Singapore Research Trip

Book about Cheong Gye Cheon Restoration

• recovering history and creating cultural spaces
• “The restoration project recovers these artefacts of historic heritage and restored the pride of the Korean people in their 600-year old city. It is also necessary for Seoul to explore its cultural resources in order to become a cultural city for all citizens to enjoy.”
• “Cultural properties”
• Cheonggyecheong, witnessing a renaissance of culture and history.
• recovers the long-forgotten history and cultural of seoul by linking traditional cultural events to historic sites.

Telok ayer market

Story about Tan Che Sang or Chesang, one of the earliest pioneers to settle in Singapore.

urban futures

• critical commentaries on shaping the city
• edited by malcoml miles and tim hall
• different possible views on urbanism:
  • scientific rationalism, where cities are described rather than viewed critically, and planning facilitates some form of “progress”.

or

• • direction and ownership of “progress” is open to change through conscious intervention.
  • although planners, architects, etc still operate in conventional subject boundaries and professional organisations and thus retain conventional methodologies, they also meet in conferences and academic courses in which cities (social econ, cultural political ,built environ) are the focus.
  • new understanding of cities as events and processes of becoming.
  • new agencies recognising a range of urban publics and their needs.
  • urban problems are multilayers and complex.
• how are cities shaped?
  • cultural expression - cultural production and reception as indicative of social currents, and similarly cultural planning denotes a cultivation of the planning process when cultural activities are seen to contribute to city marketing as well as a politics of identity.
• what constitutes culture? is it art in the museum, graffiti, tea, room decor, or tending of an allotment? do urban cultures different fmor each other, but also from the rural or suburban? how far does the urban reach?

• culture is making evident a set of values in everyday acts and occupation of space, also in cultural production of media such as photography and film, much of which is concentrated in urban centres. culture is *a site of identity formation which in any society will be multiple and mutable.
• tactical, negotiated, reflecting a state of nicety but also opens possibilities to foresee futures states.

where the thinking stops, time crystallises

• jane rendell
• A klee painting named angelus novas

walter benjamin

IX

	My wing is ready for flight,   

I would like to turn back.If I stayed timeless time, I would have little luck.

Mein Flügel ist zum Schwung bereit, ich kehrte gern zurück, denn blieb ich auch lebendige Zeit, ich hätte wenig Glück.

Gerherd Scholem, ‘Gruss vom Angelus’

A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

• rut blees luxemurg
  • Caliban Towers - photography and video obsessed with capturing the present as froezen moment in relation to permanently abandoned buildings. no inhabitants. places devoid of people. emptiness is not **created in order to view the object better but in order to provide a place for the viewer to imagine.
  • concerned with spaces of dereliction, neglect, decay, less with mourning for utopian project, more with emotional themes of loss and emptiness
• these are suggestive images. these places have not always been and will not always be empty.
• insertion of moments which allow time to expand.

• the viewer is asked to engage with the object in a way where they have no choice but to become conscious of the passing of time.

• allows us to project all kinds of alternative scenarios onto them. past and future. like detectives we search for clues, traces of past occupations, like script writers we set up props for future activities.

• lustre, gold sheen
• blurred focus
• water in urban scenes.

• they make the abandoned places beautiful.
• as they give themselves up to the light, their lustrous surfaces become mirrors, multiple sites of reflection.
• night river. black water, planar surfaces. thick dark sultry, glossy.

• uta barth
  • in passing 1997
  • they depict out-of-focus, outdoor backgrounds with a foreground component protruding into the edge of each composition.

• • time cannot be understood without space.
  • by holding the object of our gaze away for us, there is distance between viewing subject and viewed object. control over the distance.
  • we are in present tense.

• i feel unsure here of what i have said. is what i see in these photographs what is ‘really there’ or am i only looking at what i am looking for? am i, like the photographers, lost in my own self-absorption?

the places here are empty, they allow us to project ourselves on to the image. they are full of time, of the minutes passing by as we try to see, and of time ignored as we drift off into dreams. are these images full of potential, are they dialectical images where out awareness of the present allows the past to become visible? or is time held still by our own reflection? the self-absorbed look polishes and shines until we can see our own reflection.

• glossing the external, creating a lustrous surface. are we doing this to reassure ourselves? is it critical distance or narcism

• LIST OF KEYS (see image in camera)

• between dream nd awakening
• tacita dean’s sound mirrors
• delft hydraulics
• highly functional architectures whose original resins for construction are no longer valid of viable.

focuses on one viewpoint for long time, long enough for attention to wander and random thoughts to enter.between focused meditation and random drifting. (I DONT LIKE THIS) doesn’t work. more like drifting off to sleep. when head drops forward and you jolt awake. awakening state as a coming into consciousness.

