Studio Bibliothèque

Three in One

2009-05-10T23:45:00.000-07:00

Painting

Acrylic on corrugated board

120 x 180 cm (incl. frame)

2001

I am this, that and neither.

Anatomical: Architectural

2009-05-10T23:30:00.001-07:00

Drawing

Deskjet on cloth (series of 12)

70 x 70 cm (incl. frame) each

2004

How do buildings look like when they relate to one another physically? This work peers into elevation views of 12 such buildings.

Guest-of-honour Tang Guan Bee gives his opening speech as the artist looks on.

Crowd in the gallery on the opening night of exhibition.

Prepairing for Work

2009-05-10T23:07:00.000-07:00

Photographic installation

Digital print on paper

Dimensions & scales variable

2004

My photographic installations are site-specific to the extent that they are site-parasitic. The self-portraits taken in another contexts were cut out and installed in this conservation site (St. James Power Station, Singapore) in a playful interaction between space and figure.

Detail view

Unconscious Drawing

2009-05-10T23:01:00.000-07:00

Photography

Deskjet print on paper (series of 3)

90 x 90 cm (incl. frame) each

2006

I chanced on a hawker centre during renovation, and began seeking unintended but arresting marks made or left by the users before me.

#1: Black Chair

#2: Brown Ceiling

#3: Blue Wall

How Aren't Things?

2009-05-10T22:40:00.001-07:00

Photography

Deskjet print on paper (series of 3)

90 x 90 cm (incl. frame) each

2007

When objects and spaces lose their utilitarian functions, their aesthetic ones come to the foreground.

#1: After Francis Ng

#2: After Hong Sek Chern

#3: After Chua Ek Kay

100 Ways to Make Art (and Have Sex Too)

2009-05-10T22:05:00.000-07:00

List

Digital print on canvas

350 x 150 cm

2009

Detail view

Gallery view

FULL TEXT:

100 Ways To Make Art

(And Have Sex Too)

1. Attend an art exhibition with your buddy.

2. Auction yourself off.

3. Be a French; or at least date a French. (After Map Office)

4. Bring an extra-large mat to your next beach outing. (After Christo & Jeanne-Claude)

5. Carve on the body. (After Ancient Nubian civilisation)

6. Consult a geomancer.

7. Cook. (After Rirkrit Tiravanija)

8. Critter-cam your partner. (After the recent David Attenborough)

9. Critter-cam yourself. (After the early David Attenborough)

10. Dance. (After Ah Hock & Peng Yu)

11. Date an artist. (After many artist couples)

12. Discuss art ideas while getting topped.

13. Discuss open-relationship ideas with your artist partner.

14. Do nothing much. (After Gilbert & George)

15. Do relational erotica. (Before Nicolas Bourriaud)

16. Document your blowjob. (After Andy Warhol)

17. Document your genitalia. (After Robert Mapplethorpe)

18. Don’t have a baby. (After Kacey Wong)

19. Down two glasses of wine at exhibition openings.

20. Eat well.

21. Edge in a gallery. (After Elke Krystufek)

22. Edge, surf porn sites, edge, chat, edge, draft proposals, edge….

23. Exercise, or at least jog, regularly.

24. Flash your body art.

25. Float in a tank of formaldehyde. (After Damian Hirst)

26. Fuck your sitter. (After Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio)

27. Fuck yourself. (After Charles Ray)

28. Get an abusive partner. (After Nan Goldin)

29. Get arrested together. (After Linda Montana & Tehching Hsieh)

30. Get fucked by 252 men. (After Annabel Chong)

31. Get into a photo booth.

32. Go away.

33. Go diving.

34. Go for walks.

35. Go online only after your partner is asleep. (After Heman Chong)

36. Go through the pictures in THE ARTIST’S BODY.

37. Have a pre-show launch the night before the opening.

38. Have a quickie during setup or between rehearsals.

39. Have music on during sex.

40. Hire a rapist. (After Sophie Calle)

41. Hire an amputee. (After Matthew Barney)

42. Hit the gym. (After Rassim®)

43. Include a reasonable talent/assistant fee in the proposed budget.

44. Interview a/the prostitute.

45. Invite collectors to your studio.

46. Invite God.

47. Just do it, without thinking if it is art or sex.

48. Kiss in water. (After Ulay/Abramovic)

49. Knock each other out.

50. Let go of one of these criteria: beautiful, smart, fit, adventurous, nice.

51. Let your partner suck you off while you’re working.

52. Lick curators’ ass. (After Ondrej Brody & Kristofer Paeta)

53. Live separately.

54. Look damn good. (After Elmgreen & Dragset)

55. Look like many stars. (After Cindy Sherman)

56. Make a baby with a faghag.

57. Make a porn Godard-style.

58. Make an installation with blowup dolls. (After The Chapman Brothers)

59. Make sex the theme of your art.

60. Make two boiler suits connected at the genital area. (After Lygia Clark)

61. Marry a curator. (After Yuk King Tan)

62. Marry an art dealer. (After Sam Taylor-Wood)

63. Marry an MA student. (After Samson Young)

64. Map out who you wish to fuck. (After Simon Patterson)

65. Masturbate dead artists through a seance. (For Jaffa Lam)

66. Must-have’s: name cards, rubber, lub, camera, mint, floss.

67. Own a copy of ENCYCLOPEDIA OF UNUSUAL SEXUAL PRACTICES and keep it safe.

68. Participate in a sex-themed project.

69. Photograph the bed afterward. (After Lee Kit)

70. Pose for Kama sutra.

71. Prolong foreplay.

72. Read pornography to corpses. (After Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook)

73. Record your squirm as you’re inspired by an eight-incher.

74. Remix your recordings of moans. (After Vitto Acconci)

75. Rework the Phalanstery. (After Charles Fourier)

76. Rip each other’s clothes off. (After Yoko Ono)

77. Save a screen shot of all your chat windows.

78. Seal your cum in a good bottle. (After Piero Manzoni)

79. Send sexy emails the morning after.

80. Set a timetable.

81. Shave each other. (After Josef Ng)

82. Show your unmade bed. (After Tracey Emin)

83. Sign up for Film 101: Camerawork with Edison.

84. Sleep a lot.

85. Snap that tight ass! (After David Hockney)

86. Speak in Shakespearian English during intercourse.

87. Spit on each other. (After Pablo Picasso)

88. Squirt on your partner’s body and title it AFTER POLLOCK. (After Keith Boadwee)

89. Stock. (After Michael Lee)

90. Strobe-light your bedroom.

91. Study an astrology book.

92. Subscribe to xtube.

93. Supervise your own ads. (After Jeff Koons)

94. Swear to god that you won’t have sex anymore.

95. Take a golden shower. (After Otto Mühl)

96. Type with one hand.

97. Use a mechanical third hand. (After Sterlac)

98. Use a pet. (After Joseph Beuys)

99. Use ice as a material for your next sculpture piece.

100. Use your brain.

with Heman Chong, Stefen Chow, Ming, Arron Khek, Tan See Kam and Doris Wong

Stud House

2009-05-10T21:32:00.000-07:00

Architectural model

Compressed foam, paper & acrylic

36 x 36 x 36cm

2003

How do two persons live together without getting sick of each other? My solution in 2003 was to design a hypothetical house comprising two separate annexes, one for each member of the couplehood. Amidst the mutual exclusivity and privacy are spaces and moments of intrusions and connections - slit windows, the rooftop pool etc. - aimed at regulating desire. Appropriating the human figures of uber-macho men and the purist architectural forms of Corbusier, this work suggests a neurotic solution to an impossible/perennial search of self and relationship.

Installation view

Detail view: ground level

Detail view: rope

Detail view: staircase

Detail view: ladder

Gallery view: LEFT: Work by Chris Tan, BACK: Work by Charlie Tan

Publishing

2009-04-28T08:28:00.000-07:00

Anthology

2008 | Preoccupations: Things Artists Do Anyway

Artist's Book

2008 | The Consolations of Museology

2008 | Every Architecture is a Banana

2008 | For Good Confessions, Please Stir

2007 | The $100,000 Gallery of Art

2007 | Confessions of a Slug

2007 | Appearance of Desire

Companion Publication

2008 | Unbookshop

2008 | Foundations: The Consolations of Museology

2008 | Hong Kong Anarchitecture Bananas

2008 | Eniminiminimos: Artists Who Make Things Small

2007 | Documents: The $100,000 Gallery of Art

2007 | Autobibliophiles: Artists Who Make or Use Books

2006 | Appetites for Litter: The 6th Emerging Artists Show

2005 | When a Body Meets a Building

2003 | Cinepolitans: Inhabitants of a Filmic City

Curating

2009-04-28T08:06:00.000-07:00

Solo

2007 | Between, Besides, Beyond: Daniel Libeskind's Reflections and Key Works, 1989-2014

Group

2008 | Preoccupations: Things Artists Do Anyway (with Cornelia Erdmann)

2008 | Hong Kong Anarchitecture Bananas (with Lee Chun Fung)

2008 | Eniminiminimos: Artists Who Make Things Small

2008 | Arrest

2007 | Autobiobliophiles: Artists who make or use books

2006 | Appetites for Litter: The 6th Emerging Artists Show

2005 | Txtrapolis: Contemporary Text-Based Art from S’pore

2004 | In the Flesh: Nude in Contemporary Art (with Sim Kok Huoy & Tay Swee Siong)

2004 | WoodLand, Woodlands Regional Library (with Ahamd Mashadi & June Yap)

2003 | Cinepolitans: Inhabitants of a Filmic City (with Tang Ling Nah)

2001 | Eye-dentifying Peranakan Cultures (with Sim Kok Huoy & Hong Sek Chern)

Bookshop

2009-04-23T10:21:00.000-07:00

I. Where to Buy

Distributors

Singapore | Select Books

UK | Gazelle

Retailers

Beijing | "the shop", Timezone 8

Berlin | Pro qm

Guangzhou | Vitamin Creative Space

Hong Kong | Blue Lotus, Delay No More, Kapok, Kubrick, Mackie, Palace

Macau | Pinto Livros

Singapore | Asylum, Basheer, Books Actually, Earshot, La Libreria, Food #03, Select

Online purchase

Singapore | studiobibliotheque (Click "Add to Cart")

Singapore | WORM

UK | amazon.co.uk

US | amazon.com

II. What to Buy (Click here)

Anthology

2008 | Preoccupations: Things Artists Do Anyway

Companion Publication

2009 | Drawing Out Conversations: Hong Kong Leg

2008 | Unbookshop

2008 | Foundations: The Consolations of Museology

2008 | Drawing Out Conversations: Eight Slangs

2008 | Eniminiminimos: Artists Who Make Things Small

2008 | Hong Kong Anarchitecture Bananas: Artists Who Reclaim Space

2007/8 | As Brutal As a Sharpened Pencil

2007 | Autobibliophiles: Artists Who Make or Use Books

2007 | The $100,000 Gallery of Art

2007 | Documents: The $100,000 Gallery of Art

2007 | Send Me an Angel

2006 | Appetites for Litter: The 6th Emerging Artists Show

2005 | When a Body Meets a Building

2003 | Cinepolitans: Inhabitants of a Filmic City

Artist's Book

2008 | The Consolations of Museology - SOLD!

2008 | Every Architecture is a Banana

2007 | MY ARTISTS - LIMITED COPIES LEFT!

2007 | The $100,000 Gallery of Art - SOLD!

DVD

2008 | Come Out and Play!

2008 | Hinterlands (insert of Foundations: The Consolations of Museology)

Press

2009-04-23T10:18:00.002-07:00

Curatorial Introduction

2007 | Contextless Bodies in Skive: A Worker's Guide

Text Contribution

2008 | obliquely affected

2008 | How To Doodle, or A Private View on an Artist's Everyday Life

Preview

2008 | Anarchitecture Bananas

Review

2009 | Love Simply

2008 | A Glimpse into Lives of Artists

2008 | AAA Project: Review of A-Z, 26 Locations to Put Everything

2008 | Afternoon Tea with Michael Lee

2008 | Art varies in size and value

2008 | Books: Preoccupations****

2008 | Book Review: Preoccupations: Things Artists Do Anyway (Singapore Architect)

2008 | Book Review: Preoccupations: Things Artists Do Anyway (macauCLOSER)

2008 | Confessions of an Artist

2008 | Hong Kong Anarchitecture Bananas (ampost)

2008 | It's a bit personal

2008 | Kidnap Urban Spaces

2008 | Kidnapping Exhibition Sadness

2008 | Mixed fortunes | John Batten

2008 | Troisième triennale de Canton

2008 | What artists do for fun

2008 | Planning a City of Sadness

2008 | Reform

2008 | Obsessions

2008 | Sad Architecture, Regrettably Exhibited

2008 | Small wonders make big impression

2007 | Show and Tell

2007 | WE: Negotiating the Fabric of the Real and the Imagined

2007 |Daniel Libeskind's Reflections and Key Works, 1989 - 2014 Exhibition

2007 | The $100,000 Art Gallery

2007 | Singapore artists crosses the sea to train new talents

2007 | Show and tell

2007 | re-examining our heritage

2007 | Provocative Ghost-less shells

2007 | From Words to Pictures: Art During the Emergency

2007 | building a need for space

2007 | Book Lovers Unite!

2006 | alter-aesthetics - Lovely load of rubbish?

2004 | Off the Beaten Track

Commentary

2008 | On abysses and other dark matter

2008 | Encounters

2007 | An Invisible Influence

2006 | On Roads Much Travelled

2006 | From Tian'anmen to Times Square

Interview

2008 | Untitled (Interview with Cornelia Erdmann)

2008 | Preoccupations: Things Artists Do Anyway (Radio interview)

Online mention

2008 | The Consolations of Museology

2008 | the cattle depot artist’s commune & anarchitecture bananas

2008 | Hong Kong Anarchitecture Bananas

2007 | Michael Lee's Skive: A Worker's Guide installation

Making

2009-04-23T10:15:00.001-07:00

Artist's Book

2008 | The Consolations of Museology

2008 | The Booked, the Unbooked and the Unbookable

2008 | For Good Confessions, Please Stir

2008 | Every Architecture is a Banana

2007 | Confessions of a Slug

2007 | The $100,000 Gallery of Art

2007 | Appearance of Desire

Architectural Model

2008 | Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Which is the Sweetest Home of Them All?

