Looming the Memory

Guiness Theatre, The Substation
7-8 January 2009

Part of the M1 Singapore Fringe festival

Who would’ve thought a handmade rug  could transport us to a rural village in Greece? Thomas Papathanassiou does just that. His astounding one man show, Looming the Memory, is a memoir that draws on the theme of identity, family, heritage, and home – things that are close to the hearts of people in immigrant countries such as Singapore.

The stage is bare but for a rug rolled on the floor. The play opens with childhood memories: an old woman at her loom, weaving strips of garment of a deceased relative – weaving the memories. As the play unfolds and the rug unrolls, snippets of memories are brought to life, one interwoven with the other.

Thomas Papathanassiou’s parents migrated from Greece to Australia, leaving all their relatives behind. Papathanassiou spent part of his childhood in Greece and he tries to explore his own  family history through stories told by relatives and neighbours during his visits to Greece many years later. He discovers untold grudges, connections, and stories through his conversations with people from his childhood.  It’s his  struggle to understand where he actually belongs, as with many migrant children who never feel they fully belong to one place.

Papathanassiou plays eighteen characters that makes up episodes of the story, including grandmothers, uncles, neighbors, himself and a chicken, very effectively – even when they are conversing between themselves. With just the slightest change in posture or expression we can easily identify the character he’s become. The transition between characters are done seamlessly, making it look almost effortless.

With his powerful emotions and effective story-telling, we are taken through a crowded market, rows of fig trees, an old school building, just as if we are walking with the characters themselves. We can feel the festivity of a dance, the blue skies and warm sun of a Greek summer, and the commotion of a village fire.

As we leave Greece, the rug is rolled up and the characters were flashed once again in rapid succession without Papathanassiou ever losing one bit of control or intensity. The phrase uttered at the end reverberates with me: it is a difficult thing to have your heart in two places. This journey of self-discovery asks us to question ourselves how family and culture has shaped us to who we are.

Looming the Memory is a very personal and intimate storytelling that grabs the audience’s attention right from the beginning and doesn’t let go until the end.

Thomas Papathanassiou trained in Curtin University (Theatre / Literature), WAAPA (Music Theatre), and VCA (Grad. Dip. in Animateuring – Performace Creation). He is an actor, writer, choreographer, dramaturge, and theatre-maker. Looming the Memory won Best Actor (2006 Perth Theatre Trust Equity Guild Awards) and Best Production (2007 Blue Room Theatre Awards)

Singapore’s First English Animation (or is it?)

So we’ve been bombarded by posters at bus stops and TV commercials and trailers in cinemas and repeated ads on the radio of the latest proudly true blue 100% got warranty Singaporean production, Sing to The Dawn, a 3D animation feature based on an award-winning children’s book. So Singaporeans should be really proud of this production, especially since the last two local animations flopped at the cinemas. (Legend Of The Sea and Zodiac: The Race Begins)

Or should they really? Let’s see who worked on this animation:

• The author of the original story is Minfong Ho, a Myanmar-born Chinese American,
• about a girl in Thailand.
• The movie is directed by Phil Mitchell, an Indonesian-based Canadian,
• with Indonesian animation crew,
• working in Infinite Framework Studios in Batam, Indonesia.
• The team also includes UK’s Stephen Read, who worked in Happy Feet.
• With Singaporean cast, backed by Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) and MediaCorp’s Raintree Pictures (Singapore).

So I consider it more of an international effort, rather than Singaporean. Or Southeast-Asian. Or maybe Singaporean-Indonesian. My evil nationalist twin would say it’s a truly Indonesian effort, with funding assistance from Singapore.

The Vagina Monologues in Singapore

Went to watch Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues the other day at the National Library’s Drama Centre. Apparently it’s the inaugural production of the local theatre company Zebra Crossing. There was a Cantonese production of the same play a few weeks before, but for obvious reasons I didn’t catch it. Maybe it’s not obvious enough – I don’t speak Cantonese. The Vagina Monologue is an award winning play that consists of a few short monologues told by women on different aspects of the vagina or femininity including its physical appearance, love, sex, rape, etc.

I haven’t watched the original, so this is just my observations. This time the version departs from the original monologue, involving between 1 to 9 women for each ‘chapter’ of the play. Among them a woman who couldn’t say the word ‘Vagina’, a know-thy-vagina camp (led by a cartoonish French accented sergeant), a transsexual looking for acceptance, and a bunch of drunken housewives telling stories of abuse by their husbands.