• unusual places hidden between the real, represented and imagined space.
• how often when we watch a film, and aided by the sound track, drift off into another world, do we bring ourselves back into reality and consider the places in which the sounds were made

stepney's lack of culture

the ability to “name” things, acts and ideas - is a source of power. harvey, 1989, 388

• charles jennings bleak houses? guardian 1999
• because that’s all stepney is now, just the minimum of places to live, roofts, and font doors and streets to walk down. the struggles of town planners nd housing creators, but nothing, honestly nothing else, the calm of no expect ions.

• culture apparently absent.
• as if there is no cultural landscape into which the policy machinery can descent.
• no creative uzz, no cafe society, no obvious formal and information spaces where cultural activity takes place

• no visible signs of valued cultural of recreational pursuits, no posters of events

no signs to venues, no shops selling artefacts of cultural consumption only on the edges of stepney, but in the centre no colonising potential no cultural resources, no rich mix.

“known identifiers” of cultural practice. value to attached to this narrow interpretation by local policy intermediaries. a narrative of myth of cultural void in stepney cultural absence no public face?

Keith: 1995, 17 : “sylheti settlement in the east end is perhaps better understood as the first british case of post-fodist labour migration.

EVERY TOWN SHOULD HAVE ONE

where control over searouces is absent, local govance becomes hollow promise for local communities.

effect of local regeneration on the shape of cultural landscape. has been to overlook and undervaluing the common and everyday culture of residents. consequence of conceptualisation. hidden in informal spaces. much our every day cultural practices is hidden in informal spaces of the community.self affirming but in need of resources and support.

NLB visit

Consuming the nation: national day parades in singapore - leong wai-ting

“if individuals find the”nation” too abstract an idea to imagine or too distant from every life to identify with, then governmentments and political leaders will turn to more concrete symbols to personify, reify and objectify the nation kertzer, 1988:6) the nation is concretised very much as a material object like a flag, food, product, or visual icon. national elites are at the same time cultural producers involved in the business of concocting things that provide a focus of national belongingness with which a collectivity can readily identify. the nation is therefore a commodity to be consumed (foster, 1991:248). the logic of commodity form applies here: states establish cultural industries like a ministry of culture to promote, invent or revive objects, images, and acts that are said to represent the nation. these commodities are packaged and marketed to domestic consumers in order to inculcate a sense of nationality so that the nation of “imagined community” is also a community of consumption united by the partaking of these same culture products.

Museums in particular have become part of a heritage industry in which the language of “preservation” and “conservation” objectifies the nation as commodity and property of a collectivity. (dominguez, 1986) [marketing of heritage, american ethnologist]

- the reasons why NDP looks like state rituals in fascist and communist regimes owes in part to the military dominance of the parade. with military themes like “rugged and vigorous singapore” and “youth and ruggedness” ad “total defence”. - but the intended audience is also malaysia. cos it is singapore’s expulsion form malaysian federation, not independence from colonial rule.

- tamed version of carnival and western pop takes relief from the regimentation of the parade

media in singapore is unlikely to give voice to dissenting individuals and alternative views. one has to read between the lines to test out an unknown number of repressed consumers.

in the report on overseas singaporeans celebrating national day abroad, an incidental reference was made to a lucky draw at the end of all the rituals of flag and anthem observances. lucky draws as typical singaporean way of enticing consumers to participate - the lucky draw will be at the end after all the rituals have been performed.

amongst spectators, the motive for attending is the parade kit. from candies to torch lights, souvenirs and miscellaneous paraphernalia. free items attract children who tend to be easily ittated by the inconvenience of the parade, long lines to get to seats, obstruction of view by big sized adults, need to comply with orders to be still, stand, or sit, weather uncertainties.

carried to the extreme, kiasu habits confuse ends with means. joining queues without knowing what the queue is for, but if everyone is queuing it must be soothing desired.

theatre of power expressed in the form of state rituals and public spectacles

A Dirty Story

• chapter 8

• the story of chen hung who spent the first 23 years ofh is working life in the sewerage department
• “The first day I reported for work and I went home, my father asked me, “where have they assigned you?” and so I told my father “they’ve put me in the sewerage department.”
• my father said, “you mean i’ve spent all my money educating you and you’re in the shit-house now?
• “to me, cleaning the river is the least important thing, maintained chen hung, because he hastened to explain, cleaning up in a physical job. the import important thing is pollution control.

