We are accustomed
to think that there is a proper time to ask questions and a proper place
to answer them. For example, we ask questions when we suppose there
is someone to reply to them, and we expect to receive replies on the
dotted line. Consultation scratches the surface of such proprieties
and wonders if there is something beneath: whether there are stories
that we have forgotten how to respond to.
There was something about Consultation's description in the
M1 Singapore Fringe Festival's programme notes that raised my suspicion:
how can an approximately 15-minute "consultation" session possibly culminate
in a treatment that would actually benefit each of its many participants
and, in turn, justify itself? It was with such doubts that I sat myself
down opposite Paul Rae of spell#7, who
conceptualised Consultation as part of the Resident Fringe
Series curated by Zai Kuning.
We began quite simply. There were some straightforward instructions
and the request that I take note of the time of our session. Rae first
asked me to think of an island, and I gave him the name of our very
own. He asked, "Why Singapore?" and I related to him the sense of ambiguity
and imminent departure that I associate with the idea of an island.
We subsequently discussed my neutrality towards Pulau Ubin and the beach
in general, as well as my memories of Beach Road, Golden Mile Shopping
Complex and old cinema seats, and I was surprised at how many personal
associations were drawn out within the span of ten minutes or so. If
it could be said that Consultation had a script - a script
it executed with efficiency - it was not because the questions were
easy or that one could answer them. Rather, it was because the odd strands
holding Consultation together were none other than one's own
experiences.
Paradoxically, the answers I gave were not simply a matter of what I
could claim as my own. For, regardless of whether my interlocutor knew
it or not, I discovered that these experiences, as I was recollecting
them, sounded almost foreign to my ears. Furthermore, since I was required
to keep a constant check on my watch, the specificities of time, location
and activity became vividly marked out. Consultation highlighted
these specificities and thus brought out the realisation that each session
is an event as real and yet as ungraspable as all of the other events
in our memory.
If I were to pick a turning point, so-called, in Consultation,
it was when Rae asked my opinion of graffiti: whether I had seen any
of it in Singapore and whether I thought people take notice of such
impermissible writing. After I had recounted my experiences of graffiti,
Rae revealed his. Apparently, there is a trail of graffiti that he has
been following around the vicinity where he works, capturing it with
his digital camera. It consists of writing, mostly in English and partly
in Chinese, scribbled in white or black markers on faded posters and
on the surfaces of those ubiquitous electrical boxes which power our
island.
There is nothing vulgar or even spectacular about these writings. They
merely tell of Singapore, of the people who came to this island only
to escape to another, of the beaches at Ubin, of the foreign workers
and fake branded goods along Beach Road and especially at Golden Mile.
Despite how ordinary and mild a story the graffiti tells, apparently
someone found these scribblings irritating and wrote back rather furiously,
"f***-off nonsense". Perhaps this respondent found the graffiti's
subject matter too familiar, too ordinary, and therefore offensive.
Consultation was in no position to judge, however, for it too
felt the urge to write. As our session drew to a close, Paul requested
from me a prescription - anything that I thought would best allow him
to respond to the symptoms the graffiti and its defacement represented.
He noted, "The graffiti is symptomatic of something that is unwell in
this island and, clearly, you share some of it too" and he passed me
a piece of white paper. Facing this paper, this blankness that had been
handed to me and was therefore a "proper" place for expression,
I did not quite know what to do. I admitted that I was uncomfortable
"prescribing", reacting to a problem which, however abstract,
was shared by a nameless crowd. Nor was I exactly proud of my indifference.
Perhaps after Consultation revealed to me the sense of foreignness
I had towards my own memory, I too needed an impermissible, improper
space to scribble on.
By asking each participant to respond to the photographed graffiti,
the subject matter of Consultation was at the same time its
method. It is possible that we all share more or less the same problem
as the anonymous graffiti artist in that, sometimes, we simply do not
know what to do with our memories and received experiences. And when
we finally find a way to deal with them - by writing or otherwise recording
them - we can only be "respondents", absent to the actual
events and places. If there is any difference between me and the graffitist,
it is that while the graffiti artist chooses to inscribe his experiences
on surfaces not meant for writing, I made my mark by participating in
Consultation, and I eventually had the privilege of re-inscribing
them here in this review.
But should my writing be considered more "legal" and so more
acceptable than the graffiti? Yes, I did eventually write something
on the prescription paper - and the only detail I would like to disclose
about my prescription was how I paused over the correct spelling of
the word "graffiti" and had to ask Rae how to spell it. But
when I finally returned my prescription - misspelled, inadequate - I
realised that the acknowledgment of impropriety, whether of time, space
or word, is an inevitable condition of any response; and Consultation
embodied this condition. (As it turned out, Rae too was not quite sure
how to spell graffiti either.)
If each session of Consultation varied according to its participant,
such variety can not be a shortcoming but only a strength. After all,
it was able to cater to my idiosyncracies and my perverse interest in
reflecting on them. Although Consultation had a prepared set
of questions, more importantly, each session had to negotiate with different
participants whose responses could not possibly be anticipated. I cannot
conceive of any other "treatment" where both counselor and
counseled are "patients" whose "prescriptions" are
symptomatic of the problem of memory and of the duty to remember. If
there is one best solution to this issue, Consultation did
not pretend to know it. Instead, it only pulled the rug of propriety
from right underneath memory's feet.
|
"Consultation revealed to me the sense of foreignness
I had towards my own memory"
|
