Art history is life

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@wellcomecollection niiiice! #anatomy #art #kpuparis (at Wellcome Collection)

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When Breath Becomes Air (2016) by Paul Kalanithi

This book has been on my mind since I first came across Kalanithi's New Yorker article. The article was about his last day as a neurosurgery resident. That was many months ago and somehow it has slipped my mind to read his memoir. I am so glad to have crossed path with it again. If I remember correctly, it was because I had seen Bill Gates' review for it on his blog, and read another excerpt of it, that I had a sudden urge to find locate the book at all cost. I recalled it from another borrower at the library; the good soul returned it promptly, well before the recall deadline. And I braced myself for the story, having been primed by Gates that the book left him in tears. It is funny how we avoid the verb "cry" and opt for the noun "tear," that somehow, the notion of it is honourable but the act is vile. I condone such objectification; crying must be acknowledged when sadness is due.

I cried during the foreword; I was sad during the prologue; I was intrigued in Part I--In Perfect Health I Being; I became slightly less engaged in Part II--Cease Not till Death; I cried during the epilogue.

I was left deeply torn after having read his memoir. The default, reactionary response to any such story to a profound sense of sadness for the loss of an individual. His pursuit of art and science, in particular, found resonance in me. However, I must reframe from lamenting too much on what a great loss he represents. The numerous accolades that circulates his identity, both in the final biography of Kalanithi at the end of the book and the brief descriptions of him in periodicals, strike me as a bit too imposing. Was his death somehow more tragic than an individual who did not go to Standford, Cambridge, and Yale? Perhaps this was an editorial decision; they know that using these signifiers will help sell the story. Or perhaps I am being to unfair to him; he did earn those credentials so if his family wants them known, they can. I just cannot help but wonder how many other voices left unheard.

Nonetheless, I can only hope than when my time come, I can attain as much clarity and fulfillment as he did. I think one of the most memorable things from the memoir was the second to last line where he describes the immense joy he felt being with his daughter. As he writes: "You filled a dying man's days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger of more and more but rests, satisfied." I really wish that this was true. That he really was able to construe satisfaction out of his situation. What other kinds of reality are there besides one's own acceptance of the world; and when one comes to term and finds joy in one's situation, could there be blessing more fortunate than that?

Lucy's Epilogue is both sad and consoling. While widowhood is difficult beyond my imagination, she shares an idea that I have never considered and she did not expect: "I expected to feel only empty and heartbroken after Paul died. It never occurred to me that you could love someone the same way after he was gone, that I would continue to feel such love and gratitude alongside the terrible sorrow..." That was a moment of revelation for me. And on some level, I think it is a reflection of a more or less healthy response to grief. It was reassuring to know that death is not a doomed event; one is ultimately never severed from the deceased. Damien Hirst's "The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living" (2012) comes to mind.

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The Bad Doctor: The Troubled Life and Time of Dr. Iwan James (2015) by Ian Williams

I cannot even remember when was the last time I read a graphic novel. Unlike a cartoon or a comic book, a graphic novel, as deduced through my personal experience with it, is a story not intended to be humorous. It could have comical elements to it, but there are multiple other affective dimensions to it. The Bad Doctor is a good example of this genre of visual literature.

The Bad Doctor tells the story of Dr. Iwan James, a middle-age man with a wife and two kids. He practices in a small town and joins his friend for bike rides when not working. As a doctor, he is charged with making difficult moral judgement calls at work; as an individual cycling with a buddy, he reflects and vents about the dilemmas he is expected to solve. In several instances, he imagines shooting himself through the mouth, the bullet thrusting through from his pallet out through the skull. This reoccurring motif strikes me as particularly poignant. What I used to associate with physicians was a general sense of serenity, or indifference at worse, but never, suicidal urges. I wonder how many doctors I have had concealed that from patients; I wonder how many struggled with their own issues and insecurity like Dr. James did. The latter was secretly OCD; at the end of the graphic novel, he decides on seeking therapy for it.

