An Open Letter to Redza Piyadasa
Introductory Note
The
incident that is the subject of this open letter to one of the most vocal
artists and art critics in Malaysia occurred in 1974. The setting was an
exhibition frighteningly called Towards a Mystical Reality held at Sudut Penulis (Writers Corner) of the
Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. It consisted of “found objects” (a half-empty
Coca-Cola bottle, a dirty abandoned raincoat found on some rubbish heap, a half
burnt mosquito coil and that sort of thing). It was accompanied by a manic
manifesto full of abstractions, capital letters and exclamation marks.
 |
| Redza Piyadasa (center) discusses his manifesto |
There were
about fifty people – artists, writers and students – in that corner to witness
my little gesture of friendly protest, the incident went unreported in the
press; I was told that somebody or other had managed to have it hushed up, and
I, having made a public exhibition of myself in that hallowed corner, was not
about to make another one in the media.
The
incident would have remained a lost footnote in the history of modern Malaysian
art if, about a year later, Redza Piyadasa (bless his soul) had not challenged
the perpetrator (individu was the
word he used) of this sacrilegious act to explain “the rationale” of that act.
This challenge occurred in the course of a debate in Dewan Sastera on this direction of modern Malaysian art between
Piyadasa, Siti Zainon Ismail and one or two others. It was a challenge I had
been waiting for.
My open
letter was published uncut, title and all, in the July 1975 issue of Dewan Sastera. For this, I have Usman
Awang, then editor of the magazine to thank. There was some faint resistance to
certain parts of the letter at first, and I remember having to argue quite
vociferously in defense of the title I had chosen (Kencing dan Kesenian or Pissing
and Art.) But Usman as editor was a true gentleman who was willing to
listen to argument.
I don’t
know what my kurang ajar
(ill-mannered) act was worth, if it was worth anything, from the point of view
of the history of Malaysian art. This is for our art historians to judge. I
note that the distinguished art historian T.K. Sabapathy has a flattering
comment on my letter, and even quotes from it in his Introduction to Modern Artists of Malaysia (1983) which
he co-authored with Piyadasa. But from Sabapathy’s comments you wouldn’t know
anything about the incident that provoked the open letter he refers to. I
sometimes wonder what the silence here means.
What is the
point of reprinting this letter? Am I
not content that the incident had passed into the folklore of Kuala Lumpur
underground; and I have, by the simple act of unzipping my trousers and zipping
up my mouth, attained a minor Malaysian immortality? (I must admit that some
inherited perversity makes me rather fond of the smell of the past; and the “Mystical
Reality Incident” has certainly pursued me, to echo the words of an Australian
poet about a notorious poem of his published in his youth, like a familiar bad
smell?)
Yes, what’s
the point? Well, I would say that the points raised in the letter have more
than topical relevance. If asked to sum up its significance in one sentence,
I’d say it defends what I see as the true values of art and of intelligence - against
the pretentious, the false and the fashionable. And the target of the letter is
an artist of no mean standing in this country whose “Mystical Reality” thing -
both manifesto and exhibition – is considered by Sabapathy a significant event
in the history of Malaysian art.
As for the
pissing act itself, I still consider it, to put it in the language of Asian
courtesy and modesty, as much a “breakthrough” in the history and modern
Malaysian art as the exhibition called Towards
a Mystical Reality.
A dunce once searched for a fire with a
lighted lantern.
Had he known what fire was,
Had he known what fire was,
He could have cooked his rice much sooner.
~ From
The Gateless Gate by Ekai
(translated by Paul Reps)
Dear Piya,
Whenever I open my big mouth
people say vulgarities and obscenities pour out. When I unzip my trousers they
say I sully my self-respect.