I applaud their effort to localise many of the contents by including references to local heritage such as the inclusion of an Indian woman, Malay, Chinese, and Eurasian. Although I think some parts still seemed a little too American.  In emphasizing the local flavor they threw in some local phrases (Hokkien, Malay, Singlish, Tamil) that made it sound a little school-theatrelike to me. But they drew laughter from the audience nonetheless. It seems that local curses or exclamations is one of the best recipe to entertain Singaporean film-watchers and theatre-goers. There was even pole-dancer that showed off a bit of her skills. But left me with “What was that for?”. But some of the scenes are genuinely touching and funny and do work most of the time. Could do a little better on the costume for the ‘dominatrix’, tho. She looks more like a Panic at The Disco fan than a dominatrix.

I did cringe badly once during the show. There was a chapter where the actresses in school uniforms were acting as teenage girls who talked about their first period while running around the first few rows of audience and showering them with tampons and sanitary pads. Then one of them took a huge bottle of Vagisil (the production’s sponsor) and shrieked “I WANTED TO USE VAGISIL!” followed by some corporate advertising catchphrase, echoed by the other girls. Ugh.

Anyway, it was much entertaining and seventeen bucks well spent. (This cheapskate bought the cheapest available)

Annoying F1 Races

I don’t understand the hoohah, other that the country is making lots and lots of money out of it, and somehow, accidentally (NOT), many events coincide with or are scheduled around the time of the race – like the Bienalle (the next one in 2010 will coincide with the inaugural Youth Olympics. more tourists. more money, And by then the first two casino resorts should be up), Sun festival, River festival, etc. Almost every shop in any shopping mall have their own ‘F1 sale’. Also, I’m not a big fan of such.. uh.. manly pursuits.

Singapore’s hosting the inaugural night F1 race. They turn the Suntec / Marina Bay area into a circuit. The roads there are closed for the whole week, and since it is downtown central business district, you can imagine how much problem it creates in traffic flow especially during rush hour. And since my flat’s just outside town I can hear the cars zooming. Really bothersome to my ears. The boyfriend said it sounds like demons out of hell

I’ve never been interested in car / motorcycle races – and I must admit I’ve never watched any on tv either. Although I’m not a big fan of sports, I can still understand where the excitement lies in, say, soccer, badminton, or even synchronised swimming or javelin throwing. But I just dont understand F1 or any other vehicle races. Karapan sapi sounds more exciting than F1 to me.

Just for the sake of being a Singapore resident and I just have to at least know what’s going on here, I tuned in to the TV just now to see the race. We couldn’t even tell when the race had ended. I had to make sure so we put the TV on mute and listened if the zooming outside had stopped. But I still think it’s better to watch it on TV. It’s free. You can mute the sound. And the camera follows the cars, you can even get the drivers’ view. I imagine sitting as a spectator down at the circuit goes something like this: *nothing*….. then one car passes by *cheer for 2 seconds*.. then *nothing*….. then another car passes by *cheer for another 2 seconds*.. then *nothing*….. sounds pretty boring to me.

Contemporary Art at SAM

8Q sam is located at 8 Queen Street, Singapore,
On the opposite side of the street from the museum’s “DOME cafe” and the Church of St. Peter & Paul

EVENTS

Today, 15 Aug is the opening of 8Q, the new wing of the Singapore Art Museum, which specialises in Contemporary Art. Opening is 6.30pm onwards. A few events over the weekend will follow:

Gallery Turn Studios at 8Q sam
16 – 17 Aug (Sat & Sun) • 8Q sam Gallery Level 1 • 10am – 7pm • Free
Come interact and find out how artists work as they transform a museum gallery into a working studio space to create artworks! Do not miss this opportunity to mingle with The Artists Village artists as they create artworks, turning a gallery space that is traditionally reserved for the display and presentation of art into a creative space where art comes alive!

“Uninvited Obstacles” Install II workshop by artist Agnes Yit
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Visualise your thoughts with artist Agnes Yit, who will pose questions and set you thinking on the role that you adopt in your everyday life.
Expect an installation of punching bags, which was exhibited in Post-Ulu at The Substation in the year 2000. Post-Ulu was organised by newer members of TAV who did not experience the early phase of the group and space at Lorong Gambas.

