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(An e-mail dated 5th July 2020, 12:27pm:)
“Broadly I am interested in ideological compositions. My research on the Makara and other composite creatures is an attempt at understanding how composites present a sense of imaginary unity through multiplicity. This optic of unity is itself a demonstration of power. The seed of this idea lies in how Najib’s 1Malaysia was a composite in response to a fragmented post-tsunami Malaysia in 2009.”
Prelude: Zi Hao’s research on an iconographic composite creature in Southeast Asia, namely Makara.
A Makara can be assembled piecemeal from a wide-ranging catalogue of appendages: an elephant trunk, a crocodile body, a fish tail, dragon claws, wild boar tusks, or goat horns. With varying connections between the appendages, Makaras may come in different forms, each securing its own distinctive groupings for specific applications. Some Makaras can be found guarding the balustrades at the entrances of Hindu monuments, bedecking the hilts of Malay kerises and Tibetan phurpas, while others are shaped into finials to be grafted onto the roof ridges of Javanese and Chinese temples. A diversiform appearance is developed out of a multitude of connecting appendages, within which no one Makara mirrors another, nor a single description to be proportioned to its verisimilitude.
“Makara and Other Connections to Come”, Tan Zi Hao
(12th August 2020, 20:00pm:)
Au Sow Yee: How did your interest in “ideological composition” begin? How do you see political ideology such as former Prime Minister Najib Razak’s 1Malaysia(註1) as a composite?
Tan Zi Hao: Najib’s 1Malaysia is just one of the many examples. It has a lot to do with how I understand ideologies in the political context of the region. In particular, how ideologies essentialize specific ideas, or even the inadequacy of political ideologies such as ‘democracy’ and ‘neoliberalism’ in fruitfully capturing our grounded experience. As a mode of knowledge, ideologies are an over-simplification. Whenever the authorities posit an idea, an ideology, it is usually premised on the pretext of benefiting the greater good. But in actuality, it serves to singularize complexities to embalm an existing status quo. For most of the works I have been doing, I intend to expose the falsehood of these epistemic singularities. We faithfully cling on to notions of cultures, roots, identities, without really scrutinizing the volatility of these conceptual distinctions. It is in this light that I see ideology as a kind of composition. Ideology has to be artfully crafted and composed before it can convince an audience. This is where my interest lies. I want to uncover the multiplicity of this unity. When we begin to shift our attention from ideology to historicity, the intrinsic complexity and contingency of an idea betrays its very own constitution.
To return to Najib’s 1Malaysia, it was a political ideology that had emerged after the political tsunami in 2008, which was a critical juncture, characterized by political fragmentation and the emergence of extreme right-wing populist groups such as Perkasa. Read against this backdrop, 1Malaysia was an attempt to overcome fragmentation by giving a sense of coherence and singularity to this territorial abstraction called “Malaysia”. 1Malaysia was the envisioned unity of Malaysia. If you get to read some of the documents drafted for 1Malaysia, they actually outlined its core values based on the different principles collated from previous Prime Ministers in Malaysia. From Rukun Negara (National Principle) to Dasar Ekonomi Baru (New Economic Policy), 1Malaysia incorporated multiple agendas from our forefathers. It combined elements of the past and ambitions of the present, to project a vision for the future. It is through this understanding that I regard 1Malaysia as a literal “ideological composition”.
My interest in mythical composite creature came later as I delved deeper into the zoomorphic artifacts in Southeast Asia in preparation for my PhD at the National University of Singapore. Examining how mythical creatures were publicized in the name of heritage, I notice a similar thread. Composite creatures are often conceived as a singular biological entity comprising multiple animal parts. They are also complicit in the relations of power since their narratives are intimately bound to royal genealogies. In a sense, mythical composite creatures are perfect ideological compositions. Distinct parts of the animal are seamlessly weaved together, and yet each of them articulates distinct moral values while adhering to an existing status quo. Mythical composite creatures are ideal political instruments because they offer a way of simplifying and homogenizing difference, without appearing as a state-initiated political ideology. They are deemed as legendary, cultural, and thus, apolitical.
A: In your writings regarding Makara, you mentioned its transformative potential and expounded its transformation and extrusion. “Makara reveals itself as a composite of connecting narratives, of speculative linkages and fixtures.” How do you see the transformation between your writings and artwork, as well as the transformation of the various presence of the embodied composite creatures?
