from Abad to worse, har har
I think it's interesting that there is no forensics of bad taste; although we're all quite good at pointing out kitsch, we're less accomplished at pointing out specifically WHY something is so bad. I'm quite good at dealing with mediocrity, but when I encounter something truly obscene I tend to be a bit gob-smacked. Recently, this has begun to frustrate me. Today, the particular excresence that is pictured below completely ruined my fish and chips as I sat along the Singapore river.
Why is the Alkaff bridge, recently (and expensively) covered in 900 litres of krazy kolor by Filipina artist Pacita Abad, so depressing? Is it the rediculous muscularity of the bridge--or, as Shing put it, "do you really need that much structure to keep a Chinaman in the air for twenty meters?" Is it the grim insistence on technicolor fun that gets me? There's no real enjoyment in this thing, and the Easter-Egg treatment doesn't help--it's like putting body-paint on someone in traction. In fact, the whole kiddie carnival aesthetic is so aggro and unnerving that people actively avoid this bridge, and it's perpetually empty. It's a big, authoritarian joke without any humor, but with teeth lurking somewhere behind the smile. For god's sake, it even looks like a risus mortis on stilts.
Hey, now I think I'm starting to cheer up. He heh. Go figure...
* joshua, 3/08/2004 05:53:32 AM
