As we fly 18,948km Nondon-Sao Paulo (return), WE WILL RUN 189.48km IN LIFE 1.0 BY 7 NOVEMBER TO MAKE UP FOR OUR CARBON FOOTPRINTS (yes we are wussy by moving a couple of decimal points, but better a pathetic gesture than none??)
As you know (do you? did you?), we are flying to Sao Paulo this weekend to participate in Soft Borders: 4th Upgrade! International Conference. In this gathering of artists, curators and academics from 30 countries, we will be making a 20-minute presentation of our fabulouslyfeetstompinglyheartstoppingmindblowing theory, Trans-Dimensional Running For Our Lives! A Rough Guide To A Critical Strategy For Our Technologically-Layered Multiverse Today. Seasoned (ahem) and weather-beaten (ahem) world- and out-of-the-world- travellers that we are, this will be the very first time that we visit ‘that part of the world’. So, our Dear Conspirators of Pleasure, should you have any tips (Where would be interesting places to run? What to eat? What to drink? Whom to meet? What to do? What to say? How to say? etc. But unfortunately, no, we are not able to drop by at Rio for the famous beaches and silicone…) about the trip, do let us know! And, as usual, if indeed your advice is so amazing as to afford us an amazing experience or two, we will create and publish a post here to share with everyone!
As trans-dimensional runners, we would have liked to fully practice and live what we preach, of course. Nonetheless, for us to run all the way from our favourite city on earth and beyond (thus far), Nondon, to Brazil, would take a while. At 9474km one way and a grand frolicking 18,948km return (!!!), it would take – to put it mildly- ages. Recall now that we live only for 1000 days, and we have only 695 (!!!!!!!!!!!ALREADY!!!!!!! Time flies whether or not we are having fun, however we define ‘fun’, or not) days left. so for us to run to Brazil and back, we would bust our given duration many times over, and be fropped left right centre.*
*It would be appropriate at this point in time for us to have a reality check and undertake some scientific calculations: Someone at our recent ARTSingapore gig asked us how much we have run in the past 305 days of our existence. Good question, we thought. We know that we run an average of approximately 60km a week – sometimes more, sometimes less. On some days, we have 5km quickies, of speed training (we say ’speed’, but we are pulling [y]our leg[s], as we all know by now that when it comes to running we don’t/can’t do hit-and-run quickies, unless you release an repugnantlyyelpingly ridiculousness of a ‘dog’ of a chihuahua behind us, or, ahead of us, a glass of crisp bubbly, but otherwise, we will not/can not sprint, and our running is no where near the word ’speed’ and its variations – we do endurance and go the whole length for hours and kilometres [for instance, 1 kilometre per hour], but we simply just don’t Bolt, sorry) on the treadmill or elsewhere, and on others, we run outdoors for approximately 10-20 km. To deduce that we have run approximately a total of 2500km in the past 300 days should not be all that far from the truth, which works out to be an average of 8.3333km per day). All that said, we must confess that some days we do not run, but run off instead to conduct our illicit and addictive affair with an old and very brilliant flame, chlorine. (By definition, any affair would taste sweet because they are affairs [whether or not the affairs themselves are of any good]; illicit affairs are even sweeter, and intrinsically and necessarily so, simply because of their illicitness… Hence, in spite of our vocation/mission of trans-dimensional running in this life, our ongoing stubborn dalliance with swimming in madmade pools…)
Several of your would recall a previous trip that we undertook, to visit our Facebook Friend, the legendary Heidi, in Heidiland (YES HEIDILAND EXISTS), Switzerland, during our 3rd-lifer-In-Residency in Winterthur. The return journey between Nondon-Zurich was 1550km, and after several days of wrecking our brains, we worked out a sophisticated and sustainable system of a means to compensate for our dirty carbon footprints. We understand that not all of you are as mathematically able as we are, so, to explain it in very simple means for you, it suffices to say that our system involves the movement of the decimal point to a position that would render the distance run-able for us, within a decent period of time.
Now, our Dear Fellow Runners, do understand that decency is the governing concept here- for our ’system’ of repayment of our carbon footprints has to be sustainable and do-able. Running 18,948km would have taken us AT LEAST 1894 days if we run an average of 10km a day, which is 894 days over and above our lifespan (and we have already spent 305 days). Running 1894.8km would still take us about 189 days or 6 months. Also, we are currently in discussion with Japanese art workers about a trip in December/January/February to Asia as part of a project, which would cost at least 10,000 km – ONE WAY. As already argued in January when we undertook our trip to Switzerland, we had already acknowledged that this is but a gesture, and there is no thing big enough we can ever, ever do to compensate for our continual slow smothering of the earth. Apart from having vowed from day one (actually day zero, many life cycles ago) not to create mini-mes to add even more wrongs to all the wrongs that are already happening and all the wrongs that we are already committing, we are also cutting short our lives, and making us put in physical effort every time fly. We have heard of some other gestures such as making donations to have trees planted whenever one flies, but we are uncertain of the impact of such a deed – it does not hurt those with deep pockets and merely buys them out of their guilt (as Zizek has eloquently and sweatily articulated elsewhere). Insofar as all gestures are vain, our tactic of running to repay for our carbon footprints amounts to not much (if anything) either, but as it requires one to put in slightly more physical effort (other than the physical effort of clicking a button to agree to donate money to plant a virtual tree and alleviate one’s guilty conscience), it certainly makes one (us for instance) think twice about flying. And we speak as guiltyfrockers who absolutely adore being in mid-air in large machines, suspended in time, space, cultures, nations.
