Thursday, September 14, 2017

Atomic Consciousness & my unpretentious friend Raj


He messaged me via Facebook, saying he would appreciate a few words from me to include in the catalog for his upcoming solo exhibition, Atomic Consciousness.

“Raj,” I said, “I haven’t been involved in the arts scene for a very long time, I’m totally out of touch.”

He was insistent, saying it was precisely why he wanted me - not someone with an academic background - to write about his work as a visionary artist. In fact, Raj showed up at my doorstep a few weeks later, clutching his portfolio. I had other guests at the time and everyone gasped when they saw the mindboggling detail and psychedelic quality of his artwork.

I looked through his exquisite pieces, marveling at the man’s sheer patience and stamina, not to mention his technical skill. But what could I say about his vision that wasn’t already being said – and far more eloquently so - by his own outstanding handiwork, every piece a collectible? Can words enhance their impact on the beholder? Do his glorious visual expressions require verbal elaboration?


Before leaving, Raj handed me a printed flyer from an earlier exhibition titled The Pulse of Creation in which he had given voice to what inspires and motivates him to create art. I doubt I can do better than to quote and paraphrase the artist here:

Thangarajoo Kanniah in April 2017
The line that divides also unites. Lines portray both division and unity in the universe. Physical lines divide space into form and structure. Imaginary lines connect ideas and thought. My work is the subconscious manifestation of the mystery of the creative force. In essence it reflects and harmonizes the tangible and the intangible. The paintings are in reality a spiritual journey within the conscious and unconscious realm of form and space.

There you have it - the artist has perfectly articulated the conceptual basis of his own life’s work. All that remains for me to do is to embellish his statement a little with a few anecdotes and flashbacks; and perhaps some personal commentary on Thangarajoo’s unique situation in the context of the Malaysian sociocultural milieu.

I don’t remember exactly when I first met the young Thangarajoo Kanniah. It would have been in the mid-1970s when a friend introduced me to the legendary Latiff Mohidin at Anak Alam – a pioneer artists’ collective located in what is now known as Taman Budaya. Raj, as he prefers to be called, would have been a mere teenager then, happy to be part of a cultural ferment he could already sense would someday be spoken of in reverent – and most certainly nostalgic – terms.

As the token Indian of the group, Raj made it a point to immerse himself fully in whatever activities were happening at Anak Alam – and there were poetry readings, intimate stagings of experimental plays, junk sculpture projects, even community cookouts. Many of the artists and performers associated with Anak Alam later went on to carve distinguished careers for themselves – and Latiff Mohidin himself deservedly achieved iconic status as a painter of international renown, as well as a poet and a translator into Malay of classic works like the Tao Te Ching.


To my mind there is absolutely no reason why Thangarajoo Kanniah should not have attained equal stature with many of the other Anak Alam luminaries – nationally as well as internationally – judging by the quality and prolixity of his artistic output. However, in the art world (as in almost every field of endeavor) a competitive, pushy ego seems to be a prerequisite for substantive commercial success – and Raj is one whose temperament is averse to aggressive self-promotion.

Another massive obstacle would have been the unwholesome trend in the 1970s towards an institutionalized ethnocentric nationalism (in recent years worsened by divisive faux religiosity) which would have effectively made someone like Raj a permanent outsider in the arts patronage stakes.

Instead of simply giving up and doing something more lucrative, Raj just kept soldiering on. In 1984, Raj had a transcendental near-death experience when he slipped and fell down a waterfall in Templer’s Park and found himself trapped underwater for what seemed like an eternity. According to Raj, his soul involuntarily left his physical form and he became a conscious part of the entire reality spectrum. Somehow he found himself back in his body - he can’t recall whether the water pushed him out or if somebody pulled him to safety – but he was never again the same person. From that point on, the bulk of his artistic output became a conscious exploration of the interface between the physical and metaphysical dimensions, between mind and spirit.


Encountering his work in the digital age where fractal motifs proliferate, some may be tempted to compare Raj’s numinous imagery with the hallucinatory work of Alex Grey - who famously taught himself anatomical drawing while preparing cadavers for dissection in the anatomy department at Harvard Medical School (please note that Alex Grey bears no relation to the popular TV series, Grey’s Anatomy). When I asked if he had seen some of Alex Grey’s entheogenic visions, Raj was quick to point out that his externalized innervisions are not the product of consciousness-changing drugs, but they emanate spontaneously from the core of his own cellular (and soulular) being.


Well, here he is, some four decades down the line from those heady Anak Alam days, still the token Indian consumed with a mystical passion to reveal the sacred in all things through his consummate art.

Antares Maitreya
Magick River
Kuala Kubu Bharu

13 May 2017


Catch Atomic Consciousness when it opens at
BALAI SENI LUKIS MELAKA,
Bangunan Muzium Belia
on 21 September 2017!
The exhibition will be on for two months.


