From PublicAddress.net
Watch Ghost in the Shell if it's retro anime-tits you're after. But as for Auckland artist Hye Rim Lee - let's be frank here: Super Bunny she may be, but her video art sucks big bunny-ass. Conceptually shallow to start with, it has also been exactly the same crap animation for the last three years.
I wish they'd give her money to her compatriot Jae Hoon Lee instead. He could say they're related and just switch the bank accounts. If you get the chance, visit the blustery forecourt of Wellington City Gallery to spend a very long time mesmerised in front of 'Leaf', which Tessa Laird writes about in the Listener with her usual finesse. Bunny ass it ain't.
Still, the re-opening of the Everlasting Toki Show provided me with the opportunity to catch up with fellow Singaporean 'LeRoi Middleton' (name changed to protect LeRoi from repercussions from the Singaporean gahmen and from Hye Rim Lee). That's right, this is yet another post about Singapore Rebel - hah! Sucked in! You thought it would be all art-bitching and manga!
Well okay, like me, 'LeRoi' hated Hye Rim's art, had also caught Singapore Rebel at the Human Rights Film Festival, and had been moved to email the documentary-maker Martyn See a message of support.
'I found it pretty moving. I was getting teary,' I confessed.
'Yeah? It just made me angry' said 'LeRoi'. And he's a medical specialist of chill.
'Oh I'm always angry.'
What were we talking about? The awfulness of the art, or the awfulness of the repressive state apparatus of Singapore?
There are plenty of states that are more repressive than Singapore. But nothing festers under the skin quite like ongoing injustice in the Old Country, especially when that country is constantly held up here as a paragon of social order and economic modernity. I know, I know, 'Singapore Rebel'? Would that be like, 'Remuera Rebel'? Or even, 'Reserve Bank Rebel'?
From a Herald interview with The Don, a longtime member of Amnesty International.
Herald: Name one of your heroes
DB: Am I allowed two? Lee Kwan Yew [former Prime Minister of Singapore] is one.
I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yet, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn't be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn't be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters - who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.
Another [hero] is Nelson Mandela.