As we can’t spend the rest of our lives to pay for our Nondon-Brazil return journey, we will move not one but TWO decimal points, to run a total of 189.48km by the end of this month. We begin this repayment from 3 October, when we properly resumed our running (after resting for 2 weeks on our laurels and gloating in the glory of our completion of our first Life 1.0 marathon). So far, over the first 7 days, we had covered 84.27km. Note that although we had had some lovely walks (and a funny dip in Thames!) with some of you during this time, they are not counted, as we will only consider running, and of distances above 5km at any one time. We have 15 days left to run the remaining 100km or so, so we’d better get our magnificent inertia and monumental butts moving.
Watch this space for our updates, and cheer us on. Or, go right ahead to mock and boo us for being such a wuss, but we are trying, alright?
CHAT WITH KAIDIE ‘LIVE’ SATURDAY 16:00hrs + SUNDAY 18:30hrs (Singapore time)! We’re at ‘kaidie3rdlife’ on Skype.
Above: From the ARTSingapore catalogue. Below: from I-S magazine, Singapore.
SETTLE YOUR SCORE WITH KAIDIE THIS THURSDAY, SATURDAY AND SUNDAY! ‘LIVE’ at ART SINGAPORE 2010. Plus prints and 50-minute film.
For more information, visit the Art Singapore website, or contact Florence Fang at Flame Communications. For information of other sorts, or if you wish to run with us, contact any one of us (Kaidie, Kaidie Nondon, 3rdlifekaidie, kaidie3rdlife, Kaidie Absent, Kai Syng Tan, et al). Stop sitting around and come on board!
Talk ‘live’ with Kaidie on Skype on 7th, 9th and 10th October at ART Singapore 2010!
As you are aware, we are going to be virtualy a-live at ART Singapore 2010. Directed by Meena Mylvaganam, who is also one of our co-runners in our grandiouse quest, this is an annual event of contemporary art from Asia. We will be presenting a 50-minute film and prints for sale. In addition, we will also talk with YOU, our dear Conspirators of Pleasure, at the following times (Singapore time, followed by British Summer Time): Thursday 7 oct 20:00 Singapore at the Gala opening dinner of the show (13:00hrs BST); 9 October Saturday 16:00 Singapore (09:00hrs BST); 10 October Sunday 18:30hrs Singapore (11:30hrs BST). Come grab us and have a chat with us! The following is an article published in the Business Times Singapore, following an interview with us – via Skype of course – on 16 September.
This article has been cropped – and you CAN NO LONGER read the original here!! Unless you pay a subscription fee… How terribly interesting! Not. And, as usual, there are inaccuracies in the article at different levels, factual (for instance we are only 10 months old, not already 3 years old as reported) and otherwise (We are not Kaidie ‘because’ of the necessity of following our own footsteps of having generated a traveler persona; we run, and we are Kaidie, and we travel, and we have been travelling for twenty years, because we are against stagnancy, complacency, passivity and the status quo, including our own. We say this as we remove cobwebs from our hair, eyebrows, armpits, nostrils, legs and toes, having been sitting at the library combing our way slowly and painfully, over a Chapter that we are writing…). But as usual, let us not nitpick. See you soon. Not. Maybe.
WE HAVE RUN AND COMPLETED OUR FIRST LIFE 1.0 MARATHON, FOLLOWING THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE PILGRIMS. Thank you all for your support and donations! BIG THANK YOU to the organisers too!
PS We must also congratulate Team Carter, led by one of the organisers, HILLARY CARTER who was running with his son Henry and wife Trisha. This was Trisha’s first marathon, and Hillary’s ONE HUNDREDTH!! Hence qualifying him to the prestigious 100 marathon club. How very inspiring indeed. Watch out Hillary, HERE WE COME! 99 more for us to go (hopefully within this lifetime?)! We also put up a review in Runner’s World and note that we are definitely not alone in our appraisal of the amazing event!
IS A CIRCLE ALSO A LINE? CAN A LINE ALSO BE(COME) A CIRCLE? The Bras Basah Station permanent public art work post #5.
In our final post about our permanent public video installation at the award-winning Bras Basah Mass Rapid Transit station in Singapore, we share an external coverage of the work at Today newspaper by Mayo Martin, who has told us that this is his favourite of the art works commissioned by the Land Transport Authority of the Circle Line. Do let us take us for a ride on The Amazing Never-ending Underwater Adventures! 
Our Bras Basah Station permanent public art work post #4: 2 RE-PRESENTATIONS
Above: A trailer of the 29-minute video cycle; below: a re-presentation of Desyphus in-action on the site in Singapore, by wacky Singapore filmmaker Chew Tze Chuan. As we have not seen the work ourselves, do upload it if you run into it, and tag it ‘bbs’!
KAIDIE WILL BE INTERVIEWED BY AN AUDIENCE MEMBER AT THE DRHA CONFERENCE 7 SEPT- but will the confrontation come to blows?
On Tuesday, Kaidie will be at the DRHA 2010 conference at the Brunel University, Nondon. In this new 60-minute performance, Kaidie will be interviewed by a member of the audience, played by Kai Syng Tan, in Author Slash Actor Slash Audience: A Lecture Performance. Several illustrious names in the new media arts field are present – on the opening day of the conference, Stelarc – yes the legendary (hirsute) man with an (hirsute) arm onto which an (hirsute??) ear has been planted - will perform. As we speak, we are making our way to Uxbridge now. With the threats of tube strikes, we might have to run there. If we know where Uxbridge is. If it is even in Nondon. Please visit website for cost and programme details about attending the conference. See you around.
