The 106th Story

Young Star
The 106th Story (Do-It-Yourself Store)
SLEEPWALKING By Yason Banal
Friday, December 5, 2008


Since 2001, Masahiro Wada has been director of the Tokyo artist-run-space HOMEBASE. Recent exhibitions in Japan include CUL-PORT, Tokyo Art Center and AIT, as well as the Third Guangzhou Triennial at the Guangdong Museum of Art in China.Masahiro Wada’s Stories makes use of the radio drama as part of his installation work. The original script, which was written and recorded in Japanese, was then translated to English using a web translation software. For these mistranslated, deconstructed and seemingly nonsensical stories, Masahiro Wada creates an invisible yet memorable sculpture, fictions that seem erroneous in syntax but nevertheless palpable in everyday life: much like real-life drama, or static on the radio.

***

It completed recently, and it boasts of the best floor space in this position region, and it is opposite with there no conversation for gay this and five minutes or more and sits also in the coffee multiple store in a huge do-it-yourself store. A small round table is placed and the coffee cup that has already emptied is put with 2 and the ashtray.

"Really take it ..tomorrow.. ..China... "

The husband is still face down and is fiddling with Cachacacha and the cellular phone.

Did not it hear, "It mailed and did to whom" it be from when? Even the thought thing becomes silly. It did not want to be mortifying and to think about the regretted thing for the lazy wife of not putting the nature on the husband who has become it.

Noriko took out carrying, and started the check on mail. It is separately an insinuation to the husband who is fiddling with carrying though the thing that important mail has not come to carry of I etc. were understood.

｢Ah. It goes really. Shanghai｣

The husband returned it without source natures with the face down. Is the thing that I watch mail tentatively anxious? The visited thing doesn't separately have this 2?3 year by the husband though Noriko was a little glad who the other party is either.

｢..referring.. ｰDo not it go by the business trip and do not it disregard t?｣"How much do you go?"

"Then, is not baseball with Kenft promised impossibility?"

It seems not to be understood whether to hear or not to exist and has begun to enter the husband who keeps seeing a portable screen with feelings Wawa to get irritated gradually as usual. In reality｢It sleeps in the Tema sit cross-legged tendon. It turns and the E-mailing point in the under when. Scamp it. Minimum manners when speaking with the person can be done, and because the married couple very much, it is executive job,, and ..encounter.. ? in Tema Cai Co. you see. When talking with the person, had not you learnt it from Babaa and Gegei of the miser of Tema that saw person's eyes?｣The barrage of a glance that it frightens it, is the colder might be received from a guest and a clerk near by ten people who is sipping coffee with carefree abandon in this coffee chain, and, according to circumstances, there be a thing that the clerk goes to call the guard member, too, if such a thing is done though it is a place where it wants to disperse the Steller's sea lion, and to throw out to one's heart's content by the coffee cup and the ashtray with an empty it is in the presence. And, from neat glasses to sit on the next｢When the bride scares only bean jam, the married couple's conversation is ..nature.. ..lost... Ccc. ｣It might be a disgrace sneer and be a thrown thing. In addition, this fellow will only have to be straightening only the appearance in the impact always suitably in the back because he is unpalatable when cutting though the fear husband keeps up the appearance, and this fellow will comfort it momentarily. The appearance would say, and run, and more and more conversations as the married couple were lost, and the sense of crisis of connecting with more and more disfunctional families finally ran at high speed in Noriko's head. When it seems to explode, becoming it feelings are subdued with a jerk, and a violent word that goes out of the mouth is swallowed, the word gotten off below begins to shake my right leg that Noriko is uniting naturally.

｢Is it about four days?The business trip｣

The husband declared while groping the cigarette on the table by the right hand. with stared at the cellular phone as usual

"Then, promise of Kenft after all. "

It violently took it out again of the fact that ..Noriko.. handbag of my carrying
saying.
Portable sound
Timing often thought by my carrying and thought that something was saved very
much at the beginning by the kite by business.

