Dada Creative Response

 

What stood out to me about the Dada art movement, was the underlying satirical and nonsensical nature of the artworks produced. Inspired by this, I wanted to explore this in the context of Singapore.

To start my ideation process, I wrote down on small slips of paper of what are some specific singlish phrases/food that are unique to Singapore. I then passed the slips of paper to members of my family to pick out and the results were as follows.

  • Bak Chor Mee
  • Laksa
  • Bak Ku Teh
  • Talk Cock
  • Shiok

With these five words, I then tried to connect the dots and search for meaning to express a certain message, making sure to include these 5 words in my final response.

The end result is:

I wanted to explore the idea of FOOD culture in Singapore and inspired by Dadaism idea of rejecting logic and embracing irrationality, I decided to make a  huge ‘what if’ statement within the culture of Singapore. This was created by bringing in ideas of ‘fake news’, to challenge the role of media in Singapore which is mainly used for national building. This included changing history by altering the popular news article page spread in which Singapore was reported to have split from Singapore, marking her journey towards independence. This is juxtaposed against Food as a national identity. And should Singapore be out of it, would this actually destroy our identity, or mark our step towards independence from it?

Image sources:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bucketfullofbuddha/146510394

https://asianinspirations.com.au/recipe/laksa-noodles-2

https://www.linsfood.com/bak-chor-mee-singapore-noodles/

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/independent-times

https://sethlui.com/best-bak-kut-teh-singapore/