2008 | The Consolations of Museology

2007 | The $100,000 Gallery of Art

2005-6 | City Planned: Tracing Monuments

2005 | Notes Towards a Corporeal City

2005 | Anak

2004 | Vertigo

2003 | Stud House

Paper Sculpture

2008 | Will the Real Phoenix Please Stand Up?

2008 | Mail Order: Gifts from Heaven

2008 | The BIG Sweep

Text, Map & List

2010 | Notes Towards a Museum of Cooking Pot Bay

2009 | 100 Ways to Make Art (and Have Sex Too)

2008 | An Almost Natural History of Social Relations

Photography & Photo-Installation

2007 | How Aren't Things?

2006 | Unconscious Drawing

2005/7 | Skive: A Worker's Guide

2004 | Body Meets Building (contribution to Mindwasabi)

2004 | Staircase: A User's Guide

2004 | Prepairing for Work

Painting & Drawing

2004 | Anatomical: Architectural

2002 | The Work of Shadow in an Age of Electronic Repercussion

2001 | Three in One

Video

2008 | Curatorial Documentation of Eniminimimos (Work-in-Progress)

2005 | Elsewhere, Elsewhen (#4 of 8)

2005 | Saying Thank You By Saying Sorry (Arts Awards 2005)

2004 | Cinetectonics of Desire

2004 | A Psychotectonic Experiment

2001/3 | A Thesis on Cruising

2001 | Non-Art Objects

2003 | Caressing the Gallery

1999 | When Ends Don't Meet

1996-7/2001 | One or Zero

Performance

2007 | Appearance of Desire

2005/7 | Skive: A Worker's Guide

2004 | Prepairing for Work

2004 | Body Meets Building (contribution to Mindwasabi)

2004 | Cinetectonics of Desire

2004 | A Psychotectonic Experiment

Watch video on Youtube:

Download portfolio on PDF:

Video

2009-04-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

Single-screen videos

2008 | Hinterlands: The Consolations of Museology

1996-7 | One or Zero

Video installations

2003 | A Thesis on Cruising

Photography

2009-04-23T10:02:00.000-07:00

Two-dimensional photography

2008 | How Aren't Things

2007 | Unconscious Drawings

Photographic installations

2007 | Skive: A Worker's Guide

Photographic videos

2004 | Cinetectonics of Desire

2004 | A Psychotectonic Experiement

Exhibition

2009-04-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

Participated exhibitions (solo)

2008-9 | A Psychotaxonomy of Home

2004 | When a Body Meets a Building

Participated exhibitions (group)

2009 | Curating Lab::100 Remix

2009 | No Sex in the City

2008 | The 3rd Guangzhou Triennial

2005 | The 2005 World Exposition

2005 | Asian Traffic

Curated exhibitions

2008 | Hong Kong Anarchitecture Bananas: Artists Who Reclaim Space

2008 | Arrest

2008 | Eniminiminimos: Artists Who Make Things Small

2007 | Autobibliophiles: Artists Who Make or Use Books

2007 | Between, Besides, Beyond: Daniel Libeskind's Reflections and Key Works, 1989-2014

2006 | Appetites for Litter

2005 | Txtrapolis: Contemporary Text-based Art from Singapore

2003 | Cinepolitans: Inhabitants of a Filmic City

2001 | Eye-dentifying Peranakan Cultures

Hosted exhibitions

2009 | Drawing Out Conversations: Hong Kong Leg

Writing

2009-04-23T09:45:00.000-07:00

Aphorism & List

2009 | 100 Ways to Make Art (and Have Sex Too)

2008 | Manifesto No. 1 (c/o Hong Kong Anarchitecture Bananas)

2007 | Manifesto (c/o MY ARTISTS)

2007 | Appearance of Desire

Experiment

2005 | When Medusa Meets Pinocchio

2003 | Grouses Overheard

Map

2010 | Notes Towards a Museum of Cooking Pot Bay

2008 | An Almost Natural History of Social Relations

Statement & Book Preface

2008 | Homes for the Damned

2005 | What's a Body Got to Do with a Building?

Curatorial & Editorial Introduction

2008 | On Doing

2008 | Small is Big

2008 | On Slowness and Solidification

2008 | Daze in the City

2008 | These Books Are Made For Watching

2007 | Reflections as Intervention

2006 | One Trash's Man is Another's Monster

2005 | Txtrapolis

2004 | Unclad

2004 | A Brief Art History of Nature

2003 | Cinepolitans (co-written with Tang Ling Nah)

2001 | Eye-dentifying Pernakan Cultures)

Catalogue & Brochure Contribution

2007 | Manifesto (c/o MY ARTISTS)

2006 | Untitled (c/o Positions)

2006 | Encyclopedia Blankia

2005 | The Truth about David Chan's Cats and Dogs

2005 | On Being Unsure

2005 | The Shadow Escapes....

2004 | Spirited Away

Commentary & Review

2009 | Aesthetic as Relief

2009 | Museums of the Imagination

2009 | Possible, All Too Possible

2009 | Natural Born Failures

2008 | Library of Mess

2008 | One Plus One Makes More

2008 | Typing as Prophecy

2008 | How to be a Dummy

2004 | The Inevitable Body

2003 | Critique of the Urban Order

2003 | Contemporary Singapore Filmmaking (co-written with Tan See Kam & Annette Aw)

2003 | Tackling History

2003 | Poetics of the Ruin

2000 | Dead Man Gazing

Interview & Conversation

2009 | Space & its Creative Energies: Hu Fang

2007 | Drawing Bodies: Genevieve Chua

2005 | Notes Towards an Interdisciplinary Artist

Editing

2008 | Drawing Out Conversations: Eight Slangs

2006 | Send Me An Angel

Copyediting & Proofreading

2009 | the sky i wish to share with you

Publishing

2008 | The Consolations of Museology

2008 | Unbookshop

2008 | Foundations: The Consolations of Museology

2008 | Every Architecture is a Banana

2008 | Preoccupations: Things Artists Do Anyway

2007 | The $100,000 Gallery of Art

2007 | Documents: The $100,000 Gallery of Art

2006 | Appetites for Litter: The 6th Emerging Artists Show

2005 | When a Body Meets a Building

2003 | Cinepolitans: Inhabitants of a Filmic City

Publication

2009-04-23T09:36:00.001-07:00

Artist's Books

2008 | The Consolations of Museology

2008 | Every Architecture is a Banana

2007 | The $100,000 Gallery of Art

Exhibition Catalogues

2008 | Foundations: The Consolations of Museology

2007 | Documents: The $100,000 Gallery of Art

2006 | Appetites for Litter: The 6th Emerging Artists Show

2005 | When a Body Meets a Building

2003 | Cinepolitans: Inhabitants of a Filmic City

Anthologies

2008 | Preoccupations: Things Artists Do Anyway

Paper-Engineering

2009-04-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

Architectural models

2008 | The Consolations of Museology

2008 | Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Which is the Sweetest Home of Them All?

2007 | The $100,000 Gallery of Art

2005-6 | City Planned: Tracing Monuments

2003 | Stud House

Paper sculptures

2008 | The BIG Sweep

2008 | Will the Real Phoenix Please Stand Up?

Paper installations

2008 | Mail Order: Gifts from Heaven

Manipulated books

2008 | Every Architecture is a Banana

City Planned: Tracing Monuments

2009-04-12T05:10:00.000-07:00

Installation of architectural models

Bristol board

1:100 scale

2005-6

This work comprises 21 sets of massing models of demolished or collapsed buildings in Singapore.

"Sparrow," after National Theatre (1963-86) on Clemenceau Avenue

"The Four Musketeers," after Stamford Court (c.1954-2004) on Prinsep Street

"Tierra! Tierra! Tierra!," after Cathay Building (1939-c.2003) on Mount Sophia

"Lessons on Modern Tectonics," after Lido Cinema & Shaw Centre (1958-90) on Scotts Road

"Caterpillars," after Forfar House (1956-96) at Queenstown

"Bracketing the Rain," after Singapore Improvement Trust public flats (1958-c.2003) on Upper Pickering Street

"Look, I am an Other?!," after Maryland Point (1982-2006) on Blks 27 & 35 Amber Gardens

"Love is still, in the Heir," based on Hotel New World (1971-86) on Serangoon Road

"Memoirs of a Kimono," after Marco Polo Hotel (1981-c.2000) on Tanglin

"Excuse Me, Are You the Next Top Model," after Van Kleef Aquarium (1965-1993) on River Valley Road

"Apple Strudels," based on Gan Eng Seng School (1951-89) on Anson Road

"Great Barrel Reefs," after Khong Guan Flour Milling Ltd on Tanjong Rhu Road

"Picassonata," after Buona Vista Community Centre (1982-2006) on Holland Drive

"Scaling Renewed Heights," after Odeon Cinema (1946-c.1984) on North Bridge Road

LEFT: "Sleepwalking Like an Egyptian," after Bukit Gombak Community Centre (1980-2005) on Hillview Road; RIGHT: "When Tom Meets Jerry," after Whitley Secondary School (1965-92) on Whitley Road

"Courting Yard," after National Library (1960-2004) on Stamford Road

FOREGROUND: Back of "Sparrow," after National Theatre (1963-86) on Clemenceau Avenue

"Logs, Chocs and Smoked Chickens," afte Expo Gateway, Harbour Pavilion, and Exhibition Halls 1 – 6 @ World Trade Centre (1977/92-2002) on Telok Blangah Road

Museums of the Imagination: Doris Wong Wai Yin

2009-02-01T02:37:00.000-08:00

TEXT BY Michael Lee Hong Hwee

PHOTO BY Kwan Sheung Chi

Singapore Architect #249

A museum is an institution that serves the society by collecting, studying, caring for and exhibiting artworks and artifacts of lasting value or interest, for the purposes of education and enjoyment. Not just an archive of history and memory, it is also a generator of continually updated knowledge about humanity’s past, present and future. What if a museum or an art system is deemed deficient? The Hong Kong art scene responds with ground-up initiatives and vivid imagination.

The Hong Kong art scene is characterized, as art critic John Batten observes, by “mixed fortunes.” The city has the world’s third-largest art market after New York and London in terms of auction turnover, but the local art scene “remains mostly unaffected by this newfound status” (Sunday Morning Post, 28 Dec 2008). Three common grievances about the Hong Kong Museum of Art are its bureaucratic structure, opaque acquisition policy, and weak curatorial programming. These weaknesses translate to a year-round of mostly uninspiring programmes. Since 1975, the Hong Kong Art Biennal Exhibition (this year renamed the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Biennal Awards) at its premises remains more a community-based art competition than a showcase of international cutting-edged art, while its ongoing Hong Kong Art: Open Dialogue series, which invites external curators to curate shows, with a focus on local art, only occasionally looks promising. Projects that expressly foster ‘Hong Kong art’ (often featuring only Hong Kong practitioners) are self-defeating by, ironically, limiting dialogues with the global art circuit. West Kowloon, a mega-scale cultural district project that includes a contemporary art museum called M+, still lacks a strong mission, vision and plan since its public announcement by the authorities in 2001. The unconducive art museum system in Hong Kong has inspired initiatives from ground up. Alternative art spaces like Para/Site Art Space (est. 1996) and 1a space (est. 1998) have sprung up to offer contemporary art offerings. Though involving such spaces presenting programmes loosely linked by a theme, October Contemporary, the annual month-long art festival since 2007, remains a string of fringe events to an absent biennale that it strives to be. What is Your Dream Museum? (2008), a project conceived by the Asia Art Archive to collect ideas from the community, had an earnest aim and sleek execution, but report of key findings or proposal to better the city’s museum practices is still nonexistent. Perhaps the art scene’s saving grace is its participation in the Venice Biennale since 2001, which has so far supported the city’s top artists such as anothermountainman and Map Office to engage with the world. On the whole, the vision for Hong Kong to be Asia’s World City remains at the levels of concept, debate and teacup storm.

Among art museums of the imagination, those ongoingly dreamt up by Hong Kong artist Doris Wong Wai Yin are noteworthy. They are diverse in presentational form, medium and museological programming, with the artist asserting her idiosyncratic tastes and playing the roles of a make-believe curator, director, architect, planner and even arsonist of art institutions. Importantly, her imaginary museums reveal insights on and blind spots in the cultural scene.

In shifting the emphasis from aesthetic and material concerns to ‘ideas’ and ‘intentions,’ conceptual art in the West nonetheless developed along two trajectories. Since mid-1960s, the first tendency focuses on anti-commodification, institutional critique and the use of ‘concepts’ as materials. The placement of a chair, the photograph of the chair and an enlarged definition of a chair in Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs (1965), and Lawrence Weiner’s Declaration of an Intent (1968) series consisting only of words bearing the principles or instructions about art-making and doing away with physical crafting of art objects, are typical of this first tendency. The second, a notable return to object-based practice, is exemplified by the work of Young British Artists since the Freeze exhibition that Damien Hirst curated in 1988, and may range from the latter’s large sculptures such as The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living (1991) to intimate confessionals by Tracey Emin. The split between these tendencies offers options, and dilemmas, for contemporary artists who investigate and imagine alternatives to existing institutions. This is especially so in the case of Doris Wong.

Wong’s artistic mission is steeped in the discourse of truth. She writes: “I desire to make an honest piece…. My longing is for an honest piece. I am unable to claim this without losing honesty.” (artist’s statement, 2005). In her work, Wong casts a critical eye on institutional processes, examines their underlying ideological structures and reveals them by way of parody. Examples are The Contribution of Modern Art (2007), a painted copy of the book Collage; a mock-Phaidon monograph for Niyiaw Gnow (her name reversed), and an in-progress book, Being an Artist for Dummy (2008). The artist does not reproduce the ‘original’ literally; she aligns her practice with the claim of postmodern thinkers like Jean Baudrillard and Roland Barthes, that the distinction between ‘real’ and ‘fake’ is neither possible nor meaningful. Jeff Leung, curator of the group exhibition, aWay (2006), says of Wong’s work: “The roughness of the imitation quickly dispels any doubt that it is an ordinary object, and compels the viewers to explore the intention of the ‘work’.” Leung’s take on Wong’s practice is interesting, because he seems to suggest that good intentions are a valid reason or fair compensation for any shortfall in material crafting and choreography of viewing experience. His view is also symptomatic of a broader ‘hermeneutic fetish’ in Hong Kong’s cultural scene whose particular demand on ‘intention’ and ‘meaning’ in a work, in my view, legitimizes, nurtures but also limits the development of conceptualist practice here.

