Two months back, I was introduced to amazingly wonderful people from
The Center for Creative Communication (CCC) in Shizuoka, Japan to join together with Bigbrosworkshop to this prestigious conference called the
Asia Design Conference 2010, Shizuoka, Japan.
Si Juan, mayor of Shizuoka, Mr Zenkichi Kojima & me
Eric Chen, me, Larry & Jackson Tan in Malaysia showcase at CCC Japan
Me and Tomoa, Director of Creative Commons Japan
With +81 Magazine's director, Satoru Yamashita, me, Taka Nakanishi and her friend.
More photos of my Japan trip available here:
Joining us is our neighbor, Jackson Tan and his team (the black angels) from Singapore, Eric Chen & Larry from Taiwan, Daisung Kim from South Korea, Laurence from iDN, Hong Kong, Gino Woo (Woogi, whom we met back in 2009's KL Design Week) from Shanghai. This conference would be complete entirely if we have participants from Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand so that we can discuss and gain tremendous input from each S.E. Asian countries.
What is interesting about this conference is that each country showcase their excellent portfolios from and discuss about their current situation that is happening in their creative industry.
Like Korea, the government does not support their creative industry to provide funds or support, not like Singapore or Malaysia. In Singapore however, everyone seems pampered by their government's privileges towards the support in arts & design industry, while we, in Malaysia still struggle to find that support. By support does not mean the government itself, but the people, Malaysians.
The biggest concern in Malaysia is that the people still have the 3rd world mentality and aren't able to support any art-related events or design conference due to their 'budget constrain' and whine about how expensive our events are, when both government and private institution offers free access to seminars and conference. The only problem is that we, Malaysian doesn't even bother or care to attend or they could never accept any feedback or critic be it negative or constructive because they only want to hear what they want to hear.
I remember hosting a Creative Commons event where I provide them free access to the event, provided food but no one bother to care about it and show no physical support.
One of our 'genius' excuse or reasons:
- Students who can't afford to come to our event but have enough money to buy themselves an expensive gadget, expensive clothes
- Professionals who can't spare time to even participate and some do provide statement that some tickets to local conference are too expensive, but they don't have problem paying RM300 for 3 jugs of beer instead of gaining great knowledge and education or simply ignorant to bother about our events.
- Double-standard. Those who aren't well known are being discriminated especially by the media.
- Malaysians are so particular and 'scared' to go out because it will waste their money by paying for their petrol and parking just to attend an event.
- The advertising cannot work together with the architecture industry because each and everyone thinks that they are too important that none can brush their ego's off to do something noble.
All of these reason are unbelievably ridiculous because they refuse to support such initiative and became ignorant to proclaim there's no local event or government is not doing things to support our creative industry. There's even a question if it's a Malay organized event or Chinese organized event. Everything had to be color on top of everything.
Other countries like Indonesia would be so happy and privilege to have these kind of event lining up in their city, while we Malaysians can never be grateful enough to even acknowledge, appreciate us and always put a stop to any group who have the passion to host or initiate an event or a design showcase. Everyone start to close doors instead of opening doors to opportunity in collaboration and networking to increase a greater skill-trading between other sector in the creative industry. Everything is too monotonous.
What we should learn is to show our support instead of whining and complaining things. When we don't move forward, we can never catch up other countries to be on par in terms of state-of-the-art technology and innovation, such as Japan and other countries, even the closest one to us, which is Singapore.
It's a shame that we can't even get any politician to endorse or support us, while here in Shizuoka Japan, even the mayor would come to our show and show appreciation to support us.
This is what went wrong with Malaysians. The attitude of "
Who cares! What's In It For Me?". Because when you don't care, it's how we can never see progression to our creative economy.
We have tons and tons of talented creative individuals who make Malaysian proud, from
Jimmy Choo to
Tan Eng Huat's wonderful talent in illustrating top comic studios from Marvel, DC, we have Milx, Aadi Salman,
Mohammad Yazid, Heavymetal & Imaginex's wonderful creation of the
Wars of The Worlds the Animation, Upin & Ipin or
Saladin the 3D animated series, where most Malay muslim in this country is trying to go against this project that I would consider a noble effort made and it's to be proud of because it's
100% made by Chinese, Malays, Indians, Sabahan, Sarawakian and other Malaysians who then became a family along the process of this project, but others don't see it. They only see figures that overcloud their judgement.
It's a shame how we (or those who try to pitch this account before and lost to produce the animated series or did not get a job interview as animators would provoke others to hate) became so insecure and vulnerable to see Malaysian talent emerge and try to find any way to put us down to the ground and these negative conservative people shred our effort due to their temper-tantrum towards government and we creative people, became the victim.
My sister, Abby, just wrote an interesting article. I encourage you guys to read and to understand what's really going on with our country besides the lack of support that I have wrote in this blog.
'I'm Not Going Anywhere' - By Abby Latif:
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/breakingviews/article/im-not-going-anywhere-abby-latif/
Creative Gathering: Behance 2nd Meetup
Another great session with members of Behance Malaysia. Check out our video ;-)
No Art, No Fun
Can't even begin to explain eversince I going my new workplace, I didn't have the chance to put my hands down to work on any artwork except for this.
Ok, later ;)
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