WE ARE LOSING INERTIA

WE ARE LOSING INERTIA

CONTRIBUTORS MIYUKI BAKER @velle_ JOE PARSLOW HO RUI AN VANESSA HO RAJU RAGE GRACE KYNE-LILLEY AMANDA LEE KOE GODWIN KOAY FRANK CANTON TILLY SCANTLEBURY DARYL YAM JAY BERNARD

COVER IMAGE KATHY ANNE LIM

PERFORMANCES BY METH ZOU ZHAO

CURATOR // EDITOR BINGHAO WONG wong.binghao@gmail.com

// Transcending QTPOC Activist Burnout // #AsianGirl // An Open Mesh of Possibilities: Drag Queens, Performance, and Queer // Coming Out of Sight – Queer Visualities // “There will be Children” // We are not what we remember but what we are told to remember // “You need to work on your insecurities” // The Materialistic Anus // Collision // We are losing inertia? // By Virtue of Another // The Anus is the Centre of the Soul // Paranthropus Comix

UNLUCKY 13 or THE (MIS)FORTUNES OF QUEERNESS WE ARE LOSING INERTIA was first conceived about a year ago, when I came across the provocative work of Meth and Zou Zhao. Initially, inspired by their activist spirit and politics, I had, paradoxically, aimed to ‘show’ something of the queer condition and its diversity and ambiguity. I wanted to reveal and resolve a perceived lack in my own embodied experiences of racialized queerness that wasn’t meant to be delineated or contained. Whether it was the complexity and constant identitarian negotiation that queer persons-of-colour experience daily, or the exteriority of queerness from an increasingly (global) homonormative movement, I advocated an intersectional politics of marginalization without realizing the contradictions of my own praxis.

Thankfully, through individual conversations with the 13 amazing contributors to this zine/informal exhibition publication, I was able to interrogate what it means to be an intersectional body, or as Jose Munoz calls us, ‘identities-in-difference.’

His theorization of the hybridity and fragmentation of intersectional identities is one of fluid exchanges and interactions between different ‘identity vectors.’ Drawing on Spivak’s writing on migrant identity, Munoz’s very use of the hyphen (in ‘identities-in-difference’) and ‘vectors’ (implying a trajectory, movement, and hence displacement) only demonstrates the very indemonstrability, liminality and processual incompleteness of queerness and intersectionality. The intersectional body is as graspable as water in cupped palms – it constantly eludes you. It is characterized not just by fluidity and porosity, but also by discomfort and frustration. As you move beyond simple binaries that seem to provide strategies of resistance and counteridentification, an infinite (im)possibility of intersections open themselves to you, making your individual itinerancy seem futile.

These critical contributors have allowed me to revel in the productivity of not-knowing. So I moved from wanting to ‘demonstrate’ or ‘show’ what a specific intersectional experience is like, to embracing all manner of intersectional bodies (diasporic, queer Asian, white feminist, black lesbian, trans* ally, the list goes on…). Our promiscuous dance has inspired me to shift my mentality of organization and resolution to one of magic, luck, and (mis)fortune, a point of view that defies or at least problematizes theorization and compartmentalization. While collating the number of contributions (unlucky 13!), it seemed to me a wry twist of fate brought our little microcosm together to ruminate on the multiplicity and parallelism of our struggles and triumphs. As cultural producers, we all work within and without dominant ideologies, disidentifying with their incumbent binaries, all while remembering and reconfiguring the shame and scars of their toxic regimes.

To that end, this zine loosely circles 3 mutable nuclei – intersectionality, queer performance, and the global politics of marginalization and activism. Often, while re-visiting the contributions, I found that a certain piece that I had unceremoniously filed into 1 category actually enriched another. So I rightfully abandon the task of definition, and of speaking on the contributors’ behalf, and urge each reader to personalize this experience. As diverse as our Unlucky 13 are, so are our opponents – whether they take the guises of hetero/homonormativity, (in)visibility, white supremacy, patriarchy, misogyny, capitalism, state apparatuses, the military, transphobia, stigmatization against sex work, classism, ageism, ableism… (sadly, this list goes on too). It is my hope that this project has provided a precarious platform to react against these hegemonies.

Whether through anger or inaction, poetically or incoherently, relish in the thought that the magic of our marks can only be made and (mis)understood by us. x Bing June 2014

PRESS RELEASE WE ARE LOSING INERTIA brings together the radical performances of alternative-drag artist, Meth, and Chinese-Singaporean performance artist Zou Zhao. Through the phenomenological encounter of two bodies marked by sexual and racial difference, the event seeks to proliferate critical dialogue on the politics of marginalized intersectionality as sites of resistance against ideologies and histories of injurious interpellation and reductive categorizations.

Both artists operate insidiously within structurally violent and repressive regimes in order to rupture them, producing new artistic and socio-political counterpublics. Meth’s practice provokes the exclusionary aspirational ideals of beauty, race, and class that have plagued drag and queer communities. By embracing irony, anonymity and physical distortion in her lip-sync to Christina Aguilera’s Beautiful, Meth revives the critical potential of drag and reclaims the shameful caricaturizations of LGBT communities that serve as heterosexist entertainment.

Adopting the fictive persona of John Hansen, a student of modern Chinese philosophy that proclaims its lack of truth, Zou Zhao satirizes the conceited theorization, representation and fictionalization of racial Others. While deceptively ‘radical’ in form, such thought remains deeply ideological, conserving the Western subject’s sovereignty. Through her parodic lectureperformance, Zou Zhao ridicules the claim that Chinese is not a language by appropriating and sabotaging these existing structures of knowledge and rationalization.

In a collaborative performance, Meth & Zou Zhao attempt to translate and complicate their respective vernaculars for each other and their audience. Though seemingly estranged by their cultural difference, both artists converge in their shared use of the voice to articulate their marginalized lexicons – Meth’s improvisational skills as a hostess and synchronicity as a lipsync performer interject Zou Zhao’s lyrical singing of 8th Century Tang poems. Throughout this idiosyncratic dialogue between idiomatic Chinese and queer colloquialisms, lacunas of misinterpretation and incomprehension surface. Yet, these chasms are not performative teleologies, but rather the engendering of a poetics of unknowability.

WE ARE LOSING INERTIA acts as a platform to facilitate such agonistic encounters of disharmony between strange(r) bodies and factions, thus suturing new radical subjectivities. Embracing the experimental nature of performance art and subculture, it revokes resolution, and instead asks necessary questions about how and why marginalization and disenfranchisement acts. Comingling between artists like Meth and Zou Zhao proliferates infinite tributaries and melanges of subjectivities that escape white, heteropatriarchal definition and representation. These futural imaginations allow for the reclamation of social agency and the re-imagination and radicalization of histories of shame and hegemonic oppression.

Binghao Wong

Jay is a Londoner, writer, zinester and graphic artist who can be found @brrnrrd, jaybernard.co.uk and paranthropuscomix.tumblr.com.

Transcending QTPOC activist burnout

by Miyuki Baker

After spending and working for several years within the fabulous spaces inhabited by queer and trans people of color activist communities, I’ve begun to do what many of us do when we’ve done the same thing for a while: questioning our methodology since we’re so close to (if we haven’t already) burning out.

I see it in my fellow activists all the time because our movements often lack a sustainable infrastructure for individuals, while glamorizing a brand of activism that’s most taxing on our bodies and minds.

With the knowledge that I’m repeating what others have said countless times, I want to first reiterate the need for self-care. Our bodies are connected to our minds and hearts and we have to remind ourselves that we truly are what we eat. The process of decolonization must include the ways in which our food histories were colonized and how we’ve forgotten the ways in which our * ancestors ate. You can visit my blog for more writing and thoughts I have on food and race, but I’d like to focus on another facet of our movements today.

That is, in order to avoid burning out, we need to be willing to embrace our intersectionality and let it manifest into the ways we build our movements. On the surface, it may seem like we’re embracing our intersectionality if we hang out

with people who are both queer and people of color, but in my opinion, that approach limits us from exploring all of our intersections. The minute we demarcate ourselves as being uniquely different because of x, y and z, and needing to fight for a cause that is unique to us, we’ve just pushed away allies that might be more effective in getting the message out. We’ve also inadvertently boxed ourselves in. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a real problem when organizations like the HRC try to win votes by creating a false facade of white male homonormativity, and I’m more than aware of a need and importance for safe spaces. And yet I want to challenge our communities to be fluid. I want to push myself to hold hands with someone I thought could never understand me and realize that we will both be liberated when there is true equality.

As a mixed race person who usually passes as solely Asian, it’s not surprising that I’ve gravitated towards people of color (POC) spaces. But recently I’ve come to question the hatred that has been bred in me for my European heritage because of my time in these POC spaces. How can I

love myself fully if I view whiteness as evil? And if I’m feeling this way, then how are queer and POC communities limiting the scope of the movement by promoting anything other than self-love?

Many of us need all POC spaces to escape the daily barrage of unwanted attention and prejudices. I’m not critiquing these spaces. Rather, I’m trying to challenge people to not stop there or to expand the role of these spaces. I want to challenge us to remember that the way to heal our colonized bodies and minds isn’t to stay in these spaces with no plan to ever leave. Our healing will not happen if we continue to breed hatred either. It is tempting to reciprocate the same negativity that was directed at us in the past. But I urge people to step back and realize the repercussions of this approach.

Do we want to be happy and feel fulfilled in life? If so, I’d say it’s near impossible to achieve that without learning to sever our ties with negativity and to instead find creative ways of changing tracks.

A concrete example might be more useful here. When I was in

Amsterdam’s autonomous space Vrankrijk, some QTPOCs explained that in the past, the space was hardly diverse and to be a queer woman was hard enough, let alone trans and/or a person of color. And yet, the time I spent there demonstrated to me how solidarity between all kinds of people can look. Of course, it didn’t happen overnight and there were a deliberate set of actions that brought Vrankrijk to where it is today. My friend--we’ll call him J--a trans person of color and immigrant who is working on his PhD in The Netherlands explained one of the approaches to me. He emphasized the need to work the doors early at parties and that this simple act created an infinitely safer space for other QTPOCs. He and a white Dutch trans woman often work the doors when a party is just starting, and make sure that they greet the party attendees with a warm welcome and a brief rundown of the rules of the space. Now, I’m sure you’ve all gone to parties where the gatekeepers were unexcited or downright rude.

The simple act of making genuine eye contact with every participant while warmly welcoming to this safe space sets up an accountability that makes it much more difficult for

people who enter to commit acts of physical or verbal violence. Not only that but the presence of active and friendly QTPOC folks at the doors lets it be known to passerbys that this is a space which celebrates diversity in its party attendees. Compare this to the big and burly imposing cisgendered men of color who are often employed to be bouncers in front of predominantly white spaces.

What I wanted to demonstrate with that example was that it doesn’t take much to create a space that is safe (although no space is truly safe, even so-called safe, closed spaces for QTPOCs) for everyone. Inculcating accountability using creative methods from the get go can raise the sense of solidarity and a natural diversity. This can create a healthy foundation from QTPOCs and allies to build even more positive change in our communities.

and slum evictions. They never hid their queer and trans identities when they were in the slums (as some might do when they work with people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, with the excuse that they are more homo/transphobic) and explained to me that actually, people in the socalled “queer activist spaces,” made more repeated mistakes with their preferred gender pronouns than in the slums. They aligned themselves with residents in the slums who were equally (obviously) of varied sexual orientations and gender identities by continuing to show up day after day. Unlike those who were constantly swooping in from out of state or out of the country claiming to be helping the fight against slum eviction, S, S, K and G were all from nearby neighborhoods and just kept showing up in solidarity and friendship.

On a similar note of building stronger ties with our allies, I want to share a story about a few activists (S, S, K and G) I met in Bangalore, India. They were all queer or trans identified and were active in queer activist communities, but most of their time was spent organizing the fight against casteism

To me, their activism brings home the idea that words and surface actions of support and solidarity will only go so far. We have to come together as friends and families of our universal struggle for respect (acceptance, not just tolerance) and equality with ** our actions and bodies, not just

our impressive but empty words. We should challenge ourselves to put our actions (in addition to our money) where our mouths are. Too often we excuse ourselves from building true solidarity with other causes because we have already donated money or we have perhaps already liked a group’s facebook page. Yes, these groups often require financial and internet support, but I think we can do better! I think we can show up. I think we can have potlucks. I think we can get to know each other and learn from each other beyond the internet.