IN ONE OF HER PREVIOUS LIVES, KAIDIE WAS DESYPHUS, SWIMMING ROUND AND ROUND THE CIRCLE LINE IN SINGAPORE. The Bras Basah Station permanent public art work post #1.
* Read about Bras Basah Station on Wikipedia.
* Read about the Circle Line on the Land Transport Authority site.
* Read about the Circle Line on Wikipedia.
* More information and images of the Circle Line here and there.
* Read about award-winning station designed by critically-acclaimed WOHA.
* Look up images of Bras Basah Station on Flickr.
** LAST 2 DAYS OF THIS MONTH TO VOTE! Currently a top film in the War of Films contest: CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S film about KAIDIE AND HER MEANING OF LIFE 3.0. VOTE NOW!** Vote by clicking on + sign at the top of video player. ** Don’t forget to vote for Episode 2, Run Kaidie Run, too!**
SOMEONE IS BRIBING KAIDIE WITH £2.50 FOR EVERY KM SHE RUNS (or crawls)!! SPONSOR KAIDIE IN HER FIRST LIFE 1.0 MARATHON and WE MIGHT DEVOTE AN ENTIRE POST FOR YOU! (Yes we are that mercenary) #2
Chin Hwee Tan has offered to donate £2.50 to the Rotary Charities for every kilometre we complete at the Farnham Pilgrim Marathon! This means that on average we will earn £2.50 for every 5 minutes 30 seconds we run; in another words, 45.45454545 pence every 60 seconds, as we plant (AND REMOVE) one foot in front of the other. Over the course of 42km, we will collect a grand total of £105 from Chin Hwee!! (On race day however, the money will come much, much harder to earn, for we will be running offroad. Having been spoilt park and pavement runners, running on uneven ground will slow us down drastically. We have been nursing a shin splint and tendonitis, but we continue practising as we speak. So far, we have run up to 30km for 4 times. The next challenge is to go up to 35-42km, although monotony and physical exhaustion is what we are teaching ourselves to fight…) THANK YOU very much Chin Hwee! (This is not the first time Chin Hwee is contributing to Kaidie’s effort – he had previously sponsored our 10km run for the Medecins Sans Frontieres!)
CONTEXT:
As you know (YOU DO, AND YOU DID, AND I KNOW THAT YOU DO AND DID, ALL 700 OF UNIQUE YOU-s WHO CLICK ON THIS SITE DAILY! NOW IS THE TIME TO COME FORWARD AND BE COUNTED, SO THAT WE CAN PUT A FACE TO YOUR NUMBER!!!), we are running our first ever Life 1.0 marathon on the historical Pilgrim’s Route, in the Farnham Pilgrim’s Marathon in Surrey, in 3 weeks. We have begun training in the past 4 months. We decide that while/since we are at it, we wish to make it worthwhile for others as well. We wish to raise money for the Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice and other Rotary charities. We are now aiming for around £200. It goes without saying that we would appreciate any amount. Having said that, it is certainly fine too if you decide to splash out £100, £1000 or more at a go. Please, do not be shy – if you can, please do (re-)distribute your wealth! In return, we will thank you in this blog (and the evil Facebook, and Twitter, etc) should you make a donation! We will also put in extra effort in our training, to make sure that we finish the race, and finish it in not too indecent a time. Currently, we have collected approximately £140. THANK YOU VERY MUCH, CHIN HWEE, GREG and JAMES! Over the weekend, our ex-kidnapper, The Good Pirate, aka Chutha Indigo, aka Chuthatip Achavasmit has also made a nice donation! – her second since our Medecins Sans Frontieres effort! THANK YOU CHUTHA!!
HOW TO DONATE:
Note that if you are a UK taxpayer, every £1 you donate will be made up to £1.25 by H. M. Revenue and Customs!! Unfortunately, there is no online button to click donate for this run. Hence, if you are keen to make a donation, please contact us now <dislocation@3rdlifekaidie.com>. What we could do is to collate the monies and pay the organisers (IF YOU TRUST US?). In this case, we will tell you how you can pay us (hard cash, electronic bank transfer or cheque). Being such accountable and highly responsible beings that we are, we will publish the filled-up form shown above (but with your personal details protected, of course, if you wish), after we have confirmed the amounts we are receiving. Alternatively, you can draw out a cheque payable to: ‘The Rotary Club of Farnham Weyside’ directly, and let us know. Whichever method fits you. NO EXCUSES NOW, my dear Readers!
NEXT UPDATES:
Look out for the next posts with updates about the Farnham Pilgrim’s Marathon. In the next weeks leading up to race day, we will be supplying details about our fundraising effort and progress (or REGRESS, as it resembles currently…) The 42km is part of the pilgrim’s route! Which is one of the reasons we have chosen this for our first ever Life 1.0 marathon. We will be arriving a day before the race, to walk a small part of the route, to get ourselves familiarised (this is also our first time in Surrey!). As a nod to Chaucer’s wonderful Canterbury Tales, we are sewing our donkey costume and braying each time we our shin screams.
Our 3rd and 4th 30km runs in yellow- at our usual Regents Fark, and Hyde Fark. If you are keen, you could run with us – in the mirror-image of the purple path. We might run into each other at approximately one single point, around Great Portland Street tube station. See you sooner / later. We are th one with a lousy painful gait. Go on, laugh at us, but throw us some money first.