The responses to Wong’s Exhibitions On – Fire! (2007) demonstrate the limits of hermeneutics. This triptych comprises sequential photographs of several Hong Kong-based cultural institutions first moulded into massing scale models, then set on fire and left to burn. According to the artist, she was bombarded with questions of why she is so ungrateful of Osage Gallery, John Batten Gallery and Hong Kong Museum of Art as to play an ‘arsonist,’ albeit imaginarily, of these art institutions. Such responses suggest the ignorance, or disregard, of the layered symbolisms and uses of fire as not just for malicious destruction but also in rituals like meal preparation and spiritual communion.

For Wong Wai Wheel Art Space (2008), the artist plays the curator of an exhibition entitled Sun of Beach expressed as a miniature model of a mobile gallery on wheels and tugged around in appeal for financial assistance of artists. I agree with curator Alvaro Rodriguez Fominaya’s observation that Wong’s work “reflect on the idea of how History of Art is constructed and how the system of art, as mechanism, works,” but I am unsure if it reflects “a deep sense of humour,” as he claims. The particularity of Wong’s humour is that they are light and evasive, which allows her to produce work that have relative strength in prolificacy, versatility and wit over rigour. A shortfall of the latter becomes especially evident when one examines her text-heavy pieces. 38 Things To Get Ready For Guangzhou Triennial: Emerging Artist Version (2008), though witty and contextually appropriate, begs rounds of copyediting and proofreading. In pieces that Wong veers towards idea-based conceptualism or relational aesthetics (Nicolas Bourriaud), such as when her parody pieces are touchable by audience or tugged around, the magic of imagining her proposed museums is sacrificed in the service of a meaningful cause or concept. This calls to mind Susan Sontag’s observation, in Against Interpretation (1966), of the overemphasis on intellectually constructed concepts among contemporary art critics, which downplays the spiritual dimensions of art as sources of defence against brute rationality and empiricism.

The artist’s two strongest series of museum proposals to date are pieces that operate on illusionism, even though they exist variously as paintings, models and posters. If you have money, build HK a museum (2007-8) comprises a set of eight model-cum-poster proposals for art museums conceived around mediums and expressions: P+ Hong Kong is meant to house the city’s collection of paintings, and others are for sculpture, ink, performance, photography. The wordplay in HK Brain Storm and Anti-Hong Kong Musee of Art reveals the artist’s awareness of and capacity in harnessing language’s complexity.

For Hong Kong Artist Museum (2008), the artist uses acrylic to paint her impressions of proposed museums to house works by local artists. Currently she is at 25 of her aim of 100 museums. This series sees the artist at her best as a freestyle remixer of key artists’ work, architectural canons, painterly styles all based on a Hockneyian (i.e., non-linear) perspective. Among the artists she pays homage to in this series are veterans like Frog King and Chan Yuk Keung but also mid-career practitioners like Leung Chi Wo and Kacey Wong, and younger ones like her contemporaries Lee Kit and Kwan Sheung Chi. The Chu Hing Wah Museum is a reference to the Swiss architect Le Corbusier’s seminal work, Villa Savoye (1929), at Poissy, France, while the Kwan Sheung Chi Museum is practically sited on The Peak Tower in Central, Hong Kong. It is unclear if her proposals constitute postmodernist pastiches of visual references or practical suggestions of adaptive reuse of existing buildings into artist museums. This uncertainty in intention and selection criteria of artists, coupled with the use of external rather than inside views of all her museums, leaves much to the audience’s imagination rather than dictate their viewing experience.

The significance of Wong’s hypothetical museums is two-fold: Firstly, they reveal the lack of proper infrastructure for a contemporary art scene through which Hong Kong can engage with the world. They do this not simply by informal grouses but with an aesthetic transformation of the existing with alternatives infused with humour, and in the better cases, triggering wonder and reflection on the value of art. Ironically, such critiques could not have been possible without a respectful homage to art institutions and artists as key recorders and producers of knowledge about arts and culture. In mocking at existing art institutions and proposing new ones, Wong offers a series of visual primers on Hong Kong art and artists. Yet by focusing only on notable individual artists born and working in Hong Kong, she has left out a host of other artist-categories, such as Hong Kong-born artists based abroad (e.g., Suki Chan and Simon Leung), foreign artists who are or have based here (e.g., Andrew Guthrie), and art collectives (e.g., Map Office). It will be interesting to see how she fills up the rest of her 100 artist museums in this series, and how she conceives her a new series of proposed Hong Kong Contemporary Art Museums, “until Hong Kong actually has one,” as she intends.

Secondly and paradoxically, Wong’s museum proposals have important implications in a realm beyond worldly endeavours, including the trials and tribulations of an emerging contemporary art scene like Hong Kong’s. Her museums are important precisely because they are infeasible. Along this line of thinking, Wong’s museum proposals retain their highest artistic value as images and objects referring to ideas and sentiments about art museums rather than actually built or buildable projects. Her proposal of Leung Chi Wo Museum to be at the Rietveld Schröder House (1924), in Utrecht, includes positioning his work desk in a dark field, under an equally gloomy sky except for portions of it, in a way similar to Leung’s signature photographic series of bottom-up views of the sky left over from high-rise buildings. It is as if a hole in the shape of Leung’s piece of the sky has opened up, no matter by serendipitous cloud formation, laser light projection or a depleted ozone layer; or, her proposal could well have smacked the museum in the midst of an urban jungle. At once painful and poetic, Wong’s proposal borders on the apocalyptic, absurd and useless, thereby drawing us away from our everyday realities. As Robert Harbison argues, “uselessness is the most sublime of all human constructs, and art fulfills itself in floating miles above every desperate human involvement” (The Built, the Unbuilt and the Unbuildable, 1991).

Seemingly in a dilemma between pursuing meaningful causes sometimes at the expense of material rigour and pursuing an aesthetic experience whereby audiences can enter her proposed dream worlds of art museums, Wong is ‘caught’ between the first wave of concept-based conceptualism and the second, more object-based practice. Perhaps it is this in-betweenness that puts Wong in the best position to continue investigating more engaging and experimental museological ideas to shake up a cultural scene tightly embalmed in protectionism and hermeneutics. In this way, in the event that Hong Kong still does not get a proper contemporary art museum in the short or long term, which will not be surprising, at least the artist has better success rate in stirring more people to more periodically think about the value of art and of imagination amidst the humdrum of everyday life.

More information on the artist is available on wwy.hk

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2009 | Museums of the Imagination: Doris Wong Wai Yin (280109 draft)

2009-01-31T10:07:00.001-08:00

Museums of the Imagination:

Doris Wong Wai Yin

TEXT BY Michael Lee Hong Hwee

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF Doris Wong Wai Yin

(280109 draft for Singapore Architect #249)

In shifting the emphasis from aesthetic and material concerns to ‘ideas’ and ‘intentions,’ conceptual art nonetheless developed along two trajectories. Since mid-1960s, the first tendency focuses on anti-commodification, institutional critique and the use of ‘concepts’ as materials. The second, a notable return to object-based practice, is exemplified by the Young British Artists since the Freeze exhibition that Damien Hirst curated in 1988. The split between these tendencies offers options, and dilemmas, for contemporary artists who investigate and imagine alternatives to existing institutions. In this regard, imaginary museum is a complex genre as a critique, a homage and an aesthetic transformation of available institutions of art. This is especially so in the case of Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong art scene has been characterized, as art critic John Batten observes, by “mixed fortunes.” The city has the world’s third-largest art market after New York and London in terms of auction turnover, but the local art scene “remains mostly unaffected by this newfound status” (Sunday Morning Post, 28 Dec 2008). Three common grievances about the Hong Kong Museum of Art are its bureaucratic structure, opaque acquisition policy, and weak curatorial programming. The Hong Kong Art Biennal Exhibition (this year renamed the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Biennal Awards) at its premises remains more a community-based festival than a showcase of international cutting-edged art, while its ongoing Hong Kong Art: Open Dialogue series, which invites external curators to curate shows here, occasionally looks promising. West Kowloon, a mega-scale cultural district project that includes a contemporary art museum called M+, still lacks a strong mission, vision and plan since its public announcement by the authorities in 2001. The unconducive art museum system in Hong Kong has inspired initiatives from ground up. Alternative art spaces like Para/Site Art Space (est. 1996) and 1a space (est. 1998) have sprung up to offer contemporary art offerings. Involving such spaces presenting programmes loosely linked by a theme, October Contemporary, the annual month-long art festival since 2007, remains a collection of fringe events to an absent biennale that it strives to be. What is Your Dream Museum? (2008), a project conceived by the Asia Art Archive to collect ideas from the community, had an earnest aim and sleek execution, but report of findings or proposal to better the city’s museum practices is still nonexistent. On the whole, developments that aim to foster ‘Hong Kong art’ ends up more protectionist than engaging with global practices, and serves to keep the city from engaging with the international contemporary art circuit. The vision for Hong Kong to be Asia’s World City remains ‘conceptual’ and ‘debatable.’

Among art museums of the imagination, those ongoingly dreamt up by Hong Kong artist Doris Wong Wai Yin are noteworthy. They are diverse in presentational form, medium and museological programming, with the artist asserting her idiosyncratic tastes in playing the roles of a make-believe curator, director, architect, planner and even arson of art institutions. Importantly, these imaginary museums reveal insights about and blind spots in the cultural scene.

Wong’s artistic mission is steeped in the discourse of truth. She writes: “I desire to make an honest piece…. My longing is for an honest piece. I am unable to claim this without losing honesty.” (artist’s statement, 2005). In her work, Wong casts a critical eye on institutional processes, examines underlying ideological structures and reveals them by way of parody. Examples are Matisse calender (2008), van Gogh acrylic tube paint (2008), a Phaidon monograph for Niyiaw Gnow (her name reversed) and an in-progress book, Being an Artist for Dummy (2008). The artist does not reproduce the ‘original’ literally, understandably, as she aligns her practice with the claim of postmodern thinkers like Jean Baudrillard and Roland Barthes, that the distinction between ‘real’ and ‘fake’ is neither possible nor meaningful. Jeff Leung, curator of the group exhibition, aWay (2006), says of Wong’s work: “The roughness of the imitation quickly dispels any doubt that it is an ordinary object, and compels the viewers to explore the intention of the ‘work’.” Leung’s take on Wong’s practice is interesting, because he seems to suggest that good intentions are the valid reason or fair compensation for any shortfall in material crafting and choreography or the viewing experience. His view is also symptomatic of the broader ‘hermeneutic fetish’ in Hong Kong cultural scene whose particular demand on ‘intention’ and ‘meaning’ in a work, in my view, legitimizes, nurtures but also limits the development of conceptualist practice here.

The responses to Wong’s photographic triptych, Exhibitions On – Fire! (2007), demonstrates the limitation on hermeneutics. According to the artist, she was bombarded with questions of why she is so critical and ungrateful of art institutions to the extent of setting their models on fire, as captured on photographs. Such responses suggest the ignorance, or disregard, of the layered symbolisms of fire as not just for destruction but also in rituals like meal preparation and spiritual communion. For Wong Wai Wheel Art Space (2008), the artist plays the curator of an exhibition entitled Sun of Beach expressed as a miniature model of a mobile gallery on wheels and tugged around in appeal for financial assistance of artists. I agree with curator Alvaro Rodriguez Fominaya’s observation that Wong’s work “reflect on the idea of how History of Art is constructed and how the system of art, as mechanism, works,” but I am unsure if “there is a deep sense of humour,” as he claims. The particularity of Wong’s humour is that they are light and evasive, which allows her to produce new works that have relative strength in prolificacy, versatility and wit over rigour. A shortfall of the latter becomes especially evident when one examines her text-heavy pieces. 38 Things To Prepare for Guangzhou Triennial: Emerging Artist Version (2008), though full of wit and contextual appropriateness, needs rounds of copyediting and proofreading. In pieces that Wong veers towards idea-based conceptualism or relational aesthetics (Nicolas Bourriaud), the magic of imagination about her proposed museums is sacrificed in service of a meaningful cause or concept. As Susan Sontag has acutely remarked in her essay, Against Interpretation (1966), the overemphasis on intellectually constructed concepts among contemporary art critics downplays the spiritual dimensions of art as sources of defence against brute rationality and empiricism.

Her two strongest series of museum proposals to date, in my view, are pieces that operate on illusionism, even though they exist variously as paintings, models and posters. If You Have Money, Build HK a Museum (2007-8) comprises a set of eight model-cum-poster proposals for art museums conceived around mediums and expressions: P+ Hong Kong houses the city’s collection of paintings, and there are also others for sculpture, ink, performance, photography. There is even one called HK Brains Storm and another called Anti-Hong Kong Musee of Art.

For Hong Kong Artist Museum (2008), the artist uses acrylic to paint her impressions (or, imaginations) of proposed museums to house works by each of 25 local artists. This series sees the artist at her best as a free appropriator of key artists, works, painterly styles and also the Hockneyian perspective. Among the artists she pays homage to are veterans like Frog King and Chan Yuk Keung but also mid-career practitioners like Leung Chi Wo and Kacey Wong, and younger ones like her contemporaries Lee Kit and Kwan Sheung Chi. The artist takes appropriation to amusing ends. The Chu Hing Wah Museum is a reference to the Swiss architect Le Corbusier’s seminal work, Villa Savoye (1929), at Poissy, France, while the Kwan Sheung Chi Museum is practically sited on the Observation Tower at The Peak at Central, Hong Kong. It is unclear if her proposal constitutes a postmodernist pastiche of references or practical suggestions of adaptive reuse of existing buildings into artist museums. This uncertainty in her intention and selection criteria, coupled with the use of macroscopic rather than inside views of all her museums, leaves much to the audience’s imagination and is the series’ strength.

The significance of Wong’s hypothetical museums is two-fold: Firstly, they reveal the lack of proper infrastructure for a contemporary art scene through which Hong Kong can engage with the world. They do this not simply by informal oral complaints but with an aesthetic transformation infused with humour, and in the better cases, triggering wonder and reflection. Ironically, such critiques could not have been possible without a respectful homage to art institutions and the artists as key archives and producers of knowledge about arts and culture. In mocking at existing art institutions and proposing new ones, she offers a series of visual primers on Hong Kong art and artists. Yet by focusing only on notable individual artists born and working in Hong Kong, she has left out a host of other artist-categories, such as Hong Kong-born artists based abroad (e.g., Suki Chan and Simon Leung), foreign artists based here (Andrew Guthrie), and art collectives (Map Office). It will be interesting to see how she fills up the rest of her 100 artist museums, or how she conceives her a new series of proposed Hong Kong Contemporary Art Museums, “until Hong Kong actually has one,” as she intends.