I’m all about staying radical and critiquing our society, but if the only way to be a “real” QTPOC activist is to criticize from QTPOC-only spaces, then we’re leading a lot of folks to burn out and encouraging them to leave parts of their identity at the door.

What do you think? Have you ever felt burned out or like you weren’t a good enough activist because you didn’t seem radical or separatist enough? If you have any thoughts or comments, I’d love to hear them.

+Send me an email at heymiyuki@gmail.com +You can read all eight zines I put together on international queer art and activism here: queerscribe.com *

Subscribe to my blog where I post illustrated articles on food, race, gender, and travel weekly at heymiyuki.wordpress.com **

It isn’t my intention to use the word “action” in a way that excludes differently abled folks. It also isn’t to prioritize one form of activism over another. I myself have always felt like my activist work (making zines, talking to people etc.) wasn’t as valued as going to protests and rallies. Rather, it is to differentiate the act of making genuine efforts to bridge gaps and form solidarity with each other beyond just paying lip service to a cause or group of people.

#AsianGirl

The Hypervisibility of a Hypersexualized Image

The Asian woman in Western cultural consciousness is a deliciously dangerous piece oferotica-exotica: a reductive characterization spawned from the loins of Orientalist tradition, the image of Asian women today paints us as literal embodiments of sexual peril, the forbidden fruit of White Anglo-American Protestant culture that entices the hapless hotblooded man with our devious sexuality. In the 21st Century, we are still an imperialist fantasy, an adrenaline rush, a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not for the culturally omnivorous collapsed into one sexually accessible “Asian Temptress”.

Media representation and exploitation only serve to eternalize a colonial logic of entitlement to our bodies. A hypersexualized version of the Asian woman is stripped from our collective body and sold through the global marketing mechanism; whether infinitely replicated on a printing press or nailed upon a billboard, as a group we are constantly being magnified and dissected for commercial use. Our image is subject to perpetual media slavery.

Mass media proliferates images of an image of us, one that has flattened the various shades of Asian womanhood into an easy stereotype, and for Asian women the

dehumanization of modern mass production thus comes twofold. The cognitive athleticism built into Internet culture just takes our hypervisibility even further: not only does it increase the intensity of media bombardment, but recent hashtag culture reiterates the exact process of condensing diversity into simplified categories and therefore amping up the accessibility.

Increasingly menacing implications become evident as we survey the broader societal trends that frame our online presence.

When neural research has discovered that pictures of naked women stimulate a part of the brain associated with objects or “things you manipulate with your hands” (Fiske, 2009), what happens when real-life Asian women are abbreviated into the repeatedly sexed-up images of themselves that seem to be their only form of media representation? Is it mere coincidence that the Asian woman persists in media portrayals as the perfect submissive and inferior partner, and half of the victims depicted in the sub-genre of Internet rape pornography are distinctly characterized and advertised as Asian (Gossett and Byrne, 2002)?

So when #asiangirl on Instagram alone brings up close to 1,800,000 individual entries,

twice that of #whitegirl and more than three times that of #blackgirl, some deeper questions need to be asked: What is #asiangirl being used for? Why is #asiangirl the most prominently used of all ethnicity/race-based hashtags? Who is browsing #asiangirl?

Most important of all, how does an Asian girl react to #asiangirl? The issue with social media is that we buy into it. When confronted with the cognitive dissonance between media representation and lived experience, it is so easy to fall into the trap of internalizing our own fetishization, for the trope gets marketed to us as an aspirational self. The amount of attention is attractive. Based upon stories sold to us by an insidiously white supremacist media, we see Miss Saigon and Suzie Wong and we internalize the portrait of Asian woman as societal abject.

Without proper awareness of the historicalcultural intricacies, we mistake the fetishizing desire for respectful love, forgetting how harmful Yellow Fever as a term is because it has become so popular as Internet meme. The dignity of our own humanity is eroded in the face of stinging caricatures from which we try to find selfvalidation. We start to hashtag ourselves.

Identifying and deconstructing this internalized fetishization thus becomes imperative to Asian womanhood, and reasserting ownership through active selfrepresentation as a challenge to oppressive institutions needs to be on the agenda. v

About #AsianGirl

#AsianGirl is a multimedia project that seeks to create a space for self-representation within our cultural framework, and to challenge reductive stereotypes without alienating ourselves from a healthy engagement with our own sexuality, as we emerge from a hypersexualized media landscape and yet a mostly sexually conservative cultural background.

It is also a statement about a flawed hypervisibility, especially in the context of the Internet age. The Internet’s worldwide connectivity creates a complex political atmosphere in which the experiences of the Asian diaspora and that of Asian people in Asia collide, and #AsianGirl uses the digital landscape in order to prioritize the discussion surrounding these shared spaces in online culture. @velle_, in collaboration with @jaynelies

@velle_ is a writer, conceptual artist, and despot born in Singapore. @jaynelies is a visual artist and photographer born in Hong Kong. They are both based in NewYork City.

An Open Mesh Of Possibilities: Drag Queens, Performance, and Queer

With a rise in popularity of RuPaul’s Drag Race (a drag competition in which drag queens compete for the title of America’s Next Drag Superstar), the documentary Drag Queens of London being screened from late April, and a growing interest in drag performance nights across the country, drag is at a critical point in the UK.

these punks these cowards these champions these mad dogs of glory moving this little bit of light towards us impossibly - Charles Bukowski, ‘beasts bounding through time -’

To list any number of drag performers you can regularly see performing in London alone—including, but certainly not limited to, Holestar, Miss Cairo, Bourgeoisie, Ruby Wednesday, Laydee Tena, Dusty O, Sink the Pink, The Lipsinkers and Meth—is to list a diverse range of aesthetics and performance styles which encapsulates everything from traditional conceptions of British drag to all the gender-bending freaks and weirdos you could want or imagine.

and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism - Frank O’Hara, ‘Having a Coke With You’

You can watch Holestar completing a spoken word piece about depression and telling her audiences about her time in the army, or belting out a disco classic. You can see Miss Cairo sing a perfectlypitched rendition of ‘I Just Want To Make Love To You’ and perform most daring GoGo dances in the capital. You can be astounded at Bourgeoisie in the most elaborate costumes hand-made out of tinsel and recycling bags and tutus and paper. You can witness Ruby Wednesday bring audiences to tears with her punk androgynous aesthetic and her lip-synch to ‘And I am Telling You I’m Not Going’. You can bask in the glory of the bearded beauty that is Laydee Tena and her perfectly on-point lip-synchs to ‘I’m Every Woman’.

And when all of that gets a bit too much, you can seek out Meth either in her home at The Black Cap in Camden or elsewhere across London and the rest of the country. You can watch her start a show with blood pouring out of her mouth, or be led on the stage with a paper bag covering her head, only to reveal her face distorted and warped by tape. You can see her throwing her heart into lip-synch from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, or anything by Rufus Wainwright, or getting her rocks on to Meatloaf.

The above examples cover just a few of the performers, styles, aesthetics and practices that you can see throughout the drag scene. As a drag queen’s boyfriend and co-producer of The Meth Lab—a drag and queer performance night held at The Black Cap in Camden currently famed for playing host to stars of RuPaul’s Drag Race such as Latrice Royale and Raja—I have found myself at the centre of a spinning vortex of drag performance and culture which is expanding, shifting and changing at an absolutely phenomenal rate. Not only are the performers I encounter producing work and aesthetics which are ground-breaking, challenging and entertaining, but the audiences attending shows are becoming larger, more engaged and certainly more intense.

We love you, you are so welcomed here. You know we as gay people we get to choose our family. We get to choose the people we’re around. I am your family, we are family here. I love you.

- RuPaul

Drag is, for the queens I talk to, get drunk with, and love, more than just performance or beauty, but a way of exploring and living in the world. I only have to look around my own flat covered in makeup, wig heads, glitter, glitter, a dress-maker’s dummy and a jacket currently being embellished with rhinestones depicting the chemical symbols of Meth to see how much it has taken over my life, and the lives of those closest to me.

Standing in the smoking area of The Black Cap in Camden, Meth - the mistress of The Meth Lab herself - expresses her opinion that ‘“drag has nothing to do with what is between your legs, it is a performance of gender, an idea of “femininity” or female”’. As with her performances, drag, for Meth, is more than what you think it is. More than just the subversion of the gendered body, but the performance of an idea of gender itself.

The drag queen, in a contemporary sense, has the potential to be a queer figure because she challenges—or has the potential to challenge—normative idea(l)s of gender, sex, and sexuality, by presenting bodies and figures that do not adhere to the binaries of male/female, masculine/feminine, heterosexual/homosexual. Eve Sedgwick refers to queer as: the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically. (Sedgwick, 1993: 8) Part of what drag is, or at least has the potential to be, sits in those gaps and overlaps, those possibilities that Sedgwick reads as queer. The “excess of meaning” produced by drag provides audiences with a momentary glimpse of a radical queer future beyond the binary confines of gender to which so many of us are confined.

Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of this moment, but we must never settle for that minimal transport; we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds.

Queerness is a longing that propels us onward, beyond romances of the negative and toiling in the present.

- JosĂŠ Esteban Munoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity.

I am aware, here, of the amount that I am idolising a particular mode of performance of drag and being which is, perhaps, also exclusive and regulatory in its own ways. I am enamoured with drag, I am invested in its continuation—both culturally and economically—and I am critically engaged in writing about it. But I am also aware that some drag can be terrible, and that not everything that I see is perfect or interesting or exciting. There is, also, a tremendous amount of joy and pleasure to be taken in seeing a traditional practice done well.

What I want to suggest, however, is that a change is happening. It is slow and, like all changes, it is resisted by those who are established in the scene already. The change in drag feels similar to the change I feel I am witnessing in young queer politics. There is a need for something more immediate, more challenging, more visceral. The new drag I see works and fucks with the traditional and takes it to places still unknown, and it is these unknown places which are exciting, which provide performative ways to explore more the alternative modes, spaces, sites of living.

Joe Parslow is a queer thinker and writer currently researching drag and queer performance and the emergence of sites of community and kinship around spaces of performance. Alongside research, Joe is a Co-Producer of The Meth Lab, a drag and queer performance night held at The Black Cap in Camden.

Coming Out of Sight: Queer Visualities Ho Rui An

1.

From a closet, Jackie Chan comes out. Unlike the artful self-unraveling of a certain Ms Foster, slick in its convolution and nimble backpedals, the outing of the international face of macho kitsch is decisive and unambiguous. In the YouTube advertorial for the American LGBT media watchdog, GLAAD, one of the many campaign videos flooding a confetti-choked world where gays and their allies gyrate in slow-mo to “Same Love”, the actor and martial artist literally steps out of a closet and comes out... “as a friend to those fighting for equality”. The ellipsis prepares the punchline—the punchline that is the coming out, or precisely, the coming out of coming out itself, which is to say that the very act of coming out is here outed, outed as not being what it appears, as not really coming out.

To begin with, what does it mean to come out? The usual refrain goes: gays and lesbians have to come out because homosexuality is invisible. As Richard Dyer notes, being homosexual “does not show—unlike gender, colour or disability, it is not physiologically apparent; unlike class or ethnicity, it is not something the visible markers of which you have to unlearn if you wish to disguise it; only if you choose to behave in an ‘obvious’ style is being lesbian/gay in any sense i

visible” . By this logic, to come out is to thrust oneself into the field of visuality, to claim a space within a model of identity politics that takes visibility as the precondition of political subjectivity.

Yet, coming out is more often than not a decidedly non-visual act, delivered less as a sensational striptease than a stuttering, guttural confession that disavows the possibility of its specularity.

To reveal that one is gay, after all, does not change the person in any visible way, and thus oftreceived incredulity to such pronouncements, commonly taking form as a concerned “Since when?”, to which a baffling “Always” is often the resolute answer. In uttering “I am gay”, our sensuous, inarticulate glottal reverberations become words, abstracting themselves from the realm of the sensible as they at once speak and eject themselves from the “I am” that conditions speech. One says “I am gay” because one is not recognised as such. Yet, speaking these words does not make one in any way more recognisable as gay. The words at once call upon and split from recognition. Coming out, in this sense, is less an act of making something seen than a demand to see. But what? Not the homosexual himself, which remains at large, unseen, but the very act of coming out itself, the thrust of the unseeable into the visual field, a giving to vision that instead of giving an image, gives itself to be seen—a giving of something not as image, but of the as itself. Or as Alexander García Düttmann puts it, the possibility of the as, of recognising ii

something as being this or that, is here thwarted . What unfolds is therefore not a struggle for recognition—a struggle to be recognised as a certain entity—but the struggle of recognition, the struggle that inheres in the very moment of recognising something as.