“When The Ship Comes In” workshop by artist Lee Wen
Time: 3pm – 5pm
Express your imagination to social history of Singapore and respond by creating your own artwork. Selected artworks will be used to form a collage to be installed at the future Bayfront MRT Station.
Commissioned by Land Transport Authority of Singapore (LTA), Cultural Medallion recipient & artist, Lee Wen will be conceptualising an artwork as part of LTA’s Intergrated Art Programme.

EXHIBITIONS

School: 8Q-Rate
(16 Aug 08 – 9 Jan 09)
Tour by curator: 22 Aug 08, 7.30pm (free)
School: 8Q-Rate is a contemporary exhibition where eight curators will work with eight artists from multi-disciplnary backgrounds to present works that play on the theme of school.

The Artists Village: 20 Years On
(9 Aug 08 – 5 Oct 08 )
Tour by curator: 29 Aug 08 & 12 Sep 08, 7.30pm (free)
The Artists Village: 20 Years On addresses issues concerning the history, or rather, memories of The Artists Village (TAV). The dynamics of individual and collective social memories of the TAV artists during the Ulu Sembawang period and the Post-Ulu period offer multiple entry points to the understanding of TAV.

Masriadi: Black Is My Last Weapon
(15 Aug 08 – 9 Nov 08 )
Tour by curator: 19 Sep 08, 7.30pm (free)
Masriadi: Black is My Last Weapon gathers more than 30 paintings by Indonesian artist I Nyoman Masriadi from early 1990s to his most recent 2008 works. A first solo exhibition of contemporary Indonesian art at the SAM, the exhibition forms part of SAM’s ongoing efforts to feature significant modern and contemporary Southeast Asian artists, continuing from solo exhibitions of Affandi and Widayat in 2007. The works on display for Masriadi: Black is My Last Weapon have been borrowed from individual collectors in , and Hong Kong.

For more Info visit the Singapore Art Museum website: www.singart.com

Singapore Night Festival 2008 – Week 1

It’s Monday and my fingers are having the blues so I won’t be typing out much but I’ll just paste some photos we took at the first weekend of Night Fest. Enjoy!

ps: for those of you wondering, my camera is a compact Fujifilm F100fd. And I love it!

The National Museum of Singapore, note the dancing couple in the middle

Sailing ship and dancer suspended in the air from wires

Extreme piano playing

Part of the crowd and a line of local girls in gigantic skirts on wheels

Giant luminescent ball – can’t really see it here but there’s a dancer suspended in the centre of the sphere

The moon (I assume) and two ladies

Dancers suspended from some really pretty balloons

Another view of the balloons – personally the red one is my favorite

Classical-style faces projected onto a screen of fine mist from a sprinkler

Water dance, a bit like gymnastics with goldfish in a bowl

Fire dance, ladies in nighties with pyromaniac tendencies

Fire umbrella, patent pending – waiting for scientific proof that spinning fiery spokes will keep you dry

Library Book Sale

Date: 18 – 20 July 2008

Time: 9.30am – 8.00pm

Venue: Singapore Expo Hall 4A

The National Library’s having a garage sale, a “cuci gudang”. English & Chinese books are going at $2 a pop, magazines at $5 for a pack of 10. Malay and Tamil book are going at at $1 a pop and magazines at $5 for a pack of 20. Your purchase is limited to 50 copies, tho. And they also provide delivery service through SingPost.

Unfortunately I’ll only be able to visit the sale on Sunday (that’s the third and final day) cos today I’m gonna go to the night festival opening, then tomorrow we’re going on a field trip to the Matisse exhibition at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute (STPI) and my birthday dinner. So.. yeah I really really really hope they still have buy-worthy stuff left on Sunday. I can visualize the kiasu Singaporeans queueing up and loading their baskets up with any book they can find, and bringing along friends or members of the family so that they can buy more than the 50 book quota. Fingers crossed!

Update:

According to the bf there were 600 people waiting outside the hall before the sale opened this morning. Damn.

Singapore Night Festival

Date: 18 – 26 July 2008

Venue: National Museum, SMU lawn, and its vicinity

Time: at night

There’s gonna be some fun happening the next two weekends. Singapore is holding a Night Festival which includes performances spectacular (imported, of course) some outdoor Zouk-ing and a slew of other performances and installations.

The Italian aerial Performance, The Dancing Sky by Studi Festi, will be on 18 and 19 July at 9.00pm at the National Museum with a second performance at 11.30pm. It’s gonna involve suspended stuff and people flying around. There are also other performances around the venue.