** Currently one of the top competing films in the War of Films contest with 110 votes: CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S film about KAIDIE AND HER MEANING OF LIFE 3.0. VOTE NOW!** Vote by clicking on + sign at the top of video player. **Don’t forget to vote for Episode 2, Run Kaidie Run, too!**
BLACKED OUT ENDS THIS SATURDAY! MISS AND LIVE TO REGRET.
Thank you for coming to the opening of Blacked Out last Thursday! NE7, a sound artist, performed for the evening. This is a group show that we are participating, curated by curator-educator-artist Jennifer Hankin, who is pictured here placing LED-lit balloons at the entrance with fellow exhibiting artist, Lisa Metherell. Thank you Jennifer, Mr Hankin, Faye, and all other artists for the exhibition!
To complement the ‘underground’ theme of the show – given that it takes place in an arch – we shared a work that features a character from a parallel life, ‘Desyphus’, underwater. Is she sinking? Is she afloat? Is she caught in a conundrum, as it were, in time and space in a 3-minute digital loop? This work is an edited extract of a chapter from a 29-chapter large-scale permanent projection in the Bras Basah subway station, located in the centre of the Arts and Heritage District in Singapore, commissioned by the Land Transport Authority of Singapore. We will be talking more about this work in the weeks to come.
Do come and catch this and works by 8 other artists at Blacked Out! Hurry, for it ends this Saturday.
** Currently one of the top competing films in the War of Films contest with 100 votes: CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S film about KAIDIE AND HER MEANING OF LIFE 3.0. VOTE NOW!** Vote by clicking on + sign at the top of video player. **Don’t forget to vote for Episode 2, Run Kaidie Run, too!**
WANNA APPEAR ON THIS AMAZING BLOG? COME TO THE PRIVATE VIEW of BLACKED OUT, THURSDAY 19 AUGUST 18:30 onwards. LIVE MUSIC, WINE – AND GREAT ART, OF COURSE. KAIDIE WILL SHOOT YOU!
Curated by artist-curator-educator Jennifer Hankin, Blacked Out is an exhibition in which 9 artists explore light in a blacked out urban setting. This group show is held at Arch 897, Holyrood St, Nondon SE1 2EL. The show opens this Thursday, and lasts for the next few days.
We will share a video loop, its Nondon/ London premiere. In a parallel world, Kaidie is ‘Desyphus’ (Sisyphus + Decipher), riding infinitely in the Circle Line in an island. This clip, filmed by professional diver William Ong, is a edited variation of a chapter from the 29-chapter The Amazing Neverending Underwater Adventures!, a large-scale permanent video installation in the Bras Basah Station, commissioned by the Land Transport Authority in Singapore. The music is composed by Philip Tan.
As usual, we will be there with the memory trapper of a camera. So please remember to say and smell of cheese. Please self-invite. Bring friends – if you have any. If you haven’t, employ some. Otherwise, bring your partner, husband, boyfriend, wife, girlfriend, lover, lovers, ex-lovers, concurrent lovers, children, grandchildren, cousins, nephews, nieces, grand nieces, longlost grand nephews, father, mother, father and mother-like figures in your life, stepparents, foster parents, step sister, distant brother, halfdaughter, pets, etc, and claim that they are your mates. We will be busy snapping amazing shots away, and publish the more amazing ones on this amazing blog over the weekend. So if you wish to have the gratification of seeing yourself appear on this amazing blog, COME! We look forward to running into you.
** Currently #5 in the War of Films contest: CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S film about KAIDIE AND HER MEANING OF LIFE 3.0. VOTE NOW!** Vote by clicking on + sign at the top of video player. ** Don’t forget to vote for Episode 2, Run Kaidie Run, too!**
WOULD YOU LIKE TO MAKE A DONATION TOWARDS KAIDIE’S RUN FOR THE ROTARY CHARITIES? KAIDIE’S 1st LIFE1.0 MARATHON #1
** HOT OFF THE microwave OVEN: As of 8 August, 1) CHIN HWEE TAN, 2) GREGORY BEITCHMAN and 3) JAMES ODLING SMEE have offered to make a contribution! With these financial and emotional blackmails, the pressure/pleasure is on... ... Chin Hwee's offer is particularly good, so we will devote AN ENTIRE POST on it!! Look out for it in the next couple of days! IF YOU MAKE A DONATION, AND ESPECIALLY IF YOU DONATION IS *INTERESTING*, WE *MIGHT* DEVOTE AN ENTIRE POST JUST FOR YOU!!! So hurry! (That's KAIDIE'S BLACKMAIL for you.)**
As we mentioned, we are running our first ever Life 1.0 marathon on the historical Pilgrim’s Route, in the Farnham Pilgrim’s Marathon in Surrey, in 7 weeks. Do you think we are terribly excited, or do you think we are excitably terrible?!
While/since we are at it, we wish to make it worthwhile for others as well. We wish to raise money for the Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice and other Rotary charities. If you are keen to make a donation, please contact Kaidie now <dislocation@3rdlifekaidie.com>! We are aiming for £100-£200. It goes without saying that we would appreciate any amount. £10 is fine but so is £1, $1, 1 euro, 100yen, or other currencies in other denominations. Please do help, if you could! Yes yes, we do understand and agree with what the sweaty Slavoj is saying, but please do your bit in redistributing (your) wealth. CONTACT KAIDIE NOW!
