KAIDIE TRANS-MIGRATING? 6
Art time, life time, passing time. Teh-Ching Hsieh with Kaidie, 20 June 2012, Hayward Lecture Theatre, Nondon.
On 20 June 2012 Wednesday, Kaidie runs into one of her forerunners, the legendary Taiwanese-American performance artist Teh-Ching Hsieh at the Wide Open School, Hayward Gallery, Nondon. Hsieh’s seminal durational performances, in particular One Year Performance (Outdoor Piece, 1982-1982), has been guiding Kaidie in her running about, 30 years on (2009-2012), not to mention that, before that, before Kaidie was Kaidie, Hsieh’s quiet but powerful works have been inspiring her in her journeys. As Kaidie prepares to run further, for the last time, in the final 80 days of her life, to have met Hsieh, face to face, eye to eye (Hsieh, like Kaidie, is not big, built like an endurance runner), has served as an important breath of life. With that, she carries on with her journeys (Photograph of Kaidie with Hsieh taken by another ‘Kai’, called Kai Nien, [unrelated]).
Our Bras Basah Station permanent public art work post #4: 2 RE-PRESENTATIONS
Above: A trailer of the 29-minute video cycle; below: a re-presentation of Desyphus in-action on the site in Singapore, by wacky Singapore filmmaker Chew Tze Chuan. As we have not seen the work ourselves, do upload it if you run into it, and tag it ‘bbs’!
AN EXPERIMENT-WITHIN-AN-EXPERIMENT-WITHIN-AN-EXPERIMENT: TEST RAT / GUINEA PIG / FAT CAT / BROWN COW
Values in Life
* WHAT: I am opening myself to science – I am willing to be a test rat for new medicines and any other related experiments in the field/name of science.
* HOW: Scans, psychology tests, new medicines, etc. As I have no thing to lose, and, for all we know, Kaidie might even find the, The, THE Meaning Of Life 3.0! In which case, Kaidie’s endeavour (and this travel blog) can be shut down way before 09.09.2012 as planned!! Hence I am up for any thing. Try me.
* WHY:
1. As an experiment myself, I am keen to undertake other people’s experiments as well. And if we wish to be grand about this (for Kaidie’s coming into being is as grand as it is pathetic), life – yes yours too, darling – is an experiment. I like experimenting with being an experiment-within-experiment-within-an-experiment (just as I enjoy trips-within-a-trip-within-a-trip).
2. Having already been a cockroach, hamster, a sponge, a human being and a cheap Swiss chocolate bar in my short life, it would be meaningful now to be a guinea pig, fat cat or brown cow.
3. Perhaps, if I am lucky, I may undergo yet other transformations with some of these tests! Is a pseudo-Orlan Feminist deformity sexy? Or a quasi-Stelarc cyborgian appendage oh-so-macho? Naah, neither, no thanks. That is not quite the territory that Kaidie the Turdlifer likes to tread. Instead, she much prefers to become a brilliant Wim Delvoye product – a lovely warm piece of turd at the end of an elaborate scheme.
4. Being a make-believe being that straddles between the real and the imaginary, I would be keen to see how yet other artificial means can push my mind and body. So ‘high risk’ tests are welcome!
5. By offering myself to Science, I would be able to save other animals from being subjected to cruel scientific experiments for our selfish benefit. Save the cuddly rats! Save the cute panda bears! Save the whales! Save the tickworms! Save the cockroaches!
6. My kind contribution to man kind (sic) (if mankind deserves to receive contributions [sic]) and its quest for longevity /immortality (if these are perceived as positive goals?).
DAY 54: RE-STARTING NONDON, AGAIN. A TASTE OF NONDON TAP WATER INSTANTLY TRANSPORTS ME BACK TO THIS REALITY.
Shall we sit on this, or chew it?
A taste of Nondon tap water, and being just an other anonymous ‘other’ in a large city of others, tells me that I am back in this reality, in Nondon.
Happy to be away and enjoying an other city when I am away, happy to be home when I am home.