Monday, September 11, 2017

16th Anniversary of 9/11 ~ Loose Change (Final Cut, November 2007)



Sixteen years after that fateful morning when the world watched awestruck on millions of TV screens the collapse of New York's landmark World Trade Center Twin Towers - followed seven hours later by the crumbling into a pile of rubble of WTC7, a building that wasn't even hit by any plane - we still don't really know whodunit.

The mass media was immediately fed the "intelligence" that it was 19 Arab hijackers armed with boxcutters, acting on the instructions of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. However, at least 7 of the 19 alleged hijackers subsequently lodged complaints that their identities had been stolen, that it wasn't them on the FBI list of suspects.

When I first heard the news, it was via SMS from a friend glued to her TV in KL. I wasn't particularly shocked because I had been expecting something dramatic to erupt on the geopolitical stage - but I was stunned by the sheer audacity of the ones who had planned this outrageous act of human sacrifice, this colossal false flag operation aimed at injecting terror into the collective psyche, paralyzing the masses into docile acceptance of increased security and surveillance, and sheeplike acquiescence to America's retaliating with a bogus "War on Terror."

By blaming the dastardly deed on Osama bin Laden (who was trained by the CIA in guerrilla warfare) and pinpointing his hideout as "somewhere in the mountainous region between Afghanistan and Pakistan," the Pentagon hawks and the Neocon White House were able to strong-arm a few allies (the Coalition of the Willing) into logistically and morally supporting the military occupation of Afghanistan - followed soon after with a debilitating military offensive against Iraq.

The scope of the whole diabolical plan was so vast and complex it's difficult for anyone who hasn't been researching the sordid history of Black Ops to even begin to grasp the strategic significance of the 9/11 event - what more comprehend the barely concealed ritual symbolism of the entire operation.

With all the evidence that has been gathered by thousands of diligent 9/11 Truth researchers and presented all over the world at packed-out conferences and seminars, it's utterly astounding that so many veteran journalists continue to parrot the Official Version of who stage-managed and funded the 9/11 atrocities.

Since 11 September 2001, the loss of human lives as "collateral damage" numbers in the millions and keeps mounting as the deleterious side-effects of warfare kick in. The only ones who have increased their fortunes through this hellish misfortune are Israeli, U.S. and British defense contractors, private security firms like Blackwater (later Xe Services), and oilfield services corporations like Halliburton (with close links to the Bush family as well as Dick Cheney).

And, for sure, there has been a sharp surge in worldwide demand for high-tech surveillance and security products and services, post 9/11, in tandem with a tightening of borders and an ominous increase of police powers.

It would require several volumes to present a detailed summary of all the evidence - and who and what it all points to. Suffice to say for now that I have read almost every independent probe into the 9/11 false flag operation (the "New Pearl Harbor" ordered by the Project for the New American Century) - and I have come to the inevitable conclusion that, for a start, several individuals must be arrested and charged with criminal conspiracy to defraud humanity, and to perpetrate genocidal and ecocidal programs aimed at culling the population and making it more manageable under the New World Order Central Authority.

The better known among these individuals would be George W. Bush (former President of the United States), Dick Cheney (former Vice-President of the United States), George Herbert Walker Bush (former CIA director and President of the United States), Donald Rumsfeld (former Defense Secretary), Condoleezza Rice (former Secretary of State), Philip D. Zelikow (author of Catastrophic Terrorism and executive director of the 9/11 Commission), Larry Silverstein (real estate mogul who signed a lease for the WTC buildings on 24 July 2001 and collected $4.55 billion in insurance claims 6 years later), and Dov S. Zakheim (foreign policy advisor and Undersecretary of Defense under George W. Bush, financial comptroller of the Pentagon, member of the Council for Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, intermediary between the Pentagon and the Israel Defense Forces, board member System Planning Corporation, supplier of the Flight Termination System used for shooting planes out of the sky and collaborator in the development of Raytheon's Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle ground control systems).

For sure, many, many more individuals and networks are complicit in this monumentally wicked conspiracy. Most rational people would find the idea of so many accomplices in high places knowingly play a part in, going along with, or covering up such a horrendous crime utterly incredible. Therein, as always, resides the sheer banality of bureaucratic and corporate evil.

Please dedicate a couple of hours to viewing Loose Change 9/11 - and then do some research, for a start, at these helpful sites:

9/11 INFORMATION CENTER

Military, Intelligence and Government Patriots Question 9/11

9/11 REVISITED ~ BY TRUTH ROCKER (most precise & succinct summary!)

Those of you who reside in Malaysia will have witnessed how brazenly a gruesome, premeditated murder involving the abduction, torture, shooting and blowing to pieces of a 28-year-old pregnant Mongolian woman can be covered up and buried under a stinking pile of racist rantings and sodomy accusations.

In both the 9/11 and Altantuya Shaariibuu cases, the sheer force of mainstream media spin appears to have bludgeoned the masses back to business-as-usual apathy.

You fall asleep in a speeding bus driven by a drunken maniac at your own peril.

Antares
~^@^~

[First posted 11 September 2013]