blogger's down

bathroom scene
Originally uploaded by Wurly.

Bloggin' hell... Blogger's down again - has been for about 4 or 5 days. Damn you people (raises fist in the air)!!! I can evidently post, but can't view the site. Luckily that will still allow me to put a coded message in my blog entry, to let everyone know that “capitalism is your best friend”... he he he...

In the meantime, why not join our new Flicker group - "the Everyday Mundane" - it's not inspired by the everyday beautiful, in fact it's not inspired at all. If you have photos that are unimaginative, banal, mundane, worthless, boring or craptacular (as Jonno put it)... then feel free to jam up that site with photos. The photo that accompanies this post is one I've submitted. It's a stunning photo in my mind, imaginatively titled “bathroom scene”...

I'm out!

summer's ending

As I mentioned a few posts back, the temperature can very quickly drop here in Suzhou. In the last couple of days, we've gone from quite warm, humid days where we've used the air conditioning regularly, to a drop of at least 5 degrees cooler. It's days like these when you realise how cold Suzhou can get, and that when people keep telling you that it gets really cold that you start to believe them.

On another topic - here's an interesting widipedia article on funny words. Apparently words like underpants (and simply pants), duck, megaphone, weasel, spleen and the 'Wankel rotary engine' are inherently funny... if you're not laughing now as you read this, there's something wrong with you!!

more on photography

After finishing reading Sontag’s, book On Photography I feel that it has affirmed my belief in the importance of being present in the moment, of living each moment, taking it in and living life to the full. Photography is a type of consumption – we consume photos quicker as technology improves. With the advent of digital cameras and iPhoto and computerised documenting of photos, we are taking more photos and keeping more. But we can never reach our need for the consumption of photos – “As we make images and consume them, we need still more images; and still more”, says Sontag. She describes it as a lust, which cannot be satisfied: “first, because the possibilities of photography are infinite; and second, because the project is finally self-devouring”.

The consumption of photography is also due to the accessibility of it – it is both easy to participate in (to take photos or be in them) and easy to appreciate them. This makes photography quite different from other art forms such as painting and literature, which require greater time, and an often more advanced understanding of how to see (ie cultural literacy).

Some other thoughts from Sontag’s book: “One can’t possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images… one can’t possess the present but one can possess the past”. It’s almost as though by taking a photo we are ignoring the present, but documenting the past… an interesting thought. Garry Winogrand has said, “I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed”.

I like Jonathan’s idea of a challenge to take the most boring, uninteresting, or worthless photo – perhaps this could be our new challenge for a flickr group? My photo for this post is an example…

film

more later

Lars Von Trier

Today, in my spare time I watched the film "The Idiots" by Lars Von Trier. For those of you who may not have heard of him, Lars Von Trier is a Danish film director who has created many unique and highly original films since the early 1990s. He's widely known for a trilogy of films exploring what he calls the 'golden hearts' character found in his films "Breaking the Waves" (1996, starring Emily Watson), "The Idiots" (1998) and "Dancer in the Dark" (2000, staring Bjork), along with his next major film, "Dogville" (2003, with Nicole Kidman). He's also known for jointly creating the "Dogme" film making method - search on google/wikipedia to learn more about this - but basically, it's a fundamental re-evaluation of filmmaking based on using real people (non-actors), real location shooting, no props, natural light only, no credits etc etc... quite challenging in itself. Of the four films listed above only "The Idiots" is a Dogme film.

All four of these films are amazing and importantly, worth seeing through to the end (which can be a challenge) as Von Trier has an ability to create incredibly beautiful (and often tragic) endings to his films that are often based on redemption. In particular the breakthrough ending to "Breaking the Waves" - probably my favourite of his films is amazing. All of these films (but more-so the first trilogy) have a central character who has a Christ-like nature in the way she sacrifices her life for others. But this character trait is usually combined with an 'idiot' like innocence like the main character in Doestoyevsky's the Idiot. For christians or those interested in the concept of the ‘ideal’ or ‘perfect person’, these films are a fascinating watch. They are also challenging to watch (particularly "Breaking the Waves" and "Dancer in the Dark"), but as I have said, I believe rewarding. The central character is always a female, (played by Emily Watson, Bjork, and Nicole Kidman) and is someone who is taken advantage of by the people around her. This abuse of their trust is what makes his films hard to watch, but the selfless nature of the "golden hearts" always seems to have some more meaningful purpose to it.

Von Trier is not a Christian, and was not even brought up in a Christian environment. It is therefore strange that he creates films that seem to both condemn the simple Christian faith, and celebrate it as well… Dogville has a revengeful twist to it’s story which separates it from the other 3 films. Interestingly in Dogville, Kidman’s character is titled, “Grace”. All these films intertwine themes of faith, abuse, sacrifice and enslavement – and I think they say that faith is the only avenue to transcendence…

Anyway, I guess I'm just excited at seeing an interesting and thought provoking film. Von Trier is one of those rare directors like Andrey Tarkovsky, Stanley Kubrick or Yasujiro Ozu - a true visionary! Get out there people and search out his stuff! I'd start with "Breaking the Waves" and if you liked that see the others...

For those of you who have seen his films, I’d be interested to hear from you!

censorship

This image is the one I was referring to earlier in the 'on photography' post. I know this blog entry's title is a bit provocative - but it's not actually meant to be. Just last week Wikipedia began working again which is great news. And we've also finally managed to get our cable connection working so we have access to the standard Asian pacific TV channels - CNN Asia, BBC World Asia, HBO (movies), TV5 (French), NHK1 (Japanese), CNBC, ESPN (sports), plus an even more expanded selection of Chinese channels. We are now both feeling a bit more connected with world news and CNN and BBC both provide pretty good coverage of a whole range of issues.