Usual for new or ‘new’ beginnings, I had a haircut. I had promised to not cut my hair for the duration of my life. So I have, and haven’t – alright I have HALF-KEPT my promise. Or half-broken it (Is a glass half empty of half full? Is a mixed-raced kid a ‘half’ or a ‘double’ in Japan??) I tried. I combed my fringe to the left, right, back, front, jedw**d style, amy whinehows style, and zz top style, covering my eyes, my brains, my nostrils. It just doesn’t quite ‘work’. After my easy bus dropped me at Faker Street, near the famous Museum of Fakes where Kaidie will one day be (if she cannot get a stool next to Jeremy’s auto-icon), I went straight to the local butcher, borrowed his (are there any women butcher in Nondon?) large knife, put my head on the chopping board, and chopped off the front bit. Then, I packed the hair that dropped to the floor and fed them to the pigeons in Frafalgar Square. Though already obese due to nonstop feeding by ‘kind’ Nondon tourists, they gobbled up my hair; I can see some of which sticking out between their teeth. Alas, my short absence from Nondon has made me forget that it is illegal to feed these winged rats. The cops tried to handcuffed me but fortunately the Save The Pigeons people saved me. They believed that I was a pigeon with my new haircut.
PS 1:
A quick update – and this goes to show clearly that I DO KEEP MY PROMISES. I had promised to run 155.0km to as a gesture to compensate the 1550km Nondon-Zurich-Nondon flight on 19 January. Since then, I had acted according to Rainold and his several terrific advice, by wearing comfortable cloths, and tried my best to feel positive emotions. I also gave myself no pressure, only pleasure. With the positive emotions and pleasures, I have covered more than 120km so far. I am currently trying to tabulate my results and will update you soon. So, I will say what I have said before, but I will say it again – WATCH THIS SPACE!
PS 2:
THANKS SO MUCH RAINOLD! I will have to come back to you to ask you how I could ‘be myself’ and ‘be a unique individual’, as I have been born with nothing. How could I be, then? I am rather puzzled and need some more advice on this, if you will!
DAY 28: THRILLS AND SPILLS OF BEING A SPONGE… WHAT CAN I BE NEXT?? WRITE IN NOW!
DISADVANTAGES:
1) Children run away from me and scream ‘Sponge! Run!’ I suppose that at 157m, I am slightly too large, though I do no ‘scary’ features whatsoever, merely spongy bits (see close up below).
2) Being so large, it is impossible for me to escape anybody’s attention. When I went to the party at NYE, I was trying to sneak in and was caught, even though it is easy for me to change my form and squeeze in. So I had to pay the entrance fees.
3) Some people are mistaken. I have had to explain that it is not that I am being immodest. It is just that my square pants are the same exact shade as my skin tone (#ff02d8). I am beginning to understand the fashion decisions of Clark, Bob and Lady.
4) It is nearly impossible to move about with this body, and hard to do anything else really, given that I have no limbs, though much life. My ‘walk’ from Pings Pross down South to Elephant and Castle would have taken longer than [ Joyce’s + Homer’s Odyessies] X [psychonaut Orlando’s 400 years of existence] X [Sisyphus’ weightlifting sessions up/down the hill] combined. Fortunately, I have my M&M plugin kicking in, urging me to be focused and overcome my physical weakness. Also, the cops were charming and chivalrous, and blocked off the road for 6 hours for me to allow me to make a crossing.
Close up of me in my square pants (not to scale).
5) At 00:00hrs 1 January 2010.
Boy: Happy new year! How are things?
Me: Good, just soaking things in you know. Happy new year to you too.
Then I was used to wipe up somebody’s puke.
I wanted to kick him at where it hurts, but with no limbs, I could not do that. So I suffocated him to death. Since it was self-defence, and given the festive cheers, I was let off.
6) I continued to party and soaked in the festive season alright – slightly too much, perhaps. I got quite heavy and soggy, making my motion even more difficult. So I stood in the open for some air, hoping to get dried out. Then it began to snow, so I got even heavier. I wanted to buy a hairdryer, not for hair that I haven’t got to speak of, but to dry my skin off. However, all Currys were closed.
