysian renaissance man, has also designed the layout and cover of this visually, as well as musically, exciting CD.


Those of you who have been intently following the contemporary arts scene, or who have been nose-diving into arts listings or even shrewd enough to access on-line Malaysian arts reviewers, recently, will have seen Kamal as part of 15 Malaysia.

15 Malaysia was a project consisting of a series of 15 short films, concerning the realities, and some fantasies, of life in Malaysia. Kamal’s entry – LUMPUR (mud), is about, strangely enough, mud, or rather what it comprises of. This short film explores people’s association with land, ownership, water and earth, leaving the audience pondering these subjects.

‘Lumpur’ saw Kamal as film director, editor, musician and composer, along with the legendary Pete Teo as overall producer.
Music from ‘LUMPUR’ - Ruang Kosong Remix, containing sounds taken from soil and water, add an ‘organic’ element to the soundtrack, and appears on the CD The Space Gambus Experiment.

Out of the canon of Kamal Sabran’s musical enterprises, this CD offers what may be his most accessible compositions, with a more direct focus on instrumental melodies, intertwined with electronic abstract resonance. Certainly, with this innovative CD, Kamal has moved, ever so slightly, away from the more distinctly avant-garde Terry Riley, or, perhaps Max Neuhaus inspired sound experiments he is known for - towards a more rounded sound imagery, infinitely more palatable for the general, lay public, as well as proving stimulating for the discerning music lover.

Senses of Malaysia July 2009

New Malaysian Essays 2

Hopefully coming to a bookshop near you soon - my essay; Colourful Language

Rainbow Warrior

Rainbow Warrior
An exhibition of work by Rafiee Abdul Ghani,
Galerie Chandan, Bukit Damansara 1-26 June 2009

When the Mother Earth is sick and the animals dying there will come a tribe of peoples from all cultures, who believe in deeds, not words, and they will restore the Mother Earth to her former beauty. This Tribe will be called, the Warriors of the rainbow. Ancient Hopi prophesy.


The above text is taken from an ancient North American Hopi Indian belief. Later, the essence and meaning of that text was incorporated into William Willoya and Vinson Brown’s book Warriors of the Rainbow (1962). It is from that book that the environmentalist group - Greenpeace, borrowed the concept to give name to their first fishing vessel - Rainbow Warrior, sunk by agents of the French government in 1985. It is now the title of Rafiee Abdul Ghani’s exhibition at Bukit Damansara.

There is much to connect the increasingly organic work of the artist Rafiee Abdul Ghani to those stalwart concepts held aloft by Greenpeace and other environmentalist groups. They include the re-greening of the planet, saving threatened flora and fauna, a profound love of nature and an intrinsic belief in the preservation of our environment.

Since Rafiee Abdul Ghani’s early works - Ingatan dari Gunung (Memory of Mountains -1985) and Green Park 4 (1993), an insightful care and concern for nature’s milieu has been self evident within the artist’s works.

A thread of quiet concern links Rafiee’s entire image making, from the seeming abstract (Ingatan dari Gunung – 1985), to the expressionistic (Purple Flowers – 1997) and through to the predominantly figurative, with expressionistic abstract overtones (Yellow Wind Coming - 2008).

It is a concern for nature, our planet, and, like a Rainbow Warrior of legend, Rafiee is intent upon giving a warning regarding man’s footprint on the planet, while also revealing the intense beauty of the world as seen through his eyes.

Over the last few years the artist has been seen searching for a method of developing figurative work, within the context of an expressionistic framework. Man, both as a concept and a reality, has been increasingly portrayed as an integral nexus for the artist’s depictions of nature, recollection and innocence.

Certainly innocence, rather than naiveté, has pervaded Rafiee’s works over the past two decades. With his nuanced painterly sophistication, the artist currently presents the perfect symbol for innocence and love – the purity of the child.

In the artist’s works, presented at Galerie Chandan, we encounter Ali’s Wonderland 1, an obvious play on Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Here we see a young boy (Ali/Rafiee) wading through a life beset with nature, imaginings, flowers, butterflies, planes and bombs. It is an age of communication, but the letters remain sealed, it is an age of beauty and of butterflies as he luxuriates on the beach of time and timelessness, stretching, wondering, and pondering. Sand pulls waters to him as he is weighed by the heaviness of being, kneels and rests his head on sand, the bright sun hot on his young shoulders.

Alternately the twin fascinations of melancholia and listlessness pose the boy, as he kneels, deep in innocent thought, beside reflections of eternal nature, or with grim determination stretches, climbing to pluck jasmine flowers, which, like his future, are just beyond his reach.