That Salleh
fellow, is he ever “serious”? Pissing, being vulgar and obscene – that’s the
only thing he‘s good at. How disappointing when one thinks of our Eastern
values.” Blah, blah, blah… Alright
Piya, this time I’ll be a good Easterner - and you I hope will be a good
listener. I accept your challenge that “the individual” who “membuang air” (literally “threw away
water,” i.e., urinated) at your exhibition, Towards
a Mystical Reality, should come forward to “explain the rationale of his
act.” Actually I’ve been waiting for quite some time for this opportunity to
explain an act that a lot of people seemed to have completely misunderstood; to
set out my real attitude to your exhibition and to the manifesto that
accompanied it.
Let me
begin with two observations which don’t really require much elaboration, and
two admissions which will be explained and defended later.
First
observation: Our artists (that includes writers) and intellectuals tend to be on
the whole a solemn lot. They tend to confuse solemnity with seriousness,
verbosity with intellectual breadth, and pomposity with depth. This tendency
often goes with egotism and an embarrassingly acute sense of their own
importance. And needless to say (this being Malaysia, it has to be said of
course), it also goes with shallowness of mind.
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| Redza Piydasa, Empty Canvas On Which So Many Shadows Have Fallen, 1974 |
The most
noticeable thing about our contemporary cultural life is the relative absence
of humour in the field of ideas. [1]
Oh people make jokes of course, and usually of crudest variety. They even
attempt what they call comedy and, God help us, even satire. That’s not what I
have in mind. The humour I mean is bound up with a balanced conception
of the intellectual and artistic life; it implies the capacity to distance
oneself from what one is doing, to see things, including oneself and what one is doing, to see things,
including oneself and what one is doing from different, usually unfamiliar
points of view. This capacity Malaysian (predominantly Malay) men of letters
and intellectuals are not distinguished with. That’s one of the things that
make our intellectual life dreary and dry. Satire and parody are conspicuous by
their absence, at least as a viable tradition (the existence of isolated
attempts at such forms only serves to prove my point). In such an arid
intellectual landscape, to expect the solemn Malaysian (again, Malay) Artist
(with a capital A, a connotation better suggested by the contemporary usage of
the Malay word seniman) – to expect
this animal to laugh at himself is like expecting dew to drop at midday. [2]
Second
observation: The two major categories of people in the world of arts in
Malaysia are the type who say yes without understanding. Most of these people
who welcomed or rejected your manifesto and your exhibition, Piya, belong to
these two categories.
Now I would
like to make two admissions. First: What I did at your exhibition was actually
a serious act; serious but not solemn, and contained elements of the
purposefully playful. The act was carefully thought out, and had a clear
rationale. Second (this will probably make people think I am not right in the
head, or incorrigibly facetious even when I protest the earnestness of my
intention): Not only was my action
fundamentally serious, it was also consistent with the spirit of Zen which you
keep invoking in your manifesto!
Yes, there
was an unashamed stink of Zen in my pissing, Piya. (“Stink of Zen”, by the way,
is not a gratuitously rude expression but a fairly respectable phrase often
used in Zen literature.) If the
atmosphere that surrounded the opening of your exhibition had been different,
and the people there were not as solemn as they were or not so awed by the self
declared importance of the occasion, they would have smelt the stink of Zen and
laughed the laughter of Zen. You will remember that although the target of my
“Zenny” gesture (a Westerner schooled in the antics of Dadaism would probably
have called it “Dadaish”) was the whole idea of my show, my actual pissing was
aimed at a specific object. Not one of those “found objects” that constituted
the so-called exhibition, but the only object that was not “found,” that was
created – the manifesto itself. At the
moment the piss hit a copy of the manifesto a loud laughter should have been
heard among the audience – the laughter of enlightenment, at least with regards
to the meaning of the gesture. R.H. Blyth says of Zen’s deliberate use of
humour: “Laughter is breaking through the intellectual barrier; at the moment
of laughter something is understood.” (Oriental Humour)
You and I,
Piya, have often argued, at times heatedly. Not infrequently the argument is
mere noise; there is no real dialogue. Because you are extremely vocal, even
eloquent, and fond of abstractions, you tend to talk at people, not to them.
Most of us, especially the manic among us, are often guilty of this vice. But
you, I think, are more guilty than most.
