Guest Explorer in Wasteland Kuala Lumpur 2 (2012)
*In November to December 2012, artist Bec Stevens from Tasmania, Australia has been exploring and observing the Wasteland site in Kuala Lumpur. My sincere apologies to Bec for the delayed posting which was received on March 20th 2013.
Saubin
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In November (2012), Saubin introduced me to the Wasteland Twining Network’s site that is under observation in Kuala Lumpur. During November and December I visited the site at least once a week with the intent of a response. My working process is usually one of observation of particular sites, reading the layers of use to get a sense of past and present uses, and users; a sense of its history and its idiosyncrasies; and to somehow make visible a new layer of a conversation about the space.
I found the layers of readings of Jalan Danau Saujana were dense - or that the layers were written in a language that I was unfamiliar with. Cultural ideas were embedded in the lands use, political processes were embedded in its use and as a foreigner I found it hard to read these signs or remnants. It felt like major chunks of my vocabulary were missing in terms of how I might be perceiving the site. I kept trying to read this space and I became a little obsessed by the reading. Each visit trying to see something else or peel back some of what felt like a kind of fog of foreignness. One of the most valuable things about the visits to the site, for me, was the unravelling or slow understanding of some of what was embedded in a different cultures approach to land use, via this microcosmic parcel of land on the fringe of Kuala Lumpur.
The following posts are observations and reflections from that time.
These first images are documentations of some of the sites users.
Bec Stevens.