Yet, too much of contemporary gay politics locates itself not in the struggle as but the struggle for as, in the struggle to be seen as one or more of the identities designated by LGBTQIA, to the point where even the profession of solidarity inducts one into the field of visibility, where one is recognised as straight ally. But this as, given how it splinters, is inevitably unstable, and thus the necessity of the closet from which Jackie Chan comes out, without which coming out cannot fashion itself as a struggle for recognition. The closet mobilises this struggle for by

imaging a threshold cutting between the invisible and the visible, such that coming out becomes invested with the magical power of revelation, of lending something concrete, unequivocal form.

But insofar as the martial arts star doesn't really come out, insofar as he has to literally retreat into a closet in order to come out, the coming out of Jackie Chan turns against itself, outing itself as its own failure. Coming out turns out the as that motivates it, turning that which inaugurates the struggle for recognition into its own struggle.

2.

But you’re Indian! In the British film, Bend It Like Beckham (2002), Jess, a young aspiring footballer fighting the expectations of her Punjabi Sikh family, is shocked when her good friend, Tony, comes out to her as gay. Tony tells her that he really likes Beckham, to which her immediate reaction is to call up his ethnic/racial identity—one putatively at odds with his sexual orientation.

There are two ways one can read this kneejerk response. First, as the overwriting of an invisible identity by one that is highly visible, to a certain extent even inscribed upon the skin: You are Indian, so how can you be gay? Or she could, as I’m inclined to think, have equally meant the converse: You are gay, so how can you be Indian? In the latter, there is inescapably an absurdity, for Tony is and has always been recognisably Indian, at least to the extent that race, as generations of theorists following Fanon have argued, is constructed through a specularised recognisability—“Look! A iii

Negro!” Tony’s Indianness, by this schema, establishes itself by making itself seen, further rendering it impossible to unsee it, given how seeing here essentialises, depriving the seen of all history and future. This explains Jess’s baffled gasp, for Tony’s coming out insistently, unreasonably demands that she unsees his Indianness, as if the newly surfaced fact of his homosexuality, through its very invisibility, disturbs the operation of visuality that establishes and confirms Tony’s recognisability as Indian.

One could even contend that here Tony comes out not as gay, but as not (Indian), or should one say, not as? Throughout the scene, Tony never says anything to the effect of “I am gay”, in the sense of calling to be recognised as a newly constituted gay subject. By the same token, Jess’s reply addresses not his homosexuality itself but the difficulty of reconciling it with his ethnic identity. To Jess, Tony’s coming out is a call to see something that has always already been there but unseen and ultimately, despite her effort at re-cognition, unseeable. The doubled dialogue reflects Jess’s double take as she attempts to see the same again.

Tony: I really like Beckham too.

Jess: Of course you do. No one can cross a ball or bend it like Beckham.

Tony: No, Jess. I really like Beckham.

Jess: What, you mean...? But you’re Indian!

In this instance, but designates the impossibility of seeing Tony as both Indian and gay insofar as how, going by the machinations of race-thinking, being Indian is deprived of future, denied the possibility of expansion and self-differentiation, of becoming other than itself. And for a moment in the film it does seem as if Tony’s recognisability as Indian would overwrite his a-recognisable homosexuality, when he proposes to marry Jess as a ruse to at once disguise his sexual orientation and secure her parents’ blessings for her to pursue football professionally.

But could one in equal measure understand the lack of a future ascribed to being both gay and Indian in the radical sense of an opening towards the future that refuses to affirm it in advance, that refuses to think ahead of itself a new identity into which the homosexual Indian can come out?

As Lee Edelman’s polemic on queer theory goes, by saying “no” to the future, queerness refuses “the insistence of hope itself as affirmation” and by extension, “the demand to translate [this] insistence, the pulsive force, of negativity into some determinate stance or ‘position’ whose determination iv

would thus negate it” . After all, to affirm the future is always to affirm the possibility of a future, of a projected other side into which one propels oneself. In its negativity, queerness turns away from this other side; it is the side that is absolutely other to politics, “the ‘side’ outside all political v

sides” . Or one could say that queerness sides—slides—it is the oblique line that is pure deviation, recognising no destination as it demands its own future, its “no future”. With no future, Tony comes out to nothing, comes out of himself without the contours of a prefabricated identity ready to receive him—recognised not as but but.

3.

A sea of pink. One increasingly finds this expression invoked in the yearly coverage of Pink Dot, an annual event held in support of the LGBT community in Singapore. Since 2009, thousands of Singaporeans have gathered each year in a small park designated as the only site within the nation-state where peaceful demonstrations can be held to celebrate “the freedom to love”. As its organisers have always claimed, Pink Dot is neither a protest nor a parade. It is exactly, or tries to be, what it calls itself: a giant pink dot formed through the coming together of LGBTs and their allies.

But with the event busting its attendance records every year and the dot spilling out of itself, one cannot but resort to lexicons of the amorphous in describing this strange, quasi-Pride phenomenon.

While in its earlier incarnations, the geometricity of the dot can still be conjured into visibility by shepherding an often all too acquiescent crowd into a circumscribed perimeter, recent years have seen the crowd swell to such immensity that it can barely be contained by the boundaries of its venue. In the last edition, the compulsory aerial photograph of the event pictured an electric pink mass blazing through the twilight with such Leviathan monstrosity that it prompted a certain former Member of Parliament to flag it as a return to the “dark ages”.

But despite this, the event has continued to fashion itself in a way that disavows its own affective excesses, its explosion beyond itself. Insisting on its containable specularity—a tautology, given how the spectacle contains as much as containment is spectacle—it downplays its irrepressible powers of contagion in fear of stoking anxieties of a maleficent “gay agenda”. So reads the statement on its website: “Pink is the colour of our ICs (Identification Cards). It is also the colour when you mix red and white—the colours of our national flag”. Pink is this; pink is that. Hot pink was the stripe that was dropped from the original rainbow flag because of the unavailability of the fabric, expunged by the expediencies of a capitalised chromatism. It represented sexuality.

Today, it returns, albeit no longer throbbing hot, as the defanged, diluted incarnation of itself: love.

No other civil society movement in the country is so caught up in such an anodyne of a chromatic fantasy, so intent upon colouring its community and making an image of it. No other movement is as cinematic. Each year, the festivities, which begin months before Pink Dot, kick off with an always much anticipated campaign video and conclude with a post-event throwback video that itself ends with the indispensable aerial shot of the park flared up in pink. Always captured from a secluded high ground to which the crowds would crane their necks, the crowning shot makes a pink dot

out of a coagulation of bodies truly lost within their own image. Such is the irony of the crowd, that which lends its constituting bodies a form through which they can finally come out into visibility, but vi

only to the extent that they lose their particular visibility . Pink—the visibility that renders invisible.

But what if pink refuses to cohere into an image? What if pink was instead the invisibility that demands to be seen without offering itself as image? What if pink was blue? Blue not in the vii

sense of the colour blue, but “a form of being, of being blue” —the blueness that suffuses Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993) beyond its chromatic visibility. The final film made by the cult director just months before he died from AIDS-related complications, Blue is all blue, made of a single frame of blue from which a polyphony of voices emerges, out of the blue. But the blue of the film, the blue that is the film, exceeds the colour, for blue here “deterritorializes itself, perpetually rendering blue not blue, rendering the image phonic, drawing from the phonic substance or materiality an viii

inherent blueness” . The blue of the image allows the voices in the film to travel untethered, to mingle, coalesce, split like there is no tomorrow. They speak: “For blue, there are no boundaries or solutions.” Jarman made the film as he was losing his sight, thus rendering blue blind, meaning not that blue here is a sign of blindness, but that it blinds. It calls upon us to look at it only to scatter the look into the blue, charging it as it flies like electricity.

What if pink too can electrify? What if we stop interring pink within its own suffocating pinkness, allowing it to stretch and yawn in its oceanic sublimity? What if pink was no longer a glutinous, salubrious dot but an achromatic vector, a savage cutting through colour, an outing of colour that surrenders its own evacuation—no longer in the pink but out of pink?

i

Richard Dyer, Now You See It: Studies on Lesbian and Gay Film (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), 249.

ii

Alexander García Düttmann, Between Cultures: Tensions in the Struggle for Recognition, trans. Kenneth B. Woodgate (London and New York: Verso, 2000), 119.

iii

Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove, 2008), 89.

iv

Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004), 4.

v

Ibid, 7.

vi

What I draw this from Rosalind C. Morris’ observations in “Giving Up Ghosts: Notes on Trauma and the Possibility of the Political from Southeast Asia,” positions: east asia cultures critique 16, no. 1 (2008), 250.

vii

Akira Mizuta Lippit, Ex-Cinema: From a Theory of Experimental Film and Video (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 15.

viii

Ibid, 23.

Ho Rui An is an artist and writer working in the intersections of contemporary art, cinema, performance and theory. He has presented projects at the Serpentine Galleries (London), LUMA/Westbau (Zürich), Witte de With (Rotterdam) and The Substation (Singapore) and is the Singapore desk editor for ArtAsiaPacific.

“There will be Children” LGBT people are bad for Children—or so they say. We cannot have gay cis male teachers in our schools because they will prey on the Children. We cannot have trans women work in environments where there are Children because they will scare them or fuck up their precious notions of the gender binary.1 We cannot allow same-sex couples to adopt Children because they will lose out on motherly love/ father figure, or that they will be bullied in schools for being different. We cannot have butch women near Children because they will “influence” them.

We cannot have trans men adopt Children because they are “immoral” and “wrong”.2 We cannot have people under 16 years of age watch anything with “homosexual content” because they are not mature enough.

Children; the figure of the Child—not a reference to actual children but rather a reference to the image or the ideal, is what drives society. The symbol of the Child is the raison d’etre of heteropatriarchy; it is what allows us to “die but still live”, i.e. our legacy. It is what continues society as we know it, which is why homophobes often espouse that allowing homosexuality is tantamount to allowing civilisation to die (obviously because homosexuals strive to convert others into our “lifestyle”). It is why women are not women until they have given birth; it is why the pro-life campaigns often utilize the image of the Child to diminish the rights of the mother. As Linda Kauffman wrote, “The fetus has come to symbolize everything that is Right about America”—and apparently Singapore too.

Project X spoke to a trans female sex worker who received a complaint at her day job. The complaint was directed to her manager, and basically said that trans women should not be allowed to work in environments where there are children.

Thankfully, her manager did not fire her instead he transferred her to another outlet where there are fewer children. Read more here: http://theprojectx.org/2014/03/06/ another-case-of-transphobia-3/ 1

Local trans* activist Joe Wong did some research about whether trans* people are able to adopt children in Singapore. He found that most agencies responded with hate and narrowmindedness. One responded that, “I hope you know that you are not normal and not a male, so to speak (or at least born one), you should also know that raising a child would not be possible since you will not pass our assessment. We are strict in the processes and the child’s upbringing as our priority.” Others responded in a similar vein, invoking religion and vague “morals”. Read more here: http://voicesofthesons.tumblr. com/post/82381192691/child-adoptionin-singapore-for-trans-people 2

It is the reason why non-reproductive sex—casual sex, samesex intercourse, sex work, or any other sex without sperm and egg meeting—is frowned upon in society. Frowned upon to the extent that laws, policies, and powerful norms have been created and fiercely protected simply to guarantee that the only purpose of sex is reproduction: the criminalization of homosexuality, the legal disavowal of same-sex marriage, the part criminalization of sex work, and the abstinence-based sex education, are but a few examples. These norms have in turn caused some grave human rights violations.

“Historically constructed…to serve as the repository of variously sentimentalized cultural identifications, the Child has come to embody for us the telos of the social order and come to be seen as the one for whom that order is held in perpetual trust.”

– Lee Edelman

Yet, the image of the Child has been uncritically appropriated by the mainstream LGBT movement as a way to “assimilate” and “integrate” into mainstream/ heteropatriarchal society. Take for example Pink Dot—an annual event in Singapore where LGBT people gather at Speakers’ Corner clad in pink in order to shout out that all LGBT people want is the “Freedom to Love”. When asked if Project X—the organization I work for, and an organization that advocates for sex workers’ rights, could be a community partner for the 2013 event, we were declined on the basis that “There will be Children”, and that they have “sponsors to report back to” (Google and Barclays). Even as I elaborated on the issues that trans*, lesbian, gay, and bisexual sex workers face, I was confronted with utter reticence. I have also met LGBT people who think that sex workers should not be around residential or school areas because they will come into contact with Children. I have met students who tell me they are conducting research on whether sex workers are “good parents”.