The highlight on 25 and 26 July is the Zouk Beatnik Picnic outdoor party (do I hear PARTY? Yeah!!!!) A number of heritage-related events will be held in museums and and vicinity, and watch out for the light installation that will paint the facades of the National Museum and the Art Museum. They’re also going to screen (the John Travolta) Hairspray and Willy Wonka (the 1971 version) outdoors, under the huge banyan tree outside the National Museum.

And.. and.. they’re all FREE!!!! And the 5 museums in the civic district (Asian Civilisation, National, Peranakan, Art, Philatelic) will be open to the public until 2.00am on both weekends the 25th, and.. and.. it’s FREE admission from 6.00pm onwards! Now how cool is that?

I picked up a pamphlet with all the performance schedule but apparently they don’t have an online version of it. The National Museum website lists the programmes but the website isn’t really that friendly – but anyway it’s better than nothing, so if you wanna know more you can visit their website then click on the Night Festival link at the bottom of the page and then click on the respective dates to view the programme line-up.

They’re Tearing Down 7th Storey Hotel. Boo!!!!

A bit of History from Wikipedia:

The New 7th Storey Hotel was established in 1953. The founder of the hotel, Wee Thiam Siew, spotted the potential for a hotel business on its current site in the early 1950s. Wee also owned the Ban Leong Group. At that time, there was an influx of immigrants and Europeanbusinessmen.

The then five-star hotel did well and became prominent. It was the tallest standing structure in the Beach Road area, and offered panoramic views of the beach. It was commonly used as a landmark by drivers to locate the lower Rochor vicinity. With the advent of land reclamation in the 1970s and 1980s, the seascapes gave way to flyovers. Following urbanisation directives, shophouses, a Chinese temple and pasar malam markets in the hotel’s immediate surroundings were also pulled down. In the 1990s, the development of the high-rise skyscrapers in Marina Centre such as the Suntec City obscured the sea view that the hotel once enjoyed.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the building’s top floor was the site of cha cha parties thrown by post-war British officers and graced by Singapore’s veteran singer S. K. Poon. After Singapore’s independence in 1965, most of the hotel’s guests were traders from India and Indonesia. Since the Asian economic crisis of 1997, fewer traders have been putting themselves up at the hotel’s rooms. Most guests now are backpackers from Europe and North America.

For those who are not sure which one it is, the New 7th Storey Hotel is that odd tilting building in Bugis in the same plot of land as the (tacky) DHL balloon and the Art-Decoish Parkview Square.

The other day I heard that the plot of land had been acquired to make way for an MRT station for the new downtown line which will be opened in 2013. Can’t imagine how lazy Singaporeans will be in the future. The place is just a friggin 5 minute walk from the already existing Bugis MRT! And I have this image in my head that in a few years, Singapore’s underground will be vaoid and filled with pipes and tunnels. Even now there have been a few cases of land caving in due to construction of tunnels. Maybe we will even live underground in the future, if Singapore hasn’t reclaimed so much land that the island is eventually connected with Indonesia and Malaysia.

Today Newspaper interviewed the lift operator (yes its lift is manually operated!) and the lift uncle was surprised to hear that they’re going to close the hotel and tear it down, his boss didn’t even say a word about it. My mind wanders. How will he make a living? Does he have a wife? Does he have to buy medicines for her? He’s so used to meeting so many people from different parts of the world everyday, he chats with them, won’t he feel lonely? What can he do next?

I hate it when they “have to” tear down old buildings, especially something not short of being a landmark – like the case of the New 7th Storey Hotel. It’s like telling an old man, “Hey sorry we just gotta kill you. We have better use for the space you are occupying in this world right now”

I thought I could book a room there for my birthday, before it’s evacuated later in December this year. But they’re fully booked for the period. Summer holidays, I guess. OK. Resolution. I gotta stay at least a night in the hotel before it’s closed! It’s gonna be an historical experience

The Merlion is Missing Something

I believe everyone knows how the merlion looks like:

As in previous years, Singapore sends a representative to the Miss Universe pageant, where she will compete with a few dozen of the supposedly most beautiful, charming, but not necessarily intelligent, girls in the world. They’ll strut their stuff dressed up in a bathing suit, then a night gown, et cetera et cetera. This year, Singapore decided to be more creative. Our Miss Universe representative, Shenise Wong, will be wearing a Merlion-inspired gown made of dangling pieces of PVC leather and plastic as her National costume. Yes this means the picked costume is thought to represent Singapore. It was designed by the 18-year-old designer Muhammed Hafiz Tahir. [source]