Nonetheless,
despite all the sound and fury, sometimes the points of your opponent do get
through to you. At least at the level of the unconscious. I would like to think
that this was the case when I argued against your manifesto the day you came to
my house with a copy hot from the press. I said, didn’t I, that if you went
ahead with the exhibition, I would shit on it? You heard it, but couldn’t
believe what you heard, or that or that I would really do it. (Thank God for
everybody concerned that the threat could only be partially realized, our
bodies don’t always do what we want them to.)
I don’t
suppose you can remember what you registered of my argument that day. Well, let
me repeat it. Basically,
Piya, I do respect the intention of your manifesto and exhibition. I respect
your commitment to art and the life of the intellect. You rightly feel that
something vital is missing from our cultural life, and something should be done
about it. “Respect” did I say? But… there is always a “but” to my yes, Piya.
(Well, not always; but often - especially when it comes to matters of ideas.) The
proof of my respect is that I actually read your manifest, really read it –
with a red pencil in my hand. It was not fun, I can assure you, because the
thing is quite unreadable.
I sympathize
with your intention of creating a habit of polemic that is positive and dynamic
(how you love the words “polemic” and “dynamic”). There are a number of things
in your manifesto which are relevant to our situation, though I can’t really say
there is anything in it which is truly new. I support in particular your appeal
to our artists and writers that they should be more aware of the rich cultural
and philosophical traditions of Asia and their relevance to the perennial needs
of man. (It is ironical that this Asia-centric business was got going by
Westerners; and there is a danger that it will become a mere fad, if it hasn’t
already become one, as it has in the West.)
I also
agree with you that many of our artists (and writers) “are not aware of the
implication of the idiom (idioms?) of modernism they use in their works.” But
this doesn’t mean I agree with your call that they should all be as articulate
as you are in matters of theory and in polemics. I don’t see any reason why all
painters must be expected to theorize or engage in polemics. If a painter like
Latiff Mohidin, for example, is content with just painting, he should be left
alone to do what he does best. It’s good enough they are articulate on canvas
without having to be articulate on the typewriter as well. But they can, of
course, we would like them to be so.
I
appreciated your intention, but I wasn’t happy with the tone, the manner and
certain other things about both the manifesto and the exhibition. My little act
of protest was a gesture that was clear in motivation, but not without
ambiguity. A number of factors provoked me to do it. I wont deny the
mischievous side of me had a hand in it; the exhibitionist in me too no doubt.
But believe me these were not decisive factors. Do you really think I would melacurkan maruah (sully myself or
prostitute my self-respect) just for a joke? You’ve got to be joking, Piya.
Among the major things the act set out to do was to test a central premise of
your manifest, as well as to protest against what I saw as pretentious,
contradictory and false.
I was
prepared to do this although I was quite conscious of the risk I was taking.
Among the risks was the likelihood of the act being completely misunderstood,
seen as an anti-intellectual buffoonery, perhaps even hooliganism. I was
prepared to take the risk in the name of commonsense and for the sake of
genuine intellectuality and true spiritual values.
There is an
element of “bullying” in the rhetoric of your manifesto – a juvenile sort of
“bullying”, and embarrassing in its excess of self-consciousness and solemn
protestations. “OUR ART WE ALSO DECIDED WOULD BE MYSTICAL IN NATURE!” Who are you
trying to convince or impress, Piya, with your capital letters and exclamation
marks? Yourself? Those who have some
idea of true mystical insight might just wonder if you know what you are
talking about; they might feel “mystical” is not something one or one’s art can
just decide to be.
If the
“mystical: is understood as a direct translogical knowledge or experience of
the divine, the transcendent, or the “oceanic” I wonder how you, prisoner of
verbalism that you are, can ever be guide to us? Listen to this: “… modern art…
finding its raison d’etre in a
dialectical reconsideration of phenomenal process…” often this sort of
“rhetorical amok” is repeated, capital letters and exclamation marks bandied
around so indiscriminately, almost threateningly. You claim in the Foreword that
you have undertaken a “voracious reading programme” (it had to be “voracious”
of course) lasting two whole years specifically for this manifest. I am
impressed and prepared to believe that you know the meaning of the words you
use with so much relish. But as I suggested above, a Zen master would most
probably be amused by your “raison d’etre,” your “dialectical reconsideration,”
etc., etc.
