Finding the Unique in the Generic City

After exhibiting in two locations in London, Uniquely Singapore – Distinctively London?, a project comparing the cities of Singapore and London to find out what’s unique about each from its everyday spaces, will officially open in Singapore this Saturday. This is a fringe event in this year’s ArchiFest and it is held at Illuma shopping mall. As one of the six Singapore correspondents who worked on this project, I got to study eating spaces in these two cities with my London collaborator Lingxiu. If you’re keen to come for the opening reception at 6pm, please RSVP at info@generi-city.net.

There will also be a Really AR? 5 presentation that evening organised by re:act, and Reclaim Land has been invited to share our work together with speakers like architect William Lim. Do come by to support!

 

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Uniquely Singapore – Distinctively London? Exhibition
1-24 October 2010
Opening hours: 10am – 10pm
Illuma, 201 Victoria Street, S(188067)
Free admission
Opening reception: 9 October 2010, 6pm.

Really AR? 5
Saturday, 9 October 2010
7 pm
Filmgarde Cineplex
Illuma, 201 Victoria Street, S(188067)

Crafty 2010 is Cancelled

After months of teasing and enticing designers to sign up for a conference about the role of craft in design, Anonymous abruptly cancelled Crafty 2010 a week before it was scheduled to happen. “Yes. The rumors are true. Crafty is postponed indefinitely”, read a post it uploaded on to its its Facebook page last Saturday.

When contacted about the cancellation, Anonymous partner Felix Ng apologised for the decision, explaining that ticket sales up till then were “a long way to go” from reaching a “respectable audience size”. While he had considered lowering ticket prices and even offering free tickets, he decided against it as this would only devalue the efforts put up by the speakers and collaborators. Moreover, he said that this would contribute to the problem of audiences who didn’t believe in paying for content.

In the weeks running up to Crafty 2010, Felix said the conference received great feedback from around the world, but for some reason the excitement did not translate back to ticket sales. When asked if he thought that Singaporean designers were not interested in craftsmanship, Felix thinks it is quite the opposite.

“So far our post-mortem points to the possibility that we designed a conference that Singapore needs, but don’t want (yet),” he replied in an e-mail interview.

crafty2010

 

There were also rumblings that the conference tickets were too expensive and there was no subsidy for students, he said. However, Crafty 2010 was meant for working professionals and it was not going to be a “half-baked event” where speakers showed pictures of their work that one could already view online. In fact, at the price of $250 for each ticket, Crafty 2010 was not going to be profitable at all. Moreover, the conference had no sponsors, which in Singapore was “commercial suicide”, he said.

“[It] makes us a little insane I guess, because we rather spend our time making sure the content is great rather than chasing corporate sponsorship,” he adds.

According to Felix, Crafty’s ticket price was comparable to recent design-related conferences held in Singapore. Tickets to a Kenya Hara lecture last year cost $600, while the Business Evangelism 2010 conference featuring Malcolm Gladwell, Pico Iyer, Marc Ecko and Stefan Sagemeister were selling tickets at $2461 each.

While Crafty 2010 is cancelled, Anonymous is going ahead with A Crafty Paper, a 44-page newspaper featuring a foreword by Duane King and profiles of 15 other individuals, which it produced for the event. It will now be published as Bracket, a eight-volume publication that will be published between now and 2012 on topics ranging from craft, hunger, and ethics to failure.

 

Nostalgia For Sale!

I recently visited BooksActually’s new store in Cineleisure and was a little surprised that it sold few books, but lots of retro knickknacks instead. These range from the useful such as old notebooks and wooden rulers to the entirely kitsch such as fish-shaped soya sauce bottles and bird warblers.

Shopping at this BooksActually store reminded me of walking through Sungei Market (Thieves Market) with its range of curiosities and old stuff, except the store was more a curated exhibit rather than a market. Instead of discovering gems amongst the garbage, and haggling with an Uncle over the price, the objects have already been “sourced”, cleaned, and even price tagged for my purchase. A similar store that comes to mind is The Little Dröm Store, which is located near the main BooksActually store in Telok Ayer Street.

Though the items in both stores bring back memories of my past, I just find it hard to buy anything from them nowadays. I used to buy authentic artifacts from the past such as posters, pins and books. However, now that they sit on my shelves collecting dust, I question what use do these items have in a contemporary context? In paying for authenticity in these items, I have in fact commodified my memories for something that is just a simulation of it.

Increasingly, I’ll rather spend on an object created out of inspiration from the past, rather than something found from my past and put up for sale. Examples of what I’ll rather buy are items found in the newly-opened FARM Online Store. Take the Merlion Shopper for instance, a polyester version of the Merlion print plastic bag created by Hans Tan. Stocks of the original plastic bags would have been been “sourced” and sold at the stores peddling retro stuff, but this bag has actually been “redesigned” to contemporary times. Same goes for the 1960s National Museum Tote Bag.

On a side note, the Merlion Shopper probably sounds familiar because it first debuted as part of the exhibition Singapore Souvenirs held during last year’s Singapore Design Festival. The Kueh Tutu eraser from the same exhibition is also on sale.

An item I’m really keen on getting is Michael’s Lost Monuments Poster, a beautiful poster that appeals to nostalgia but has been placed in context.