you want it so bad you roll on the toys r us floor you want it so bad you put it in your bag and go for it you want it so bad you save pocket money for four months you want it so bad you work at mc for four-forty-four hours you want it so bad you kick your mom your dad forget them you want it so bad you sell your soul to demon forever you want it, you want it, you want it so bad, so bad, so bad to get toys that you play only once, to get snacks that you spew like gum, to get mags books films that you stack on shelves, to buy running shoes that you never run in that could never match your skin, for pills that don’t make you truly happy and mobile phones that get no calls but you want it, you want it, you want it so bad, so bad, so bad you want her so bad you buy her roses dresses diamonds houses the whole world you want him so bad you throw your head your arms legs boobs your whole body at him you want him so bad you bear a child to keep him you want her so bad you kill her eat her up so she is yours you want them so bad you kill you, you kill you, you kill you, yourself, yourself, yourself to get one that never loves you, one that makes you lonely, life that gets boring, wives that you dump fast, boyfriends that you despise, split after the first fight, so do you, do you, do you still, still, still crave the cigarette after sex? you regret what you wanted, ditch right what you get, you demand for a planet, and sieve it with a net. so what you always ask for, what happens when you bet, your whole life upon it. is it worth it, worth it, worth it so much, so much, so much they say you’ll love what you lose, do we hate then what we choose, how could we have a clue, if our effort goes to loo, what happens to our dreams, are they just like icy cream, are they the same as backstreet boys that no longer make you scream, they may seem supreme but will you skim through your living dream and find that your life, your life, your life is just meaningless.

- silent rap

have you ever faced a blank piece of paper and never, have the courage to start the first stroke it’s almost, like you could get a stroke if you ever, put ink in the wrong corner no matter, how experienced an artist you are, maybe. they say art is easy, cos we don’t involve no lives or engines (normally) so it’s a little stupid to say if we get any kind of pressure really- but our feeling is relative to our lives, so when there is tension at the tip of Doctor’s knife in the tummy there should be an equal seizure when a kid wants her barbie it isn’t childish, we simply feel differently. have you ever heard of artists’ vulnerability by Pearl Buck, i guess we’re just hopeless creatures of doomed luck, but that’s only to the extremely talented cos all the rest they suck and feel less than a cheeky duck- anyway, back to the piece of paper in vanity you know, the probability of an artwork is one over infinity how could, we ever answer the query to this mystery hidden in the white sea of fantasy without ecstasy it is, when we become greater mathematicians than that of relativity that we can’t be, in reality- but we don’t count energy, so instead we let an unknown energy take over our minds and dig the brain like a tantalum mine so you could imagine the pain it’s caused us to draw what entertains you in games when you hold wine in openings and chime with the lowest charm in awe- flattering.

- silent rap

it’s been 10 years since the last and first time i write. in this type of language you might. never have read it alright. i am never a writer so i may counterfeit eminem alike. cos he’s the only rapper i listen to and like. but i don’t do that on purpose it’s just an impulse to talk like you fight. for an expression in life. to balance yourself in a flight of dreamy matters that tie you up tight. a release in heart while shit’s still the thing you see in daylight - now i ain’t no rapper, i stutter like the king and mutter like a burglar but i’m no quieter than an unplugged speaker on the contrary, i may already be too loud as a facebooker i sometimes feel i should put myself in a locker but what do i do if i don’t do what i do so i’ve gotta keep being a shameless blogger as if i have a million stalkers - now what’s up with writing in rhymes, it’s just a cheesy disguise to add a little fiction and lies to whatever i’m saying online cos you’ve gotta be lyrical when you’re personal like you’re only a character in a novel so when people circle you in questions threaten to throttle you leave a fart in their nostrils and chuckle “it is just art!” - but i don’t do no art. not that i really don’t but i don’t fart and call it MoMArt. that’s why i didn’t predict. when i start-ed howcanipick- i didn’t tick artist or blogger in JUPAS but now i’m an addict and holic in all this- i can’t go back it’s too late to change the damn genes in fetus- why am i telling this like it means shit- it is meaningless nobody cares one bit- but before you make yourself a critic, just bite your lip and lick it cos it’s an urge for me, an OCD, to pour shit- if you wanna taste it you eat it if you don’t, just turn away or face it cos i ain’t gonna stop- it when you bitch. next time you talk about how i put myself on the table think of Bacon’s bacon lovers before you try to load a global context in your statement and exclude a whole genus of flavours.

- silent rap

I’m reading Daul Kim. I didn’t know of her until I knew of her death. I felt related (Not necessarily related to loneliness or death. When something is said and nothing added, it is to be taken as it is. You can make speculations but they remain fiction) and managed to read several months of her blog (There’s too little time to read all. There’re too many blogs and words and images and information to check as if we have to learn. I understand if you’re too busy reading good ones and can’t spare a minute for my blogs, I do, except maybe a little blue). It’s good that her Blogspot still exists.

