Welcome to Smoke Signals

A newsletter about keeping cool in a world on fire, from an artist living next to mangroves (very cool) and an oil refinery (opposite of cool). These are stories about art, the land, community organizing, and becoming local. And the local is nothing if not offbeat and fantastical... especially in Port Dickson, Malaysia.

Topics

  • Gardening
  • Taking care of an old house
  • Repairing and mending stuff
  • Making art
  • Small town scene reports
  • Coastal mangroves scene reports
  • Experimental ecology
  • Local flora and fauna
  • Practicing with the mind
  • Neighbourhood organizing
  • Malaysian art and culture
  • Decolonial, leftist and anarchist politics
  • Fossil fuels and the energy industry
  • Reseller culture on Carousell

About me

The person sending these smoke signals is Sharon Chin. Sometimes I go by Chincarok. I'm an artist. Under that label I've also been a writer, critic, curator, production designer for film, illustrator, graphic designer, propaganda maker, and sometimes activist. These days, the studio is heavily occupied with printmaking.

I grew up a city girl in Petaling Jaya, and went to university in Melbourne, Australia on a FaMo (Father-Mother) scholarship. In 2011, I moved to Port Dickson with my partner, the writer and games designer Zedeck Siew. We live in and take care of his childhood family home. We have a garden, with one each of inherited durian, nangka and mangosteen trees, and more recently, an avocado tree, which we planted.

The Covid-19 pandemic turned Zedeck and I into true locals. During the 2020 - 2021 lockdowns, we began to visit the local mangroves, and our relationship to this landscape, town and its people has grown deeper. It was also around this time that the oil refinery located 200m from our house (henceforth called the Next Door Entity) restarted operations. Established by Shell in the 1960s, the refinery was sold to a China multinational in 2016. And so our time of relative peace and quiet came to an end. We now spend increasing amounts of time organizing with our neighbours in response to pollution from the Next Door Entity.

About this site

The site mascot is a pair of side-eyes looking away from behind a fire emoji. It's like if Clippy the Microsoft Office Assistant was on fire, but denying reality. Anyone relate?

The internet accompanied my art career like Clippy, the helpful assistant. Broadcasting my agenda let me more or less chart my own path. The point at which the internet started to become hell for me was when Instagram killed the chronological feed in 2016. I became addicted to Facebook and Instagram as a quick way to reach an audience, and sharonchin.com got updated less and less. Last year I downloaded my Instagram data and wiped my accounts (including the alt). I recommend regularly setting your digital self on fire, especially if you've outgrown it. A company like Meta would very much like you to stay trackable, i.e the same. And every little fuck you to Meta = another inch of your soul clawed back.

My main site is sharonchin.com, which was custom built by a friend on Wordpress. I love it, but it's also a decade old, and has grown wild and clunky. Besides blogging and archiving artworks, one of my favorite things to do was send a monthly newsletter. Then I got creeped out by how much data I could collect from subscribers. Who opened the emails and how many times they clicked on which links - I (and Mailchimp) could see it all, and there was no way to turn it off.

If you subscribe to Smoke Signals, new posts will be sent to your inbox. I won't be collecting any data except your email address, and I'll never share that. Ghost gives me the ability to turn off tracking opens or clicks. Sometimes, looking away IS the decent thing to do. It feels less icky.

Ghost's backend. I have a CHOICE? You mean my eyelids aren't forcefully pinned open to the eternal light of data surveillance?

I'm not committing to a posting schedule yet, but it probably won't be more than 2 or 3 posts a month. You can unsubscribe with a click. You can also just visit the site, you don't have to sign up.

I hope Smoke Signals will become my new home on the internet, with more control, less ick, and an easy-to-use backend. I'll still update sharonchin.com with finished art projects. Like a hermit crab, I'm trying on this new shell for size. Hope you'll join me.