Animals in the Refinery Cam
Wildlife casually interrupts your crisis on CCTV
It's been an intense time over here. Some updates:
- The refinery next door has been polluting heavily the last few weeks with black smoke and high flaring. When an industrial entity emits such strong don't give a f–k vibes, it's scary. Our neighbourhood is not taking this lying down. We can't afford to. Helped by CCTV footage, we've organized a response. If you would like to help, the best thing you can do for us is:
- Re-share the post on any social platform and tag the Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment (NRES) YB Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad
- Share the post with any media and ask them to cover the story
- In early June, I gave a talk and workshop at National Gallery Singapore around my artwork in Figuring A Scene, an exhibition curated by Patrick Flores. I had a great time chatting with my old mentor Khairuddin Hori, who moderated the talk. The workshop 'Creatures of the Mind, Creatures of the Land' really needs its own Signal.
Photos by Jack Yam, courtesy of National Gallery Singapore
- A nice interview in Eksentrika about the same work.
The heavier the smoke, the stronger the signal. Let's get to it!
Animals come to soften my eyes
I looked at a lot of CCTV footage in the past weeks. Sure, my eyes are aching, but that goes for everyone in this screen-addicted civilization. What I wasn't anticipating was the emotional fatigue of watching hours of video evidence in order to extract and organize it.
Living close to industrial pollution is an assault on the senses - sound, smell, sight, skin. Our bodies are sensitive instruments. To organize a community response, we have to turn subjective experience into quantifiable data. Frustration hardens into facts - there's evidence the refinery has been emitting almost 24/7. The data forces a more direct confrontation with reality as it is. It is overwhelming and I understand more deeply the despair of climate journalists and scientists. If I could clock out, go home after a few hours, it might not feel this bad. But this IS our home, there's no other.
More than once, I felt this was a job for AI. I remembered the human workers who filter the internet for us, keeping out the worst gore and sexual abuse material. I'm closer to those workers than I am to having access to an AI model I can train to analyze refinery footage for me. Google's emissions are up 50% because of all the energy-sucking data centers needed to power AI. And where do they put those data centers? Usually small towns like Port Dickson, all over the world. There's never been magic in our technology, only the extraction and refining of human and non-human life. Those who don't pay the cost will say it's all worth it. I'll use our civilization's tech, but I live too close to the anus-end of capitalism to be enchanted by it.
Now and again, an animal would appear on camera, blissfully unself-aware. A nose in the corner of the frame, the flash of a long tail, an articulated foot, the opening of wings - sips of water for a parched mind and tired eyes.
A friend talks about 'softening the eyes'. She's staffed at a company in China and works harder than almost anyone I know. Once I overheard her recruiting new staff with a warning: 'You know these days people die at their desks, right? Well, not on my watch, ok?' I took her to the beach and she sat staring out at the water. She said: 'I don't want to forget how to soften my eyes'.
Life, caught on the refinery cam, is so soft and expressive. Sweet, comedic, intricate. Beyond the screen, a musang left scat on the wall where the CCTV sits. Black ants crawl all over the little surveillance robot, now available to almost anyone who wants to keep an eye on something. Their ongoing-ness keeps me going. I burned a number of hours off my eyes and mind to extract the data. Life, for life.
This has been Signal 005. I love this newsletter and love you for being here. Did you know if you subscribe to Smoke Signals it's like a cup of water from a mountain spring to me?
Until the next send, stay open, stay soft.
Snapshots from the Studio
Back in early June: working on workshop prompt cards from my hotel room in Singapore. My hotel room fugue state food culture is: mini wine, cherries, cottage cheese, crackers. I left a favorite pair of pants in the hotel closet! Second time I've done this. Next time everything stays in the suitcase.
Mockup for a project that I hope will come to fruition this Nov. Still playing in the dark, trying to light my own fires.
Scanner - Links
One traverses this scroll in a downwards direction of potentially great but unknowable depth, also known as a rabbit hole - Kat Kitay on doomscrolling
Rewilding the internet sounds like a great idea.