When questioned, no one could give me a direct answer as to why sex workers should not be near Children—a gesture that seems to indicate they know how bad it would sound to utter the words “sex workers are immoral” given how those were the same words often used to describe LGBT people. Yet, they persist.

This phenomenon, however, is reflective of a much bigger problem of the mainstream LGBT movement—that they are more than willing to ignore and invisibilize key issues faced by a significant segment of the LGBT population in order to create an image that is palatable to mainstream heteropatriarchal society.

Strategically, I applaud them. It’s a smart move. However, when a movement “aims to take the message of inclusivity and diversity to Singaporeans far and wide”, but yet denies or ignores the existence of a segment of the LGBT community, then they should seriously

reconsider who they are really speaking for (Chinese, Middle to Upper Class, Educated, English Speaking, Gay, Male), and what rights they are demanding.

Sex work remains the most viable opportunity for many trans* women, especially when the education system fails them, their families abandon them, and when potential employers discriminate them. It is the job that gives them the rare opportunity to be financially independent, to be able to pay rent, to be able to reap the benefits of living in a so-called First World Country, and most importantly, to be able to undergo various surgical procedures.

(I would like to add that there are lesbian, bisexual and gay sex workers too, and that there are similarities in their experiences.) It is also an industry that allows trans* women to express their gender without being under scrutiny and without having to constantly explain themselves.

However, due to the “criminal” aspects of their work, due to their association with (unreproductive, casual) sex, they do not make good warriors to fight the battle to love freely. Most glaring is how the trans* spokesperson in many LGBT associations is more often than not a drag queen, a white-collar trans* (woman), or simply no representation. Somehow espousing that trans* women who are sex workers are not “worthy” of having human rights.

Yet sex workers—especially trans* and non-gender conforming sex workers face some really terrible forms of human rights violations.

A key issue is that of police brutality and abuse of power. We have documented and witnessed countless cases where (trans*) sex workers are at the receiving end of harassment and violence from law enforcers. This takes the form of “random” checks by police officers, where officers address trans* women with the wrong gender pronoun, ask insulting and personal questions, search their bags for condoms, drugs, allege stolen phones, etc. It also takes the form of being told by officers that they were not to be seen in a particular area again, effectively curtailing their freedom of movement. In addition, we have also documented a couple of cases of sexual and physical assault at the hands of law enforcers.

Ignoring and invisibilizing the issues faced by LGBT sex workers is also to erase any meaningful and important conversations that we need to have about race and class. It is to stay silent about the high rates of incarceration of LGBT sex workers—not just for charges on soliciting, but charges on theft and drugs too. It is to stay silent about the high numbers of drug users within the community, even as drugs play an integral part in the lives of many trans* sex workers. Be it an abuse of prescription drugs or illegal drugs, sex workers use drugs for various reasons—it allows them to be more confident at work and gives them energy, it allows them to not have to deal with abusers (people walking by shouting vulgarities or insults, bad clients, rude law enforcers).

These are real issues that need to be talked about and not to be erased simply because funders might frown upon the cause, or because “There will be Children”.

What I am trying to illustrate here is what other queer activist scholars have termed “the violence of assimilation”. By trying to assimilate into mainstream heteropatriarchal society, there will be people who are left behind and trampled upon in order to achieve that.

Yet the question remains, why do we want to assimilate into a society that marginalized us in the first place? Why are we so hell bent on portraying ourselves to be THE SAME AS straight people (which is insulting because heterosexuals are not a monolithic community either) rather than trying to genuinely allow differences and diversity?

What we really need is to critically analyse the systems of heteropatriarchy, homonormativity, and meritocracy and reject the oppressive structures and institutions they create. We need to give space and to highlight issues faced by the most marginalized within our communities, rather than ignoring them or talking about gay marriage and inheritance rights. As Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore puts it, we need to talk about the very basic needs of the community that are not met, such as education, housing and healthcare, but also to allow space for gender, sexual, social, and political self-determination without censorship.3

“Queer voices: Beyond the Queer Mainstream – Beyond Gay Marriage and the Mainstream Gay Movement”, an audio clip featuring an interview with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Dean Spade, and Kenyon Farrow. http://www.kpfa.org/ archive/id/92989 3

“You need to work on your insecurities” I once thought my mother’s relationship was fucked because patriarchy and the state steal from us the knowledge of how to not remain trapped. And that feeling secure in oneself meant knowing how and what to do right.

If you read around you’ll find texts about contemporary neoliberal capitalism increasingly coercing workers to sell their personalities and charm. Service. If you work you’ll probably know this already. Most employed women in England before World War I worked in domestic service.

The development of service and security.

State security is reactionary and strategic. Powered by fear.

Those in power have a lot to be scared of - namely ‘us’. We, who would, and have, burnt down their houses and cut their throats.

I long for this. I’m not sure I could kill someone, but imagine what I allude to.

The title was the conclusion of a tutorial. It struck me as generic.

The constant questioning, the hesitation, the long pauses, the conferring, the reluctance, the compliance, the servitude. Generative – produces questions – and slows us down. Forges friendships, and pushes people away. Who doesn’t inhabit contradictions?

We’re told to eradicate insecurity, also from writing.

I disagree with the premise of Plan C’s text about anxiety. W.H. Auden’s poem The Age of Anxiety, in six parts, was published in 1948. The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts from 1951. Agamben writes through Spinoza’s Confidence and Despair in The Coming Community.

Etc. Contemporaneity is not the beginning of this.

[I am not what I want to be.]

Perhaps we belong in negation – in all the things we are not.

The king of the Netherlands gave a speech in September, soon after I moved here. He called for a ‘participation society’. Volunteerism, removing state provision of care, increasing corporate control and governance.

Striving to be brave. To become heroic in all areas of one’s life. Do you feel that? What would happen if we all got braver? [batons being forced out of police’s hands; women turning on their violent partners; government offices ransacked] [Why am I fixing myself?]

An artist I know took two photographs of security cameras in this city’s airport. He was then approached by gun-carrying uniformed men, taken to an office-like room, and strip-searched. I suspect he evaded arrest by being white and Dutch.

A friend’s facebook status made me realise that the presence of security guards in shops is because people steal. The most obvious things are inverted and twisted about. Marx wrote about the camera obscura and ideology.

Our insecurities are not our own. They belong to the scared ruling classes who outsource their fear.

That is not to say that the financial insecurity we experience, and the many proliferations of doubt and anxiety, are not real.

[All we have is each other, and the internet] [I am lost without you]

Capitalism as crisis. I read about predictions for this year’s stock market crash. More recently, Ukraine.

More [obvious] war.

The fortification of Europe.

The projection in my mind of partner, children, house in the countryside means that every romantic encounter is a shade of disappointment from that compelling absurdity.

Where ideology / imagination mean long self-analytic conversations with other women, maintaining our fear of eating pussy. [not long now]

We’ve also been analysing our birth charts and checking our horoscopes. We are powerless [like this] and so prefer to be governed by ambivalent planets.

(I’m an Aries with Taurus ascendant. Venus is in my first house).

A gallerist told me Adorno wrote about horoscopes and fascism - mysticism and “idle chatter”.

Born on 11th September he’s Sagittarian. “Sagittarius, the ninth sign of the zodiac, is the home of the wanderers of the zodiac. It's not a mindless ramble for these folks, either. Sagittarians are truth-seekers, and the best way for them to do this is to hit the road, talk to others and get some answers. Knowledge is key to these folks, since it fuels their broad-minded approach to life. The Sagittarian-born are keenly interested in philosophy and religion, and they find that these disciplines aid their internal quest. At the end of the day, what Sagittarius wants most is to know the meaning of life, and to accomplish this while feeling free and easy.”

Evade.

[If I was paid for this I would have written differently]

The Materialistic Anus (after Bataille) It is clear that the world is purely consumerist, in other words, that each thing bought is the consumption of another, or is the same thing in a buyable form.

Ever since money started to circulate in free markets devoted to trade, an effort at hyper consumerism has been made, because with the aid of advertising each campaign profligates one desire to another; all goods would be invisibly connected if one could discover with a single credit card swipe and in its totality the tracings of Adam Smith’s equations leading money into its own vault.

But the accumulation of goods is no less irritating than the excesses of bodies. And when I scream I AM THE BUCK an integral erection results, because the verb to be is the precursor to amorous consumerism.

Everyone is aware that life is materialism and consumption and that it lacks autonomy and selfexpression. Thus the choice between Prada and Lanvin is a grave question of esteem and aesthetic.

The carbon footprint engendered is the niggling imbalance in the spreadsheet of ecotourism.

Property secures the ego (in mortgages). Paychecks are paper hand jobs.

Aspirational luxury, property ownership and money-making can each be put forward as the central tenets of consumption.

And if the origin of materialism is not like the smoothness of a trading floor that seems to be the base, but like the circular movement that the trading floor describes around dynamic forex, then cowrie shells, prostitution, or Eros and Thanatos could equally be accepted as the generative principle.

The two primary motions are rotation and sexual movement, whose combination is expressed by stockmarkets and the ad industry.

These two motions are reciprocally transformed, the one into the other.

Thus one notes that the earth, by turning, makes money go around, and (because the result is as much the cause as that which provokes it) that money makes the earth turn by going around.

It is the mechanical combination or transformation of these movements that the alchemists sought as the philosopher’s stone.

It is through the use of this magically valued combination that one can determine the present position of men in the midst of the elements.

A stuffed shark in a vitrine, a bergamot macaron, a golden toothpick, the Pakistani help slipping and twisting his ankle in the back kitchen of the Michelin-starred Brooklyn gastropub are to desire what a battle flag is to nationality.

A mouth-blown vase, a millennial’s yawn, a finger dipping into whisky, the sound of a malfunctioning escalator, the staccato click of three-inch heels are the roots that nourish materialism.

A row of cows electrocuted in a pristine abattoir, a sixteen year old girl getting her first bikini wax, a lawyer’s stubble, a maple leaf in the middle of a kidney-shaped suburban swimming pool represent the confusion that serve as the vehicle of materialism.

A man who finds himself among products is irritated because he does not know why he is not one of the products.

In bed alone, he forgets that he does not know why he is himself instead of the products he uses.

Without knowing it, he suffers from the mental darkness that keeps him from screaming that he himself is a product of the system that fails to acknowledge his presence even while embracing him with both arms.

Desire or unweaned greed, or a Hollywood A-lister’s latest rehab, or bespoke tailoring, or the curlicue of whipped cream atop a latte bewilder lemmings forgotten in pristine high-rise office complexes.

They can very well try to find each other; they will never find anything but media images, and they will fall asleep as empty as LCD screens.

The omnipresent and slick iPhone surging quixotic between my thumbs is no more foreign to me than the cubicle partition or daily traffic jam I cannot look through or pass.

I rediscover indifference (allowing my products their rest) when I fall asleep, through an inability to prolong my usage.

It is impossible for my products to know whom they will discover when I use them, because they naturally project a complete lassitude.

The financial systems that turn in central business districts like recursive disks, and whose centers also move, describing an infinitely larger circle, only move away continuously from their own position in order to return it, completing their rotation.

Movement is a figure of money, incapable of stopping at a particular being, and rapidly passing from one to another.

But the status symbolism that determines it in this way is only a subterfuge of cultural hegemony.

A man gets up as brusquely as a loose spring on a production line and falls in the same way.

He gets up a few hours later and then he falls again, and the same thing happens every day; this great coitus with glocal economics is regulated by the financial rotation around the free market.

Thus even though financial life moves to the rhythm of this rotation, the image of this movement is not fluctuating graphs, but the male shaft penetrating the female and almost entirely emerging, in order to reenter.

Desire and money appear to be indivisible only because everything on the market is broken apart by vibrations of various amplitudes and durations.

However, there are no vibrations that are not conjugated with a continuous circular movement; in the same way, a liquidation undulating on the maw of Wall Street is the image of continuous metamorphosis.

Beings only consume to be esteemed, in the manner of phalluses that enter orifices in order to come on the face of the owner of the body.

Start-ups rise in the direction of the sun and then collapse in the direction of the ground.

MNCs bristle the industry with a vast quantity of minions and KPIs raised up to the sun.

