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?

Remember 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

In 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.

In 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.

In 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.

For 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.

Reena 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.

Confronted 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?

From 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.

Ng 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.