posters

So we had another class exercise, and we created pieces based on another person's description of their projects. Sarinah painted a melancholy Munch-like portrait for my project. It was a child's face made out of two parents linking hands. And with these pieces created for us by our friends, we had to make posters for ourselves by adapting them in some way.

I did away with the actual painting, lovely as it was, and used Sarinah's compositing idea to redraw the balloon child:
(click picture to enlarge) The parents make up the face of the child. The cheesy slogan was a temporary filler.
These are the kind of illustrations I like to do most: smaller pictures within the big picture, hidden stories and obvious stories.

The bird is the balloon child's friend, who the balloon is afraid of getting close to at first because of its sharp beak. The balloon child is almost like the bird, just that it is tied down with a string. When it is ready to have its string cut, the bird comes back to help it with its beak.

the balloon child becomes a parent

where did you come from?
i want to protect you forever.

but i have no hands to hold you
perhaps wrapping myself around you will do

you cry too loudly for my large ears
made of air, i want to burst with air

--

Cindy suggests doing the animation first, perhaps with my voice telling the story. I know all the frames but can't bring myself to do them. I foresee them taped to my wall, my wardrobe, my shelves, a wistful narrative of disproportionate beings, and it makes me want to start.

I have to find the voice of the balloon child. Is it a soft voice? A child's voice? A girl or a boy? It seems that all these nuances of sound will determine the script. And that trickles on into the typeface, which trickles into the size and form of the book, and everything else.

I wish that 'balloon' was another word. I can't title this as Balloon Child, or Balloon.

Meanwhile, tomorrow i go back to the start. I only felt for these children when I came to know about them. And that is thanks to the royal family kids' camp, which i stumbled upon without thinking and have never untangled myself from since. Tomorrow begins the training for this year's camp, and i'll hear the stories again, sing the songs again, meet the volunteers again. Many more have signed up this year, expectant for something.

I'm not a kids person, I say to everyone. I really am not. But even among injustices there are some more unjust than others.

balloon boy and difficult things

Biomorphic explorations with the Character. With each psychological change that takes place, his body morphs a little. Until there is the swollen head, no mouth, no limbs, no heart, no belly, large ears. But there is a string tying him down.
When the Balloon becomes a parent. How can it hold its child when it has no arms? How can it handle the cries with its big ears?

The string has to be cut. And when it is cut, there is a tremendous release of pressure, and the Balloon can reform, become proportionate again, grow limbs.

I am exhausted from drawing and scanning and putting together saturday's presentation. Soon enough there will be a proper post on the Balloon.

This week I read A Child Called It by David Pelzer. And I talked to Felicia from Fostering about abuse investigation, child protection schemes, and most importantly for my project, the solutions and exits for parents who haven't been dealing too well with parenting.

From the interview, the good news is most physical abuse cases in Singapore start from the intention to find a discipline method that works; in other words, purely sadistic abuse is not common, although I will not hasten to comment on where the boundaries lie. Sexual abuse is a completely different arena altogether, slippery and altogether sinister, an inexcusable perversion.

The way I am approaching Abuse as a whole, I am closing an eye to the perversion that drives a good number of cases, and focusing instead on Abuse as a living force in itself that can be averted, like closing a window to put out the wind, or in this story, cutting the string that ties a balloon down. It is mild, it is non-confrontational. But is it right?

I still say that we shouldn't rush to condemn abusive parents as villains, because they could be victims too. But we cannot ignore the inexplicable part of it: the darkness of the soul, the demon-like glee that pushes a human being to hurt another human being, and enjoy it. This is where I must stop and think. Do we open up Pandora's Box?