Take a look:

OK it’s a perfectly fine mermaidish dress – which I personally think isn’t appropriate for something the scale of the Miss Universe Pageant, the Halloween pageant maybe or the Recyclable dress competition. I don’t even think it represents Singapore or it’s culture, more like Atlantis maybe. But since the choice has been made, why not just improve on what we have. My suggestion is: to up the impact and shock factor and also to more closely resemble the Merlion, get water to spew out of the Miss’ mouth:

Now that’s more like it.

An Eventful Weekend and More

FRIDAY

Went to the Singapore Art Museum to catch Ket Noi, a performance art event by Vietnamese and Singaporean artists. Four artists performed on Friday, started with something that involved the artist being whipped by a red scarf (missed the start, was watching this video about Giacometti in SAM), then a ‘Silent Conductor’ (or something to that effect), where the artist conducted silence, poured water into her left ear, turned her back to the audience and started howling, and then a woman’s temple where water was transported with nothing but bare hands as an offering. The last one was where art books and magazines were put into a washing machine. Also met some of Billy’s friends there, Angie, Sherman, and a few others. Also Ken, who seem to be the only ADM staff I know who attend openings. He was taking photos of people taking photos of the event.

Have you ever been in somewhere really nice and captivating and pleasant but then something/one ugly enters your field of vision and you just can’t help staring? Well, during one of the performances there was this lady who apparently wore G-string with really tight jeans. She squatted down and I happen to be standing right behind here. What happened was a bad case of plumber’s crack. When she squatted, the waist of her jeans slipped right to almost the end of her ass and we could see not only her panties’ waistband but also the (what do you call it?) vertical part of the G-string right to the end of her ass. Another millimeter and I bet her jeans would just fall off. Eyes traumatized, I went home and tried to forget all about it.

SATURDAY

It’s Ririn & Henry’s wedding in the morning, at the Bukit Batok Presbyterian Church. They’ve been going out for ever and whenever we ask her when they’re getting married, she always replied “Still very loonggggggg”. And then one day we received an invitation to their wedding, just a month before! Sneaky! And they’ve bought a flat! Which means they’ve been planning for this for long! Sneaky! So here’s us and the happy couple..

We went back to town on the train, and when we stepped into the train at Jurong East, this lady stood up from her seat and offered it to me! OMG, SHE MUST’VE THOUGHT I WAS PREGNANT!!!! I’M NOT THAT FAT! We laughed until tears rolled and I didn’t dare to turn my back and look at the lady – I assume she’s embarrassed – and we laughed some more. I dried up my tears and tried hard to stop laughing. But then Aldo was still laughing after so long. So we started laughing again. And more tears rolled.

Since there’s no training at the museum today, I met up with Billy after the wedding and went for a walk around the city. We dropped by the Arts House – which is Singapore’s former Parliament House – to check out what’s on and went into the chamber and tried to experience how it’s like to stand at the podium and talk to the whole parliament.

Then we went to the Asian Civilisation Museum. Last time I went there was maybe almost 2 years back. I remember liking it a lot, but now the place just seem so big and empty and dark and scary. But I had fun nonetheless. They have lots of interactive exhibits and we tried on costumes and learned how to play middle-eastern drum. I wanted to take pictures of the deities, but I was afraid that it works like how it works in Java’s Keratons (palaces) – your film won’t develop when you take pictures of sacred objects – I personally have never tried it but just to be on the safe side of my brand new $500 toy, I refrained from it. I found out that Jamiroquai got his inspiration from Torajan warriors:

SUNDAY

Checked out the newly opened 9km track from Mount Faber, through Henderson Wave and Hort Park. The climb up to Mount Faber from Harbourfront was grueling. It was an almost never ending staircase and that hurt my ass. Or maybe I just need more exercise for my ass. We were lucky that it didn’t rain although the sky was overcast. We could’ve resumed the walk to Kent Ridge Park, but we thought we’d had enough walking for the day and headed to Vivocity for lunch and some shopping instead. Elisa bought a Winnie the Pooh drumset for her niece in Jakarta. So then I went home and watched the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly on DVD. It was rather cheesy and it reminds me of Kill Bill. Or rather if I’d watched the Clint Eastwood flick before Kill Bill, I’d say Quentin Tarantino drew his inspiration from TGTBATU.