• which is to enforce prevention measures and educate public
• pollution of river must be stopped to make rivers clean.
• problem is that pig farms… very crude chess pits constructed for collection of pig waste. cesspits collect solid waste while liquid waste overflowed into steams.
• one pig gives off 5 times the waste of a human per da, so govt phased out pig farms. processing pig waste not viable long term solution.

• for human waste, if you dig a hole and put waste in, there will be another hole.
• R2 system.
• waste goes into first concrete pit where solids settle. liquid goes to second tank. as second tank overflows, liquid goes through subsoil drainage system.
• ground was used as filtering agent so bacteria was not supposed to get into water table, but the die off rate of bacteria was high. no chemicals needed.
• site instructions very important. level and higher.
• $200, very affordable. but where the kmpong folk wanted them sited makes another story.

they think its smell. wah! mai cher tow ah! ee peng. (not here! over there!) “bo chow, eh-ah!” (not smelly lah) “mai.. mai… ee pent.” no thanks over there!

• chen hung put it 30 m away from house. as it went to rural it got closer and closer.
• “wow swee-li!” wow! beautiful
• his last R2 install was next to the bedroom

• Singapore river - all manner of rubbish flowing down and floating down the canalds of the singapore river before clean rivers effort.

• resettlement of squatters numbering 21000

excavation of more than half a million cubic metres of organic mud (pig shit) replaced by sand grains of less than 3 percent silt (normal building sad has 5-10 percent) so won’t wash away in the water

• The civil servants in charge of doing all this got Gold medals!
  • Tan Teng Huat (current head of sewerage dept and co-plannor of master plan with tan gee paw) said “its a case of your getting either gold of lead.’

he burst out laughing.

• • “if we failed to achieve what we had to do, the latter would either weigh us down to the bottom of the Singapore River or come to us through the barrel of a gun.
  • he was rolling with laughter then.
  • they chose willow-like trees to plant on kallang river banks.
  • Lee Sing Kong, deputy commissioner of the parks and recreation dept said.
  • many suggestions for willow trees. but willows being temperate plants won’t do well in singapore. they will grow but their vigour quickly diminishes.

Dalberghia Oliveirii. a tree with dropping branches similar to willw was chosen.

• chen hung remembers examining the sand and exclaiming, “But this is not white sand! it is yellowish!”
• unflappable, pillai told him, of course, haven’t you heard of golden sands?

• Lee Ek Tieng admitted to a slight nagging doubt - “Suppose we clear the last lot of hawkers in CHiantown - all o them into this multi-storey hawker centre. suppose that having moved them all out and the water is still really dirty - what are you going to do?”
  • but fortunately the cure for the dirty river was simply to stop dirtying it.
  • Singapore River was dredged.
  • tons of rubbish moved out.
  • Sides of river repaired.
  • Environment Ministry dredged the river for long buried poles, iron girders, wreckage, bottles, etc
• PSA’s water witch - to scoop up flotsam.
• mooring poles including spirit poles were pulled out.

• Life centred around the toilet because it provided fresh water for free. hawkers took it for cooking, making a health problem.

• the 40 cents for mahjong as tax but also entitled them to coffee from store. normal cost 5 cents for teh-o

haircut

• quack doctor - pulls teeth!
  • large pile of teeth displayed on a red cloth to prove to the crowd tha business was good.

• kitchen where hot water as continuously boiled to make tea and coffee. wires for toasting bread.
• showers with margarine tin to scoop water from cement tank.
• sex of the bather could told - women splash less noisily
• old man, guardian of the river under read bridge

• Mr Ho’s River Garden of Peace.

stone and wood monuments of sabah

pg 3 the megaliths found in sabah are almost entirely without marks or carvings, but this need not diminish their importance. it is acknowledged (jaffe 1974, 232) that “even unhewn stone had a highly symbolic meaning for ancient and primitive societies. rough, natural stones were often believed to be the dwelling places of spirits or gods and were used in primitive cultures as tombstones, boundary stones, or objects of religious veneration. a primeval form of sculpture. a first attempt to invest the stone with more expressive power than chance and nature would give it.

it is appropriate to consider here the use of stone by man as a means of marking his presence in a region and of celebrating events in which he wished to be remembered. jaffe: "man with his symbol-making propensity, unconsciously transforms objects or forms into symbols (thereby endowing them with great psychological importance) and expresses them in both his religion and visual art. The intertwined history of religion and art, reaching back to prehistoric times, is the recor that our ancestors ahve left of the symbols htat were meaningful and moving to them.\\

it is not known if the scarcity of markings on the megaliths of dabah was due to lack of knowledge or inability or due to a decision to leave the stone monuments in their natural state. Jaffe 234: " The primitive tendency to give merely a hint of a human future, and to retain much of the stone's natural form, can also be seen inmodern scultpure. Many exmaples show the artist's concern with the 'self-expression' of the stone, to use the language of myth, the stone is allowed to 'speak for itself'.

