The glut of en bloc sales and their accompanying gluttony of riches, the impending demolition of the National Stadium and some time ago, the 'rational' removal of the central National Library are probably fresh in most people's mind.
Tan Pin Pin seeks to probe and stick something in Singaporeans' notoriously stulified minds. Not unexpected from a director who brought us Luvre Me Now (a 3 min short video on Barbie, and was banned in Singapore)
Dreadfully slow in certain parts of this 60-min documentary but always poignantly so. It might seem at first as being reactionary with questions on the 'official' histories, collective erasure of memories and nearly every interviewees' desire for immortality. However, if you watch carefully, at certain points in the show, one wonders about the legitimacy of terms such as collective even.
What struck me most was this Englishwoman who said that Singapore is not a good place to grow old in. A frail body and gradually fading recollections is definitely not helped with the complete loss of external artifices of memories.
It is not a show to watch if you want a feel-good vibe after it. But it is also just about time to stop feeling sense-lessly good about nothing now.
Catch it in the Arts house for full effect. Watch it with your fellow Singaporeans (whom you do not have much hope in) in an adaptive reuse building where 'they' passed laws to ironically erase your past. I guess the static buzz of the DV and the film reel was cleverly used and very much akin to a person stringing thoughts in his/her mind.
4 comments:
Asked whether the building's value would rise if it were declared a landmark, Tan replied: "We don't need this kind of building. And we can't keep coming back to antiques - that's not progress."
oh u mean tan pp said that? was that in jest or wat. but seriously i agree with her, i dont think preservation is particularly meaningful with adaptive reuse especially when implemented in the scale of city blocks or even districts. nostalgia when materialized can only mean fetishized commodities
that said, while i appreciate the interviewees' attempts at relativising history and all, personally i think people can be more buddhist about things and accept the transience of material being and embrace life as a series of experiences... ohmmm
i tried that buddhist thing once, but was rudely sadly informed by qiaos that "a man without memories is handicapped".
haha no pp didnt say that. that is my all time favorite pro en bloc quote from one of the residents of pearl bank.
hmm singapore lah. other countries becoz pple own the land, gentrification leads to adaptive reuse. here we just copy without the dynamics involved in its production at all.
PROGRESS. u good technocratic servant.
there can be no fruitful contemplation when u deliberately cut off ur natural capacity to imagine; the ability to think of possibilities as a projection of past, present, future as a single thought.
the interesting thing abt buddhism is the deep contemplation of the unspoken, uncommunicable, ur own endeavours without deliberating on something else. i am sure everybody do think of memories. "without memories" does not mean complete zero sum negation like western metaphysics. in buddhism, emptiness is a being in itself.
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