Mata Buta Video 2004

August 2004, I was asked to join an exhibition at the National Art Gallery. The show was called as Footsteps, curated by our friend Puan Shireen Naziri, somebody I have been working for quite a time, designing catalogue/book layouts, cards, presentations etc. Anyway, I forgot all about the exhibition’s opening until the last minutes. So I hurriedly made this video clip, using Dung’s rehearsal recording of Mata Buta and some rudimentary work on Macromedia Flash.

This clip still needs a lot of work before it can even be presented to the public, but since the dateline was really tight, I sent it in unfinished. And it was shown, playing on a little TV in one room of the gallery for weeks, with the volume at full blast! The famous local architect, Hijjas Kasturi, officiated the exhibition and actually mentioned favourably about the clip in his opening speech!

Recently the Flash ingredients and images I saved until time permits me to work on the clip proper were all deleted when Alak’s eMac died horribly. My intention of making this video a proper one is now dead. Oh, well! I never think of it as an art statement in anyway but it should be fun to slip this clip in some future CD of the band.

Here’s an excerpt of review by an old friend of mine, Ms. Carmen Nge:

“In contrast, the digital video by Zulkifli Zakaria (more widely known as Joe Kidd of the underground punk scene) is a pastiche of stills strung together into a raw but not entirely discordant narrative format. The video is animated and quirky, juxtaposing musical references with sly social commentary. “We are all the same” is a line from one of the frames but this is not necessarily seen as a good thing. Or is it? Does homogeneity mean boring, cookie cutter, dispensable or does it signal a common purpose, a united front, a strong alliance of like minds?”

All I can say (while stroking my chin studiously) is… hmmmmm.