7) Stupid tourists also keep stopping me to take pictures of me. Perhaps I am on Flickr or Youtube? Fearing more unwanted attention I did not attend the New Year Parade at Piccadily – I wanted to be there as an audience, but in my current impressive physical appearance, I was afraid that they might take me as a float to parade down the streets.
8. With no limbs, I cannot run at Regents Fark.
9) With no limbs, I cannot run on the treadmill.
10) With no limbs, I cannot run. Nor play chess or scratch an itch.
11) I cannot take a shower, for my body shape and weight will be modified, and all my curves at the right places will disappear.
ADVANTAGE:
1) As a sponge, I can wash dishes, as sponges do, and I suppose, given my all-rounded talent, I should excel in it. However, genderless as I am currently (have you heard of a sexed sponge??), I am a post-post-feminist. Surely a banal activity as washes dishes is below me. I just transfer food straight into my mouth – no dishes needed.
CONCLUSION:
I suppose my days as a sponge are numbered, also now that the party’s over and we are entering the full shebang called ‘daily life’, again, for the next 300+ days. But Kaidie holds no regret for anything she does whatsoever – every experience is a lesson learnt.
So, WHAT PHYSICAL FORMATION DO YOU SUGGEST THAT I BECOME NEXT, MY DEAR READERS???? WRITE IN NOW, GIVE ME SOME LIFE OPTIONS! There was a suggestion:
1) 29 December 2009: Vassili’s suggestion (via Facebook) become water. Possible – how’s Nondon tap water?
2) YOUR SUGGESTION HERE!
DAY 19: KAIDIE HAS SHAPESHIFTED TO A 157m SPONGE SO AS TO BETTER SOAK UP THE FESTIVE ATMOSPHERE.
How are you enjoying the festivities, my Dear Readers?
This morning I took a hard look at myself at the mirror. I quite like my current formation as a hamster – I quite enjoyed being a cockroach as well, both of which are fabulous for going undercover, but I am also exhausted of only being vertically-challenged all the time. (For instance, what in gods’ names gives short men the right to chat up short women as if they are godsends, as if I should be ever so grateful for meeting someone of a physical formation [sic] that I could crush with the tip of my little toe?! Kaidie is a 3rdlifer, for chrissake, and is adamantly against smalltownprovincial incest, inbreeding and any sort of breeding. Have you forgotten that Kaidie is a perfectly globalised cosmopolitan of metropolitan Nondon? Get out of my way shorties, let Kaidie mingle with all the other species, formations, forms, lifeforms and non-life forms out there.)
So, what should I become next? I pondered for a while… When in Rome, surely I should do as the Romans do. When in Nondon, surely I should do as Nondeners do. What better way to soak up the atmosphere than to be a sponge! But what size should I go for? A 1.57m kitchen sponge does not quite make a strong enough visual presence as a 157m one. So voila, I’ve made the transition. In order not to confuse you, my Dear Reader, for my continually refreshing renewals, renovations and reinventions, I created a diagramme for your kind reference. (My hamster formation is a few pixels, right at the left side of the diagramme, actually, can you spot it? ) As you can see, I have coloured myself in my favourite pink to try to add some neon glamour to the festive occasion. In addition, in order not to commit the frequent superhero fashion faux pas, I have dyed my square pants the same #ff02d8 shade as the rest of my body. Don’t you think this is a most fabulous getup for me to visit Frafalgar Square, the Nondon-I and the New Year’s Day Parade! How do you like it?
* PS THANK YOU my Facebook friends Breda and Vassili for your kind advice! *
* If YOU have any suggestions as to what (and when) I could become next, do SHOUT!*
Kaidie finally meeting her match in Nondon.
DAY 3: UNDERCOVER AS ROACH TO EXPLORE UNDERBELLY OF NONDON
Time flies when I am having fun. I have 997 days to go. How can I get beneath the surface of things, I wonder? So I Metamorphise into a roach. Not just an ordinary roach, but one on top of the food chain (in the lowest in the food chain) – Queen Roach. With an army of me, we scuttle down Nondon and explore the nooks and crannies, all the in-between spaces, as I suspect that The Meaning Of Life 3.0 could be hiding there. You reckon?