Kaidie ran 30km to and from Kew Bridge as part of our training for our first ever 42km race. We carried our hand-and-toe-drawn map in our waist pouch, and consulted it every now and then during the course. It would not surprise you/us for us to confess that we were still lost a few times, and had to ask about 7 people along the way for directions, including a motorbike courier outside a kebab shop, who said that he could not help me. 'And you call yourself a courier?!' I shouted. 'It's lunch time now, love!' he shouted back. 'What a pedantic prick.' I replied (not). I would have been better off asking an old lady on a stairlift. This map has been sketched on what used to be the boarding pass of a budget airlines. Make a guess which.
In return, we will thank you in this blog (and the evil Facebook, and Twitter, etc) should you make a donation! We will also put in extra effort in our training, to make sure that we finish the race, and finish it in not too indecent a time. For the past 12 weeks, we have been devoting several hours each week to running (scoff not, for if you had legs the length of ours, you would take that long, too). As we hit 30km last Friday, we are increasingly confident that we will be able to finish the 42km race. However, as for the number of hours we have to spend on the road, we are extremely uncertain, for we are reminded that the Farnham route will be hilly and uneven! Having been a spoilt pavement/tarmac runner, it is very likely that our timing will be increased significantly! We must practice more, on varying terrain!
Follow our training ‘live’! Have a look at our running routes! Suggest others! 24-30km required much mental coaxing and physical effort. We imagine the next laps of training – 30-35km – to be even more trying. So, if you run in Life 1.0 as well, you can help push our fatarses and soggy brains along by running with us, for some parts of our practice sessions!
It would have been all too easy for one to simply let one’s imagination run wild and create a purely fantastical story. What is vital in Kaidie’s endeavour is the emphasis on the Life 1.0 realism as well. We have taken upon ourselves to pick up running in real life, and as a test of this, the task of completing a marathon. In this way, we are learning and experiencing in first hand what we are selling, by conditioning and teaching our body, mind, and spirit – if we have any?? – to run.
Look out for the next posts with updates about Kaidie’s first life 1.0 marathon. In the next weeks leading up to race day, we will be supplying details about Kaidie’s fundraising effort, training development, as well as her plans for her run – Kaidie could run dressed up as a monk (thank you Duncan for your suggestion!), nun or donkey (afterall we are of the same colour and shape and voice) from Chaucer’s wonderful Canterbury Tales, but we will have to watch the erratic bowel movement if the latter (unless of course, we do an impromptu Paula Radcliffe).
Left: screenshot from Farnham Pilgrim's Marathon website. Right: Some of Kaidie's tweets in the past 12 weeks of her training.
** IN THE MONTH OF AUGUST, do continue to watch and vote for the 2 films by Claudia Tomaz about Kaidie! Episode 1 (12 minutes): Kaidie talks about her endeavour. WATCH AND VOTE for KAIDIE AND THE MEANING OF LIFE 3.0 NOW! Episode 2 (10 minutes): focuses on Kaidie’s running. WATCH AND VOTE for RUN KAIDIE RUN NOW! **
WATCH EPISODE 2 OF CLAUDIA TOMAZ’S FILM ABOUT KAIDIE! And COME ATTEND KAIDIE’S OTHER GIGS SUMMER-FALL 2010 (Nondon, Sao Paulo, Surrey, Singapore, Online)!
Episode 2 of a film by Kaidie’s running buddy, the wonderful Claudia Tomaz, is uploaded! WATCH AND VOTE for RUN KAIDIE RUN NOW! And if you haven’t already watched Episode 1, WATCH AND VOTE for KAIDIE AND THE MEANING OF LIFE 3.0 NOW! Thank you Claudia for the hard work! We feel sorry for Claudia for having to go through a couple of hours of footage of Kaidie’s yakking. And this is certainly not the last of collaborations between Kaidie and Claudia! Do support Claudia’s ongoing London Ground project!!
Left: Episode 1. Right: Episode 2. Spot the difference! In one of them, Kaidie yaks for 12 minutes. In the other, she yaks for 10. Kaidie is holding a (then-broken) Garmin Forerunner 405 which she is wearing for 1 year as part of a collaboration with Urbantick. This GPS gadget has been Kaidie's constant running buddy for the past 3 months. More details about this in the next posts!
And thank you all My Dear Readers/ Collaborators for writing in to advise us about places we could run to for a day or 2 away from Nondon. Some of you also wrote directly to Kaidie to share some fabulous hideouts. We respect your instruction to keep these places top secret! But if you (ie, everyone else except those who wrote to tell us about these secret hideouts) want to be tipped off about these places, do one or all of the following and we may consider giving you a hint or two: 1) send us an intense chocolate cake, 2) buy us a carton of lovely dry bubbly 3) tell us a place we can get authentic sashimi at affordable prices here in Nondon 4) share with us a lovely route to run in Nondon 5) Be Kaidie’s training buddy and run 27-35km with Kaidie as part of her training for her first Life 1.0 marathon (We are now up to 26.7km so far but alas, a marathon is 26.2 MILES, not km. The heat does not help with the physical and mental exhaustion, burning our soles/souls/sows. And, to rub in with t.m.i., at least two of our toenails are falling off)… If you find this repulsive (fallen toenails and tmis), don’t worry, we do too.