Seemingly in a dilemma between pursuing causes sometimes at the expense of rigour and pursuing an aesthetic experience whereby audiences can enter her proposed dream worlds of museums, Wong is caught between the first wave of concept-based conceptualism and the second, more object-based conceptual practice. Perhaps it is this in-betweenness that puts Wong in the best position to continue investigating more engaging, rigorous and experimental museological ideas for a cultural scene steeped in the fetishes of protectionism and hermeneutics, so that in the event that Hong Kong still does not get a proper contemporary art museum, which is not surprising, at least she succeeds in getting more people to more periodically think out the value of art and of imagination amidst the humdrum of everyday life.

2009 | Museums of the Imagination: Doris Wong Wai Yin (270109 draft)

2009-01-26T04:20:00.000-08:00

Museums of the Imagination:

Doris Wong Wai Yin

TEXT BY Michael Lee Hong Hwee

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF Doris Wong Wai Yin

(270109 draft for Singapore Architect #249)

Since the late1960s, in the many ways that conceptual artists sought to shift the emphasis from aesthetic and material concerns to ‘ideas’ and ‘intentions,’ two prominent tendencies emerged. The first was institutional critique, whereby artists investigated, questioned, commented on or revealed the underlying ideological, racial, gendered and sexual biases of art institutions, For example, Hans Haacke’s installation, Germania, at the Venice Biennale 1993, made explicit reference to the Biennale’s roots in fascist Italy. The other tendency was, rather ironically, more object-based than the first, as exemplified by the Young British Artists of the late 1990s, whose works ranged from Damien Hirst’s large sculptural pieces such as The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of the Living (1991) to the highly personal and emotional confessionals by Tracey Emin. The split between these two tendencies offers a range of options, and dilemmas, for contemporary artists in their practice.

The contemporary Hong Kong art scene is characterized, as art critic John Batten observes, by “mixed fortunes.” It is the world’s third-largest art market in terms of auction turnover, but the local art scene “remains mostly unaffected by this newfound status” (Sunday Morning Post, 28 Dec 2008). Two common complaints about the existing Hong Kong Museum of Art are: the rigidity of its bureaucratic structure, and the insularity of curatorial programming including the Hong Kong Biennale (this year renamed the Hong Kong Biennale Award 2009). The museum’s ongoing Hong Kong Art: Open Dialogue series, for which external curators have been invited to curate exhibitions, is an attempt to address such criticisms. The West Kowloon project, a mega-scale cultural district that includes a contemporary art museum called M+, still lacks any ambitious mission statement and concrete action plan since its public announcement by the authorities in 2001. October Contemporary, a month-long art festival involving local alternative art spaces loosely connected by a theme, and which has run for two consecutive years 2007 and 2008, remains a collection of fringe events to an absent biennale that it strove to be.

In this regard, ‘imaginary institutions’ constitutes a complex genre that engages the two seemingly distinct tendencies of conceptualism by being simultaneously a critique, a homage and an aesthetic transformation of existing institutions. The dismal state of art system in Hong Kong has inspired proposal from ground up. What is Your Dream Museum? was a project conceived by the Asia Art Archive to collate ideas from the community, but we still await how these ideas have been analysed and used towards the city’s ongoing museum practices. Among art museums of the imagination, those ongoingly dreamt up by Hong Kong artist Doris Wong Wai Yin are noteworthy in their variety of presentational form and medium and range of museological programming, whilst reflecting the artist’s idiosyncratic tastes. In her oeuvre, we sense different levels of struggles and success in addressing the apparent dilemmas between idea and form, artist’s intention and audience’s experience. Importantly, in Wong’s fantasy museums lie areas of unique strengths, blind spots and insights that illuminate the cultural scene’s present and future.

Wong’s artistic mission is steeped in the discourse of truth. She writes: “I desire to make an honest piece…. My longing is for an honest piece. I am unable to claim this without losing honesty.” (artist’s statement, 2005). Specifically, she refers to cultural theorist Roland Barthes’ book, Writing Degree Zero (1953), in which the author makes a distinction between derivation and creativity: the former associated with language and style, which appeal to conventions, while the latter linked to form, referring to specific ways an individual selects and manipulates conventions, styles and languages for a desired effect. The new is always a variant of the old. In all, Wong’s art is underpinned by a critical stance towards institutional processes, an earnest search for the truth and the acumen to perceive and produce irony. I say ‘critical’ rather than ‘self-critical’ as the artist’s observations and commentaries veers more towards the outside than inward.

The artist’s wit, prolificacy and versatility across subjects and mediums manifests well in her parody series in which she recreates artifacts of artistic canons using painting, printmaking and sculpture Among these are Matisse calender (2008), van Gogh acrylic tube paint (2008), a Phaidon monograph for Niyiaw Gnow (her name reversed) and an in-progress book, Being an Artist for Dummy (2008). She does not reproduce the original literally. “The roughness of the imitation quickly dispels any doubt that it is an ordinary object, and compels the viewers to explore the intention of the ‘work’,” says Jeff Leung (aWay exhibition catalogue, 2006). Leung’s take on Wong’s work is interesting, because he seems to be suggesting that good intentions are the valid reason or fair compensation for any shortfall (such as ‘roughness’) in material crafting. It is also suggestive of the tendency of Hong Kong conceptual art practice to remain at the early institutional critique of 1960s and 1970s conceptualism, rather than the re-embracement of the object as a portal of aesthetic experience in contemporary art from 1990s onward. I argue that it is the Hong Kong cultural scene’s particular demand on ‘intention’ and ‘meaning’ of an artwork that legitimizes, nurtures but also limits the development of conceptualist practice here, and Doris Wong’s imaginary museums are at the nexus of such hermeneutic and ideological struggles.

The responses to Wong’s photographic triptych, Exhibitions On – Fire! (2007), attest to the prevalence of a hermeneutic tendency here. According to the artist, she was bombarded with questions of why she is so critical and ungrateful of art institutions till she has to set their models on fire, as captured on photographs. Such responses suggest the ignorance, or disregard, of the layered symbolisms of burning as not just for destruction but also in rituals like meal preparation and communion with the spirits. For Wong Wai Wheel Art Space (2008), the artist plays the curator of an exhibition entitled Sun of Beach expressed as a miniature model on wheels and tugged around in appeal for financial assistance of artists. I agree with curator Alvaro Rodriguez Fominaya’s observation that Wong’s work “reflect on the idea of how History of Art is constructed and how the system of art, as mechanism, works,” but I am unsure if “there is a deep sense of humour and levity….,” as he claims. The particularity of Wong’s humour is that they are light and evasive, which allows her to continually produce new works that have relative strength in prolificacy, versatility and wit over rigour. A shortfall of rigour becomes evident when one examines her text-heavy pieces. 38 Things To Prepare for Guangzhou Triennial: Emerging Artist Version (2008), calls for a few more rounds of copyediting and proofreading.

Her two strongest series to date, in my view, are proposals for new art museums based on art forms and for individual artists in Hong Kong. If You Have Money, Build HK a Museum (2007-8) comprises a set of eight proposals for art museums conceived around mediums and expressions: P+ Hong Kong to house the city’s collection of paintings, and also others for sculpture, ink, performance, photography. There is even one called HK Brains Storm and another called Anti-Hong Kong Musee of Art. This series showcases the artist’s identification of the lack of good art museums and museum practices, and also her finesse in beautifully crafting the architectural models, photographing them and finishing off through graphic design as posters.

For Hong Kong Artist Museum (2008), the artist used acrylic to paint impressions (or rather, her imaginations) of proposed museums to house works by each of 25 local artists. Among them are veterans like Frog King and Chan Yuk Keung but also mid-career practitioners like Leung Chi Wo and Kacey Wong, and younger artists like her contemporaries Lee Kit and Kwan Sheung Chi. The artist takes appropriation to inventive ends. The Chu Hing Wah Museum is a reference to the Swiss architect Le Corbusier’s seminal work, Villa Savoye (1929), at Poissy, France, while the Kwan Sheung Chi Museum is practically sited on the Observation Tower at The Peak at Central, Hong Kong. It is unclear if her proposal constitutes a postmodernist pastiche or practical suggestions of adaptive reuse of existing buildings. This uncertainty, which triggers wonder, is the series’ strength. For the one unfamiliar with these artists, Wong’s series of painted museums offers a visually engaging and humorous primer. One appraises het painting, starts wondering how she chooses her artists for this series, and then realizes that she is ‘quite right.’ This series sees the artist at her best as a free appropriator of key artists, signature works, painterly styles and also the Hockneyian perspective. It will be interesting to see how she continues this series till she has a collection of 100 museums , as she originally intended, or how she begins her a new series of proposed Hong Kong Contemporary Art Museums, “until Hong Kong actually has one,” which she shared during a chat. Wong’s practice tackles insularity in a half-absurd, half-meek manner: By referring to other artists, she gets outside of herself and contributes to a network of ideas about Hong Kong art. Yet by focusing only on notable solo artists born and working in Hong Kong, she has left out a host of other categories, such as Hong Kong-born artists based abroad, foreign artists based here, and art collectives. Overall, her paintings, models and posters may appear to be areas of her relative strength primarily due to the illusionist quality of these media, in which one can enter into alternate realities. In more interactive pieces such as books and textual ones like brochures, the magic of her propositions is shattered. There seems to be a dilemma, unbeknownst to her, about pursuing institutional critique without regard to material study and pursuing an aesthetic experience whereby audiences can walk into her imaginary world of art museums.

By playing the roles of urban planner, architect, museum director and exhibition curator for her imaginary art museum series, Doris Wong draws attention to the dismal state of museum system currently in place in Hong Kong. Ironically, such a critique also pays homage to the institution as an important archive and producer of knowledge about arts and culture. Currently, however, her prolific collection of imaginary museums is symptomatic not just of the fast pace of living and somewhat insular practices here, but also of the trappings of ‘intention’ and ‘meaning’ as taking precedence over innovation and the audience’s aesthetic experience.

2008 | Mixed fortunes

2009-01-17T04:41:00.001-08:00

Sunday December 28 2008

Mixed fortunes

After a mostly successful year, local galleries may now find themselves on life support, writes John Batten

Hong Kong may now be the world's third-largest art market in terms of auction turnover, but the local art scene remains mostly unaffected by this newfound status.

The city's commercial galleries have had a mixed year. High-end art spaces dealing with Chinese big-name artists such as Yue Minjun, Zhang Xiaogang, Cai Guoqiang and Xu Bing, and those that put second-tier artists up for auction have done well this year. But high rents and clients who resolutely focused on contemporary Chinese art meant that sales were concentrated in a tight range.

Galleries dealing in art from other countries, including ceramics, photography and sculpture, benefited from the general buzz, but high costs dented earnings.

A symbol of the froth early in the year was the Chanel Mobile Art exhibition, which featured art inspired by that company's ubiquitous bag, with some of the world's biggest art names jostling for space in architect Zaha Hadid's 'art container'.

The overt commercialism of the exhibition was marginally offset by the spotlit eeriness of Hadid's oval egg against Hong Kong's famed skyline. For those interested in the slick relationship between art, design and the business world, the exhibition was a must-see. (The show, which was due to have travelled on to London from New York, is now temporarily suspended because of the financial meltdown.)

The ambitions of Osage Kwun Tong were consolidated this year and its Futuramanila exhibition, highlighting young contemporary Philippine artists, was one of the best of the year.

Schoeni Art Gallery showcased the street art of Britain's Banksy, incongruously mounted in beautiful clear acrylic display boxes. The significance of his works as art may, like those of Andy Warhol, become clearer in the fullness of time.

This year, Hong Kong also saw a plethora of anonymous artists emerge using stencils, spray-cans and stickers in the city's quiet backstreets. A condition to allow street art to thrive is a non-controlling environment. Officious security guards of shopping centres, office buildings and private flats love the administrative ease of a clean environment. The disclosure that much public open space on private property was closed to the public saw spirited expressions of public art and performance - the guards at Times Square were especially tested by artists demanding the right of freedom of expression in public areas.

Hong Kong's nooks and crannies often offer the best and some of the year's most exciting art was on show in small, out-of-the-way art spaces. C&G Artpartment in Prince Edward presented some very considered group exhibitions, the best being Sick Leave, featuring Clara Cheung, Gum Cheng Yee-man and Doris Wong Wai-yin.

The gallery's unilateral declaration of an 'International Sick Leave Day' played with the Hong Kong government's stated but seldom realised promise to 'engage with the public'.

The recently shut-down Too Art presented many fine exhibitions featuring young unknown Hong Kong artists who mostly produced three-dimensional pieces, such as those in the exhibition Passionate Objects, by Luk Tsing-yuen, whose plastic model toy kits were engaging. The demise of the gallery is particularly sad as it was a focal point for younger artists, but it was unable to attract collectors.

The quietly hard-working photographer Ducky Tse Chi-tak's show The Colonial Expired, at Hulahoop in Wan Chai, explored the British withdrawal from Hong Kong in 1997. The black and white images were photography at its best, capturing the nuances of the time, counterpointing the poignancy of leaving with the hope of a new beginning.

A newly initiated guest curator programme at the Hong Kong Museum of Art has countered long-standing criticism about outside curators being excluded. Two of the year's better exhibitions, Digit@logue and Looking for Antonio Mak, were trail-blazing and augured well for future curated exhibitions of contemporary art at the museum.

The museum itself organised A Eulogy of Hong Kong Landscape in Painting, a significant show that featured the traditional paintings of Huang Bore, who died in 1968. The beautiful landscape paintings showed a variety of Hong Kong moods and the exhibition highlighted what the museum exhibits best: traditional ink painting.

Over the past three years, Hong Kong has benefited greatly from having overseas artists and curators work here. Michael Lee from Singapore is both an artist who makes beautifully crafted objects and a curator who organises intriguing shows, including his satirical Anarchitecture Bananas exhibition.

