The First Trip

4 June 2016

I had my field trip to the Art for Grabs festival with my course mates in Publika on Saturday, 4 June 2016. 

Art for Grabs Festival

I attended a talk about “ I Am, Here and Now”, by Mislina Mustaffa. 

Mislina Mustaffa is giving her talk to us

She introduced her first book, Homeless by Choice. She shared with us her experience about traveling around the world thanks to an opportunity.  She brought 4 sets of clothes and a camera for her journey to places that are less travelled, such as the Amazon, Brazil, Columbia and many other places. She also told us that she did not use any soap and makeup product for about five years. This is to help herself to listen to her body, what her body really needed and realizing the intelligence of her body. She wanted to explore where do our thoughts and fears originate from. After travelling and giving some thought to it, she realized most of our thoughts and fears are not from herself, but from others and her surroundings. For example, the weather, teachers, family, friends, and belongings. She started to think again about who she is and this pushed her into deeper thinking.  

Homeless by Choice that written by Mislina Mustaffa

I like the sentence that she told us, where everything that are permanent in our life changes every second. Everything you had is not yours but is yours too. For example, bags, houses, and cars. They are our possessions, but when we die, they also will not belong to us anymore.  At the end of the day, the only thing we have is ourselves. So, always take good care of our own body. She said that taking care of ourselves is not a selfish thing to do. We also have to learn to be silent and spend more time with ourselves. This is not trying to isolate a person from the world, but to make us more harmonious with the world.

Besides that, she also mentioned people nowadays are scared to move. She used her real life example for this provident. She shared her life example by telling us a story where there are 3 toilets. The first toilet was locked. For the second toilet, the door is open but there is no one standing outside the door or using it at all. The third toilet had seven people stand outside, waiting for the person in this toilet to come out. She felt strange and went to the middle toilet. She checked the toilet and found that everything is normal in the toilet. When she came out from the second toilet, everyone that queued up in front of the third toilet looked at her strangely. They looked at her as if looking at an alien.  

Furthermore, I was also inspired by her words, where your own experience is real for you, while my experiences are real for me. We should be brave to try everything in life. She also said that because we not love ourselves enough that there is no way to tell us our rights and wrongs unless we are already in the mess.

I have attended the talk about “Funning the News”, the panellist is Lau Chak Onn and Harith Iskandar, and the moderator is Erza Zaid.  They started the talk by sharing the types of genre they had use in the comedy and showed the audience. From this talk, I learned that the media organisation is not joking about the politics stated such as Roshman. They could have put some elements in it to make the news be catchy and interesting, but it must be obvious. However, they usually avoid sensitive topics because sensitive topics are more serious and less funny, in return would take away the interest of the audience. Furthermore, media organisations should never joke about things that are not true because they do not want to confuse the people, and provide false information, which is also against the law.  

"Funning the News" Talk

Those who use Bahasa Malaysia as subtitle or language, likes to share and “like” the news but they rarely read it. They started to think of ways to solve this problem. They started to put incomplete title to grab peoples’ attention to motivate them to click to read. Besides that, most Bahasa Malaysia comedy like to use the repetition of the punch line.  They said that Malaysians have grown muture because our understanding of comedy has improved. Someone had ask a question to the paneralist about the guideline and the ways to be funny. The panaralist answered him by saying that this question actually has no answer to it. They said that the only thing that we can do is live in a funny environment and always paying attention to our surrounding.   

            There are a lot of booths at the Art Fair. There are some booths that popped and grabbed my attention.  For example, the booth of Andi Miranti, on handmade polymer clay, lino printing, stone art, emotipots, fine art print by Ajim Juxta and Caryn Koh, and the booth of kikiyaya.

Stone Art

The booth of Lino Printing

The booth of Andi Miranti

The booth of Kikiyaya

The favorite booth of the day for me at the Art fair is the booth of the artist, Caryn Koh. 

Caryn Koh

She had a drawing style that drew my attention towards her immediately. From taking to her, I know that she is a Malaysian who is currently based in Kuala Lumpur. She has always dreamed of becoming an artist. And now, she has become a drawer, painter and a visual creator. I am very inspired by her drawing of “sekolahseries”.   

Her Drawing of " Sekolahseries"

Her Drawing of "Sekolah Series"

The school girl is made up of simple lines and contrasting scratches of colour pencils. The national school uniform symbolizing limitation others set on oneself. She loves to share her artistry with everyone around her. She is truly an inspiration, and empowers the people around her.  Her drawings makes me feel like I am back in school again, not my school, but the school in the drawing. I love her drawings and wish her luck in her future.

I learned a lot of things in this trip. This trip is fun.