Sharon Siddique

Speech at the launch of FOCAS 6: Regional Animalities, 15 July 2007.

I would like to thank Lucy for this opportunity to express my gratitude to all those who have contributed to the six volumes of FOCAS over the years. Some are my friends. Many are acquaintances. I am full of admiration for them all.

Having just leafed through the six FOCAS volumes lined up on my bookshelf, I must admit that I was also filled with regret. Regret that I had not allocated more of my own time to becoming more involved in FOCAS. Not because I could have contributed anything significant, but because I would have benefited so significantly.

So I am even more grateful for this evening, because I can comment as an outside–insider on the process which has produced the FOCAS volumes, particularly this latest, and I understand, this last, on REGIONAL ANIMALITIES. I would like to record my own humble judgement that these volumes will continue to be collected, read, and treasured, as one of Singapore’s most meaningful early 21st century intellectual exercises.

Having lost some of my own central vision, I have literally come to realise the importance of peripheral vision. FOCAS is the product of very intense, and very refined, figurative peripheral vision. In the world of central vision loss, there is a technique called “eccentric viewing”, in which one relearns how to see by using peripheral vision to refocus on whatever is in the (missing) central visual field.

I think the FOCAS volumes, figuratively speaking, are written from the same perspective of eccentric viewing. Authors use peripheral vision to gain unique perspectives on issues that are often taken for granted, or ignored, by those who rely on the central visual field. Actually, those who possess only central vision are even more gravely handicapped than those with central field loss. Their condition is called tunnel vision — they cannot see the periphery. And we can certainly find many examples of tunnel vision (figuratively-speaking) here in Singapore.

I have three brief points to raise with regard to the use of eccentric viewing by FOCAS authors.

FIRST, eccentric viewing has allowed FOCAS to focus on objects and subjects which should be in our central vision, but which are generally relegated to the periphery. FOCAS is a marvelous storehouse of materials gathered through eccentric viewing of Southeast Asia, and particularly Singapore.

Here we can mention several themes that echo through the FOCAS series:
— Community Arts and Public Interactions
— Intercultural Arts Practice and International Arts Organisations
— Gender, Sexuality, and Art
— Bodies and Text
— Cultural Activism in Southeast Asia
— The politics of arts practice in Southeast Asia

FOCAS 6, REGIONAL ANIMALITIES, rounds out all these perspectives in two of its main sections: (i) Arts and Activism in Singapore; (ii) Censorship.

SECOND, eccentric viewing has allowed FOCAS to focus on objects and subjects, with a uniquely peripheral perspective on their embedded, multi-layered meanings. The FOCAS volumes are visually rich in incredibly complex codes and signals that often inform us without the realisation of how truly subtle the messages are. And many of the essays on animalities demonstrate how we take so much for granted.

Take, as an example, the Cat Welfare Society announcement at the very end of the book. A beautiful cat with the caption: “save lives, sterilise”. Counterintuitive unless one has been through the cat culling and cat fights with AVA and other government agencies.

THIRD, the tributes section gave me much pause for thought, which ties in with the regret I mentioned earlier. We often loose things which are irretrievable. In my case, the opportunity to participate more actively in FOCAS. But we not only loose through our actions, we also loose those we love. And FOCAS has sustained heavy losses over the past few years. FOCAS 5 carried tributes to Pao Kun. FOCAS 6, this present volume, records the passing of three more of Southeast Asia’s towering intellectuals: Krishen Jit, Redza Pivadasa, and Pramoedya Ananta Toer.

Sumit Mandal wrote a brilliant essay on Bung Pram, ending in an eloquent summary. “In a lifetime of writing he tirelessly filled in the dotted lines of a country after his own vision. The nation which emerged was not the one for which he had struggled. His Indonesia never came.” How true.

Janadas Devan on Pao Kun in FOCAS 5, was equally eloquent when he wrote that: “Kuo Pao Kun was a possibility, a challenge within us — a possibility of breaking beyond the shells of our certainties, a challenge to our armoured identities. He is no more. The possibility and challenge remain — still.

But I don’t want to end on a melancholy note. One of the great lessons from great lives well lived is that they are lived not only with courage, but with single-minded devotion to art and culture, and communication, and all that matters which is good. This includes the ability to touch us with their unique perspectives on the everyday, the mundane, the past, and the future. And so I would like to read to you my all-time favourite poem by TS Elliot. One that is coincidently so appropriate to the launch of REGIONAL ANIMALITIES:

……………….

Of the Awefull Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles¹
Together with some account
Of the participation
Of the pugs and the poms, and the
Intervention of the great Rumpuscat

The Pekes and the Pollicles, everyone knows,
Are proud and implacable passionate foes;
It is always the same, wherever one goes.
And the Pugs and the Poms, although most people say
That they do not like fighting, will often display
Every symptom of wanting to join in the fray.
And they
                Bark bark bark bark
                Bark bark BARK BARK
         Until you can hear them all over the Park.

Now on the occasion of which I shall speak
Almost nothing had happened for nearly a week
(And that’s a long time for a Pol or a Peke).
The big Police Dog was away from his beat —
I don’t know the reason, but most people think
He’d slipped into the Bricklayer’s Arms for a drink —
And no one at all was about on the street
When a Peke and a Pollicle happened to meet.
They did not advance, or exactly retreat,
But they glared at each other and scraped their hind feet,
And started to
                Bark bark bark bark
                Bark bark BARK BARK
         Until you could hear them all over the Park.

Now the Peke, although people may say what they please,
Is no British Dog, but a Heathen Chinese.
And so all the Pekes, when they heard the uproar,
Some came to the window, some came to the door;
There were surely a doyen, more likely a score.
And together they started to grumble and wheeye
In their huffery-snuffery Heathen Chinese.
But a terrible din is what Pollicles like,
for your Pollicle Dog is a dour Yorkshire tyke,
And his braw Scottish cousins are snappers and biters,
And every dog-jack of them notable fighters;
And so they stepped out, with their pipers in order,
Playing When the Blue Bonnets Came Over the Border.
Then the Pugs and the Poms held no longer aloof,
But some from the balcony, some from the roof,
Joined in
To the din
With a
                Bark bark bark bark
                Bark bark BARK BARK
         Until you could hear them all over the Park.

Now when these bold heroes together assembled,
The traffic all stopped, and the Underground trembled,
And some of the neighbours were so much afraid
That they started to ring up the Fire Brigade.
When suddenly, up from a small basement flat,
Why who should stalk out but the GREAT RUMPUSCAT.
His eyes were like fireballs fearfully blazing,
He gave a great yawn, and his jaws were amazing;
And when he looked out through the bars of the area,
You never saw anything fiercer or hairier.
And what with the glare of his eyes and his yawning,
The Pekes and the Pollicles quickly took warning.
He looked at the sky and he gave a great leap —
And they every last one of them scattered like sheep.

And when the Police Dog returned to his beat,
There wasn’t a single one left in the street.

……………….

And so Lucy, and all FOCAS stakeholders, I’m sure that the GREAT RUMPUS CAT is at this very moment, saluting you with a stretch and a yawn. And urging you to, well, simply go on.

1. T S Elliot, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats: Collected Poems 1909-1962 [↩]