Tobias Berger from Germany has now relocated to South Korea after working at Para/Site Art Space and his Where the Lions Are show transformed the usually dismal Sheung Wan Municipal Building Exhibition Hall into a vibrant space.

The annual arts calendar is punctuated with events, with ArtWalk, the twice-yearly seasonal auctions, Fo Tan studio open days, and the end-of-year Asia Art Archive fundraiser all well established. The Hong Kong International Art Fair, in its first year, can now be added to the lineup.

Finally, drama on the international art market was played out in Hong Kong, with record auction prices at the start of the year suddenly replaced by a muted reality brought about by the current global financial meltdown. The much-hyped art boom vanished as quickly as the hot air on which much of it was built.

John Batten is a member of the International Association of Art Critics - Hong Kong

Top five exhibitions

To nominate the five best exhibitions during 2008 appears to negate the spirit of other artistic endeavours, and the following merely represent many of the best here this year:

Ducky Tse Chi-tak: The Colonial Expired at Hulahoop;

Futuramanila at Osage Kwun Tong;

Huang Bore: A Eulogy of Hong Kong Landscape in Painting at the Hong Kong Museum of Art;

Sick Leave at C&G Artpartment;

Wong Yan-kwai: Painting Yankwai Wong at the Hong Kong University Museum.

South China Morning Post

2009 | Review: Love Simply

2009-01-16T11:43:00.001-08:00

Review: Love Simply

John Batten
Jan 13, 2009

		\|

Fotan Artists' Open Studios
Until 18 January

Fo Tan's current open studio weekends allow visitors to discover artist studios, small ad-hoc shows, video installations and exhibitions. Love Simply is one of the better group shows, organised by recent art graduate Tang Kwok-hin, an up-and-coming artist.

The exhibition has the feel of the film Love Actually, in which storylines intersect. Likewise, the four artists, who studied together, unconsciously overlap.

Gwen Chung Chin-man's paintings form a wall diary of words and images that document the pain of breaking up with a boyfriend. Lui Long-tin's The Kiss of Metaphysics (pictured) uses her own orthodontic treatment. Lui argues that being attractive will allow mankind to continue. Michael Lee Hong-hwee offers a cerebral exploration in Foundations: the Consolations of Museology. Lastly, Tang exhibits a photograph of filial tradition.

Hang Fat Studio, Unit 21, 4/F, Block A, Wah Luen Industrial Centre, 15-21 Wong Chuk Yeung Street, Fo Tan

2009 | Library of Mess: The Case of Wah Luen Industrial Centre

2009-01-15T02:30:00.000-08:00

Singapore Architect 247

How does a disorderly sense of space and time relate with creativity? What can society learn from messy architecture?

Lofts offer an interesting site to investigate these questions. In old industrial districts like SoHo in New York and the Dashanzi Art District (previously 798 Factory) in Beijing, artists, gallerists and bohemians alike have taken advantage of the expanse of space to set up studios, galleries and homes at low cost. Artists’ lofts are anarchic in that they defy the architects’ original intentions for industrial uses; they blur the boundaries between ‘industrial’ and ‘artistic’, old and new, work and living, art and life, day and night. In short, they constitute a library of mess.

In Hong Kong, a combination of post-industrial economy (the shift from manufacturing to service-oriented industries) and a series of economic crises (the Asian Economic Crisis 1997 and that which arose from the SARS epidemic of 2002-2003) had left many units in industrial buildings empty, as industrialists moved their factories to Mainland China. With reduced rent, industrial centres in Fo Tan, Chai Wan, Kwun Tong and Wan Chai, became affordable to artists to carve out their creative bases. What is somewhat unique about the Hong Kong situation is that the industrial buildings continue to function in a mixed-use nature, such that factories and studios coexist, while comparatively, spaces in SoHo and 798 barely have any more industry users nowadays. One particular case is Wah Luen Industrial Centre in Fo Tan. This building boasts a list of superlatives. Although not the tallest (at 18 storeys), it towers over all other industrial centres because it is situated at the highest point of the area’s hilly terrain. Completed in 1983, if it is not the oldest building in the district, it must be the oldest- and dirtiest-looking. Its low rental rate led it to quickly become ‘popular’ and populated with artists (some 200 artists across more than 30 studios, and still counting). Today it is the most expensive Fo Tan building to rent in. If industrial districts constitute ‘the other’ of Hong Kong’s postcard image as a financial hub and tourist’s paradise, then Wah Luen is a microcosm of this ‘other’. Hong Kong has been accommodating this library of mess. She can also learn something from it.

Earlier this year, award-winning novelist Joan Brady successfully sued her neighbouring shoe factory in Devon, England, for noise and air pollution, which, according to her, had led her to downgrade from completing her high-brow novel to managing only a crime thriller recently. If Brady had worked or lived in Wah Luen, she might even venture into postmodern pastiches of melodrama, tragicomedy, poetico-philosophy, spiritual skin-flick and mockumentary. Each weekday, in and around Wah Luen Industrial Centre is a catalogue of apparently ‘dubious’ activities: the illegal loading and unloading of goods on the roadside jamming up Wong Chuk Yeung Street on which the building stands; junks and more goods choking up lift lobby and corridor areas; oily floors that are easier to be looked at as abstract paintings than to be walked on; a cacophony of bare-chested men roaring instructions or curses at one another, trucks horning, engines murmuring, lift-doors slamming; and an encyclopedia of stenches from food to grease, sweat to fume. The maintenence of Wah Luen is ad-hoc. Chipped concrete floors are relaid or tiled selectively, if at all. Portions of ceiling are revealing too much of its framework. The building, with its grime and rust inside out, begs for a fresh coat of paint. The lover ofwabi sabi, the Japanese art of imperfection, will have a field day here. This means that Wah Luen seems far from a conducive workspace, not to mention a peaceful home.

In the evenings or weekends, the building is understandably a silent, deserted town. Well, almost. From the street at night thru early morning, one can see tens of units in the centre with their lights still on. These include workers of specific food businesses on overnight shifts, but probably also painters and sculptors rushing to resolve their art pieces for exhibitions. Along the corridors, one is treated to a jamming session of bass, drums and vocals from a unit several floors down or up, which may contribute to the soothing of many a lonesome heart or to the development of collaborative art projects. A chat with select security guards will reveal their near-exhaustive knowledge and deep respect of the artists in Wah Luen. One of the guards can detail the stages in painter Chow Chun Fai’s artistic struggles from his earlier exploration of street scenes to his currently popular film stills, and his progress from a rented group studio to the individual one he now owns. The local zoning regulations forbid anyone to live in workspaces, including lofts. At Wah Luen, there is strong though implicit support of the use of the spaces here, originally designed for work, to double as dwelling. Once or twice a year since 2003, the centre, along with other buildings in the area, dedicates two weekends to Open Studio, during which thousands of visitors appear from nowhere, to peek into what goes on behind artists’ closed studio doors. Flexibility is a modus operandi here, manifest in the various forms of clutter, improvisation, inconsistency, ambiguity and noise. A refusal to stick rigidly to rules and expectations allows things to move quickly and easily.

A related benefit of flexibility is diversity. Like any public building, Wah Luen is subject to safety regulations, including the confinement of certain activities to select areas. For instance, industries involving burning are allowed only on the top floor for unobtrusive exhaust. A quick survey across the different floors will reveal a looser structure: Artists and chemical engineers have barbecue businesses as their neighbours, while printers, furniture wholesalers and hardware shops seem to coexist with little complaint alongside fishball makers. An implied code of “minding one’s own business” facilitates an inclusive array of cultural activities: Lofts of all kinds – from those that appeal to the contemporary art circuit such as Mr 221, in which the current biennale-hopper Pak Sheung Chuen made his first creative base, to hobbyist art clubs offering weekend painting classes and the Blue Lotus Gallery dedicated to promoting works by local artists – are sprinkled throughout the building. Wah Luen is also said to play host to writers, academics, performers, photographers, designers and architects, who may or may not participate in visual arts initiatives like open days or books like OASIS, published in 2007 by AsiaOne on artists’ studios in Hong Kong. To be sure, diversity does not automatically lead to interesting art, but it provides opportunities for novel ways of thinking, including serendipitous moments when one discovers fortunate things without consciously seeking them. The ceramist Sara Tse has shared that one of the catalysts to her signature series – handkerchiefs made of porcelain – was her observation of the activities at a nearby unit that runs a clothing recycling business. A critical study and transformation of diversity can foster creative inventions.

A series of related question arises. How does one work (and live) in an industrial building? Is it safe? Is the water drinkable? Is the air toxic? At what point does clutter, dirt, dust, rust, rot, mould, rubble, chipped concrete, falling structures or peeling paint in the building cross the line that separates the need for clearing, cleaning, replacement or repair from the enjoyment of doing nothing more than tolerating their presence, if not appreciating their visual beauty? A quick answer: to each his or her own. Wah Luen tolerates a wide variety of ways of managing studio spaces: from the large and luxurious three-unit workshop of Leung Chi Wo with his partner Sara Wong, to the more cluttered and cramped group studios such as Kettle of Lemonpop. To be sure, one can be easily tempted to interpret the growing number of artists here as being a close-knitted ‘community.’ In fact, relationships among the Fotanians are loosely defined: Beyond the open days, the studios are not openly accessible and artists meet only on small-group and impromptu bases, such as when specific visitors arrive, or when one needs the help or equipment of another. Yet it remains somewhat a focal point for formal and informal exchanges: the occasional get-together meal; the hosting of foreign artists; the exhibition of works by artists who do not work in the centre, to name a few. Like a library that offers a sanctuary for reflection, Wah Luen is a respite – from the strict order of ‘proper’ living and working conditions; from the crowd in downtown areas, and from the regular scrutiny of visitors.

It would be ludicrous to claim that this library of mess that is Wah Luen leads to or equates with artistic innovations, including the achievements so far of its inhabitants. It may instead be productive to consider lessons that the centre throws up for the Hong Kong art scene in relation to ongoing reflections about its status, roles and developments. A recurring lament amongst artists here is that Hong Kong art seems to reside in the unconscious of the international art circuit: Most galleries and buyers go straight for works by foreign and Mainland Chinese artists; other than a handful, artists here have yet to attain global repute. At the same time, due to or despite this, it is also not difficult to observe a tacit framework of insularity operating here, manifest, for instance, in an insistent preference for Cantonese (rather than Mandarin or English) as the main language of communication and a quasi-protectionist tendency among the cultural practitioners to safeguard and promote local interests. Flexibility, diversity and tolerance are principles that emerge through a study of Wah Luen’s mess. Whether these are appreciated and translated in social terms remains to be seen.

Fotanian: Fotan Artists Open Studios 2009 will be held on two weekends, namely 10, 11, 17 & 18 Jan 2009, 2 – 8pm. Details and updates are available on www.fotanian.com.

2009 | Natural Born Failures (shortened, submitted)

2009-01-12T07:51:00.000-08:00

Natural Born Failures

by Michael Lee Hong Hwee

Pictures by Han

Header: How to live fulfillingly? Fail. Strategic rule-breaking exercises and unexpected crises require us to exit comfort zones, experiment with remote possibilities and encourage novel outcomes. Yet, the global obsession with success sustains the fear of trying anything new, not to mention failing purposefully. Such aversion to risk stunts growth. So, is it surprising that a society that embodies, celebrates and pursues success as Singapore does, is home to many disgruntled souls?

Beneath the Singaporean

The ‘average’ Singaporean adult enjoys a life of contentment in an economically and socially stable society, with gainful employment and cheerful relationships. He usually owns a property, and has disposable income for shopping and travel. His main preoccupation is his work, from which he gets a regular pay and a sense of self. But, probe further, and one senses regrets and grievances. For every Singaporean devoted to his job there are others who find their work a drag, remaining in it only to pay the bills and sustain their material pursuits. Herein lies the vicious cycle: Singaporeans work hard, tire out, seek recreation, and so, continue working to sustain their lifestyle. Neither critical thinking nor creative endeavour can enter this self-contained logic. In fact many people fear the repercussions of criticizing public policies. Those who have done so are exceptional cases, a number of whom have been reprimanded for their ‘improper conduct.’[i]

Most Singaporeans are sure they are not, cannot and will not be artists because they are not creative enough. Even if they enjoy painting, poetry or music they choose not to pursue it as a career because it does not pay them enough. Hence participation in culture veers more towards coffee shop grouses than systematic critique, entertainment more than critical art, and consumption rather than creation. Tentative and meek in engaging with experimental ideas, many Singaporeans are cosmopolitan in appearance but conservative in thinking, outwardly jovial but secretly unfulfilled.

The three K’s that allegedly characterise a typical Singaporean, namely kiasu, kiasi and kiabo (Hokkien colloquialisms referring to the respective fears of defeat, death and wife), seem the causes, effects and coping strategies of a comfortable life.

Species of Solace

Singapore’s intolerance of failure is, to a large extent, based on the prevalence of two types of consolation. The first, which I call ‘The Cradle’, comprises the work ethic, with its emphasis on diligence and delayed gratification, and the culture of consumption, in its myriad varieties - alcohol, fashion, the latest gadgets, pop music, fine dining, clubs and health supplements. It tells us: ‘Keep working and buying, and you are on your way to happiness. Moreover, the government will keep things in check’. The ruling People’s Action Party, which I refer to as ‘The Wand’ type of consolation, has long kept a vigilant watch over many aspects of its citizens’ everyday lives. These range from education to housing, employment to marriage, health to recreation.[ii] The government’s glowing record in ‘delivering the goods,’ especially in economic progress and social stability, legitimises its continued existence and control. Recently, it has attempted to adopt a less ‘authoritarian,’ more ‘consultative’ management style. Yet, as Kenneth Paul Tan, Assistant Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, observes, despite talk of a more liberal society, the ruling party continues to play “old politics” in “new times”: a “politics of apprehension – a ghostly kind of fear that, in a menacing way haunts the minds of Singaporeans….”[iii]

The main problem with ‘The Cradle’ consolation is that the reduction, avoidance or numbing of pain may be temporary and illusory, and more damaging than helpful in the long run. Work and alcohol, when engaged excessively, can lead to complacency, escapism and ill-health. On the other hand, the main problem with ‘The Wand’ consolation is that it dismisses desire with the aim or effect of keeping people contented in their ‘rightful’ place. In many Singaporeans’ heads is a series of mantras on pragmatism: Do the least to achieve the most; don’t stand out; just follow the rules; don’t upset the system; relax; don’t take things too seriously; turn in early; get up; get back to work; don’t get fired…

Such obedience has a structural similarity with the New Testament reminder: “Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh….” (Colossians 3.22-4).