Dr. James is not a "bad doctor." He is simply entrusted with solving a lot of situations that do not have win-win solutions. Situations where doing his best will still yield disatisfaction. A suspicious man asks him to approve his gun license; he declines; the man retaliates by suicidie. An unsympathetic colleague pushes extra workload onto Dr. Iwans; the latter is later criticized for being negligent. The politics of medicine and the boundaries of humanly possible feats are honestly explored and laid bare in this book. The choice of using visual cues to deconstruct complex issues present an alternative way of communicating. The visuality of graphic novel allows it to be less intimidating than writing; it appears more approachable and conveys the internal struggle of doctors in a paired down, simple way. 

I appreciate the graphic novel for its honesty. For revealing, without romanticizing, the hardship of being a physician. To be in a privileged position in terms of wealth and social esteem can be paradoxically isolating because any profound suffering would seem unfounded. I loved what one reviewer wrote of the book: "This profoundly honest doctor pursues his humanitarian mission while exorcising personal demons. Ian Williams gives us a dose of insight and laughter that is germane not only to the comics medium but also to medicine itself." (Justin Green, author of Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary) I wholeheartedly agree with this review. In the end, The Bad Doctor is humorous like a comic book but poignant sense with dark humour. For that reason, 8/10.

[whitneymuseum]

The 2017 Biennial opens Friday! Members see it first during special preview days, March 14 through 16. 

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Wow!

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Wafaa Bilal

Today I went to a lecture by the NYC-based, Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal as part of a series of events for the AHVA Graduate Symposium "Under Super Vision."

Bilal is also an Associate Arts Professor at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. The event was in two-part. There was a screening of Renzo Martens film Episode III: Enjoy Poverty (2008) and a discussion of Claire Bishop's Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (2012). Because I have not had the chance to read the latter, I did not engage as much with the discussion as I would have liked. It was nonetheless very interesting to hear what other students had to say. Overall though, the film left me very blue for several hours.

It was a tough film to watch. Renzo Martens filmed his travel around Congo, interviewing locals about their hardship and capturing on camera poverty and malnourishment. I want to purposefully avoid the word “documenting.”

I think one of the hardest part about watching such films is that you do not know if things will get better. There is no telling. It could go either way. It could end on an empowering note; it could end in darkness; or it could just end in suspense. No matter how much they give you, you want to stretch open the aperture and take in a little more; no matter how much you feel for them, you feel so powerless to change the status quo.

Martens film was unique in several ways. First, it implicated everyone. He challenged plantation owners who did not find it problematic that there are malnourished kids in his camp; he challenged the Doctors Without Borders leaders who allowed foreign cameras to capture patients and not local photographers; he challenged UN leaders for plastering logos onto every visible item; he challenged an Italian photographer for capitalizing on local destitude.

Martens also turns the camera onto himself, questioning himself on what he hoped to gain from this film. He tells the locals that this film will not be shown to them; it will be screened in Europe. He might as well have said it was for Westerners, for Canadian college students who will mourn your misfortune as they munch on catered cookies and tea. As if to heighten the sense of inequality, the light refreshment was as difficult to ingest as the film. The disparity between us and them could be measured in light years.

Two thoughts overcame me as I watched the film. First, it lead me to think about the Food for Thought event I attended yesterday.

The topic was Food Insecurity and one of the panelists, Candice, shared a surprising data. 45% of UBC undergraduate students feel food-insecure. This means they do not feel confident about where they will get their next meal; they stress about having enough to eat. I could not believe it! They are in the process of increasing the sample size and she expects the number to be around 30-35% which is still way above the national average of 10%. 

