Features︎︎︎

I

Reflections on White Sculpture
Polly Palmerini

II

How can we approach Anti-Racist Curating?
Rachael Burns

III

How can spaces be calming for children with autism and learning disabilities? Rand Jasim

IV

Care /ing /ful /less: A Reflection
Bella Probyn

V

Flatpack Design
Hannah Lim

VI

Standing up for the right not to stand
Ip Wai Lung

VII

Re-orientating the orientated
Moses Tan

VIII

The Negative Space
Stacey Chan

IX

Matter Out of Place
Audrey Albert

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We have been working on a series of blog features with artists and contributors who we wanted hear more from about. We see these blog posts as spaces of reflection, which can be as informal as a sketchbook page and detailed as an excerpt of an essay - depending on the contributor and how they wish to present their research.

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The Negative Space
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Re-orientating the orientated


The playground roundabout came to a pause, you get off the roundabout, ending up diagonally

An exercise in thinking through centres, nodes, intersections. Let’s ask these questions of orientations, wherein phenomenology is also questioned. Can we but all re-think the didactics of phenomenology and its relevance within a region once controlled. How do we re-think decoloniality and re-speculate futures?

How can we decolonise experienced bodies?

It is 2055, the year where an openly queer politician is elected into parliament. People question the legitimacy of an umbrella term such as queer. Suggestions include using other forms of language as a re-orientation, and with animistic and ritualistic belief systems replacing theoretical, activist framing. An exercise in nostalgia takes over the current, and revises the current instead of the historical space it used to occupy.

The gantry lights up with the flick of the wrist. Camera pans to the back of the protagonist, a non-conforming body gestures to the incoming train. On the screen, a clock strikes 13 on a 36 hour clock. Train doors open and bodies navigate the space, passing through one another in a world where quantum tunnelling occurs as a result of a pandemic.

Southeast Asia is now a powerful economy. With some countries spearheading this turn while Singapore takes on an ambiguous position. As they always do. Countries have invested in this space of ambiguity where resonance taxes are safe.



Can we ever really re-orientate the orientated?

The roundabout sits alone in the quiet playground, willing itself to be turned.

Standing up for the right not to stand

Don’t think anyone will disagree that museums where artistic, cultural, historical, and scientific objects are stored and viewed need to change. Sometimes changes occur at the most unexpected places. This is the story of Luke Ching Chin-wai, a visual artist from Hong Kong championing for rights of museum security guards not to stand all day at their jobs.
The right not to stand might sound trivial to you, but imagine if your job required you to stand for your entire shift just because once in a while some of your colleague fall asleep during their shifts. He thinks that is wrong. What he did next is to take up a job as museum security. After experience the job first hand, he protested to the management of these museum. After rounds of negotiation, both sides agreed that bar chairs will be provided to the guards to sit on, but not doze off.

The truth of the matter is, blue collar workers are always treated as tools, rather than people. There are still hundreds, if not thousands of people without the right not to stand at their jobs. Will you stand up for them like Ching? 

Image credit: Edward Wong