Failing is Succeeding

What Singapore needs is a ‘Federation of Failures’, a museum that celebrates difficulty. I propose that it be sited beside the Integrated Resorts, the centre of upcoming gaming activities at Marina Bay, as an intervention of Singapore’s ‘culture of comfort’.

This proposal engages a third type of consolation for failure, which I shall call ‘The Library’. It urges us to read widely, think critically, create things of our own, and then repeat the cycle. If ‘The Cradle’ regards our problems like weeds to be nipped in the bud, and ‘The Wand’ pinpoints desire as responsible for our misery, ‘The Library’ says pain and pleasure coexist. Friedrich Nietzsche lambasts people who avoid difficulty:

“If you refuse to let your own suffering lie upon you even for an hour…. it is clear that [you harbour in your heart]… the religion of comfortableness. How little you know of human happiness, you comfortable… people, for happiness and unhappiness are sisters and even twins that either grow up together or, as in your case, remain small together.” [iv]

Nietzsche argues that a fulfilled life must involve art. Stop consuming; start creating. A disclaimer: Adopting ‘failure’ as a principle in life and art is not condoning shoddy practice. Instead it’s about setting ambitious goals beyond the expected and imaginable. Here, the artistic life is not self-indulgence but a critique of society’s preference for conformity, mediocrity and comfort.

I recommend ‘hyper-cantilevering’ for the overall architectural form of the proposed museum, for a sense of precariousness and engineering impossibility. The following set of dual truisms suggests the museological stance:

A museum compiles human achievements.

A museum celebrates human failures.[v]

Though apparently incompatible, these statements are flipsides of a coin. The history of innovation has been a history of struggles and failures. New ideas are often deemed useless or dangerous at the point of conception. Every recorded success belies countless unnamed setbacks.

Singaporeans have discipline, which is crucial for any breakthrough in art or science. What they lack is the recognition that they have the innate impulses and the option to create, grow and lead individualistic lives. If humans are inherently creative, and if we accept that the creative journey is arduous, then it follows that we are always already ‘Natural Born Failures’. Since we are to fail anyway, rather than keeping failures or problems at bay, we might as well try to fail better, more often, more interestingly, drastically and perhaps even more successfully. This way, we avoid being bland, rigid and under-fulfilled.

*Michael Lee Hong Hwee, a Singapore-born artist based in Hong Kong, is enjoying his occasional investigation of his nervous excitement through artefacts and words.

Han is a documentary photographer based in Singapore.

[i] In 1994, writer Catherine Lim was rebuked by then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong for writing an article suggesting that the latter’s promise of a more consultative approach to governance had not come about. Goh then advised that anyone who “wants to set the agenda for Singapore by commenting regularly on politics… should do this in the political arena.” Chua Mui Hoong, “PM: no erosion of my authority allowed,” The Straits Times (Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings, 5 Dec 1994).

[ii] This is in light of the nation’s small size, geopolitical position as having a predominantly Chinese-ethnic populace amidst several Muslim nations, lack of natural resources, post-war turbulences, and ongoing threats to social harmony from ‘oppositions,’ ‘critics,’ ‘communists’ and ‘terrorists.’

[iii] Kenneth Paul Tan, ‘In Renaissance Singapore’, in his (Ed.), Renaissance Singapore? Economy, Culture, and Politics (Singapore: NUS Press, 2007), 2.

[iv] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882), trans. Walter Kaufmann (London: Vintage, 1974), 338. Quoted from Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy (London: Penguin, 2000), 232-3; bracketed words ~~and ellipses~~ are de Botton’s.

[v] Michael Lee Hong Hwee, Foundations: The Consolations of Museology (Hong Kong: Studio Bibliothèque, 2008), 107.

Review of A-Z, 26 Locations to Put Everything

2009-01-01T21:28:00.000-08:00

MEDIA COVERAGE

Title: AAA Project: Review of A-Z, 26 Locations to Put Everything

Publication: Yishu, Dec 2008

Author: Melissa Lam

Natural Born Failures (revised)

2008-12-25T01:25:00.000-08:00

TEXT CONTRIBUTION (revised)

Publication: C for culture, Jan 2009

Title: Natural Born Failures[i]

Text: Michael Lee Hong Hwee

Photo: han

To lead a fulfilling life, one must fail. Both strategic rule-breaking exercises and unexpected crises require one to leave the comfort zones, experiment with remote possibilities, and encourage spontaneous outcomes. Yet the global obsession with success supports the fear of trying anything new, not to mention failing purposely. An aversion to risks stunts growth. Should it be surprising that, as a society that embodies, celebrates and pursues success, Singapore is home to many disgruntled souls?

Beneath the Singaporean

The ‘average’ Singaporean adult appears to lead a life of contentment in an economically and socially stable society, enjoying gainful employment and cheerful relationships with family, friends and colleagues, and usually the possession of a property and disposable income for shopping and travel. Probe on, and one senses regrets and grievances. The main preoccupation of Singaporeans is work, from which they get a regular pay and also a sense of self. For every Singaporean devoted to her job, however, there are others who find their job a drag but remain in it to pay the bills, or to sustain material pursuits. Therein lies the vicious cycle: They work hard, tire out, seek recreation, and so, continue working to sustain their lifestyles. Neither critical thinking nor creative endeavour can enter this tight and self-contained logic.

The fear of ‘repercussions’ of voicing opinions critical of public policies is prevalent, though there are exceptional cases who are, at times, reprimanded for their ‘improper conduct.’[ii] Most Singaporeans are sure they cannot or will not be artists because they are not creative enough, or, even if they enjoy painting, poetry or music, they will not pursue it as a career because it does not pay them enough. Hence participation in culture among the citizens veers more towards coffeeshop grouses than systematic critique, entertainment than critical art, consumption than creation. Tentative and meek in engaging with experimental ideas, many Singaporeans are cosmopolitan in appearance but conservative in thinking, apparently jovial but secretly unfulfilled.

The three k’s that allegedly characterise a typical Singaporean, namely kiasu, kiasi and kiabo (Hokkien colloquialisms referring to the respective fears of defeat, death and wife), seem, at once, the causes, effects and coping strategies of sustaining a comfortable life.

Species of Solace

Two popular types of consolation prevail to deter Singaporeans from taking risks. The first type, which I’ll call The Cradle, shares the modus operandi of the medical sciences. This involves diagnosis (of the causes of your pain) and prescription (by way of medication, anesthesia or surgery). It calls out to our worn-out or wounded soul: Come to mummy! The second category of comfort, The Wand, the mainstay of a number of key religions in the world, operates like a magician’s stick that instantly flicks our desire and pain into existence or oblivion. It says this of the problems we encounter: Accept your fate as you accept god, and your sufferings will be gone!

Singapore’s intolerance of failure is, to a large extent, based on the prevalence of these two types of consolations. The bulk of the society is steeped in the work ethic, with its emphasis on diligence and delayed gratification, as well as the culture of consumption, in its myriad varieties of the booze, fashion, the latest electronic gadgets, pop music, fine dining, clubs and health supplements. The Cradle tells us: So long as you keep working and buying, you are on your way to happiness. Moreover, there is The Magic Wand around to keep things in check: The ruling People’s Action Party has long kept a ‘vigilant’ watch over all conceivable aspects of its citizens’ everyday life, ranging from education to housing, employment to marriage, health to recreation.[iii] The government’s glowing record over the decades in ‘delivering the goods,’ especially in terms of economic progress and social stability, legitimises its continued existence and control. Recently, it has attempted to adopt a less ‘authoritarian,’ more ‘consultative’ management style. Yet, as Kenneth Paul Tan observes, despite talks of a more liberal society and expressed dreams of becoming a cultural hub, the ruling party continues to play “old politics” in “new times”: a “politics of apprehension – a ghostly kind of fear that, in a menacing way haunts the minds of Singaporeans….”[iv]

The main problem with the Cradle mode of consolation is the decrease, eradication or numbing of pain may be temporary and illusory, and more damaging than helpful in the long run. Work and alcohol alike, which allow one to forget one’s sorrow for the time being, may well, especially when engaged in excess, lead to complacency, escapism and ill-health. The main problem with the Wand type of consolation is that it dismisses desire with the aim or effect of keeping people contented in their ‘rightful’ place. In many Singaporeans’ head is a series of mantras about efficiency, pragmatism and conformity: Do the least to achieve the maximum, don’t stand out, don’t upset the system, just follow the rules, don’t make life difficult for yourself and others, relax, take a break, don’t take things too seriously, turn it early, get up, get back to work, don’t get fired…. Such obedience has a structural similarity with the New Testament reminder, even when one experiences ill-treatment by one’s boss: “Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh….” (Colossians 3.22-4).

Failing is Succeeding

What Singapore urgently needs is a Federation of Failures, a museum that celebrates difficulty. I propose that it be sited beside the Integrated Resorts, the centre of upcoming gaming activities at Marina Bay, as an intervention of the ‘culture of comfort’ that characterises Singapore today.

Such a proposal engages a third type of consolation for failure, which I shall call The Library. It first congratulates us on our sufferings: You’re in luck!, it says, and then it urges us to work: read widely, think critically, make things of our own, and then repeat the cycle. As much the realm of philosophy as of art, politics and other humanities disciplines, it considers failures as ‘constructs’ of social conditioning and thus ‘opportunities’ that bear critical reexamination and possible transformation into strengths, aesthetics or new truths. If the Cradle type regards our problems like weeds to be nipped in the bud, and the Wand variety pinpoints desire as responsible for our misery, the Library relief reminds us that pain and pleasure go hand in hand. Friedrich Nietzsche has this to say to people who avoid difficulty:

If you refuse to let your own suffering lie upon you even for an hour and if you constantly try to prevent and forestall all possible distress way ahead of time; if you experience suffering and displeasure as evil, hateful, worthy of annihilation, and as a defect of existence, then it is clear that [you harbour in your heart]… the religion of comfortableness. How little you know of human happiness, you comfortable… people, for happiness and unhappiness are sisters and even twins that either grow up together or, as in your case, remain small together.[v]

Crucially, Nietzsche is of the opinion that a fulfilled life must involve art. Stop consuming; start creating. A disclaimer: Adopting ‘failure’ as a principle in life and art is not to be equated with shoddy practice. Instead it’s about setting impossibly ambitious goals beyond the expected and imaginable. In this regard, the artistic life is not mere self-indulgence or personal fulfillment. It is a critique of society’s preference for conformity, mediocrity and comfort.

I recommend a ‘hyper-cantilever’ concept for the overall architectural form of the proposed museum, to create a sense of precariousness and engineering impossibility. The following set of dual truisms suggests the museum’s overriding ideological slant:

A museum compiles human achievements.

A museum celebrates human failures.[vi]

Though apparently incompatible, these two statements are nonetheless flipsides of the same coin. The history of innovation has really been a history of struggles and failures, landmines and mistakes. New ideas and inventions are often deemed useless or dangerous, impossible or immoral, at the point of conception. Every success story that is achieved, told and recorded belies and necessitates a host of unnamed setbacks.

What Singaporeans have in abundance is discipline, which is crucial for any breakthrough whether in art or science. What they lack is the recognition that they, like any human being, have the innate impulses and the option to create, grow and lead individualistic lives. If humans are innately creative, and if we accept that the creative journey is arduous, then it follows that all of us are always already Natural Born Failures. Since we are to fail anyway, rather than keeping failures at bay or cushioning ourselves from stress, problem and discomfort, we might as well try to fail better next time, fail more often, more interestingly, drastically and perhaps even more successfully. This way, we can avoid being bland, rigid and under-fulfilled.

Michael Lee Hong Hwee, a Singapore-born artist based in Hong Kong, is enjoying his occasional investigation of his nervous excitement through artifacts and words.

han is a documentary photographer based in Singapore.

[i] All photographs by han are of Federation of Failures, part 6 of 10 in Michael Lee Hong Hwee’s The Consolations of Museology (2008), an installation of 10 pieces of origamic architecture of hypothetical museums that provide solace to problems of everyday existence.

[ii] In 1994, writer Catherine Lim was rebuked by then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong for writing an article suggesting that the latter’s promise of a more consultative approach to governance had not come about. Goh then advised that anyone who “wants to set the agenda for Singapore by commenting regularly on politics… should do this in the political arena.” Chua Mui Hoong, “PM: no erosion of my authority allowed,” The Straits Times (Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings, 5 Dec 1994).

[iii] This is in light of the nation’s small size, geopolitical position as having a predominantly Chinese-ethnic populace amidst several Muslim nations, lack of natural resources, post-war turbulences, and ongoing threats to social harmony from ‘oppositions,’ ‘critics,’ ‘communists’ and ‘terrorists.’

[iv] Kenneth Paul Tan, “In Renaissance Singapore,” in his (Ed.), Renaissance Singapore? Economy, Culture, and Politics (Singapore: NUS Press, 2007), 2.

[v] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882), trans. Walter Kaufmann (London: Vintage, 1974), 338. Quoted from Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy (London: Penguin, 2000), 232-3; bracketed words and ellipses are de Botton’s.

[vi] Michael Lee Hong Hwee, Foundations: The Consolations of Museology (Hong Kong: Studio Bibliothèque, 2008), 107.