The second thought that occurred to me during Food for Thought, and which reoccurred today as I watched Martens' film, is the idea of having the right to receive help. The idea first came to me when I realized that I have the opportunity to apply for a MA program at UBC. I was delighted by the prospect; it would mean I get to enroll a year earlier. However, upon finding out that I would not be eligible for any entrance scholarship since I am a late-applicant, I started to panic about how affordable it will be. I kept thinking to myself: "There must be a way. Somebody, somewhere--maybe the government, maybe the university--will give me some money if they just get to see my situation." For some self-righteous reason, I felt like the society owed me the right to have access to higher education. But it does not. Not only does it not owe me that, it does not even necessarily owe anyone the right to live. As Martens' film and the Food for Thought demonstrate, life can be so incredibly arbitrary. Where you are born; who are your parents; what is your gender.

The fragility of life means that nothing is inherently guaranteed upon birth. Whatever I receive along the way is as much my luck as not receiving it.

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Dream Cities

I started a new goal for myself: read at least three books a week.

I was going to do one book a day but I felt like that might be a bit extreme. One of the worse thing you can do to a resolution is to set unrealistic standard and then feel bad about yourself when you do not achieve it. Three books a week, that should be manageable. I do not plan to read every word. Selective reading and skimming would be sufficient; there is not need to read it like a primary source because I am hoping to use this opportunity to read outside of the immediate realm of art. And since I do not expect to become expert at those realms, attaining a general idea shall suffice.

So today, I read Dream Cities: Seven Urban Ideas that Shape the World (2016) by Wade Graham. It was pure serendipity that I came across this book. Prior to reading this, the mere thought of urban planning gave me a headache. The only reason I picked it up, put it down, then picked it up again is because I have been thinking about place-making for the last two weeks. Place-making means the making of a place: how do we conceptualize our world, divvy it up into categories of distinct places? In landscape paintings, for example, the creation of a place and the acting of a space becomes very interesting. It is for this reason that I decided to just dabble in urban-planning, just a little, to understand how city architects have tried to structure our physical world, and by extension, our sense of living.

As the title suggests, Graham lists out seven ways in which architects have tried to structure living quarters. The first way is "Castles" where a romantic suburbia is reenacted around picturesque, pseudo-historic architecture.

The second is "Monument" where the building is neoclassical (e.g. the Met). Third, "Slabs" and Le Corbusier is a prime example of this modern, minimalist structure. "The center of the city must be constructed vertically" (Le Corbusier, quoted in Graham on page 87).

The fourth type of structure is "Homestead." For this section, unfortunately, the most memorable information was a personal gossip of the architect Frank Llyod Wright whose "well-publicized crises [was even] more captivating than even the most futuristic buildings" (116). The fifth type is "Coral" which, to be honest, is about new urbanism which I skimmed through, hoping to reach the next one--the "Mall." Now that was a fascinating dissection; especially when mega-malls are becoming a stand-alone world themselves.

Finally, the last one is called "Habitats" where the structure are more futuristic and techno-centric. The book follows an engaging structure: clearly explained premise; followed by a bullet-point summary; finished with pictures with examples of the structures discussed. The overarching premise was weak. It was briefly introduced in the beginning but left tampering out in the end. I wish the author brought the message home. But still learned a lot so overall, 8/10.

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First visit to KPU!

Today I went to Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) Surrey campus for the first time. Very amicable; very techy techy.

I had previously been to the Richmond campus a total of three times. The first two trips were to attend their Kwantlen Science Challenge during my high school years. The last trip, to drop off my application for the Paris/Documenta Field School 2017.

I should explain what the Field School is. It is a two-month long program at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in which we study modern art for a month then go to Paris and Kassel (Germany) for three weeks to see the art in person. After Kassel, I am hoping to travel on my own to Venice to see the Biennale and the Renaissance art and architecture that I have studied in previous classes. It would be the journey of a life time.