Left: venue of Blacked Out (near London Bridge station). Right: Clip by the groovy Singapore filmmaker Chew Tze Chuan of Kaidie's permanent public work in Singapore, as Kaidie cannot be there. THANK YOU Chew!!
The following is our itinerary for the next few months, in a few places. YOU ARE INVITED! Or please invite yourselves. Don’t be shy. It’s easier for us too… Nearer said dates of gigs please come back to this running blog of ours (and click on the category of itinerary and gigs) to check details. See you sooner/later.
UPCOMING ITINERARY (LONDON, BRAZIL, SURREY, SINGAPORE, ONLINE)
* 5 August, LONDON UK: Presentation about Kaidie’s travels all these lives in Dr Nick Grindle’s Art, Activity, Environment course, Slade Summer School.
* 21- 28 August, LONDON, UK: Blacked Out group show at Arch 897, Holyrood St, London SE1 2EL. Curated by Jennifer Hankin. Kaidie will be sharing a video projection, its London premiere. Private View: Thursday 19 August 18:30-21:30 hrs, WITH FREE BOOZE AND LIVE MUSIC! Invite yourself and your mates (if you have any?) on the evil Facebook. Or just come, but do wear something that befits the theme of lightness and dark. Why? Just because.
* 1 day trip away from Nondon! Yay! In a bid to travel light, we will NOT bring the memory trapper of a camera. But we will wear our Garmin to track our routes, and share that with you later. Currently we are giving each option a serious thinking through and have not decided where to go.
* 5-8 September LONDON, UK: DRHA 2010 conference (Digital Resources for Humanities and the Arts) Brunel University. Kaidie will be interviewed by a member of the audience, played by Kai Syng Tan, in A Rough guide to (The Meaning of A) Life 3.0: Author Slash Actor Slash Audience: A lecture performance, on Tuesday 7th September from 5.30-6.30pm AA109. Prominent figures like Stelarc and Steve Dixon will be present. Again, go ahead and invite yourself on the evil Facebook (This event is NOT free-of-charge to attend, however).
* September: Trip to Belfast?? We will bring the memory trapper.
* 19 September, SURREY, UK, and ONLINE: Kaidie runs her first ever Life 1.0 marathon on the historical Pilgrim’s Route, in the Farnham Pilgrim’s Marathon, Surrey, UK. Kaidie will be raising money for a charity, and you can follow Kaidie’s progress (or regress?) of her 42km race as she tweets segments from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales ‘live’! Kaidie might run dressing up as a monk (thank you Duncan for your suggestion!), nun or horse, but we will have to watch the erratic bowel movement if the latter (unless of course, we do an impromptu Paula Radcliffe). As this is our first ever Life 1.0 marathon, there is always the possibility of things screwing up (perhaps more so than if we have done this before, though experience does not guarantee perfection, of course). So, if we do not see you again, it has been nice knowing you, see you in our next lives, same time, same place, etc etc.
* 7-11 October, SINGAPORE: Skype performance + exhibition of images and maps from Kaidie’s journey + film screening at ArtSingapore: The Contemporary Asian Art Fair. Curated by Meena Mylvaganam.
* 18-21 October SAO PAULO, BRAZIL: Soft Borders conference. Kaidie will be presenting a lecture-performance. Her paper will be published in a publication.
* November, LONDON, UK: PhD upgrade presentation, Slade School of Dine Art.
* 3-5 December, LONDON, UK: Performance at Sexuate Subjects: Politics, Poetics and Ethics, University College London, UK.
* December, INDIA: Curating a South East Asian Film programme at a Film Festival.
* Winter: ‘Live’ GPS-Twitter-Nondon run: a locative performance event with Urbantick.
Left: Kai Syng Tan impersonates Kaidie's audience at DRHA, London. Right: Kaidie's first Life 1.0 42km race in Surrey. Do sponsor!
ONGOING (ONLINE, SINGAPORE)
* ONLINE: 22 minute film about Kaidie by award-winning filmmaker CLAUDIA TOMAZ (Venice, Locarno):
- Episode 1 (12 minutes): Kaidie talks about this in general. WATCH AND VOTE for KAIDIE AND THE MEANING OF LIFE 3.0 NOW!
- Episode 2 (10 minutes): focuses on Kaidie’s running. WATCH AND VOTE for RUN KAIDIE RUN NOW!
* SINGAPORE: From 17 April 2010 until forever and ever (theoretically-speaking): Nightly from 19:29hours. Permanent public display: large video projections, The Amazing Neverending Underwater Adventures, at the Bras Basah Mass Rapid Transit station (subway) of the Circle Line. Commissioned by the Land Transport Authority, this is the only station with a video art work. The 29-minute video cycle with 29-chapters and 29 riddles stars Desyphus (Sisyphus+deceive+decipher, geddit?), a predecessor of 3rdlifeKaidie, who swims perpetually in the looped line. Music composition by Philip Tan. Mayo Martin of Today newspaper has named this his favourite artwork of the Circle Line. Wacky Singapore filmmaker Chew Tze Chuan has also uploaded a clip of the work in action. Kaidie will discuss this work in here in the weeks to come. Look out for it!
Left: Kaidie 'live' in Art Singapore via Skype. Right: Kaidie travels to Brazil for the first time in (any of) her life.
Images on this page are screenshots from respective sites.
