se(rang)ga

Ini merupakan karya video aku yang pertama. Dihasilkan secara kolektif dengan teman-teman seniman dalam tahun 2003. Amirul Fakir (sang poet), budak-budak band underground Bodysurf Music & Masnoor Ramli (visual artist). Edisi 2/6 kini merupakan himpunan tetap Muzium & Galeri Tuanku Fauziah USM.

Karya ini terhasil oleh kerana perasaan kurang senang yang semakin membuak-buak di dalam diri ini. Kurang senang dengan sentimen manusia terhadap Islam yang balik-balik dianggap teroris, ortodoks dan ketinggalan zaman. Aku bermain dengan paradoks dengan mengambilpakai kenyataan-kenyataan bikinan para filasuf dan pemikir Barat.


se(RANG)ga -Kenyataan Pelukis

Kata Baudrillard: “Behind this exacerbated staging of communication, the mass media, with its pressure of information, carries out an irresistable destructuration of the social.” Justeru “…the stupidity and the obscenity of all that is reported about the terrorists: everywhere the wish to palm off meaning on them, to exterminate them with meaning.” ‘Ethics of consumption’ teks-teks media Barat mewujudkan identiti massa: identiti kebencian terhadap ‘Islam’ pasca-dekonstruksi menara falik berkembar; rasa benci yang meletakkan Islam sebagai susuk ‘persona non grata’. ‘Disinformation’, ‘misconception’ dan ‘distortion’ media Barat membina sebuah realiti palsu; kedustaan yang membuahkan dialogisme ‘habitus-habitus’ imajinasi mengikut selera prinsip ‘clash of civilisation’ neo-imperialis dan mandarin kolonialis baru. “In the struggle for power, often perception is more important than reality,” tulis Dhoruba bin Wahab. Proses dan produk videologi media menayangkan “no longer a question of the ideology of power, but of the scenario of power:” imej dan ‘spectacle’ kekuasaan pengawal dan pembikin ‘genre’.

Islam terjebak di dalam struktur realpolitik Barat bukan disebabkan oleh Al-Qaeda dan kumpulan jihad militan, fanatik mahu pun fundamentalis; tetapi sebahagian besarnya oleh pemanipulasian jahat agensi-agensi non-Islam dan sekutunya. Dengan memutarbelit semiotika sosial dalam kerangka konteks yang direka-reka, “the role of message is no longer information, but testing and polling, and finally control.” Yang hendak dikawal ialah induk-induk ‘mass culture’ pencerna wacana hegemoni imperialisme, kapitalisme, globalisme dan ekspansionisme Barat; ‘discourse’ yang mendorong dunia ke arah konformiti, uniformiti dan homogenisasi. Islam dilemparkan dengan pelbagai ‘interpellation’ rangga-rangga berciri konflik tamadun: jambang, serban, cadur, burqa, harem, kalashnikov, jihad, mullah—kolot, ganas, bahaya, musuh, binatang; ortodoks, primitif, anti-feminis, sadis, anti-modenis, teroris, diktatorial, militan. Umat Islam tersentak dan tergamam menontoni opera propagandistik Barat. Dialektik politik mutakhir memunculkan keraguan, kemusykilan, tandatanya dan kekecewaan akan hakikat iman yang ditatang. Perkara-perkara tersebut mengganggu manusia Islam dan mengakibatkan krisis identiti, ‘isolation’, ‘alienation’, ‘decentering’ sosial, pelupusan signifikasi, perungkaian makna dan sebagainya.

Bosan dengan kemajalan ‘hyperreality’ dan hipokrisi media massa tunggangan Barat, serta keabstrakan fitrah hubungan insan global, masyarakat Islam mulai mencenderungi imej, lambang dan ‘signifier’ warisan yang sudah disunglap dan dipalit dengan ‘image of the outside, of the undomesticated, of the wild.’ Mereka mengunjurkan sebuah ‘paradox of the attraction’ dengan penampilan imej ‘political fury’ dan visualitas ‘shock value’: semacam ‘great refusal’ bertindak merungkai dominasi, ketidakadilan dan penindasan. Apa yang dicari ialah etika ‘fetishism of the lost object’; elemen praktis estetik yang selama ini dikira ‘banal, inertia, apoliticism’. Mereka mahu memartabatkan semula ‘objek-objek yang hilang’ itu sebagai unsur pembentukan politik identiti dan pembina teras-teras budaya “without changing meaning, without ceasing to have meaning.” Melalui penyataan visual unsur-unsur yang dianggap remeh dan tidak bertenaga politik, akan terserlah representasi mutlak realiti sebenar yang berupaya menganjakkan paradigma massa menerusi ‘microrevolution of banality, transpolitics of desire.’ Penzahiran paradoks dan idiom baru ekspresi politik tampak akan menyantaikan kembali konflik dan marginaliti dunia pascamoden pasca-911.

