THE NOTICE
THE PRESS RELEASE
THE FINE & SUMMONS
cloud projectsReading the Padang
In conversation with: Mark Teh, “The Padang as Time Capsule”
2022
Screen-printed on paper
71 x 50 cm
Our three posters engage in the language of control and contestation. In Mark’s performance lecture, Dataran is made manifesto. We are interested in the types of language that are used to assert authority over the space of Dataran: the manifesto, like other literary forms, is located in a rich genealogy of language-based readings of space.
Our work satirises three dominant literary forms of reading the padang, each absurd, bureaucratic, and speaking to their own worlds. The Notice, used by governments to list rules and regulations, is a circus-like, self-referential word-soup. The text for The Press Release is AI generated using GPT-3. Commonly used by NGOs as tools of protest, their language of human rights is formulaic, easily reproduced by a machine. Finally, The Fine & Summons, the inevitable conclusion of every clash about public space, is no more than a bureaucratic form.
