My friend: Bird
Hello there! A photo taken by my dad, Tang Yew Hong.
At first there was hesitation. A cautious gaze, a step back, a sharp call, a flutter of wings. Then gradually, they started visiting us more often. Once a week, twice a day, every now and then. (Each with his …or her own schedule!) These noisy neighbours live in a tiny crevice where the pillar meets the parapet near (or even directly) beside our living room. We figured it out from the appearance of the National Environment Agency at our door and two tiny fluff balls screaming bloody murder. More smitten than annoyed, my papa gave them names: Heckle and Jeckle. Soon, the feathers start to vary from spotted to a deep glossy dark emerald.
From left: Piggy the pigeon, Glasses, Nugget, Gou Lou (Tall guy), Dodo, Heckle and Jeckle
Some of them are either brave or trusting…or perhaps foolish enough to enter our home and twirl around legs made of wood and flesh. How queer, how strange these little creatures are: there’s something close to recognition and knowledge when they recognise their name or fly towards one’s approach. To honour these little flighty figures, I made a few prints: One a Lino cut and the other a cyanotype. Through the process of printmaking, my thoughts have drifted to the concept of time, printmaking, and friendship. All so dissimilar and yet very intimately intertwined. Now, if you may allow me to ramble…
Printmaking and photography have a common history of working with plates and chemicals to produce images. They come with their own sets of knowledge and technicalities that are unique from, and equally complex to, that of painting. To quote Alfredo Jaar, who is known for his interventionist works, “you do not take photographs. You make it” (2013). So making (yes making) pictures are attempts at creating and reminding one of one’s existence and situating self (or the other way round) in a complex web that is the world and its various/ accompanying relations. An act of apprehension to arrest a phenomenon on a piece of paper…and the sheer impossibility of capturing it ‘whole’. An attempt which is perhaps fuelled by the need to elucidate experiences that are otherwise abstract and flighty. The cliché quote of pictures embodying a thousand words could be better explained in John Berger’s statement that stories are told out loud in hopes that the “telling of a story can transform a nameless event into a familiar or intimate one” (p. 107). It is a celebration and baptism of making important something as trivial or insignificant as an old crumpled piece of newsprint. The act of baptism , or the giving/ taking on of a name, alludes to endowing a significance to one’s existence on earth. A proclamation of one’s devotion, or on the other side of the coin, a symbol and reminder of death where one will be called by God (or the Buddha, or whomever). To add on, the idea of naming bounds and subjects a thing to time and space. It is like generating a hypothesis to the workings of a phenomenon. That an event stands true unless proven false…and this naming of a concept is subjected to time. For instance, Pluto was a planet during my primary school years and years later it was then relegated to become a ‘dwarf’ planet…or not even a planet at all depending on how one sees it. The example highlights that there are always variables and shifting grounds. So, if you get my drift (and if I have not rambled on too much), printmaking and pictures could then be a visual testing of hypotheses on intangible relationships and the melange of emotions and contradictions experienced by one that is otherwise hard to put into words (which in itself is both expansive and limiting).
An old picture of a spotted dove that Yeye used to keep.
On that very same line, the conversation one has with birds through naming, calls, and coos could also be an attempt to communicate what is otherwise uncommunicable. In And our faces, my heart, brief as photos, John posits that “Once one lived in a seamless experience of wordlessness” (p.32). This idea is not far from the world of birdcall and primal harmony. On that note, Call has roots in the early 14th Century which branches out to loud sounds and also, more significantly in this context, an invitation. This word then brings one to the questions of who is subject, who is the listener, the ones listening, and the interpretations of this sound.
“Maybe we could express ourselves more fully if we say it without words.”
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And perhaps the one could be free from the shackles of words and their rules if one were to analyse elements that constitutes natural act of auditory perception. In Listening, Jean-Luc Nancy explores and elaborates on listening and its constituents like resonance, timbre, etc. I am still trying to understand most of it but I will do my utmost best to use what I somewhat know (if you may excuse me and my interpretations). To Jean-Luc, communication is a “sharing that becomes subject” wherein sounds are active in defining their own meanings (p. 41). It involves the need to listen which is an “intentional inclination towards the opening of meaning” which taps onto what one knows and what one has come to know…and also on things that one does not know or have yet to potentially know (p. 27). Similarly, the chirps, coos, and songs sung by my ‘neighbours’, while waiting for a snack, might be an invitation to listen and respond to them. (Or, it might just be a case of eavesdropping…or even worst! Interrupting their chat by projecting our assumptions onto them.) More importantly, as Jean-Luc explains, to say…or sing, is to dictate …where one is the subject where there is an
awareness of an “I” in relation to a “you” (Jeremy says it better in his book (On)fidelity) (p. 35).