Artist's Statement:
se(RANG)ga

Baudrillard once wrote: “Behind this exacerbated staging of communication, the mass media, with its pressure of information, carries out an irresistable destructuration of the social.” Hence “…the stupidity and the obscenity of all that is reported about the terrorists: everywhere the wish to palm off meaning on them, to exterminate them with meaning.” The ethics of consumption embraced by Western media texts institute a mass identity: a collective hatred towards things Islam in the age of post-deconstruction of twin phallic tower; an extreme abhorrence that could categorise Islam and its adherents as ‘persona non grata’. Excessive disinformation, misconception and distortion deliberately manufactured by the media construct false realities: irrational pretexts forming a dialogism of illusory ‘habitus’ in keeping with the ethos of ‘the clash of civilisation’ advocated by the crusaders of neo-imperialism and the mandarins of neo-colonialism. “In the struggle for power, often perception is more important than reality,” said Dhoruba bin Wahab. Thus the process and product of mass media videology merely put “no longer a question of the ideology of power, but of the scenario of power”: an image and a spectacle of the supremacy (‘superpowerness’) of its controllers and producers.

The entrapment of Islam in the world’s current realpolitikal scenario and structure is not duly initiated by the ‘wicked’ actions and ‘treacherous’ ideologies of Al-Qaeda and other militant, fanatic and fundamentalist jihadic groups as deceivingly argued by the media. Instead the intricacy is mostly due to malicious media manipulations and exploitations by the enemies of Islam and the skeptics. By organising the present volatile social semiotics in deceptive contexts, “the role of message is no longer information, but testing and polling, and finally control.” Their targets are the passive consumers of mass culture—the submissive instruments for manipulative discourses of Western hegemony, imperialism, capitalism, globalism and expansionism—indoctrinating the world towards conformity, uniformity, homogenization and a shared dream. Islamic masses have been appended with unruly ‘interpellations’ indicative of a civilisational conflict and cultural ignorance: beard, turban, chador, burqa, harem, kalashnikov, jihad, mullah—primitive, dangerous, violent, enemies, beasts; orthodox, anti-feminism, sadistic, anti-modernism, terrorist, tyrant, militant. The ugly theatres of propaganda performed by Western media agencies enormously traumatised the followers of Islam. Contemporary radical political dialectics and social discourses unleash uncertainties, dilemmas, predicaments, and dissatisfaction towards the absolute truth of the Islamic faiths. These dynamic existential factors perturb the communities; thus generating a crisis of identity, feelings of isolation and alienation, social ‘decentering’, de-signification, deconstruction of meanings etc.

Feeling dejected with the brusqueness of ‘hyperreality’ and hypocrisy of Western-controlled mass media, coupled with the abstract nature of human relation in this postmoral world, Islamic followers begin to search for images, symbols and icons; ‘signifiers’ that have been willfully manipulated and attributed with the image ‘of the outside, of the undomesticated, of the wild’. They advocate the adoption of a Baudrillardian ‘paradox of the attraction’ capable of portraying an image of political fury and imparting visual shock values: promoting a Marcusean ‘great refusal’ to obliterate all kinds of domination, prejudice and suppression. They explore the ethics of ‘fetishism of the lost object’; craving for rudiments of an aesthetic practice previously regarded as ‘banal, inertia, apoliticism’. The absent objects are now intimately consumed in the hope of constructing new politics of identity, forming new cultural fundamentals “without changing meaning, without ceasing to have meaning.” Visual manifestations and iconic statements of prosaic and apolitical objects will put forward a faithful representation of the absolute reality about Islam and ‘Jihad’ against the dominant Western-oriented discourses; hence shifting the ignorant paradigm of the masses through the “microrevolution of banality, and transpolitics of desire.” The creation of new paradoxes and idioms in the superstructure of visual political expressions shall regularise the postmodern conflict and harmonise the posthuman marginality arisen from the ‘simulated’ human tragedy on 9/11.

Nur Hanim Mohamed Khairuddin
2003


Putaran karya se(rang)ga di:
se(rang)ga screening at:

BUREIKO Japan-Malaysia Video Art Exchange (2009): -Stripes Space, Roponggi, Tokyo - Nihon University, Tokyo - Ajibi Hall, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka

UN-CUT Malaysian Arts Festival, Roskilde Museum of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark (2009)

Lyon Biennale (Part of Rirkrit Tiravanija’s film project) – France (2007)

Artist’s Dialogue – UiTM Sri Iskandar, Perak (2007)

‘Liberation’ - Opensaigoncity Project- Thonduc Thang Museum, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam (2007)

‘Nafas’ – Contemporary art from the Islamic world’ – Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (Ifa), Berlin & Stuttgart, Germany (2006)

‘Still Light’ - Alliance Francaise, Penang (2006)

‘Bangkok Democrazy’, the 4th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival – Lumpini Park, Bangkok, Thailand (2005)

‘Spaces and Shadows’ – House of World Cultures, Berlin, Germany (2005)

‘What? me? a racist?’ (For Actuelle Videokunst) – Galeri Pankow, Berlin, Germany (2005)

Artist’s Dialogue – Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang (2004)

Artist’s Dialogue – Plattform Galllery, Berlin, Germany (2004)

‘IDENTITIES VS GLOBALISATION’ by Heinreich Boll Foundation (2004)
- Chiang Mai Art Museum, Chiang Mai, Thailand
- National Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand
- Dahlem Museum, Berlin, Germany

‘notthatbalai’ video art appreciation –Lost Generation Space, Kuala Lumpur(2004)

‘WAHANA’ – National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur (2003)


Artikel oleh Kean Wong