T: I intend the essay to be an appendix to the artwork “The Skeleton of Makara (The Myth of a Myth)” (2016). When I was writing about Makara, I was looking more at the history of the iconography. I was intrigued with how different cultures bear a similar imagery. In Indonesia, you can find Makara-like creatures such as the Singa Barong and Paksi Naga Liman. In Myanmar, you can find Pyinsa Rupa and Byala. In that essay, I discussed some affinities between the iconography of Makara and the Merlion in modern Singapore. Despite sharing the same composite imaginary, different nation-states and communities seem to want to lay claim on these respective creatures and have their own ways of identifying with each. There is also an attempt to nationalize this composite imagery. The trace of the Makara can be co-opted and turned into an emblem. Of course, historically, the iconography of Makara traversed the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, and it was variously localized and translated according to local cultural conditions unbeknown to citizens of modern nation-states. In Cirebon, there is a figure called Paksi Naga Liman, which is a combination of the naga (serpent), elephant, and Garuda (phoenix) or Buraq (steed of Muhammad). And some would see this trinity as a symbol of peaceful coexistence between Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or of civilizational centers, namely, Egypt, China, and India. This is a very trivial way of grasping a multicultural society and it inevitably reminds me of the familiar postcolonial condition in Malaysia and Singapore. But the composite Paksi Naga Liman once had a different rendition in the past, when it was understood as a proxy for tribuana (three realms): the naga represents the aquatic realm, the elephant the terrestrial realm, and the wings the celestial realm. This was a very different configuration! But the tourism and heritage industry has a preference for cosmetic multiculturalism, hence, it is becomes convenient to portray the Paksi Naga Liman creature as a representation of different ethnic communities.
A: How does your research influence your art practices and your artwork? If your research and writings are appendixes to your artwork, what is the relation between the two?
T: The distinction between these two fields, unfortunately, is quite stark. It struck me forcibly at the beginning of my doctoral program. I suspect my university department would consider my writings to be rather speculative, at least that was my impression based on the comments I had received. Unlike art writings, there is a persistent idea (or illusion) in academic writings that your argument should be based on a specific mode of logic and reasoning. While explaining one’s subjective position and the use of personal pronouns are highly encouraged in scholarship today, your personal voice, ironically, has to be somehow subdued or succumbed to that logic of inquiry. Speaking as an artist gives one greater leeway to argue for something. When I was writing for the paper on Makara, I was looking more specifically at the transoceanic history of the iconography, using manuscripts and epigraphic sources as evidence to substantiate the argument. But the overarching objective is similar, that is, to probe the idea of nation-states and to question methodological nationalism by reviewing the historical trajectory of Makara and how transcultural encounters have inflected the iconography.
A: Your art practices in the early stages of your career — such as your works with “Typokaki”, or the video work “Negaraku. Bukan. My Country. Is Not. 我的祖国。不是。எனது நாடு. அல்ல. ਮੇਰਾ ਦੇਸ਼. ਨਾ. Menuaku. Ukai. Pogunku. Au. نڬاراکو” — have shown a considerable amount of interest in language as they present a playful examination of different languages. Arguably, language is also a form of composition. I would further argue that language is as well another kind of composite creature. How did your interest in language begin and how do you view the relation between language and the idea of composition in your recent research?
T: The primary intention has always been to question essentialism by revealing forms of assemblage that have been obscured, in a sustained manner, by various political or historical forces. Language is as much a form of assemblage as are composite creatures. When it comes to language, I am constantly drawn to the hermeneutics of etymology: how words and languages pass from one tongue to another, and how our pronunciations are always already contaminated and creolized, which leads to accidental inventions and translations of borrowed words, compounding further the idea of word origins. In Malaysia, we are rather obsessed with the purity of language, but the moment we examine the etymology of a single word, we will begin see scholars having different conjectures about how the word — or the language to which the word belongs — has travelled. These conjectures, as informed estimates of a speculative history, are telltale signs that no single language is ever “pure” to begin with. Language is an anarchist; language is indifferent to our insistence to preserve or to standardize it. As a tool of communication, language is always beyond the singular and refuses purity.
The Malay saying “Bahasa Jiwa Bangsa” (language is the soul of a nation) is problematic for it presupposes an isomorphism between the language and the nation-state. It binds one’s mother tongue with one’s mother nation, one’s language with one’s geography. I attempted to question this association in a series of works entitled “Address” (2017), using the home address as a starting point of investigation. In general there are two senses to the word ‘address’. Firstly, ‘address’ as a marker of geographical location and residence; secondly, to ‘address’ someone, meaning to respond or to speak to someone. In the series, I view the address as a text that articulates one’s location through an official language. To be addressed, to have (or have not) an address, is to enter into a relation of power. The unquestioned connection or disconnection between one’s mother tongue and mother nation in an address is always problematic due to the complicated history of a sovereign nation-state. If one’s mother tongue is deemed unrelated to one’s mother nation, then the address will betray one’s location. For example, translating my home address from Malay to my mother tongue (Mandarin) immediately displaces my idea of home and unsettles the isomorphism between language and geography. To render my address in a language closest to me catapults me to a place beyond home. The address is a discursive site that cannot be challenged.
In one of my articles “Alamat, Address”, which is related to the “Address” series, I further discuss the differences of Latinized Chinese names in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Singapore, and Malaysia, because our registered name is another mode of address.(註2) My name “陳子豪”, for instance, is Latinized as “Tan Zi Hao” in Malaysia. But this Latinized Hokkien “Tan” could potentially be read as “譚” in China. So depending on your ‘address’ (as location, as a site of language), the Chinese surname “陳” can be Latinized as “Chen”, “Chan”, “Tan”, and so on. One’s name is readily tied to a locality. Similarly, as we address someone and enunciate someone else’s name in a particular language, we have already determined — unknowingly and a priori — that particular person’s place and belonging.
