Seeing as your Resident Art-Throb hasn’t done any “scorecard” or “goosebump” reviews lately, I’m introducing another segment in For Art’s Sake! And I’m taking a leaf from the respectable online theatre site Flying Inkpot’s First Impressions. Hope you don’t mind guys! I’m still negotiating with my bosses on what to call it. You see, my original title had something to do with hands and the assumption – among the more cynical-minded at least – that critics are basically w****rs. Heh. Instead, for now, I shall dub thee Talk To The Hand. Very `90s, I know. Had a rather well-rounded arts weekend, having caught a play (Cake’s Cuckoo Birds), a “dance” piece (TheatreWorks’ Memory), a visual art exhibition (Ming Wong’s Life And Death In Venice) and a movie (Sherman Ong’s Memories of a Burning Tree). And to be honest, I was planning to write something more substantial and intertextual – connections kept piling up and certain thematic and performative aspects kept resonating as I went from one to another. But I’m also spending some time playing Xabi Alonso on my handheld console so… nah. Hey, it’s a weekend. Or what’s left of it, that is.   ***  

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  MEMORY   ON ONE HAND… It had a beautiful set. Like Cuckoo Birds, it was, for the most part, a self-contained one. But with a huge mosquito net unto which documentarist Wu Wenguang’s various video components (animation, lines, real-life interviews) was projected. Inside the mosquito net, a woman was “sewing” paper on her sewing machine and another inched her way to the forefront while bending backwards in an excruciatingly slow manner (that is, for the entire show) – both moments of which I really liked. (Although I’m not sure which of the two was the choreographer Wen Hui).   ON THE OTHER HAND… Despite its visual beauty and, arguably, loose, erm, stitching together of the many elements, it seemed distanced. It’s basically Wen Hui’s memories of her life as a dancer during the Cultural Revolution in China. And while some of them were rather poignant, I felt detached for the most part – because the piece seemed detached from its subject matter as well. What was its stance towards the Cult Rev? Was it traumatic ala how intellectuals were persecuted by rabid young Maoists? Not at all. Was it something like how Cynical Realists/Political Pop visual artists treated Mao and Maoist iconography? Well, it milked the iconography and the cliches for all its worth but not really. Was it celebratory? Unless I dozed off at some point, I couldn't recall it being so.   ***