Listening, Pearl Tang Xiaow Jun, Dec 2022
Which brings me to the process of printing (not the one with the photocopier, but the one with a press. The first involves a process obscured by cartridges and plastic bodies. The later involves a more sensory process that involves working the ink…and smelling it, feeling the grooves and reliefs, etc. The press essentially requires the human touch.). There is always an emphasis on the artist as the omnipotent narrator of stories lived by lines, colours, shapes, and forms. However, there is more to art than just the artist alone. In Art Objects, Jennette Winterson explains that “the true artist is interested in the art object as an art process, the thing in being, the being of the thing, the struggle, the excitement, the energy, that have found expression in a particular way” (p. 4). It can dictate its audience and it can “maintain its own authority” through how it wants to be viewed or take form (Berger, p.26).
In light of exploration, the “being of the thing” as mentioned might also refer to what comes into being…or the materials that plays a role in creation. What comes across as noise might very well be sound. The creaks and whirr of the metal roller as it clips the plate and passes over, for instance, could tell the printmaker if the pressure is too high. Or the sharp squeaks of metal on metal as one burnishes the plate for a mezzotint. And if one is blessed with an astute sense of hearing, there is even the fizzy pianissimo played by Ferric Chloride as it works away at exposed copper. All these are sounds coming from things that are, in a sense, alive and communicative. Through making art, the artist comes to recognise other elements that were once seen as inanimate…and by acknowledging their presence and their agency, one is able to use the opportunities to respond to them. It could be as simple as loosening the screws or in the case of Ferric Chloride, timing it to get the desired outcome …which is also depending on the strength of the acid. Back to the beginning. Hence, the artist never has full control or authority over a piece…it goes on its journey, meets (happy) accidents, and comes to be.
From left: The first draft of my linocut print inspired by Ito Jakuchu followed by mishaps and misalignments.
In recognising oneself in the face of others…One opens up space to explore beyond fixed plans and predictions. Sure, there is political, socio, and economic importance in honing one’s craft to successfully express oneself and be recognised as an expert. However, a practicing artist finds joy in conversing with ideas and materials. Through conversations, one forms a relationship…with birds, and with printmaking. Relationship is closely linked the idea of intimacy. It is the union of not just bodies and feelings, but in also ideas and the essence of being. Through such an encounter one discovers. Jeanette continues to postulates that “the only way to develop a palate is to develop a palate” and in the process one always “tests standards and continuing to test them” (p. 5). Likewise, the development of a relationship is one that involves skills, techniques, and even …strategies. I mean, it is a chore to find a suitable time for everyone to have dinner. To reiterate what Jeremy has mentioned in his countless works, to call someone a friend means opening oneself to all kinds of risks and possibilities: trust, faith, contamination, transgressions. Every encounter is a unique event which opens up space where one shares moments with, or listens to, or responds to another, and build associating codes, jokes, and a collection of knowledge based on one’s awareness of the other. Just like the chirps which could mean asking for a piece of hand-pulled Sunshine Premium Extra Grain or it might very well mean something else.
Flight, Pearl Tang Xiaow Jun, Dec 2022
Such interactions inevitably lead to collisions and disagreements that stems from a lack of understanding or just simply an act that is beyond one. Despite being together, there are times when Jeckle threatens to bite off Heckle’s head when he gets too close. In the case of printmaking, a surprising stab from a protruding handle or brain fuzz from the lack of adequate sleep the night before could evoke a row. These are part of the risks that come with relationships and friendships…It is like a waltz between two parties who somewhat know the steps but can never anticipate if the other would break into a freestyle… or end up with crushed toes.
These unknown variables and changing factors are part of the conditions and limitations of a relationship. Aptly elaborated by Berger on the topic of storytelling; “we cannot control our characters after the narration has begun” (p.30). Similarly, one can never control when feathery friends drop by for a visit. Nor can one fully anticipate when ink expires under the glare of sunlight and age. The same could be said of friendships as one is always testing a hypothesis (that one is friends with the other) and, unless a conclusion reached, one continues to be exposed to risks and possibilities. Perhaps an experience that is beyond conventional notions of friendship? Intimacy? A life-long companionship? Eventually, it all leads to death: Not just an expiration of life, but in terms of friendship, the form of being intentionally forgotten…and denied of existence.
So why not just let relationships take their own time and their own forms. In the process one might just discover possibilities that are otherwise beyond the shackles of convention. One might discover an airy whistle of acknowledgement or admire cyan rendered by light.
Cyanotype
An experiment
of bleach on deep indigo
soft luminescence
- Pearl Tang, 12 Dec 2022
Reference
Berger, J. (2005). And our faces, my heart, brief as photos. Bloomsbury.
Berger, J. (2008). Ways of seeing. BBC and Penguin.
Berger, J. (2016). Some Notes About Song. In Confabulations (pp. 91–121). essay, Penguin Books.
Fernando, J., Batcho, J., & Guan, C. D. K. (2013). On fidelity, or, Will you still love me Tomorrow ... Atropos Press.
Nancy, J.-L. (2009). Listening. Fordham University Press.
Winterson, J. (1995). Art Objects. Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery, 3–21.