View from Mount Faber

Henderson Wave

@ Hort Park: this was supposed to be Dorothy from Wizard of Oz with her dog, Toto. There were other characters form the movie, too. Made out of scraps. And there’s the witch (blond!) who popped out of a field of flowers, it was successfully creepy.

MONDAY

I took Monday off to enjoy some of Singapore’s nature. We went to Pulau Ubin in the morning. By mistake we took a bus from Lavender MRT to Changi Village. Was a veerryy longgg rideeee… We didn’t have to wait for other passangers at the jetty, as it’s school holidays and quite a number of people went to Ubin. We were tired from the walk at Mt Faber the day before, so we didn’t stay too long at Ubin. It’s pretty interesting to see this side of Singapore which looks more like spectacles from road trip out from Jakarta. We cycled to Check Jawa, get some tan lines on my feet from the scorching sun, watch the crabs with huge right claws fight for women and teritorry (When they fight with their claws they make this obscene gesture.. if you watch the South Park episode where they parodied 300 you’ll get what I mean) and had lunch and cycled a bit more and fed the turtles at the temple, and we went back to Changi Village. We felt old. We had to push our bikes up steep slopes, while other people happily pedal up.. But then I like to blame it on the $8/day bike – stupid gears don’t work. Bwahahah. Or maybe cheap bikes are just not made to go up inclinations. Anyway the cycling sored up my groin. On the way back, we dropped by the WWII memorial Changi Chapel & Museum. I guess it’s the Singaporean version of Lobang Buaya. While waiting at the bus stop, we saw 3 girls brats, maybe about 13 or 14 years old, smoking and cursing, and one of them very unglamorously spitted out a string of phlegm. I felt like giving them a good kick in the face.

View from Check Jawa

Another view from Check Jawa

This is where we fed the turtles

At Changi Chapel & Museum

Art for Today : Surrounding David

This gigantic duplicate of Michelangelo’s David clad in pink kebaya brocade is currently in the rotunda of the National Museum of Singapore (NAMOS). It’s the deeds of Indonesian artist, Titarubi. I believe people’s reactions would vary, including “This looks like candy”, “What is this?”, “Who is this?”, “Gotta be someone with fucked up brains”, “What next? Rodin’s The Thinker clad in Hello Kitty decals?”, “This is an eyesore”, “Heeheehee look at his dick”. I just thought it was a bit frivolous at first. Anyway, I found a writeup done by its curator, Enin Supriyanto.

Subverted David, Subversive Beauty
…
By choosing David, Titarubi is jumping directly into a maelstrom of intertwining problems: the canon and model of genius (male) artist and his masterpiece, gender, idealization of masculinity and nudity. This is why, although there are other existing statues, which are generally considered in Western tradition as the ideal figure of a human (male), the hero and also the symbol of knowledge, such as exemplified by Apollo Belvedere, David provides more space to problematize not only conceptual debates concerning to the ideal canon of human body—the masculine beauty—but also how the concept is realized within a specific context: the contribution of modern art history in constituting the dominant discourse of the ideal human body (male). And how all of them are contextually represented to Indonesian or to Asian society in general.

At least there are three visual, as well as conceptual, strategies that Titarubi applied to approach David in her current work. First, she amplifies the size of David, almost two times larger than the original one. The 5,5 meter tall David in Michelangelo’s version is already in larger than life size, gigantic even, added to its arrangement on top of it’s plinth. Titarubi enlarges it even more. She transforms David into Goliath’s size, soaring up to 4 to 5 times taller than the average height of average Asian men. At the present, David truly becomes monumental by filling up the space as if reaching out to the pinnacle of rotunda above. The historical synchronism between David and the structure of the space and building ostensibly reveals the conjuncture of civilization that has merged the two. But on the other hand the colossal figure has transformed it from the ideal form of man into a giant. Hence it diverts from objective representation into pure abstraction. David’s image as ‘small, ordinary man’ is presently abstracted and idealized—complying with its mythological grandeur: a mighty man turns into a gigantic towering figure.