Jeanne-Claude is another person leaving. It’s good that there’s someone to post a proper notice on her/their website.

I wonder what will happen to my blogs after my death. They are an extension to me and should probably follow fate as I’m gone, but I’d like my extension to extend longer than myself. Alive or dead, I can’t assure the existence of free blogs like Blogspot (though they may actually last longer than the paid ones, oh irony) or shared platforms like Flickr. I have most control of anything under sin-stuff.com, when I’m alive. So maybe, when I have enough extra money, I will purchase hosting plans for some future years to keep it running existing. If, on some posthumous day some month some year, you can’t load sin-stuff, that means I haven’t saved enough dough to sustain it before going. Blogs can die of poverty too, you know.

- sin_blog

I love you.

No, you don’t. You love my artworks.

Yes, I do.

No, you don’t.

Yes, I do!

No, you don’t!

-

You love me.

No, I don’t. I love your artworks.

Yes, you do.

No, I don’t.

Yes, you do!

No, I don’t!

- sin_blog

Q&A: Sin
Interview by Johnathan Kochis 

Earlier this year I randomly discovered Sin’s work through Flickr and have been following it ever since. Whether it involves the digital, or physical manipulation of images, or the creation of original pieces, I’ve enjoyed what she creates and shares with the world through her site. So, I reached out to her and got to ask her some questions about what she does:

Well, I guess my first question is who and what is Sin? I know it’s your name but what else is it and why did you start it?
Sin is actually my Chinese name and it means nothing evil. My full name is Lam Hoi Sin. (Lam is the surname. We don’t usually write “Lam Hoi-sin” so it sometimes confuses people.) I forget which came first, but in Form 4 or 5 I started thinking about a signature and the resulting “sin” sign (there’s an entry about it) sort of became my logo since then, and gradually I call myself Sin instead of other names, esp. on the Internet. Well of course the English meaning adds something to it.

That entry you sent me is interesting and I went through some older things you wrote, like this and it just made wonder about some different things. One thing I wondered about was do you have a goal with the site and with your work, because you seem to produce so much stuff.
The Web is more a vehicle than the core of my works, though it initiates a lot of pieces that are specific to being viewed online. I simply love making things and in order not to waste what I make, I post them online. As said (here and here) not all posted are artworks. Most are bits and pieces of my thoughts and life. The impulse to realise streaming ideas comes naturally. I believe in living an artistic life but artwork is not a necessary component. Concerning what I’d like to achieve I wish my works are viewed by a larger audience, which is why I use the Internet as a medium. Even without an audience I would continue to do so, for it serves well as a documentation of what’s done in my own history (then of course, regarding a trace in history there’s hope for it to be discovered – by an audience). It helps, for example, finding my own words – see all the hyperlink notes in this interview. Thank Web, this would be impossible in real-life interviews!

Something that I was really curious about was your music drawings, could you explain those?
Music-drawings are automatic drawings by Sin – that’s the official description. There was a time when I wanted very much to draw music, so I did. If it sounds strange how one can draw music, treat it like dancing. One moves the body to a piece of danceable music. I move the pen to a piece of drawable music. Though there is a certain extent of thought in execution, all lines are instant expressions of music and they are not planned. Abstract music-drawings may be easier to understand by this explanation. Figurative ones (there were more at earlier stages) are developed by more effort in recognising forms hidden in the lines. Recent ones involve found images as background, but the drawing method is the same. I certainly did not invent this. There are quite a number of people who make drawings of music by different methods and techniques. It’s like landscape or portrait or still life, an area that we are interested in drawing. At a point I would say “visualise” but it’s not the intention, for why would Picasso visualise women in cubes and Monet, the cathedral in strokes when we can see women and cathedrals? You sing or play another instrument in response to music, and a different sound is made. You dance to music, and a different art form is generated. Music-drawing works similarly. [notes of music-drawings]

One of my favorite pieces by you is this picture. In that series you talk about using your imagination. Is there a process for your creativity? Or does it just come naturally?
Interpretation is special because it’s surrealistic in nature. I did put the word “imagination” but that was in layman’s terms. The thinking process relates to Dalí’s paranoiac-critical method. Associations are formed as I focus on the found image, and the result is a new image initiated by the ambiguity of it. My practice may deviate from Dalí’s, but he directly influenced (me to start) this series.

What other artists inspire you?
Depending on my preference and knowledge I’m attracted to different artists at different times. I’ve admired Michelangelo. I love text art by Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer. Current favourites are Miranda July and Terence Koh.