｢Yes is done. ･･･ Oh, Kenft?It has already come back from the school. ｣

The husband finished the transmission of mail at last, looked up, and was turning sea anemone's the second mouth to Noriko while igniting the cigarette.

｢Yes. ･･･ Yes. ･･･ Yes. Aspect of ..encounter.. ｰ. . Did you get it ..what..?｣
...decrease.. ｰ. From who?｣｢Ar aspect and. Yes. ｰ. Good sleep. ｣｢Do you return the elder brother?Yes. What?Do you pretend outside?Is .. It is so. Is Kenft?Getting and cake eating point. Present. Aspect of ..encounter.. ｰ. Good sleep. Yes. Because papa and the mama also ..Mousg.. return. Yes. Then, the sleep food. Yes. ｣

"Is Its?"

｢It eating what as for the cake of the present gotten in Christmas party. ..outside pretense.. . when ..elder brother.. .... hearing it. Is .. ｣

｢Is it so?. Is it pretense?｣
"The present is from Yumi. ""He tidy ..reward.. ..whether it was possible to say.."

Husband's face is laughing.
Even if a twin sea anemone that grew from the potato took food, the face seemed to move the Pacpac mouth.

The shake of the right leg had been installed a little more.
Noriko quite thought that it was able still to connect with this husband because there were sons. How on earth did we become it if it was this, and there were no sons?There are a lot of thought things recently.

Portable sound

｢Yes is done. Ah so. It asks suitably while I am not because I Mr./Ms. Yamada's matter to Tanuma though I am gone on the fifth the fourth from tomorrow by the business trip. Ah so. Yes. Yes. It has understood. Does the matter reach though E-mailed now?So. So. Yes ･･･｣

When it was understood to have sent E-mail that sold the face down hard to the subordinate in the company, Noriko felt relieved a little. It thought a little when saying as the business trip was an excuse for the husband to go on a trip somewhere with the mistress, and the reason for the immorality is to tell the truth that it was convinced that the other party who was doing in E-mail and the company that always the face down and took it. Perhaps, the husband will have the person who seems to be the mistress. There are some evidences and reasons that can be proven for this, and the intuition of the wife who cultivated it for 12 years works, too.
The delusion of sending mail of my.. presence to the mistresses always continued for a long time for these 2.3 years. Therefore, the mail that some husbands had been seriously striking thought that I was liberated from blind disgust where husband's cellular phone was felt a little in the thing that it was able to be confirmed that there was E-mail in work, too.

The husband hung up the telephone and lit a cigarette. Noriko also took out my cigarette of the handbag and the fire was set fire. The spoken thing did not float at all. It thought only of child's thing and it did not float though I wanted to do other some conversations.

The husband started and and started the cellular phone again.

｢Let's already go. Kenft and the elder brother are waiting. ｣

Noriko left the seat stubbing out a cigarette.

"Ah"

The husband tightened the cap of the cellular phone.

"That and my paper bag Mo"

Noriko said so, had the paper bag with which the home kit of the thing and the present for children were blocked in the hand, and went out of the coffee place previously. It completely gave the day when going out outside the building. It shines on at constant intervals of a huge parking lot and the light of the halogen light of O cooking stove color is ..innumerable car.. ..coming to the surface... The thing splendidly decorated surrounds the entire building when looking up at this huge do-it-yourself store from the stopped car. The do-it-yourself store shone on about one mono-vicinity with brightness.

Watching Deleted Scenes

Young Star
Watching Deleted Scenes
Sleepwalking by Yason Banal
November 28, Friday



Heman Chong is inspired by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky, Stanislaw Lem, J.G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Michel Houellebecq, Thomas More, Haruki Murakami and countless other science fiction writers. His art practice involves an investigation into the philosophies, reasons and methods of individuals and communities imagining the future. Charged with a conceptual drive, this research is then adapted into objects, images, installations, situations or texts. The artist represented Singapore at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. He has collectively written a science fiction novel entitled "PHILIP" with 7 other collaborators, published by Project Press in 2006. Heman Chong works with Vitamin Creative Space (Beijing/Guangzhou).

