white space, white noise

Checked out the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts' open house over weekend, from what I gathered I'm leaning ever more away from this choice. My largest consideration has got to be environment, that'd mean first and foremost my peers, - their age, skill and passion - syllabus - the course structure, and inclusive are teachers - and the campus itself - would say it's way too vertically-orientated and there's hardly any open space. It seems the school's target audience are those fresh out of secondary school, and positions itself more as a parallel to other tertiary institutions than an undergrad school, not much surprise then that they treat the one-year BFA course as separate from the diploma. What I want (or what I think I want) is both higher education and training in technical skill and conceptual substance, but apparently one only gets to truly major in the third year (that is counting the first foundation year) with most of the second spent just on general art (2D/3D) skills. From speaking to a BFA student she was doing things totally different (focusing on concepts and contextualisation) from that during her diploma course, that and the stress involved kinda worries me. Whatever the case, I cannot apply to NAFA this year anyway because for some reason places are not reserved (NSFs are just not entertained? That left quite a wtf look on my face), so perhaps that's some good news as more time is always better - it's also great for shutting the parents up.

With Lasalle-SIA's open house coming up next week, I might have taken to a less passive attitude towards what holds for my future, hopefully I'll be more impressed this time and reality lives up to my expectations. Indeed less passive is the best description I could think of, it'd be misleading to use active because, well there're still things like scholarships and overseas art colleges I haven't yet looked at even on the most superficial levels. Still very undecided, and frankly the unknown scares the shit out of me, but I believe all will fall into place in due time.

Life outside of camp has been going better of late, last Thursday I attended TAGS for the second time and felt my happiest and freest since I don't know when (I also happen to believe my introduction to and interacting with this group happened not simply by chance). Besides having met some very nice people, it's helped me immensely with opening up and speaking properly to strangers, the fact that we talk about so many shared beliefs makes it easier, but it really breaks my mold of paranoia to realising that people's prejudices are their personal problems. And I guess it's brought me closer to God in a certain small way.

Speaking of people, and the future, albeit totally unrelated, everyone should watch Children of Men.

Hard Fall
Photoshop CS2
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It might as well have happened this way; take away the living part of life and just throw us the uniforms, pep talks, and high flung intentions at birth. Might as well fix our feet to rails with necks hanging from power lines; encase our bodies in moulds, do away with every make-believe choice presented and just drive us there; sewing our lips, clipping our eyes and plugging our ears.

It might as well have been, but realise that it isn't. So perhaps we should treasure this ability to criticize, reflect, and demand while we can. We weren't meant to be born into coffins.

A Pictorial Travelogue, Part 3
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Mostly left with the urban landscape of Hong Kong and Kowloon City at dusk and sundown to show here. Will write more when not tired.

So this is the new year, seems more like just a number to change at the end of written dates. I didn't celebrate in any way; it was just another day in a weekend for me, like how it is with my birthdays: quiet, solitary, blissful, reflective. If you think about it, any day could be (or could have been) a new year's day, you just count down 364 from there, working exactly like fiscal and working calendars in organisations. I wonder how many people actually see this thing as opportunity to begin on a fresh slate, and how many actually commit to that, because in essence it is all in the mind, and you could attempt this any other day, it just perhaps becomes more meaningful or an easy reference and start point - maybe even for bragging rights? - to have it be a "new year's resolution". I have none, the way my life's going right now, I'm just going to be taking it day by day, pain by pain, and trial by trial. In any case I leave 15 more pictures from Hong Kong below, enjoy, and have a good year.

A Pictorial Travelogue, Part 2
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