However, there is some logistic to figure out. That is why I am at KPU Surrey today, to talk with the Exchange Coordinator about how to register for the program. We belabored tirelessly to sort out the best approach to keep the computerized, admission system—gasp, Banner—happy and content. We decided it was best to register as a General Studies student; that way I am eligible for scholarships. I should be enrolled by next week! I am so grateful for all the help I have received today; without my Coordinator's guidance, I would have been so lost trying to navigate the admission process solo. We went to a series of offices today to make sure we have covered every facet of the process. I lost track of how many departments we consulted. Three? Or maybe four? At one point, the Coordinator tried to call McGill Service Point. We were on hold for almost ten minutes before he finally gave up. He reasoned that this ridiculous waiting time is because they are a big school; I did not have the heart to tell him that they are just not student-centered. Indeed, since having studied at UBC, and soon KPU, I have realized that the latters are way more student-oriented than the former. However, what McGill lacked in attention, it made up for it in generosity. It supported me with incredible scholarships, awards, and bursaries during all four years of my undergrad. And for that reason, I owe it a debt of gratitude. In the meantime, I am working on my scholarship applications so that they are ready for submission when my admission application goes through the system. Fingers-crossed!

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Gallery Hopping I

I went gallery-hopping with Imogene today. It was great; I have finally been to the galleries that I have always wanted to visit.

LUMAS was an explosion of color as usual. Ergo, loved it. It was a smooth, Cadbury candy for the eye. It was a good place to warm up one's visual faculties although imbuing one with that much color can make the rest of the gallery-hop feel more sterile and minimalistic.

Artspeak, was fascinating. If I had not spoken to the associate director, Erik, I would not have gotten nearly as much out of it as I have. The group show featured three artists, each exploring a dimension of sound and vision. I am definitely pumped to write for them. I will email the director to see if she needs someone to write a postscript.

Catriona Jefferies was intriguing. Although I think I hyped it up in my head too much. One of the most memorable pieces by Geoffrey Farmer is Wooden High Crusty and Dusty (2017). It is a large painting of kitchenware on cloth hung in the corner of the room; its height forced me to view it at a distance, helping me combat my problem of getting too close to a work too quickly.

Farmer’s artist statement for the show The Big Kitchen was very powerful. It was at once about him and not about him; I think his childhood memory will resonated strongly with  readers. A good artist statement should not really be an "all-about-me" page of the artist; nobody except his mother would want to read that. Instead, there needs to be some mindfulness of the audience. Do not just present yourself, engage yourself; universality needs to be derived from specificity. 

Equinox Gallery was incredible. I really enjoyed the Phillipe Raphanel show—Island. The paintings were abstract but legible. Without depicting the particularity of the forest, he extrapolates its sheer visual abundance with lines and color. The multitude of layers and paint renders the canvas as a portal to a fantastical world of color.

Raphanel’s works, like those of Farmer’s, must be viewed at a distance to see their immersive effect. Up close, the hallucinatory illusions resolve into distinct colors, subverting the spiritual with bodily. Yet it is funny how the immediate reaction, at least for me, is to view a painting within inches of its surface. As if somehow art needs to conform to the same "closer, faster, bigger" mantra that seems to characterize the contemporary consumer culture of "more, more, more."

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Tote Culture

There is a curious tote culture going on in the artworld. At the gallery where I work, almost everyone carries them with pride. Sure, the bag may be worn-out and stained, but having the words "Artforum" or "Books are a burden" stamped onto it serve as a physical marker of the wearer. It is as if the tote, as ancillary as it may be, acts as an amplifier of their identities. Totes define people.

In a way, the actual label, what is written on the bag, becomes a secret code. Only those in the know (i.e. art nerds) will know the connotations of "October" or "Artspeak," Only those in the know will even pay attention to what is written on a tote or ponder upon its existence. The artworld permeates life, it just often goes undetected.

Contemporary art is absolutely enchanting. More things are on the table than ever before. More mediums; more subjects; more opportunities. I will be making some art this summer; I am curious to see what I create. I have a few ideas right now but creativity works in mysterious ways so I am open to new influences.