Jaffe, A (1974) Smbolism in the Viual Arts. In: Carl Jung (ed.) Man and His Symbols. Aldus Books Ltd., London, pp230-271

rock and plant are yin and yang in eastern cultures. rock as foil to plants. strong masculine rock, feminine soft plants.

Writing about the historical geography of southeast asia, Dobby, (1967: 382) stated that anything that existed of local record and history rotted away quicly, the climate, the ants, the insects and mould soon destroying anything in wood, paper, leather, or cloth. "Buildings and carvings on stone were not normal expressions of southeast asia people where over large areas stone is not easily come by and where implements had not in any case developed far enough to deal with stone." Where stone was available in southeast asia, people were aware of its uniqueness as a suitable material for use as a monument because of its durability.. In Kevin Crossley-Holland's book (blythe 1989: 1002) on megalithic sites of britain, "the stones remain", crossley-holland suggests that ancient stone monuments have a spiritual dimension: he claims that the stone patterns he has studied still retain a power to "raise us to a level of sonciousness that has nothing whatesoever to do with the factual or the casual. but with the world of the spirit. they remind us of our awareness of stone's imperishability.

indonesia tale in which the the sky was much lower and gof presented them with gifts suspended on string. the first man and woman were offered a stone but they rejected it not seeing any value in it. soon afterwards a banana was lowered to them and they accepted it. their lives would be like the banana.

J. G. Frazer, The Belief in Immortality, 1 (London, 1913), PP. 74-5, quoting A. C. Kruijt: Thus the natives of Poso, a district of Central Celebes, say that in the beginning the sky was very near the earth, and that the Creator, who lived in it, used to let down his gifts to men at the end of a rope. One day he thus lowered a stone; but our first father and mother would have none of it and they called out to their Maker, 'What have we to do with this stone? Give us something else.' The Creator complied and hauled away at the rope; the stone mounted up and up till it vanished from sight. Presently the rope was seen coming down from heaven again, and this time there was a banana at the end of it instead of a stone. Our first parents ran at the banana and took it. Then there came a voice from heaven saying: 'Because ye have chosen the banana, your life shall be like its life. When the banana-tree has offspring, the parent stem dies; so shall ye die and your children shall step into your place. Had ye chosen the stone, your life would have been like the life of the stone changeless and immortal.' The man and his wife mourned over their fatal choice, but it was too late; that is how through the eating of a banana death came into the world.

early singapore 1300 - 1819

Associate Professor Tan Tai Yong, Chairman of the Singapore History Museum notes;

• Professor K G Tregonning: "Modern Singapore began in 1819. Nothing that occurred on the island prior to this has particular relevance to an understanding of the contemporary scene; it is of antiquarian interest only." (in Ooi Jin bee and chaing Hai ding eds modern Singapore. university of Singapore, 1969, p 14)
• He was not wrong in asserting that colonial rule, whic hbegan with the acquisitioon of SIngapore by Stamford Raffles on behalf of the East India company, laid the foundations and created the conditions that produced the patterns of singapore today. But was he correct to state that singapore's pre-colonial past was of antiquarian interest only?
• the reluctance of an earlier generation of historians to engage in the scholarly scrutiny of singapore's pre-colonial past stemmed from the absence of reliable written evidence form which that past could be analsyed and understood. historians, schooled in imperial history, trained to be reliant on archival collections, preferred to be on firmer groun when attempting to unravel singapore's past.

myths, legends as well as sketchy and unclear travellers accounts were dismissed as inadequate and inadmissible evidence for serious history.

• since late 1980s, historiography of singapore developing in new ways.
• no longer comfortable accepting 1819 as starting point. pushing time boundary further back. unearth singapore's pre-colonial history.
• miksic andcheyl -ann low mei gek's book - convincing case for a 700 year history of singapore.

a journey through singapore, travellers impressions of time gone by

by reena singh - a great book of various accounts stitched together