So it seems that our limits on access to information as westerners is now almost on par to most other countries. I still cannot access the proboards site - a forum where I used to regularly go, and the BBC news section of it's web page is blocked, but most other things work fine. I get a sense that things are changing here quite rapidly - from week to week this country looks and feels different. The wikipedia opening last week is a good example as was access to blogger which seemed to be reopened about a week or two after we arrived.

which film are you?

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

on photography

I've been thinking a bit about photography recently. Mostly because I've been reading an excellent book by Susan Sontag titled "On Photography". Susan Sontag is one of my favourite authors, she writes fiction, and non-fiction on a whole range of topics. I find her thoughts really insightful. Her book "On Photography" explores a number of different ideas about why we take photographs and what this signifies.

She ponders why it is that we find beauty in everyday items, the'everyday beautiful' as Nick and Jonno call it. The mundane, or the everyday has for many years been a major focus of photography: "bleak factory buildings and billboard-cluttered avenues look beautiful, through the camera's eye". Relating this to a surrealist asethetic she notes that "the Surrealist ragpicker's acuity was directed to finding beautiful what other people found ugly or without interest and relevance - bric-a-brac, naive or pop objects, urban debris". And she notes how in contrast to paintings which look worse over time, that photographs, "when they get scrofulous, tarnished, stained, cracked, faded still look good; do often look better". And she says that photography in this way is like architecture whose works are subject to the "same inexorable promotion through the passage of time" arguing that the Parthenon for example probably looks better as ruins. It is true that overtime, all photos become artistic, beautiful, unique - because of their reference to the past. Check out Found magazine to see our fascination of old photos and found scraps of things... my favourite from that site, is a note, that simply says, "Crossing the Delaware... snakes, wolves, space, the Century..." - cryptic, but equally fascinating!

Sontag also explores many other motivations for, and symbolism in photography. There is obviously the widely known concept of the photographer as voyeur - which is at its most strangest in photos of war victims - where the photographer has made a choice to photograph rather than assist the victim. Strange. She talks about boredom (an interesting concept for me) - she says that "boredom is just the reverse side of fascination" - both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other. In fact, the Chinese have a theory that you pass through boredom into fascination. Sontag notes that many photographers are outsiders who do not relate to the images they take (they are removed, distanced through the lens) - not intervening in their subjects' lives - just visiting.

One other obvious connotation with photographs - is death and the past. Photographs are a reminder of death and "an invitation to sentimentality. Photographs turn the past into an object of tender regard, scrambling moral distinctions and disarming historical judgements by the generalised pathos of looking at the past". I like this quote: "photography is the inventory of mortality". Commenting on observing photos of Polish Jews in WW2 - days, weeks, or months before they would die, Sontag says, "photographs state the innocence, the vulnerability of lives heading toward their own destruction, and this link between photography and death haunts all photographs of people".

staring

Ok, so I don't feel I've had much culture shock, but one aspect of the Chinese people's culture is grating on me, and that's staring. You get stared at everwhere, whether it be walking down the street, eating meals, and even the occasional stare while doing your thing in the toilet. Of course, there is also my earlier remarks about being stared at while getting changed at a swimming pool... You get used to people staring and to some extent you deal with it, but I still don't like it. It can be really invasive. My main way of dealing with it is to ignore it, or send a fixated stare back, and lately when someone's deliberately trying to get a good look, to look downwards and away as much as possible to deprive them of any "stare enjoyment" factor...

I haven't worked out how to say in Chinese that "staring is extremely impolite in the West" etc. This combined with the constant exclamations of "mei guo ren" (American) or "lai wei" (foreigner) that for some reason Chinese people feel compelled to say when you walk past is really annoying.

I've thought up many shirts I could print up to 'fight back'.... one's like "have a good stare"... or "yes, I'm a foreigner"... maybe even, "I'm a foreigner - you should stare at me"... or taking it further, "I'm a foreigner" (and on the back) "want to try and rip me off?".... of course all of these would be more effective if written in Chinese characters on the reverse...

English teaching

I've now been teaching for 7 or 8 weeks and although I have had some ups and downs, overall I am very much enjoying teaching. Teaching adults in particular I have found to be rewarding, but I feel I still have some way to go with teaching my kids (year 4 and 5 kids), as at times this has been a struggle. The kids need a lot of entertaining - ie games, and need to be challenged, and for the most part, I feel that I probably haven't challenged them enough.

I'm learning a lot about English by teaching it. Did you know that 8 words make up approximately 33% of spoken English? Have a think about what they could be and then check the comments section - where I'll post the answers! I actually have a list of the 300 most commonly used English words. Some interesting words that made the top 300 - state, American, war, government, president, John, church, power, and God. Just shows that although we are taught to not talk about politics and religion etc, that these topics are extremely popular. Most of the other words were prepositions and adjectives (ie not nouns etc) like - don't, got, told, let, look, only, what, said, most etc....

Australia

get your head in there
Originally uploaded by Wurly.

Well, I've enjoyed a week and a bit's holiday, where I was lucky enough to get home to Australia for all of 5 days to see Andrew and Jen's wedding and visit friends and family... Then flew back to China and together with Trace went to nearby Hangzhou, which is a picturesque Chinese city located on a lake. It's been a great break from everyday life here and I loved catching up with everyone in Australia, and Tracey and I enjoyed taking it easy in Hangzhou. I'll put up a few photos on my flickr site if you're interested.

I have some very special friends back in Australia and seeing many of them and kicking back to see the great AFL grand final was fantastic. See you all again hey!