It is useful at this point to mention Rachel Leow’s brilliant monograph “Taming Babel: Language in the Making of Malaysia”, in which she staked out an important question on the “fundamental, perhaps inevitable, disconnect between a monoglot state and its polyglot subjects”.(註3) Paraphrasing Vicente Rafael’s study on translation in the Spanish Philippines, she considers this to be a “problem of address”.(註4) How should a monolingual authority address a multilingual society? Often, it is this concern that gives rise to the imperative of the national language. And it is with this language alone that, as the naïve would have us believed, the Malaysian society would come to terms with one another. But I think at the very moment one begins to address the other, one already commits unawares a form of linguistic treachery. In one way or another, you will need to betray your own tongue the moment you start to speak to the other. This treachery occurs even if you are speaking to someone with which you share the same language. Do we ever share a language, even up to every single idiomatic expression? Every utterance will entail some form of treachery, without which communication cannot take place. It is this anarchic element of language that I find compelling. And to be able to grasp the full implication of this anarchy is to witness every conceptual unity as a composition, an assemblage.
A: Regarding your video work “Negaraku. Bukan. My Country. Is Not. 我的祖国。不是。எனது நாடு. அல்ல. ਮੇਰਾ ਦੇਸ਼. ਨਾ. Menuaku. Ukai. Pogunku. Au. نڬاراکو“, you appear to harbor a strong intention as the work questions the usage of language in shaping national identity. Can you share with us your thoughts behind the work?
T: This harks back to the crisis of addressing, as Rachel Leow puts it. How should an intently monolingual authority address its multilingual nation? The video plays Malaysia’s national anthem “Negaraku“ — a song available only in the national language — with subtitles rendered in seven languages and eight scripts. Of course, a national anthem has to be in the national language, but I was playing with the possibility of translating the national anthem. Like our registered address, the national anthem as an official text cannot afford translation. Translation is treacherous. But an irony underpins the problem of address: if a nation were to educate and inculcate a sense of belonging to its citizens, the nation would have to first speak multiple languages. Political communication is often a treacherous act. Bear in mind that Arabic Malay was Latinized partly to facilitate the acquisition of Malay language among non-Malay citizens. Furthermore, during the formative years of Malaysia, official documents were rigidly multilingual to ensure that the majority of its citizens could understand its propagandas. But imagine if a nation-state truly intends to be inclusive, exactly how many types of language need to be incorporated? Where do we set the benchmark? This ticklish question exposes the problematics of multiculturalism and multilingualism. The video has only seven languages, which is insufficient given the copious amount of languages in Malaysia, but the subtitles already filled up the entire screen. In a sense, cultural or linguistic inclusivity is really a kind of smoke screen; it fills up our attention while concealing other more pertinent questions. The anarchic element of language (or even culture) is at work here against the nation-state. Having said that, language is never the crux of the problem. It only becomes a problem insofar as the nation-state confines it to its sovereign territory, slicing its speech communities into self-victimizing majorities and minorities.
A: Returning to the question on Makara, where our conversation began, Makara as a composite figure has always been categorized into the realm of mythology. Yet you’ve mentioned also the transformation of the metaphor of the creature itself are coined to the actual transformation in socio-political context. What are your thoughts on the tension between mythology, a concept that allows speculation, and history, a realm that significantly relies on evidence-based narratives?
T: The installation “The Skeleton of Makara“ is also titled parenthetically “The Myth of a Myth”. Constructing a mythical animal in a skeletal form, I was enveloping a myth with another, straddling between the episteme of museological scientism and mythology, between the fossil and flesh, between historical fossilization and vitality. Among all composite creatures, I employed the Makara for very specific reasons. As an iconography, the distribution of the Makara is as widespread as the naga, and yet, its name is relatively unheard of. The Makara is also variously translated and known by other names, as I have stated earlier. The creature itself has multiple forms. Different communities have had different manifestations of the Makara. In some, the fish tail or the serpent head is emphasized, in others, it bears a crocodilian or a pachydermic body. Thus, to paraphrase Donald K. Emmerson’s critical evaluation of the term “Southeast Asia”, I find the creature possesses a certain ‘unicorn’ quality.(註5) But the moment the Makara is depicted in an incomplete skeletal form, the flesh and skin disappear and what is left is this unsuspecting structure as befits a museum.
At another level, “The Skeleton of Makara (The Myth of a Myth)” was subtly conceived as a site-specific installation with regards to the uncanny intersection of historical amnesia and nostalgia in Singapore, in addition to a speculation that the Merlion was related to the Makara according to a letter published in The Straits Times in 1999.(註6) Drawing on these connections, I seek to question the fictitiousness of a nation-state, as well as the attendant methodological nationalism that distorts our view of culture. As a transoceanic iconography and a by-product of translation, the Makara therefore offers a strategic frame of reference for initiating inquiries that aim at disorienting nation-state-centric categories. We should call into question the numerous fictions of belonging we are so fond of imagining.