Bukit Brown Index #132: Triptych of the Unseen

Bukit Brown Index #132: Triptych of the Unseen was exhibited at Gillman as part of Singapore Biennale 2019. It is a large scale installation consisting of a stage, a three part video performance and an archival collection covering the uproar around the redevelopment and destruction of Bukit Brown Cemetery back in 2011 to 2014.

The set up was a familiar sight, adopted from traditional Chinese Street opera often performed during the Hungry Ghost Festival. The significance of it is that it is a common space where the dead and living meet to enjoy, in this case, as the writing on the red banner connotes, the nostalgic or tragic saga of Bukit Brown. It is a place of tribute and offering to the visiting dead; perfect choice in setting.

Actual Chinese Street opera Stage

I think Post Museum, the creators of this artwork, has achieved their aim “to encourage and support a thinking and pro-active community in this piece.” In an interview from OnCurating, they were asked about where they think they stand between the centre(state) and the periphery(independent). Their answer spoke about who public space belongs to? Saying that Singapore adopted a place management strategy to inject ‘heart and soul’ into the city. The strategy had been used by other cities such as New York and Paris and is referred to as “placemaking”. It is directed to developing participatory communal places and improving quality of life for its residents. It is after this point that their response really raised questions for me. Post Museum raised a point that placemaking should not be exclusive to urban planners and the government, it should be a shared decision. Because we are all enagaged with said space, thus are always participating in the placemaking process. Post museum may be referring to their artistic practice but I find it prevalent in this project.

I picked to write about this work because it is closely related to my idea for FYP; revolving around culture, heritage and identity. Why heritage should be preserve and how it ties to belonging? Bukit Brown cemetery may house many graves of pioneers such as Tan Lark Sye (1897-1975), entrepreneur and co-founder of Nanyang University and Chew Joo Chiat (Joo Chiat estate) but why is it important to conserved them? What reasons is there to be upset other than the fact that digging graves is disrespectful? Triptych of the Unseen first featured at Substation in 2018 and the artistic director then spoke of heritage as a form of control. He said “heritage really largely is not just about the past, but the way you define the past also determines your present and future.” It is a deceivingly harmless topic for one so political. (at least in Singapore) I wish to go into more detail in my next post about my FYP ideas so the discussion shall end here.

The title refers to the database of Bukit Brown. There is a nostalgic/tragic connotation in the writing on the red banner.

The meat of the story is literally in the content of the work. The three part video performance, taking on the perspectives of the ‘Ghost,’ ‘Activist’ and ‘Bureaucrat’. It depicts the struggle of space in Singapore through moral contradictions of the three characters and their relationship with each other. The choice for implementing the virtual reality setting was to “trap the spectators and performers within this ‘unseen’ tragicomedy where they ‘are condemned’ to watch and perform this act endlessly.” When you enter the virtual space, you are sat in within an ‘ghost’ audience as everyone is wearing a opera mask. “Unknowingly we all become victims to the priorities embedded in the grammar of the city.”

 

Reference:

https://www.singaporebiennale.org/art/post-museum

https://sgmagazine.com/arts-things-to-do/news/substations-next-exhibition-explores-weird-tug-war-behind-conserving

https://post-museum.org/root/2018/09/15/1492/

https://www.on-curating.org/issue-41-reader/interview-with-the-founders-of-post-museum-jennifer-teo-and-woon-tien-wei.html

https://remembersingapore.org/bukit-brown-cemetery/

Biomimicry

Eastgate Centre in Zimbabwe

This is an example of biomimicry in the field of architecture, borrowing the natural interior structure of African termite nests to create sustainable buildings. The Eastgate centre has managed to achieve 10% less energy consumption compared to other conventional buildings its size. That is an impressive feat to be able to regulate temperature of a mid-rise building without air-conditioning or heating.

So how do these self-cooling mounds work?

Cooling Vents!

African termites feed on a fungus that they farm in their mounds and these fungus can only grow at 87 degrees F. Since the climate in Africa ranges from 35 degrees F at night to 104 degrees F during the day, the termites invented a series of cooling vents to maintain the interior temperature of the mound.

Through constant opening and closing of these vents, the termites are able to suck in air at the lower parts of the mound, through the tunnels and up to the peak. These vents are also always under construction as new ones are constantly being built and old ones are plugged up. It is a brilliant way to regulate temperature naturally considering that hot air rises up and cool air sinks.

