Earlier this year, after a brief chat with visual artist Elizabeth Lim at the opening night of Zai Kuning’s gallery installation
With the proliferation of digital photography and highly sophisticated consumer-level cameras, the idea of documentation-by-sketching may seem quaint and anachronistic, but the resultant image spoke for itself: remarkably poignant, the sketch was like a modern, black and white version of Chua Mia Tee’s Epic Poem of Malaya, more roughcast and spontaneous, with Zai playing the role of the impassioned orator, albeit cutting a cooler figure with jacket, shades and bucket hat. On her sketch, Elizabeth commented: “other ppl got like 100 photos and i only have 1 sketch and some words that really meant a lot to me written in my notebook…”
I later invited Elizabeth to help document Playfreely IV. As she explained to me after: “at the event i sketched out the basic placements and scales in pencil and then i listened and the tones and shades came in based on the performance. then i got home, pen ink up, cleaned up the page then inked it all up.”
When I asked about a detail in her early sketch, she explained that she was not drawing “performers” as much as she was, the “performance”.
Finally, I asked Elizabeth if she wanted to pen down any thoughts on her experience at the session. Having a keen interest in performance art, she offered her own musings on the improvising musician as performance artist. – Ed.