Data Entry (as of 24 Dec 2008)

2008-12-24T03:29:00.000-08:00

Info on Telok Blangah

Period	Category	Name	From	To	Brief Description	Data	Event	When	Remark
P	Animal	Fish				O	Singapore was at first a fishing village
P	Animal	Lion				O	was spotted by Utama
P	Animal	Merlion			Tourist icon of Singapore	O	has a 2nd replica in Mount Faber	1998
P	Animal	Merlion					is afraid of flying and was almost made to fly to Venice by artist Lim Tzay Chuen	2005
P	Animal	Tiger				I	was spotted by Utama, but advised that it was a Lion instead
P	Animal	Tiger				O	refers to Singapore, among 4 Asia Economic Tigers (the other 3 being Taiwan, Korea & Hong Kong)
	Animal	Bird					Escaped Hornbill sighted in TB
	Animal	Great Hornbill					sighted in TB, escaped from captivity
P	Being	Pontianak			Ghost	I	was spotted at Alkaff Mansion	2002
P	Event	Between, Beside, Beyond				O		2007	1st solo exhibition of Daniel Libeskind in Asia
P	Event	Mutiny					Indian soldiers (sepoys) mutinied against their British Officers in India.	1857	Activity: Protest
	Event	Lightning Strike					at Signal Stataion and Flagstaff
	Event	Mail Flag Signal					"For some years, I lived under this huge flag mast on Telok Blangah Hill. Every time the 19th-century mail ships arrived from Europe, special flags would be flown so that people in the city would know the mail had arrived."
	Event	Floods				1964
	Event	Fire
	Event	Ghost Sighting					Alkaff Mansion
	Event	Tree falling					31 Oct 2008, a 20-m tall tree fell onto a black and white bungalow; family from Asutrailia escaped unscathed	2008	http://www.asiaone.com/News/the%2BStraits%2BTimes/Story/A1Story20081106-98644.html
	Event	Migration			of Pahang settlers to Telok Blangah				Travel
	Event	Telok Blangah Resettlement					heated argument landlords and TB's MP P Govindasamy	1972
	Event	Female Impersonation					Michael Lee won top prize in beauty pagent during army
	Event	Female Impersonation					Lee Dai Soh does it over the air
	Event	Paranormal help					in tracking down Huang Na murder
	Event	Murder					Huang Na
P	Event	Amazing Race 3					Mount Faber was pit-stop for Leg 10	2002	Media: TV
P	Event	Amazing Race Asia 2					Mount Faber was featured as a Route Marker for Leg 1	2007	Media: TV
	Event	Ho Ming Mao			student of Gan Eng Seng Secondary School		sleepwalked out of window	2008	http://www.asiaone.com/News/Education/Story/A1Story20080131-47516.html
	Event	Landscape Planning					Edmund Waller: "From the point of view of landscape planning, I suggest that the most successful residential development conceived during the first decade of the HDB was the new town and tourist attraction at Telok Blangah…." (Landscape Planning inSingapore, 2001, NUS Press)		http://books.google.com/books?id=L5kLBHwUwfEC&pg=PA50&lpg=PA50&dq=telok+blangah&source=web&ots=EDRjSEWZ3g&sig=Z7mXsC0MshHcD4ZvfrjAXV0WOjs
P	Facility	Cable Car				O	7 killed when 2 cable-car cabins fell into the sea between Mt. Faber & Sentosa,	1983	Accident: Fatal
	Idea	Space Needle					Original intentions but unrealised
	Idea	Hotel					Original intentions but unrealised
P	Material	Clay			the material of Indian cooking pot, which Telok Blangah looks like	O
	Material	Soft soil					may have cause tree to fall		See Tree falling
P	Object	Crown				O	Utama the his crown off the boat during a storm to save the boat from capsizing	1299
	Object	Baju Kurung Telok Belanga			costume whose origin was in Telok Blangah; created and worn in Johor during the reign of Temenggong Abu Bakar Sri Maharaja.	1862			Naming, Culture
	Object	$5 nnote					features Tembusu tree found in Telok Blangah		See Temneusu
	Orgn	Singapore Free Press					published posting of Faber on 3 Oct 1844
	Orgn	Madras Engineer
	Orgn	Bata Shoe Factory			A Czech MNC that is often mistaken for a homegrown brand.		built on Telok Blangah Road	1964
	Orgn	Telok Blangah Toastmasters Club					Originally Tiong Bahru Toastmasters Club (est. 1998) which was moved to Telok Blangah in 2002		Name, Relocation, Culture
	Orgn	Seamen Training Centre	1979		regional training school in Telok Blangah
	Orgn	Radin Mas English School			formerly Engku Khalid's palace
	Orgn	UMNO			setup branch at Radin Mas
	Orgn	Telok Blangah Children's Home
	Orgn	Telok Blangah Soka Centre							Religion
	Orgn	Telok Blangah Estate Speed Dating							http://www.matchmaker.com/mm/speed-dating/singapore-telokblangahestate3.htm
	Orgn	Telok Blangah Mosque					Brick-faced walls and wide overhanging roofs characterize the mosque which responds to climate by adapting the traditional courtyard plan. The plan shape follows the parallelogram geometry of the site, clashing internally with the plan of the main space.		http://www.archnet.org/library/sites/one-site.jsp?site_id=1088
	Orgn	Telok Blangah Community Centre
	Orgn	Tsao Foundation - Hua Mei Seniors Clinic (Telok Blangah)			Eldercare
P	Person	Abdul Rahman, Temmengong		1826	Governor of Singapore	O	was resettled by Sir Stamford Raffles to shift from Singapore River to Telok Blangah		1st urban resettlement
P	Person	Anonymous			Chinese Man in 30s	O	stole taxi and crashed into a wall, Telok Blangah	2007	Crime: Theft & Suicide
P	Person	Brunner, Fraser				O	designed Merlion	1966
P	Person	Faber, Charles (Captain Charles Edward Faber)			engineer		Telok Blangah Hill was renamed Mount Faber after him, after he constructed the road and signal station up; Signal Station was removed from Blankan Mattie (Sentosa)	1945	See also Sentosa
P	Person	Huang, Na			Eight-year-old Chinese girl	O	was killed and found at Telok Blangah Hill Park	2007	Crime: Murder
N	Person	Lee, Hong-Hwee Michael	1972		Singapore-born artist	I	Commissioned artist for Telok Blangah Station	2010
P	Person	Lee, Kuan Yew			1st Prime Minister of Singapore	O	enjoys swimming		Activity: Recreation
P	Person	Libeskind, Daniel	1946		American architect	O			in project in Singapore is in Telok Blangah (Reflections at Keppel Bay)
P	Person	Puteri Raden Mas Ayu			16th-century Javanese princess		has a shrine at Mount Faber Road, near the junction with Telok Blangah Road
P	Person	Raffles, Sir Stamford	1781	1826	Modern founder of Singapore	O	Founded Singapore	1819	Founding: Modern
P	Person	Thomson, John Turnbull				O	made a painting from Pulau Brani entitled Telloh Blangah	1849	Art: History
P	Person	Utama, Sang Nila			Prince of Palembang	I		1299	Founding: Premodern
	Person	Randy			Security guard	I	saw ghosts	2007	Paranormal Phenomenon
	Person	Ramlee, P.			Filmmaker
	Person	Wang Dayuan	14th C		trader who travelled through Southeast Asia noted natives and Chinese lived side-by-side; also noted that Dan-ma-xi babarians were pirates
	Person	Pirate			Barabarians in Temasek, Utama was one also		Usually let ships pass unmolested to the west, but plundered returning shps when they reached Karimun island.
	Person	Chow Yun Fat			Hong Kong-born actor who played the role of pirate king of Singapore in the movie, Pirates of the Carribean; his wife is a Singaporean
	Person	Chow, Jasmine			wife of Chow Yun Fat; business manager (met 1984, married 1986)
	Person	Sun, Yat Sen			stayed on Golden Bell Mansion
	Person	Jeyaratname, Joshua Benjamin					contested in 1980 General Elections in Telok Blangah but lost to Rohan Bin Kamis	1980
	Person	Rohan Bin Kamis					won Jeyaratnam in 1980 Egenral Elections in Telok Blangah	1980
	Person	Lee, Dai Soh (originally Lee Fook Hung)	1913		Chinese storyteller		born in Telok Blangah; joined RTM and hosted a Cantonese programme, Tam Tin Shuit Tei, which ran for more than 30 years. He went on to host other Cantonese programmes telling folktales, ghost stories, swordfighting stories, detective stories and Chinese classics."		Name
	Person	Tan, Boon Liat					lived in Danish Seamen's Church in Telok Blangah
	Person	Orang Laut			tribes at TB and Kallang River observed by Raffles				See Raffles, Kallang
	Person	Wedding couples					love to take photos at Telok Blangah Hill Park
	Person	Yeo, Vinson			founder of founder of Tiong Bahru Toastmaster Club`1998
	Person	Tamiya			Jap soldier during WW2
	Person	Yap Siong Eu					related story about a Jap soldier Tamiya
	Person	Shree Lakshimi Narayanan Temple
	Person	Dube, Ram Swarath			President of Shree Lakshimi Narayanan Temple		became SG citizen in 1962
	Person	Choo Teck Hong`					saw bombings in Telok Blangah, but scaped death
	Person	Abu Bakar bin Hj. Abdul Halim (Haji)			malay rulers in 14th c
	Person	P Govindasamy					had heated argument with landloards over TB resslement
	Person	Tang Mau Lee			mid-wife		runs mid-wife business at Telok Blangah
	Person	Tan Chwee Heng (Prof.)	1948				Stayed at Telok Blangah
	Person	Kamis, Rohan			Member of Parliament, Telok Blangah		won elections againist Jeyaratname
	Person	THUNG Syn Neo					Recounted case of a boy who was destructive in a volunteer children's home but gradually improved in his behaviour after transferring to Telok Blangah Children's Home.
	Person	TOH, Chew Seng			writer		had a column and book titled 花葩山 (Mount Faber)
	Person	Chay Wai Chuen					regular jogger at Mount Faber
	Person	Eugene Toh			President, Society of the Paranormal Investigators; a relative of Hunag Na's mum scored Timag and Faber after a friend had vision that she was held on a hill.				http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_289166.html
	Person	Police					dismissed paranormal clues to Hunag Na's body
	Person	Waller, Edmund			writer of Landscape Planning in Singapore				See landscape Planning
P	Place	Alkaff Mansion				O	"an elegant colonial bungalow built by an Arab trader and is previously a place for grand parties of the social elite. "		See ghost sighting
P	Place	Blk 101 Depot Road			Michael Lee stayed there				Autobiography
P	Place	Blk 103-107, 110-112 Depot Road					demolished		Urban Redevelopment: Demolition
P	Place	Bukit Bendera			Malay for Flag Hill
P	Place	Bukit Merah Planning Area				O
P	Place	Flagstaff					a new Flagstaff wa erected on Telok Blangah Hill. A month later it was struck by lighning and destroyed	1851
P	Place	Jewel Box				O	houses the cable car station on Mount Faber to Sentosa
P	Place	Mount Faber			Institution that explores Telok Blangah's past, present & future	O
F	Place	Museum of Cooking Pots	2028		Mass Rapid Transit Station of the Circle Line	I
P	Place	Observatory					was built on Mount Faber	1905
P	Place	Observatory					was built on Telok Blangah Hill	1905
P	Place	Palembang				O	was the place where Utama came from
F	Place	Reflection at Keppel Bay			Private apartments	O		2012	Architecture: 1st project designed by Daniel Libeskind in Singapore
P	Place	Signal Station					The Free Press, a local newspaper commented “…stupidly narrow road to the top….two persons meeting can barely pass each other….so much of renown is bestowed up him.”
N	Place	Singapore				O
P	Place	Sit Lat Mng			Hokkien for Telok Blangah for 'Singapore Gate' or 'North West Gate'	O
P	Place	Telok Blangah			a district between Pasir Panjang and Tanjong Pagar in Singapore to the south-west of the Central Business District in the southern part of the island. It is part of the Bukit Merah Planning Area,	O
P	Place	Telok Blangah Hill				O	was renamed Mount Faber	1945	Name: Renaming
P	Place	Telok Blangah Road					officially named	1907	Name
P	Place	Telok Blangah Station	2010			O
P	Place	Urban Redevlopment Authority	1974			O
P	Place	World Trade Centre				O
	Place	Hiap Guan San	1882	1970s	Cemetery at Telok Blangah Hill		was evacuated and removed to Choa Chu Kang	1882	Urban Legend
	Place	Simhapur (Vietnam's Lion City)	4th C	9th C	a Lion Citadel in Tra Kieu, Quang Nam province in Vietnam;the first capital of the Champa from 4th- 9th centuries
	Place	Lion City			Singapore's old name, Singapura		Singapore was the 4th place for a Lion City, after central Vietnam, Kelantan and Java		See also Simphapur, Chi Tu, Pajajaran
	Place	Chi Tu	7th C		literally, Red Earth		located near Kelantan		See Redhill
	Place	Redhill
	Place	Raktamrtikka	5th C	Sanskrit for Red Earth			Sanskrit inscription found in Kedah (likely to refer to Chi Tu)		See also Chi Tu, Redhill, Simphapur
	Place	Pajajaran	14th C		next potential Singapura, aka "Singha-pura"		Political marriage led to bloodshed; had syncretic mix of Hinduism and Buddhism		See Redhill, Chi Tu, Syncretism, Hinusim, Buddhism
	Place	Temasek			Old Malay for "city of the sea"; Singapore's name before Singapura
	Place	Sentosa			offshore island aka Blankan Mattie				Sinal station removed and installed on Mtelok Blangah Hill
	Place	Fort Faber					linked to Charles Faber
	Place	Ellenborough Market					linked to Charles Faber
	Place	Outram Prison					linked to Charles Faber
	Place	Faber's Bridge					by Chales Faber, known to be slipshod, "[Amongst] his peers, he, unfortunately, is known more for the few constructions which fell apart soon after they were built than for his engineering contructions that stood. He was highly criticised in the press for...the slip-shod construction of his unstable Faber's Bridge..."		http://infopedia.nl.sg/articles/SIP_907_2004-12-23.html
	Place	Fort Canning Park					Charles Faber built a Gothic Style North Gateway to eastern section of Government Hill Cementary (now Fort Canning Park)	1846
	Place	Golden Bell Mansion			stayed by Sun Yat Sen and family during their travels here
	Place	Danish Seamen's Church			once home to Tan Boon Liat, who has factory in Tiong Bahru named after him, grandchild of Tan Tock Seng
	Place	The Southern Rdiges
	Place	Marang Trail
	Place	Faber Walk
	Place	Henderson Waves
	Place	Hilltop Walk
	Place	Forest Walk
	Place	Alexandra Arch
	Place	Malay Girls' School			first Malay vernecular girls' school			1884	First
	Place	Telok Blangah Hill Park			Recapturing the pAst Splendour		gathering place for trade communities since early 19th c, symbolised by Alkaff Mansion
	Place	Keng Seng Pri Sch					Attended by Michael Lee
	Place	Keng Seng Pri					merged with
	Place	Gan Eng Seng Pri					Merged from KSPS, Alexandra Hill Pri, Bt Ho Swee Pri, Henderson Pri	2002
	Place	Gan Eng Seng Sec					Attended by Michael Lee
	Place	Gan Eng Seng			merchant		founded Gan Eng Seng School 1885
	Place	Temmenggong Abu Bakar's palace					converted in Malay College
	Place	Mount Faber			Title of book and column by Toh Chew Seng
	Place	Bukit Merah Planning Area			TB is part of this
	Place	North West Gate					TB's Hokkien name: Sit Lat Mng
	Place	Pasir Panjang					TB is between Pasir Panjang and Tanjong Pagar
	Place	Tanjong Pagar
	Place	Malayan Railway
	Plant	Cannonball trees
	Plant	Tree Ferns
	Plant	Tembusu			Fagraea fragrans		Symbol of state-civil relations; Like the tembusu, Prof Koh noted, the Government was deep-rooted, strong and protective, but that it also permitted other plants (that is, civil society) to flourish in its vicinity.		http://www.wildsingapore.com/news/20070506/070609-5.htm
	Plant	Bougainvilleas
	Plants	Eugenia
	Plants	Alstonia
	Plants	Rain Trees
P	Word	Bendera			Malay for flag
P	Word	Blangah			Malay for cooking pot	O
P	Word	Singa			Malay for lion
P	Word	Telok			Malay for bay	O
	Event	Man					found deadhalf an hour after stealing taxi in Telok Blangah, crashed the car into a wall….		http://www.sgclub.com/singapore/man_found_dead_24315.html
	Person	Chinese Lady					her spirit haunted Riandi for 7 years
	Person	Xue (Madam Xue)
	Place	Xieyuan Hill			old name of TB Hill		burial ground for Yang familu from Fujian province since 1882		http://waynedhamma.blogspot.com/2007/03/trapped-soul-of-telok-blangah.html

