An exhibition review I guess

God, the Malaysian art scene hasn’t progressed by an inch, has it? The brightest creative minds of my generation are being roped into performing public acts of self-abasement like participating in art exhibitions about the HAZE. Their energies are being consumed and depleted by these dead-ended projects; they’ve just no time or head space to think for themselves anymore and further their own ambitions. So the ones dictating cultural production in this day and age are the ones with the most money, which happens, right now, to be an NGO. What an irony? I thought the "green" in Greenpeace was an environmental metaphor, but I’m starting to think that it’s actually a metaphor for money. Green stacks equals world peace. Do I even need to go into detail about why the Haze: Coming Soon exhibition currently ongoing at Rexkl is the most ridiculous, pointless, toothless piece of art as activism that I’ve ever seen? Because the haze is such a non-existent problem in Kuala Lumpur at the moment, on the opening night of the exhibition (which I shamefully admit I showed my face at) the organisers had to put something in the air vents to simulate a haze situation. Do I need to go into details about how painful it is to see young, promising, creative minds attempt to use their creative abilities not towards creating actual art but towards painting a poetic face upon a totally banal and non-poetic social issue, as in Trina Teoh’s poem art about the haze?! Do I need to state my reasons in saying that this is the most ridiculous and boring piece of social propaganda I’ve ever seen—it’s not even malicious, as you’d think propaganda ought to be, but simply ridiculous, almost condescending—these people think you’re straight up stupid. (And i am, i fucking am, because i go to their event, i register at the door, i show my stupid fucking face.) Not only does it batter art into serving the lowest, basest function possible—which is, as a policy-advocacy tool—but it’s using art to advocate policy on the most banal issue imaginable, i.e. the FUCKING HAZE!!!!!! I mean what are they trying to do, really? Raise awareness about the haze, a phenomenon that, if it was as big of a deal as their exhibition suggests, would have unavoidably been within the scope of people’s awareness anyway? Since it is literally a change in the quality of the air you breathe? The aspect of the exhibition that’s most insulting to the intelligence is its suggestion that there is a potential of backlash (as with anything that aims to raise awareness, the implication is that there are parties actively trying to stifle your awareness of this thing) when they chose the most toothless, most niche of all social causes that basically has no possibility of backlash (thereby making the artist’s subservience all the more degrading, because of how cheaply it was bought). If and when the haze arrives, its arrival is universally opposed. So what is this exhibition trying to prove? Especially when their advocacy is totally dead-ended by their lack of transparency as to the NAMES OF THE ACTUAL COMPANIES doing the mass burning. Haze haze haze. But the only thing that I find obscured from my vision is NAMES!

And before anyone asks me why I care so much about this thing ("if you hate it so much, why not just stop thinking about it and move on to something else? nobody cares, let people enjoy themselves"), let me just say: 1) you aren’t the first, i’ve already heard it; 2) it’s my blog; and, most importantly, 3) don’t you just think it’s a little weird that one of the biggest global non-profit organisations is funnelling so much money (it must be at least six figures) into an exhibition about a total non-issue, and the thing at the heart of the issue that could even be remotely construed as an issue (i.e. these corporate giants burning in Indonesia) isn’t given a face or a name? All this money and labour and effort and the audience’s attention: for nothing? They’re taking you for a ride. Where does Greenpeace get the money from? Which international body? Which region’s taxpayers’ money? Is awareness raising really such a big deal for NGOs that they are able to funnel all this money—probably six figures, maybe more—towards an exhibition that tells you something you already knew? What is the function of NGOs and activism in general in our current era, anyway? Are they all, perhaps, merely benevolent fronts for the mass transfer of wealth—as the Black Lives Matter movement was proven to be? These people actually think you’re an idiot!

God, we’re just going nowhere. I’ve never nursed any illusions that we were going anywhere anyway, but at least such questions were put out of my mind and I got to go through life in a numb, narcotised HAZE, until events such as this, where I have to face the fact that as a nation, if the most talked-about and well-funded art exhibition of the day is an exhibition about haze, that nothing has changed in the national understanding and appreciation of art and its functions and meanings. We get the art we deserve. Redundant social propaganda it is then.