Hostile architecture, defensive architecture, disciplinary architecture—call it what you want, but public space is never truly designed for every single citizen in mind.
In his penultimate piece for a 6-part series on sensing the city, #GoodReviewCircle writer Alfonse Chiu shares a timely reflection on this concrete jungle that we inhabit: "In a hostile city, who wears the skin that feels the pain, and how do we help?
Read MoreRemember the Parasite scene where rich man Park Dong-ik commented on how poor man Kim Ki-taek smells like a boiled rag? That's a sensorial observation that immediately defined the social standing of the Kims while revealing the barriers of class mobility that the family faced against the affluent Parks—without ever uttering the word "poor".
What scents in Singapore tell us about who gets to occupy and dominate the olfactory landscape of public space?
#GoodReviewCircle writer Alfonse Chiu recalls an instance when the heavenly smell of curry stirred up some very insidious sentiments amongst our local community. Click on to read more
Read MoreIn her final piece for GRC, Reena Devi delves into the spaces of the imaginative, the creative, and–as is inevitably the case for any writer, the personal. Spanning her experiences and stumbling (writer’s) blocks in the past eight months, she takes us through her creative odyssey and arrives at a revelation of the unknown.
Read MoreIn this final piece, Malaysian writer Sharaad Kuttan shares his intriguing experience at the Jaipur Literary Festival (JLF). From mistaking a student protest as a musical performance to confronting and engaging with the charge of complicity, of “fostering fascism in India” by attending the JLF on Twitter.
Read MoreIn the midst of the circuit breaker, Yi-Sheng examines the unravelling of this pandemic: shattering of the queer community; the impact of isolation and distancing on a “culture of desire”. In a strange circling back to digital queer communities of the 90s, Yi-Sheng offers suggestions of cultured company, vigorous self-care, solidarity, and hope, in spaces of community online.
Read MoreFor her final GRC piece, Akanksha Raja reviews an art walk surrounding Telok Ayer, an unusual location that is inextricably associated with upscale F&B establishments and corporate office spaces. She speaks to the four artists behind the works featured, as they explore the history, mythology, and autobiography.
Read MoreReena Devi charts a journey from Guggenheim’s exhibition on rural spaces to an Instagram solo traveler’s adventures to deep-sea exploration, before coming to pause around the idea of “power spots” and its future possibilities.
Read MoreConfronted by the invasiveness of our current reality (data mining, facial recognition, and the all-around surveillance of our private lives and public spaces), Reena Devi seeks solace (and answers) in contemporary art and questions whether spaces for intimacy can be carved out and protect the sacredness of our privacy amidst the pervasiveness of surveillance technologies?
Read MoreFrom sight to hearing, and now taste—our #GoodReviewCircle writer Alfonse Chiu serves up yet another inquisitive, policy-driven piece on the sensorial experience of navigating our public spaces, this time by dissecting the fall and rise of our divine national icon: the Singaporean Hawker.
Long live the hawker.
Read MoreNg Yi-Sheng talks of harrowing times. From the Coronavirus to SARS to AIDS, from the personal to the societal, he remembers states of fear and—on occasion, of solidarity and looking after for one’s own. Finally, offering a clarion call to empathy and vitality, he reminds us to remember to live, with heart and art—even amidst face masks and kiasu-ness.
Read MoreIn her fifth piece for GRC, Akanksha Raja reviews an entirely immersive and occasionally discombobulating experience, Secretive Thing 215, by role-playing theatre company Lemon & Koko. Like in the game itself, one is transported to a space of simultaneous choice and control, where suspension of belief happens only insofar as the irony of allowing yourself to be manipulated; perhaps a metaphor or just a game, the experience posits how space and environmental experiments can induce behaviours and anxieties…Love is Blind, anyone?
Read MoreFor her fourth GRC piece, Akanksha Raja reviews the Lorongs of Wisdom by Geylang Adventures, which is part of the Coordinates Projects series of Singapore Biennale. The projects facilitate various modes of direct connection and exchange with specific communities and spaces.
Read MoreThrough a book review of Jane Jacobs’ most known work, Ng Yi-Sheng delves into the approaches and ideas of urban planning and draws parallels to the urban landscape of Singapore.
Read MoreFor her third GRC piece, Akanksha Raja reviews the 12th edition of Urban Ventures, a placemaking initiative by urban design studio LOPELAB, held on Keong Saik Road. In experiencing the artworks at the event in relation to its street, and the undeniable gentrification of these “heritage” neighbourhoods, she asks what becomes of a place, and what it means to “make” it?
Read MoreIn his second GRC piece, Alfonse Chiu deconstructs performativity—of an ostensibly passionate public, and the reality of regulations that corral the humble street performer. Tracing the ethos of street performance alongside the state’s designs on a cultural economy, Alfonse contextures an aural fabric of what is creatively permissible and marketable in this global arts city.
Read MoreIn his second piece for GRC, Ng Yi-Sheng goes shopping. Analysing our stratified relationships with malls—whether loved or reviled, avoided or embraced so you can dry your sweat in sub-zero-air-con, he puts this questionable symbol of the Singaporean public on display.
Read MoreIn her third piece for GRC, Reena Devi plumbs the depths of human existence through a seemingly trendy tendency towards the deeply spiritual, and the sometimes downright shamanistic. Beginning with the hermetic paintings of Hilma Af Klint (and her hugely attended retrospective), as well as other contemporary artists who dabble in mystical practice, Reena broadens this generation’s and its artists’ call to the spiritual, into a contemporary question germane to all.
Read MoreIn her second piece, GRC writer Akanksha Raja discusses the Singapore Climate Rally—a decidedly non-protest held last month in Hong Lim Park—to address this generation’s approach to the larger, geopolitical conversation on climate crisis, as well as the ambivalent responses from our local public. Positing notions of what advocacy and activism could mean in a place like this, she asks where the public and pragmatic coincide.
Read MoreIn his second GRC piece, Sharaad Kuttan reviews “Merdeka / 獨立 /சுதந்திரம்”, WILD RICE's recent play by Alfian Sa’at and Neo Hai Bin. Sharaad traces our artistic inclination to question our colonial past back to an earlier intervention by the late Lee Wen—AIM (Artists Investigating Monuments), a performance piece staged in 2000.
Read MoreIn her second GRC piece, Reena Devi comments on the practice of London-based multi-disciplinary research group Forensic Architecture and explores the shifting parameters of a seemingly insular art world, and the power of art (and revolutionary praxis) to incite change.
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