And, second, Titarubi covers David’s body with brocade fabric, a type of fabric that is weaved with patterns of tendrils and flowers, which is commonly used as kebaya material in combination with women traditional outfit in Indonesia, mainly in Java and Bali.
…
Titarubi sees that brocade fabrics and the design of kebaya outfit contain a manipulative nature towards female (body): fabrics and clothes are intentionally worn to cover up women, protecting them from nudity. But because the fabrics transparent nature and the skin-tight design of kebaya tend to expose the curves of female body, the clothes ironically work by stripping women off. Brocade fabrics have put woman’s body and identity under the gaze.

Titarubi thinks that male nudity is uniquely positioned or separated from the attribute of ‘beauty’—which in the context of female body is reduced into sensuality and sexuality. In contrast, male nudity is represented as an attribute of masculinity and power.
…
David, the ideal male which was originally naked, is now covered with brocade in bright color. He became a visible object, placed right at the center of a room with a rotunda dome on top of it, surrounded by huge pillars. Although stand towering in immensity, David’s body is now covered with an all feminine attribute. He is no longer indestructible bulges of solid muscles and tissues. His muscular body looks weightless, transparent, with beam of lights coming out from the inside. He turns perfectly—through the surface of his body devoid of any organs— into an object of gaze from certain proximity.
…
Titarubi’s act of covering up David is an intervention that intentionally infiltrates his whole appearance with ‘feminine aesthetics’, smearing him with the sentiment of beauty. In our socio-political context today, regarding to gender polarization and anxiety towards bodily exposition, to say nothing of nudity, the act of representing beauty in such an open and lucid way is one subversive act.

A Fun and Informative Saturday

Dropped by the newly opened Peranakan Museum at Armenian Street last Saturday. I can’t remember exactly how long they’ve been closed for renovation. I just remember that I liked being in the former school. It was initially another branch of the Asian Civilisation Museum but I guess they choose to make it more specialised and thus the Peranakan Museum. Honesly, I don’t know if I’m counted as a peranakan. I’m not even too sure about the family’s genealogy. But it’s definitely fun to see those things that we have at home (or keep in boxes) displayed in the museum – our TV table at home was a functioning altar until my Granpa died about 17 years back, and our house is filled with random (straits?) chinese antiquities.

Stumbled upon an interesting place – a small graveyard in the Armenian Church’s yard. Pretty interesting, since I’ve never actually seen any old Christian grave here. Small tombs arranged in 2 curves with some tombstone figures losing their extremeties, no mausoleum or whatnot. But still a nice find, afterall. And apparently the famous Vanda Miss Joaquim (namesake of the Singaporean Orchid) is buried there.

Another interesting find is the Civil Defence Gallery at the pretty (as in, beautiful) old Fire Station opposite Funan (near the Philatelic Museum). Saw some old fire engines there, including a steam-powered one. The second level was less interesting IMO, tho. Contains a replica of an ambulance’s interior, some rescue scenes (including a really boring elevator scene where all you did was look at the level-indicator lights and listen to some woman’s voice telling you that the firefighters are coming to help you at level 18), and hazmat suits.

Romance, Academically

From the International Herald Tribune -

“Singapore succeeds at managing everything – except dating”

SINGAPORE: It was like a college mixer, a classroom full of young men and women seeking a recipe for romance.

They had assembled for the first class of “Love Relations for Life: A Journey of Romance, Love and Sexuality.”

There was giggling and banter among the students, but that was all part of the course material as their teacher, Suki Tong, led them into the basics of dating, falling in love and staying together.

The course, which is in its second year at two polytechnic institutes, is the latest of many, mostly futile, campaigns by the government to get its citizens to mate and multiply. Its popularity last year has led to talk of expansion through the higher education system.

“We want to tell students: Don’t wait until you have built up your career,” Yu-Foo Yee Shoon, minister of state for community development, youth and sports, said at a news conference last month. “Sometimes, it is too late, especially for girls.” <<<< WOT????

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“I’m not open to relationships in school,” said Wei Shan Koh, a former student who works as a teacher’s aide. “Boys in school are not my cup of tea. They are male chauvinist pigs. They’re annoying and childish. And they won’t give in to you. They’re just not mature.”

Another former student, Tian Xi Tang, was quick to respond.

“I think girls’ ideas are a bit childish, or you might say girlie,” said Tian, who hopes to become an engineer. “It’s a matter of pride. Guys are more outspoken.

We don’t like a girl to be more outspoken.”

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Credits to Els for highlighting the paragraph above – and for starting a battle of sexes (and ego)