In the meantime, I am waiting patiently for my complimentary tote to arrive with my new subscription to @newyorker. Right now I have a tote from the University of Edinburgh. I received it at our last Club's Day. A booth was promoting the veterinary school at Edinburgh and tired of being toteless, I grabbed two. To be toteless is to be undefined.

Review of the Edinburgh tote:   6/10. The handle is too long: it always gets tangled and constricts circulation in my wrist. The thread-count is too low: the ephemerality of the fabric is akin to Eva Hesse's Contingent (1969). Finally, it has the veterinary school website on the back when we all know that art history is life. I do like farm animals though, so I have worn the tote twice. But I felt like an imposter. I have never been to Edinburgh; I do not aspire to go to its veterinary school. A tote novice must respect the integrity of the tote culture—wear only totes to which you have a genuine association.

So now I am constantly on the prowl for totes. I have never really liked having paintings on my wall; perhaps I will start hanging totes.

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Hello and welcome!

Here we go, my first blog post. I have jotted down disparate thoughts here and there over the years but have always hesitated to post them online because it just did not see worth the trouble. But in anticipation for the @kpustudyabroad experience this summer, I figure it is time I warm-up my blog penmanship so that I can best chronicle the journey of a lifetime when I visit Europe.

My goal for this blog is to post at least once a week. Gradually, I hope to build a portfolio of personal anecdotes that will serve both personal and professional growth.

I suppose I should start by introducing myself. It is actually pretty simple: art history is life.

Although how I got to here is a long story. I graduated high school; got a B.Sc.; hated labs and medical school; decided to pursue something I discovered through elective courses; loving the latter.

I was incredibly lost during B.Sc. I tried everything from cell biology to physiology; from social psychology to economics. In my last year I encountered art history and the discipline just made sense to me. I used to mock art history, thinking it was just about looking at paintings and had no practicality. But I have since realized its presence permeates every aspect of life; it is just very discrete. Much like the pristine condition of galleries that masks all signs of labor, the artworld tends to go undetected unless you seek it out. And when you do, you will realize that it has never been just about shapes and colours. Art is politics in disguise. It is an orchestrated, visual performance disseminated to the masses. Art, money, and politics are the new trinity in this godless world. At a later time, perhaps I will share my religious musings with you.

My goal is to pursue a MA in institutional critique. I am currently interested in critically analyzing documenta and perhaps using it as a launching point for studying the fabric of contemporary art. Along with biennales, triennials, and art tourism, the artworld has never been more exciting than it is today (see book by Green and Gardner).

My second goal is to do good. Like honestly, do good. In that respect, I am part of a non-profit group called @effectivealtruism. We are dedicated to the intellectual movement of trying to understand how an individual can make the maximum amount of positive impact through his/her life. We follow the progress of innovative institutions like GiveWell (San Francisco) and 80,000 Hours (Oxford) to access what charitable organizations are actually effective at making an impact with the donation they receive. As a member of the team, I am currently working on writing funding applications so that we do not have to pay out-of-pocket to attend the Effective Altruism Global conference this year. This is an annual conference akin to TED Talk where innovators at the forefront of social progress share their story to inspire and spark discussions. Elon Musk, a personal role model of mine, spoke at last year's conference!

Effective Altruism is a launching point for socially-minded scholars. We understanding that science and technology will not lead to utopia--they may not necessarily lead to progress for that matter--but if we make the effort to look at cold hard facts in a humanistic manner, we stand to a much better chance at guiding the global community in a direction that the future generation will not regret. We are not romantic idealists; we are just not skeptical of progress.

EA is not perfect. As a strong proponent for arts, I think it is important that alternative ways of relating to the world are acknowledged and appreciated at EA. The EA currently does not do enough of that; they place way too much emphasis on the sciences and too little emphasis on the art. The pursuit for empiricism should happen in conjunction with an appreciation for the arts. Can you image a world without music? The society thrives on a diversity of talent. The zealous for science should not come at the sacrifice of art. Science is what we stand on; art is what we live for.