MNCs that forcefully soar end up burned by lightning, chopped down, or uprooted. Returned to the ground, they come back up in another form.

But their polymorphous coitus is a function of uniform financial rotation.

The chicest image of consumerist life united with rotation is fashion week. From the movement of spring/summer to fall/winter, uniform coitus of the fabric with the seasons, comes the polymorphous and organic coitus of fabric with money.

But the first form of status spending is a concrete structure raised up over the property market. The erotic structure sometimes falls into disuse and rejoins earth in the form of dust, whilst real estate prices rise in the layers of inflation.

Dust is soon raised up again in the form of another brick for another building.

Consumerist life comes entirely from the movement of the markets and, inside bodies, life continues to come from the drive to own goods.

The consumer, then, has played the role of the female organ that liquidates its assets under the excitation of the market penis.

The consumer continuously jerks off.

Solid elements, contained and minted on metal animated by mechanical movement, shoot out in the form of minted nickels.

The erection and the buck scandalize, in the same way as the zombie and the chill of safe deposit boxes.

Industry is uniformly directed towards capitalism; human beings, hand in hand, phalloid like corporate ladders, in conjunction with other modes of production, necessarily exert their egos.

Human egos countenance sun, coitus, fortune and failure, but with different reactions.

When my hands are flushed with money, they become red and obscene.

It betrays at the same time, through rapacious reflexes, a covetous erection and a demanding thirst for indecency and materialistic debauchery.

For that reason I am not afraid to affirm that my bank account is a scandal and that my passions are expressed only by spending the BUCK.

The financial markets are covered with volcanoes, which serve as its anus.

Because these markets eat everything, they often violently eject the content of its entrails.

These contents shoot out with a racket and fall back, swiped down the sides of the buck in the body of MasterCard, Visa, Diners Club, spreading envy and prestige anxiety everywhere.

In fact, the erotic movements of the market are not fertile like those of the ego, but they are far more rapid.

The market sometimes jerks off in a frenzy, and everything collapses on its surface.

The credit card is thus the plastic consolidation of an erotic movement that burglarizes the desires produced by the ego, giving them the force of a scandalous eruption.

This eruptive force accumulates in those who are necessarily situated above.

Blue-collar workers appear to the white-collared to be as ugly and dirty as hairy sexual organs, or lower parts; but never will there be a scandalous eruption in the course of which the liquid assets and property values of the white-collared will be chipped away at.

The banal grind of blue-collar workers and volcanic deflagrations of money antagonize the dead revolutionaries.

As in the case of materialistic love, they take place within the constraints of barrenness.

In opposition to communal ascetism there are market failures, the image of financial ruin without condition, penury without escape and without rule, scandal and terror.

Desire then screams in my own throat; I am the mindless bottomlessness of a credit card, the filthy parody of the torrid and flimsy buck.

I want to have my throat slashed while violating the high-class call-girl to whom I will have been able to say: you are the money shot.

The buck exclusively loves consumerism and directs its sheeny violence, its ductile shaft, toward the ownership of goods, but finds itself incapable of reaching satiety or serenity, even though both diurnal and extraordinary expenses head continuously toward the indecency of moral and actual bankruptcy.

The solar annulus is the intact anus of her body at eighteen years to which nothing sufficiently gratifying can be compared except the buck, even though the anus is the expulsion of materialism.

Amanda Lee Koe is the fiction editor of Esquire (Singapore), editor of creative non-fiction magazine POSKOD.SG, and co-editor of literary journal Ceriph. She was also the 2013 Honorary Fellow of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. She spearheaded and edited Eastern Heathens (Ethos Books, with Ng Yi-Sheng), an anthology subverting Asian folklore, whilst her first book of short fiction, Ministry of Moral Panic (Epigram), was launched at the Singapore Writers Festival. She also develops interdisciplinary projects; her research interests tend towards ethical subjectivism and discursive explorations of diasporic Chinese identity.

Collision My running shoes have sat for weeks by the bench beside the door to the flat. They are ASICS branded with a lime green silver white and black colourway. I got them for free, though “free” is misleading because in truth it is a trade-off where they were purchased with “e-mart credits” provided by the Singapore Armed Forces. These shoes will be familiar to thousands of other male citizens conscripted by a half-century-old set of laws, who also spend their credits in a similar fashion buying “free” t-shirts, shorts, vests, socks, towels, LED torches—objects that bear some use and currency in the “real world” of “civilian life”.

I probably wouldn’t even own running shoes otherwise. Sports and working out don’t interest me, but because I enjoy walking more than most people I know and am not particularly put-off by the idea of sweating in an equatorial climate, I am unsure if this aversion to the physical arose more as something configured and programmed by the political environment I exist in. There are demands placed on the body, a policing at work, a claim of ownership even. Where it goes, how it functions, what it looks like, what goes into it, over it. There is no line between this and some “real world”.

There is an annual “individual physical proficiency test”—IPPT in bureaucratic jargon.

Despite being “able-bodied”, I have never passed this fitness test in 27 years of my life, including its derivatives in state-sanctioned physical education curricula, except that one time during full-time military service, when in desperation to meet its auditing and award quotas the battalion had my score altered internally.

Failing means punishment in the form of “remedial training”, a series of twenty physical training sessions to be completed within three months. Hundreds of men attend these sessions at dedicated military bases after work each day, bodies, paths, and spaces reluctantly reshaped.

A veneer of flexibility and freedom comes in the way they are allowed to select the place and days to attend to their punishment, and what to wear while performing these remedial tasks.

There are always trade-offs to make things seem acceptable and legitimate, such as paying a pittance for this labour-attendance. You get to feel like you own your failed body.

My running shoes have sat for weeks as I put off my own attendance. Twenty can be a large number and I am at two. I wonder if my failure is a conscious refusal. I am never able to keep at the minimum pace by the third round into the 6-lap 2400-metre run. The body, and mind, stop short and refuse to be bound by this arbitrary standard, by the un-consented social contract bestowing the role and burdens of soldier upon it. There is always some degree of agency. Sometimes in the evenings the bugle calls on-base. I continue running. Why should I stop, stiffen my body, calm my heart and rage and turn to face the lowering flags, while being punished, to salute that symbol of the very institution that is punishing me?

I am growing increasingly prepared for the prospect of being charged in military court again.

I was once four years ago, let off with a warning for forgetting about the test, but not before being forced to do away with my chest-length hair. I still had to complete remedial training. This time I will likely pay a fine, and get one step closer to facing a detention cell in future.

I am told that it’s not worth it.

The narrative goes that this is a small sacrifice to pay to enjoy a life of privilege.

Sacrifice for privilege. Freedom that needs defending. Does the equation really flow that way?

The shoes come to represent contradictory but related things—mobility, control, speed, protection, inertia, welfare, warfare, support, delegation, discrimination, leash, noose... It begins to feel like momentum, if it had even existed or been allowed to accumulate, is negated each time the body collides with the state. There is a real effect on productivity, in the general project of art making and “working on things”, which involves recurring feelings of lethargy, futility, hopelessness, and a teetering on the edge of depression. The shoes, and this open Writer document, are immobilised by monumentality.

Yet as they sit there, I am thinking about being stationary, and how it’s not necessarily a defeatist or disappearing or inconsequential position to take.

That that’s the very basis of the occupation as direct action, of the sit-in, strike, blockade, the notion of solidarity – all the things that we here do not do, or have forgotten how to do.

Are we so gripped by fear, or is it shame, that our first response to the migrant transport worker going on strike for better wages is to ridicule and blame them for disrupting “our way of life?” Evidently, a way of life that requires subservience and perpetual tradeoffs towards some twisted normativity devoid of failure and misstep. Could we learn to take a stand, and not for authority, not for nation?

I like to think that we can, but we have much to learn, especially from the struggles of the oppressed peoples of this world, struggles so easily rendered invisible by privilege. We have to recognise our complicity and participation in violence and cease it, even if it takes putting our bodies upon the gears.

I am working to separate the trajectory of my own momentum from the one demanded of my body, and deny its negation. I like to imagine that amongst other gestures, in my small, quiet, and often private refusals, contemplations, I am training and hardening myself—resistance advancing in tandem with acts of self-care towards... revolution. I can only imagine how other bodies are policed, in other collisions, even to the point of death. Solidarity must be real, because these things are urgent, more so than remedying any perceived physical in-proficiency.

Godwin Koay is an artist based in Singapore. Using image and text, both digital and physical, found and fabricated, his work is informed by and performed through methods of open-ended inquiry. This is directed towards exploring the possibilities of an artistic practice forged at an interstice with anarchist social and political praxis. An ongoing project is Remedial Regiment, a visual intervention in the state’s remedial training regime for national servicemen.

We are losing inertia?

Speech is my small, chipped edge of a revolution.

Speech spoken on a platform given by those who applause to show they’ll afford me the pause to listen.

My rebellion doesn’t whisper, it roars.

Imperfect stutters stammer from the broken lips that blistered Out There, Where my gender is the marked scorn of the impatient, Losing their focus with my gesturing searches for explanations.

But on this stage I answer the questions.

I muster every pound to beat like punches stubbornly Pummelling through the silence and closed eyed, tongue tied, Entertainment.

Self-censorship is a prison and honesty is rarely calm, Cos rage is fire, my smoke screams, my truth burns.

So I’ll bear my scars if it’ll grab your attention long enough to ask – What fucking revolution?

What uprising is invited by line ups and guest lists, Brow quivering because you already clocked the heads that merge to Form the blurred edge of a snake, Nerves are a serpent who whispers; ‘Feminist.’

But you fulfil your tropes and slay no stereotypes no less than the eye that meets yours and Gets it.

There is no wisdom like a knowing smile.

No revolver so loaded as the bullets prepared by poets Who recite the rehearsed rhymes of something you already knew But never heard.

And some of them refuse unless they buy it.

If you can be pre-packaged into a deliverable and anticipated powder, Tapped into wine glasses, blown over ash And inhaled by the spectator who will never see.

I always think I should try to find funny, To sculpt some clever and amusing way of articulating my call to arms, And how terrified I am.

But I prefer to keep it stripped simple, And as brutally blatant as it needs to be.

Speech is my revolution because even if they never hear me, I’ll know that I have said it.

Frank Canton @FrankUCanton An unapologetic feminist poet who seeks to use honesty as a platform to start new conversations.

By Virtue of Another The art of performance is not mine to master – it can be packaged and sold but I will never possess it.

It shifts in my hands and it slides off my tongue as I stand on the stage and recite my lines.

The noise is sometimes unbearable.

The words are often lies, or if they are truths they are seen through a screen.

Am I mediated? Appropriated? A quotation or imperfect citation?

I hope I am not a poor copy.

Do I disguise myself or do they see what they wish?

Am I a mirror or a brick wall?

Does my face melt when your eyes are on me or do I succeed in staying together?

I am jealous of those who have nothing to hide but maybe they have nothing to lose.

I gave myself to only one and the weight of that offering lowers me now.

My performance was devised with her – rehearsed until perfect.

On stage and off I was singing a song.

But now the singing stops.

Does the performance continue if I’m standing alone?

I hope that it does now I’m standing alone.

But what if I am not ready – where will it go?

It shakes me – this unpracticed routine, this solitary song.

My body is heavy, like carrying a debt.

Indebted to another with no wealth to pay back.

And if my body is not my own, I must start negotiating, pulling it apart, taking it back.

What was once so bound, inscribed, so given up.

And now I am beside myself, as if looking in on myself. How do they see me, I wonder.

By virtue of another: a sense of pride that couples with grief.

This mourning will pass and one day I will say: So thankful to have known all that you are and that I could give you all that I did.

Today there is silence and nothing is said.

But there is one consolation that I keep on forgetting: If it has gone then at least I once had it.

By virtue of another, she said: by virtue of another.

by Tilly Scantlebury

THE ANUS IS THE CENTRE OF THE SOUL

by DARYL YAM

1 “A taxi had burst into flames that morning,” the young man said. “It

thing had ever happened.” He then leaned forward on his chair. “Why

burst into flames in the middle of a tunnel.”

do you ask? Do you think it might have something to do with…”

I didn’t say a word. I just looked into his eyes and nodded twice.

I looked up from my pad. “With?”