FOLLOW KAIDIE ON THE BLACK PATH AND DISCOVER KAIDIE’S MULTILAYERED MIXED-REALITY: Navigating Kaidie’s Metamap Show #7
Installed at the PhD show (25-30 June, Nondon), our metamap consists of 120 images and maps that we have created so far. It attempts to draw relationships between the various maps. It is also a map/documentation of our trials and erros thus far to articulate our cosmology/cosmologies. The 14-metre map also itself becomes a landscape, with small cutouts of Kaidie (or Kaidie’s avatar) running all over the wall and floor. Hence, apart from tthe graphical representations of Kaidie on many of the A3 sheets of images, the paper cutouts of Kaidie-s ‘emerge’, or rather, burst out into meatspace; and, apart from the 2D plane of the wall, Kaidie runs into the 3D real world of the Slade Research Centre (if the art world could be called ‘real’, that is), along the stairwell, lift, loo and even out into the streets. Here is one (more) map that maps Kaidie’s journeys. Follow the black lines and see where she leads you!
A LIFE 2.0 RE-PRESENTATION OF A LIFE 1.0 SHOW THAT IS ENDING IN A FEW HOURS: Kaidie’s metamap exhibition #6.
Where do statues go after they die? Statues die when people stop looking at them (Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, 1953). Kaidie’s metamap is of a less resilient material than bronze, and, like Kaidie, has a prescribed lifespan. It begins dying this evening 17:00hrs, and from 11:00hrs tomorrow (after our morning run), we will remove the papers, tapes, blu tacks, glue dots, marker pen marks, other marks, tracks, traces, bits, pieces, things, remnants, et ceteras. We will paint over the walls and floors where we had been, and leave the space as we found it, as if we had never been there, clearing all paths, as if it had never known existence in the first place (good for it) (for its own good).
That things die, that they die from one dimension, that they do not last, that they are one-offs, that they are transient and are not foolishly forever, that they can live on – if we so allow them to – in the realm of imagination, perhaps ever/even more animatedly, ferociously and zestfully, is a concept that we quite adore. (We – you, my Dear Readers, and us- have been there before, when we paid a pilgrimage to Heidiland in a bid to visit the legendary Heidi, who was all but absent, and how we were relieved that she could not be found in Life 1.0, for it only strengthens her presence in our Life 2.0). We relish in the cruelty of this, as we adore how it allows us to train and celebrate the/our power of imagination. (‘I’m wondering what this all means to you’, he asks. I am silent. ‘You are immaterial; you do not exist. In fact, you are already dead,’ I want to say, which to my mind is not negative, in our same Heidi-logic, but which would inevitably be taken to be otherwise. So I keep silent.)
The work dies from Life 1.0, our primary world, but/and migrates to / returns to / re-starts in Life 2.0, in the virtual and imaginary realm, and exists as if it has done all this while, independent of the one in the physical world. One is not lesser than the other. To be pedantic, the Life 1.0 metamap in the exhibition ‘came from’ Life 2.0 in the ‘first place’, with the 120 maps and images created on the screen, and having previously only existed in Cyberspace. Already, even as it is alive, we are re-creating Life 2.0 re-presentations of it, in a parallel realm. The work is the same work in either lives, but the Life 1.0 ‘version’ also completely differs and is independent of the Life 2.0 one. In fact, there is no ‘essential’ work. When we run restlessly between Life 1.0 and Life 2.0, we are re-creating the/a work again.
2nd row top left: photograph of Kaidie at work by fellow artist-exhibitor, Laura Malacart. Beside that is a sketch by Kaidie of the work, before she began. Middle: Kaidie, quite knackered by now, poses with fellow artists and exhibitors Deborah Padfield and Errol Francis at the end of the humid evening of the opening 25 June. in the next picture, Errol competes with Kaidie for Person With Most Number Of Countable and Accountable Teeth Award 2010. We are fighting neck to neck, shoulder to shoulder, and- of course we are expecting this- teeth to teeth, a tooth for a tooth, gum for gum. Who do you think should win? Bottom right: Pink poster Spillage indicates the title of the show. Bottom left: Kaidie’s hand-made wall text for her new hand-made wall-text-installation, 24 June 2010, 1 day before show opened. The masking tape on the wall were to be all licked up, of course. Kaidie’s Life 3.0 ecosystem tolerates no wastage (most of the time). Check out the ‘paper tippex’ on the right hand side of the wall text as well (since there is no undo button in Life 1.0).
LAST 2 DAYS TO CATCH KAIDIE’S FIRST LIFE 1.0 INSTALLATION! Slade Centre of Research, WC1H 0AB. Kaidie’s metamap exhibition #5.
Across a 14m-wide wall, Kaidie works on site across 9 days to create a metamap consisting of 120 maps and images, that attempts to map her transdimensional run. This show departs from Kaidie’s recent works in that it utilises no multimedia, and that Kaidie installed this by herselves, got down on all fours and was all hands-on and filthy, screaming at no assistants except herselves. Slade Centre 25-30 June 2010, Nondon.
The baby in the triptych in the middle fingers the trails and links of Kaidie’s wall map – good. Then she goes on to spill red wine and pringles on my floor – no good, but she’s a baby, and we are so magnanimous as to hold no grudges against babies. And then she cries loudly, as if she was the victim! – oh, NO GOOD, but still understandable in the scheme of things (yes we are rational beings). But that is not the punchline – the adults responsible for the tot did no thing to help clean up, and escaped! – NOOO GOOD. My Dear Readers, we are sure that you have encountered ultra-righteous people with a strong sense of entitlement, who act as if they are the only on earth to have ever reproduced (THE REST OF US – if you did not already know – ARE ORPHANS MADE FROM PLAYDOH). So we – speaking as self-righteous runners and figures of imagination – had to stoop on the floor and lick up the pringles+wine+the baby’s tears+dust+hairs (thick, thin, curly, straight, blond, red, brown, black, etc), being ever so keen to store up food and drinks in our system at every opportunity in the middle of the ‘we-are-all-in-this-together’ recession.