The growing awareness of his Jungian symbolic internal world is all that separates the boy from the nature which surrounds him. His moodiness, his insular thought-filled reality ultimately cuts the boy off from the lush, vibrant world around him.

Ever in thought he inhabits the hanging gardens, observes geese, glares at the sun or sits enveloped in the glow of a peach moon. At times, compelled by his inherent cheekiness, the boy rests one foot on a red plastic chair and waves out to sea, growing to become aware of his gesture and its double meaning.

Thoughtful adults sit surrounded by fireflies and butterflies, as if caught in reveries by Odilon Redon (Firefly Beach – 2008), or smile towards the viewer unaware of the solemn child melding into an array of butterflies and Hockneyesque imagery (The Piano Beach – 2009).

In Whales in the Sky (2009) to some extent we are back within the realm of the Ali’s Wonderland 1, only in the foreground leans a stylised young woman, wiping a tear from her eye, she leans as if leaving, or resting from some sorrow which threatened to overwhelm her, but at the moment of painting had not succumbed yet. In the mid-ground drifts painterly paraphernalia of butterflies, flowers, fish and a variety of objects which pull the viewers eye through to the child, standing, gazing to off canvas left (viewers left).

In the background blue whales swim in lighter blue skies, a brown aeroplane is sighted against a white backdrop. The sadness and anxiety of the painting reveals a last gasp, the moment before all is lost, before the youth of the boy is lost forever, and the penultimate moment before the ultimate extinction of the whales, forests and finally us.

Is the boy the Rainbow Warrior, who is finally preparing for battle as he gazes off canvas, is his stance that of the martial arts horse, a position of strength from which he will spring ready to save the day, and the planet. The soft despair of the woman is countered by the bold strength of the boy, hand clasping wrist. We shall never know, for the exhibition poses questions rather than provides answers, it is for us to search within our sensibilities and reconcile ourselves to what the artist Rafiee Abdul Ghani is saying through his work.

Somewhere, at the back of my mind, unbidden, two tunes danced through my consciousness as I viewed these images produced by Rafiee Abdul Ghani. There was, quite obviously you might think - Don’t Kill the Whale, by the aging British progressive rock band Yes, replete with Jon Anderson’s distinctive vocals, and the less obvious Seaside Woman by Paul McCartney’s band Wings. Why Seaside Woman, because, at times, while viewing Rafiee’s images, I could see the deft hand of the Argentine cartoonist and animator Oscar Grillo, and his flamboyantly coloured animations for both Seaside Woman (1980) and the Kia-Ora adverts (1981).

Boldly Going.....................

I was never what you might call a ‘Trekkie’; I just enjoyed watching Star Trek, the TV series, then the Next Generation et al.

I knew someone who was a Trekkie, they used to go to conventions in the UK, dress the part, learn Klingon etcetera. From them I learned what a ‘blooper’ was, which episodes had never been shown on British TV and countless other really quite pointless facts. But that’s in the past.

Taking a leaf out of the new film – Star Trek, I’m going to pretend, just for a moment, that 3 decades have not gone by, and that I am in my late twenties – for it is quite unseemly for a man at my time of life to have such enthusiasm over a popularist film, much less over one which, once again, drags that old 1960s media franchise cliché, Star Trek, out of its now dog-eared and be-cobwebbed box, dusts it off and re-presents it as new.

Watching J.J.Abrams latest Star Trek film I found myself buffeted by emotions, no doubt intended by the film makers, and on a roller coaster of nostalgia and blissful wilful suspension of disbelief. For this film not only welcomes new viewers with the brave new, young, cast, but has so many points of contact for Star Trek nostalgia buffs too.

We had Star Trek, the original NBC series, from 1966 to 1969 and a host of others since, including an animated series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise. Now Star Trek goes, not back to the future, but forward to the past.
The new film gives an account of how the original crew – James T Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quito), Dr ‘Bones’ Mc Coy (Karl Urban), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Scotty (Simon Pegg), Sulu (John Cho) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin) all met and served upon USS (Star Ship) Enterprise.

Relationships are explored, especially that between Kirk and Spock, briefly, and the characters are put through a protracted team building exercise called - save earth, which happily they do. It’s the usual sub-genre SCI FI/Western plot, goodies, baddies – this time the Romulans, goodies beat baddies and a suitable crescendo ensues leaving us wanting more.

And I for one did want more. The two hours something just seemed to wiz by on warp speed, leaving me a little reluctant to leave the cinema, just in case it was an interval and not the end of the film.