Natural Born Failures

2008-12-15T10:44:00.000-08:00

TEXT CONTRIBUTION

Publication: C for culture, Jan 2009

Title: Natural Born Failures

Text: Michael Lee Hong Hwee

Photo: han

How to lead a fulfilling life? Tom Hodgkinson suggests pursuing freedom, merriment and responsibility.[i] By these, he means releasing ourselves from the control by all forms of external authority especially the government, our job and consumer products; adopting a carefree and humorous outlook to life, and taking charge of our time and way of living. I would sum these up in a word: failure.

Philosophically and looking at the history of innovation, failure grounds all breakthroughs: Both strategic rule-breaking exercises and unexpected crises facilitate the experimentation with remote possibilities, the risking and development of novel ideas, and the discovery of spontaneous outcomes. As David Schafer succinctly claims: “To fail is to succeed.”[ii] In this regard, my definition of ‘failure’ encompasses two closely linked concepts whose distinction from it some scholars[iii] prefer to make: ‘futility,’ a sense of pointlessness in gestures that have no hope for success anyway, and ‘defeat,’ which is often the trigger for subsequent attempts in the hope of eventual success.

Contrary to popular belief, failing is not an easy task. The global obsession with progress, speed, perfection, wealth, beauty, intelligence, popularity, comfort, convenience and happiness correspondingly relegates setback, slowness, weakness, poverty, ugliness, foolishness, unpopularity, distress, difficulty and melancholy to the realm of failure. With the layers of shame attached to being different or less than the ideal, many of us are afraid to fail. Or whenever we fail, we are anxious about admitting it, much less embracing it or recognizing its aesthetic potential. Most of us may strive to do well materially and socially, but our aversion to risks also corresponds with insignificant, slow or the absence of personal growth. Failure is not just a possible and interesting option; it is important and necessary for an enriching life. The journey, however, is laid with obstructions but also distractions.

Species of Solace

Two popular types of consolation prevail to deter us from taking risks to fail. The first type, which I’ll call The Cradle, shares the modus operandi of the medical sciences. This involves diagnosis (of the causes of your pain) and prescription (by way of medication, anesthesia or surgery) for the sake of finding and completing a cure, preventing relapse and restoring health. Come to mummy! It calls out to our worn-out or wounded soul. Consumer culture, in its myriad varieties of the booze, fashion, the latest electronic gadgets, pop music, fine dining, clubs and drugs, works in a not too dissimilar manner.

The second category of comfort, The Wand, the mainstay of a number of key religions in the world, operates as a magician’s stick that instantly flicks our desire and pain into existence or oblivion. It says this of the problems we encounter: Accept your fate as you accept god, and your sufferings will be gone! I observe that some leading governments today, including secular ones, operate with the same mechanism.

The main problem with the first mode is the decrease, eradication or numbing of pain may be temporary and illusory, and more damaging than helpful in the long run. Alcohol, for instance, which allows one to forget one’s sorrow for the time being, may well, especially when taken in excess, lead to complacency, escapism and ill-health. The main problem with the second mode of consolation is that it dismisses desire with the aim or effect of keeping people contented in their ‘rightful’ place. For instance, if one is unhappy about ill treatment by one’s boss, the New Testament reminds: “Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh….” (Colossians 3.22-4).

Singapore as Cushion

Singapore is a large cushion against failure. In light of the nation’s small size, geopolitical position as having a predominantly Chinese-ethnic populace amidst several Muslim nations, lack of natural resources, post-war turbulences, and ongoing threats to social harmony from ‘oppositions,’ ‘critics,’ ‘communists’ and ‘terrorists,’ the ruling People’s Action Party has long kept a ‘vigilant’ watch over all conceivable aspects of its citizens’ everyday life. These range from education to housing, employment to marriage, health to recreation. This style of governance has inspired a host of labels from critics over the years: “nanny state of Asia” (Iain Buruma, 1972), “third world fascist state” (Gook Aik Suan, 1981), “controlled democracy” (Jon S. T. Quah, 1988), “social engineering” (Barry Wilkinson, 1988), “Singapore bureaucracy” (Thomas J. Bellows, 1989), “authoritarianism” (Daniel A. Bell, 1997), “air-conditioned nation” (Cherian George, 2000), to name a few.

The government’s glowing record over the past decades in ‘delivering the goods,’ especially in terms of economic progress and social stability, legitimizes its continued existence and control, perhaps at the expense of political debate by the populace and cultural development. In the past two decades (since Goh Chok Tong took over the prime minister position from Lee Kuan Yew in 1990), it has attempted to adopt a less ‘authoritarian,’ more ‘consultative’ management style. This is in recognition of the demands of younger Singaporeans who have had a better education than their parents and a global outlook to life, facilitated in part by the liberal exchanges of information over the Internet and other broadcast media. Yet, as Kenneth Paul Tan observes, despite talks of a more liberal society and expressed dreams of becoming a cultural hub, the ruling party continues to play “old politics” in “new times”: a “politics of apprehension – a ghostly kind of fear that, in a menacing way haunts the minds of Singaporeans….”[iv]

On the surface, the ‘average’ Singaporean adult leads a contented life in a society of economic and social stability with gainful employment and cheerful relationships with family, friends and colleagues, and usually also the possession of property and disposable income for shopping and travel. Probe on, and one senses regrets and grievances. The fear of possible ‘repercussions’ of voicing critical opinions of public policies is prevalent, though there are exceptions who are, at times, reprimanded for their ‘improper conduct.’[v] Equally common are those who find their job a drag but remain in it to pay the bills, or to sustain their material pursuits. Most Singaporeans are deadsure they cannot or will not be artists because they are not creative enough, or, even if they enjoy painting, poetry or music, they will not pursue it as a career because it does not pay them enough. Hence participation in culture among the citizens veers more towards coffesshop grouses than systematic critique, entertainment than critical art, consumption than creation. Tentative and meek in engaging with experimental ideas, many Singaporeans are cosmopolitan in appearance but conservative in thinking. The three k’s that allegedly characterize a typical Singaporean, namely kiasu, kiasi and kiabo (Hokkien colloquialisms referring to the respective fears of losing/defeat, death and wife) seem, at once, the causes, effects and coping strategies of sustaining a comfortable life.

Creativity and Difficulty

There is a third type of consolation, which seems more troublesome than the Cradle and the Wand. I shall call it The Library. It first congratulates us on our sufferings: You’re in luck!, it exclaims, and then it urges us to work: read widely, think critically, make things of your own, and then repeat the cycle. As much the realm of philosophy as of art, politics and other humanities disciplines, it considers failures as ‘constructs’ of social conditioning and thus ‘opportunities’ that bear critical reexamination and possible transformation into strengths, aesthetics or new truths. If the Cradle type regards our problems like weeds to be pulled out at the first instance, and the Wand variety pinpoints desire as responsible for our misery, the Library relief reminds us that pain and pleasure go hand in hand. Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the champion of the ‘free spirit,’ has this to say to people who avoid pain, difficulty and failure:

Beyond saying “no pain, no gain,” and “failure is the mother of success,” Nietzsche is urging you and me to take charge of our own lives, rather than relegating this responsibility to circumstances, another person or an organization. His condescending message to people who swear by comfortable lives is also a liberating consolation for those who have long been plagued by pain in their creative pursuits. The liberation comes in three layered messages:

You are not alone.

You are only human.

You are special.

Crucially, Nietzsche is of the opinion that a fulfilled life must involve not just knowledge and love, but also art. Stop consuming; start creating. A disclaimer: Adopting ‘failure’ as an overriding framework in artistic pursuit is not to be equated with shoddy practice. On the contrary, it’s about setting impossibly ambitious goals beyond the expected and imaginable. In this regard, the artistic life is not mere selfish indulgence or a means of personal fulfillment. It is a critique of society’s preference for conformity, mediocrity and comfort.

Failing is Succeeding

Recently, I proposed and produced The Consolations of Museology, a series of 10 hypothetical museums realized as handmade books, each striving to provide solace for a common problem in everyday existence. One of them is named Federation of Failures, an institution that celebrates failures. I proposed to site it beside the Integrated Resorts, the centre of upcoming gaming activities at Marina Bay, Singapore, as my intervention of the culture of comfort that characterizes Singapore today. Where once difficulty and failure were intrinsic conditions, now they are taboo words. The government’s prevalent rationale for continuing to hold back major transformation in politics and culture is couched in “narratives of permanent vulnerability and fragile success.”[vii] The populace’s commonest defense against creativity and criticality is that conditions are not conducive. The advertisers’ ground for endlessly rolling out new products is that everyone loves them. My project aim is to trigger reflection of these commonsensical logics.

My proposed museum of failure offers the Library sort of consolation in two main ways: artifacts and words. For the former, I employed paper as my main material to explore origamic architecture (otherwise known as the pop-up book) as a way to develop a conceptual model of the imaginary museum. I arrived at a ‘hyper-cantilever’ concept for its overall architectural form, with the aim to create a sense of precariousness and engineering impossibility. I have long found it important to engage the realm of the ‘useless’ as a way to question and investigate ‘use’ and ‘usefulness’: “[U]selessness is the most sublime of all human constructs, and art fulfills itself in floating miles above every desperate human involvement.”[viii] The most meaningful role of art is at points of failure.

For the textual component, I developed seven categories of words relaying the museum’s proposed name, mission, site, the philosopher to whom the museum pays homage, a significant quote by this philosopher, architectural design and museum programming, and a set of double truism. In particular, the double truism carries the proposed museum’s ideological slant, whilst engaging historical conditions and classic museological missions:

A museum compiles human achievements.

A museum celebrates human failures.[ix]

Though apparently opposing to each other, these two truisms are nonetheless flipsides of the same coin. The history of innovation has really been a history of mistakes, struggles and failures. New ideas and inventions are often deemed immoral or impossible, dangerous or useless, at the point of conception. Moreover, every success story that is told and recorded belies and necessitates a host of unnamed setbacks. Like Douglas Darden’s 10 allegorical buildings that are “condemned from the start,”[x] my 10 hypothetical museums have a simple wish: to console by failing foolishly, humorously and exquisitely. Stupidity is beautiful.

If human beings are innately creative, and if we accept that the creative journey is arduous, then it follows that all of us are always already Natural Born Failures. Further, if we are to fail anyway, rather than keeping failures at bay or cushioning ourselves from stress, problem and discomfort, we might as well try to fail better next time, fail more often, more interestingly, drastically and perhaps even more successfully. This way, we can avoid being bland, rigid and under-fulfilled.

Michael Lee Hong Hwee, a Singapore-born artist based in Hong Kong, is enjoying his occasional investigation of his nervous excitement through artifacts and words.

han is a documentary photographer based in Singapore.

All photographs by han are of Federation of Failures, part 6 of 10 in The Consolations of Museology (2008), an installation by Michael Lee Hong Hwee.

[i] Tom Hodgkinson, How To Be Free (London: Penguin, 2006), 1.

[ii] David Schafer, “Up is High, How?” in Nicole Antebi, Colin Dickey & Robby Herbst (Eds.), Failure! Experiments in Aesthetics and Social Practices (Los Angeles: The Journal of Aesthetics Protest Press, 2008), 67.

[iii] Nicole Antebi, Colin Dickey & Robby Herbst, “Introduction,” in their (Eds.), Failure!, 11.

[iv] Kenneth Paul Tan, “In Renaissance Singapore,” in his (Ed.), Renaissance Singapore? Economy, Culture, and Politics (Singapore: NUS Press, 2007), 2.

[v] In 1994, writer Catherine Lim was rebuked by then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong for writing an article suggesting that the latter’s promise of a more consultative approach to governance had not come about. Goh then advised that anyone who “wants to set the agenda for Singapore by commenting regularly on politics… should do this in the political arena.” Chua Mui Hoong, “PM: no erosion of my authority allowed,” The Straits Times (Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings, 5 Dec 1994).

[vi] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882), trans. Walter Kaufmann (London: Vintage, 1974), 338. Quoted from Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy (London: Penguin, 2000), 232-3; bracketed words and ellipses are de Botton’s.

[vii] Tan, “New politics for a renaissance city?” in his (Ed.), Renaissance Singapore?, 17.

[viii] Robert Harbison, The Built, the Unbuilt and the Unbuidable (London: Thomas and Hudson, 1991), 8.

[ix] Michael Lee Hong Hwee, Foundations: The Consolations of Museology (Hong Kong: Studio Bibliothèque, 2008), 107.

[x] Douglas Darden, Condemned Building: An Architect’s Pre-Text: Plans, Sections, Elevations, Details, Models, Ideograms, Scriptexts, and Letters for Ten [-] Allegorical Works of Architecture (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993), back cover.