Well, Piya,
you with your “Zen,” I with mine. In a way it was Zen which inspired my zippy
comment on your “dialectical reconsideration of phenomenal processes.” I can’t
really say I knew what kind of reaction to expect. Shock from the majority of
those present obviously; even arrest for indecent exposure. But, against my
better knowledge of Malaysians in such situations, I vaguely expected at least
one or two people to burst out laughing. No one did. (One person, however, did
walk up to me and touch my shoulder, which I took to be a gesture of
solidarity.)
I must say
I was a trifle disappointed by the total absence of even a smile. I don’t know
what sort of Zen books you have been reading, but the ones I’ve read are full
of humour, even accounts of practical jokes. These Zen jokes are designed to
shock the Zen aspirants into awareness; they also affirm what I’ve always
believed in - that in a philosophy that
sees life as a unity, the mundane and the mystical, the sacred and the profane
merge; ordinary categories that separate reality in the name of Reality.
I can
recall a host of anecdotes from Zen literature that demonstrates this. This
story of the Buddha and his flower sermon you yourself must have come across in
your voracious reading programme. You must have also read some of those stories
that climax with a kick of the Master on the monk’s backside that produces
enlightenment, or with the Patriarch tearing a sacred manuscript into shreds
and tossing it into the winds. Of the anecdotes that are “vulgar”, my favourite
is the one that was made the subject of a painting by the 18th century Zen
painter, Fugai Mototaka. The story tells of a Zen monk on a very cold day
burning an image of the Buddha to warm his backside. When reprimanded by fellow
monk, who was shocked by the act of sacrilege, the first monk said (tongue in
cheek) that he was burning the image to obtain sarira (an indestructible substance found only in ashes of cremated
saints). He could find no sarira from
the ashes of the image; therefore it couldn’t have been a saint’s, and since
the day was even colder than he had thought, the monk went on to burn two other
images to keep himself warm.
So, Piya,
like the flower sermon of the Buddha, like the kick of the Zen Master that
produced enlightenment in the earnest seeker, and like the burning of the image
of the saint to warm one’s bum on a cold wintry day, my kurang ajar act at the opening of your exhibition was designed to
shock you into enlightenment about some homely truths concerning art and
reality. What could be more concrete, more ordinary and at the same time
“mystical” in the sense of revealing “the essence of phenomenal processes” than
the processes of our own body such as pissing and shitting that we do every day
(at least I do; I don’t know about you)? So, from this point of view my act of
spontaneous theatre had the aim of testing one of the major premises of your
manifesto and exhibition. This, as well as protesting against the false, the
pretentious, and the contradictory in it.
The
atmosphere of the opening was such that it could not have induced the state of
meditation that you claimed to have wanted in order to bring your audience into
“confrontation” with the essentially “mystical” nature of reality.
 |
| Redza Piyadasa (1939-2007) |
In your
manifesto you go on about “the self-effacing role of the artist.” This may be
evident in the objects of the exhibition, and consistent with your shrill rejection
of the concept of art as expression of the artist’s personality. But the nature
and tone of your manifesto and the manner and atmosphere of the exhibition
clearly contradict your claim to a “self-effacing role.” No, Piya, you are not
a self-effacing invisible dalang (the
unseen puppeteer in Malay shadow play); you are a modern artist like all modern
artists, subject to all the usual pressures and needs.
It wasn’t
supposed to be an exhibition; it was supposed to be an “experience,” a “direct
confrontation with (mystical) reality.” But it still had to be legitimized by
the presence of a representative of officialdom; and he of course had to give
one of those usual speeches. What did
you say, Piya? A situation conducive to meditation on “mystical reality”? Were
you serious, Piya?
