Welcome to Smoke Signals
And two other big announcements
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
- Costume and production design in Malaysian cinema
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 and dirty 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.
No tracking
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.
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.
Announcement 1: CAREC
I'm happy to announce I was selected for the 2023-2024 Prince Claus Mentorship Award for Cultural & Artistic Responses to the Environmental Crisis (CAREC).
It's a year-long lab with 12 artists and four mentors. Everyone is extremely accomplished and warm. It's a privilege to be in conversation with them. One of the reasons I started Smoke Signals is to share what I'm learning this year.
My application was about forging community responses to pollution from the Next Door Entity, i.e the oil refinery. This means I get to spend more time in Port Dickson. So many major art opportunities are either escapes to remote locations, or assume that artists live in urban centers.
The 2024 -2025 CAREC cycle is now open for applications. Deadline is 24 March 2024. If you're thinking about applying, do it. If you want tips, email me.
Announcement 2: Shrineshare
2024 will also be busy with a project called Shrineshare, which I'm organizing with Zedeck and our UK colleague David Blandy. We're lucky to receive a British Council Connections Through Culture grant for the project.
In times of polycrisis—climate collapse, loneliness, war, economic uncertainty—what do we hold sacred?
Shrineshare is a collaborative print folio project, bringing together 6 artists from the UK, 9 artists from Malaysia and one from the US. We invite artists to contribute an artwork responding to the idea of sacred shrines. These drawings will be turned into rubber stamps, which will be used to create hand-made prints. The 16 prints will be assembled into a custom folio, which can be presented as a publication or in an exhibition. 70 editions of the folio will be produced. Each artist receives an edition of the folio, and the remaining editions will be available for sale or distributed to institutions.
Help Yourself, installed at Partners and Son in Philadelphia
Last year, I was invited by Philadelphia-based printmaker Amze Emmons to be part of an international print folio called Help Yourself. It generated the inspiration for Shrineshare!
We're assembling our artists and thrilled to be cooking with them. Look out for the folio later this year.
And that's our very first letter! Thanks for reading.
Sending you good smoke,
Sharon