The film is extraordinarily well done. Gone are the shaky sets, over acting, lurid colours and clichéd monsters, admittedly the film does rely heavily on CGI and computer wizardry but what self respecting modern SCI FI film doesn’t. It all seems to blend very well together to assist the aforementioned willing suspension of disbelief.

Finally someone decided to make a real Star Trek film. Maybe it had to wait until the deaths of both Gene Roddenberry (1991) (Star Trek creator) and his wife Majel B Roddenberry (2008), (Nurse Chapel in the original TV series) and some of the original cast before the franchise could move in a different direction.

A make-over was certainly on the cards for this very popular series of films. In the same vein a TV make-over had worked for Dr Who, and in films - Star Wars, Batman, and Spiderman, it almost worked for The Hulk too.

It is with excitement and a little disappointment that I await the next Star Trek film - excitement to see how the next film is handled by the film makers, and disappointment at having to wait for, at the very least, one more year before that happens.

Expat Magazine May 2009

Languorous Papan

The languorous morning was bright and clear. A constant sun warmed through an idyllic blue sky as I journeyed towards Lumut, in Perak; detouring through Pusing to the patently somnolent town of Papan.

I had been invited to view the display honouring Papan’s most famous daughter Sybil Kathigasu, nurse and resistance warrior against the Second World War Japanese invasion. Its founder, Law Siak Hong, has created a space within Sybil’s old surgery for historical narratives to grow, and memories to linger.

Arriving early, I took a slow drive through the town to witness, for myself, its balmy, soothing atmosphere.

Papan, once a home for Mandailing peoples, was named for the river (Sungei Papan) and from the area’s lumber produce. Gradually it grew into existence during the early 1800s, but was ravaged by fire a century later. Papan, one of the many Kinta Valley tin mining towns, began a slow decline from that fire and a decrease in tin production until today, where it exists as a shell of its former self.

Today the town of Papan lies dormant, awaiting that spark which will cause it to erupt and return to its former splendour. Yet in its dormancy Papan exudes peace, serenity, calm and is, in a way, stately too. The town’s obvious serenity and calmness is reflected throughout Hong’s spatial creation to honour Sybil.

Within the calming blue-washed walls, Hong’s collection is not just a by-product of nostalgic romance but a full-on love affair with artistic spatial creation and its nuances, creating a lulling tranquillity out of an organic collection.

Inside the presenting display room, curiously blue/green metal electric fans nestle with cabinets containing sparkling glassware. Japanese Malayan currency is firmly held by an Art Deco ink stand abutting an enamelled bowl.

Towards the rear of the display, just before the visitor is enticed into the lush garden, an ancient bicycle rests on its stand, awaiting the rider who is, momentarily, indisposed.

Hong’s poignant creation of display space concurrences and alliances refutes traditional pigeon –holed museology, where items are catalogued until their demise, then tagged and bagged and buried.

Instead, Hong’s correlation of objects better resembles contemporary art installations, where visitors are subsumed into the experience - as much part of the overall work, as are the items themselves.

For this innovative collection draws upon a spontaneous creation of narratives, and storied sub-texts, facilitated through visitor interaction using individual perspectives and inspiring object juxtaposition.

Being neither a re-creation of the war-time clinic, nor a static museum of staid objects Hong, instead, has created an organic approach to his display, presenting none of the usual gallery clues as to nomenclature or single dominant, imposing, narrative. Within the space’s ambience, it is for the visitor to interact with the items and together create narratives.

Eventually, Hong’s antique cornucopia spills over into a sublimely tranquil oasis of green whose siren call could be mistaken for that of visiting birds. Where the internal display remains ultimately bounded by the form of the structural walls, outside there are no such boundaries and the visitor’s glance is able to trace the line of objects, through foliage and away to gaze at beckoning hills.

It was with more than a little sadness, that I had to eventually draw myself away from the garden, the building and the town.

With very little encouragement I could have lain behind one of the outside bedroom walls, peering though aged wooden shutters at one of the most restful places I have visited – a dreaming lotus eater.

Sybil Kathigasu’s Clinic, the memorial display, gardens and restfulness maybe accessed through Law Siak Hong, at siakhongstudio@yahoo.com.

Gopeng preserving its heritage

The tiny, yet historic, Perak town of Gopeng, is easily bypassed. Travellers speed down the highway, stopping, briefly, at tolls, then race onwards to the North. Other travellers, not so concerned with haste, drive cautiously through the main Gopeng thoroughfare, unaware of streets and avenues spreading inward towards the forest and back in time to its own heritage.