As he paused I stole a glance at the fish tank, standing at the corner of

“You know,” he said. “My condition.”

his bedroom. It was a fairly large one, about a metre long and half a

I gave him a smile. “It might, or it might not,” I told him. “As of now

metre wide, and in it swam a single catfish. Its skin was of the pearly

I’m not entirely sure. But if you promise to tell me everything that had

white variety, but its fins and whiskers appeared to be dotted by flecks

happened to you on the twenty-fourth of April from start to finish, I

of black ink. It lay motionless at the bottom of the pool, gazing out of

might just be able to give you an answer.”

the glass. I wanted one of my own once, but my daughter objected to the idea. Think of the cat, she said.

“It was a terrible accident,” the young man said. “But it was kind of awesome, you know?”

The young man nodded. “Okay,” he said. He then looked down towards his feet. “I guess you must see a lot of people like me.”

I shifted in my seat. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Lim,” I said to him: “Very occasionally.”

•

I crossed and re-crossed my legs, and clicked on my ballpoint pen.

I flipped open my memo pad and turned to a fresh page, and began

There are not many words for the kind of people in my line of work.

writing down the young man’s name.

Over the past thirty years or so I’ve been referred to as many things:

“What morning is this again?” I asked.

an investigator, a private eye, some say a therapist; a relative of mine

“On the twenty-fourth of April,” he replied.

once called me “the fortune-teller” during a family gathering, which I

I nodded. A month ago, I noted to myself, as I wrote down the date

found to be a far cry from anything that I do. I don’t even pretend to

on my pad: 24 April, 2012.

“Thank you,” I said to him. “You seem to remember the date with a surprising amount of speed, Mr. Lim.”

tell fortunes. I would like to stress that I am an ordinary man with no extraordinary talents. I merely have a keen eye for detail, and a penchant for the English language. If I were thus compelled to give a title

“Do I?”

to my profession—anything along the lines of doctor, banker, or lawyer

I nodded again. “Whenever I ask my clients to recollect the precise

for example—I’d call myself a specialist. People in my line of work tend

date of events, they usually can’t recall. Most of the time they end up scrolling through the calendars on their phones.”

“I suppose that can be quite troublesome,” the young man remarked.

“Very occasionally,” I said in reply. “Do taxis burst into flames very often?”

“What,” the young man said, “in Singapore?”

I didn’t say a word.

“Well, no,” said the young man. “Not at all. It’s the first time such a

to refer to one another as such.

I was informed of Mr. Lim’s situation when I had received a call from a colleague two days ago—a fellow specialist, based in Singapore.

My secretary said that it was an urgent matter that required my immediate services, and that even though I was in the middle of a session with an old client of mine, Mari insisted that I had to take the call. And so I did.

The woman at the other end of the line, Ms. Neo, had a friend of a friend whose son was suffering from a particular problem.

“What kind of problem?” I asked.

soft, cool breeze around the room, and cooled the parquet tiles beneath

“It’s very hard to explain,” she said to me. “I don’t exactly know

my feet.

how to put it.”

His room seemed ordinary enough: a queen-sized bed in one cor-

“In the simplest of words, then,” I asked her.

ner, and a few movie posters along the wall. There was a study desk

She laughed. “Of course,” she said. She then said nothing else over

placed beneath the window, a sliding-door wardrobe, and a tall book-

the next several seconds. I imagined her looking towards the ceiling,

shelf, sparsely littered with books and DVDs. There were two other

or towards an empty wall, trying to think of the simplest, most direct

doors in the room: one led to the bathroom, while the other led to a

words. “You must understand this is an unusual situation—even for

balcony. And then there was the fish tank as well, and its quiet, scale-

someone like me. It’s a case I’ve never seen before. I spoke to another

less inhabitant. The whiskers of the catfish probed the walls of the tank,

colleague about it, and he confesses to being unable to help at all. He

like the feelers of a large insect.

then recommended I speak directly to you.”

In another sheet on my memo pad, I had jotted down all of the oth-

“I see,” I said in reply. “I must say you’ve made me very curious.”

er details concerning Mr. Lim that his mother could supply me with.

She laughed again. “Thank goodness, then,” she said, and I could

His first name was Kevin, and his Chinese name was Wenlong; he was

sense the tone of her voice beginning to harden. “I believe this young

born on 16 January 1990 in K.K. Women’s Hospital, and although his

man—this particular son of a friend of a friend—might have lost

was a natural birth, the doctor had to extract him via vacuum because

something very crucial over the year. I hope you’ll understand: it’s very

she had become too tired to push in her fourth hour. For the next three

hard for me to pinpoint the exact time of this loss.”

months, while his skull was still soft, his father would put a hand over

“Why?” I asked. “What exactly did this man lose?”

his head and rub it in a circular motion, just to coax the shape of his

I imagined her quietly shaking her head, rubbing a finger across

skull back into a perfect, round shape. Aside from him he has no oth-

her forehead. “I think he might have lost his soul,” she said.

er siblings in the family. His father passed away from late-stage colon

I blanched. “His soul, you say?” I had forgotten entirely about my

cancer in 2009, when Kevin had repeated his second year at H— Junior

client at this point. “That’s something nobody should be losing,” I said

College. It was on his deathbed when he had confessed to his parents

to her. “How did you arrive at this conclusion, Ms. Neo? Did you per-

that he was a homosexual. They felt enormously glad and relieved

sonally see the young man?”

when Kevin had come out of the closet: like most parents, it was some-

“Of course I did,” came the voice from the receiver. “The thing is,

thing they had always known, but had feared to acknowledge. It was

the boy was completely fine. He acted as though nothing in his life was

something the child should do after all; it was a sign that their child

out of place. I asked him how he felt and he told me he was okay. He

had finally grown. He served his National Service from 2010 to 2011,

was perfectly fine. But if you know where to look, Mr. Haruhito, and

and is now an intern journalist for the Singapore Press Holdings.

you look at that spot hard enough, you can see it for yourself. Even his

“Is he currently in a relationship?” I asked his mother.

mother could.”

“Not to my knowledge,” she replied.

She then sighed, directly into the speaker. It felt as though her actual breath had gone into my ear.

“Did he have any in the past?” I asked.

“None that I know of,” she replied.

“There’s no doubt about it,” she said. “He lost his soul. It’s a gone case.”

“Why do you say so?” I asked her. “Do you think he might be hiding them from you?”

•

His mother shrugged. Madam Lim was a senior financial planner

Mr. Lim lived in a house along Sixth Avenue, in a small two-storey

in her late forties, and she possessed a natural poise and demeanour

terrace off the main road. His bedroom, like the other, was located on

that most likely came from many years of interacting and negotiating

the second floor. The quiet hum of the air-conditioning unit blew a

with a vast network of clientele. Under the natural light, streaming in

from the veranda, I saw that she had a rather prominent mole in the

faint feeling that something was amiss since the start of the week, but I

space between her neck and left shoulder that I particularly admired.

didn’t fully come to realise it till the weekend.”

“The boy has no reason to,” she replied. “He of all people should

“Why?” I asked. “What did you realise?”

know that I am perfectly accepting of his sexual orientation. It’s been

She took in a deep breath, and sighed. “It was something in the air,”

three years since he had come out to me and my late husband, and I’ve

she said. “Something lighter. It reminded me of the time the both of us

never had any issues with it since.”

had gone to Kunming. It was springtime, then, and I remember how

“I see,” I said in reply. With my ballpoint pen I wrote down the

light the air had felt at the time, and yet how heavy it was with the scent

words, single and virgin (?). I then looked up from my pad. “Has your

of nature. It was like being in a florist’s.”

son ever gone on any trips? Excursions? Has he ever travelled abroad?”

“How peculiar,” I commented.

“My son and I try go on holiday once a year,” she told me. “After his father passed away we went to Kunming, the province in China where

She shrugged again. “Maybe it’s part of being Singaporean. We can’t help but measure the humidity in the air.”

his father’s family came from. Before his enlistment in 2010 we went

“I see.” By then there were already a number of new words scrawled

to Rome and Venice, followed by Paris. During his block leave in 2011

across my pad: Yamanashi, Saturday, 4.30, before Saturday, 春, the air.

we went to California.”

“What else did you notice?”

“Is that all?” I asked.

“I realised the same feeling had applied to him.”

“Well, after his discharge, he and his platoon mates went to Japan.”

“By ‘him’, you mean your son?”

My interest became piqued. “Japan?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “He felt just like the air in the house: light but heavy.

“In December, yes,” said Madam Lim. “There were seven of them,

Call it a mother’s instinct, or a woman’s intuition, but I knew that

and they had all decided to go on a tour to celebrate their release from

something was wrong. And so I called a friend, and then that friend

the army.”

referred me to, um—”

“Which parts of Japan did he go to?” I asked.

“A specialist?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” she replied. “Tokyo? Osaka? Somewhere in

“Yes, yes. A specialist,” said Madam Lim. “Ms. Neo, I believe. As

between they stopped by Mount Fuji, I believe.”

an atheist, I was rather grateful when she declared that her work had

“So you’re saying that they went to Yamanashi prefecture.”

no religious affiliation whatsoever. She came round to the house a few

She shook her head. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Admittedly I’m not

days after my friend made the call. Just before Ms. Neo left however

too familiar with Japan.”

I smiled. “I don’t blame you,” I told her. “My father is from Tokyo, but my mother was from Saga prefecture. I’m sure you’ve never heard

she said that unfortunately there was nothing she could do about the situation. I asked her to help me think of a solution regardless. And so she resorted to calling you.”

of it. It’s near the very end of the country, towards the southwest region.

“Yes,” I told her. “And so she called me.”

The prefecture is particularly famous for its ceramics.”

She gave me a smile. “I understand you’re a specialist as well?” she

“Is that so?” said Madam Lim. “That’s very nice.”

I sensed she was being non-committal at this point. I couldn’t really blame her for that either.

“May I ask when you had first noticed any changes in your son?”

asked. “From Tokyo?”

“Yes,” I said. “Tokyo is a remarkably strange city, stranger than most. But even then, it’s been a while since I’ve seen a case like your son’s.”

“When?”

“I see,” she said. “You must be a very busy man.”

“Yes,” I said. “When.”

“I wasn’t, not really.” I gave her a smile in return, in the hope it

“About a fortnight ago, I suppose—towards the middle of the month. It was a Saturday, around four thirty in the afternoon. I had a

might assure her. “I am now.”

•

that day. Not a single vehicle drove along the lanes.

Nothing really remarkable happened on the morning of the twen-

“They really closed off the entire tunnel,” Mr. Lim remarked. The

ty-fourth of April. Mr. Lim assumed it was the same as every other

combination of heat and nervousness had made him sweat rather pro-

morning, because he didn’t really remember much. He had gotten up

fusely at this point. If he knew better, he wouldn’t have worn loafers to

at eight, taken a shower, and dressed for work. He took his breakfast,

work that day.

and then rode the subway to Braddell station. He arrived at the office a

“Yeah,” said Rahul, his sideburns wet and slick with perspiration.

few minutes past ten. He barely had a chance to place his bag down on

Mr. Lim saw he already had his camera at the ready, his right index

his desk when his editor quickly informed him that a taxi had caught

finger positioned and steady on the clicker. “They really did.”

fire on the C.T.E.

It was something he had never seen before, or thought he would

“C.T.E.?”

ever get to do in his entire lifetime. Nobody even thinks of doing some-

“The Central Expressway,” said Mr. Lim. “On the way to the A.Y.E.

thing like this, Mr. Lim insisted. It’s just not a thought that occurs in

It caught fire in the Kampong Java tunnel.”

someone’s head, walking down the middle of a wide and empty tunnel.

I shook my head. “My apologies.”

It’s impossible. A tunnel as highly frequented and as important as the

“No worries,” he said. He spelt them out for me: Ayer Rajah, Kam-

Kampong Java tunnel would never be completely devoid of vehicles.

pong Java. The tunnel so happened to be rather close to his house,

Not even for a second. Even Rahul, with his casual, nonchalant demea-

added Mr. Lim; it was approximately ten minutes away by car. As I

nour, couldn’t help but be impressed.

scribbled down the details, he then asked if I had to make a note on

“Whoa,” he said to Mr. Lim. “I can’t believe we’re doing this, man!”

everything that he said.

