“Location (6)”, Hans Op De Beeck, 2008: Singapore Biennale


i.
Have we been here before?


ii.
botched climate planning
blue chip imagination
clearly not enough


iii.
O verily how great are the works of the Creator
He layeth barren the verdant plains, he leaveneth all color
He bringeth down the crown of the proud birch
He stoppeth up the waters, yea even unto their deepest reaches
He causeth the very air to smoke and blur like a lamp put out
The might of the sun is as nothing to Him, nor the capricious breezes
Tremble ye who know not the name of the Maker


iv.
24kg wood ash
48kg sawdust
35kg chalk
2 kg volcanic sand
4L housepaint “Arctic White” (non-toxic, waterproof, EzyCoat)
5kg albino elephant bone
13kg fossilised dandruff
67kg talcum (Silky Smooth Baby Soft ^TM)
30kg milk powder
22kg salt
109kg flour
42kg instant mashed potato flakes
49kg coconut flakes
10kg melamine
3.14kg cocaine
900g Monosodium glutamate
May Contain Nuts


v
Not quite aiyowishiboughtthatthickmerinowoolcardiganonsale
but certainly goodthingirememberedmyextrajumper
and perhaps even aboutthesameastheofficeaircononarainyday or hokkaidowasmuchworseinspring1997
for those accustomed to alwayslikethatthenhavetoroadmarch or thisiswhyiwanttoemigrate
in diewaitkenaheatstroke and reallyfeellikehavingicekachang conditions


vi.
The hard September that broke my grandfather was worse than this
and it was only rain, premature and pitiless, daggerfuls of the stuff coming down
free of charge, rendering his whole naked lorryload of rice worthless.
Grandfather was a tough man, he’d outlived the Japs, the Communists,
he’d traded his pre-war fortune for a sore back and a labourer’s diet,
but this was the bayonet in the side, this was machine cruelty, and he
said so in so many kicks to his ruptured, mudsucked tyres, breaking a toe
in the telling of it. , his wife my grandmother would have said.
Snowfall in summer, downpour in dry heat, that operatic, cosmic signifier
of a world gone awry, some terrible injustice done.  He healed
and fathered children who fathered children, lived to see them slush
through decades of bewildering growth, a deluge of riches, his hair gone white
in its proper time, a pipe in his mouth, more often than not, smoke-screened.
Read the papers and took them lightly. Watched the sky for undue clouds.


vii.
Are those rabbit ears
or the upturned feet
of a monk atoning
for treason?


viii.