Lying dormant within Perak’s silvery Kinta Valley, Gopeng is a town awakening from a sleepy recent past. Historically it has variously been a ‘tin’ town and a ‘rubber’ town, but is now girding itself to move into being a tourist town.

Uniquely standing at the Cameron Highland foothills, and within easy reach of Ipoh to the north, Gopeng is perfectly situated to appeal to vacationers seeking sumptuous rivers (ideal for white water rafting) and cooling rainforest resorts. It is a wonderful starting point for adventure and eco-tourism, and for the traveller wishing to visit the pungently magnificent rafflesia flowers.

The growth in enthusiasm for adventure holidays, in and around the area, has caused Gopeng to reappraise itself, and in so doing has realised that it is a town which has much to offer, not just within the realm of adventure and eco-tourism, but of its own heritage too.

Gopeng has a recorded history of at least one hundred and fifty years, shared by Malays, local Semai tribes people, Rawa and Mandailing from Sumatra, Chinese from southern China and Indians from their Tamil homelands. It is this mixture of divers peoples which makes Gopeng town distinctive, and gives it such a rich history.

It is a history which at all costs is worth preserving. One entrepreneurial former son of Gopeng, Bernard Yaw, teamed up with local historian, S.K.Phang, to do just that, by creating a centre to display some of that exceptional history and have, in turn, constructed a springboard for further historical research into the town.

The centre’s opening was planned to co-inside with World Heritage Day (18th April), and was the only venue in Malaysia where Malaysians, and foreign visitors could get together to celebrate, with the rest of the world, the crucial act of heritage conservation.

Heeding the call for conservation and preservation from organisations like UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), a few heritage societies have sprung up in Malaysia. Law Siak Hong presides over the Perak Heritage Society which had an interest in the birthing of the new Gopeng History centre, and he had helped bring Papan, the home and clinic of Sybil Kathigasu, back to life as a museum dedicated to her and her Second World War work.

Together, the interested parties have enabled the general public to share in Gopeng’s history. Visitors may now mull over antique watches, historic currency, latex mangles and tin weighing machines. Thanks to people like Bernard Yaw, S.K.Phang and Law Siak Hong, Gopeng’s past is being preserved for future generations to further understand their own histories. The Gopeng History Centre now provides a focus for further heritage preservation and conservation, and a stop off point for visiting adventure and eco-tourists.

Outside the heritage centre, a marquee had been constructed to keep the heat off guests for the opening event. But more poignantly, on the road adjacent to the marquee, stood a man who had been selling ice cream from his wooden cart, for over thirty years. He, his cart and the bell he has used to summon customers for decades, were a fitting tribute both to World Heritage Day, to those who put in the effort and cared enough to bring the concept of heritage to Gopeng, and to the new history centre.

We the Undersigned - in Off the Edge April 2009

Darkness

The Yin Yang symbol proposes that in every light there resides a fleck of darkness, and in every dark a fleck of light. Subconscious reveals consciousness and from the night, day.

It is inevitable that we should consider the two, lightness and darkness, inextricably entwined, latter born of the former, each linked, for eternity, in bonds of the other.

It is from mysterious obsidian shadows that Rembrandt’s philosopher becomes enlightened, a tangled helix staircase revealed in all its wooden glory; three translucent brides evolving from Jan Toorop’s symbolic gloom, which of the light and which the sinister.

There is a paradigm observed in the perpetual birthing of Moore's rotundity, Pablo's Classicism - the inevitable bragging chiaroscuro, moulding perception and giving pseudo-reality to Trompe L'Oeil faux, marred only by careless brush stroke.

It is the texture from which the sheen Pop Artist Allen Jones’ high heeled boots brazen a reflection, it is the absence of dark illuminating Ad Reinhardt’s, Zen abstract, black squares canvases, making visible the covert as sight adjusts to nuanced pigment, subtly discerning tone from tone, less dark from darkness.

It is the imaginary darkness of the dark Knight, the glint caught in the eye of all consuming madness which ties Dali to the clown prince, and the night watch’s lantern to that of Kyle Rayner’s darkest night.

Darkness and its opposition, though no longer opposite but sliding, melding, each bred of the other, depth, form, rolling curves revealing and maskings in their dexterity, for eternal darkness remains fecund, perpetually pregnant with its other.

It is the darkness of malaise, the o'er encompassing blanket of shadow from which phoenix hope springs - brother sun and sister moon - there buried in the other, the one, perpetually reaching for its nemesis, hand in fading hand.