The exit they had walked through was Exit 5. If it was any other

“As much as possible,” I replied. “It’s not up to me to decide if every detail counts.”

day, they would have walked straight into oncoming traffic, travelling at thirty-five kilometres an hour; instead, all they were met with was

Kevin nodded. “I get that.”

the constant buffet of a hot, sticky breeze, pressing itself against their

After a quick debrief by the editor and a hurried introduction to

bodies and flapping their shirts like flags in the wind. A deep, sonorous

the photographer assigned to the story, it was decided that the photog-

groan filled the drums in their ears as the breeze rushed across the

rapher would drive them both to the scene of the accident. He had a

walls of the concrete chamber. Measuring four to five lanes wide with

driver’s license, after all, and also knew the best way to get there.

an approximately five-metre-high ceiling, Mr. Lim couldn’t help but

The photographer went by the name of Rahul, and drove a pretty

become in utter awe of the vastness he was feeling, the sheer sense that

sizeable Nissan saloon in a shocking shade of yellow. In spite of its loud

he was in the midst of something terribly, terribly wide.

exterior, however, Mr. Lim noticed that there was barely anything in

“And how did it feel like, this vastness?” I asked.

the car except for a small water bottle, tossed onto the backseat.

“Heh,” he said. “What else, really? It was like being in a damn big

Top 40 radio played loudly from the speakers as they made their

tunnel.”

way towards a public car park in Cairnhill. They parked the car, gath-

Eventually Rahul spotted a small white motorcycle, parked by the

ered their essentials, and trekked their way towards one of the smaller

side of the lanes. “I think we’re nearing the scene,” he said; and they

exits of the tunnel. According to Rahul, the both of them had no choice

did. They spotted the taxi, about ten metres or so from the entrance

but to climb down a small incline of grass in order to enter the tunnel

of the tunnel.

via the exit. It was neither too steep nor too gentle, and the grass was

“I can’t quite describe it,” Mr. Lim said to me. “The taxi.”

fairly shorn but thick. It would have been dangerous, thought Mr. Lim,

I leant back against my chair. “Take your time,” I said. “Take as long

if either of them had lost their footing and tumbled down the slope, straight into the passing traffic. But the roads were completely empty

as you need.”

“Hmm,” said Mr. Lim. He thought about it for a while. “Well, to put

it simply—it was a total heap. A complete wreck. I could barely make

“We had pizza in the office. It happens from time to time.” He then

out the structure of the taxi itself, although you could still make out

sighed. “It was very uneventful, after the whole thing in the tunnel. I

the hood, the bumper, and the wheels. You can still tell where the seats

can’t say anything particularly special happened since then. All I did

were, though it wasn’t very clear. It was charred and black and ruined,

was sit on chair, make a few calls. I took the M.R.T.”

but it was also coated with this grey-white substance—I think that was

I nodded. On my pad I had written down chair, calls, M.R.T. “And

how the fire was put out. It was a taxi by all means, but it had become

yet somehow you managed to lose your soul, somewhere in between

so utterly reduced to—to whatever it had become. It was—it was a taxi

all of those events.”

without being a taxi. Do you know what I mean? It was incredible.”

I took down everything that he had said. “I see,” I said. “Were you reminded of anything in particular, Mr. Lim?” “Not really,” he said.

He raised his hands in the air. “Apparently I did,” he said. “What else is new, eh.”

I looked up from my pad. I clicked on my ballpoint pen and set it aside.

I nodded. “And did you linger long, Mr. Lim?”

“Do you not believe you’ve lost your soul, Mr. Lim?” I asked.

“We couldn’t. Surrounding the scene were a bunch of people from

He looked at me, with a tentative manner in his eyes. “I don’t even

the police, the fire department, ambulance people, as well as some of-

know if it was ever there to begin with, Mr. Haruhito,” he said. “But

ficials from the Land Transport Authority. They were all wearing these

something in me says I might have lost it on that day.”

vests, you see—but either way they spotted us coming from quite a

“As opposed to any other day?”

distance. You couldn’t not see us. By the time we got close enough to

He nodded. He stuck out his lower lip as he did so. “As opposed to

take a decent shot they told us to go. I left them with my details so they

any other day.”

could give me their official statement when they had it.”

“And then?”

2

“And then we left,” said Mr. Lim. He shrugged. “That was all to it.

It was towards the end of May when I next saw Madam Lim. It was

We walked back out of the tunnel, climbed up the grassy slope, walked

a couple of days after I had conducted my interview with her son, a

all the way back to the car park and drove back to the office. This time,

pre-arranged meeting to be held at the Guthrie House on Fifth Ave-

however, Rahul took the C.T.E., and you could see this incredibly long

nue, during which I was to update her on any progress I might have

traffic jam, stretching on for miles and miles on the other side of the

made on my investigations. It was also agreed that Ms. Neo should

road while it was completely clear on ours. It looked like one of the

join us during this meeting, to provide a third opinion on my findings

scenes in a movie, you know? When the world is ending and every-

if necessary.

body’s trying to leave the country, but no one’s getting anywhere.”

I suppose the main question that has been on my mind since the

No one’s getting anywhere, I wrote. “What did you do at the office?”

very start of the case was why it had to be referred to me. Like I said

He scratched his head. “I spent the rest of the day conducting in-

before, I was and am by all means an ordinary man of no extraordi-

terviews from my phone and typing up the article.”

nary talent. There’s nothing very particular about me, aside from the

“Nothing else?” I asked.

admittedly peculiar nature of my work—but this is something I share

“Nothing else.”

with all my other esteemed colleagues from around the world, Ms. Neo

“I see,” I said. “Around what time did you get back home, Mr. Lim?”

included. Why, then, did Ms. Neo’s colleague recommend my services

“Around nine thirty, possibly ten,” he replied.

to her? And why, then, did Ms. Neo agree that my help was best needed

“And what did you do then?”

in a situation like this? It was something I resolved to find out from Ms.

“I took a shit, took a shower, and went straight to bed.”

Neo herself by the end of our meeting.

Shit, shower, bed. “What about dinner?” I asked.

We met at six thirty on a Wednesday evening, in one of the bak-

eries located on the ground floor of Guthrie House. It was a rather

come back around six in the evening; he leaves at eight forty-five and

homey yet posh setting, with white tables and chairs laid out around a

comes back after I do. He even had to work the weekend. The only time

counter, beside long shelves of freshly baked goods and pastries. I was

I saw him was an hour after I’ve had my dinner, about two nights ago.”

the first to arrive at the bakery, followed shortly after by Madam Lim

“How was he?”

and Ms. Neo. My first thought upon seeing them was that they couldn’t

“Pale, sickly,” she said. “I asked him if he was fine, and he told me

look more different. Madam Lim was dressed in a tailored blazer and

he was. He acted the way he always did, lively and a bit sarcastic, but

skirt, in bold, fashionable colours, while Ms. Neo wore a plaid shirt

the complexion of his skin had really worried me.”

and a pair of faded, denim jeans. From a distance they looked like two

I nodded. “Any other updates, Madam Lim?”

different sisters, leading two very different lives of their own. The both

“None,” she said. “And you, Mr. Haruhito?”

of them promptly sat on the other side of the table. In order to get the

I snapped my memo pad shut, and tucked it back into the pocket

conversation started, I asked Madam Lim how her son was doing over the past few days. When she answered, I noticed that her voice had sounded considerably more tired and weary than before. There were also these dark circles beneath her eyes that her light layer of foundation couldn’t do much to hide.

“To be perfectly honest,” said Madam Lim, “I don’t know.”

of my suit.

“I’ve made some progress, Madam Lim, but unfortunately I still don’t have any answers for you, or for your son.”

“I see,” she said. “Nevertheless, Mr. Haruhito—I’d still like to hear about what you’ve done so far.”

“By all means,” I said. I thought back to the first step I took after Mr.

She paused. I leant back in my chair, and waited for her to contin-

Lim’s interview. Like opening a drawer full of folders, I ran my hand

ue. Ms. Neo rested her left shoulder against the wall and looked at the

over the memories until, finally, I came upon the right one. “The first

corner of the table.

thing I did, Madam Lim, was to investigate why the taxi had caught on

“It’s the nature of his job, I suppose.”

“As an intern?” I asked.

“As a journalist,” she said. “There’s not much difference between

fire on the twenty-fourth of April.”

Ms. Neo leant forward on her chair at that point. “The taxi?” she asked. “Are you talking about the incident on the C.T.E.?”

being an intern and a full-timer over there. An intern gets low pay and

“Yes,” I replied. “When I had asked Mr. Lim when he thought he

more slack for his mistakes. That’s all. Other than that, an intern has

might have lost his soul, he didn’t know how to answer at first, which,

to work just as hard. He works the same shifts and stays for the same

by all means, is a most natural response. Nobody immediately knows

number of hours.”

the answer to that question. But when I pushed him to provide me a

“What kind of hours are we talking about?” I asked.

date, any date that came immediately to mind, he told me about the

“On a good day, ten to six. On a really good day, he might not leave

taxi that caught fire on that day; on the twenty-fourth of April.”

the office till ten o’ clock, or even midnight. That means he has a story

“And you trust him?” asked Ms. Neo.

to file.”

“Of course,” I told her. I then looked at Madam Lim; she was being

I nodded. I took out my memo pad and began taking note of the details. “Has he had a lot of stories to file lately?”

“I don’t know,” said Madam Lim. She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Unfortunately I don’t read the paper he works for.”

“I see,” I said. “What you do know, however, is that he’s not been home much.”

every bit of the protective mother, taking in every word I was saying.

I cleared my throat. “There’s no better source to trust than the source itself. That is my belief.”

“Right,” said Ms. Neo. “So did you find out anything about the taxi?”

“Not much, in truth,” I said. “Mr. Lim showed me his notes on the

She shook her head. “Not at all. I barely see him, let alone bump

story, as well as the statement he had received from the company that

into him in the house. I leave the house at seven in the morning, and

managed the taxi. They said it was a fuel leak, exacerbated by the heat

of the morning.”

“‘I see,’ I said to him. A closer look told me that the hiking trip

“Who was in the taxi at the time?” asked Madam Lim.

seemed to have taken place in a rainforest of some sort, and that he

“No passengers,” I said. “Just the driver, Mr. Yong. I managed to

wasn’t the only one involved in the trip. Amongst the faces, I discov-

make a few calls and obtained his details, his home address included.”

ered, was the face of his son-in-law, who at the time became busy with

“What for?” Ms. Neo asked. “Did you pay him a visit?”

unplugging the old television in order to replace it with the new one. I

I nodded. “Yes, I did, Ms. Neo.”

then asked Mr. Yong why he felt compelled to show me these pictures.

She raised her eyebrows. “But why, Mr. Haruhito? Do you actually think the driver might have something to do with Mr. Lim?”

“‘Because,’ Mr. Yong explained, ‘we were in the very middle of MacRitchie reservoir, in search of a lost shrine.’ A shrine? I asked him,

I shifted in my seat.

and he told me that it wasn’t any old shrine: it was a shrine built by

“No, to be honest. I did not. By the time Mr. Lim entered the tunnel

the Japanese in 1942 when they had occupied Singapore during the

that day and saw the taxi with his own two eyes, the driver, of course,

Second World War. The Japanese had demolished it in 1945, following

was long gone. If anything, the connection between Mr. Lim and Mr.

their surrender to the British forces, but its remains, apparently, still

Yong was a tenuous one. But it was a connection I still had to establish

stand in the middle of the reservoir. The name of the shrine was Syo-

and enquire into.

nan Jinja.” I turned to Ms. Neo. “Have you ever heard of this shrine,

“According to the driver’s details he lived in a public housing estate

Ms. Neo?”

situated along Sengkang East Way, about a hundred metres or so from

She didn’t answer for a while. “Yes, Mr. Haruhito,” she said. “I have.

the nearest train station. His apartment was situated on the ninth floor.

Unfortunately the place is now in ruins. There remains nothing special

When I went there I found him and his son-in-law, hoisting a brand

about the shrine.”

new television through the door.

