Lifted off a Facebook group concerned with finding affordable spaces for art(and artists) in Singapore:
Post #5
wrote
Even when it gets demolished, it makes a great story for the news. Artist Village during the Tang Da Wu did just that.
Basically the rule of thumb – dead spaces make great spaces
And now with the credit crunch perhaps hitting Singapore it might just change the rental and development situation.
While corporations are increasingly attuned to the benefits of patronage, with the developer of Scotts Square turning its showflat into an art gallery for local artists and a showcase for international art pieces, artists are increasingly finding themselves casualties not only of the current state of the rental market but as a function of their own success. Sleepy neighbourhoods which they have helped made ‘hip’ through the congregation of artists in residence, have in turn, priced them out.
Haji Lane- first catapulted into mainstream consciousness through the cameo appearance of Comme des Garcons has become a charming enclave of bohemian, artsy small businesses with names like Lipstick Bandit, Straits Records andPluck.
Kaki Lima(literally, FiveFootWay- a name also connoting a space for the stereotyped Malay ideal of lepak ), a cafe cum gallery on Haji Lane is a recent casualty of the ironic SoHo-esque playing out of events. Its last concert has been documented by photographer Tan Ngiap Heng.
A documentary about space and memory and how we stake our claim on spaces, no matter how temporary-from the graffiti on the wall or the tissue paper in a food court.
The official website here:
The issue of the preservation of a city’s heritage through architecture is also present in Syria. When Mohamed Atta expressed concern for the preservation of the souks in Aleppo as a student of urban planning, he was similarly expressing a distaste for the encroachment of Westernization/modernization as represented by the monolithic Cham Hotel in Aleppo. This distaste for large, luxury hotels is a continuing thread evidenced by the number of luxury hotel chains being the target of terrorist attacks. One of the concerns of luxury travellers is to travel responsibly and the same concern extends to luxury hotels that try to benefit the communities in their immediate locality. This is especially true when there is a huge disparity between the standard of living of the ‘locals’ and the clients of the hotels.
Singapore’s love-hate relationship with graffiti.
Sadly, I feel it shows how Singapore generally lacks a sense of humour. From Wu Xiao Kang’s expulsion from the Month of Photography after the photographs were revealed to be the work, not of a schizophrenic, dead photographer but a body of work of an art collective, (full story here ) to reports of a student from an art school being expelled over graffiti, we really need to understand that creativity shouldn’t be a government prerogative.
From The Straits Times Sep 7, 2007
LaSalle student expelled for campus graffiti
By Khushwant Singh
A SECOND-YEAR student in fine arts who painted graffiti on his college’s new premises has been expelled from school.
He was caught spray painting the words ‘Gotta start somewhere’ on some steps, a lift door, a pillar and a wall of the LaSalle College of the Arts in McNally Street, off Prinsep Street, on Monday night.
His classmates would have known that the phrase referred to a mantra lecturers used during classes.
Fellow second-year student Joj Chan, 22, said: ‘They keep telling us that to be artists, we’ve got to start somewhere.’ Full report here:
Check out the video here:
Look out especially for the architecture of the new La Salle campus- really beautiful work. Wait- is that why they’re so angry?- naughty students defiling a pristine new campus… the kids interviewed in the video said the students had the same habits in the old campus and apparently no one cared.