Do you have a favorite piece of work that you’ve made?
Again it changes over time. Now I browsed through my works to remind what I’ve done. Snow Black by Walt Mathers could be one at this moment. It’s Snow White clips accompanied by Eminem’s “If I Had”, a raw random video put together with Windows Movie Maker. I’m not a video person (as you can see from the software) and it’s not an important piece, but I still find it pretty cool. YouTube removed it due to “violation” so it’s on Vimeo now and not played often. [update: it’s back on YouTube] Speaking of continued works of the same type I love them as a whole. Interpretation, music-drawing, the new Affordable Conceptual Art and “non-art” projects such as Fortissimo and Mom & Sin… They exist as groups and I feel unfair to name any one piece, but out of these groups I treasure music-drawing the most.

I like that video, that pairing gives the whole thing an eerie feel. I’ve also seen some other things by you relating to Eminem, what is it about him that interests you?
Listening to Eminem is the most inspiring thing during high school. He’s pure genius. I appreciate Em because not only he can think of wicked ideas, he’s able to rap them with a superb level of technique and artistic execution. That’s also why I appreciate Dalí. Skill is very important. Even conceptual art requires an executed piece of work to communicate. If the execution fails the work fails. Skill determines quality. Em’s definitely of high quality. And he looks good – that’s a kind of execution too.

You mentioned your Mom & Sin stuff. You work with her right? What does she think of your work?
Right, Mom & Sin is a collaboration with my mom. She’s a dressmaker. Basically I borrow her hands to make bags for me to draw. She doesn’t really comment on the bags or my other works. Honestly I don’t know what she thinks about them. In fact, I try to avoid explaining/exposing to her works that are more critical, sexual or foul – the stuff that you wouldn’t normally share with your parents, you know. But whether or not she understands the works, I think she’ll be happy when I accomplish something. That’s what I hope for, so that she won’t have to worry about a dead-end artistic career.

- Concerning This…

It’s funny. Years ago when I was coy and reluctant to show my works, people said I should be more open to showing them. Gradually I changed. Now I become so exhibitionistic I post (almost) everything I produce, online. They still say I’m hiding too much, hiding too much in my room making my own works (that nobody could/would see).

With Internet users of the whole world as (potential) audience I’m still hiding. I wonder why. I suppose they mean serious (whatever that means) artists all go to galleries and museums. I don’t mind going to galleries and museums. I’d love to. But sometimes it doesn’t make sense to. As said I don’t make art all the time. Works that are not artworks shouldn’t go to galleries and museums (and there are those that are artworks that shouldn’t go to these spaces). You would not want to see this printed on 20″x20″ archival paper framed in double acrylic hung on white cube wall, you know what I mean?

As for the autistic practice of making things in my tiny little room and uploading 24/7, is it different from making things in a studio (tiny or not) and exhibiting non-stop? Maybe… and I will head to try that — if I don’t die too soon. Before that, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what I’m doing.

- sin_blog

Hey honey look what I’ve got for you!

Is it another portrait, drawing or poem?

This time a piece of music…you don’t like it?

Why do you keep making me art?

Why,…because I love you…I want to give you something…

Am I an ingredient for your creations?

What do you m…

Sometimes I wonder, when you make pieces for me, whether it’s to show your love for me or for art.

Does it make a difference? I love you…and I love art…

Can you love me without making artworks of me or for me?

But this is just what I do…

- sin_blog

An excerpt from Existentialism and Humanism by Jean-Paul Sartre (Eyre Methuen, 1973):

“Quietism is the attitude of people who say, ‘let others do what I cannot do.’ The doctrine I am presenting before you is precisely the opposite of this, since it declares that there is no reality except in action. It goes further, indeed, and adds, ‘Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realises himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.’ Hence we can well understand why some people are horrified by our teaching. For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, ‘Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions.’ But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art. The genius of Proust is the totality of the works of Proust; the genius of Racine is the series of his tragedies, outside of which there is nothing. Why should we attribute to Racine the capacity to write yet another tragedy when that is precisely what he did not write? In life, a man commits himself, draws his own portrait and there is nothing but that portrait. No doubt this thought may seem comfortless to one who has not made a success of his life. On the other hand, it puts everyone in a position to understand that reality alone is reliable; that dreams, expectations and hopes serve to define a man only as deceptivce dreams, abortive hopes, expectations unfulfilled; that is to say, they define him negatively, not positively. Nevertheless, when one says, ‘You are nothing else but what you live,’ it does not imply that an artist is to be judged solely by his works of art, for a thousand other things contribute no less to his definition as a man. What we mean to say is that a man is no other than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organisation, the set of relations that constitute these undertakings.”

