So March finally begins. Will be focusing on the projects that I am developing here this post. I did mention that I had brought a couple of other works with me, including the every unfinished drawings for Teach us how to walk tomorrow (2023), Neuron II (2025) and of course the recent performance back in January, Ali e (2026). I have also mapped out an work that I am going to show at the end of August in Melaka with current working title まにまに (2026 wip). Oh and I have also been reconnected with Ivan, with a possibility to continue our conversation in person. We wanted to work on something small for a show in March but astronomical shipping cost has made it impossible. The work was to be a series of drawings on my part and handwritten mantra on Ivan's part; both on paper plates that are to be thrown around in the gallery. I also brought Tamaya (2023) with me and that series of drawings have been on hold too. So technically, this residency have been so very good for my mental health, and also physical health to be honest that I have not been producing as much work as I would love to. But restarting the engine on a slower pace is always good, I guess.
I have now to start on working for a performance that will be presented at the end of the residency, thought the date has not been confirmed just yet. The challenge this time is I want to present two works that I devised in 2025 and presenting them one after another with a work I am devising here. So it is like 3 in 1 day sort of performance event. Thematically they are not of the same but conceptually, the red thread exists. The work I am making here is titled I do (2026) and it will be followed by I am sorry I am not your ̶g̶o̶d̶dog (2025) and concluding it with Hard Boiled (2024-25).
The works combined is presented like a wedding but also a race. There is a save-the-date invitation, a ring, a bouquet toss, a baumkuchen, a sun setting, a cerberus, a swimming lesson, a rase the glass and finally, a shooting. I have never been able to navigate my thoughts process in a linear explanation, but they are always in a circling, lost of way, like a merry go around or an ourobouros completing itself in a circle. So I will be showing some photos of sketches and mindmaps currently filling ym studio wall here in PART.
Above is the sketches for I do. The work started with the masculine attraction I feel around PART; one is clearly the Ernst-Happel Stadion right in front of PART's door. There is such strong erotic energy projected from the oval structure, in ways I can not utter in words. It has also been eerily deserted and extremely quiet, almost dead, like a carcass, unused, but I know for sure it is only hibernating. It feels like a sleeping animal or an undefeated titan for which I am clearly underleveled to face.
Not that this is way smaller, second is the Krieau Trabrennpark, the harness racing track which to my pleasant surprise, is equally close by from my studio's doorstep. Horses come and go in my project and with the idea of betting,it synchronizes with gacha ideology that I am very much interested and engaged in. It of course reminds me to Umamusume: Pretty Derby which revolves around anthromorphic racehorses who are also idols and singers on stage. I have been consuming the world of Vocaloid in such extreme extent that this feels way closer to home.
It was around the same time when I discovered the return of Triple Baka trio; Miku, Teto and Neru with a song by Amala called Baumkuchen End Credits. It is a story of three-persons relationship, one that actually has played with and successfully stolen the love of the couple. Like being chucked, the person who is alone now becomes a reflection of my own situation/ship with Pistachio Star. I feel like a third person, but I am content. This makes me reflect on the position of being third, if it were a race, the bronze medalist is still a winner. I am still content and thankful for the experience, but I will never be either a gold and silver medalists, which in this case, has become a single podium; the winner. Two winner and another still a winner but also a loser at the same time. I start to reflect on being ended up in third place. Why am I content with it;
I started to also look into baumkuchen, out of curiousity of the strange title of the song. It is a german confectionary that has become extremely popular in Japan, both as a tradition and popular culture for symbols of longevity romance. Japanese would bring baumkuchen to wedding as gifts but also baumkuchen end is a modern meme to describe a failed shipping. I wanted a baumkuchen, but also I am its end.
The baking process of the cake is to my surprise, synonymous to racing laps. If I were to imagine the race course as the spit, the action of me running it in laps is like baking the cake itself. Hence the decision to use this as the primary gesture of the performance.
I want to run around the race tracks, as if I were an anthromorphic racing horse and by documenting it through fitness app like Strava, I can collect images of the documentation of the laps, often as red or blue lines on map. These repeated lines then become the layers of the cake, and by repetition, the cake will be fully baked.
I am trying to stream this fitness app from my phone as I make the laps live to be projected somehow in the gallery. The gallery then becomes the oven so to speak, and when I arrive with fatigue, I am bringing a baumkuchen as a wedding gift.
Salvatore, the residential manager of PART has helped me to speak with the horsetrack management on the possibility of using it as a performance stage. The news as of this blog is written has been positive though we have not decided on the dates yet.
But in cases where it is no longer a possibility, I will try to bake the cake witht he Stadium instead. It opens up to more possibilities of shape and errors compared to the rather static but more conceptually rooted horseracing track.
If it were to be the stadium though, I would like to include another work in progress, Second smallest hand in class (2025 wip) which is based on a cam video of me back in 2006. I have always wanted to use this video which has been fermenting over two decades in a work and the stadium echoes it. The video was recorded inside Singapore stadium after my dragonboat practice, which was also me cruising and the excitement and tension surrounding public erotica in early 2000s; as a newly legal person no less.
While the final idea of the work is still very hazy, I am interested in looking back into my junior college years, as an attempt to reconnect to my youth and how I had the second smallest hand in class. And people say your hand reflects the size of your penis.
I am not exactly sure how this will tie in together but also from the morality perspective; the fact that the work was rejected for a show last year due to its 'child nudity' factor, is an interesting one for me too.
But regardless of which erotic masculine oval structure will be my skip,I would love to do a public intervention of this. Almost like the rune to help me run the whole thing. It is the Holy Rune from Suikoden series and I would like to do some drawing with it and install it in the phone box outside of the stadium. It is kind of an easter egg situation. The idea of running is important for me, not only it is a physical action that generates fatigue, it is also reclaiming the back injury that I had last year as I was preparing for a 10k and eventually hoping for a half marathon by end of last year. Topped with the drugs abuse, my physical stamina has decreased significantly and to make a work that utilizes running will be a massive recovery.
I have in fact been training, still on treadmill but on various modes of exercises to build my speed and stamina back. The gym has also reminded me the joy of being in one, which I have started to lose sense of for the past year in London. It is a feeling that I do not want to forget again.