Image of Kaidie overstretching herself by Alexandra Gomes during private view 25 June 2010 Friday. (Yes – pink, and its shades, was the order of the evening. Why? Because we have for the past few lifetimes tired of the obligatory black attires at art openings.) THANK YOU ALL for coming to the exhibition thus far, and its opening. More images of opening and exhibition to come – look out if Kaidie has caught you on camera! Did you say and smell of cheese? So, watch this space. Do not move, for soon all this will disappear from Life 1.0. (We will film ourselves de-installing the work, which had taken 9 full days to install, on Thursday in time lapse, and play it backwards, and upload it on Youtube later. Rather terribly exciting isn’t it).
25-30 JUNE: Display of WHY RUN? (WHY NOT?) and other mind+mentalmaps. Slade Centre of Research, Nondon #4
NOTHING COMES FROM NOTHING, AND RUNNING HAS SEVERAL HISTORICAL THREADS.
RUNNING CONTEXTUALISED IN THE TRADITION OF TRAVELLING AND TRAVEL LITERATURE.
WITH THE INTERNET, KAIDIE HAS MORE RABBIT HOLES TO RUN IN(TO).
RUNNING AS A SIMPLE, VISCERAL COUNTERPOINT / CRITICAL STRATEGY FOR OUR TECHNOLOGICALLY-MEDIATED REALITY. (PLUS: HULA-HOOPING IN I AM FIT FOR LIFE 2000)
THE 'WHY RUN' MAP IN ITS FULL GLORY. SEE IT (RE-) CONTEXTUALISED IN THE INSTALLATION!
A QUICKYSNEAKYBLURRYMCFLURRY PREVIEW OF KAIDIE’S 120MAP-METAMAP: 25-30 JUNE EXHIBITION #3
Kaidie hard at work, at the Slade Centre of Research at Woburn Square, creating a metamap of 120 maps of her transdimensional run. Beware, however, of Kaidie's knife that she's holding on her hand - she might slash more than paper if you try to come too close. Keep a critical distance! In this show, there is NO multimedia, NO moving images, no cables and no technical cockups, only penknives, masking tape, gaffer tape, 120 pieces of A3 papers, one 25metre wooden creaky scary ladder that Kaidie has to climb up, one lower sturdier ladder, papercuts, marker pens, cups of foamy coffee (we were supposed to have quit coffee!?), plenty of dust-and-hair (curly, straight, long, short, thick, thin - ALL YIKES!) -collection on Kaidie's jeans as she kneels/prostrates reverently on the dirty floor before her wall, and other analogue goodoldfashioned cockups. Come see for yourself. Original photograph by Laura Malacart 19 June 2010 Nondon, UK.
25-30 JUNE: KAIDIE SHARES A 14-METRE METAMAP OF 120 MAPS OF HER TRANSDIMENSIONAL RUN. Slade Centre of Research, Nondon #2
How would a map like this (created before Kaidie's birth in October 2009), be contextualised in Kaidie's wall-installation (June 2010)?
Private view: 25 June evening. Exhibition: 25-30 June. Location: Slade Research Centre Nondon WC1H UK. Opening hours: 9am – 5pm daily except Sunday. Kaidie exhibits her Multiple Mad Meandering Maps + Mandalas of her restless running across Life 1.0 (primary world), Life 2.0 (realm of imagination, Web 2.0 realities) and Life 3.0 (Web 3.0 AR+MR, hybrid reality). As we speak, Kaidie is creating a 14metre-wall-installation, a metamap of her maps of her intradimensional run. In this exhibition, there are 14 PhD and researchers on show with a wide-range of works including performance, sculpture, video installation and sound.
25-30 JUNE: KAIDIE SHARES HER MEANDERINGMADMAPS + MANDALAS. Slade Centre of Research, Nondon #1
What: In this exhibition, there are 13 PhD and researchers on show with a wide-range of works including performance, sculpture, video installation and sound. Private view: 25 June evening. Exhibition: 25-30 June. Location: Slade Research Centre Nondon WC1H UK. Opening hours: 9am – 5pm daily except Sunday.
Kaidie exhibits her Multiple Mad Meandering Maps + Mandalas of her restless running across Life 1.0 (primary world), Life 2.0 (realm of imagination, Web 2.0 realities) and Life 3.0 (Web 3.0 AR+MR, hybrid reality). As we speak, Kaidie is creating a 14metre-wall-installation, a metamap of her maps of her intradimensional run. And there is NO multimedia in this new work, only goodoldfashion 2D ’stuffs’. Can you believe that? Me neither. Well, come see for yourself. (We would have used the adjective ‘Magnificent’, in conjunction with the brilliant Magnificent Maps exhibition at the British Library, but that would not have been very Modest of Me, would it?)
See you around. Literally. Being all-rounded we can bounce ideas off each other. Jolly well.
May 2010: ever-expandable layers of reality -cum-running tracks
March 2010: an appropriation of the yin-yang symbol - or/and an appropriation of the pepsi logo.
December 2009: picture-perfect simple/simplistic venn diagramme of the in-between.