***

When I began the series of collages, Deleted Scenes, I had in mind, a process that reflected something completely violent on a seriously extensive level. I have been researching for 2 years now, this topic of the representation of imposed solitude, where an individual is deliberately taken out of society, and a huge portion of it deals with the idea of being imprisoned by a authoritarian body. This has always been a thorn in my side for a long time, as we are surrounded by many reports, especially in South-East Asia where we know for a fact that people are being put away for their political beliefs.


Please don't get the wrong impression that I am some sort of a political crusader, making art as political statements. On the contrary, I am an escapist. I have never involved myself directly in any form of protest, neither am I part of any political party or NGO. I stand alone. As an artist. And my work is political (I believe that all work is political, whether you label it that or not).


My position as an artist is informed by the fact that I am neither the beginning nor the end of anything. I find it really difficult to accept art that speaks of itself as new or innovative. For me, its such an impossibility. To state that it came from nowhere, plucked out of the clouds. I reject this notion.


This position of an escapist interests me much more than being active in politics. I have always been drawn to characters in narrative who exist outside of the active arena of a situation rather than the main heroes. People who have no strings attached to anything, who are capable of saying anything they like and want without having to justify themselves to any side or form or shape. Loose cannons, we call them.


To make the work, I begin by taking photographs with my camera phone. As I have my phone with me at all times, these photographs are of anything and everything. There is no selection process involved when selecting what to capture. Buildings, plants, people having sex in clubs, people crossing a street, people eating in a cafe. Mostly I make the photos while spending time with my wife, hanging around, doing nothing on a warm tropical afternoon.


Then these photographs are sent to the cheapest photo lab in Singapore to be processed. It is really important that they are produced in a shop where other images from the general public are being processed. It means that the photograph in this instance has the same status as an ordinary snapshot by the man on the street, without any kind of artistic consciousness to it. Just memories. Nothing else. Nothing elite or high-brow about it.


The photographs are ready. They're 4 by 6 inches each, what we call 4R size. The most common size for snaps. I usually print up to about 100 to 200 prints at one time. I bring them home. I take a pen knife and cut a rectangle out of the center of the photograph, leaving a 1 cm border all around.


What remains is a curious little object, resembling a frame without a picture but which is a picture in itself. You immediately develop this sense of loss when you look at the sad bastard.


I remember years ago, when Singapore was still pretty anal about censoring pictures of naked bodies in magazines, I would find missing pages in magazines (mostly from European magazines like Dazed & Confused and The Face) you find off the shelves and wonder what these images are. It represents a lost idea, floating around, being horribly de-contextualized from its mothership.


I digress. This project is NOT about censorship.


Imagine being imprisoned. For a long, long time. So long that you don't even remember the face of your mother. That is what this work is about. The fragility of images. You try every morning to remember the outline of her face, the shape of her nose, the softness of her lips. But you get nothing out of this except for something that resembles a Josef Albers painting.


Now that is violent.


I haven't made a photograph in years. I just can't. I can't bring myself to bring into this world another image when we're already surrounded by so many. And so many that are so senseless. Even the important ones.


We are confronted everyday with a massive amount of images through the internet. Google something and you can instantaneously get an image of it. We view our friend's lives through their snaps on Facebook. We are bombarded with visions of the past, the present and the future, all on that 12 inch laptop. It de-sensitizes us to the power of images : as rare objectified reflections of the human condition. What we have today is just fluff, lint from the neither world of endless snapshots of banal minutes we spend drinking coffee at Starbucks.


So this is the result of my problematic relationship with photography. To make them and to immediately erase them. And to forget. Just like the man in the cell, waiting, indefinitely for the day he sees the sky again, to experience rain on his face.