Despite that, it should be noted that the series of vents are regulating the temperature and not exclusive to cooling. The system also works with other materials as the Eastgate Centre is made out of concrete. The outside air that is drawn in can be warmed or cooled by the building mass depending on which is warmer. Similar to the termite mounds, the air is through the multi-storeys and offices before exiting out the chimneys at the top.

The energy sustainable building not only benefits the environment but also the people. The owners of the Eastgate centre saved $3.5 million for air-conditioning that was omited from the design and this helped the tenants with 20% lower rents than it neighbours. Both an climate and economic solution.

Reference:

https://biomimicry.org/biomimicry-examples/

https://inhabitat.com/building-modelled-on-termites-eastgate-centre-in-zimbabwe/

https://asknature.org/strategy/mound-facilitates-gas-exchange/#.VB52Ry5dUa0

TréPhonos by Project Row Houses

The Third Ward is a predominantly African American community that persevered through many difficult times to sustain their home. For example, the area is known to be poor as after world war II, they received a large group of migrants and were unable to get non-menial jobs. Then in the 1970s, their population dropped when America implemented racial integration. In addition to the fact that many of the children from the third ward graduated from Universities and have moved out for better jobs, the Third Ward was neglected and lost economic traffic.

The project TréPhonos pays tribute to the history of the Third Ward with three payphones, reprogrammed to become audio time capsules. The project was inspired by a series of hangouts in the neighbourhood and one of the collaborating Artist – Jeanette Degollado says “We have managed to create a feedback loop, where community self-determination, artist, activist, and Third Ward residents are both the input and output, informing each other, creating synergy.”

She describes the payphone to be a “symbol of public and private space”; an intersection between the two. It was a place that held people’s “connections, distance, emotions, infrastructure?, and socialization.” Therefore, people exists where payphones are.

The three booths…

1. TréMixTape

  • Features musicians from the neighborhood, including various genres and generations of local music.
  • can also be play externally when the coin release lever is held down, for multiple people to listen together.

2. TréSonic

  • ambient noise of the neighborhood

3. TréSankofa

  • voices and stories of Third Ward residents.

Is this Social Practice Art?

To be considered Social Practice Art, the project has to tick two boxes – human interaction and social discourse. I do have to take that definition with a pinch of salt as it was from Wikipedia. But it does gives more meaning and reason to the project without it being created for the sake of art.

Its goal is primarily in strengthening the community as a whole, uniting the Third Ward to engage with the stories with one another. While TréPhonos level of human engagement is high, the discourse here is a little fuzzy.

 

Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Ward,_Houston

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/shows/arts-insight/2018/10/23/304186/watch-pay-phones-re-appear-as-third-ward-time-capsules/

Research Critique 1: Wearable Technology

Ying Gao is a Montreal based fashion designer and professor at University of Quebec whose interactive work features a lot of animated textiles. Her recent project – FLOWING WATER, STANDING TIME capture the ever-changing persona of Jimmie G from the novel, The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. He is a middle age man who thinks himself to be still a youth at 19 years old, and he jumps between these two mental age which Ying Gao describes as a metamorphosis.

A Rasberry Pi

According to Dezeen, “The garment reacts to the chromatic spectrum using colour, light sensors and tiny cameras that are connected using a rasberry PI computer, to gather information about their environment. This data then activates a series of actuators and magnets interlaced with silicone to cause the fabrics to move.” It is interesting to note that besides silicone, the fabric also includes glass elements created in studio. These combination of materials, helped Ying Gao to achieve the shifting hues in the “chameleon-like” autonomous dress.

As far as my knowledge goes, Raspberry Pi is another version of an Arduino, they are both open source technology that are sustained by the creative digital community.  Tutorials and project ideas are quite abundant online and there are even ways to help find nearby Raspberry buddies to get creative together. The true benefit of open source technology is that it is firstly, free knowledge. Secondly, the amount of projects available for reference is infinite, the number will always be growing as people feed off ideas of others to make their own.

I have played around with a Circuit Playground before, it is a cousin of the Raspberry Pi. So references and forums I have searched online were a learning process to aid my production process. I think as I am a designer, I do not know what their difference is technically, only that they have a different shape. In this case, we designers need  the engineers for their in dept understanding of the electronics. The designers come up with ambitious ideas that cannot be fulfilled themselves and Ying Gao has experienced this with this project. She says “Technically and technologically speaking, this project is different from the previous ones because the clothes have a much greater autonomy,”

Reference

http://yinggao.ca/

https://www.dezeen.com/2019/10/28/flowing-water-standing-time-ying-gao-chameleon-autonomous-dress-fashion/