“I asked the middle-aged man if he was Mr. Yong. He said that he was. And then he asked me, in turn, who I was, and what business I

I nodded. “Mr. Yong also happened to agree with your assessment, Ms. Neo. And you, Madam Lim?” I asked her. “Have you heard of this shrine?”

wanted with him, and I told him I was there to enquire into the nature

“No,” said Madam Lim, shaking her head. “This is the first time I’ve

of how his taxi had caught on fire. His son-in-law then asked if I was a

ever heard about such a thing. Frankly I’m surprised the government

representative from the taxi company. I told him I wasn’t, but I was a

hasn’t turned it into a tourist spot or something.”

private consultant, hired by both the management and the taxi’s man-

“Hmm.” I had ordered a glass of iced lemon tea for the three of

ufacturers to get to the bottom of the case, so that no incidents of this

us, and took a quick sip from mine. “It appears that Mr. Yong agreed

nature might occur again. I then showed them my card.

with Ms. Neo’s sentiment. In spite of the sensationalism that might

“Mr. Yong looked at it, and began to look impressed by something.

surround the existence of a ‘lost shrine’, it was nothing but a few steps,

‘Haruhito Aki?’ asked Mr. Yong. ‘You’re Japanese?’ I then bowed, and

terraced into the side of a small hill, leading up to a bunch of rocks that

told him that I was. Mr. Yong then rushed his son-in-law into the

formed some kind of foundation for what had once been the shrine

apartment and asked me to follow him in. I did.

itself. He then showed me photos of what used to be a wide bridge,

“At first glance, Mr. Yong’s apartment didn’t seem to possess any-

spanning across a river, and how they had to circumnavigate around it

thing particularly remarkable—that is, until Mr. Yong himself led me

in order to properly access the ruins. There was another photo of Mr.

to a modest-looking piano where a number of framed photographs

Yong’s son-in-law, washing his face in the pool of a small bath by the

had been arranged in a neat row across the top. ‘I know you’re here

side of the shrine. His name was Alvin, if I recall correctly. The only

on official business, Mr. Haruhito,’ said Mr. Yong, ‘but I need to show

remarkable thing about the place was how the moss had covered over

you something. These,’ he explained, ‘are pictures that I had taken on a

everything, and how, in spite of the mosquitoes, there was a freshness

hiking trip last year, on the third Saturday of November.’

to the air he could never quite breathe outside of the reservoir. ‘It’s the

trees,’ said Mr. Yong. ‘Nature’s lungs.’ But that is all there was to the shrine.”

Madam Lim blinked. “Nothing more?”

A look of realisation came over her face. “You can’t stop. That or you pull over to the side, but people only do that in case of emergencies.”

“Nothing more,” I replied.

“Or if you drive a motorcycle,” added Ms. Neo.

She turned to Ms. Neo. “Do you sense that there could be more to

I nodded. “Every time Mr. Yong drives into a tunnel, it feels as

this shrine thing?”

Ms. Neo shook her head. “I doubt it. Even the connection between Mr. Yong and the shrine is, to use the word, tenuous. If he had gone

though the tunnel never stops, as though the tunnel is longer than it actually is. Every time he comes out of a tunnel he feels a sense of release.”

there in the third week of November, that would mean there was, what,

“Are those his exact words?” Ms. Neo asked.

five months between the shrine visit and the explosion?”

“More or less,” I said. “I like to paraphrase.”

“It wasn’t an explosion, Ms. Neo,” I said. “It merely caught fire.”

For the next minute or so, the conversation appeared to ground to

“Well it certainly was dramatic, Mr. Haruhito,” said Ms. Neo. “I saw

a halt. Nothing more could be said or added to what had already been.

a video of it once. There was black smoke everywhere, nobody could

I took a sip from my glass of iced tea, which seemed to prompt a sigh

see shit from inside the cars. Nobody in the tunnel knew whether to

from Madam Lim. She was pinching the bridge of her nose once more

go out and run or stay inside. Did you ask the driver how he felt about

when she asked what my next step was.

the accident?”

“I did,” I said. “Till this day, Mr. Yong still doesn’t fully understand how it happened. One moment he was driving, the next he realised that the hood was on fire.”

“My next step, Madam Lim?” I said. “I might have to conduct a second interview with your son.”

“That’s fine,” she said. “I’ll let him know and ask him when’s he available when I get back home.” She stood up from her chair, and

“Was he frightened?” asked Ms. Neo.

slung her leather handbag over her shoulder. “I have to be home for

“At first. On hindsight, however, he felt relieved. He felt very glad

dinner, anyway; my son texted me during the afternoon to say he had

it happened.”

Madam Lim frowned. “Why?” “He said that compared to his hiking adventures, driving a taxi was horrible. There was no life in it whatsoever. All he did was go through

a half-day off.” She turned to her companion. “Would you like me to drive you to the nearest station, Ms. Neo?” “It’s fine,” she said. She then gave me a look. “I’d like to have a few more words with Mr. Haruhito, if you don’t mind.”

the motions, day in and day out, driving down the same roads in the

“By all means,” she said. She then placed a five-dollar note on the

hope that somebody might flag him down for a trip to who-knows-

table. “Thanks for the drinks. And for everything you’ve done as well.”

where. Whenever he was stuck in a jam, he’d look at the cars beside

Madam Lim then turned and left the bakery.

him, and see that the drivers were just as numb and bored and wit-

•

less as he was. Every time Mr. Yong drives down a tunnel, he feels as

I took another sip of my iced lemon tea and placed the glass back

though he’s lost all control over himself. He loses all sense of his limbs

down. Now that it was just me and Ms. Neo, I felt more inclined to

and his motions and his actions.”

express what I really thought about the case of Mr. Lim’s missing soul.

“Why’s that?” asked Madam Lim.

But I also felt it was important, especially in cases like these, not to ut-

“Do you not drive?” I asked her.

ter the first word. I interlaced my fingers on my lap and merely waited

“I do,” she said in reply. “As a single parent I have no choice but to.”

for her to say something. Ms. Neo, in return, got up from her seat and

“What do you do whenever you drive into a tunnel, Madam Lim?”

sat in Madam Lim’s chair.

She blinked. “You just—drive.”

“And what can you not do?”

We were seated directly opposite one another. One person’s gaze became inevitably locked into the other’s. In a peculiarly calm and

even voice, she then said, “I suppose the most interesting thing about

I leant forward on my chair. “You must understand that this is a

the cab driver is the parallel he drew between the reservoir and the

very Singaporean situation,” I said to her. “When most people have

tunnel. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Haruhito?”

their souls stolen or extracted from them back home, I notice that

I couldn’t help but smile. “I personally find it interesting that you find it interesting, Ms. Neo. May I ask why?”

There was a brief pause of a few seconds. “You know that Mr. Lim couldn’t possibly have lost his soul on the twenty-fourth of April.”

“No, he couldn’t,” I said in return. “To my knowledge it’s possible to have your soul stolen, extracted, disposed of. It’s impossible, however, to lose it. No lack of agency will ever be enough to lose something so precious.”

their bodies tend to follow a process of decay; whether it takes a day, a month or a year depends on the person. The same goes for suicide, Ms. Neo: in some cases the death of the body is instantaneous, and in others the body never goes away completely. But tell me, Ms. Neo—what happens when a person is born without a soul? What would you call that person?”

“There’s no particular name for that kind of person,” she replied.

“Such persons however tend to result in stillbirths or miscarriages.”

“But you know his soul couldn’t have been stolen or extracted ei-

“Alas,” I said. “And yet in Singapore it appears that if one is born

ther,” said Ms. Neo. “Disposal, yes—but theft, no. Petty crimes of that

without a soul, one manages to live, nevertheless. One continues to live

sort don’t happen in this part of the world, Mr. Haruhito.”

in spite of its absence.”

“So why would you say, Ms. Neo, that Mr. Lim had lost his soul?

Was it to appease the mother?”

She nodded. “That’s right, Mr. Haruhito.” She then redirected her gaze, back into my eyes. I looked back into hers and never wavered,

“Yes,” she replied.

not once. “You probably thought I shouldn’t have had to enlist the help

“And what about me, Ms. Neo? Did you say that to me over the

of a Japanese specialist,” she said. “But I believe you already know the

phone to excite my curiosity?”

She didn’t exactly reply to the question. “It was better than saying the truth,” she said.

I raised an eyebrow. “Which is what exactly, Ms. Neo? If you can’t lose a soul, let alone steal one—what exactly do you think had happened to Mr. Lim’s?”

She looked away. She shifted her gaze to the corner of the table. In a quiet voice, she said to me: “He doesn’t have a soul in the first place.”

That’s my answer, I thought to myself. I took my glass of iced tea

reason why.”

I merely kept my smile up. “I do, Ms. Neo,” I told her. “It appears that Mr. Lim might have caught something during his recent trip to Japan in December. Something only a person without a soul could catch.”

Ms. Neo began to frown. “What did he catch?” she asked.

“A desire,” I replied. “Do you know what a shirikodama is, Ms. Neo?” “I think so,” she said.

and drained half of it away, including the ice. Only a third of it was left.

“It is said to contain the essence of one’s soul. It is also said to re-

I leant back in my chair and crushed the ice cubes between my teeth,

semble a small bead, nestled deep in one’s anus. This,” I stressed to her,

and slowly relished the sound it made in my mouth. When the ice was

“is a particular trait of the Japanese; the belief that the anus is the centre

gone, I asked if I could ask her something personal. She said I could.

of the soul.”

“How old are you, Ms. Neo?” I said. “I’m fifty-eight this year.”

“And thus the taxi,” said Ms. Neo.

“Twenty-seven,” she replied.

“Yes,” I said in reply. “It is possible, Ms. Neo, that when Mr. Lim

“And how long have you been in the profession?”

saw the burnt remains of the taxi in the Kampong Java tunnel, he be-

“Two years,” she said.

gan to desire something he never knew he wanted before. All of the cir-

“Two years!” I said. “Just two years. You’ve learnt more in two than

cumstances that had surrounded the taxi and the tunnel—including all

I have learnt in ten, Ms. Neo.” A small smile played on her lips. “Thank you, Mr. Haruhito.”

of Mr. Yong’s projected fears and beliefs—had created the perfect conditions to light this desire within Mr. Lim. And now he is on a hunt.”

it open.

“For a soul?” asked Ms. Neo. I nodded. “Indeed,” I said. At that point I felt a deep sense of sat-

Mr. Lim was seated on a chair, in what seemed to be a perfectly

isfaction, as though my work here was more or less done. There were

empty room. A single light bulb hung over his figure. A desk might

no solutions, but at least there was an understanding. I reached over

have been here before, even shelves, but all I could see now were traces

to my glass of iced tea in one final attempt to drain it all down. I was

of things that could have been. Furniture that might have once exist-

interrupted, however, when I had received a call. I took my phone out

ed. Now the only thing left in the room was Mr. Lim, his eyes staring

from my pocket and saw, on the screen, that it was Madam Lim.

straight ahead at the door. There was just a slight flicker in his eyes as

“Hello?” I said.

he registered the three of us, Madam Lim, Ms. Neo and myself, stand-

She sounded desperate. She made a sudden plea for help. I stayed

ing uncertainly before him.

calm and asked her what had happened.

“My son’s gone,” she said. She sounded on the verge of crying.

To say that he was different would be an understatement. It would be more accurate to say that he had transformed into something else altogether. He was still noticeably Mr. Lim, with his slight figure and

“He’s—he’s gone!”

I didn’t fully understand what she was saying. “Are you currently in

shaggy dark hair—but his skin was now perfectly white and flecked, very curiously, with spots of black. A number of things began to click

your son’s bedroom?” I asked.

“Y-yes.”

in my head as I spotted a pair of gills, flapping at the sides of his neck,

“Are any of his things missing?”

and a set of small whiskers, hanging from his cheeks. As his mother

“No,” she said. “None—none of his things are missing. Not even

stepped forward, not quite believing what was before her eyes, I caught a slight twitch in his lips and realised, that the strange clicking sound

his clothes—”

in the room was in fact a quiet, sucking noise.

“So why would you think—?”

“But he’s gone, Mr. Haruhito,” she said, screaming into the phone.

“All of his things are here—but my son, Mr. Haruhito, my son—my son’s gone!”

“Kevin?” said Madam Lim. The figure cocked its head to the side. It blinked once, twice, at the woman’s steady approach. In retrospect I realised I should have acted,

• It was like what Mr. Lim had described to me. There was a sheer vastness to it, as well as an essential incredulousness to walking in the middle of a tunnel. It was just something a person never imagined himself doing. I couldn’t help but sway on the balls of my feet, as the hot wind buffeted around us, whipping us about. I found myself needing to hold on to somebody. It was half past two in the morning, a time Madam Lim and Ms. Neo had both judged to be the right moment to pull over to the side of the tunnel. Nobody would look at us and care, they believed.

We didn’t know exactly what we were searching for, but eventually we came upon a door, carved into the tunnel walls. It seemed to be designed for emergency purposes, like a fire access of sorts, although none of us knew where the door really led. It was perfectly camouflaged, coated in the same yellow-grey colour of the concrete. We could never have found it if it hadn’t been left ever so slightly ajar. We prised

done something, moved faster. It leapt.