After two months of planning a prep, ICE's international artists in residency hip hop rapper/ MC "The Narcycist" and his partner, mixed media and visual artist, Sundus Abdul Hadi have finally arrived in Australia. I must admit, my frame of mind of the last few days has been a little run down and clouded, nevertheless, it was refreshing to finally meet and also anticipating working with these two. These two are about my age, and yet their progressive minds, boundary pushing works inspire me a little bit more to engage and grow as as a little gungho activist in my very own ways.
It captivates me how these two speak with such clarity and an understanding of who they are, where they are going, how they are developing and their impacts on own cultural identities and also abroad. Narcy's sound tracks all have some rationale, incited incidents, that people just usually don't think about. Personally, I never dig the hip hop scene, I always thought it was music about "pimps and hoes" and autotuned noise with the sporadic "yeah babies". Another thing, prior to working with ICE, I had a fear of Arabs (a common view shared by my closed off parents who relied on mainstream media 6pm reports) as well as the ocassional debate with a very old school ocker who kept on warning me that the "Asians will be taking over, so be careful".
Speaking of fear of Arabs, Narcy will also be releasing his published book "Diatribes of a Dying Tribe" based on the concept of the Fear of an Arab Planet. On the same note, I did get the chance to meet the boys from "Fear of a Brown Planet" - comedian Amer & Nazeem from Melbourne. Check out my quest clip.
So where does this leave me? Fear of an Asian Planet? Let's help me brainstorm...
Fear of A Slant Eye Planet
Fear of A Gook Planet
Fear of Riceeaters Party
I know, I know. So where does the white (wo)man who really have this fear stand? The Australian Protection Party of course. They seem to be quite a media saavy bunch with all sorts of backups (from academia, politics, businesses etc...) who truly have a major concern with the potential "invasion" fears. Be slightly surprise. There's this fear of "White genocide" and the "minorities" taking over.
Then I thought for a further minute, is the term minority/ majority relative? What if you are a whitey living in China? Wouldn't you be a minority and Asians becoming a majority? Ok, I'm tripping out now and some of the issues and "parties" just wouldn't make sense in another context.