  I totally believe that we are no more than what we are and what we’ve done; for the flesh we possess is the person that we present, and the actions that we have done are the only manifestation of our own being. There is no excuse to claim we are more than that, though when someone says “I could have done that, only that I didn’t”, it is not necessarily false that they have the capacity to do so. When a person of normal physicality holds a glass of water and says “I could have taken three sips of water, only that I did not”, it is almost certain that he has the ability to drink the water in his hand, and that it is true that it is his decision not to drink, unlimited by his physical ability. Yet it is exactly this decision that he made that he should be responsible for, and this deed and the corresponding consequence would still leave a mark in (his) history and contribute to evaluation, if any, of him as a whole. We can always throw excuses, but in the end oneself is the only person who is responsible for what he does. And that is the existentialist teaching.

*Seeing what he said in the second lesson, Jimmy could well be an existentialist, despite he does not exist.

- sin_blog

As I said I wasn’t acquainted with Surrealism before I started practising music-drawing. Therefore I could not be aware of myself doing anything surrealistic. It was only after I fell in love with Dalí(’s artwork) that I started knowing about Surrealism and automatic drawing, thus recognising the connection. Since it is about the subconscious after all, it makes no wonder that one would start so without realising. Different from music-drawing, however, surrealistic influence was obvious to me when I started Interpretation. The first piece was directly inspired by Dalí.

- sin_blog

Was that a joke, that I’m not making art? Well, most of the time, I’m really not making art, and I’d like to clarify this. To make things simple and avoid turning this entry into a never-ending book, I should explain without discussing what art/artist is. Just a reminder to myself.

Classification is actually not very important. But it matters when people try to assess. Identification is necessary then, so that people won’t hire you as a photographer when you present a portfolio to apply for modelling, or criticize you for the wrong lighting. Equally, I don’t want the lousy pictures that I post on Facebook to be treated as my works of art. In fact, a lot of things that I post elsewhere online are not artworks, at least I wouldn’t consider so.

Consider sin_stuff. Call me conservative, but now I feel comfortable only with Interpretation and music-drawing being treated as art. The other things stuffed in the sin_art category are just for presentation’s sake. !postapostcard! fits barely but its drawings are free-drawings (automatic drawings), so I let it in or it will be put at sin_object. I didn’t know where to put Madcap Machine, so I left it there. The other things are named based on what they physically are. I didn’t use words such as design or writing, and there won’t ever be such a category called photography. There are several things that I am not (I’m not a lot of things, but speaking of arts-related subjects…). I’m never a photographer nor a writer. I do take photos and write, just like everybody else. But not everybody is a photographer and a writer. Right. I’m not a designer too. By job I may be one, but by nature I’m not. Sometimes I mess around with writing lyrics and melodies, but don’t mistake me as attempting to be a musician. Certain things at sin_activity could be easily tagged conceptual art in today’s context where everybody makes art, but please just let activities be activities. Simple.

Or maybe all the things can be called “blog art” or “bloghibition”, who knows.

Anyway, I just want to say, I don’t make art all the time. Most often, I just want to make something.

- sin_blog

“Cathy, you like art. Why are you in a science class? Are you going to be an artistic scientist?”

“A scientific artist.”

The whole class laughed and clapped. Despite the humour, there was a seriousness to what I said. I never found entering the science stream (either arts or science for my high school) and my interest in art contradictory. I did not find it necessary to study art in school either. Science and art just go hand in hand in my life. Logic and aesthetics, to be exact. The two can never be and should never be separated, in my life or in this world. But people always find it strange for subjects that I take, and what I like to be.

And the story continues. Between Fine Art and Design I chose the latter for my Bachelor’s degree. Again, they don’t get it. I understand the relationship between science and art may be subtle to realize, but art and design, are they that different to puzzle you? Alright…there’s a difference, or else I won’t choose one rather than the other. $Practicality$ could be one reason. I also thought design mentalities would be a suitable injection to my artistic ones. Naturally enough to me, I went through university life with design studies.

Nothing is enough. For yet another time I’ve misplaced myself in others’ eyes. Currently I’m taking a curatorial programme. I can find nothing more logical to learn more about the art field, also because I had the chance to this course. As said by my friend, life is random, yes. I tend to take randomness. I’m young but not very young anymore. What if I don’t try now, and it’s just one year anyway.

Then you may ask, if I were to know more about the art field, I could have studied Fine Art in the first place. Why make another option only now? Maybe I really detour, doing art without ever touching the art field. Yet by moving along the spiral, I guess I can hit the centre a little bit more precisely. Maybe not as accurate as the golden spiral, but I will be there one day.

There are people who are not comfortable when you use a knife to kill people. Not because anybody’s harmed. They won’t feel good even if you use it for cutting hair. They want apple knives for cutting apples, fish knives for fish, frog knives for frogs, if there are such knives. Not only designers get angry because people come up with creative methods of using their products. Everybody else comes to condemn you for playing ping pong with iPone (there may be a lot of virtual-real applications, but I mean real hitting here).

I can decide what to learn and how to use what I’ve learnt. The knowledge is mine.

- sin_blog