Originally posted on Queer Book & Movie Club (Singapore):
This discussion note is written by Brian (who blogs at Foreign Influence). Blue is the Warmest Color drew a nice group of twelve folks together and provoked all of us to make comparisons, even when we tried to avoid them. We compared the book and the…
by Brian Bergen-Aurand World-renowned Ethnic-Chinese, Thai independent filmmaker Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul (born 1970) has composed one documentary, six critically-acclaimed feature films, and more than forty-five short films, videos, and photography installations since the early 1990s. He has won the Un certain regard prize (2002), Prix du jury (2004), and Palme d’or (2010) at the Cannes … Continue reading
by Brian Bergen-Aurand We were young people living in houses seemingly more populated by ghosts than by the living, with the old dead and the new. ~Jesmyn Ward Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped (2013) is a memoir of her life growing up Black in rural Mississippi, the generations that came before her, and the men … Continue reading
Originally posted on Yawning Bread:
Right up to the last moment, I wasn’t sure if I should use the preamble I had prepared. The point I wanted to make in the preamble was that I believed Singaporeans were going to be instinctively resistant to the idea of constitutional redrafting. Our aversion to taking risks, our…
by Brian Bergen-Aurand Produced by the Children of Srikandi Collective, Indonesia/Germany/Switzerland, color, 74 mins., 2012. An omnibus documentary recalling the Mahabharata tale of the hero who is born a girl and becomes a boy, this essay film features nine queer women describing the paradoxes of non-normative life in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country. There … Continue reading
Originally posted on Singapore Review of Books:
“Politics begins in disappointment”. So goes Simon Critchley’s useful aphorism.[1] Naomi Klein’s version thereof could go “politics begins in missed appointments” – from the first warning shots about a “metabolic rift with nature” during the industrial revolution, through to burgeoning science about climate change from the likes…
by Brian Bergen-Aurand In 2014, Foreign Influence was viewed by about 6000 folks. Where do they all come from, you ask? Although folks clicked on Foreign Influence from 81 different countries this past year, most visitors arrived from these ten locations: 1. Singapore 2. United States 3. Brazil 4. Philippines 5. United Kingdom 6. Canada … Continue reading
by Brian Bergen-Aurand Recently, I made the claim that perhaps we can read Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching through the lens of structural sexism, where the multi-generational female characters–most especially Miranda–are trapped in the domestic sphere not through overt actions taken directly against them by individual actors, but, rather, by a system of social … Continue reading
by Brian Bergen-Aurand On the morning of 4 December 2014, a small group of concerned Singapore folks stood in protest of the EU Human Rights Seminar’s invited speaker, former Nominated Member of Parliament Dr. Thio Li-Ann, who was scheduled to address “International Human Rights Law and National Courts in Asia”. While four members of civil … Continue reading
by Brian Bergen-Aurand One of the accepted modern understandings of dis/ability is as a lack or shortcoming to be overcome. Being dis/abled is associated with loss, vulnerability, and dependence. Something to be avoided, especially because of its “nature” as less than normal. Rarely, if ever, has deaf culture, blind culture, dis/abled culture been thought of … Continue reading
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