Dear friends and colleagues
Apparently, I come from a cool country.
Welcome to the New Year and many thanks to those readers in other parts of the world who have sent me images of triangles or cones masquerading as Christmas Trees. Obviously, it is a trend one can see all around the world. Even in countries where real trees are available artificial trees are so much more convenient than the real thing! They don’t drop needles everywhere. They can be folded up again for next year.
I suspect Singapore is however quite an extreme example of this tendency to abstract and simplify the Christmas tree into a glitzy decorative cone. Certainly, in the Philippines it is very different: they are all artificial of course but the imagery of leaves and baubles seems more persistent. And there is often a nativity crib near by! Hang in another year and I will survey them for next year.
It is often easy to think some trend is local whereas it is global. Three or four years ago I got very intrigued by the way the Union Jack appeared so often on clothing and merchandise in Singapore and Malaysia and to a lesser extent Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines – even in China and Taiwan. It seemed to be especially worn by young, fashionable people. I started to take images whenever I saw an instance and had a camera to hand. Very occasionally one saw a stars and stripes used this way but no other nation’s flag. Clearly, I came from a cool country!
I was minded to make a slide tape piece of these images – and I can hear my younger readers asking, “What is that?”
The slide tape was an art form in the era of the 35mm transparency. Sometimes it was akin to a lecture; often it consisted of 81 slides, e.g. the number that fitted on a carousel; if you were knacky or had Bill Furlong of Audio Arts to assist you could also have an audio-tape in synch. Artists who made them included Robert Barry, Lothar Baumgarten, Dan Graham and the maestro of the medium, James Coleman.
But well before I had 81 good images I went back to the UK and found that the Union Jack had become a regular design emblem there too in my absence. Eheu! It was a global trend after all, and my enthusiasm to take an image every time I saw one diminished.
But yesterday driving back from a very interesting studio visit to Leslie de Chavez in Tayabas I saw a jeepney with emblazoned on its side neither a Virgin Mary nor a Manny Pacquio but a Union Jack. Damn! I had no camera to hand! But it struck me how very strange it was to see this here and I am thinking I should start taking more images.
Global trends don’t spread uniformly and they transmogrify into different forms in different places. It is those changes that help define a local culture.
Another reader told me of how her father went into a shop in Japan at Christmas time and saw a figure of Father Christmas. No surprise there – except he had been crucified. Surely, a case of mistaken identity!
With all best wishes for the New Year
Tony
NB thanks to Ella in Shanghai for the image of her socks