The aim of
the whole endeavour, however misguided, could only have been saved by something
unexpected, by something that proved its essential point, however clouded by
confusion and pretension virtually in the teeth of its arrogance. The act of
mine was something unexpected. So, Piya, you should have been thankful to me
for pissing on your sacred text that morning in Sudut Penulis.
John Cage
whom you seem to admire would certainly have appreciated my gesture. Cage, also
influenced by Zen, at least has got the essential message of that incredible
philosophy, and is never solemn. The critic Virgil Thomson, an admirer of Cage,
once described a Cage concert in New York in 1958 as “cartoon comedy.” One
recalls Marcel Duchamp, the one-time Dadaist, saying, “Humour is a thing of
great dignity.”
Our local
“guru” of the performing arts, theatre critic Krishen Jit, who is so dazzled by
your rhetoric, affirms your proud claim to be (together with your collaborator,
Sulaiman Esa) “savage”? – far from it. Innocent in the way you get so terribly
excited, like a kid with new toys, over newly discovered notions that are
already dated elsewhere; but far from savage in your understanding and ability
to deal with reality (with a small r).
Actually,
Piya, your concept of art seems to me to be ambivalent, if not confused. Your manifesto
suggests that what you set out to do in the exhibition wasn’t art (“direct
confrontation with reality”), but also “art” (thus words like “We are approaching
art…”). If your aim was to bring us into “direct confrontation with reality”
(why “confrontation” and not simple “experience,” say?), I in my simplicity of
mind would like to ask, if that is your aim, why talk about “Art” at all? If
you really don’t want to have anything to do with “art”; you still want to
cling to the word, however supposedly radical your concept of art may be.
What
exactly is your function, Piya? If I want so experience reality directly, to
meditate on the “mystical” dimension behind ordinary objects and experiences,
why shouldn’t I do it on my own, free from manic manifestos, free from boring
speeches by cultural bureaucrats – in short free from the Piyadasas of this
world? Why on earth should I “buy experience” from you? (“The person buying my
work will really be buying an actual experience not an artifact,” says Redza
Piyadasa!)
I remember
Jasper Johns saying: “what makes something art is its being placed in the
context of art.” My agreement with Johns hangs on that “something.” Context is
important, tradition is important, the complex of intellectual assumptions is
important; that’s why anti-art only works by reference to art. But not everything
that is dragged into context of art and draped in custom-made theory can be
considered “art.”
I don’t agree
with Cage (whom you follow so slavishly) that art and reality/life are the
same. Art is “based” on reality, perhaps even “feeds” on reality; but art and
reality are not identical. If we truly value reality/life, we cannot possibly
confuse the two. But art can deepen and widen our consciousness of a reality
that is multi-dimensional. To perform this function art needs form; but it must
be stressed that the concept of form meant here is not static or rigid. The
important thing to realize is that art cannot run away from form. The literary
and art critic Harold Rosenberg once reminded artists and writers:
“Formlessness is simply another look, and a temporary one at that. In time,
organization shows through the most chaotic surface.” Piya! Piya! You want art,
but how confused you are about what art is. You want reality, but how innocent
you are about reality. Reality? Just remember the rainbow arc of my piss, the
fountain of life affirms and celebrates the unity of reality: the vulgar and
the refined, the bawdy and the spiritual, the concrete and the transcendent,
the stinking and the mystical, the profane and the sacred. A zippy gesture of
affirmation that you would do well to meditate on.
So, my dear
Piya, (and Cik Siti Zainon too), when I unzipped my pants at the opening of that
historic exhibition, I wasn’t “prostituting my self-respect.” I was just
revealing reality.
Fraternally yours,
Salleh
________________________________[1] By “our contemporary cultural life” I mean mainly the world of letters, and Malay world of letters at that. “Malay” because I refuse to pretend that there is a national cultural life in this country, simply because there is no such thing, at least not yet, as a truly national culture.
[2] Literal translation of Malay saying harapkan titik embun di tengah hari
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